Editor’s note: The following article was written by the Lovefraud reader who posts as “Adelade.” She previously wrote, “Lessons from Jurassic Park: Sociopaths simply are.”
When I first realized that my marriage was over, I was literally overwhelmed with the ensuing emotions that followed my initial discovery. After the exspath left and I had an opportunity to do some in-depth financial research, the emotions centered around fear and despair. Fear with regard to my immediate and foreseeable future, and despair with regard to the gravity of the obvious marriage-for-money-only.
I’ve been grappling with fear and despair for a good while, now. Sometimes, I have fits of one (or, both) that seem almost paralyzing – I don’t want to speak to people, I don’t want to hear from people, and I don’t want to leave the room that I’m staying in. I can’t make other people “get it” about the severity of my situation, and I’ve stopped trying. I don’t even want to hear a vague reference to the exspath or what a rat-turd he is. What I want is for the fear and despair to evaporate and leave me clean, fresh, new, and redeemed. Well, that’s just not going to happen. So, how can I get through these fits?
Lately, I’ve the fits have been getting shorter in duration and intensity. Yippee. But, what I’m finding in their wake is this hollow feeling of just being absent. I’m feeling as hollow as an empty soup can, and I’m having a hard time filling that void up with something positive. The soup was tainted, and some remnants are still sticking to the sides of that can. But, what’s left is this toxic void.
Painting again
Last week, I picked up a paintbrush and put pigment on a canvas for the first time in a long, long time. I began painting something dark and menacing – a particular scene from a well-known fantasy novel that had always been in my imagination. This was a departure from my typical subject matter, and I finished a sketch that I was satisfied with. I’ll be starting on a better version of the initial sketch and put all of my fears and disquiet onto the canvas.
What I’ve discovered is that I had found a tiny bit of my soul that the exspath had cut away and left lying around. I picked that wee bit of myself up, and stuffed it back where it came from. Yeah, it had a lot of dirt and grime on it, and it’s quite misshapen from having been trampled upon, but it’s still mine and I took it back rather than stepping over it or sweeping it up and tossing it out.
And, the relevance of this find to my issues of fear, despair, and hollow soup can? In spite of my fits of fear and despair, I’m still alive. I’m still breathing. I’m still a flipping viable human being with something important to do. I don’t know what that “something” might be, but I have “A Reason” for being here, and that fact diminishes the power of the both fear and despair. I’m not as hollow as I think I am and a good, cleansing rainstorm can fill that empty soup can up in minutes. I don’t have to feel this way and no matter what happens, I’m going to be okay.
Power of “Doing Something”
I am changed, to be sure. I no longer trust, easily. I don’t tolerate bullshit well, anymore. I make tough decisions that aren’t always warm and fuzzy. And, I am okay with all of this, I think.
No matter what stage of recovery I’m in, I want to convey the incredible power of “Doing Something,” even if it’s just an attempt to seize back some part of my soul that was taken and damaged. There is true power in this and there is self-validation in this. And, whenever I begin to feel fear about the exspath and what he might say/do in Court, I picture him standing in front of the Judge, naked, and covered in mayonnaise. If I can laugh, I’m alive and I am moving away from the carnage.
No, none of us will ever be “the same” person we were before our experiences with a sociopath. But, I intend to snatch every little piece of my soul that I find laying around, no matter what condition it’s in. And, I’m going to fill up my soup can with ME. My experiences were just that: dreadful experiences. I’m a survivor, now. I’m recovering, now. I am not a victim, nor will I behave like one. My whining will be confined to venues where I can do it, quickly, and get it out of my system. The Truths of my experiences are reserved for those who “get it.”
Everything, from this point onward, is pure gravy.
I loved this article on ‘Finding Pieces of My Soul’. Thank you Adelade.
I so relate to the ‘bafflement’ that many of you have spoken about on this blog. As human beings we are so ‘wired’ to make meaning out of things – and when something doesn’t make sense and will never make sense – as in SpathWorld – it kind of ‘freaks us out’. It certainly did in my case.
It is strange how as I continue on the journey of healing, new insights are coming to me, often triggered by the posts of people in the community.
One example that came into my mind this morning: I had finally made the shocking discovery that I had been involved with a spath (after I ended things and said ‘let’s just be friends’, he completely ‘stonewalled’ me – it was 3 weeks’ later I discovered by coincidence that he was a complete fraud and had lied to me the whole time during the friendship & the brief ‘romance’). To this day I haven’t ever heard from him again – but during the period of stonewalling, I felt as ‘though I was going crazy. Which is what he wanted, of course. In fact, he had tried out this strategy a couple of times during our ‘friendship’. He would suddenly ‘disappear’ and not be in contact for a few days. Fool that I was, I expressed my distress…and played right into his hands, so that he knew exactly how to hurt me when the time came.
For a few weeks after the discovery, my world seemed to disintegrate. I can’t remember much about it. I was so stunned that all I could do was play online scrabble in between trying to do small bite-sized pieces of work at a time (I run my own business, so am very fortunate to be able to work my own hours). I realise now that what I was doing by physically moving tiles around on a board was to try to make sense of the impossible and the incomprehensible….
Hi Ash,
I had a similar experience with the P disappearing for days at a time. I was so livid once that I changed my phone number hoping to just get rid of the relationship. So he pops up in an email a few days later acting like nothing is wrong, like he always did, and eventually wore me down again. Never had any sort of adequate explanation.
We tried the ‘friends’ route after all the romantic nonsense was obviously NOT going to work out, and he would text for days, then nothing, until finally he invited me to come stay at his house for Spring Break, he’d leave the key outside for me and don’t worry about his girlfriend, she knows I’m coming. Well knock me over with a feather. Like I shouldn’t have seen that coming. I didn’t. That was the beginning of NC.
Soon after that, wierd things started happening to some of my online accounts that I can’t prove was him, but genuinely suspect, since the last account that was flagged for fraud was my bank account. I had stumbled across bank receipts from his most recent gf before me at his house once, but did not ask him about it.
Its been about 2 weeks now since any sort of fraudulent activity has been caught on any of my accounts so I’m hoping its finally all over and done. It is mind boggling.
Hi Karma
I guess the ‘disappearing trick’ is one of the Spath strategies, ditto the ‘no adequate explanation’. I am totally mindboggled by your ex-Spath’s audacity in asking you to come and stay and ‘not to mind the girlfriend, she knows you are coming’. WTF??? If that isn’t a mindfark, I don’t know what is!
That is scary stuff re. your accounts. How did he manage to get access to your passwords etc? Really hope that the 2 weeks of no fraudulent activity continues, and that you can close the door once and for all on Creeporillo. x
Thank you. 🙂
P had access to all my account numbers since he stayed at my place all the time. And, like an idiot, I used a very similar password on all my accounts. (I had given him my netflix pw when he was hospitalized once so he could watch movies on my account on his laptop, and found out he’d been using my account up until a couple of months ago.) All my passwords were a variation of the Netflix password. Lesson learned there.
The x P had the grandest case of entitlement I’d ever seen.
Oh, and I read Without Conscience last night. Have you read it? Validating to say the least.
Ash & Karma, the “disappearing” without a word is recognized as “Withold and Reward.”
Once the spath has worked their way into our lives and created this false sense of a relationship (romantic OR platonic), they test the proverbial waters by witholding their attention to us. They cause us to feel as if we’ve “done something” to offend or anger them enough that they stop speaking to us or responding (silent treatment).
Once WE accept the blame for some imagined slight or failure, then they shower us with their attention, again – a reward for our accepting the blame. If the spath even makes any apology, it is a backhanded one: If you hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t have done THAT; along with other verbal diarrhea that pokes at shame and blame.
Karma, the “grandedst case of entitlement” is SUCH a farking TELL, isn’t it? The exspath also believed himself to be deserving of whatever he desired, including being a literary artist without putting ANY effort into it. He actually refused to return to college to finish his degree because his Eng. Comp. professor didn’t hand him high marks for his essays. And, he was not deserving of high marks – his essays were absolutely bland and utterly lacking in substance, but he could not be taught because he truly believed that he knew better than his professors!
Entitlement………..ttttttzzzzzzzzzzz……..Red Flag #47
Gives me the creeps just thinking about it. I was so worried he’d had a heart attack or something during those times he just dropped off the map. At the end I found myself wishing he had. Awful, to bring me to the point of hatred. And after years of the cycle of lovebombing, devalue, discard, after the ridiculous amount of flowers, gifts, wine, jewelry, telling me I was IT for him, his final words to me were ‘oh well, I tried.’
Karma! “oh well, I tried,” ICK!
And, it’s “okay” to feel that hatred for a little while, Karma. The things that the exspath did are deserving of hatred. But, after a while, the hatred has to be turned off, completely, and the gear put into “Self-love” mode for me.
Good advice, and most days I feel like the hatred is gone. Then sometimes when I dwell too much ( like today ), I get so pissed that I put up with his constant mindf*ck. This too shall pass. I think I will go run around in the hurricane to get out the angst. 🙂
Oh, yeah. The unexplained disappearances. I used to call it, “going MIA.”
Xbf, drug addict, spath, pulled that one on a weekly basis.
I just read an article on trauma bonding that addressed this, and said it only strengthens the toxic bond.
I know my spath used it for leveredge. And because I was so hopelessly “bonded”, it worked like a charm.