The New Year brings you a great opportunity to change your life for better health and well-being. In preparation for a better life, consider how recovering from loving a sociopath/psychopath is like recovering from addiction. Since the New Year is an opportunity, let’s take the time to focus on recovery.
A good friend of mine is struggling with substance addiction. This addiction is very similar to what many of you face because my friend was highly functioning before the addiction which started at mid-life. Before the addiction, he functioned well and was very productive. There is no obvious reason for my friend to be now at the verge of death from stimulants.
When we recently discussed his addiction, I asked my friend to consider what goes through his mind at the moment he decides that the best thing for him to do with his time is to use speed. I admitted being baffled about why he would make that choice. There are so many other ways he could spend his time and he knows that. He said, “When I don’t use, I feel great”¦ Then I use”¦I am an addict.”
Although I am generally in favor of people identifying their problems, in this case, “I am an addict” seemed like a quick excuse used to avoid really taking responsibility for his choices. After some reflection he did say to me, “You are right, it feels like a compulsion, but I guess it is a choice.”
Maybe you face a similar struggle. Instead of battling addiction, you are battling the love you feel for a sociopath. Just like my friend, even though you feel a compulsion to call the sociopath, you too have a choice to make. You can either choose to spend your time doing things that will bring you health and wellness or you can choose to spend time with that sociopath/psychopath.
During our talk, my friend reflected that he feels empty and bored at the time he chooses to use. The speed is a quick fix for the emptiness and boredom.
Many of you go about your lives just fine, then you end up home alone one day with nothing to do. Feeling bored, it suddenly occurs to you that your best choice is to call that sociopath. At the moment of boredom and emptiness all the pain the person caused you is not accessible to your consciousness. All you think about is the fun you had together. This fun is a marked contrast to the boredom and emptiness you feel in the moment. Since you feel sentimental, you think it is OK to make that call.
If you are waiting to feel repulsion for the sociopath before you disengage, you may be waiting for a very long time. The pleasant memories may always be tied to the love you feel which will be activated when you slow down and give yourself time to think. You have to make a conscious decision to make better choices for yourself. This decision has to be independent of however you feel in the moment. The decision to break away and remain free is a leap of faith in the belief that your future can be better “sociopath free.”
OK so how did you get to this place where you decide your best option is to choose to be with a sociopath/psychopath?
Just like my friend with speed addiction, during the relationship, you gave up on many of the activities that used to be meaningful to you. Also like my friend, you left friends, family members and hobbies behind. Maybe you also now surround yourself with other very dysfunctional people.
Getting free means choosing to spend your time in healthier ways; it means connecting with the love you feel for the friends and family members you abandoned when you chose the sociopath. You have to reconnect to the “you” that existed before this relationship.
You also have to admit that it is very selfish for you to hold on to your love for the sociopath. You likely have people who are counting on you to be a friend, parent or devoted family member. You can’t be there for others who need you as long as you hold on to the sociopath. Stopping then, means thinking of those other people. You do have a duty to them, much more than you have a duty to the sociopath.
You might benefit from combining all your New Year’s resolutions into one: Resolve to live a life of greater physical, psychological and spiritual well-being.
Make a commitment to fill your boredom and emptiness with activities that will build you up and make you healthy. If you are overweight, the CDC says you need an hour of exercise each day. There is a world out there full of fascinating possibilities, you can find them if you try.
Now I’d like to introduce you to a couple of friends who have brought joy, meaning and healing to my family. Each day when we walk and play with our dogs, the dysfunction brought into our lives by a psychopath feels very far away.
Use the comment section below to make your own lists of things you can do in the New Year, rather than wasting your time and precious life energy with a sociopath.
Other articles on addiction to a sociopath:
Ask Dr. Leedom: I am really sick, aren’t i?
How does one ever get over the heartache of being taken by a con artist?
Why is this so hard for us mentally?
A deeper understanding of love, ourselves and the sociopath
Why you can be addicted to a sociopath
I don’t understand why I still care
Just reading about the jealousy of how he may be with her..you get over it, desensetized…and know he will be as bad if not worse to her at some point..Mine ended up dumping her after she found his begging text to me, she threatened suicide and all kinds he did not care..I am the only one who knows him warts and all, with everyone else he puts on an act, I know h e is only ever truly comfortable, he just gets bored, but then he wants home, he was far worse to her in the end than he ever was with me..I think when they have an easy ride out of us, and we bow and twist to please them we set the benchmark for the next one to live up to!
eileen says – New Phone Number = New Life — I dont know why this is so difficult for some people to do – it ends the dance – it ends the game – and we win – when we do this we are making the final discard….no contact is our only weapon and our ultimate salvation….
Good morning everyone – I got up today and came right to the computer. No fetal position but I have those bad butterflies in my stomach. I’m so grateful for all of you – I feel like there are wonderful, friendly LF ghosts all around me, hanging out in my room….
Muldoon…Eileen..I know you are right about the girl. I know how he is is…gets bored with everyone but me very, very quickly. In fact, there’s nothing about me that bores him at all and thats one of the reasons he comes back. He’s told me that. What’s different for him this time is that, when I met with (breaking NC) two weeks ago, I didn’t let him come up to the house. That would have been the beginning of something far worse than this. He was trying to feel me out, probably had a fight with his mom, wanted out, some place to go, wanted to see if he could still just move in and out like before. He has been living here on/off for ten years. When I said no, he had to juggle quick with whatever he’s got going on, started lying, still trying to keep me in the fold. When I outed him (anonymously) to that girl on FB after realizing what he was doing, he became absolutely livid – doing the two things that he KNEW would send me into an anxiety/panic-ridden frenzy: he called my mother and went to file a Order of Bogus Protection. I’m sure he already regrets the order but its all he had left since he couldn’t come up here and create his chaos. And I know the girl – if she isn’t already gone because of what I wrote – is only the supply because obviously it wasn’t going to be that easy to use me and be where he is most comfortable. He will do anything necessary to get whatever he needs at the moment. It’s, of course, sad to me that he couldn’t be normal, mean all the things he said when we met that night, and TRY to act on his words.
This time, more than any other, I am aware of the lack of ACTION in his words. How they will say anything and everything – the same things over and over to apease you – and then do absolutely NOTHING. The words/promises just pour out of their mouths and then they continue on. He was so used to me NOT EXPECTING the “action” – so used to me being happy to just HEAR the words and him not having to ever worry about acting on them. This time I told him that he couldn’t come up until I knew he was getting ready to leave his mom’s and get his own place, that I could SEE all his plans in progress. He didn’t like that. Thinking about that right now makes me sick. Everything after that first meeting and right up until he got the Bogus Order was null and void to him because he already knew that – for the first time in ten years -I had EXPECTATIONS and had set boundaries that were going to be a little harder to cross if he wanted back in. Consequently, he went right for the juggular by calling my mom, filing an Order as if he’s IN FEAR FOR HIS LIFE, and, now, the absolute silence.
Nothing, but nothing, has any meaning at all to them. They live twisted moment by twisted moment and time stands absolutely still. I want to scream at him, hit him, ten frigging years and it really was NOTHING. Now, a day and a half until I have to file that Order. That’s a really big deal for me because I have never ever done that and he doesn’t think I will. I mean, it is such DRAMA. He didn’t have to go that far.
Sometimes I think I should have let him come up – because its when he’s here, hanging out, invading my space, that I am the strongest and he annoys me the most – to the point that I am GLAD when he leaves. Maybe I should have done that. Maybe I made this so much harder on myself. I should have just let him up to dig his own grave. Maybe I wouldn’t be feeling this awful rejection feeling again. This is what’s on my mind today.
Henry….I reread your posts early this morning and I could feel everything you felt when he made his unexpected appearance. How you were fine and then, suddenly, you weren’t. How they can bring emotions to the surface that we thought were gone. There is such power in their evilness sometimes – if only momemtarily. I hope you are good today.
THOUGHT OF SOMETHING FUNNY TO SHARE: Something the N (name is WAYNE, by the way) said while we were sitting in the car for three hours two weeks ago – that first meeting after NC. It just goes to show how they are nothing but empty words but its kinda FUNNY. See – for the months prior to me kicking him out, I started saying “I’m on to you!” to everything he did so, when I’d leave, he’d go snooping in my computer and must have come across the “narcissist” stuff/research/LF I’d saved or whatever. I know this because, at one point, he had gone down to harrass one of my girlfriends about me and I guess he blurted out to her “She’s nothing but a narcissist!”. She thought that was hysterical and I was, like, “ah-ha!”
Well, when we sat in the car two weeks ago – and he was “pouring out his heart to me” this was an actual piece of our conversation (show’s the mentality of these idiots, I swear). Something to this effect:
The N: “I love you and Sky. You were my world. I think about you every minute. I’ve changed. My life is so different now. I wish I had done more for you guys. I love you” blah blah
Me: “But you hurt me all the time. It’s always the same thing. You break my heart”
The N: “I know, you’re right. I’ve been a narcissist and I’m so sorry”
Me: “Yes, you ARE a narcissist. Do you know what that means? It means you are incapable of love, you have no remorse, no conscience…you’ll use anyone and say anything to get what you want. it’s awful”
The N: “Yup. God, you know me so well. Anyway, I love you, I miss you………blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH”
True story. Jeeeeez!!!!
Luckyzb! My sociopath told me the exact same thing – that I was the most interesting person he knew, the only one he didn’t get bored with! Don’t listen to that. It’s sociopathtalk. Means nothing at all.
Thanks to everyone here for letting me take up so much space the past few days……
Eileen…….How truly bizarre that all their brains are wired EXACTLY the same…right down to the EXACT same words…..the scientific/medical anomoly of that alone is worth studying……frigging amazing
the spath of my acquaintance was duping about 4 others at the same time, and said to me: “YOU gave me something that none of the others do/did, you understood that…blah blah blah.”
the last conversation:
me: “I am not sure what you are, a death blogger or a sociopath. and they are not mutually exclusive.”
her/’him’ with great HURT and self pity in his voice: “oh, so now i have a NEW label, I am a ‘death blogging sociopath’.”
me: oh, we are so not going to do that shit.
and then LATER in the conversation:
‘him’/her: “do you think i am bi-polar?”
oh good f**king chr**t!
luckyzb,
The thing is that if you let him come up, he would have PERCIEVED this as a win. Because that is exactly what he wanted. Right now he has you second guessing yourself and all mixed up. That is also what he wanted. FOG. The fear, obligation and guilt.
The only real defense you have against his lies and deception is N/C. He can’t lie to you if your not listening. He can’t decieve you if you have no contact.
He can’t pull you into the drama of the other woman.
The order of protection is maybe not the worst thing that could have happened here. It might backfire on him now as well. You should file for your own and then stick to it.
Go one step further and have your own “order of protection” by not allowing your friends to tell you anything what is going on with him. Or looking on FB or whatever other source contains info. Go full N/C not just physical N/C.
It is usually the “small stuff”, the note, the chance sighting, the info on FB, that draws you back in.
Just like the recovering alcoholic sitting at the bar “entertaining” the idea of having just one beer. N/C is the alcoholics only chance and this is true of any addiction.