Dr. Eve Wood is a practicing psychiatrist and an author of motivational books such as There’s Always Help; There’s Always Hope and 10 Steps to Take Charge of Your Emotional Life. Her motto is, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Now she’s written a new book that she wished was available when her own life fell apart: The Gift of Betrayal—How to Heal Your Life When Your World Explodes, available in the Lovefraud Store.
Dr. Wood’s husband of 27 years betrayed her. For legal reasons, she doesn’t tell exactly what he did, except to say the magnitude of the betrayal was truly shocking and she could have died. Reading through the lines, it sounds like she was involved with a sociopath, and we all know what that’s like.
So what was she to do? Dr. Wood believes what she wrote in her other books, and decided that she wanted to heal, move forward and build a new life. She writes:
“You have a choice. You can see this betrayal as a curse or a blessing. You can make it about him, or you can make it about you. You can be the victim, or you can take charge. You can grow or shrink. You can heal your life or shrivel up and die. You can choose light, joy and love ”¦ or remain bitter and alone.”
The process was painful, and it took time. She didn’t start out trying to forgive her husband. Dr. Wood writes:
“Most books about betrayal focus on forgiveness, on forgiving the offender and yourself. But I think the attention of forgiving is misguided. When you’ve been burned, you need to treat your wound. You must figure out how you got scorched in the first place and learn to heal.”
The book is divided into 14 chapters, which Dr. Wood calls “lessons.” They are:
- What is betrayal, how does it feel, and where can it take you?
- You have a choice: Do you seize your power or become a victim?
- Could you have been married to (or involved with) a sociopath?
- How did you get here, and what are you meant to learn from this?
- What is the role of forgiveness in healing?
- Trust in your ability to create your heart’s desire
- Take action to create the life you really want
- Slow down: Examine and honor all your involvements
- Take risks, try new things ”¦ and pay attention to how you feel
- Let your female friends help you
- Learn what men have to offer and what they cannot do for you
- Invite joy, pleasure and passion into your life
- Stay present to the gift of the moment
- Celebrate you newfound freedom, fulfillment and fabulous good fortune
This book is written for women who have been betrayed by men. Dr. Wood specifically emphasizes that if the man was a sociopath, the only way to heal is to leave the relationship. She states that sociopaths destroy people. However, she doesn’t talk about how to recover from severe psychological issues that may result from these relationships, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
This book is for the woman who has processed the shock of the betrayal by the sociopath and is ready, however shakily, to rebuild her life. The Gift of Betrayal provides a roadmap for doing it.
The Gift of Betrayal—How to Heal Your Life When Your World Explodes
Rosa
It was betrayal that woke me up from my dysfunctional relationship with my sociopath boyfriend. For me, betrayal was the BLESSING.
While I was killing myself trying to make a fraudulent relationship work, he was out there cheating, running a smear campaign on me, and projecting every ugly characteristic of himself onto me.
When I found out, there was the trauma that went through my whole body.
Then I got angry. I thought, “You son-of-a-bitch.”
After that, it was easy to turn off all emotions and go No Contact.
I left him high-and-dry (sociopath-style), thinking we were still in a relationship.
P.S. To anyone who wants to get “revenge” on a sociopath, I highly recommend anything that leaves the sociopath with a feeling of, “What the F***??? What just happened here?”
Leave them with a dose of their own medicine. That is probably the closest to revenge that you will ever get.
P.S.S. Sociopaths become very angry when their own tactics are used against them. Be very careful. Protect yourself.
Rosa
The only reason mine became angry was because he was not “through with me”.
shabbychic2
Sounds like a very interesting book. The 14 chapter titles sound like a roadmap of what I have learned here at LF!
shabbychic2
Rosa: I like to think I left the S high-and dry, he hung up on me 4 weeks ago and probably still thinks of me each day he needs money (which is Mon-Sun). I have no plans on calling him but I am sure with his huge ego that he thinks I will call.
Ox Drover
Sounds like the same “Doctrine” that is preached in the “Love Fraud Church” and I idon’t think we ever get to the point we don’t need to hear it presented in a new format! AMEN!!! and pass the collection plate!
kat_o_nine_tales
Hi Oxy and Hi gang. Just wanted to let you all know I’m still alive and all that good stuff. I’ve been having a whole lot of issues but life is going pretty well.
My problem is for some ungodly reason I am still hung up on you know who. Not enough so I want to walk down that alley again, especially since I finally got a second chance from the truly good. But still enough to hurt. I can’t understand myself. Why do I still long for a man who is such a jerk that I don’t even want anything to do with him anymore?
I am with a seriously nice and kind man now, that I love and that my kids adore, and I want to walk into the future with him, without anybody hanging on my heartstrings. Although Oxy once told me I couldn’t have loved the “Prince” very much, that’s not really true. I do love the guy. I just didn’t think it was fair to put him through the emotional mess that I was in at the time.
Rosa
ShabbyChic:
Mine hung up on me so many times during the course of the “relationship”, it has affected me to this day.
I don’t call men, and I do not like talking to men on the phone.
And I have met a few nice guys since that time, and they will say things like, “You could call me once in a while, you know.”
But, I just cannot do it. Too many bad memories.
Genevieve79
That book seems brilliant I must get it.
And he must have been sociopathic because he did exactly that to me – left me high and dry via text with no contact and to this day I wonder who the hell he was. Who did I spend 2 years of my precious young life with? And then I realise he was only someone else for the first few months – someone loving. After that and until the end when the mask slipped entirely he increasingly became very much himself…
It’s been almost a year and I will buy this book, looks like it might help me heal, this intro is really speaking to me.
The one thing we must not do is let them destroy the rest of our lives and make us shy away from other partners – they will have won otherwise.
One thing I keep doing is blaming myself thinking if I had been a better girlfriend maybe he wouldn’t have treated me that way, maybe I did something to deserve it, maybe I could have tried harder to make it work.
But I’m assuming he thinks like normal people – that someone has to do something really bad for a person to go no contact so coldly (ie be a sociopath lol!) Truth is I didn’t do anything, I wasn’t unfaithful, I wasn’t abusive in any way, I didn’t try to kill him – none of the logical reasons that might
make a healthy person withdraw from another very quickly.
Love to all xxx
looking up
I am trying to leave mine now…we have been together for 2 yrs and every time I try to get out more and more guilt gets shoveled my way. I like Rosa’s theory just leave them high and dry…but then I get the voice mails of abusive comments and such. He uses his grown children, church and his own sickness to guilt me back in or to stay. But he has cheated on my so many different times…Even now I have another number to call to see what is going on between him and this girl…but havent called yet. When him and I talk I feel like all I get is excuses. My gut tells me all this so why cant my mind get me out.
Matt
looking up:
I was a criminal defense attorney and I got conned by my S. While I still, at times, try to make sense of him and the craziness, I discovered an approach to dealing with all the information I collected that helped start to connect my gut and my head.
What I did is say to myself “If you were presented with all this evidence on a person you had never met before in your life, what would be your conclusion regarding this person and his activities?” Basically this adopting the approach of Sargeant Joe Friday on the old TV show “Dragnet” — “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”
So, I looked at the criminal conviction. The 15 creditor default judgments. The lack of bank accounts. The lack of State and Federal identification. The lies. The cheating. The deceit. The manipulation. The “past” drug addiction. The “current” alcohol problem. The financial irresponsibility. The stealing.
And looking at this objectively I concluded he was a sociopath. His lack of money, the stealing, the living “outside the system (no ID, no bank accounts) mean he was in all likelihood involved in some type of illegal activity and that he was probably going to be back in the criminal justice system sooner rather than later.
The bottom line was this was not a good person to have in my life. The real bottom line is I hated the way he made me feel. And I have to keep reminding myself of that every time I start to miss “the man I fell in love with.” Because what I had at the end was the real man — the one I fell in love with never existed.
It does get better, but it does take time. Too damned much time.