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
recovering….I am going to order that book for the title alone. Thank you for all that information.
Every LF post is so smart, so well-written, so insightful, so full of clarity for others, so insanely SANE. There is nothing like it anywhere for those recovering from N/P/S abuse. This is a very, very special place.
(Now I’m crying about THAT. Good God!)
I said earlier that I was amazed by the anomoly that is narsissism/S/P. How they all say and do the exact same things – the almost paranormal aspect to it all. My son is a diagnosed schizophrenic (I have a story online about our journey together) and has been since the age of eleven. He suffers from chronic auditory and visual hallucinations and for the past ten years (yup – on TOP/along/during the N saga) my mission has been to learn everything there is to know about the illness/the brain/the origins of consciousness/the mind/evil.
What has always fascinated/freaked me out – and still does – is the fact that The Voices heard by schizophrenics – and even many of the visual hallucinaions – are universal. From one side of the world to the other. My son hears and sees the same things that schizophrenics all over the universe expereince. It is very, very bizarre – and there are hundreds of theories as to how the brain anomoly is created to begin with and why it does what it does. The behavior of the N/S/P – the fact that all of us here have experienced the same exact things – disapperances/reappearances/lies/gaslighting/the very same words/actions/lack of actions! I know this is a disorder but, today, I am so aware that this is a DISORDER. Why, then, do I have absolutely NO DESIRE to accept it as so like I accept and want to fix my son’s illness? I HATE that the N can’t just CHANGE! Or at least REALIZE. I have extreme bitterness – as we all do. I have no “sympathy” whatsoever for his DISORDER but my sympathy for those with mental illness is enormous. Or is that the reason why I stay in the drama – because deep down I think I CAN fix it? Is that why we all stay?
Now, I’m getting way out there. But it makes me wonder about the whole damn thing….
Luckyzb – I had the same feelings, hoping my sociopath’s sociopathy would go away. Even thinking “he would be such a great guy / it could be such a great relationship if he wasn’t a sociopath”.
But the more I read about sociopaths, the more I analyzed, deciphered, deconstructed his words and actions, the more I came to think that…if you take the sociopath out of my sociopath…there’s nothing left!!!! He doesn’t “have” a disorder, he IS a disorder. Even the “good” aspects of his personality are feigned, fake, and/or mere instruments that serve no other purpose than the sociopath’s sociopathic ambitions and needs.
luckyzb,
You wrote that you have difficulty accepting that the N can’t change or at least realize.
I think we struggle with facing the fact that their disorder makes them so different from us. We assume that, at some level, they see what we see and feel what we feel. And that, under the right circumstances, they can break through.
If they’re true NSPs, they can’t. They live without so much that we empaths take for granted, and they’ve developed survival skills and character traits in the absence of empathy or belief in connection or belonging, that their inner worlds are as much like ours as as lizards are like cows.
Our difficulty in dealing with this is magnified by the fact that they survive in empath society by observing us, miming us, and taking advantage of the key difference between us — that we feel for each other. They not only appear to be like us initially, but they appear to be extraordinarily attractive and exactly what we are looking for. This is part of their survival technique. If they can’t fit in and fool people into caring about them, they can’t survive or thrive in empath society. However, they can’t really do what we can do, in terms of building things collaboratively for mutual gain, and they also can’t maintain the illusion of being an empath, because it’s work for them and they tire. (Imagine trying to pretend you’re tough and unfeeling for days on end.)
One of the big challenges we face in coming to terms with them — and perhaps one of the reasons you’re resisting the truth that he’s disordered — is that we naturally feel pity and want to help the ill and disadvantaged. It’s not just because we’re nice people (we are), but we’re conscious of the overall health of the community. Ideally, we want us all to be well, safe and happy.
Sociopaths challenge this part of us. Admitting they cannot be healed and, worse, they repay any human feeling with heartless usage and leave behind loss and destruction… well, all this forces us to do damage to ourselves. We don’t want to be as cold and uncaring as them. Most of us have gone through a phase of healing where we’re frightened we’ve become sociopaths as well.
It’s no coincidence that most of us who get involved with these people don’t have very good boundaries or sense of personal entitlement. We are, due to training or result of trauma, “over-socialized” to be communal people. Our understanding of ourselves as separate and entitled to care for ourselves, to get our needs met, and to do this first, before we start sharing our resources, needs to be developed.
So, I’m telling you that you can be an empathic, loving and generous person, and still make a personal decision that you are not responsible for other people’s problems that you didn’t create and you can’t fix. In fact, to be a truly open-hearted person, you have to get through through first learning to love and care for yourself. That’s the path. Trying to be generous or tolerant or caretaking in any way before you are able to extend all that to yourself, just makes you a walking opportunity for users.
The cure to all of this is in your relationship with yourself. To the extent that you’re worrying about him or thinking about him or anyone else (except the people who are true resources in your life, like your son), you are avoiding what you really need to be working on. Your relationship with you.
Forgive me for sounding preachy. I’m writing fast, because my inner “mom” in reminding me I need to finish cleaning up the kitchen after Christmas dinner and start getting tonight’s ready. I hope this makes some kind of sense.
Kathy
I’m not resisting the fact that he’s disordered – there is no way for me NOT to accept that in light of what I learned on LF. It’s just odd to me that I can be so understanding of mental illness all around (because of my son, etc) and so UNACCEPTING of HIS disorder. It just pisses me off that he HAS one. You are SO RIGHT, though, about what I’ve been avoiding – things that matter.
Eileen – “if you take the sociopath out of my sociopath”there’s nothing left!!!! He doesn’t “have” a disorder, he IS a disorder.” Excellent…..there just isn’t any substance to them at all. If you took out the disorder, there’d be nothing but a big, dull void. The disorder just fills up the empty space so they can walk around and pretend to be human.
kathy…you ALWAYS make sense…..and you don’t preach – you teach!
Luckyzb: ” The disorder just fills up the empty space so they can walk around and pretend to be human” : even better!
I agree, it is a terrifying disorder. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, and other psychiatric illnesses I suppose, can turn a person into a destructive monster… but we still know there is a person in there! I’d say that’s the difference – a sociopath is not a person. We can’t help thinking he has a soul, hidden somewhere under layers of compulsive lying, deveiving, cheating, hurting – but there is no soul in there…
Eileen,
I forgot about him having all these things in common with me. That is one of the things that made me like him so much. He also has had a hard life (allegedly), and when I said I loved clothes, he said he did too. In fact, we seemed to have a lot in common. To me, this is not a red flag at all, but things to bond with someone over. I didn’t find out UNTIL AFTER TALKING WITH THE OTHER WOMEN HE’D BEEN INVOLVED WITH that he told her he had a great life (!). And I happened to catch one of his forum posts where he said he had no fashion sense. Again, because someone pays you a few compliments and seems to have some things in common, dang, that in itself would not make me suspicious.
I’m reading “Safe People” and it’s very good. In addition to describing the traits of someone who is not safe, it’s making me realize the ways in which I may not be safe either (yet one more self-help book to make me realized how f*cked up I am. Ugh). Anyway, all the signs they mention that apply to this guy were not apparent until the very end when could see his colors anyway. In the beginning it was really hard to tell. He seemed a little more emotional and sensitive than most guys, but that’s one of the things I liked about him. The only signs I should have paid attention to (besides the flattery) was the slight bit of gaslighting (when I told him he was flirting, he denied it). When I pointed out that he was playing games with me, he put it back on me. Those should have been big red flags. And I missed them.
Stargazer, Ditto in terms of signs I should have paid attention to (besides the flattery) was the gaslighting — when I pointed out mixed messages he was sending, I was left more confused rather than having greater clarity about some factual/experiential things he described about his life.
Most of us who missed the red flags didn’t know what we should have been looking for — and now we know!
Kathy, a well-summarized comment from you that I am practicing more and more: “You can be an empathic, loving and generous person, and still make a personal decision that you are not responsible for other people’s problems that you didn’t create and you can’t fix.”
Hi Stargazer, it’s good to find out from that book what makes you vulnerable, but remember he is the fucked up one, not you!
My sociopath also changed his persona/tastes from one woman to the other, depending on what could work to seduce them. The degree of abuse also varied from one girlfriend to the other, as I found out – depending on the boundaries each of us set I suppose, or depending on how ‘hooked’ and submissive each of us had become.
You didn’t miss the red flags, you noticed them, otherwise you wouldn’t remember them today.
I was the same. I wrote down a list of the red flags I noticed but ignored…it’s very long…and I’m too ashamed to post it!