By Peggywhoever Welcome to Lovefraud Land! Again, welcome. Cyber handshake.. (Smile). This is not a vacation location. But it is a destination. You can find your path to healing here. Tell me, you Googled the word “Sociopath.” You have just ended a most painful relationship. Or rather, THEY ended the relationship. And you are left as an emotional shipwreck. See how many adjectives apply. Hurt. Betrayed. Confused. Damaged. State of Disbelief. Questioning them. Questioning you. Questioning everyone. Questioning everything. Why? Why? Why? What is going on here? You have come to the right place. Having come out of the most bizarre, twisted and contorted relationship of your life as though yo …
Overcoming barriers to moving on with adult development
A relationship with a sociopath occurs within the context of a person's life. People do not stop growing and developing after adolescence. In fact, adult development is lifelong. Developmental psychologists say that early adulthood is the time that people come to grips with their needs for intimacy, love and friendship. Once this developmental dilemma of “intimacy versus isolation” is addressed, mid life adults move on to the “generativity versus stagnation” phase. Mid life is the time when people build their lives and contribute meaningfully to society. In this phase, adults seek satisfaction through productivity in career, family, and civic interests. Generative adults create a path to …
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Exploiters seek partners who dread to displease them
It is no accident that narcissistic and sociopathic personalities will seek, and often successfully attract, partners who have their own issue: a tendency to dread the idea of disappointing or displeasing them. This is admittedly a generality, but it's a pattern I've observed in my clinical experience, and it makes sense. The exploiter, who regards others as existing principally to satisfy his or her wants on a continual basis, must by definition find in a mate someone who is highly motivated—and especially, highly afraid not—to satisfy him or her. Thus one often finds the pairing of an exploiter complemented by a partner who is prone, perhaps compulsively, to look inward to himself or her …
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A springboard to a new life with a new mindset?
Last Friday Robin Hoffman interviewed me again on her radio show, The Feminine Soul. We discussed recovering from a relationship with a sociopath. She asked two very important questions, “How do we avoid picking another sociopath in the future?” and “How can we ever trust our instincts again?” Coincidentally, yesterday I received this letter from a reader: I got involved recently with a man who seemed to be the opposite of my previous psychopath. All the traits I like, strong, dominant, etc but seemed to have a good heart, and importantly a good history. I checked him out, he had a long service in the police force and a voluntary youth organization, was widely respected and successful. …
The sociopath in my life: a journey to real healing
Editor's note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud's statement on Spiritual Recovery. As I was wondering what to write about for my blog article this week, Southernman429 did me a favor and provided a topic. He posted the following on Dr. Leedom's most recent article: I'd like to pose a question to Donna, M.L., and Dr. Leedom”¦ Is it normal to go on with your life”¦ develop new relationships”¦ have new goals and new ideals”¦ years go by”¦ basically move on from the sociopathic experience”¦ but yet”¦ still feel a emptiness in a part of your heart, or a tugging at your soul”¦ a sort of grieving”¦ maybe partly for them, or about them, but also about y …
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Forgiving Yourself for Being Human
By Ox Drover In my journey toward healing from life's pains, and from the PTSD and the pains caused by the trauma from the psychopaths, I think one of the hardest things has been to forgive myself. I was raised in an abusive Christian atmosphere with a terrible, impossible definition of “forgiving others,” no matter what they did, no matter if they weren't sorry, or how likely they were to repeat the abuse to me. I was programmed to try to meet my obligation to “forgive” when there was NO WAY I was going to trust them again. How could I? While this previous “definition” of forgiveness of others who are unrepentant has changed post-trauma to a definition of getting the bitterness out …
How to talk to friends and family about sociopaths
Last Sunday, the Asbury Park Press, a New Jersey newspaper, published a front-page article about the career of Edward J. Devine. On August 1, 2008, Devine was sentenced to five years in prison for bouncing checks and deceiving nonprofit and educational institutions. The bulk of the story was not about those crimes, but what Devine did to the women in his life. Claiming to be the heir to a Sonoma wine company and a trucking mogul, he left one wife, Donna Devine, and her mother $400,000 in debt. He wiped out the inheritance of another wife, Deborah Weiss. He forced his first wife, Carol Ceralli, into bankruptcy. It's a story that many of us know, and some of us have experienced. But …
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Finding sanity after the sociopath (part 2)
Editor's note: The following essay was submitted by Lovefraud reader “Presseject.” This is part two of his story. Part one was posted yesterday. By Presseject About two weeks after I confronted my S, there was a very dark day in which I was cut to pieces. I am okay now recalling it, but at that time, and for many weeks afterwards, it was like a knife in the heart. I would like to share a bit further with you the silver lining to this part of the story and how that relates to the good work you have done with the site. You see, it went like this: I had my S visit and stay with me for my birthday weekend. He presented me with fun gifts and a card that included the words signed with "tons of l …
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LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Finding sanity after the sociopath (part 1)
Editor's note: The following essay was submitted by Lovefraud reader "Presseject." This is part one of his story. Part two will be posted tomorrow. By Presseject A little over three months ago I had my heart ripped out from me. It happened suddenly and there are few words I can use to describe the pain I felt as dreams, hopes and even what I thought was my own sanity seemed to disappear quickly in a crushing instant that reverberated with off-the-scale emotional aftershocks for weeks into months afterwards. I suffered nearly two months of an awful nerve-wracking traumatic stress reaction, a hypervigilence that has finally recently lessened its grip on me. The Internet, along with my own …
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A list for leaving the sociopath behind
by AlohaTraveler How many of us have a list, or know someone who does, of the ideal qualities we are looking for in THE ONE? I think these lists can sometimes cause us to miss out on someone quite wonderful because we get so attached to a check list. But that's another topic. I have a different kind of list. It could be called the list of EXACTLY what I DO NOT want in a life partner! This list has helped me to heal and come to terms with the reality of the Bad Man. While going through my things this morning, I found a piece of binder paper with a list I had written about the Bad Man in the early stages of my healing. It was written sometime within the first year after I had left him. …