Here’s more proof that total No Contact is the way to recovery. A new study finds that continuing to follow a former romantic partner on Facebook after breaking up makes it harder to move on. Read:
Study: Stalking your ex on Facebook is bad for you, on ZDNet.com.
Story suggested by a Lovefraud reader.
Louise,
it’s quite common for a man to marry someone who reminds them of their mother. The mental illness was what made your mom seem “familiar” to your dad, and he married her. Women will often marry guys who remind them of the way their dad treated them or their mom.
It really does sound like a curse and I know it feels like one. But it’s a curse you can break through awareness. You can pray to God to illuminate you and he will. He already has in part. I know God saw fit to illuminate me and reveal all the evil around me, even though it was so scary to see. Then God took the fear away by helping me see the evil for what it was: generational shame.
Not sure if you can do anything to heal anyone other than yourself. It’s where we have to start anyway.
skylar:
Yeah, I know. I have talked many times about how men marry their mothers. It happens a lot. Hmmmm, I wonder though. My grandmother (dad’s mom) was a reclusive, depressed mentally ill person. When she was having an episode, she would clam up and talk to NO ONE. But my mom was never like that…she yaks all the time…never shuts up (not always in a bad way). So even though she was mentally ill, he probably liked that she was the opposite in that way.
It sure does feel like a curse and yes, I have to start the healing with me 🙂
Louise,
Thank you sooooo much for starting this dialogue. I felt validated and comforted today in reading all the responses.
I have been recovering from my spath for 5 years. He is still not out of my life. The only reason he comes back to me is that he’s a schizoid. He hates to socialize and finds it easier to target ME. While the pain for you may be intense given that your spath hasn’t returned in 7 months, in the long run it will serve you better than if he reappears regularly.
I hope you find a way to be thankful that you can’t find out what your spath is up to. My spath has left every single door wide open, and so I do know what’s going on. The good news is that I can see he’s an equal opportunity liar. He lies to everybody, all the time with little discrimination. He provides “tells” – the same “tells” – to all the women in his life. And while I am grateful that he has left these doors wide open (it allowed me an opportunity to “study” him and figure out what the hell was going on, leading me to LoveFraud)….but it’s also a curse, in that I stay bonded to him by being able to “peek”.
I am again trying to go NC. It is unlikely to stick, but I am getting to the point where I care less and less and eventually I will be indifferent.
I remember some time ago when it just hit me upside the head that all his “I love you” comments, all of the “you are important to me” comments, all of the sex, all of that was just LIES. It was all an illusion. I sobbed myself to sleep. I screamed, cried, ranted, and beat the shit out of my pillows and sheets on my bed in anger and in rage. I am so far beyond that now.
I believe in “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger”. As a result of this spath experience I have figured out what I think about good and evil, I’ve figured out if I believe in God, I figured out why I was such an easy target when I should have shrugged him off (my mom was a “N”)….and overall I have become a better, stronger, wiser woman.
I look at HIM and see a 50 year old toddler running around in a dirty diaper so to speak, with the emotional maturity of a 5 year old. Selfish. Shallow. Ick.
Hugs, to you, my friend Louise.
Athena
Athena:
You are welcome. It really has been a very informative thread. I have learned soooo much. Wowwee!
I am sorry he keeps coming back, but you have to be STRONG and not let him. I agree that in the long run, I will be much better off that I have no contact even though it hurts like hell now. The hurt is much less than it used to be so there is already proof in the no contact as a great way to heal. He used to reappear from time to time, but that all stopped a long time ago and I will never know exactly why. I know it’s due to other women, but I don’t know if the other woman is his wife or the one who moved here from Puerto Rico or BOTH. But I am convinced that if he doesn’t want to talk to me, there is someone else.
I will pray that you have the strength to repel him. Hugs to you also, Athena.
Athena, I know I sound like a broken record, but NO contact is the only way to go unless you are required by law (co-parenting etc) to have contact with them.
Any contact, even “back door contact” like following them on FB or whatever sets you back.
I have to have “back door” contact withh mine, like every time he comes up for parole I have Then I ahve to WAIT to see what the parole board decides.
I’m working on not letting this trigger me so much, but I am still human and it does trigger me. I know without a doubt if and when he gets out he will try to kill me and probably his brothers too. He may be trying to get someone else to kill me now, like he did in the summer of 2007. I don’t know…and not knowing causes anxiety…but we have to accept what we cannot change, but we MUST CHANGE WHAT WE CAN. Having NO contact unless there is some compelling reason or a legal reason you can’t is the only one that truly works. ((hugs)))
bluejay,
I forgot to address one of your comments. You said, “I think that I think too much.”
If I may disagree, you’re thinking is pretty accurate. Though you may be funneling it through a different channel than others might. People don’t like to think about evil. You have faced it head on.
I went back and re-read the comments on this thread and I have to agree with Athena that it has been one of the most enlightening threads on LF. Louise began with a very direct question: WHY HIM?
Darwinsmom’s responses were very helpful in allowing me to see that Louise was trauma bonded. And that has really given me some insight as to why we are addicted to them.
In fact we are NOT. As Louise said, she doesn’t want him back so WHY does she need to know what he is doing?
I don’t know what my spath is doing He doesn’t have FB. He keeps his whereabouts secret. But I’d like to know because I fear him.
Louise, and everyone else who stalks their spaths, I think the reason you are obsessed is because you are afraid. knowing what they are up to makes you feel safer.
Louise, you said, something like, “I literally felt like I was going to die if I didn’t keep track of him.” yep, you were afraid for your life. http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2012/10/06/following-the-ex-on-facebook-inhibits-emotional-recovery/comment-page-1/#comment-171378
The subconscious KNOWS what it needs to know for us to survive. How unfortunate it is that we have been trained that our fears are stupid. That is precisely my problem and why I lack fear –until the very last minute.
Louise you feared dying, because you knew he was dangerous. Over time, you have calmed down since he has not re-activated the fear. Again, your body even understands how time passes and makes you safer.
Well, I can’t express enough gratitude to Donna for making this forum possible. Even 3 years later, I’m still learning and it’s because of all the people who are brave enough (and desperate enough) to post here. I believe God is making this all possible because the end of spaths is drawing near. They cannot survive in the light. The internet is filled with light.
Thank you so much Truthspeak.
Today, I made a “mistake” 🙁
After of 2 months of NC I checked his Facebook profile again…
I don’t know why, but I woke up this morning with the feeling that I’m finally ready to move on. I got online to check my mail, and then I thought to check his profile. I thought that by checking his profile would be the proof that I have no feelings for him anymore… After all, he already broke my heart, it couldn’t hurt more… Also, I wanted to make it sure that he never loved me. I didn’t wanted to move on with having even the slightest doubt that he might had a feeling about me…
After the last time he has added tons of other women…
When I saw the pics of him laughing and having fun with his “girlfriends” I felt hurt and I started to cry but it was only for 5 minutes… After a while I started to feel relieved that I got the proof that he never loved me and I will not have any doubt anymore.
Now, I’m not sure if I did the right thing… When you say no contact it is for a reason… right? Even if I have no feelings for him anymore and I don’t have any interest to check his profile again, I feel that I did a mistake. Is that going to step back my recovery process? 🙁
snowwhite,
Here’s why NC works so well: your body and mind gets the time to heal from the chronic stress and constant trauma of being with them. And an important development about the healing is that it develops from being about him to being about you. Any type of contact will create a new injury, and keep the focus on him, rather than yourself.
An anology: contact with a spath is like being out in a hailstorm, with some big whoppers in it. So your whole body ended up being bruised, from head to toe. NC is stepping out of the hailstorm and seeking shelter from it, avoiding any more hurt and damage. You start out healing being blue all over, but as you keep out of the hailstorm the bruises get their time to heal… first they become even darker blue, almost purple. It’s incredibly painful, seemingly more painful than it was when you were standing out in the hail. You feel raw and broken. And any time somebody stomps you or you stomp something, or even touches those bruises you yelp in pain. But then part of it at the outside turns yellowish/greenish, and that color starts to dominate. You start to look all yellowy, greeny, but everyone knows that’s an almost healed bruise. And it doesn’t hurt as much anymore, you can actually touch your own body again and others can touch you too. When you check his profile, that is break NC, you expose yourself to the hail again, just to see whether it’s still hailing. And you can’t avoid that the hail hits your body again. Of course you jump back into the safety of the hiding place again. You may have only been hit by tiny hail, but you got some new bruises nevertheless. Of course it’s not the same quantity anymore. In comparison those new bruises are so tiny and so much less, that it seems negligable. And yup these bruises will heal too. But that’s it: your healing body will have a little more healing to do.
Will it step back your recovery process? It might, it might not. If the new bruises are gigantic, it will be very painfull again over an already bruised body. If they’re not, it won’t make much of a difference. But it is uneccessary.
However, it’s not something to beat yourself up about. You’re only human and humans make mistakes. It doesn’t have to be the end of the world, if you don’t make it to be the end of the world. In overall healing time it might not even make that much of a difference, byt the sound of it. Just promise yourself to avoid doing that. You can be very kind to yourself and simply block his fb profile.
You go to privacy settings > blocked people and apps > put his name in block users and hit ‘block’. After that you can try to search his profile by name in the search for people, places and things and there will be no match anymore. You will be invisible to each other… it’s as if neither of you exists on fb for each other. And next time you feel the urge to type his name in that search bar, you can do so and check whether he’s still insivisble to you 🙂 And when he is, you will feel happy that he is blocked… the urge got the better of you, but without any new bruises needing pampering now.
After blocking hime the healing might seem to go a lot quicker even.
Athena,
I think Oxy is right about this. Yes, you’ve developed an elephant skin. But as long as there is some contact, it keeps the focus on him (that he’s a 5 year old in a diaper), rather than yourself and you deserve SO MUCH BETTER! You deserve to be surrounded by enriching adults in your life, not a petty 5 year old in a diaper.
Sky,
What a great realization! Yes, it makes absolute sense. The addiction is fueled by fear and anxiety: what’s he up to now? is he intent on coming after me again? Fear and trauma is a big part of the addiction.
Thank you Darwinsmom, you explain it so well…
I felt alright at first but now the old wounds had started to bleed again… By checking his profile it didn’t hurt me like before but it still hurts… It reminds me of how much hurt and humiliated I felt in the past and it brings all those bad memories back…
Darwinsmom, I had blocked him many times in the past and then I had unblocked him for just to check his profile, so before 2 months I took the decision to delete my Facebook.
It helped me not to check his profile for 2 months. Today I got back on facebook using an old profile that I had and I never used. I have to delete this one tonight too.
I had deleted my other online profiles so the spath couldn’t find me, but I still have contact with some friends from the past that remind me of him.
They are good friends but I don’t want anything to remind me of him, and although it hurts, I just took a decision. Today, I will explain to those friends that I can’t keep in contact with them anymore and I hope that they would understand.
What is important now is to heal my heart and I can’t if I keep into my life anything that bonds me to the past.
I hope I’m taking the right decision…
I will have to stay offline for some time too, I think that it will help me if I could change my daily routine… I don’t need anything to remind me of him and even listening to online music it reminds me of him…
By breaking the NC it makes only things worst…
In the past I had tried to contact his new girlfriend and warn her about him but it only made things worst. Now I am the crazy ex and he is the best guy in the world.
He told me that his exes where crazy, that he hated them and wished to see them dead… Today I found out that he had added them all back on Facebook…
I guess that now he is telling to everyone how much crazy I was and that I broke his precious heart…
That story always attracts the sympathy of women…
It seems that I’m the only one knowing him for he really is and that makes it hurt even more…
I have never felt so much hurt, stupid or humiliated in my life…
That’s why I have to stay away of him at any cost. I don’t need to learn about all those details…
Thank you for everything…
Reading your posts here helps me so much… There’s no one else to understand how I feel. Everyone thinks that I’m overreacting, they don’t know how it is getting involved with a spath, so I try not to talk about it and I have to get through all the pain on my own.
Ms_Snowhite, Darwinsmom is spot-on. In my situation, I spent a great deal of time searching for “More Evidence” of the exspath’s deviant activities. I really did! In my damaged mind, I needed “more” proof that he was a sociopathic liar.
What finally made it clear was that, aside from the nasty bag of tricks, and the hundreds of digital photographs that he had downloaded onto our shared computer (he took them with OUR camera as per the digital signature), the forgeries, the fraud, the cruel discard, etc…….I had all that I needed to VALIDATE my decision to end the marriage.
I was searching for validation. As if an open box of condoms and being defrauded of well over 250K wasn’t proof enough? I came down hard on myself, and I really mean hard. “Truthspeak? What the hell else do you really need to know?”
I think that there are a host of relating issues that compel victims of socipaths to “stalk” profiles or try to glean information about the spath that we can’t simply point to one singular explanation for this behavior. Seriously. Consider all of the issues that result from spath entanglements: self-esteem, self-worth, financial ruin, children being harmed, the courts, the attorneys, the physicians, job performance/attendance, etc, etc, etc. We’re angry. We’re hurt. We’re desperate. Some of us end up homeless and destitute. Most of us end up with chronic illnesses or auto-immune disorders.
For me, it took my counseling therapist to speak truthfully to me about this, at the beginning. “What more do you need to know? He did this, this, and this, and he doesn’t care.” And, I have to be 100% honest and type that I hated the fact that he did all of the things that he did and didn’t care. How could anyone simply NOT care? Well, there’s only one answer to that: he doesn’t have a conscience. That’s all. I hated this truth, I really did. But, I chose to do a lot of self-talk and “discuss” this with myself – I may very well “hate” the truth. But, the truth is indisputable – it is fact. And, just because I may have a strong “feeling” about the facts, those facts will remain TRUTHS, regardless of whether I accept them as facts or fight acceptance every step of the way by kicking and screaming, “He TOLD me that he loved me and that I could always TRUST him!” No amount of kicking and screaming are going to change those facts.
So, with the help of my cousneling therapist, I accepted the facts and the desire to “find more evidence” began to fade. Oh, but I didn’t WANT it to fade because I still didn’t know that I didn’t “need” any further validation. After a few wobbly steps on my Healing Path, I began to learn how to validate myself.
I don’t know if ANY of this makes any sense to anyone, but I thought I’d throw it on out there.
Brightest blessings