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.
The forefront of our minds
What we think about and focus on is where we will head. Keep thinking about the problem. And that is where we’ll stay in the problem. Think and focus on the solution and that is where we will head.
Sometimes we do have to look at the problem to figure out the solution. But then focus on making the solution happen and quit worrying about the problem.
Easier said then done at times but that is the jest of it.
So yes the less time one can spend on thinking about the “it” and spend that time moving toward healing. The faster the transformation will take place.
T
T
Skylar, the trauma-bonding is VERY interesting.
This may be an odd question, but have you found that you attract questionable females, as well? Not necessarily on a sexual level, but do you run into many females that put you on alert?
I don’t trust my emotions, at all. I’ve ignored my instincts, all of my life, until the past couple of years. Even then, I chose to ignore most of what they were telling me. Now, I’m hypervigilant to the point that everyone is suspect. I hope that this is just part of a transition. I know (academically) that not every person in the Universe has an agenda to harm me. I know this. I just don’t “feel” it, yet. And, this goes for possible female friends. I’m just not ready to trust anyone, yet.
Brightest blessings
Snow white,
You say that “it’s just that the thought that he was lying to me for 2 years and feels no remorse, it’s just unbearable” ”
Sugar it is the REALITY of things. What color are your eyes? Is wanting them to be green if they are brown going to change them? Nope, the REALITY is your eyes are not something that you can WISH to change and make it so.
You can get more muscles by working out, and you can weigh less by eating less, but you can’t change the color of your eyes, it is something that you just have to ACCEPT as REALITY.
The REALITY that a psychopath is a pathological liar and that he never loved you because he couldn’t is what is REAL. You have two choices, you can ACCEPT that or stay upset about it the rest of your life. Those are the ONLY two choices, and I am sure that you don’t want to stay upset about it the rest of your life, so just keep on reading and learning (Knowledge=power) and slowly slowly it will become possible, then eventually one day you will look oup and see yourself in thE mirror and it will dawn on you that you are HAPPY, that happiness just sneaked up on you while you weren’t looking.
The sadness, the anger, the bargaining, and the denial are all parts of the grief process and acceptance is as well. Unfortunately grieving doesn’t go 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5, it goes 1-4-3-4-2-1`etc and eventually you will get to acceptance, but then “back slide” to anger say, but each time you reach acceptance (the final stage) you stay longer and longer until one day you just realize YOU ARE HAPPY AND LIFE IS GOOD.
So hang on!!!! (((hugs)))
So if being attracted to danger leads one to a spath, is it a good sign that lately I’m attracted to guys who are boring and stable? I’m suddenly attracted to guys my own age and older who are nice and kind to me but don’t lovebomb me. I hope it’s a good foreboding for the future.
Ms_Snowhite, OxD is spot-on. It may “feel” unbearable, but it isn’t, really. Yeah, it’s painful, but one of the things that kept me somewhat sane was recognizing that the earth was still going to spin on her axis whether the exspath stole from me, or not.
You’ve gotten this far, and you’re still upright and breathing. THAT is cause for resolve – you didn’t die from this. You didn’t slit your wrists. You didn’t dig a hole and climb in it. You’re still here, and you’ve got something very important to do in your recovery. I can’t tell you what that is. You don’t know what it is yet, either. But, you experienced what you did for “A Reason.”
As time goes on, you’ll begin to recognize that it’s not going to be about HIM, anymore. Your recovery will be all about YOU.
Yeah, it’s painful, but no recovery is easy, simple, warm, or fuzzy. Healing is grueling. But, as long as we’re still breathing, we have choices to recover, or not. You’ll recover, in due time.
Brightest blessings
Stargazer, I can’t answer that for you. But, I can tell you that I used to be attracted to the potentially dangerous type. So, I fell in love with someone who seemed “ordinary” and somewhat boring. About a year ago, I discovered that this run-of-the-mill guy had been involved in interests that were so repulsive that the subject matter of what I discovered nearly caused me to vomit on myself. After he left, I disovered that he had forged my signatures on my individual account.
So, where I’m concerned, I don’t have any sense of “type” when it comes to men. In fact, I don’t have any interest in even forming any criteria – I have no intention of ever entertaining any type of romantic relationship for the rest of my life. LOL!!!!
Brightest blessings
Truthy, Oh my goodness, kind of makes you wonder who you can trust, huh? I’m just drawn to good vibes, maturity, stability, and kindness these days – in men and in women, though I am only romantically attracted to men. Since my last hypnosis session, my life has suddenly exploded with such men. It’s almost uncanny. My hypnotist has many stories of women who came to him for the same issue (wanting to attract a healthy relationship). The stories usually end with a chance meeting of their future husband shortly after the hypnosis session. This guy gets good results! I will continue with another set of sessions from this guy, and maybe I’ll throw in a little desire for financial success too, to cover my bases. I do feel my eyes are opened. Whereas a year ago, I felt pretty hopeless about men and relationships, now I see them (nice men) everywhere! I danced with 3 or 4 guys at the salsa club on Sunday that I would have gone out with. One of them dances for the CO Ballet, which was very cool. Salsa dancers are such interesting people. One change that happened is I no longer am too focused on what they look like on the outside – I look at their behaviors and how they treat me, their energy, and the light in their eyes. A very average looking man can become very sexy and gorgeous if he is a good dance lead and treats a woman with total respect on the dance floor. Salsa dancing is very hard work for a man. Not only does he have the physical part of initiating all the moves and making the lady look good, but he has to choreograph all the moves in his head while he’s dancing and also protect the lady from bumping into others on the dance floor. A man who can do all those things already has many qualities I like.
The guy I like the most is either not ready for a relationship or totally inept with dating. It is obvious he really likes me. He holds my hand a lot in the clubs and puts his arm around me a lot. He does not do this with anyone else. When we dance, the chemistry and romance factor are off the scales. And of course, he seems to like to dance with me more than anyone else. I am getting up my nerve to just ask him what’s going on with him. My birthday party is this Saturday. He is going to be my photographer for the Zumba part of it. So I will just have a talk with him then. Since the hypnosis session, I’m not panicked about it anymore. In fact, I’m kind of excited about just going after what I want. And I’m not taking it personally that he hasn’t asked me out. I figure if the timing is not right for him now, who knows what will happen 6 months down the line if I’m still single.
Truthy,
hmm. good question.
I’d say it is half and half. Yes, there have been a lot of spathy females but I also meet normal nice women. The spathy females also love bomb me.
I’m sort of reclusive anyway so it’s not like I socialize a lot. But I’m very friendly in any social setting, you know, like the grocery store or whatever.
The spathy females that I met, tended to bond with me very quickly. I was pronounced the best friend EVER! LOL. To be honest, I had suspicions each time but I really liked the love bomb so i allowed it –for a while.
Yes, I agree, some spaths don’t seem dangerous. In fact, I will tell you one red flag that I’ve noticed in all male spaths: a soft voice. They speak very quietly almost like they are shy. Some have a “gay” quality to them, though they are not gay.
It isn’t always intellectually apparent that a person is dangerous. They don’t always present a bad boy image. But, your gut knows instinctively. It recognizes the familiar feeling. I can’t say what happens, I just know it does. Later, the red flags confirm the feeling.
Kim,
I found your remark about the fear factor enormously interesting. And I think one even could say that falling in love in general has some type of trauma bond in it…
First of all, excitement, thrill and fear are feelings that are really much alike. To our body those three just sense the same: it’s just our brain that gives a different meaning to them… sensation similar to fear but there’s no evident cause for fear = excitement and thrill: sensation similar to fear and there is a cause for fear = fear. It’s easy for the body and brain to start confusing and intermingling the two. It’s all a sensation related to surges of adrenaline.
I’m a positive minded person: guess what? I rarely attribute ‘fear’ to my emotional circumstances, not even in the face of actual danger. I loved railways as a kid: I could go on a rollercoaster ride all day. Scubadiving, horseriding, canyoning, rapelling, rafting, rock climbing, etc… are all things I love to do. There is always a moment where you get a queezy feeling; and I almost always translate it as exciting.
The book “women who love psychopaths” identifies being adventurous as a part of a common attribute in women who love psychopaths. It also identifies having a positive outlook as a common characteristic in the profile of women who love psychopaths. I suspect it’s the positive outlook that helps to translate fear sensations into excitement.
Being in love or having a crush or severe attraction: causes us to have butterflies (just as falling/jumping from a 10m high rock into the water does), puts our intestines in a knot, and is a constant switch from being excited to fear and back.
Another very interesting thing is that to our brain and body system causation of sensations can be intermixed. There’s no different channel used for sensing stuff when the cause of the sensation comes from the mind, than when the cause is something of the outside world. People who meditate often will know what I mean. Normally when you meditate, you are in a quiet place, in a resting pose, preferably in a room where you shut out outside data (sound, etc). If you travel in your meditations, have a meditative journey inside of yourself, then everything causational is purely in your mind… and yet you will feel body sensations (heat, cold, fuzzy, harshness, heavy, light) as if they are caused by the outside environment. Vision is also a common sensation, similar to dream vision. But at times it would even include sound and even smell. I once had a meditation regarding the heart chakra and it was accompanied with the smell of baking bread. That smell was illusionary, just like the visions and even sounds I sometimes heard… and yet my body responded to it as if it was coming from the outside world. What’s the weirdest of all initially: you are conscious and YOU KNOW that the source/cause is the mind, that it is illusionary. You know it’s an OUTPUT, and yet your body senses it as an INPUT irreglardless.
Anyway, I’m just illustrating how our body and brain isn’t really good in attributing cause. It will eventually regard sensations as coming from an input, and thus an outside world source, even when there is no clear rationally identifiable source of it. Add then similarlike situations that make our adrenaline surge and rush and it becomes very easy to confuse excitement with fear as well as misattribute the reason.
Some people were taught to trauma bond as a child, and some people were not but have character features that will facilitate trauma bonding.
If there is someone who causes a moment of instinctive fear in us, but there is no apparent visual cause for that fear (too quick and then holding back such as stepping into our personal space, but also from an internal impulse such as intuition), then in all likelihood we’ll misidentify the fear as excitement, and if it’s someone of the gender we’re sexually attracted to, then we’ll start to believe the wrongly identified excitement is caused by attraction. It’s a trauma bond moment born out of our brain confusing inputs and body sensations.
It’s like spoon has explained: we have a sensation (a feeling), which we give meaning (an emotion) and relate to an event (memory). But a lot of mistakes are made when it comes to translating a feeling to an emotion, mistakes we are almost prone to make, for character reasons as well as flawed wiring that was never made to recognize which of which.
Now, when we are also people who can bond deeply and strongly (highly empathic and emotional), an intimate bond adds to the confusion. The partner becomes such a part of us, we end up feeling so much a team, that we start to regard the partner and ourselves as one union, as one indiviual almost. What happens to them, happens to us… and also what happens to US in our mind also happens to them. So, when that partner hurts us, our limbic system will still classify it as an outside threat to the TEAM altogether. The team is regarded as one body and so any harm done to the team, even if it comes from inside the team, will still be regarded as coming from outside the team… just like when internal illusionary inputs still are sensed to be external real inputs.
So, if you are a bit of a pioneer (aka adventurous), positive minded AND empathic and emotional… then imo you run a high risk of ending up feeling attracted to a person who is in fact very dangerous and become trauma bonded to them as these dangerous individuals repeatedly and actively put us in danger… and even when we KNOW this, we can’t stop it, because our body and limbic system is prone to confuse the whole bunch of stimulae. And the more noise and confusion (dramarama, lies, vague and confusing explanations, mystery) the environment is already, the easier our flawed wiring will make mistakes.
In our society we regard pioneering individuals who don’t easily panic as strong people. They are hardwired to succeed in surviving. If they are also empathic and have a high EQ these people are not just regarded as excellent survivors, but also as natural leaders. And yet their love life is often a mess, because they partner up with dangerous, messy individuals. Their whole supertrait of surviving a possible hostile environment is exactly the trait that makes them be attracted to the wrong individual and then also stick it out.
stargazer,
I think being attracted to people who ‘make you feel safe’ might be a parameter that leads to the wrong man as well.
People who are ‘attracted to danger’ are also people who have a large comfort zone. They don’t easily panic. When it comes to danger we have three zones: a comfort zone, an explorative zone and a panic zone. People who don’t easily panic have a large comfort and explorative zone. What makes other people run like headless chickens will make them investigate or even comfortable. The ‘attraction to danger’ suggests a personality who is comfortable about ‘exploring’. Their whole judgement of what is comfortabe, exciting and fearful is skewed. In many situations that gives them a survival advantage, but when it comes to personal relations it makes them prone to mistake what is safe and what is not.
Comfort zone are situations where you KNOW what to do and KNOW you CAN do it all by yourself in an environment you know by heart: for example taking a shower in your home. These tasks are routinous. Explorative zones are situations either in an unknown environment with a known task or a known environment with a task that is new: taking a shower in a total unknown environment (from the neighbours home for some to showering in a waterfall in a natural setting in a country at the other side of the world) or learning to drive a car in the streets you’ve walked or biked all your life already. A panic zone is a situation in an unknown environment which requires a skill you haven’t even started to learn yet.
So, while such a personality may learn to turn away from ‘dangerous people’ it still does not make them good judges in what are safe people.
If that person then also is highly empathic and bonds deeply the whole safety experience with someone else is prone mistakes and misjudgement: someone who makes us feel safe, may actually be someone who poses danger. It is VERY easy to start making people feel safe again. If someone is in a panic zone, you bring them ASAP to their comfort zone, by giving them orders and giving them tasks that are easy and part of a routine. So, someone who makes anyone ‘feel safe’ is probably a dominant personality who gives you a routinous task to do. If you’re a pioneering personality and thus having a large explorative zone and need and only a small panic zone, then the someone who makes you feel safe is highly likely more dominant than you are and hampering you in your explorative need.
As I said, the whole safe-exciting-dangerous measurement is skewed with pioneering empaths.
I think a better bet would be using a measurement scale of ‘boring’… Someone who’s explorative in their nature (adventurous, pioneering) and empathic would probably find a good partner in someone they might perceive as somewhat ‘boring’.
And that’s the difficulty of course: boring and falling in love are at opposite. What is the chance that you fall in love with someone you perceive as boring? And while ‘boring’ may be the safest, it’s not conducive to the relationship either. The explorative personality will feel as if holding themselves back if the partner is unwilling to explore at all. My first partner I was with for 5.5 years was a boring person. And he would beg on his knees for me not to do stuff I wanted to explore or try out. Basically the whole relationship can turn in a prison of boredom.
So, the best partner would be someone who ‘seems boring’ but is willing to explore. The ‘boring’ appearance will be the pioneer’s character judgement based on their own skewed pioneer comfort zones… It then becomes paramount in observing how explorative this perceived boring person is willing to be. And that you will see in their actions. Basically you’d have to look for a man who also has an explorative nature but probably has slightly less experience in the skills you have, but hopefully developed other experiences that could excite you to learn.