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
And now, less than an hour later I sit with how I used to talk to ‘him’ every night. and although it wasn’t true support, it was laughter and respite from the day’s hardships and disappointments – a true addictive component of the relationship –
tonight there won’t be this.
and that is quite quite okay.
Dear One, I am sorry you did not get the job, but on the same time it will give you the opportunity to work on the thought you were elaborating in your post, and which I fuond very helpful to think about:
“Or, maybe I just need to keep ignoring this picture of her, and acting the way I want to live. Like the way ignoring them diminishes their ability to draw energy from us. Punch the shark in the nose, or see its true non existent nature (as a voice and image inside me). Dharma rising.”
I do not know anything about “Dharma rising” (Karma?). It is very helpful to shrink those awful creatures to little lice and do some extermination thought on them and let Karma work, as we are just too weak to handle this at THAT moment. As Oxy puts it, do not let them rent space in the head. And when you are obsessed with “outing”, then you are blocked from better things to do, to live a full life for instance.Think about an ugly dried out potted plant you are about to throw in the bin, not watering it, just watch it dry out… (I usually am quite nice to plants, there are just two of them I killed deliberately, and I still feel remorse).
As far as I know you still have your writing job! I hope another door will open soon for you. Kind regards, and hugs!
Libelle
When I lonely and feeling a lack of resources ‘he’ rises up. – both a soother, and as another ‘lack’
when i feel enough resources, ‘she’ is what I see, and when i feel even more resources are here/coming, I have the ability to work on deconstructing and understanding what happened and ‘getting on’ – not stuck. not trapped.
spath as symbol, symptom and cause of lack.
brouha!
libelle – ty! the wriing gig is only a little, but extremely lucrative contract.
my present full time contract is very soon over.
i don’t know how to respond to the sutff about outing. still investigating the why and is it needed, and get really triggered around it.
‘dharma’ is the buddhas teachings. i practiced devoutly for quite a few years. the idea here is that things are not inherently ‘real’ – but constructs of mind and circumstances.
and a belief in karma is probably of most use if we are patient and believe in cause and effect without attaching moralism to it. in buddhism, i have heard the lamas say that the karma we are burning off in this life is from billions and billions of years ago – and it’s more like a law of physics -bad out, bad in, etc.
my desires around the spath are not that devoid of emotion.
Dear One-step. Thank you for the explanations! Sounds complicated to me. Isn’t the highest aim in Bhuddism to become “empty”? (or I am mixing it up with Hinduism?)
Maybe you can work for yourself with these strong triggers you observe. Obviously it is a “button” to some very energetic part in yourself that has not been put in there by the Spath, but has been sitting there for a long time and you were not aware of its existence.
Can you look at it, this enegetic part hidden in your basement of the soul and you were not aware of? Describe the feelings that come with looking at it? When did this feeling happen for the first time in your life? Circumstances? What was your reaction THEN? How would you have reacted THEN with the knowledge of NOW?
For me the button =trigger was the feeling of profound abandonment I experienced as a little child being the “great” one and looking after my younger sister and my infant brother, and having no resources at all. I tried my very best to keep normalcy and hide my panic. And in hindsight I got VERY angry at my reckless parents!
Maybe you will find something similar. And the challenge of a new job may be hindering the process.
Take care!
THANKS AGAIN LIBELLE – W.hat you wrote has resonance. will try to work with this process – It is suggested in the betrayal bond as a way to stop repeating trauma in our lives.
new job is necessary. that or the street. street doesn’t look too appealing.
The highest aim in Buddhism isn’t ‘to be empty’. In some forms of buddhism it is to see the emptiness in everything – that everything is made up of thoughts and beliefs and circumstances (including atoms) , and has no inherent reality.
one step
ouuu, one step DIGS the edit feature. (the writing box is so little)
hey, is there any way to make the writing box bigger?
CAT:
Thanks. You are a sweetheart. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. And I totally relate to what you said–it’s difficult to wrap our brains around this kind of behavior. It’s just unfathomable. My ex was GREAT at making me feel like he was just a normal guy with intimacy issues. Never introduced me to his friends, but always seemed to have a good excuse. Now, with this girl, he just got off the dating site, but I at the expense of sounding like it’s all about me, I truly get the felling he is a man with something to prove, since I outed his awful behavior to some of his friends. One guy friend told me he has been a shameless womanizer for the entire 12 years he has known him. He met this girl while with me, or immediately after, and now he gets off the dating site, spends the holiday with her family and is having her meet his friends/family. I truly believe he enjoys EVERY second of hurting me–every second. Even though I heard his protestations of change and it was never true, I wonder if now it is. Very, very difficult not to think about and I feel so whiny. 🙁
Well, lovefraud ladies, what’s the verdict on this one?
I’ve been talking to ex-victim 4, as we’ll call her, and she’d informed me that ex-victims 1 and 2 had left S, and he was all alone. He came to her, wanting her back, and she, knowing that she can’t handle him all by herself, wants me to go to Thailand with him and be his ‘other’. Last night, he commandeered her computer and broke my NC of a month and a bit. Shockingly, he wasn’t hostile or ranty. He said he loved me, missed me, wanted me back and wanted me to be with him forever and come to Thailand at least for two weeks to have a trial run again…with the other girls. Yep, that’s right, victim four was lied to. The other girls are still in the picture, but since victim four calms down S’s brain, he roped her back in.
The transcript of our conversation can be found, with relevant names and sn’s removed to protect the guilty, here @....... courtingchaos.blogspot.com
I’d love your feedback on this one.
Was it me, or is he a sociopath? Should I give him the trial period he asks for? Should I perhaps tell him instead that if he’s so desperate to have me back, that he should come HERE for the trial period, since I don’t trust him to let me leave at the end of the two weeks? Or should I go back NC? It SEEMS like he’s changed his spots, so to speak, but I don’t think I buy it. Plus, he keeps telling me that all the changes are actually because of ME–that the pain I felt was pain I caused myself by asking him to not go easy on me, and that now that I’m stronger/more aware/whatever, and had a ‘spark’ where I ‘loved him properly without major drama’, things will be better. I want to believe it, but I don’t think I can. Yes, he made me stronger. Cancer also makes you stronger. Doesn’t mean we should give everyone cancer. *sigh*
Courting Chaos,
He’s BS-ing you in a big way. Don’t fall for it, as much as you may want to. Steve Becker wrote an article on here about the audacity of the sociopath. That says it all.