If the wounds are too fresh and the thought of forgiving the person who abused and upset you hurts too much, honor that. There is no shame in not being ready. It is normal and everyone’s timeline is different. Close the article for the time being or read it for nothing more than future reference, with no pressure or expectations. Allow yourself to feel all that you do, the pain included, with as much passion and purpose as possible. After a while, come back to it. Examine what you have gained, rather than concentrate on what you have lost, even if what you have lost is significant. The hope is that your personal growth is also significant and that the positive things you come to learn about yourself are far greater. Believe it or not, the day may come when you are not only able to forgive, but thank the person who brought you here, but that is all in time…
Forgiveness can be a tough subject to broach when the ones we are considering forgiving are the psychopaths who harmed us. Eventually, however, we should try to find a way to do it.
Why we should forgive
Resentment and anger eat away at us. Even though we may have been seriously wronged by the psychopaths who crossed our paths, holding on to those feelings hurts us, not them. Nelson Mandela once said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill your enemies.” While it seems like an easy enough concept to grasp, putting it into practice may prove more challenging. While in the midst of the anger, confusion, and disbelief that almost always accompanies our brushes with psychopathy, it’s tough to imagine forgiving the person who tried to hurt us. But forgiveness is a funny thing. The reason it must occur has less to do with our wrong-doers, and more to do with us. Forgiving helps us heal.
What does the process look like?
This will not come easy or fast. In fact, it would be wrong to rush it. We must honor each of the stages of the grief process in order to fully heal. But eventually, we have to let go of any remaining ill feelings so that we can grow and move forward. The psychopaths’ acts may have been truly horrible, so we need not excuse them, but we can learn not to allow them to damage us further. As long as we are caught in negative feelings, our offenders are still winning. Hopefully, we can come to the place where we re-empower ourselves and re-gain control of our lives.
Forgiveness does not need to mean forgetting. We should not forget what happened to us or behave as if it never occurred. Rather, we should remember what we went through so that we don’t allow the evil back in or repeat our pasts with others in the future. Further, we need not expect anything from those who did us harm. In cases such as ours, they either enjoyed what they did or to us or were merely using us for their own “advancement.” There are no sincere apologies coming from them….ever, so do not look for one. This is about us and our peace and we can do this without seeing them or exchanging any words. For once, it is actually all about us.
What we come to feel
Recently, someone new to the struggle asked me how I feel about what happened to me and how I feel about the person in my situation. I had to think for a moment, but finally decided that I feel “nothingness.” Where I was once consumed with emotion, I now see this person as a void. It is almost like a chapter of my life that did not exist, in spite of the fact that it was extremely significant.
I know that the situation was real and awful. I care about and acknowledge what occurred, as the storm I weathered hit with a tsunami-like force. However, I lived, learned, and somehow, grew. I think I became a better person along the way, as a result. Without the experience, I don’t think I would have realized that I was only living half alive, realizing only a portion of my potential. I would not have known the strength I was capable of, without this test.
I believe that when we no longer allow them control over us, we come to feel “even” again. At that point, what once existed as love, hate, anger, and sadness disappears, becoming “nothingness.” We come to see our perpetrators as insignificant, even if their acts were not. It is then that we can forgive because what was, no longer matters.
We can move toward the future for ourselves and those we care about. For the first time, probably in a long time, the psychopath takes a permanent back seat, regardless of any residual antics. It takes time and the road is long, but eventually, we can release the demons and thrive. The rewards will come. They may not be concrete or quantifiable, but we will begin to recognize them when we feel them.
TeaLight, I discovered by researching the exspath’s employment record (written Administrative warning for attendance) that he worked in the same office as the S&M “Mistress” that he had been acting out violent sex with, at coworkers’ homes, AND in a nearby large (LARGE) metropolis where huge sums of money were paid to engage in an sexual S&M gatherings – lots of bondage, and lots of violence.
The marriage ended when I discovered that the exspath had been leading a double-life before we even met. In the span of time that it takes to unzip a gym bag, the illusion was shattered, and I had been on LoveFraud for a couple of years previous to this for another healing matter. THANK GOD, because I probably would have shot myself when it was exposed that the “marriage” was simply a cover for his extremely violent, deviant sexual activities and interests. After he left, I discovered documentation that he had relieved me of a substantial sum of money through coercion, outright forgeries, and simply helping himself via my ATM card and these funds were mine, solely, and he did not have consent to withdraw the amounts that he did.
I only learned about his “Mistress” after he left. The hundreds and hundreds of amateur photographs that were on the “family” computer were OF his “Mistress” in various states of dress, undress, hard-core pornographic poses, and S&M antics that all bore the digital signature of the “family” digital camera and were taken in various locations – SOME of which I clearly recognized.
Yeah…..it was pretty much a slam-dunk realization that I had been living with some Thing that had used human mimicry to present a mild-mannered, normal, and stable human being. Thank goodness for this site – that’s all I can say.
Brightest blessings
To clarify: the double-life had been lived SINCE before we met. By his own admission, he had entertained extremely violent sexual interests since high school. Because he believes himself to be a “writer,” he even wrote a very feeble short-story ripoff of “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty” and put a sadomasochistic twist on it. He asked me to read it (months before the gym bag) and “warned” me that I might find some of the language “offensive.” After reading it, I told him that I had heard (and, USED) enough profanities throughout my lifetime that I wasn’t disturbed. I didn’t find the language offensive so much as the content being thoroughly DISTURBING
Oh, my……..
Truthy, thank you, I really appreciate you filling me in. This is shocking, I’m extremely sorry you had to live through it. Why the hell does a man like that not simply seek out a partner within that circle, and live that way, without duping and scheming and stealing and ….oh. Because it’s not just a question of him having ”out there” sexual tastes, it’s the pleasure of hiding them from someone and abusing their trust.
The frenzy over Fifty Shades of Grey worries me. It’s being marketed as some sort of slightly ”racy” book for middle aged wives and mothers , looking to pep up their marital routine. I can’t help thinking that it will lead some onto sites and into relationships with sex offenders and psychopaths and they will be uttely, utterly unable to cope. The reality of a man who wants to engage with a woman as a ”slave” is a reality removed from the healthy in my view, ( I understand that your expath was the other way inclined, but I have read psychologists arguments that male masochists are projecting their loathing of women onto the ‘mistress’ figure. Angela Carter wrote a wonderful anti s&m book called The Sadeian Woman years ago, she said ”love admits of neither conquered nor conqueror”) and I appreciate that many practice bdsm consentually, but that is my view. Also I have read research which pointed to high numbers of men who enjoy sexually sadistic activities admitting in a research study that they had in fact raped. The marketing of bdsm as a bit of harmless fun bothers me.
Peace and love to you Truthy as ever xx
TeaLight, most psychology information that I’ve read about the exspath’s violent sexual interests COULD be harmless enough if they weren’t compartmentalized and in the “open” before a relationship becomes committed. It’s also strongly suggested that men and women who have an interested in BDS&M have suffered either emotional sexual abuse or actual sexual abuse at the hands of their MOTHERS.
The reason that the exspath didn’t inform me of his interests were strictly to secure his “respctability” and (most importantly) my money in a legal contract of marriage. Because I had just exited a violently abusive marriage that included use/abuse of pornographic material as punishment, I had made it crystal clear that I abhored violence, and I detested pornography. So, instead of saying, “Truthspeak, this relationship isn’t going to be healthy because I really like violent sex and porn,” he lied and compartmentalized his deviances (that include veiled necrophilia) so that he could get to my MONEY.
The stark, cold, and ugly truth is that he never, at any time, saw me for anything more than a cash cow. So be it.
“Fifty Shades Of Grey” is distressing because it is minimalizing a sexual interest/activity that is categorized as a “paraphelia.” Between consenting adults, it’s none of my business, but the marketing of this literary pornography just demonstrates that our culture is spiraling into some very, very dark places and people who had NEVER even considered BDS&M as a sexual interest are suddenly exposed to something that their minds cannot grasp in relation to what a “healthy” sexual interaction might be and SHOULD be.
It isn’t harmless fun. It’s objectifying, dehumanizing, and thoroughly degrading. And, it feeds the most depraved recesses of the sexual psyche.
Brightest blessings
EDIT ADD: The problem that I have with this type of interest is that more and more violent and shocking acts, imagery, and tortures are required to get the participants’ libido inspired, and this is where “snuff” and necrophilia come into play with the exspath. He identified himself in an email to his “Mistress” as (and, I quote), “nameless sub,” which translates into the recipient of beatings, torture, and whatever. However, imagery that he kept in that gym bag reflected an incredible hatred of AND for women. Some of the imagery was so disturbing that it still causes me to feel physically nauseous to recollect it. THIS is something that I’m going to have to manage for the rest of my life, and LoveFraud is probably the best place for me to practice managing the visceral reactions to the imagery that I viewed. One day, I hope to disassociate myself with HIS sexual perversions. It’s just going to take some time and work.
Louise;
Yes, that “look” is sexual, is it not? There was I third time a saw it, when the x-spath was staring at me right before I introduced myself to him…
BBE:
Yes, that look is very, very sexual. It’s like their mind goes somewhere else…somewhere deviant…
Truthy, I share your views on pornography. The French philosopher Alain Badiou writes beautifully about ”libertine” culture and the pornography that typifies it as being the industrialisation of human sexuality. It is antithetical to love.
For me, porn’s limited , cynical set of extreme, freakish, taboo, transgressive, representations which are fictions , have ended up become normative and actually practiced and imposed and indeed enforced. Pornography is the reason why many teenage girls are now relentlessly harassed by young men for anal sex. That was NOT the case in the pre internet age.
Again, thanks for sharing Truthy it is very valuable to be able to have such an open discussion, about such difficult subjects. x
BBE, what’s your take on s&m? Do you think it is problematic for the gay community or if it’s practiced by same sex partners does that make it less ”charged” than with mixed genders? I don’t know.
TeaLight, they’re “awkward” subjects, but they’re REAL in how they affect every individual.
There is a universe of difference between “erotica” and porn – I have NO problem with erotica. I’ve created erotic art of my own, and it wasn’t something that anyone might point at and say, “Oh, my GOD, that’s PORN!” Hard-core pornography desensitized the human psyche of true healthy intimacy. When partners become so desnesitized to unhealthy and dehumanizing imagery that they demand the same acts from their spouses or partners, then it’s a PROBLEM. Sex does NOT equal love – and, porn doesn’t represent “healthy” sexual behaviors, IMHO.
TeaLight, I have a number of friends who are gay and roughly my age. The porn industry has created an even more difficult canundrum for the gay community in that YOUTH is most desirable. The men that I know are interested in loving and committed relationships, and it’s become nigh-on-impossible for them to find someone who has NOT been tainted as a result of uber-deviances.
Just my observations and I don’t really have a personal frame of reference to speak from.