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- Barriers in the mind keep us from learning new information, putting it to good use, and shedding old, outdated behaviors.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.
Dear Fleeced,
What advice you’ve been given above is very valid.
NO CONTACT, means also not listening to what others say about him, not reading his FB page, and in many cases not even discussing him with others. If someone tries to talk to you about him, say “I’d rather not discuss that, please” and if they insist, walk away. If they try to tell you what he said REPEAT the phrase and if they don’t stop, then WALK AWAY.
You can safely discuss him HERE.
Find a counselor if you can, and that may help. But whatever you do, even reading and learning here, it is NOT GOING TO BE QUICK. By that I mean your healing may be in terms of a year or two not a month or two. That’s just the facts, some things can’t be RUSHED.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER so read and read and read. Start with just reading the articles here (there are about 1,000 of them 1-2 pages long) read just the articles in the archives for a while, get Donna’s book “RED FLAGS OF LOVE FRAUD” and read it.
Educating yourself about them, and then about yourself. Why did you fall for it for so long? What about you do you need to fix or change? You can’t fix or change HIM, but you can grown and fix your own problems. We all have them. So Welcome to LF, you are among friends here. PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’VE BEEN THROUGH, and also people who care. God bless and again, welcome.
Dear fleeced, I think we all can relate to your post. I too missed my old life and wanted it back, but somewhere the road I realized that I would not no matter what I did, but really, with the knowledge I have now – I would not have my old life back even if somebody threw it after me. When you’ve been through something like this, it changes who you are and how you view your world. Try to make amends with the acceptance of what is now because it makes it easier to move forward. You will become a new and improved YOU in the future.
“I WANT to meet someone genuine and honest, but feel I will sabotage any relationship I have from here on in from what this man has done to me”… … I’ve asked this question too and I’m not sure if I ever will be able to trust again. However, when others have made it, why shouldn’t we? AND btw, it was all about the spath and his sabotaging the relationship, it really had nothing to do with you. Take responsibility for your own actions that took place during the relationship, but make it end there. Listen to the advice people here provide you. They know what they are talking about and it really does work.
Please no skillet! Forgive my “pity party” of yesterday. My “ah hah” moment today is realizing that the xspath actually did everything to sabotage the relationship while pretending to be all about being together and having peace. He is NOT peaceful at all. Just lying to keep up the chaos!
Revelation, good girl! You can have a pity party once in a while (we all do! LOL) just don’t BEAT YOURSELF UP TOO BADLY. (((hugs)))
Revelation, what OxD typed is spot-on. I throw the BEST pity-parties, really!!! Full of desperation, despair, and full-on crying jags! It’s okay – it cycles around and the pity-parties become fewer and fewer.
Brightest blessings
I’ve been stalking this site for days and just reading and have become familiar with some of the posters. I just got out of a long term relationship and it ended abruptly, at my hand, because I found out he had been lying to me about so much. We had several breakups over the years but always managed to work things out so I thought we had a strong committed relationship. We had never gone without contact so I really thought we would weather this one also. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to get back together because with everything I found out the trust was gone. I was so confused. And very hurt. I made it through the first week, second week, first month, second month and so on. I thought…I can survive this, Yay me! At first I thought he was just a pathological liar but the more research I found the more he was was sounding like a Narcissist and then he had a lot of S/P characteristics. I thought this man was the love of my life and loved me like no man had ever loved me and then find out that that is was all fake. Sometimes I wish that I had found out nothing. Maybe ignorance IS bliss. How sad is it that I miss the man he pretended to be? Why is this so painful?
daisy,
Welcome to Lf, glad you found us. You’ll find tons of support and you’ll learn from others journeys.
It’s odd that we seem to need ‘proof’. That our guts screaming are not enough…..we need to SEE them in the OW’s bed in full glory.
WHY?
Why do we not have enough trust in ourselves to know what isn’t right.
This is the thing we need to build on. Our guts, our inner instincts.
We are WOMEN…..we know things, we don’t have to ‘see’ it in full force.
These guys are masters at deception…..and that is what takes us off balance, to distrust our guts.
Ignorance isn’t bliss. Life is full of pain…..but if we learn the lessons thoroughly, we will be able to carry on to a fulfilled life.
The confusion is what they use to exploit us and get away with their dishonesty.
If we are confused, we (again) are off balance and question ourselves.
Questioning ourselves get’s tiring……so we quit when we get a monocrum of nicety from them. And dive right back into the relationship head first.
We reinvest.
Jump back on the NC bandwagon…….you can do this. Heal yourself, don’t ever allow anyone to knock you off balance.
Learn the signs, learn the red flags…..and learn what it feels like in YOUR body when it happens.
You’ll be okay! Get back on that wagon girl!
INVESTMENTS;INVESTING-REINVESTING yep,that’s what life with the spath is all about!Spath ‘does their thing’ and we work our buns off trying to make the relationship work!
JUST LET IT ALL GO! And go NC!Take care of yourself and start the healing process!
Daisy, welcome to LF. Sorry you need to be here, but glad that you found us, you are NOT alone. There are people who understand.
Yep, get back on the NC wagon,a nd no sneaking peeks at his FB page or anything else. ABSOLUTELY NO contact of any kind…it is like an addiction, so got to go COLD TURKEY, no little tastes of it, absolutely cold turkey and you CAN DO IT!
Keep on reading and learning and healing! God bless, and again, welcome.
daisy welcome…you have to go through the pain to get to the other side. you have suffered a huge loss over and over it sounds like,, you know now that it is over for good..so mourn your loss. The loss of someone who never was is very confusing, you will sort it out and in time you will see the benefit’s of this Life Lesson.