Since Lovefraud launched in 2005, I’ve collected 2,850 cases—people who have contacted me to tell me about their experiences with a sociopath. In nearly 100 of these cases—3.4%—the person who contacted me was not actually the victim, but was a friend or family member who was trying to pry the victim away from the sociopath. For example, here’s an email that Lovefraud recently received:
I have a sister-in-law who is dating a married man, who claims he will be getting a divorce, which is still yet to happen. Now she’s pregnant with his kid so things are more serious. They were supposed to move out together a couple months ago, but when the day came he disappeared, then a couple weeks later she found out she was pregnant by him then they were in contact again. Anyways, they went ahead and got an apartment again, which he’s not living in because he is still living with his wife, so it’s a come and go when he pleases”¦ He’s using her! This is not his first child out of wedlock, in fact, he has no contact with the other one and he has now cheated on his wife six times! All these red flags, and all she does is cover up for him. I’ve noticed she’s been depressed and been doing irresponsible things with her health as a result of this guy! Everyone also bluntly tells her that she’s basically his whore, so she knows how everyone feels. What do I do to open her eyes?
Lovefraud’s standard advice in this situation is that there isn’t much someone else can do—it’s up to the person who is involved with a sociopath to open her own eyes and see what is going on. In order to break away, the victim must feel, and own, the negative emotions associated with being controlled and/or abused. This will spark the victim’s desire to get out.
The best thing loved ones can do is stay in contact with the victim, because the sociopath will try to isolate him or her. Friends and loved ones should be emotionally supportive of the individual, but not supply material support, such as money or a place to live. The idea, essentially, is to wait it out, and then, when the relationship crashes and burns, be there to pick up the pieces.
Dr. Liane Leedom explained this approach in her article, “How can I get my _____ away from the psychopathic con artist?”
I’ve sent many, many people the link to that article. But every time I do, it is so dissatisfying. Isn’t there anything a loved one can do?
I understand that people become deeply bonded to sociopaths, especially when they are emotionally and physically intimate, and more especially when they are pregnant. I wrote a whole chapter in my new book, Red Flags of Love Fraud, that explains exactly how this happens. Chapter 6 is called “Sociopathic sex and bonding,” and it explains the psychology and biology of how this powerful psychological love bond is formed.
Here’s a chapter by chapter summary of the book.
Still, I don’t like the idea of just waiting around the victim hits bottom. Sometimes, by the time that happens, the victim is so broken that there is no recovery. And sometimes, when the victim hits bottom, she is dead.
So, I ask Lovefraud readers: Have you ever conducted a successful intervention? If you were the friend or family member of someone in the clutches of a sociopath, were you able to get him or her out? How? Or, if you were the person bonded to the sociopath, did anyone ever do or say anything that gave you the strength to leave?
If anything works, please let us know. I’d love to be able to offer more heartening suggestions.
Kathleen, GREAT INFORMATION! Very well put! All great suggestions for getting through to someone, or being supportive for those we can’t “get through” to directly. Thank you! Hope you are doing well!
Keep in touch, we miss you when you are gone too long!@.......
Oh my god, malignant loyalty.
I was tentatively working on a plan to leave the ex-spath back in 2003. And then in the fall of that year, he was finally diagnosed with cancer — prior to that, of course, I had been the Bad Guy for suggesting he take his severe pain to a doctor.
And I thought, “I can’t leave somebody with cancer.” And much, much later, I learned from a woman who had been his lover after he went into remission (but while we were still married, of course) that he told her he only stayed with me because my job had insurance.
I should have dumped him and run for president like Newt Gingrich, right?
Lady,
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!
Just about fell off my chair, LOL!
I have never tried to get anyone away from a sociopath. Usually I meet people AFTER they have gotten away and have a story to tell. But I once tried to do a one-person intervention with a co-worker who was taking anti-depressants and drinking hard liquor and doing other dangerous things. It backfired on me in a BIG way when she got very angry and attacked me, turning a few people in the office against me. The whole thing was incredibly hurtful to me. If I’d been able to find another job I would have. Fortunately, she just left. To my knowledge, she hasn’t changed, but she is still alive, so maybe she got some help. After that experience, I would think twice about trying to wrestle someone away from an addiction. I learned after a lifetime of trying to heal my sister and my mother that people all have their own path and I can only hold up a mirror of what I see. I cannot make them change.
LadySweetG, Yea me too, ROTFLMAO that is really funny! LOL Of course he was “loyal” to you as long as he needed your insurance.
I had a sweet aunt whose husband was very physically abusive and she decided to leave the day the last child turned 18, on that day the SOB had a stroke and she took care of him bedridden the next 10 years until he died. Bless her heart! He was a BEAST!
20years,
On my journeys to recovery (I took many paths simultaneously to get better), I would ask myself if what I was doing looked like a crazy woman. Many times I had to answer YES. So I’d do things in order to not LOOK crazy. In other words, the behavior came BEFORE the mind healed. It took a LOT of observing my behavior and doing it different before my brain caught up. But at the same time, I was continuing the mind vacations, changing the smell of my home, I got plants from a woman who was moving away and took care of them, I listened to music (I had forgotten I LOVED music, my spath hated music and robbed me of my joy.) I MADE myself sit outside and read. I MADE myself interact with strangers just saying thank you to the store clerk… and sometimes I would get BAD feedback, bizarre looks, snootiness. But I realized they did that b/c of who THEY were, not b/c my spath poisoned them against me. They didn’t know me enough to hate me. WHen I think of it, it was a WEIRD journey, but b/c I’d been beaten down into such a NOTHING, it was a slog to get back to ME.
I applaud you for your journey. As I said, I experienced a LOT of me too’s here on LF, but still, EVERY ones recovery is their own individual path. Our brains have to figure it out; recovery builds upon resolution. I had to stop my brain from spinning before I could calm myself enough to read. I had to read b/f I could process more complex tasks. All, as you said, is done at the pace my brain could handle. It took years of abuse to destroy me, it took a while to regain my humanity.
Bless you. You know, your experience would surely help someone else at that abuse shelter, someone in your same situation needs what you didn’t get. Just a thought.
Best
Katy
Donna,
We all know that the victim’s eyes open slowly. Most people have to come to the conclusion that something is wrong on their own. If you attack their sociopathic partner, they will make excuses for them and defend their behavior.
I have an idea. I was thinking about this on the way home from my internship today. I am interning as a counselor and I was thinking about this in the context of one of my clients.
Suggest that the victim notice the behavior of their partner and write them down WITHOUT any interpretting, excuse making or meaning making.
Examples:
He promised me X. He did not follow through.
He yelled at me today.
He called me stupid.
He cheated on me.
He said I did X to him but really, he did X to me.
Maybe this is too simple, but the “relationshit” (as Oxy says) is often all in the mind of the victim and not in the real details.
I think all the meaning we make for the behaviors and the “reasons” and the excuses are what sustain the relationship.
When we let go of those made up meanings, reasons, and excuses and are left only with the behaviors, maybe the picture would be more clear?
Perhaps this is too simple. I don’t know. I wonder what others think.
Also, knowing your story (I read the book) and knowing mine, I think James was far more sophisticated than the Bad Man. And they played this differently. Maybe naming the behaviors would have been harder for you since he was so clever.
Aloha
Aloha
I think you are right about the list.
After I married my husband, he kept telling me that I was remembering things wrong. That he didn’t talk down to me, say certain hurtful things, that certain conversations NEVER happened. So I started keeping a journal, b/c I was honestly worried that I was imagining things. (At one time, I had worked LONG hours and after too many 36 hr shifts, I would dream I was at work and when at work, I’d lean against a table and dream I was dreaming I was at work. So I worried that I was mixing up dreams and reality again.)
The journal became my proof that I was being gaslighted.
A list in the third person perspective, that would be hard b/c I FELT more things than had hard evidence. For ex: I FELT he was ridiculing me but when I followed up, he had an explanation that made me seem paranoid. I got set up a lot, where I would respond and then he’d do something b/c I had “driven him to it”. Took a long time for me to understand I’d been manipulated. My thing is that the list is difficult when the behavior is covert and implied… yet no less mindfarking, just more insidious.
But for overt behaviors, I think the list is perfect.
I think this wouldn’t necessarily work for anyone. It’s more of planting a seed, now that I think about it.
How did we get away, anyway?
KAtyDid…
Yeah.. I was wondering how this would have worked for a really sneaky Sociopath.
Do you remember my old article about The List?
http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2008/08/26/a-list-for-leaving-the-sociopath-behind/
The thing is, I did this… the list… AFTER I left him to help keep my brain on track when I started to want him back or started to think about the fantasy and not the reality.
I have used the lists idea with client’s in therapy as a therapy homework. It seems like it has been helpful… but what do I know? I only have training wheels on. :O)
Aloha