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
courting chaos –
“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.”
The above is spath speak.
There is definitive a cancer here: malignant sociopathy.
Hopeful,
Welcome to LF…sorry you find yourself here. But this is the place for aha! and healing.
Hope you don’t mind me chiming in to your convo. The AHA! you got is a big one. Understanding how they completey use what they learn, and recycle it to dupe new sources, and to gaslight old ones! What is that saying? ‘Killing two birds with one stone?’.
I was the one who broke it off with the spathole I was seeing. I just couldn’t take any more BS, stomach aches, and drama. I didn’t know that he was a spathole at the time, but I knew he was majorly effed up and a pain and immature and manipulative. I didn’t know how much of those things he was until AFTER I left. That was when I became aware of the magnitude of his deceptions.
When I broke it off with him I told him that I had come to understand he couldn’t give me what I wanted, and it wasn’t fair of me to keep asking him for something he didn’t even want (honest, monogamous, trusting relationship). As a last ditch effort to ‘save’ what I thought might be some potential between us I bought us both a relationship book and journals. We agreed to take a two week break and use the book and journals to see what we wanted out of relationships. I did the work. He slept with 3 women, who didn’t know about each other.
So, talk about creating an illusion. Next thing I know someone is telling me he is giving a workshop about how to be a strong, trustable, honest, relationship-successful man, in today’s corrupt and superficial society. He called it THE exact title of the relationship book we had been reading; totally ripping off the author and workshop teacher’s own words and ideas. And I see silly little flyers around town about it! OK, this guy teaches exercise. He has absolutely NO experience in couseling, relationship dynamics, nothing….NADA.
The audacity of the psychopath indeed!
But it is classic. He wanted me to get the message that he knew how to be in a loving committed relationship…so much so he could teach other men how to do it.
But even more so he wanted me to get the message that he just didn’t do it with me, because I wasn’t _____fill-in-the-blank____ enough. He was projecting blame on me through this elaborate ruse.
Everything they do is tuned to EFFECT. It is inauthentic, contrived, and always with the aim to win, and to inflict LOSS on the loser (there always has to be a loser, for them to win).
He never taught the class.
Just like your guy: once he found the ‘right’ woman he took down his dating profile. Riiiiiiight. No. He is exacting revenge for your having seen what and who he really is, so now you must be made to suffer profound shame and self-doubt. And he is pretending for this new woman, that he is a comittment minded guy, who isn’t looking any longer. Two birds with one stone!
This new woman will suffer the same bloody ending.
You do what you can not to waste too many moments on wondering if she is getting ‘the goodies’, cause there aren’t any!
Glad you found your way here….Slim
Courtingchaos, I read a bit of the conversation. It was D&S sexplay. And you were right in the middle of it, negotiating.
I think you’re in a big argument with yourself. Part of you is trying to break free. And part of you is sexually turned on and emotionally hooked on this scene. And this is a tough situation. He’s very seductive and very good at this. He gives you a lot of rope, a lot of feeling like you’re in control, and then he tugs you back with little cuts and vague promises. But it’s a game, and you know that. And this is only the first act. After this comes how you’re going to prove yourself, and he won’t even have to be nasty, because you know you have to do the rest of it right if you’re going to get the part you like again.
There was so much that was familiar in that scene that I felt the big tug toward it. It’s a part of me that is very hard to say no to. But my last relationship finally humiliated me past the point where I could claim there was any fun in it at all, or I had the slightest control of what was really happening, although he claimed I did, that I wanted it. When I think about it now, I want to throw up.
And that was something I really didn’t know if I’d ever be free off. Attraction to that kind of man, and the scenes that went with them. All that crap about who was bad and who was good. And who was more screwed up, and who wanted what, and how the other one wasn’t doing enough, but everyone claimed that the other one was in control.
I got better. I sometimes don’t even believe it myself. But I did. I stop creating that damned scene in my fantasies and my life, and I started living like someone who didn’t have a history. Someone who’s future was more interesting than that.
You can get out of this if you want to. If you really want to do something different, you can. But you’re going to have to cut off contact. Really cut it off. Detox and starve this thing for a while.
I can’t imagine that it’s going to be easy. It wasn’t for me. I thought I’d die. We were special. And regular life was so boring. And I was so boring. For a little while it was really gray.
And then it gets easier to remember that these people don’t care about you. They turn you into a thing. They put you at risk in every way that matters. They make everything you care about dependent on whether you give them what they want. They look at you and see what you’re good for, and use you for that. And when you’re not useful any more, or when you’re not easy to handle as you used to be, or if something becomes wrong with you, like getting sick, you are disposed of. If you’re lucky, you get to walk away. If you’re not, you’re traded down to something worse.
I know. And after I got away from the last one, because he really did pretty much use me up, what I was looking at was downhill from there. Steep downhill. And it scared the shit out of me. So I could acquiesce to the fast slide down, kill myself, or stop doing it. I can’t even say what “it” was, but I knew that something I was doing had to stop.
I took door #3. It took a while. But I’m here, and I’ll never be there again. I lost a few things I thought I cared about, but I gained a while lot more. Mostly I got myself back. The real me, the one I like.
I don’t know if you’re there yet, ready to stop doing it. But if you are, we’re definitely here for you. If you decide to slip back into it for another round, we’ll still be here, but you’ll be that much older. If you’re still alive, you can restart your life anytime. I didn’t get there until I was 55, but I really wish I’d hit that wall sooner.
Kathy
Hey there Slim, ( I wanted to call you Slimmy, but it sounded to much like slimey) 😀
Thanks so much. I’ve been reading SO much on here. There are such good writers on this site, in addition to being “accidental” experts on sociopathy. Ahhh, killing two birds with one stone. And spathole? Oh, I just can’t stop giggling. Trust me, I can afford to giggle right about now. Didn’t sleep a bit last night, since I had checked his stupid dating site and found out it was down. Cried my fargin’ head off. I love your story about how your spathole suddenly became an expert himself. Just priceless. But really, I am sorry that you, or anyone ever went through something so damaging as an experience with a spathole is. Slim, I got back together twice with my S. The first time, I had NO clue what he was. We broke up because “he needed to get his life together..I deserve more…oh god, he has a feeling as more time goes on he’s going to miss me more…bla bla bla. Actually, when we broke up the first time after 6 months I truly thought he was a nice guy that had intimacy issues. So, when we broke up, I wanted him to know that I loved him, which I had not said. I didn’t say it in a “oh god, I’m gonna die w/o you” kinda way. I just simply wanted him to know. As soon as I said he, he said it back, without even missing a beat. It sounded so warm and genuine, without a hint of awkwardness, and I can still look back and say that it sounded completely genuine. So, I joked around and told him in mock melodramatic fashion that if he comes to realize he has made a terrible mistake, to give me a buzz. So, a week goes by and guess what he does?? Oh yes, Slim. He calls at 1am and says that he has made a terrible mistake, using those words exactly. Like a fool, I go to his place at 1am (ok, ok. I know) and he tells me that he just can’t give up on something like this. Make a long story even longer, shortly thereafter one morning I find all the proof on his computer of what an unbelievable liar he is. He was cheating the entire time and telling one woman he loved her, all the while cheating on her too. Once confronted he then tells me that he is ready for her but not for me, and that she understands him and he can open up to her about everything. Keep in mind, this is less than a week after he tells me he has made a terrible mistake and can’t give something like this up. Also, another priceless story. Silly me gets back together with him after 3 months pass and he tells me he wants to build trust and “do something different.” He tells me that he is not interested in any other woman. I give him a book to read that I also read. Throughout, the author stresses the importance of both partners “feeling safe” with one another. He reads the book immediately. One evening, he says “The worst thing you did was to give me that book.” I asked him if he was going to use that book to manipulate me and he says he is going to use it to tease me. BS! He did indeed use it to manipulate me and it was scary how right on I was. He called me one evening shortly after and said that we should take the weekend apart to think about what we really needed from one another. I was confused and didn’t know why it was necessary to take the weekend apart. He said that he was telling me this because he wanted me to “feel safe” with him! I kid you not. Silly me fell for it. That night he showed up at my doorstep from a party he didn’t invite me to, and after he fell asleep, i checked his cell phone and he had called 2 other women inviting them to the party. One of them he had programmed into his phone as “dad.” He had shown me the number a couple of weeks earlier saying that he wanted to be on the up and up with all the phone calls he was getting from and making to “dad” since he and his father were trying to process their troubled relationship. “Dad” was another woman. After I found out all this, that’s when I outed him to some friends of his on facebook. He called me for months this last time we broke up, all the while seeing this woman. He was SO SO angry that I would not see him. One evening in Sept., he called and said he was apartment-sitting and would I come over to watch movies- just as a friend, of course. I steadfastly refused. He said that he should just stop calling because every time we talked he wanted to see me more. And he was already well into this “relationship” with this girl, which I didn’t know. If I am repeating myself from prior posts, I apologize. I am really in PROCESSING mode here. As soon as he realizes that I’m not game anymore, he starts alluding to someone else and to making changes. All of a sudden he goes from brutally pathological behavior with me to getting off the site he was using to cheat on me. And he would call and pretend he was just calling to say hello. Just a month ago he said that all he could do was make changes with the new people in his life and move forward. I flipped out, and I swear I could hear the pleasure in his voice when he said, “But I thought you wanted me to be happy.” I hate this dude. And I’m so worried that all of a sudden he’s not a spathole…. spathole! tee hee hee! 😀
ROSA:
Thanks for your input on a previous post of mine. Yes, intellectually I know I shouldn’t waste any time on wondering if he’s changing…bla bla bla. I get it. And I just wish I could hurry up and process this and get through it. I feel, and have been, downright traumatized. And thanks for the reminder about the cluster B’s. Intellectually, again, I know that despite all the convincing talk he did about changing, he NEVER had any intention of changing. All for show. There’s a great article from Steve Becker on here called No Shame, No Gain. And my guy, despite what he said, did not have shame for what he had done. He played at sounding like he had shame, but would do the most abhorrent things over and over, despite what he said. So the long and short of it is, Rosa, thanks for your to-the-point response.
Best,
Hopeful~
Hopeful6596:
As I look back on my life, the only thing I REALLY want back from my bad relationship(s) is my TIME.
I spent so many years on this toxic man, who turned out to be such a waste. I would give anything to have those years back, but that is not possible anymore.
This life is precious, and time goes by so fast as you get older. I regret wasting so much time and energy on the wrong men as a young girl.
The good news is that I did finally learn from my life experiences.
I now understand that there are people navigating through life without a conscience or the ability to love.
I had no idea how close I was to evil and disordered individuals when I was in my teens and 20’s.
Since then, I have educated myself about personality disorders.
I have also done some work on myself as far as identifying my vulnerabilities, setting boundaries, and establishing what I will/will not tolerate in a relationship.
I will do my best to incorporate everything I’ve learned to move forward on a healthier, more positive path.
That’s all any of us can do, right?
You will get through your ordeal, Hopeful. You have found your way here to LoveFraud. There is an amazing support system here, and lots of great articles that will answer so many of your questions.
The amazing thing is that a bad relationship is NOT what brought me to LoveFraud in the first place.
It was a family situation, totally unrelated to any of the relationships I had been involved in.
But, once I got to LoveFraud and started reading, I realized how dysfunctional my own relationships had been through the years. The irony of it all….
ya know, i really need to wallpaper the bathroom. it’s just looking sooooooo dated. perhaps something in a fresh green and white stripe.
oh, now the cats have knocked over the rhododendronS,
AND THERE ARE POTTED PLANTS EVERYWHERE!
Too true One Step! They make such a mess when they fall don’t they? It’s such a pity they can’t clean themselves up 🙂