We recently received the following letter that expresses very well what many victims tell us they feel. Although I have written on this subject before, this week I would like to share new insights on healing and recovery. I spent two years in a relationship with an antisocial psychopath. In the last four months, since I last saw him, I have built a new life, I get on with my life, I am successful in my job, I am a good mother, I am comfortable in my own skin, and, for the first time in my life, am content to live a single life. This sounds like a success story, but in every minute that my mind is not occupied by the routine of daily life, I am totally consumed by thoughts of my …
What’s the most important thing the sociopath took from you?
By Ox Drover What's the most important thing the sociopath took from you? Money? Love? Your home? Your self-esteem? Sex? Or, is it something else, which in my opinion may be even more important than just about anything? The most important thing I think I lost from every sociopath I ever dealt with was my own confidence in myself to make assessments about people and then, reasonable choices about those people, based on those accurate assessments. Many former victims have said that they just have trouble “trusting others” again after being totally hoodwinked and ripped off for so many important things in their lives by the sociopath. Is it others that they don't trust, though, or are the …
What’s the most important thing the sociopath took from you?Read More
After the sociopath is gone: Leap before you look.
I work in a homeless shelter. It is a place where people are worn down by their stories, day in, day out. They carry the load like a weight upon their shoulders, sitting at tables with hunched shoulders, rounded backs. They walk with shuffling footsteps, backs curled into their chests, their hopes gripped in hands buried deep down into their pockets, forever fearful of coming up empty handed. And every day they wait. And wait. For someone to rescue them. For someone to deliver an answer. An escape. A way out. Another direction. When you're down and out, living below poverty, on the wrong side of easy street, sometimes all you've got to make yourself visible is the story you carry to mark …
Running your life like a business
By Ox Drover Most victims and former victims of sociopaths are extremely capable and smart people, so why exactly did these really smart people go “bankrupt” in their personal lives by letting a sociopath take over? That's a question that has plagued me since I started on the road to healing. I've always been a pretty astute businessperson and an excellent manager of both personnel and resources in my professional life. Why did I do so well in my professional life and go so wrong in my personal life? I finally came to the conclusion that I ran my business like a business and I let my personal life be run in a very ”un-businesslike” manner. I'll use my farm as an example. I had a herd of c …
After the sociopath is gone: Changing our language
On May 21, 2003 I was given the miracle of my life. The sociopath who had terrorized my existence for almost five years was arrested and I was set free from the web of his deceit. Almost imperceptibly, healing began. Without his sinister presence, the FOG of his lies began to lift. Even though I was scared, and beaten down, I began to think and feel and take action for myself, not based on what he had told me was best or good for me, but based on what was best and healing and supportive of me. Without his insidious words stealing my peace of mind with every breath, I began to unravel the web of his deceit and find myself again. I began to make choices that loved me. Choices based on my …
After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 14 – Discovering What We Are Capable Of
The Buddhists say that we fall in love with our teachers. I know that in my relationship with the man I now belief is a sociopath, I realized early that I was in a sort of classroom. He clearly saw the world differently than I did, and operated on principles that were so foreign to me that I couldn't begin to connect the dots. I was truly in love with this man, had a clear vision of the benefits a good relationship would bring to both of us, and wanted to make it work. So I tried to understand. I kept trying through all the emotional pain that started very early in the relationship. I worked at getting him to appreciate and trust me more than he did. I also experimented with mimicking his …
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Experiencing the impact of grief, Part 2
By Ox Drover In Part I we looked at what grief is and what “stages” we may pass through when we lose something or someone of great importance to us. We saw that grief can be “legitimate,” in which others “support us” by validating that we have a reason to be sad over the loss. Yet, there can be “disenfranchised” grief, grief that others do not view as “legitimate” reasons for grief, or shameful private grief that we cannot share. In their attempts to “help” us, many people make fumbling attempts to “cheer us up” or to trivialize our pain, or attach “reasonable” time limits to how long we are able to grieve, which disenfranchises our pain. Since most people view “grief” as equal to “Sadness …
Experiencing the impact of grief, Part 1
By Ox Drover Many of the people who have been victims of a sociopath have commented here at Lovefraud about how much “different” breaking up with a sociopath is than a “regular” break up, how much more painful. I've read comments from former victims about how intense the feelings are after being conned by a sociopath whatever the relationship has been, whether family member, spouse, lover, or child. I have also felt these same profoundly hurtful feelings as I have worked my way along the difficult and rocky road toward healing. Even though my profession was as a registered nurse practitioner, and I've studied “the grief process” as outlined by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, one of the people who ha …
One man’s lies are not my truth
I was at a seminar awhile ago where the speaker quoted from Gavin deBecker's book, The Gift of Fear. deBecker writes that the first time someone hits you, you're a victim. The second time, you knew what he was capable of yet chose to stay. The speaker went on to talk about how in life we always have a choice. We can choose to stay with a man who has proven himself capable of hitting or lying or cheating, or, we can chose to do the thing we fear, leave. Walk out the door and don't look back. It is always our choice. A woman in the audience put up her hand and said, “So, you're blaming the victim. If she chooses to stay, it's her fault.” “No,” the speaker responded. “She is never responsib …
Sometimes “victory” is simply walking away upright
By Ox Drover Donna's great article about Victory, of a sort, over a sociopath the other day got me to thinking. Just what is “victory?” My wonderful stepfather was a young basketball coach when he got his first real job coaching for a very small rural school which had not had a winning game in over a decade. The team was dispirited and had no real expectation of ever winning a game. One of the local coaches bragged that he would beat them “by a hundred points!” at the next game. The team thought there was a good possibility that that coach's team could do just that. However, it is “good sportsmanship” for a coach playing a much weaker team to let their second, third, and fourth strings g …