When we realize that we’ve been involved with a sociopath, and that person has callously betrayed us, we inevitably ask, “Why? Why did this happen to me?”
To help find the answer, one of the books that Lovefraud recommends is The Betrayal Bond—Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships, by Patrick J. Carnes, Ph.D. The book explains the deep psychological wounds caused by trauma, and offers a way for us to identify and overcome abusive relationships that we may have experienced.
When I read the book, I was struck by what Carnes wrote on page 68:
My experience with survivors of trauma is that every journey of recovery depends on the survivor coming to a point where all that person has gone through means something.
I believe there is meaning in what we have experienced at the hands of sociopaths. Here it is: The object of the exercise is to force us to jettison mistaken beliefs about ourselves.
Promising to fill the void
When sociopaths come into our lives, they snag us by promising to fill some void. For most of us on Lovefraud, the void is our missing soul mate, but sociopaths can also promise career success, monetary rewards, spiritual enlightenment—any number of things. (Please note: This dynamic doesn’t quite apply when sociopaths are family members.)
Sociopaths are experts at identifying our vulnerabilities and exploiting them. So the question becomes, why do we have the vulnerabilities in the first place? Here’s where the mistaken beliefs come in.
We believe we cannot attract a fulfilling romance.
We believe people only want us when we do something for them.
We believe we cannot succeed through our own efforts.
We believe we aren’t good enough.
We believe we are unlovable.
We believe there’s something wrong with us.
We believe we cannot cope with life by ourselves.
We believe other people come before ourselves.
We believe someone will come and make all our troubles disappear.
These just a few of the erroneous beliefs that create voids within us. Where do they come from? Perhaps from abuse in our past, as outlined in The Betrayal Bond.Perhaps they come from simple misperceptions. In any event, the sociopath steps right in to fill them.
Feel free to add your own mistaken beliefs to the list.
Critical juncture
So the sociopaths make promises—and break every one of them. At some point we wake up, come out of the fog, and realize that our lives have crumbled into piles of debris. That’s when we ask why? Why did this happen to me?
This is a critical juncture. We can certainly blame the sociopath—they are evil, and they deserve to be blamed. We can say it was fate, or luck, which is sometimes true—there are sociopaths who randomly assault or kill people. But in most of our cases, we believed the sociopath, went along with the charade, for a period of time. Why did we do this?
If we can find the answer to this question, we can discover the meaning in the betrayal by the sociopath.
As much as I hate to admit it, I did benefit from the destruction wrought by the sociopath I married. I am not the same person that I was before him—I am wiser, healthier and happier.
Why? Because I found and released all those mistaken beliefs.
Yes, it was painful. Yes, it was traumatic. But by looking for the meaning and undertaking the healing journey, my life is now much richer than it ever was.
Whoops, I posted that without editing out the typos. The most important typos was in the paragraph about the Eileen Warnos dynamic. What I meant to say is that the healing process ISN”T very different. There are a lot of other typos, but hopefully it makes general sense. — Kathy
Oxy, I was writing while you posted that, and I agree entirely. You and I come at this from different spiritual traditions, and I learn a lot from your Biblical references. (Catholics don’t read the Bible, and now that I’m a sort-of Buddhist, I’m off on completely different paths. But there’s clearly a great deal of wisdom there, which you present in wonderful ways.)
The empty-chair technique is something I used too. It’s a way to have the conversation that you couldn’t safely have at the time.
But something I neglected to mention is the addictive nature of anger. People do get stuck there, because being angry makes them feel less powerless and small, and they find that they can drive away certain threats by blowing themselves up like a puffer fish and looking very dangerous. And we like the brain chemicals of anger — the clarity, the righteousness, the sense of being in our own skin (rather than diffused all over the place, as we are when we feel responsible for things that are really not under our control, including other people’s feelings).
But the hint to what is wrong with this is that it is addictive. That is, we’re using it to make ourselves feel better, rather than digging down to find the real sources of our chronic anger. Sooner or later, addiction recovery involves discovering the wounded child inside us.
Before we do this work, we experiences the various pieces of it in a disconnected way. We feel wounded. We feel like we have a right to take care of ourselves. We don’t trust. We bargain with the sources of fear.
But getting down to this wounded child level somehow pulls these pieces together in a way that makes us really coherent again. We understand the nature of the wounds. We see exactly what needs taking care of. We start bargaining with the child, if you want to call it that, seeking to know what exactly it needs to feel safe and loved again. We face our internal issues of trust and make trusting ourselves our top priority.
It takes tremendous courage to face ourselves at this level. The amount of denial we live with is in direct proportion to how frightening we find it to admit that we were wounded. It’s as though the wounds are the monster. But when we get there, we discover that the monster is not there. Just us with our bruises that require concerned caring and reassurance that everything is going to be all right, and a commitment to care for ourselves in the future.
For me, Oxy’s story is one of a child that was told and shown that her own reality had to be suppressed, if she was going to be safe. The she had to subscribe to other people’s reality in order to be loved and sheltered. And as children, we feel and rightly that our lives are at stake. What if they abandon us, because we are not what they want? We do what we have to do to survive, and particularly if there is no one around to tell us that our parents are wrong or crazy, we don’t have support for maintaining what we have temporarily put away in order to survive.
I had a grandmother who was a relatively small influence in my childhood (compared to the daily craziness at home), but she encouraged me, seemed to understand what I was dealing with (without my having to say anything), and she seemed to see me as valuable and full of potential. Sometimes I think that she was the reason I maintained a vision of a different life for myself. I though about her a lot in recovery, because I often felt I was coming home to what she saw in me, before I had gotten to the point that I saw myself as truly worth caring for.
Oxy mentioned expecting other people to be as responsible as we expect ourselves to be. I would add something to this. We have been giving other people the freedom to be who they are, while denying ourselves that freedom. A lot of the identity damage we sustain as children or in other traumas results a kind of punishing noise in our heads telling us we are not okay. The truth is the parts of us that are not okay are the parts that are reacting to that noise. Deep inside of us, behind the traumas and our coping mechanisms, we are very okay. We have good values based on the fundamental belief in the goodness of giving and receiving love.
I realize that this generalization does not work for NSPs that may have been born broken, or so genetically disadvantaged that it took very little to destroy their capacity for compassion or bonding. So let’s say that there are some incurable emotional cripples among us.
But that is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about us, the people whose sense of themselves was warped by trauma that can be resolved. I’ve written here before that this healing attention to myself was the greatest gift I’ve ever received, and I gave it to me. Unpeeling the onion is a tremendous adventure, and there are parts that are scary and require courage. But it we believe in ourselves — and I think we all do at a deep level — we can do it. And we can use the experience with the sociopath to get really well, better than we’ve ever been in our lives.
Dear Kathy,
I am NOT advocating “premature” forgiveness, because like you say that ANGEr stage has to come in there, because we are JUSTLY angry. Jesus was angry. he advised his disciples to “be ye angry and sin not.” Anger itself is NOT a “sin” or even a bad thing, it makes us TAKE ACTION against the problem. Jesus took ACTION by driving out the money changers in the Temple. He was justly angry and took ACTION to rite the wrong that was going on.
He also said “do not let the sun go down on your WRATH.” I always thought of wrath as anger, but the two words are NOT the same thing at all. anger is immediate when you perceive the wrong (even if the wrong itself took kplace years ago) but WRATH is nurtured, fed, and vengeful and bitter. It is bad for YOU where as anger is not. We can be justly angry and it does not hurt US, but nurturing WRATH and a feeling of vengence and HANGING ON TO THIS FEELING FOREVER is a bad thing for US.
The commandments in the Bible and the wisdom are for US and how to live a peaceful and good life…even if you are not a believer in the religious aspect of the Bible, the wisdom and knowledge on how to “handle others” of different types, how to “get along and play nice with others—if they are willing to play nice” but unlike what is taught many times we are NOT, I think, to be DOOR MATS. Being a martyr is NOT what Christianity or Judism is all about. It is using our wisdom and good sense to be “as cunning as serpents and as gentle as doves” and to “tell what a tree is by examining its fruit” (pattern of behavior)
The Bible itself has many examples of psychopaths and their “hard hearts” and lack of pity or compassion. Ahab’s wife Jezeebel has become the by-word for this lack of pity and compassion. She is a perfect example of a psychopath who was she thought entitled to what she wanted and persuaded her weaker husband to act just like her. Fortunately, she got her just deserts! He did as well.
There are multiple examples in the Bible of people being led astray by psychopaths and “evil companisoos corrupt good morals” and in many ways we gave in (many of us any way) to do things for or with the ps that otherwise we would never have done. Plus, we let them abuse us which they had NO RIGHT to do.
When we realize that we have NOT STOOD UP to protect even ourselves, we may feel pretty badly toward ourselves, but we can START TODAY….we can feel the justifiable anger at others and at OURSELVES, but let this ANGER MAKE US TAKE ACTION to correct the wrongs. We can correct the wrongs in the others, but we can sure as heck correct the wrongs inside ourselves, make ourselves better, strounger and “more righteous” people, whatever our spiritual and religious beliefs are.
You just gave me an idea for another article. I’m gonna leave here and work on it. Love to you my wonderful friend, Oxy
Oxy and Kathy,
thanks so much for your thoughts.
It helps to understand the different layers as I get down to the core problem: the programming that my parents placed on me during the time when I was developing my identity. They wanted control so they devalued me. What assholes. I would never do that to a cat much less a child. They wanted to break my spirit, but they didn’t, they just crippled it.
How to straighten it out and let it expand is the question. I’m thinking the answer is similar to what I would tell a P: choose to let it expand by getting rid of all the old coping mechanisms, so you can get new ones. Looking at the P, I see myself. I see a crippled coping mechanism, suitable only for a child but still being applied to my life today.
So what are those new coping mechanisms?
I so appreciate both of you dedicating yourselves to these discussions with me and the rest of LF. You’ve helped me grow immensely in the last few months. I have hope.
Dear Skylar,
QUOTE: “I’m thinking the answer is similar to what I would tell a P:”
The thing is Skylar, you are NOT going to accomplish ANYTHING by “telling a P” ANYTHING, they will NOT get it, they will not utilize it to grow, and as long as you think that you can influence THEM, you are stuck.
Disconnecting from THEM and connecting to OURSELVES is what we must FIRST do to get on the road to improving ourselves.
Like Kathy said, it is NOT “instant” but we start with NC–physical NC which contains NO LISTENING, NO RESPONSE, NO READING, NO LOOKING THEM UP ON FACE BOOK, etc. NO RESPONSE TO THEM.
Instead of responding to THEM, we may shoutt at the wall, the chair, or come here on LF and post and vent, but we do NOT allow them in, ,NO CONTACT. Yet, even then, they are still in EMOTIONAL contact with us, they are RENTING SPACE in our heads. There are still things we WANT to tell them, etc. so that is only the first step. BUT as physical NC goes on, we will find we think about THEM LESS and eventually we don’t give a big rat’s behind what they think, or waht they are or where they are, they are OUT OF OUR LIVES and out of our heads.
Then, we can start to truly and FULLY work on our own selves and dealing with our past. As long as they are taking up our energy and time and thoughts, we can’t think about ourselves and how WE need to change. Change our attitudes, our behaviors, and make our lives better TODAY in the NOW.
It takes work and time. and TIME AND WORK. As long as we are connected to them, for fresh injuries, though, we go back and back to square ONE.
This whole thing starts out about them, but when we start to heal, it becomes about US, NOT THEM. They are a LOST CAUSE. We are NOT lost causes.
Those of us with TOXIC parents or a toxic parent, or in some cases, even good parents, did not prepare us, or we were not prepared (either way you want to look at it) for dealing with EVIL people who would use us. If we had been, we would not have been on LF to start with, because everyone comes into contact with evil people, but NOT everyone allows them to abuse them. Some maybe by luck, but others by having good boundaries. Good boundaries that let them say, “You will NOT treat me like that.”
With strangers I had those boundaries, but with my “family” and “close friends” I didn’t, I felt it was my duty to “never upset someone who hurt me.” DUH! You steal from me and I am not supposed to upset YOU? You lie to me, cheat me, say hateful things to me and I am NOT supposed to NOTICE or make a “big deal out of it?”
Well, I found out, finally that just because you share a blood relationship with some one, or even a long past history, that you do NOT have to put up with abusive behavior, You can and should go oNC if that is the only way to make this person treat you well…. or not at all if they refuse to be honest with you. NO ONE DESERVES TO BE TREATED LIKE THIS, and I don’t deserve it either. I will NOT be treated with disrespect and dishonest bvy anyone I allow the PRIVILEDGE of being my intimate friend. Even if I gave birth to them, or they gave birth to me. NOTHING, no relationship, requires that I put up with that crap.
OxDrover,
I’m so glad you wrote…
“Ahab’s wife Jezeebel has become the by-word for this lack of pity and compassion. She is a perfect example of a psychopath who was she thought entitled to what she wanted and persuaded her weaker husband to act just like her. Fortunately, she got her just deserts! He did as well.”
I have shared of my ex NPS’s behavior. I have shared of his family (also NPS) cult like system. What I have not shared is the Jezeebel woman that has been on the heels of my marriage, believing she is entitled to all that we worked so hard for, and has been even more malicious in her smear campaign against me, and the kids. She is intoxicating in her charm, and completely without conscience in her tactics. Even when she’s exposed, which is easy to do with her, because her weakness is her enjoyment of telling people (between the lines) of how she’s going to screw them over. She wears a mask of Christianity, and studies what people want to hear, then delivers in abundance, while she undermines, and takes what doesn’t belong to her.
I heard of her when I was dating my ex. He talked of her as if she were discusting. His negative commentary caused me to feel sorry for her. Just because he didn’t like her, she’s still a human being, with feelings. This should have been my first warning about him.
I met her in 1996. I was working at the shop, having been demanded to cover the office, five weeks after having a c-section, by my ex’s father. “If you want food on your table to feed those kids, you better get your a** in her and cover these phones. I wasn’t paid. While nursing a new born, juggling a 2 year old, with baby equipment everywhere, no make up on, in a large T-shirt, to cover the boobs while the baby nursed, and I answered the phone, in walks this strickingly beautiful woman. She was stylish, confident, and intoxicating.
She introduced herself to me as someone my was was supposed to be married to, but the timing was never right. When she left, I looked at my ex, and he jestered his dislike by sticking his finger in his mouth to gag. And, I was convinced he loved my down to earth, committed to what matters, dedication, and loyalty of the beauty queen. Lucky me!!!
I had forgotten all about her. Years later, when our marriage is falling completely apart, I get a call from the office manager where my ex worked. “You need to call this number.” So I did. She announced her name, though I didn’t put it together with the woman in 1996. I asked my ex’s sister if she’d ever heard of this name, and she reminded me of who this was. She also told me of this woman’s publically known intent to make my ex HERS. My ex’s sister said, “I wouldn’t trust her as far as I can throw her.”
Then this woman shows up at my house, with flowers. She tells me some lamb excuse of how she had just run into my ex, and felt so sorry for what I was going through as s single mom (we’d recently separated). She knew every book I had just read. She recited word for word letter’s I’d written to my ex 18 months before, and then confessed that she’d been following me for the past 18 months. She told of how her mother(who she claimed is dead, but ironically now lives with her) forced her into prostitution, and a number of other sob storys, which included having experienced liver failure (which so happens to coorespond with a period of time that she delivered a baby-that I suspect is my ex’s) Her elaborate details were mind boggling. And, she was still very much intoxicating, even to me.
Until…I caught her in a lie. The looking glass crashed and I insisted that she stay away from me, and my kids. The paper trail that I’ve been on, putting together in chronilogical order, shows clearly her influence and intention to deceive. It also shows her influence in alienating my ex from the kids, vs me whom they keep accusing me of. She is all fluff, and no substance.
Her main objective is to get to the inheritance that she is anticipating my ex will receive when his father 82 passes. She’s even trying to get herself assigned as an executor of the will over the assigned children of the estate. She has managed to get herself as a co-signer on my ex and mine business account, as well as his father’s checking account… Not even his own kids have had that much influence.
My ex is an insecure little boy, scared to death and as such sees everyone as his enemy that he needs to protect himself against; except those he’s immediately dependent on, and she’s made sure he’s dependent on her. She, on the other hand, is far more manipulative; but, not as stealth, as my ex. She is easy for me to read. And, her ego needs to laugh in the face of her victims will be her undoing. Here’s an example: When I sent a bill to my ex for dental expenses of one of our children. She sent the bill back, with a copy of a check showing herself as a signer with my ex’s dad. Her message, “In your face. Look at the control and influence I have.” She could have sent a copy to me, having written in the check number, amount, and date. I would not know the checking account, nor who was on it. Because she did this….to show off, I have proof that my ex’s father is funneling money through his account with this woman, to hide income. BUSTED!!! Thank you, my dear Jezeebel. The havok your wrecked upon my family will be equally rewarded.
There is a great deal more she has done (mental and psychological mind warping stunts she’s pulled with my kids, witnessed and documented) that I may share at another time.
This woman has enjoyed what should have been my equal income since 2006, and possibly longer. When she is questioned she suddenly has a heart condition, or some other medical, psychological issue that immediately turns my ex’s family into bumbling idiots that believe her.
One member of the family that cannot stand her, had breast cancer. This Jezeebel manged to convince them that she ran a 10K marathon for breast cancer, showing the finish line metal only…. No on-line photos of her crossing the finish line, no pictures of her with the number pinned to her shirt…they just believe her. What is even more astonishing, is that they believe her after she’s convinced them that she can’t work because she has heart condition. Her lack of conscience makes her believable. Her beauty and intoxicating charm, filled with flattery, make her irresistable. She makes me… sick to my stomach.
She convinced my ex’s entire family that she was happily married. Then she convinced them that she was distraught and she and her husband were so disappointed in being caught up in the lies of my ex, and wanted nothing to do with him. All this, while she was getting her name on a new bank account for our joint business as a signer. She has enjoyed full access for her personal use of monies that belonged to me, the past three years.
Oxy, I certainly like your enthusiasm for NC even when it’s a blood relative. Blood relatives can be lethal because they use that connection against you.
Being hurt by a P can only happen when you have expectations for something and you get something else. If you know you’re dealing with a P, they can’t hurt you because you know exactly what to expect. I don’t expect anything from the P in the emotional realm. I’m only an observer. I take notes and ruminate on how his humanity relates to mine, where they intersect, where they run parallel and where they are polar opposites.
The damage I suffered when I was a child, occurred because I was in a stage of development where I could be easily imprinted. Later, my understanding of human nature was incomplete and I was taken in by P’s all the time, culminating in the xP’s theft of 25 years.
Healing is only going to happen for me through knowledge and understanding and I’ll take it where ever I can find it.
When I said, “what I would tell a P”, I was speaking metaphorically, like Socrates used to do. If I was to actually tell a P anything, I would not expect any specific reaction, but I would watch with interest for the results. But thanks for the reminder, even a scientist must remember to divorce herself from the expected hypothesis
Skylar, you asked about new coping mechanisms.
I think that a lot of this is just the difference between living a life which is shaped by unresolved trauma or one that is lived in, more or less, real time.
Those old coping mechanisms actually serve to keep the trauma alive in our lives. We’ve talked here about the way we keep reproducing the dysfunctionalities of our childhood in new relationships in an effort to make it come out different. I know this was true for me. I kept thinking as I grew older that I was stronger now, more assertive, more successful, more self-confident. But the relationship dynamics that I was co-creating with people who had similar or complementary issues always worked out with me doing the same thing — being acquiescent, over-supportive, over responsible, too tolerant, and generally codependent. I learned something from these relationships, rules like not getting involved with active alcoholics or anyone who shows signs of being a sociopath, but they didn’t change my basic strategies for getting along in life which were formed back in my childhood.
Doing the work of revisiting and resolving those traumas — and I don’t think you can get to a new place without doing this, though you don’t/can’t do them all at once — progressively makes real the fact that you are the source of your own reality, responsible for your own wellbeing, and entitled to not only bare survival but to get your needs met. All of them.
This new knowledge becomes the basis for your new approach to life. Coping mechanism is probably not exactly the right term, though we all have to deal with difficulties in life. I think that it’s more useful to think of it as reality-based responses. And observed reality has two main facets. One is what we need and want. The other is our best objective understanding of what is going on outside of us.
So given that, if asked to create some basic rules for post-recovery living, I would probably suggest something like these. (And I’m sure there are better ones listed in many books and web sites. This is just off the top of my head and based on the content of this discussion.)
1. Trust the evidence of your senses over anything anyone else tells you about what is going on.
2. Interpret what is good or useful in terms of what is good or useful for you.
3. Reduce your pain tolerance to zero in voluntary interpersonal relationships.
4. Recognize and respect your anger, fear and grief as messages from your internal systems for survival and wellbeing.
5. Regard your trust as a negotiable commodity that is as valuable as the air you breath. Make sure that you can trust yourself first, before you give any away, and be fully prepared to take it back immediately if circumstances change.
6. Develop the skill of dispassionate compassion. You can feel for other people without getting involved. Manage your involvements based on what you can really afford to invest.
7. Give yourself time to grieve. Grieving is one of the most under-appreciated experiences of life. It is really the flip side of gratitude. When we take joy in something, we must honor that joy when it leaves our life in order to let it go and make room for more joy. Take the time to create your own ceremonies of letting go.
8. If something seems confusing, consider carefully whether you want the learning experience of understanding it or whether you want to move on to other things. Life is a non-stop classroom. To a great degree we can pick our lessons, just as we once picked our school classes. In our life now, we have the option of walking away, applying an existing mental rule to it, or volunteering to learn. If it’s a chance to learn about landscaping, we may want to go. If it’s a chance to explore what is wrong with a charming alcoholic, we may want to pass.
9. Create concrete goals and pursue what you want. These are the right risks to take in your life, because even you fail, you learn more about how to get to your goals. Judge your circumstances by how they support your goals. If you’re not particularly good at creating concrete goals, just do your best and trust that you’ll get better at it. Getting better at it is adding more concrete details, or realizing that you have a better idea and working toward that instead.
10. Deal with distracting or draining or unhelpful people in alignment with your goals. And in alignment with the dispassionate compassion principle.
11. Be your own source of approval, appreciation, nurturing, ethical judgement, etc. If you get strokes or confirmation from the outside, enjoy the affirmation. But if you have to go looking for it, go looking for tools to build up your own ability to support yourself.
12. Look for love and friendship that recognizes and values you as you are. Understand that healthy people are selfish, and enjoy relationships where your mutual selfishness finds something of value in each other. This is okay. It’s also okay to disagree, to negotiate terms in situations where you conflict, and to choose not to share parts of yourself. None of these things preclude a truly great relationship, based on mutual appreciation and respect.
13. Work at understanding and accepting the great dichotomy of existance. We are ultimately alone and responsible only to ourselves. And we are connected to everything and our actions affect everything, just as everything affects us. This is a kind of brief explanation of the two sides of the brain. Both of them exist for a reason, and both of those realities are true. True maturity is being able to manage this dichotomy and float easily between these realities, integrating their wisdom in our choices of where we place our attention and how we choose to act on the world and our lives.
14. Love yourself. Accept yourself. Invest in yourself. You have nothing to give if you’re running on empty.
15. Ask for what you want. Ask God. Ask yourself. Ask the people you think can help you. Ask your pets, the trees, your clothes, the food you eat, the road as you drive. Speak it out loud when you are alone. Learn Jabez’s prayer. Become what you want. This is how to attract it to you. You know this, but doing it needs to become a habit.
16. Learn the concept of feedback as replacement for a lot of less helpful concepts like personal criticism, rejection or self-hatred. When you knock on a strange door, and a growling, barking dog starts throwing himself against the door to try to get to you, this is feedback from the universe. When you turn in an exam, and you get it back with a C- minus, this is feedback. When you eat dinner and then get sick to your stomach, this is feedback. Feedback is only what you get back for something you do. If the feedback tells you that you failed at something you attempted or that you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, you can evaluate it to see if there is something to learn. But if not, you can discard it as random noise or other people’s dramas. It’s meaning is determined by you and you alone.
I think that’s it. None of this talks about opening your heart. The reason for that is that opening your heart ideally is a common occurrence in your life. Rather these principles are more about survival, self-protection and building.
I hope this makes sense.
Kathy
Kathy, WONDERFUL post! It should have a stand alone article! Skylar, I have had to do all those things, and I realized that those very people who were my biological parents, but not my mother and father, cannot be part of my life. My sperm donor is dead but I went NC with him 20+ years ago, I didn’t even know what NC was, but I knew he was dangerous.
It was only recently that I realized my egg donor was as dangerous in different ways and just as malicious as he was, again, in different ways. She had me in the FOG thinking she loved me. I quickly learned he didn’t love anyone. I realize now that she only “loved” me as long as she could control me. I am no longer controlled by anyone except myself and my belief in God. I do not judge myself according to some one else’s standards. I have to account to myself and my God. anyone else is optional.
Why would I want ANYone in my life who despises me and treats me badly, no matter WHAt the relationship is? My egg donor thought she could entice me with “gifts”—but her givts were not “gifts” freely and lovingly given but “down payments” on CONTROL. I figured that one out! So I will NOT tolerate ANY abuse from ANYone and that being the case with abusive people, I must stay away from them.
Kathy (can I just call you Mom?)
I’ve printed out the 16 points and they are going next to my bed. I will read them everyday without fail.
#3 reduce your pain tolerance
is especially important to me. I have a high pain tolerance. Example: last week, my FWB and I were in bed and in his passion, he pressed his head against my jaw line, repeatedly for almost 5 minutes. It was so painful but I didn’t say anything, I just hoped he would move it. Finally he did, but it hurt for a week. I’m not blaming him, I didn’t say anything so he didn’t know. It’s just how I react to pain, I ignore it, I don’t know why. I’ll walk with a rock in my shoe for miles rather than bend over and take it out.
Thank you for telling me that zero is the acceptable limit to pain. I didn’t know.
Thank you for telling me that it’s ok to look at my pain to see where it’s coming from too. I see fear of rejection is a big part of it. It actually makes me sick when I think of someone I love as rejecting me. I’m not a child anymore and I’m not going to die, but it feels like it. I know this is left over instinctive reaction from childhood, when it WAS scary to be rejected. Because emotional pain manifests itself as physical pain in my body, I’ve learned to ignore both. Mostly, I can’t tell the difference.
You have spent so much time and thought detailing everything out for me, I appreciate you so much. Not only are each of these 16 points lessons for me, but so is your overwhelming kindness.
Your thoughfulness has left a warm glow where the ache was just before, and my mind has gone from panic mode to hopeful mode, just from reading your words. Thank you.