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.
OxD, that makes sense to me. The feeling of accomplishment that I experienced when I was competing in dressage (whether I won ribbons, or not!) was that I was learning something complicated and intangible in communicating with an animal. So, that makes absolute sense to me.
I guess spaths experience something similar, but it’s more of an “empty WIN” because it’s nefarious and cruel. Sheesh….makes me wonder how they really can wake up, look at their reflections in the mirror, and not just put their heads in a gas oven. I wouldn’t be able to face daylight if I knew that I had caused the damages that they have.
Weird, huh?
“The spaths were attracted to people who couldn’t discern their hatred, their envy, their desire to overpower us. In other words, they were attracted to people too innocent to protect themselves.”
Fixerupper;
I agree with Skylar’s comment save for the word “overpower” — I think “possess” is more apt.
My x-spath employed a mask of “reservedness” and soft-spoken charm to hide his true reality: promiscuity, sexual deviance and cold-heartedness. His manipulations not only put me on the defensive, but actually made me think I had truly found someone different: a relatively mature, relationship-oriented gay man who was not looking to jump into bed with every guy he met.
His mask was so good that I even became cognitively dissonant at his “profession” — flight attendant!
In retrospect, that I fell for his BS is embarrassing, especially regarding what I eventually pieced together about him. Why? Because he lied either directly or via omission, even when he did not have to lie and I fell for it. Now, I know such lying (when not needed) is one of the sociopath’s hallmarks.
On Skylar’s site, there is a paper indicting that extreme Psychopathy, i.e., the violent criminal type, is strongly biological based, probably epigenetic, with no correlation to upbringing. However, Sociopathy (in my book, non-violent, non-parasitic but still lacking empathy and the ability to form relationships) more correlates to upbringing, with some biological predisposition. There is also some evidence to suggest that the more “normal” a Sociopath initially presents themselves, the more abusive was their upbringing…
This is certainly true of my x-spath. While he spoke little of his background, I do know he grew up poor, in Liverpool during very bad economic times and his father abandoned him, his mother and his sister when he was 4 years old. I also know he hated his father until the day the man died. His actually proud that he did not visit his father in the hospital when his father was terminally ill, nor did he attend his father’s funeral.
In addition, I strongly suspect that he was physically and sexually abused — given his slight stature, he would have been an easy target, even as an adolescent. I also have strong evidence he may have been a sexual abuser himself (probably sex with an under-age boy) and may even have been involved in the “sex industry.”
Interestingly, if you want to learn about a sociopath, the answer is often not in what they say but what they do not say. While when cornered they will defend themselves with boisterous lies (think Lance Armstrong over the years), in normal conversation when a “masked” topic arrises, the Sociopath will either not respond or provide a curt response and move to another subject.
For example, two conversation I had with my x-spath. The first was over drug use. I told him that in my past I had smoked a lot of pot and tried some other stuff, but those days were gone and that beside Pale Ale, my worst vice was Potato Chips. To that, he simply mirrored me and several times reminded me of our mutual fondness for “Crisps”, as the British call them. Later on, I did something stupid under peer pressure from a friend and one late night, did a bit of cocaine. The next day, I was very upset with myself and when the x-spath called me, I told him about the incident. He really did not say much and I was so embarrassed, that I just dropped the conversation.
Of course, later on I found several dating profiles where he open said that he was into “recreational drug use.”
The other conversation was when doctors feared I might be HIV+. His only comment was “I agree you should be tested ASAP…” and nothing else. Ever. He just dumped me the next day… Even when we were still “friends” he never provided any support or asked me about having the test or test results…
“So, it makes me wonder if the adrenaline or other “feel good” chemical that might come from the thrill of the chase by the P or the “kill” or “success” might not do the same thing.”
Ox;
Absolutely. Since they cannot bond and feel the emotions that come from bonding, my guess is that once the thrill of the chase wears off, they decide that this person is not “right for them” and take up the chase again.
I believe that other than reasons of security and the mask of normalcy, only extreme sexual attraction will keep a Sociopath in a “relationship” with anyone for an extended period.
Once that sexual attraction wears off, then its off to somebody else…
skylar, you have a site??? may I take a look?
If my abuser sincerely repents then God will forgive him. Meanwhile I focus on getting through each day and maintaining NC. Did someone mention crisps?
Raggedy Ann,
just click on my name to see my site.
BBE,
I humbly disagree that “possess” is more apt than “overpower” because to possess, you must overpower first but to overpower, you need not possess.
You can overpower through manipulations, such as a baby overpowers us with his charm and we cater to his whims.
But some spaths don’t bother to possess, they just kill you or rob you, and leave.
You’re right, that they will avoid responding to a “masked” subject, sometimes. I think that if they weren’t ready or had a specific ploy in mind, they’ll avoid topics. I commented somewhere about pushing my spath to reply to me with an opinion about a female child rapist. He wouldn’t say anything at all, until I kept pushing and finally he said, “yeah, 4 years is not long enough.”
I wonder if this is why I thought that he was the “strong silent type” when I first met him.
Skylar;
Do you have any suspicion that your x-spath was either a pedophile or rapist? That is the kind of answer I would suspect if he was harboring some secret.
However, if you pushed him too hard, you would have gotten the classic “offense” defense…
I also remember that when the subject of online dating was raised jokingly by his friend, he said nothing. Later, when I mentioned that I was not really into online dating, he said nothing.
Yet he could very well be described as an internet predator.
BBE,
I know for a fact that he is both.
I found an empty bottle of the date rape drug rohypnol, in my cabin.
He told me he was afraid someone would one day accuse him of being a pedophile. He said he could be accused because he had sex with younger women when he was 18. WTF?
Then his friend told me that he had bragged about having sex with two 12-year old native american girls. This triggered my memory of him, sitting on the porch looking depressed, when he was 29-years old. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, “I’m sad because the two 12-year old indian girls who used to visit me, are mad at me now and won’t come see me.” WTF?
This spath does anything that is evil, just for the sake of being deviant.
When I was pushing him for answers, I had no idea, about those things. The reason I was pushing him was because I had come to understand that he had targeted me as a 17-year old, out of the desire to harm me and for no other reason. This was why I was pressing him to admit that hurting children for no reason, was repellent. But he wouldn’t say it. All he said was that the 4 year sentence (given to the female pedophile) was not long enough.
Skylar;
Wow. I remember now you mentioning this incident. Regarding my x-spath, my first suspicion came when he was talking abut his nephews. It was nothing he said, rather the look. I have many gay friends with nephews and never once did I ever get the same chilling feeling. That I even remembered the incident, alone speaks volumes. This is when I first met him too…
In addition, while not concrete evidence, on a dating site with “matching” questions here were some of his:
“Would you date somebody who was a former sex industry worker?”
“Would you date somebody convicted of a sex crime?”
“Would you date a former pornography actor?”
“Do you think drugs can be used to enhance sex?’
“Would you date somebody with a sexually transmitted disease?”
To “match” better with him, a yes answer to all of the above is required.
Keep in mind these questions are not mandatory — when selecting match questions, any can be skipped. In fact, I skipped ones similar to these when I joined that sight, as they did not seem relevant.