Lovefraud Blog

By Ox Drover Going through my family photos I came across one of my two oldest sons. We had gone on vacation to Montana to visit a friend for the summer in 1981. They were about 10 and 11 years old. My friend took us around to all the local sights and showed us some old gold mines dug back into the solid rock. In the photo made that summer, I saw my sons, both kneeling on a huge rock about five feet from the edge of a stream of rapidly flowing water, with a gold pan in their hands. My friend had put a handful of sand from the edge of the creek into the wok-shaped pan and showed them how to swirl the sand in the bottom and let the rushing water wash away the lighter sand, and told them that …

All that glitters is not goldRead More

I wrote the following nine months after the p formerly in my life was arrested. I was asked on another thread, was there a moment you 'knew'? Knew that you would be okay. Knew it was okay to let him go. Yes and no. In those first heady days of freedom, every moment was filled with knowing I was okay. And every moment was filled with the fear I would never get through the pain to find the light of love within me. I had to make a choice. Had to decide -- what do I want more of. Lies and deciet. Truth and harmony. I wanted to share this piece with you because it speaks to the power of one word to release us from fearing life without them so that we can surrender and fall in love with life …

After the sociopath is gone: Good-bye lie. Welcome truth.Read More

We recently received the following letter that expresses very well what many victims tell us they feel. Although I have written on this subject before, this week I would like to share new insights on healing and recovery. I spent two years in a relationship with an antisocial psychopath. In the last four months, since I last saw him, I have built a new life, I get on with my life, I am successful in my job, I am a good mother, I am comfortable in my own skin, and, for the first time in my life, am content to live a single life. This sounds like a success story, but in every minute that my mind is not occupied by the routine of daily life, I am totally consumed by thoughts of my …

How can I control my thoughts?Read More

By Ox Drover What's the most important thing the sociopath took from you? Money? Love? Your home? Your self-esteem? Sex? Or, is it something else, which in my opinion may be even more important than just about anything? The most important thing I think I lost from every sociopath I ever dealt with was my own confidence in myself to make assessments about people and then, reasonable choices about those people, based on those accurate assessments. Many former victims have said that they just have trouble “trusting others” again after being totally hoodwinked and ripped off for so many important things in their lives by the sociopath. Is it others that they don't trust, though, or are …

What’s the most important thing the sociopath took from you?Read More

I work in a homeless shelter. It is a place where people are worn down by their stories, day in, day out. They carry the load like a weight upon their shoulders, sitting at tables with hunched shoulders, rounded backs. They walk with shuffling footsteps, backs curled into their chests, their hopes gripped in hands buried deep down into their pockets, forever fearful of coming up empty handed. And every day they wait. And wait. For someone to rescue them. For someone to deliver an answer. An escape. A way out. Another direction. When you're down and out, living below poverty, on the wrong side of easy street, sometimes all you've got to make yourself visible is the story you carry to mark …

After the sociopath is gone: Leap before you look.Read More