By Ox Drover I was led to believe as a child that we should “love unconditionally” and that we should “forgive unconditionally.” This was the rule around our house. I did start to notice, though, that while I was to apply this “unconditional forgiveness and love” to others, those same people did not always apply it to me. When my children were born, I felt the first real and true “unconditional” love I had ever felt for anyone. I would gaze into the crib and watch my child sleep, little fists curled up, ten perfect little fingers with ten perfect little finger nails. The warmth of this truly “unconditional” love swept through my heart and made my eyes tear up with joy. Even when my …
BOOK REVIEW: The Gift of Betrayal
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 …
PTSD: That was then, this is now
According to the National Institutes of Health website “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat.” Signs and Symptoms of PTSD are grouped into three categories: 1. Re-experiencing symptoms: • Flashbacks—reliving the trauma over and over, including physical symptoms like a racing heart or sweating • Bad dreams • Frightening thoughts. Re-experiencing symptoms may cause problems in a person's eve …
More and less judgmental after the sociopath
Before my run-in with a sociopath, my philosophy was pretty simple: Do what you're supposed to do, and you'll stay out of trouble. It worked when I was younger. I studied hard in school, did my chores around the house and earned lots of Girl Scout merit badges. As a teenager and young adult, I never ran with a fast crowd. My cousin did, and I saw what happened to her. She should have known better, I thought. Those kids were nothing but trouble. They were hanging out and smoking dope. What did she expect? Fast forward 20 years. I'm a single professional with a profitable small business. My philosophy seemed to be working out—I'd never been in any serious trouble. Then the sociopath swept i …
The first step in recovering from a sociopath: Staying alive
Lovefraud recently received the following e-mail from a reader who we'll call “Lillian.” Yes. It happened to me. It took him six years but he left. He left me holding two mortgages in both our names. He left me once I ran out of cash. He left me when I got laid off. I am almost 50 years old and I have nothing. I haven't heard from him in over a year. He encouraged me to buy a bigger, more expensive house than I would have on my own and came up with half the down. He moved in. Wouldn't pay anything. Got us a joint account and credit card. I worked. He didn't even buy groceries. He bought himself a boat after three years of hell as I got angrier and angrier because he just lay on the couch. Th …
The first step in recovering from a sociopath: Staying aliveRead More
After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 8 – Waking up
This is the eighth article in this series about the recovery path, and it is about the second half of the path. This is after we have fully accessed our anger, and begun to grieve our losses and let go. This article may not necessarily be helpful to someone who is still reeling from betrayal and loss, or even someone who is still exploring righteous anger. However, it is part of this series because a growing number of people on LoveFraud are considering the influence of their histories on their relationships, as part of healing themselves and their lives. Please, take what is valuable to you, but if this one doesn't make sense or, God forbid, makes you feel like you're being blamed, it just …
After the sociopath: How do we heal? Part 8 – Waking upRead More
Life is different than I wished, but now I accept what is
By Ox Drover I've been on the “Road to Healing” for a couple of years now, working on getting over the worst of the grief of my losses. According to the author of Overcoming the Devastation of Legal Abuse Syndrome, Karin Huffer, M.S., M.F.T, the greatest loss known to human kind is loss by deception. I have surely suffered PTSD from the extreme losses by deception that I have suffered. Ms. Huffer outlines eight steps to recovery for her LAS (Legal Abuse Syndrome), which she shows as caused by the legal abuse that our unfair judicial system heaps upon the heads of those already abused by others. Her eight steps for recovery are basically the recovery from the grief of our losses that we …
Life is different than I wished, but now I accept what isRead More
After the sociopath is gone: The rapture of being alive
It has been a long while since I contributed to the Lovefraud blog roll -- I'm excited about being back. Excited to share with you my healing journey. It has been almost six years since I was set free of Conrad, the man who promised to love me 'til death do us part and who then went about taking the 'til death part' way too seriously. In that time, my life has flourished and grown and I've become stronger, more vibrant, more confident and committed to living the life of my dreams. I look forward to being here more often! The greatest discovery of this generation is that a human being can alter their life by altering their attitude. William James Attitude. We've all got it. We all …
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Recovering from the psychopath: A New Life
By Ox Drover Many of us here remember the pain of laboring in childbirth; we thought it was so painful we couldn't endure any more without dying. Yet, even in that all-encompassing pain that wracked our bodies and our minds, in the back of our minds we knew we were giving birth to a New Life, and we were hopeful. We knew, too, that though we were giving birth to New Life, that it would not be an independent soul. We knew that New Life would require our tender nurturing to help it grow for many years. I see our pain in recovering from the devastation of our experiences with a psychopath in a similar light to the pain of labor and childbirth, and caring for that New Life. I see that we …
Why I Am Becoming an Ass
By Ox Drover Many of you know that I have a background and interest in animal behavior, and that I look at the way animals behave and apply what I see to my own life. I have two mammoth (horse-sized) donkeys (correctly called asses) named Fat and Hairy that I frequently talk about on the blog. Someone called them the Lovefraud mascots, because I talk about them so frequently. I've ridden and owned various horses over the years and they are loveable creatures, but really not very bright. They will trust their safety to you without question once they are trained and will do what you tell them to, usually without protest, even if it gets them into a situation where they will be injured …