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.
Hello again. As usual I find your posts validating and inspiring. But still, I am so sad, resenting and yet missing my spath. I’m in a new relationship now and am afraid I am indeed dragging him — he’s not a spath — through my unresolved pain. I don’t adore him the way I did my spath. I’m not in love with him either; my admiration and enjoyment of him seem to be fading.
But I still enjoy his company and would be lonely without him; and now I also fear hurting him if I were to leave him. I fear myself to be using him the way my spath used me. My lack of interest makes him pursue me even more ardently which makes me feel guilty. I do want a relationship, but I keep choosing men I can’t love, since the spath left me two years ago. Only the spath felt right, and he was so cruel when he left me and revealed how his constant, (love-bombing) words of love were lies and he had only been using me all along. Sometimes I sadly imagine he was only a spath for me — his new woman seems to inspire genuine devotion from him, while I was just a “way station” meeting his needs until he met someone he really loved. Having that thought makes me feel even more worthless. It makes me hope he hurts her so I’ll know it was his pathology that ruined our relationship, not my failures as a person and a woman. She did work hard to seduce him away from me, so I feel anger toward her as well. I have wishful fantasies of the two of them suffering horribly. It tortures me that they are so in love with each other, and he apparently treats her well, and I seem unable to find love again.
I’ve been in a few relationships since, and each lasts a few months and ends when I realize I can’t love this new man, even though he believes he loves me and wants to share his life with me. So I break if off. And then I wonder if I keep choosing men I don’t really want, because they are safer, can’t hurt me as much as spath did. Maybe I need a few years alone to recover — but life is short, and I’m not young anymore. Have any of you struggled with these feelings?
neveragain,
Being with “someone” when you want some ONE is difficult, and there was a time in my life when I was divorced and I didn’t want to be alone and I dated a man I couldn’t love for 4 years, telling him all the time it would never NEVER be “forever” with the two of us and at the end of the 4 years I left him (we did not live together but were a pair) and it broke his heart and I have felt GUILTY ever since. I would never do that again. I did NOT mean to hurt him, but he kept hoping if he were nice enough to me I would love him the way he wanted me to. He was a good man, just not the man for me, but I should NOT I think have gone on knowing how he felt.
Time ALONE to work on yourself without worrying about a relationship which can be distracting from working on what we really NEED TO WORK ON can be a good thing. You might think about that and maybe even see about some counseling. Good luck.
Oxy, Thank you for your words. I agree with you, of course. The problem is, when I am alone I am just so dreadfully lonely. I want to date, have the companionship, etc. And at first, these men seem right for me, each one has. I tell myself the little nagging doubts or the little ways they aren’t right for me are inevitable — nobody would be perfect (unless he was a spath pretending to be perfect for me). I tell myself maybe this new man will turn out to be right one for me. Sigh.
Sorry if I sound like I’m justifying my dysfunctions. Also, I am already in therapy. A new therapist wise to the ways of spaths might be more helpful though. Oh well, time for me to go home and take care of my teenaged kids. Thanks!
Neveragain, I understand the “lonely” believe me I do….after my husband died I was terribly lonely and hooked up with the first passing psychopath. I had ALWAYS had a man in my life since age 17 or 18, but I am now very CONTENT with myself, not lonely, though I am alone…if a good relationship came along I might be interested but I am not desperate for companionship or sex any more…I have friends and family and myself and my dog…and mostly I am CONTENT with myself.
Fighting to Forgive: in reference to your front row seat to his Karma, just a few days ago I asked the same: when does what goes around comes around, when does what you give out you get back? when does Karma bite you in the ass?
It was Truthspeak who answered me:
karma will come around. You (and I) may not SEE it or ever know about it, but it’s not our purpose in this lifetime to see that karma comes around and slaps the spath(s) in the face with a rotten salmon. It just isn’t.
We can’t always see justice or even expect closure.
It is a difficult concept to grasp – this karma concept, but…..forgiveness is for me. I forgive myself for continuing to try, even when he didn’t deserve my efforts. I forgive myself for believing the best in him, even when he deliberately inflicted pain and a mean spirit upon me – and knew exactly what he was doing. I don’t ever need to concern myself with forgiving him – those are all HIS problems now. That’s really what going NO CONTACT taught me. He never gets a chance to hurt me again.
Oxy, I smiled at your biblical reference. When spath would come home and PICK a fight with me out of the blue, at first I would wait until all the kids were in bed, and privately say – I feel really hurt by (fill in) please don’t treat me that way. Then the kids would get to noticing and say things like, “Dad is so negative, or he’s in a really bad mood, or even he is not very nice (all WITNESS). Then it got to the point he would get home and PICK and I would say, “I will not allow you to sit down and eat the food that I have spent my time preparing. If you have no more respect for me than that you cannot benefit from the things that I do. Git! Scram!”
And he would get in the car, drive away and get dinner (probably with his mistress) Lol!
NeverAgainIHope, with all due respect, perhaps it’s too soon in your recovery to be invovled in another romantic relationship, yet.
When I left the first exspath, I was frightened, raw, suffering PSTD, and dealing with an adolescent who would later develop into a sociopath, himself. I had developed a system of erroneous and self-damaging beliefs that I NEEDED a partner in order to feel whole, validated, accepted, appreciated, loved, and all of the other positive things that never existed even before I married the first abusive exspath. Lo, and behold! I was targeted by ANOTHER spath that was not physically or sexually abusive to me, and I was so vulnerable that I fell for the whole illusion.
It’s going to take me YEARS of recovery before I can ever entertain the idea of a dinner date because I know that my personal vulnerabilities were the in-roads for ALL spaths that have come in and out of my life. I no longer NEED validation from others because I can provide that to myself, BY myself.
Romantic love is a concept that, in its essence, is kind, beautiful, and fulfilling. In reality, romantic love is a dicey gamble where the words, “I’ll NEVER ___” generate a pact that is based upon a concept, and not common sense or fact.
I would gently urge you to consider some strong counseling therapy to help you process your spath entanglement before getting deeply involved with someone else, just yet. This is NOT meant to suggest that the person that you’re involved with, now, is disordered or that the relationship is going to collapse, but this is an indisputable fact: any personal issues that I’m carrying forward from past expderiences is going to affect EVERY relationship unless I get myself sorted out. This means every relationship: romantic, platonic, business, client/service provider, etc.
You’ll be fine, in due time.
Brightest blessings
Honestkindgiver, I think the concept of karma is a healthy supplement to forgiveness for me, personally.
This only applies to me, but I’m going to throw it out there just in case it helps someone else: karma is Universal Justice that is the catalyst for true “Forgiveness.” I have chosen to believe that there is a balance in the Universe that has been created by God (IMHO) because all things cycle and recycle. Stars, planets, and galaxies are formed and die. Some are sucked into black holes to be jettisoned out as particulate matter that is re-purposed into forming new stars, planets, and galaxies. Even earthbound nature is in a mysterious synch as to what flowers, fruits, and plants are provided during specific breeding and birthing times of animal species. Life isn’t just what I see around me, but it’s also an unseen energy that I cannot touch, smell, see, or identify.
People who do “bad things” cannot move through their lives inflicting the heinous damages that they do without there being SOME kind of consequence. The husband or wife that is a serial philanderer is going to end up cheating with the “wrong” person and either pick up STD’s, or wind up getting physically or financially destroyed. The child molester who has spent a lifetime targeting, abusing, and destroying the lives of children will, eventually, succumb to some sort of “justice,” whether it’s in a courtroom or on an interstate in the grill of a Peterbilt truck. The financial advisor that embezzles millions from investors will, eventually experience Universal Justice in the form of a lengthy prison sentence or a former client that takes revenge in the form of murder. The examples could go on, forever, since there are ten million ways to harm another human being, deliberately.
Karma is that which we cannot explain, predict, or cause to happen, ourselves. And, this (again, applying to me, ONLY) is what allows me to crack that door open to “forgiveness” an inch at a time. Will I ever be able to get the Forward Momentum door open, entierly? I don’t know, I can’t say, and I’m not going to attempt to predict this. But, what I CAN say is that I’ve taken the “emotion” out of this concept and I’m viewing it as a pragmatic step for my personal recovery.
I dunno if that helps, one iota. And, it’s a deep, deep discussion that is very, very important regardless of anyone’s religious or spiritual beliefs. This isn’t about what “God” expects us to do in order to enter Heaven. It’s about what will help us, in the long run, to achieve what we aspire to.
Brightest blessings
Hi Oxy,
Thank you for your perspective yesterday. From reading your posts for a couple of years now I know I aspire to be at the place you are in relation to this person I once knew and made a family wth.
Not so funny but after receiving the first communication from him in many, many months, (yesterday) when I used to hear from him weekly, it caused me to have a bad dream last night,in which I was pregnant with more of his children. I was thankful that the alarm had woken me up before the birth. I woke up thankful I was no longer in the relationship, thats for sure. I am remarried to a woderful, supporting, loving example of a man now, my children love and respect this man much more than the did their father.
I have made alot of progress, as I used to wish him dead, now I don’t care much about what is going on in his life. I wish no harm to him, but I do believe in Karma like the topic has turned to, and I really prefer not to see when its his turn to pay up. I think his also shows major progress in my growth, not to enjoy the feeling of getting even with him.
I just with the anxiety from hearing from him, even a simple text, would not affect my heart beat and dreams like it does.
I’m so thankful for this site.
Desert flower,
I am glad to know that your life has taken a turn for the better and that you have a partner to love and help raise your children.
There are days though, Flower, that I also have bad dreams, or ruminate and have trouble stopping thinking about my P son, especially when I have had some sort of “back door” contact with or about him. So that may happen soometimes and I guess we just have to endure it til it quits. HAviing kids with him may keep you from totally blockiing communication but as much as you can keep it short and only about the kids.