Recently Lovefraud heard from a woman whom we’ll call Trina. Trina was involved with a sociopath for five years, who abandoned her eight months ago, after wrecking her financially and emotionally. Still, she continued to be in shock, denial and disbelief—until the guy sent her the following poem:
Catch and Release
Before I pull your hair and leave you for dead
I will ravish you
not physically, but with words sensuous and firm
with sibilance rolling off my chameleon tongue
and metaphors byzantine and allusive pitched
to that intimate space between your ears.
I will watch you wriggle with denial,
claw with anger, bargain for release,
splash like a drowning animal in hopelessness.
And when I observe the contour of your acceptance,
the precise moment your will bends pliantly to mine
I will release you.
Game over.
Trina was horrified, and when she communicated this to the guy, he denied that the poem was at all autobiographical. He said she needed to “lighten up;” she was too “up tight;” he’d just taken a line from a TV show and embellished it. Here’s how he explained it to Trina:
“I thought that was a great opening line and I twisted it a bit, threw in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief as I played on the word ‘dead’ and created a poem, role playing the braggart and using a line that fishermen do when they fish for fun and not food.”
“This man knows he drove me to the point of near suicide,” Trina says, “and rather than feeling badly for it, he actually taunts me, to this day.”
When there is no reason
Many sociopaths are parasites, manipulating people into giving them money, food, sex, a place to live—whatever. But some sociopaths, who may actually hold down a job and have their own resources, manipulate people, even torment them, just for the fun of it.
There are sociopaths who break women’s hearts just to watch them fall apart. There are sociopaths who commit crimes just to prove they can get away with it. There are sociopaths who disrupt workplaces for their own amusement. These people simply want to be puppet masters, pulling strings and watching everyone else jump.
This is probably the most difficult type of sociopathic behavior to comprehend. Many of us have spent hours, days, weeks, even years trying to figure out why a sociopath acted the way he or she did. Sometimes there is no reason other than the sociopath found the situation he or she created to be entertaining.
So how do we come to grips with this? How do normal people, who try to be considerate and cooperative, understand this behavior?
We can’t. These sociopaths are totally twisted. It’s just the way they are.
Henry,
Its just a funny tee shirt !!
You do make me laugh…with the way you tell a story. Altho the situation you write about was far from funny — the way you express it now is!
I can relate to would have given him the moon or died trying… I think our spirits practically did die Henry …. but we were saved by the love we have for ourselves… it enables us to love ourselves as well as to truly love and care for others…they dont even like themselves let alone love themselves — so therefore they will never be able to experience truly “liking” or ” loving” another…and the beauty within that comes from that experience!
It had nothing to do with us. … and of course he came back wanting to talk – … he lost the best thing that ever happened to him in his life! Was kindda freeing to kick em curbside!!!
Theres a country song with words ” Love dont live here for you anymore”… and thank goodness they didnt actually ask us to give them the moon – we would have been at NASA trying to buy tickets on the next space shuttle trip and taken out loans to pay for it! 🙂
Whats “gaslighting” ?
Tilly:
Gaslighting is the systematic attempt by one person to erode another’s reality while asserting their own.
You end up second-guessing your own reality because you have given it up to someone else’s reality.
Gaslighting is an insidious form of emotional abuse and manipulation that is difficult to recognize and even harder to break free from, because it plays into one of our worst fears-of being abandoned, and our deepest needs: to be understood, appreciated, and loved.
I am paraphrasing from http://www.RobinStern.com
If you google “what is gaslighting”, you will find a lot of definitions and info. online.
I am going to go out on a limb here, and say that I am pretty sure we have all been gaslighted at some point in our lives.
How is gas lighting different than brainwashing? or is it? Brainwashing: is a process of tearing down a person’s reality and replacing it with a different one. Some of the components are: isolating the victim: denying the victims reality: depriving the victim of sleep: sending consistent messages with great emotional force: making the victim feel unsafe: and wearing the victim down: repetition is essential to brainwashing. —— A disordered person’s reality is very different from a normal person’s. The disordered person’s saftey rest on maintaining the believability of that reality. When an intimate partner or spouse becomes an important part of the disordered person’s life, a conflict in realities occurs. To eliminate this threat to their saftey, disordered abusers often use the same techniques used in brainwashing. taken from Meaning from Madness
Henry, Tilly, and Rosa,
I am not sure if there is a difference between gaslighting and brainwashing….in either case “reality’ is twisted. My egg donor kept telling me she said X when I know she said Y, and then she kept on denying it. then she would say I said A when I know I said B and she kept on, until (thinking she couldn’t lie to me! LOL was that a delusion!) I began to DOUBT MY OWN REALITY.
It was ONLY when I actually CAUGHT her lying and had positive written PROOF that I realized she had been lying all the time, gaslighting me until i CRIED ON MY HANDS AND KNEES BEFORE HER for her to ‘believe me.” My heart was broken and crushed by her gaslighting, my reality twisted and I doubted my own sanity.
Everyone has a bit of a different “reality” like I am always asking everyone in the house “Is it hot in here or is it just me?” So my “reality” may be that it is hot in the house and theirs may be it is OK or cooler. It’s just a PERCEPTION OF WHAT IS HAPPENING OR IS.
The same situation as a “gasligting thing” would be if a P asked you if you were cold, and the thermometer said 80 and they went an dput on a heavy coat and said “NO, IT IS COLD IN HERE” until you ended up putting on a coat too and thinnking you were cold.
A common way is to deny what is real. Deny what you can SEE or touch or feel until you start to question yourself.
A psychopath can have their hand in your wallet and you catch them, and they will say “Wallet? WHAT Wallet? I don’t have my hand in your wallet, what makes you think that? Oh, NO! you are DELUSIONAL I dont’ have my hand in your wallet.” And YOU end up thinking YOU are the delusional one. LOL But it isn’t FUNNY when it is happening toyou. I think you are right, Rosa, I think at some time EVERY P does some gasligthing.
Thanks for the link,Rosa. (((hugs)))
Dear Overcoming,
You are so right, so many professionals DO NOT GET IT, and even I think, some that study them in prison don’t recognize those “on the street”—being believed and VALIDATED that your observations are right is not something some people can do. They think you are describing some mythical creature or that YOU are crazy!
Sometimes the only validation we can get is HERE ON LOVE FRAUD. For me now that is enough. There was a time though when I wanted others to validate me, but now I am strong enough i can validate myself and believe myself, even if NO ONE ELSE believes me.
Take heart, there is a lot of education NEEDED not just in your country but in ours too. (US) I’m glad you are here! God bless you.
Oxy, that is some cool comparison about the wallet. How true. And to add to that: “it was You who wanted me to put my hand in your wallet”. Or, better yet – “it’s Your fault that you left the wallet there. It’s your fault that you saw my hand in it. Just when things were great for us, here you go, prying into where My hand has been, you controlling selfish (*$&(#(“
In my humble opinion I don’t see how a professional can relate what an actual victim feels unless they themselves have been a victim of a personality disordered person. Although we victims nearly always know that something is not right, we can become very seriously confused about what is real. That can only be felt by experience not education.
Henry, sweetie, I don’t think any one can know EXACTLY what anyone else feels –like child birth for example, you can’t KNOW what it feels like, and though other women who have also given birth like me, they know pretty much what I felt and endured, but not 100%, but they probably can empathize with me more than you could about child birth.
However, a man CAN have a fair amount of empathy for a woman in labor, and he can learn to be a compassionate physician and help the woman deliver the baby, though he doesn’t know EXACTLY how it FEELS,. but he can study and observe and get some ideas.
I think that is the same with professional therapists etc. they must STUDY and OBSERVE both abuser and victim, and it is only through both study and observation that they can learn to be good “midwives” to us as we give birth to the NEW US. they can help us do the LABOR ourselves, but even the best physician who has given birth herself to 10 kids STILL CAN’T DO THE LABOR FOR YOU!
One of the funnniest cartoons I ever saw was a woman being wheeled into labor and delivery and the husband says “Honey, are you sure you want to go through with this?” LIKE SHE HAD A CHOICE AT THAT TIME!!! We don’t have a choice either, we have to LABOR OR DIE. It is painful, but once we DO give birth to that new little henry or that New little Oxy, we still have to raise them and that takes work too, but I want to nurture and guide my NEW SELF like I would a special child. I want her to grow up to be an awesome ass-riding wild woman! LOL
ps PINow, I like your comments, they are great, and so realistic too!!!! LOL (((Hugs))))
new little oxy – I by no means am putting down professionals and I know they can give victims alot of help in rebuilding their lives – I met a wonderful physciatrist who explained what was going on with me – but I could tell he was frustrated that I couldnt just see it and except it and deal with it right then and there…I dunno maybe it is better if’n they havent been run over by the train like me…