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- Barriers in the mind keep us from learning new information, putting it to good use, and shedding old, outdated behaviors.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.
Yes Healing Heart- Angels with so much love and light they can pass through hell and still come out better for it…still clutching their Griswald #9’s and Tidy Bowl atomizers. lol
Can someone answer a few questions? A few months ago I had a call from a woman the S/P had an affair with a year before me. She verified the lies and I had learned that he actually met her in the same place he met me. Said the same lines, lies, stories about himself……. I also learned that he took me to the same palces for trips and long weekends that he took her.
While I was dating him, he discarded m e a few weeks before vacation that we had planned and then refused to pay me my deposit. he did finally write me a check but took the new woman with him on the trip and his daughters. It was so hurtful to me. I cried all week. I planned the trip.
When we first started dating he invited me to join him in Southbeach as he was finishing some work travel there. On that trip, he had all kinds of family drama…..(the adult daughter calling to tell him how horrible it is that he is away with me. His soon to be x wife and she were having a big party at their lake house and how he didn’t deserve to be there…..yada yada yada).
As I think about it now, I think he took me there because I later learned he had cancelled a trip there the previous year with his x wife and she was not happy…… I think he got the result he wanted…..the x wife’s attention, the daughter’s attention…..and he did the same thing to me with the new girlfriend on our planned vacation.
My questions are: Do they do these things on purpose, knowing they will hurt others? Do they do it strictly to gain attention bad or good? Do they just do what they want when they want it, not caring how bad it looks for them or how it will affect others? Is it the anger that motivates them to do these things? Or is it simply their own pleasure? He had to know he would be pissing off the x wife, the daughter when we went there together, and in my example he had to know how hurtful it was to me and my kids when he ditched us and took the girlfriend. he once told me, when I learned about his affair, that he did it because he was angry at his wife and he never really cared about the woman, he just wanted to piss off his wife. Although the affair lasted a year and a half? What the hell goes on in their heads?
HI Keeping Faith – I think about that topic, too. I wonder, sometimes if my ex S did things deliberately that would hurt me, his children, his ex-wife, or if he just did things, and didn’t think about the outcome. The sense that I get, at least from mine and from some of the stuff that I read, is that the sociopath does whatever he feels like doing in the moment, without regard to how it will impact others. My ex S would do things that hurt me, or his kids, or HIM, but he never seemed to think things through. He just did whatever he wanted without regard to consequences to him, or others. In his past relationship, he gave the woman a key to his house….and then cheated on her, IN HIS HOUSE. I think he did whatever he wanted to in the moment, and didn’t think “well, that might come back to haunt me” or “I shouldn’t cheat in this house because I gave her the key and she could walk in.”
When my sociopath wanted to hurt me, he would scream, yell, rage. He really functioned like a three year old in so many ways. If he was angry he yelled, if he was hungry he ate, if he wanted sex, he pursued it…..he didn’t worry about the impact on me, himself, the other woman…he just did what he wanted when he wanted.
I remember reading an article here that said that S’s are cognitively lazy, and would always take the shortest route. My ex S would take all of his girlfriends to Hawaii. That’s it. That was his spot. I think, his thought processes were as unsophisticated as “I like Hawaii, I like her, let’s go there!”
And he was a fairly intelligent guy.
I know that some of the LF folks have experienced S’s who have plotted and schemed. Mine was very sneaky, and lied all the times, but his lies were not well thought-out, his alibis were always weak, and he has gone through the exact same cycle with girlfriend after girlfriend – cheating the same ways, getting caught the same ways. I’m like a broken record here…but I think they funtion, emotionally, like three year olds, and do whatever they want in the moment, without much thought about consequences or implications for others or themselves.
I don’t think others matter enough to them for them to actually invest energy in thinking of ways to hurt us. They just do what they want – and inevitably, we get hurt.
Thanks HH,
The XS/P did the same thing to me with the key. He knew I had a key to his apartment and I walked in and found him in bed with the woman who is 18 yrs younger. I heard recently that she moved into the house he and I built and lives there with her three illegitimate kids and her brother who was a convicted felon. (I can’t even comprehend it). The S recently was fired from his job too. And I think he supports all these people now.
After that event, he actually told me he wanted me to find him so that I would let go and he wanted to hurt me because he was convinced I was cheating on him. A therapist told me it’s all bullshit. He hated being caught by me because he was then not in control. And he hated that i snagged him.
Maybe it is the laziness and familiarity of the places, but do you think they keep trying to re-create something that may have felt good to them at some point? Why did he take me to Toronto or Montreal when he had been there with someone else. In my mind, I wouldn’t want to go where i had been with another man. In fact, when we were planning a vacation together, he insisted we NOT go to jamaica because I had been there with my x husband for our honeymoon (22 years previously) yet he was taking me to all these places he had been with other women?????…..Doesn’t make sense.
What IS funny is that he lied to me about how he met the woman he had an affair with (because of course he didn’t wnat me to know he met her in EXACTLY the same place) so when I spoke to her and she told me this, I recalled a time when he ACCUSED me of going to this place SIMPLY to find men. i couldn’t comprehend the acusation, but I guess that’s what HE was doing. SICK SICK SICK…..
Yes, My ex S was very similar. He was very aware of going places that I had already gone to with an ex, but didn’t seem to think twice about going someplace he had gone before with an ex. I think they are very sensitive to their own feelings, and completely insensitive to ours. Except in the fake, honeymoon, phase where they are very effortfully on their A game and actually seem to care how we are feeling. SEEM.
My ex S accused me of a lot of things that I thought were crazy. Having lunch on my lunch break, having a match.com profile up while he and I were living together, having sex with married coworkers. I would say “WHAT?” it was ludicrous. I just didn’t get it. Someone on this site, Oxy, I think said “If someone accuses you of doing something you are not doing, they are actually telling you what they are doing.” BINGO!
All the crazy stuff he was accusing me of, he was actually doing.
I still can’t believe how awful the cheating was. He moved himself, and his children (he really pushed this, but I agreed, after a minor struggle) in with me, and then started cheating on me immediately thereafter. A couple of steady girlfriends, and multiple one night (morning in his case) stands with strangers on the internet. What he was doing was so outrageous that I didn’t even suspect. Who would do that? It just seemed so ridiculous. If you want to cheat MORE, why move in with your girlfriend, she is MORE likely to find out? I think he wanted to secure me, and once he knew he had me in place, he could branch out. And I was so hooked. But his poor children. They have gone through several “stepmothers.” And they actually moved in with me – that was a first. I shake my head, I should not have allowed this, but I was SURE he and I would be together forever. MY GOD.
His kids….and this is SO sad, they are very young, forewarned me. Give me hints. And said things outright like “my daddy is a cheater.” And the little girl once told that she really loved me and my home and didn’t want to have to leave. I remember thinking “Why would she have to leave?” She knew. I can’t believe he did that to his kids. He didn’t care.
The thing that makes me want to break NC is that I want to tell him off, and say “HOW COULD YOU DO THAT?” but I know the answer. He just didn’t care. He didn’t care about me, didn’t care about them. Didn’t even care that he was ultimately very upset when I threw him out and begged for months to come back (I’m sure he was keeping his harem intact all the while). I want to say “How could you do this to Me? To your children? To you?” It’s such a WTF??!!
But I don’t think it is possible for us to ever “understand.” It’s impossible for us to wrap around that with our minds or hearts. I think we just have to accept that they really are these empty, dysfunctional, monsters. Its so frightening.
I mean having sex on my lunch break! I did have lunch!
HH,
I have read some of your posts. What they have done to us is disgusting. I wish it would all go away and as much as i have made progress it still haunts me.
I too was accused of having sex with vendors and clients on lunch hours….. in fact, it took a long time to realize he cheated on me from the very beginning. One weekend (the first time he discarded me) he told me he was going to visit his dysfunctional adult daughter in NY (both were badly behave adult women) and he told his younger daughter he was working in North Carolina. When i questioned whyhe told her that he said he didn’t want her to be jealous that he visited one and not theother. I bought it. A week later we are back together and go to a concert…..this young guy come running up to him calling his name “Hey D___ Hey dude what’s up?” He grabbed my arm and ran out of the place. I asked who that was and he said it was some guy he did covert work with inthe military and he is not supposed to acknowledge him in public……that’s when the bizarre stories started. I never really found the truth about that particular weekend but I think he lied to everyone, stayed locally and went to some trashy bars, met some trashy people, screwed around and then came back to e as they do. Read the Novemebr archives “Not one thing about him was real”.
I, like you, thought he would never leave as I am a hugeoptopmist and I believe love takes care of everything and anything and you can make it work if both people really want to…… well, he pretended to want to and I didn’t know that for a while. i also saw the result of those adult children being with such a disordered and dysfunctional ma and it is sad and disgusting at the same time. They are not nice women. They just don’t know why.
We are a breed of individuals who want to understand why because we care HH….. they pretned to care. They secured us and then justified their bad, cheating, lying, pathalogical behavior along the way. The bad memories keep flooding back lately. I just want to forget. he was the only thing I regret in my whole life.
God – isn’t that so heartbreaking!? I was SURE this was my soulmate, my partner for life. I didn’t consider, in those first 5-6 months, that we would ever be apart. He did the mirror thing so well, and love bombing was executed so perfectly that I thought we were a match made in heaven, and that we were brought together by God. I guess we were – but for opposite reasons than I thought at the time. It was not to bring me together with my partner. It was to break me down so that I could come back together, stronger. But the break down was brutal. And I’m still not together, and it pisses me off.
I feel so utterly played. I was. And I do feel furious that I have had two years of my life in which so much energy was extended on him (and I was only with him, in a relationship, for nine months). I do like to think that there was a higher purpose, and that some day I will be better for it.
But boy, has it taken a chunk out of my life and drained me. And I have not been anywhere near ready to get into a relationship, I have had limited energy to socialize (though I push myself, and do go out, and even took off several weeks to travel Europe), and feel like my life has been frozen, because of this relationship with him, for a couple of years.
I hope it all makes sense some day.
His kids were both under ten. I’m sure (and this is so sad) that they are terribly damaged. He has put them through so much awful stuff, and they have been witness to terrible things. Their mother isn’t the healthiest person (how could she be?). I think she was so beaten down after 15 years with this guy that she doesn’t even have the strength to protect them properly.
I’ve been having a lot of bad memories flooding back, too. Dreams, day time intrusions. I don’t know if I should let them come through and pass, or actively block them.
Sometimes I feel so outraged for myself, and every one else here. We are good people.
We can make ourselves crazy trying to figure out why. I don’t think there is any way for an empathetic person to understand the workings of someone whose motivations are not affected by awareness of how other people feel.
It was a watershed day in my life when I switched from trying to understand him to thinking about how his actions affected me. It doesn’t matter why he did what he did. What does matter is how it made me feel. At the time, and cumulatively. And that led to me starting to evaluate things in terms of whether they were good for me or bad for me.
I think that re-learning how take care of myself was one of the most important results of my relationship with the sociopath. My standards changed. We talk about becoming more self-protective, when we’re hurt and scared. But when those immediate reactions cooled down a bit, that self-protectiveness evolved into just being better at judging the short-term and long-term impact of things on my life.
Oxy’s post today on stress got me thinking about this. How much more conscious I’ve become about my own limitations. And how I want to put my energy into things that really pay me back. Like working on things I like and believe in. Like developing relationships with people who expand my life and make me feel good about myself. Like using my spare time for improving my home, learning and exploring charitable opportunities.
This new focus on taking care of myself has accomplished something that I was never able to accomplish by guilt-tripping myself about “getting a life.” For the most part, I have a really satisfying life, and one that has more balance than ever before.
But I didn’t get that until I stopped obsessing on his issues, and started giving that attention to my own. And it wasn’t because I was mad at him, or decided he wasn’t worth it, or anything like that. It’s that it was just useless. Beyond a kind of intellectual construct of what makes him tick, I can’t understand why he did all the things he did. And I just got tired of trying.
Dear Kathy,
I’m aware that I “know” how they think as well as I ever can, which may or may not be right, but it is like trying to know how my DOG thinks. I can see his behavior in certain situations and draw a conclusion of sorts, but is it correct? I’m not entirely sure, and can’t ever be entirely sure. We are just TWO DIFFERENT SPECIES and therefore communication will be impaired by that fact. As far as thinking is concerned, I think in many ways the Ps are a DIFFERENT SPECIES, their brains work differently than ours, therefore there is no way for us to know how it “feels” to NOT have empathy or a conscience, or to not be able to feel guilt or remorse. I can draw some conclusions by observation about how they act.
Are they angry? I can usually tell by looking at their body language, but because I know that they conceal their emotions intentionally, I can’t always be sure when they are even angry or not.
kathy, I wanted to point out to you just how much I enjoy your article and your blog posts. You are an amazing woman and obviously very bright. Your insights are very good and your communication empathetic and direct.
Your comment above about “For the most part, I have a really satisfying life, and one that has more balance than ever before,” just rang true to me. I can also say that about myself. I do step in a hole or two along the healing road, but for the most part, the road is level and most of the pot holes are filled in now, or I lookk far enough ahead to avoid them. The encounter with my mother was one I wasn’t looking for and it caught me unawares…like sometimes when I am walking across the pasture or the yard and just take a misstep and before I know it, I am flat on the ground feeling clumbsy (which I am!) Fortunately I’ve been active enough in my life and have good genetics so that my bones are strong even at 62 and it takes a lot to break them (but I have broken them far too frequently especially when I was younger.) LOL