Lovefraud Blog

By Eleanor Cowan As a 10-year-old kid in a large, rigid Roman Catholic family, I had it all figured out. I knew which way was up. There were no unknowns in my understanding. My future happiness was guaranteed if only I could do as required. Still, my stability teetered back and forth, depending on my ability to conform. For example, if I obeyed my mother’s first harsh morning shout to wake up and if I promptly completed my cleaning tasks before the oatmeal was ready, then I’d begun my day well. If without telling anyone about it, I quietly sacrificed a slice of toast and jam for the sake of a suffering soul in Purgatory (who gained freedom faster because of my personal sacrifice), then …

By being open to new ideas, I found a way to calm my overprotective brainRead More

Lovefraud received the following email from a reader who posts as "Salvation2012." Thank you for helping me decide when I needed to cut my losses during my divorce. I did cut my "losses," yet the total I received tallied up to a number similar, just not in all cash. Because I settled in his eyes, he told everyone I was just proving how I was the guilty one and didn't want to risk being exposed. To the end he will deny permanently injuring me and bleeding me of money, and cheating on me (which I only later found out about the extent). My recent concern is watching him seemingly have no consequences. I'm not a vengeful person, so this is a distressing area for me, but I just thought karma …

What do we do when sociopaths experience no consequences?Read More

By Eleanor Cowan I felt heavy as I awakened this morning. A toxic punch followed by a few slaps of self-recrimination are tossed with tuning forks—all delivered by myself to me. “No!” I say as I have for the past thirty years. I swing my legs out of bed and onto the solid oak floor. My gold filigreed daily planner is right where its supposed to be. I will never erase my actual history of having married a pedophile who molested first his siblings and then our children. His crafty, conscienceless siphoning of my time, energy, money and support for fourteen years can never be expunged. I can never, ever erase his small daily cruelties that sadly, I got used to tolerating, little by litt …

After the sociopath, managing how my brain manages traumaRead More