Never found love again after my divorce – did my sociopath ex curse me?

[sept4]

My sociopath ex would love nothing more than for me to stay lonely and alone forever after our divorce and strangely that is exactly what happened. Sometimes I think something supernatural is going on and he cursed me in some paranormal way to block me from finding new love.

During our breakup and divorce I stayed alone on purpose because I was so emotionally distressed and confused that I needed time alone to process everything. The process from separation to finalizing divorce took about three years. After my divorce was final I waited another year to start dating.

During those four years alone that I was grieving, processing, educating myself on sociopathy, divorcing etc I was very lonely but I wanted to wait with dating until I was emotionally stable again. But the whole time I expected that once I was finally ready to date I would find someone new, someone wonderful.

Well the reality was different. During my divorce and recovery I had made a list of all the good sides I missed from my ex: he was handsome, charming, successful and he took me out on dates all the time and gave me a really fun lifestyle. The bad was of course his character, he was a sociopath and a criminal and a drug addict so he was cheating all the time, he was endangering me with his criminal activity, and he was burning through all our money with hookers and drugs and partying etc

So after my divorce I figured I can date men who have his good sides but not the bad sides, men who have a normal wholesome kind stable character. Well I quickly realized that these handsome and successful men are not available to me, they are extremely rare and the rare ones that do exist can choose any women they want so they would not be interested in me anyway.

I realized I had to lower my standards and I kept trying to go lower and lower on the list of “good qualities” to try to find someone. And still no luck even when I lowered my standards to just the bare minimum of finding someone I find attractive. Eventually I realized I couldn’t find anyone attractive either and I’d have to either settle or stay alone. I’ve just stayed alone since then and I’ve become very lonely.

I really didn’t think it would end this way for me. I thought I could find someone new, someone wonderful, someone better than my ex in so many ways.

I think books and movies about divorce give us this delusion because in books and movies the main character always finds a handsome wonderful loving new man after divorce (looking at you Hallmark). But it’s just a fantasy and it never happened for me.

[Donna Andersen]

Sept4 – I am so sorry for your experience. As I said on the other thread, even though you let time pass, time does not necessarily heal all ills. It seems to me that you still have deep pain over your experience. The pain needs to be dealt with. That means allowing yourself to feel it, without judgment.

I’ve spoken about this quite a bit here on Lovefraud and also in my youtube videos. I truly believe that when you allow yourself to feel the pain associated with whatever you endured, you can get it out of your system. It sounds like you still need to do that.

[sept4]

Thank you so much Donna! During my separation/divorce I stayed home for years just crying and grieving. The first few months I cried the majority of every day. I went through a very deep grieving process that looking back I think was actually too deep in proportion to the loss. So I went through many years of extremely deep pain and grieving.

I feel like I’ve done all the work that is required for recovery: deep grieving, counseling, educating myself about sociopathy and narc abuse and trauma bonding etc, spending many years alone, focusing on companionship from family and friends, traveling, exercising, new hobbies etc

When I think of everything I’ve done the past decade to heal I’ve really gone through all the steps and phases and have done all the work.

Yet something is blocking me from finding new love and new romantic companionship. Maybe it’s just not meant to be?

[Author]

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