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
Dear onestep”sister” – you must be that long-lost twin I keep hearing about! Well, since I have to ditch my other sisters I sure could use a new one!
Witsend thank you so much for addressing my issues in such a kind and caring way. I need to go back to my trusted rheumy and tell him “you know I’ve been putting up a real good front but I am not doing so well.” I was put on a diff antideprsst 2 months ago and it is making me MORE depressed, so I called his office today and had them call in the Zoloft which I have taken for years. I usually try to maintain a good attitude but in this case I do think I need to “whine and complain” a little louder. He is a doll and will definitely listen.
The pain on top of everything else has been making me feel overwhelmed, and EVERY time I talked to my mother this week it has just been like getting sucker-punched. Now that the holidays are over and I have supportive friends here I can feel the pressure releasing a bit.
I have also been frustrated because I started taking yoga classes and I enjoyed them and most of my body felt great, but 2 out of 3 classes just put my neck and shoulders into painful spasms that haven’t let up much for the last 4 months. That bummed me out because I was trying to do something good for myself! I just need to impress on my doc that it is just getting too difficult to even function.
Between that, the family, the fatigue, and my roomate stealing my pain meds I just had a super bad meltdown. I had quite enough pressure without my roommate situation – we have been friendly and now I feel uneasy, lied to and “played.” This was just the last straw because it made me feel uncomfortable in my own home (her home). Not a nice feeling. But it also made me realize I would be happier if I could get my own apartment. I put all my things in storage 2 years ago and because of my physical state have not been able to move forward. It is what I want, though. I could then entertain my own friends and have my art, my books, and the rest of my cd’s and kitchen stuff. That would be total BLISS!
I do have friends here but haven’t really socialized at all in a couple of months. I am sure if they have the time they would be happy to at least get together and have an “attitude adjustment.”
I need to find out more about resources in the community – I don’t know what or when I might need help with down the road.
I am starting to calm down a bit. I also would love to have a pet bird again – Oxy posted here about her parrot using curse words ONLY at the most appropriate times, and that has been my experience for I have had many pet birds and some of them are so smart and funny!
One bird I had would laugh if anyone in the room started to chuckle, then hearing him laugh made you just laugh harder until everyone is in tears! This same birdie (Griffie) would also laugh if he heard people laughing on TV – BUT NOT to a canned laugh track! Somehow he knew the difference!
XXXXXXXXXXX – thank you!
This website has helped me enormously. I am not alone.
Identify with everything and I am so sorry that any of us ever had experience one. Why were they even created? They are like insects.
Remember him over for dinner with another couple. There was a moment of clarity in which I looked at him and was creeped out, think he was like a huge preying mantis. Dismissed it – as I did all other intuitive thoughts about him. Perceptions were so bizarre that I couldn’t believe them.
It has been six months since I left him. One person wrote about PTSD and I believe it. Will be fine and then something triggers me. Weeks of being okay, then not. Nightmares, waking up each night around 2-3:30, feeling like I’m too stupid to protect myself. If I can’t, who will?
Met mine in a 12 step program in which I have been a member for 15 years. Have wonderful friends in there. To stop the triggers, am now only going to women’s mtgs, and have also started therapy. He is back in program and the men (that do not know him) are wanting to help. Program is a platform of “love and tolerance is our code”. Makes me want to hurl. Severely pissed that am having to go through any of this.
Would like to stand up in a huge mtg and expose him, but think I will be hauled away, latched down on a strecher, frothing at the mouth what a crazy fuc–er he is. You gotta laugh.
Mostly want him out of my thoughts. I hope to not visit this website too long, as I do not want to keep focusing on any of it. Unfortunately I am still sick from all of it. Pray that evolution will take care of these creeps.
Hello Nature: This website has helped me tremendously too, in knowing I was not alone in this Twilight Zone encounter with a N/S.
Like you, I recall initially dismissing intuitive thoughts about my ex — his perceptions were so strange at times that I couldn’t believe them either. It was tough to come to terms with it all — a process that began six months into a 1.5 year relationship — so I am thankful I can laugh more about it now.
It has helped a great deal for me to have a place to write about my ongoing process of healing as it unfolds. Like many people here, I saw that my friends and family simply could not believe or be able to fully relate to what we’ve experienced with a disordered personality N/S.
Reading about others’ journeys on Lovefraud has been validating as I arrive at new ways of thinking and feeling in order to ultimately leave this experience behind me.
Like you, my goal for 2010 is to take the information I’ve learned here and keep it in my heart, yet move forward without a need to keep revisiting this issue.
Hi Recovering. Thanks for your reply. Felt like I had fallen down the rabbit hole until finding this website.
The sameness of the NS’s is weird. Are they a Borg?? The horrible eating of bad food, the lack of ANY kind of responsibility (giving up his child for adoption), the constant texting, calling, then waning (found out later how busy he was with others), the charisma, the looks, the bisexuality, and ALL the behaviours that people have blogged on this site.
Did not find out the true depths of illness until a guy (just had relapsed) started telling me about how my Ex-Ex had been chasing him, stalking him, and more, while still with me. Also found out NS was prostituting himself with men. More information came out of this guy until my shock started wearing off and now avoid him. Man that talked to me sounds obsessed with him, in a still wanting to see him way. One of the reasons I cannot go to mtgs. Just can’t hear about his crap from others.
I have used the words “Twilight Zone” also. There is just no good way for me to relate the astonishing fact that I was with him. He irritated me! He also did all the other things as mentioned by others, that somehow locked me in.
It was overwhelming and soothing to my ego that he wanted so much to be with me. So aware now to watch for this, and SO MANY other red flags.
Have a friend that is a counselor. He said that we date these people, interact with them, all the time. We mostly do not realize it, unless they get in our inner circle.
Let’s move forward with grace and dignity! I cannot pray for him, but I DO pray. When waking in middle of night, or plotting his demise: Please remove these thoughts. I have no need for them.
Peace to all of you in this new year.
Saw this this morning:
“INSTANT LOVE – Top Tricks to Instantly connect with Anyone” http://ca.dating.personals.yahoo.com/singles/datingtips/88578/dating-tips-4-tricks-to-instantly-connect-with-anyone
It’s a little primer for spaths, Ns and a promotion of being inauthentic as possible. – yay, just what our societies need.
I didn’t listen to music for a long time – about a year when I was in retreat. Coming out of that time I became very aware of the content of a lot of current music: the focus on the normalization of dysfunction in love relationships.
We are indoctrinated at an early age in our environments and it just keeps coming day in day out – on levels we are not even aware of. In ways that accepted within our cultures, and even when recognized as promoting dysfunction are touted as ‘benign’, and something we can ignore. good luck with that.
one_step_at_a_time: In addition to the “instant love connection” info you shared, there is actually a list of “steps of seduction” that I ran across as I was figuring out my experience with the ex. It was as if he’d read the book!
The fact that so many of them do the same things suggests that there is something wired within them to bring about this crazy thinking and strange behaviors.
Never again will I assume someone is normal. They’ll be guilty until proven innocent. LOL.
Like you, I’ve cringed at so much of popular music that normalizes dysfunction in love relationships. At least we’re aware of and questioning this, rather than just soaking it all in.
recovering: it’s hard with the music – it’s around, like air. and i love lots of singers – a beautiful voice or catchy musical line is seductive in its own right – but then there are the lyrics to contend with.
and i think that the lyrics that we don’t necessarily relate to may ‘fill in the blanks’ of what we are really experiencing; str8t up or dysfunctional they offer FANTASY.
Perhaps the reason spaths are so good at picking this stuff up is that it is ALL AROUND US- and if they have no internal compass of decency that they use to mitigate or question being players, then these plays are just tools in the toolbox.
I am sure that they see us being duped and manipulated in society and they just pick the ones they see as most effective. And through trial and error they refine their plays.
There are reports that the spath I tangled with has been doing her thing for 30 years. I read this again last night and strted thinking about all the practice she has had. One of her scams that i know about lasted over two years, one of the ones she is currently involved in (which i was part of) started early this year and is still rolling. so, if she has an average of say 18 months in each, and sometimes cons a group at a time – she has been practicing hardcore on 20 to 200 people in her spathing career.
Let’s choose a mid-point, say even 100 people. 100 PEOPLE! IF I PULLED A CON ON 100 PEOPLE I WOULD BE REALLY F*CKING GOOD AT IT. And all that times she would have been gaining more and more feedback, and refining her plays.
And this explains WHY SHE IS SO GOOD AT IT. And it also makes me less appreciative of her talent as she made some BIG mistakes 😉 with me.
Hard to tell what her mission was when some of her sockpuppets started being abusive. (oops, you probably don’t know my story – I was conned by a woman online and on phone pretending to be a man and his whole family, bf and friends. have email from them all and phone contact with ‘him’ and one of his ‘sisters.’ She pulled this one recently on another woman -and it lasted 2 years.
…back to the abuse…the last time i talked to ‘him’ was 6 weeks after ‘he died’. She said to me that she had always wondered why i didn’t get into a through down with the bf who was becoming abusive to me. I think she WANTED that, wanted that engagement, wanted THE FIGHT and the ANGER, wanted the sport. I just wouldn’t, for two reasons 1) I don’t want to be in a contentious relationship and 2) I didn’t want to jeopardize my relationship with him and the bf was set up in the con as the person who could block me from connecting with ‘him’.
The bf., The pious weird sister (who came on the scene after ‘he died’), the street rat friend – I didn’t respond to them the way i was ‘supposed to’, of that i am sure. The sister wrote abusive crap and I didn’t respond. The street rat threatened my and screamed histrionically after I spoke to ‘him’ the last time and I used words like ‘ death blogger’, ‘sociopath’ and ‘sock puppet’. At the time I didn’t know THAT THESE HORROR SHOWS WERE ACTUALLY THE SAME PERSON, AND THE SAME PERSON AS THE SWEET BOY.
‘He’ was the only one I wanted. ‘He’ was a whole lot of good stuff. Now, I am going to go over the things ‘he’ said and did and deconstruct the con.
I got word that she is now resurrecting the dead (4 deaths in the crew) and coming back to life. and this has upset me dearly – BUT IT IS AN OPPORTUNITY for me to look more and more closely at where i am tied in and pick away at the fibres to free myself. as Kathleen Hawk has said, there is a line between what is me and what is not me. This ‘stuff’ is not me. My connection to ‘him’ and consequently the spath is ‘not me’. And every opportunity to see my connection well enough that i can disconnect is ultimately good.
And in the last 2 days I see the PTSD. And am glad of that clarity.
one_step — Yes, I’m familiar with your story. I once asked you where the S who perpetrated her ruse with you got the time and energy to carry out something so elaborate.
What you describe is believable — and yet, had I not had my experience with my ex-N/S, it would have been hard for me to believe all that you endured.
Even though my situation involved just one man, my imagination has widened to not put anything past these N/S people since I’ve read about the different experiences of others on Lovefraud.
Amazing that the S you dealt with has been practicing this disordered way of life for at least 30 years.
I imagine learning more is helping you, with your healing process in some ways, yet also likely to bring up all sorts of feelings.
Dear Nature,
Wow, I’m thinking perhaps we dated the same person! Mine was all that you described and more. It helped me to read what you had written on here because I’ve had the same things happening. For those of us who have been so hurt, it’s good to know that a site like this exists and that we have a place to come to when we need to vent, share, cry or anything else that we need to do to help us stay focused on recovery. I am familiar with 12 step as that is what my ex P. was doing when I met him. He had 18 months of being clean. I came to find out it was only because he was on probation and HAD to go to meetings. Of course, he had another address that any and all court papers were sent to. They’re slick, alright. Hang in there…it all passes at some point.
one step, I just checked out the site you posted and isn’t that just too interesting? I can see where what they say would be NORMAL for most people, but P/N/A’s take them to a whole new level. For them, it’s a form of art. Lets just see how creative I can be with THIS one? How much can I take them for? How long can I keep this one hanging on? ICK!
recovering, I find myself thinking the same thing. I don’t think I’ll ever trust again and yet I hope that someday I’ll have someone in my life who I can trust fully, a person who wants to GIVE more than TAKE, a person I can talk with and not have every conversation be a word game, a person I can tell anything to and know it won’t be turned around and used against me. I’m not ready for dating, by far. I have miles to go on that one. In the meantime, I’ll work on my healing and look at everyone as guilty until proven innocent. Where did you find the “steps of seduction”? I would love to read that as well.
Happy New Years all!
Cat
hi recovering – yes, I remember – I am just coming out of the fog and don’t know who I have said what to.
I think that the sum of what she did and was as those separate sock puppets, is close to what people experience face to face with the spaths they deal with.
I view my experience in the light of other’s ‘face to face with one person’ experiences. That is what people here share.
For me it is like an accordion – constantly expanding and contracting – contacting to get all of the sock puppet action under the heading ‘one spath’, but then having to expand again and look at the behaviour/words of 6 people (and THEIR extended story lines/ families) and search through THEIR behavours singly, to SEE the behaviours others describe.
For so long ‘he’ was my focus – not the rest of them. Now, that is starting to change, so I think I am having success in getting ‘them’ under the heading of ‘one spath.’
‘he’ wasn’t real, didn’t love me, wasn’t going to save me by being what I most wanted, or by being my partner in creating the life I really wanted, or help me financially. That’s my fantasy, which i co-created with the spath.
when they speak the truth: one of the sock puppets (the mean bf) said, ‘ EVERYTHING ON (WEBSITE NAME) IS A FANTASY!
She knew – cause that’s what SHE was living and creating every single time she logged on, called one of us, sent emails and text messages. that was HER. i have read some of her writing as ‘herself’ – it is HER MOST POORLY RENDERED CHARACTER.