Editor’s note: The following article was submitted by the Lovefraud reader who comments as “Pearl.”
By Pearl
Someone on this blog once mentioned a book by Alice Miller and Andrew Jenkins, and it caught my attention. So now I’m reading The Truth Will Set You Free—Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self.
Even though I’m only about halfway through the book, I wanted to share parts of it because it is so important to what a lot of us are working on—forgiving ourselves and trying to understand why this (fraud) happened to us. I know this won’t apply or appeal to everyone, but it might help some of you as it has me. Miller’s ideas help me understand why I was susceptible and forgive myself for my blindness—my inability to spot a “bad guy.”
Miller focuses on childhood—on how corporal punishment (spanking/whipping) and humiliation—cause a type of blindness in adulthood that can lead to being manipulated and UNABLE TO SEE THROUGH LIES. She emphasizes that the kind of parenting and education aimed at breaking a child’s will and making that child into an obedient subject by means of overt or covert coercion, manipulation and emotional blackmail leaves long-lasting imprints on the way we think and relate to one another as adults.
Here is the cycle as she sees it:
- Traditional methods of upbringing, which have included corporal punishment, lead a child to DENY suffering and humiliation. (Can anyone related to having a high pain threshold? Where did I get that bruise or cut—I don’t remember getting it? Ever feel humiliated at being spanked, paddled or whipped as a child? Ever experience a parent being insensitive to suffering?)
- This denial, although essential if the child is to SURVIVE, will later cause emotional blindness.
- Emotional blindness produces “barriers in the mind” erected to guard against dangers. This means that early denied traumas become encoded in the brain, and even though they no longer pose a threat, they continue to have a subtle, destructive impact. (The memory of how to respond to such crappy behavior from our parents and authority figures is still there.)
- Barriers in the mind keep us from learning new information, putting it to good use, and shedding old, outdated behaviors.
- Our bodies retain a complete memory of the humiliations we suffered, driving us to inflict unconsciously on the next generation what we endured in childhood, unless we become aware of the cause of our behavior, which is embedded in the history of our own childhoods.
As children, some of us learned to suppress and deny natural feelings. Some of us lived in a world where our feelings were ignored and denied.
All the beaten child remembers is FEAR and the face of the ANGRY parent, not why the beating was taking place. The child may even assume he had been naughty and deserved the punishment. Miller writes that in the absence of a witness who can empathize with us in childhood and genuinely listen to us, we have no other way of protecting ourselves from the pain but to close our minds to it.
In a bid to blot the fear and pain of our abused younger self, we erase what we know can help us, we can fall prey to the seductiveness of sects and cults, and FAIL TO SEE THROUGH ALL KINDS OF LIES.
Having this information helps me understand why I was “ripe for the picking.” It also goes a long way toward helping me forgive myself and move on in the healing process.
Zim, glad to see you back!
woundlicker, i also had boys beat me up. actually never girls, girls were nastier but never physically violent, that was always the boys, spitting, pushing hitting.
i relate so much to feeling like the odd one out and trying to heal others. i think spaths see that. i think in a lot of cases they are fully aware that they are “different” and have very pathetic stories any “helper” type just can’t resist.
at first it was hard to be NC, but once i managed it, i felt like i had some of my own power back, that i made a choice for myself, i felt good about it! then it got much easier. i started to emotionaly grasp the unfixable-ness of him, i started to understand how dangerous he was as my friends slowly confessed they had been scared for my safety and were trying to figure out how to confront me without upseting me.
i figured he moved on and wouldn’t both with me ever again, although he claimed to “love” me in words, in the end, i knew his actions only showed cruelty and nothing like love. i figured hed find someone better to bother since he had so many complaints about me. i went through hypnotherapy to get over my fear of seeing him, my anxiety got some better
i even ran into him several times and even though he gave me the sociopath stare, he didn’t say a word. i felt pretty safe and comfortable that he was out of my life and that was that. a lot of time went by.
i really NEVER expected to hear another word from him. i dont buy what he said, his worry for me, his missing of me, although it touches my heart a little bit, its only because i KNOW he realizes i’m a good patient person and not a lot of people would tolerate half what i did!
and i guess i’m not, oh, angry or extremely depressed. i’m just shocked he reached out. not by what he said, just that he actually did it! i never thought he had the b@lls….lol
OxDrover wrote,
My renter’s hired hand, a nice young man age 26 who also takes care of my livestock as part of his job, is getting divorced after four months marriage with a Borderline Personality disordered woman who swore to him “she would change her ways.” Apparently she has been sleeping with her previous boyfriend the entire time they dated and were married, gave custody of her kids up to her ex husband, or they were taken away, I’m not sure.”
and
“He said she told that she “just couldn’t live with all those rumors of her cheating” and that she was “worried he would commit suicide” (he is NOT a “suicide type guy”)”
Wow..that last part..EXACTLY what my ex P did to me..asked me directly, over the phone, “are you going to hurt yourself?” .. as in “commit suicide” .. no, I am not the suicidal type, either, but it sure seemed as though, if he didn’t actually WANT me to commit suicide, he wanted to put the thought in my head for it.
And that part about the woman being a Borderline Personality Disordered person? Well, that convinces me (though I was already convinced, long before I read that part you wrote) that, he, in fact, is also BPD..not that I worry myself anymore with “diagnosing” him, I don’t, but it just firms my conclusions about his sickness, even more.
Thank you.
Zim
OxDrover..you wrote,
“he had told everyone he was a Navy SEAL, he had worked for CIA, FBI, had made 5000 parachute jumps (no one has ever made that many) and other bald faced lies etc.”
A friend of mine has been keeping track of cheaters profiled on different web sites and found TWENTY profiled who PRETENDED to be “Navy Seals” and she passed the info on to me and other of her friends. We got a big laugh from it. Don’t they know they are NOT original, or that scam has far too long been used for us not to recognize it by now? I wonder if they are all in the same PUA (Pick Up Artists) club?
Zim
The ppath never changes it’s stripes.
It never changes it’s MO nor it’s POA.
The only thing that has changed is me.
I have changed.
I have seen it all so clearly now.
It’s time to definitely move on and call it a day.
Permanently the next time and I see that coming quickly now.
Almost ‘letting go’ time again….almost….
Dupey
You’re welcome, Zim….
I_survived_The_Bastard wrote,
“I took a hammer to the ’martial bed” & found that a very good release”
I had a very pricey antique-looking bed. It was part of my divorce settlement. I’d had it for years, even used it in my home with the (subsequent) spath. But, when I finally met my GOOD, NEXT lover (the one after, hopefully the FINAL spath, my new lover had his own bed, and he doesn’t even have a headboard on it. I gave my pricey bed away, to a friend of mine who has a large country home and it looks good in her marital home.
I also discarded most of the clothes I wore when with the spath. Got rid of all and any POLYESTER clothing, including the things the spath had bought me across many years, most, if not all of them, typically polyester. I got new ones. Though used, from consignment shops, they are all of silk, wool, natural cotton, linen..natural fabrics..things that felt good on my skin and let me breathe. Nothing in my closet now reminds me of the spath. It’s those little steps that count.
Zim
Correction…I did not mean that my lover since the FINAL SPATH is a spath, too. He isn’t. I was just typing too fast.
Zim
I also agree with Oxy that what behind_blue_eyes experienced from his cousin was RAPE. Even though blue_eyes told us it was “consensual” (AT AGE 13????!) and not “molestation”.. I don’t believe it was not rape..not for one second.
Just curious, blue_eyes..did you live in the mid west when this happened? Often, this can happen around rural or farm areas, when everyone older in the family is out doing the hard tasks of farming, way the hell outdoors somewhere..out of sight, out of mind, no one inside to protect. Or, this “seduction” might have happened in a barn..some obscure place, behind/between myriad giant haystacks, possibly?
And your cousin’s sisters..how many of them were there total? Of those, how many of those told later of being molested by their uncle or father? No one was around to witness anything he did to/with you? Was there no one in sight around when this (I’ll call it rape-seduction) took place, who was older than you? Were his sisters older than him? I suppose he didn’t think of it as “rape” either.
How well we know to what extremes rapists can go, to justify their actions!
I gathered from your story that after the father died, one or more sisters came forward to say they were molested by either their father or their uncle? How many of them came forward? Did the wife (either the wife of the uncle or wife of the father, or father’s brother) know when this went down, to just “look the other way”? Did either woman, your mother or your aunt, stay in a dysfunctional marriage just “because of the kids” (I can imagine, even in the most dysfunctional marriage, a woman could want to “save face” even more, if she had adopted a son, so doesn’t want to escape a bad marriage, because it might make her “look bad” in the community..that/if she, as an adoptive parent, didn’t work out so well with her marriage, after all the red tape it took to adopt a son)?
It is a bit confusing when you wrote, “My family issues really come from my aunt’s husband. She had the misfortune to marry a disturbed individual. Thus the male culprits of my story (uncle and his brother) are by marriage to my mother’s sister.”
You mean your mother and your aunt are sisters, too? You’re not telling us that both culprits were married to the same woman at different times, are you, but are telling us, rather, that your mother and aunt were sisters? You meant that your aunt and your mother were sisters, right?
Sounds like one hell of an enmeshed family, not to mention highly dysfunctional.
I’m just curious as to how many of your female cousins (much too late) revealed being molested by their father or uncle? Hope no granddaughters or grandsons were molested by them, as well.
Did the “seduction” from your cousin take place during a vacation your cousin took, from his state to yours, or did you two live locally close to each other, as in down the street from each other?
Were either your father or uncle also alcoholics? If so, was alcoholism an issue in the family, that was passed on from father to son?
It seems you still have major cognitive dissonance about that episode..especially when you wrote you were not molested. Yet, I think you were. Very probably so do many other LF bloggers believe the same as I do (well..at least one of them, so far, agrees)
This cousin of yours..you said he was imprisoned for statutory rape of a girl. How much time did he serve? When he got years older, did he go on to commit pedophilia with other children, and if he did, was it just girls, or girls and boys? Or do you suspect him of this? How long did his failed marriage last? Was he the only boy among his siblings? Was he the youngest?
Your story runs very parallel in details to my own story (about my ex spath’s family), eerily so, that is why I ask these questions.
Zim
The key to getting out of the doldrums, to heal, is to take little steps, like:
Wear nothing or keep nothing that reminds you of the spath.
Don’t look at photos of him if you can help it. Put them away safely somewhere, out of your home, along with any proof or documents you have on him, possibly store them at the home of a friend, or in a safe box at your bank..but save them just in case one day a Private Investigator comes to your home..in case some other women he duped wants to confirm that others have been conned by him, then you can find those documents/photos when you need them.
Most of you are probably still angry, as I once was. Do safe things to obtain peace of mind. Take an anger management class or see a counselor. Take up advocacy/activism to help other women. Volunteer a fews hours a week in a woman’s shelter, if you have the time or energy, or commit yourself to some other advocacy/activism effort.
yours truly, Zim