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.
Oxy, You are the “wisest of them all”! My mirror would definitely reflect your image when asked. You always give great advice and encouragement to All! Thanks!
I too loved the vocab word “relationshit”- it fits perfectly and makes ya laugh too.
Here is a prayer of the Bodhisattava that reminds me of all of us.
Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain
but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look to allies in life’s battlefield
but to my own strengths.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
TOWANDA! Have a Beautiful DAY! Take Care!
YES EVERYBODY I WAS A PSY NURSE. That should made you feel better about yourselves. Believe me these people can fool even the professionals. As a nurse I thought of the people I was taking care of as “sick” now I know they are “pure evil”. I can no longer do the work I was doing. That is another thing he has taken away from me.
Betty
Your post was brilliant. Why? because you stayed loyal to your feelings, showed them to a sociopath and survived. I think that’s the only thing that can transform us…and they remain in their own hell
I would like to share with you most excellent peeps the wonderful transformation that occurs once you heal your lovely selves from being involved with predators.
True, it has taken me 20+ years to realize my own worth, my own unique beauty and voice in this world, but I don’t regret one minute of the struggle, with myself and with others. The life lessons have become beyond priceless to me.
Without the negative, turmultuous times I don’t think I would appreciate the positive. As Martha Stout so eloquently wrote in her book, The Sociopath Next Door…”Only by seeking to discover the nature of ruthlessness can we find the many ways people can triumph over it, and only by recognizing the dark can we make a genuine affirmation of the light ”
Her profound written words have become a daily reminder to me so I remain steadfast and true to myself and my striving to live a righteous life. A life of goodness, kindness, compassion and love. It flows from within to without, touching and being touched by those people who are truly awesome themselves. To me it is beneficial to countering the evil in the world.
The transformation I mentioned is that after healing my heart, mind, spirit from the toxic influences of past involvements with certain deficient types, I now love the woman I am, the one The Lord created.
Like I said, my confidence has grown tremendously and in return my skin has become thick as leather (metaphorically speaking, of course…haha). I no longer flinch, wince, weep when a stranger (noone I am close to would even dare or want to say such trash to me) spews some nasty, cruel words from their mouths. Those words cannot penetrate this newly toughened skin, heart, mind, spirit. I shrug them off as they mean nothing to me.
As the Buddhist say, we must own our anger, our intense emotions and deal with them ourselves. If a person is talkin smack to you, seeking to belittle you, undermine you, trample upon you, that is THEIR problem, THEIR dysfunction, THEIR petty anger at the world for not feeding their insatiable selfish appetites, not yours.
Classic projection and deflection. The best and I would think only recourse for the actions/words of immature, possibly pathological personality disordered individuals is to simply walk away. Shoulders square, head up high and back straight with dignity and self respect. It works, believe me, it works.
The paramount reason I continue to visit LF is because I have never in my life discovered a place, an environment of concentrated good and decent people who willingly and bravely share their horrid experiences with others and receive so much concern, support and encouragement in return.
How marvelous a dynamic is that? The TRUE definition of reciprocity is constantly in action on this wonderful, healing, informative, brilliant website the Lovely Donna realized for us.
Thanks again, Donna!
Peace, Love, and Joy…xxooxxooxx…
🙂
JaneSmith,
What a thoughtful, beautiful and heartfelt post. Thank you for sharing you thoughts & appreciation so eloquently and for reminding people of the emotional destinations we are all striving towards…
Hecate
Hecates Path,
And thank you also, very much. Without LF and the amazing contributions of articles, essays and comments I don’t think I would be where I am now. Truly.
You know, if I can learn to acknowledge and appreciate my own existence, to keep my standards, my self respect/esteem, my wants and needs, my innate positive character traits, my non-negotiable boundaries without sacrificing my identity, to waste precious time and energy trying to please unpleasant people…ANYONE can do it.
It’s a process and it moves in the direction each person wishes it to move. Take your time while you heal and educate yourself. Enjoy learning how awesome you really are. Because you are most definitely AWESOME!!
*Hug*
🙂
For some reason I had to change my user name slightly and re-register in order to log in, but this is hummingbird! I’m curious if anyone has read “The Psychopathy of Everyday Life” by Michael Kantor?? I came across excerpts of this book on-line, and much to my surprise and confusion, he speaks of “mild psychopaths” as though they have “somewhat” of a conscience…some capacity for guilt, remorse…feelings. I have done massive amounts of reading on this subject and have yet to come across this line of thinking by a psychiatrist.
The one thing that has enabled me to finally move on from my SP with NC is KNOWING that he will never change…knowing that I was never the reason he “takes a long time to fall in love”…but that he is unable to fall in love. Finally accepting that it was useless to hope that any amount of kindness, understanding, or patience on my part, would ever unsurface the goodness that I was so sure lay deep within his heart.
As I look back and watch the re-runs of “Days of Our Lies” in my head, this conscienceless, loveless, heartless charming actor possesses all the traits that I don’t want to believe, yet those very traits can be the only explanation for this nightmare.
I actually find myself so mistrusting, that I question whether this author is a SP himself trying to mislead us into believing that there may be hope for some recovery for the “mild P”…just so he can have fun with us…
Any thoughts?
Hello To Luckyzb – wow – I wish I had the gift of translating my feeling, thoughts and emotion’s to paper like you Luckyzb. I have read your post and your last one at 4:13am has me worried. Please don’t break no contact, you have realized your life is nothing with him in it. No contact is your only weapon and your ultimate salvation. They have no limit’s and are unable to do this. They will play their game to the end, you are the only one who can end it. Yes at times it goes against every thing your delusioned mind wants. But the core of your being knows you must remove him from your life. Please stay on that strong path to healing and post here anytime for encouragement. You described my X and my relationshit to a T, thank you for reminding me of the madness, not that I will ever forget but because you shared your pain and made it fresh in my mind,,,I need that cause at 18 months NC I still have those moments, thanks for sharing and hang in there it does get better – it gets WONDERFUL~~~~!!!! I am HERE, and where is he? I could care less TOWANDA!!!
Dearest Oxy,
Thank you so much for all your great advice, which Im determined to take. I know that I know that I know that you are right! NC is the only way forward for me,however hard it is to do. I think I told you that my son in law[who says he has no emotional connection at all to her now, so he is lucky} has the 3 kids full time now,”until she sorts herself out” whenever that may be. The Ns s think they are so clever, NOT!! She has thrown away a loving husband, countless great jobs,{which she either flounced out of or was sacked from}. She borrowed a huge amount of money as an unsecured loan to help her ailing kids magazine,{we all advised her to let it die, but she wouldnt}.She has huge credit card debt, despite me baling her out to the tune of around A$10,000 over the last 3 years. She has lost good friends through using and abusing them once too many. Now her ex,{tho they are still not divorced after 3 years, she keeps on “losing” the papers”. LOL} says her stuff is in storage and she is bunking in with a friend. She is 45 years old, when Oh when will she get her act together, if ever? Its not my concern any more, but I still worry. So, at 45, she has no home, no money, no car,{an old lady crashed into deb, and later the old lady died,perhaps luckily for D, as shed let her car insurance lapse,{DUMB?}, no full time job, no husband, few real friends, masses of debt,has estranged the one person,{me ] who has faithfully perhaps stupidly helped her over the last 30 years on and off.What happens to these Nc people? Im not supposed to care, but I still do, thats my problem.thanks again dear Oxy, and all you great people in LF .geminigirlXXXThanks also to newLily, shabbychic, kathy, and others .You are Awsome, all of you!
Ps, the old lady crashing into D, and later dying,her losing her job,estranging good friends and family,if this is not BAD KARMA I dont know what is!!geminigirl.