After the sociopath, when the fog starts to lift, many of us ask ourselves, “Why didn’t I see what was going on?” According to a new book, we should probably cut ourselves some slack.
Read Book Review: The Invisible Gorilla on Scienceblogs.com.
Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader.
So we all know that there was an elephant in the room. We all read, research, try to continue to understand the insanity. We have all gone through the different stages but seem unable to have closure.
Can someone PLEASE explain to me where I am in this process. Two and one half years out and I am still sad, mad, confused, angry, anxixety plagued, haunted…
More than anything, at this point, I cannot get passed the ‘unfairness’ of it all.
Being mentally/psychology raped and brutally beaten by a predator. They walk free, on to the next victim but, continue to enter your thoughts and stay in your world.
I, the victim, still pay. Everytime I go somewhere, bump into someone that is still ‘friends’ with the monster, I still deal with it. The monster walks free, never having to face it.
There is nothing ‘we’ as victims can do. The stories that we hear about in the news or read about in books seem so severe. We think that a Lifetime story can never happen to us.
Someone, PLEASE, tell me not to care that the monster is walking free. That the ribbons of emotion it keeps going with friends and acquaintances should not matter. People see that the sociopath is ‘off’ but they don’t see the damage that has been done or how dangerous that person really is. Hell, half of them can’t even see what was done to them by this monster.
Enlighten me, please!
Help!
Dear Aeylah – Nobody here is going to say “I told you so or You shouldnt of done that.” It is part of the process I think, I can count on all my fingers and toes how many times I tried it again and again, each time with more hope and determination it would work but each time it just got uglier and sicker. You are a stong person and you will survive, instead of poise and arrow’s you might try poison arrow’s with your X. Sorry you are going through this but thank you for sharing.
Dear Still Trying..I am also at 2.5 years no contact. I have some of the same feelings but not to the degree you are having. I think I was fortunate that we did not share any friends and he moved to another city about 40 miles away. I have remained no contact and so has he I guess. I know how you feel, but the friends you mentioned that know he is ‘off’ and continue to see him are prolly just as bad as him. And nobody will ever understand what he did to you until he does it to them. The only advice I have is go no contact with the friends, that way you wont know what he is up to. Sorry you are still trying to dig out of this, we all know what your feeling, but count your blessings that he is gone and out of your life..I dont give a crap what my X is up to as long as he stays gone..I wanted to be more comforting to you but it didnt come out that way..HUG
Stilltyring:
The ‘phase’ you are in…..is the ‘phase’ you are in.
There are no rules to healing.
It’s up to you, where you are at.
Remove him and make it about YOU!
If what your doing, you feel, is not working….well then….shake it up…..look at it all from a different angle.
Get new friends, remove yourself from the world you ‘shared’ with him.
Create a distance.
I know I got tired of dominating my friendships conversations with spath news…..I felt disconnected from my friends and got tired of hearing it myself.
I know a huge release for me was tackeling a huge lingering spath connection…..3 years of tax’s…..the minute I got it done and got the news back…of a refund….it was a HUGE RELEASE! I don’t think of him like I used to…..he doesn’t dominate my world these days.
Yes, he still enters my mind, like yesterday about the kids…..but I also thought…..you know…..I really don’t feel like I want him to drive off a cliff or not……i’m indifferent.
He is he and I have my own life. He is not part of my life!
If I got news of his death…..I now….dont know how I’d feel.
I don’t put that much energy into him. I put it all into me now!
When we allow them to ‘stall’ our thoughts, they live in our mind.
When they live in our mind, we live in the past and don’t make efforts in ‘today’s’ life for us.
I think your stuck on being externally validated. you are validated……you lived it…..who gives a shit about what /who /how want to be duped by him, or believes you……you have no control over that! KNOW THAT!
Open the door and simply escort the elephant out.
Hens…thanks for the support….I allways feel a bit “embare -assed” comming here …again after another failed attempt to finish for good!…”uglier and sicker”…yes indeed. I think it happens because they hate us for being so weak and so loving at the same time.
Hens and EB,
I have not had any contact with her for the last, almost, 4 years. I haven’t looked at her, talked to her, talked about her… She on the otherhand seemed obsessed with me. This story is just so long, I don’t have the mental strength to think about it much less type it out.
In a nut shell – she is the wife of one of my husband’s childhood friends. She is the complete opposite of me in everyway. She knew my husband long before I came into the picture. This woman infiltrated our lives and the lives of our children. Snuck into every crack and crevice. I bought, hook line and sinker every demented, sad, tragic story she told me. She played me and my husband, like a finely tuned instrument. I stopped speaking to her almost 4 yrs. ago when she started really spirling out of control. The determining factor for the end of the ‘friendship’ – she did something to my son, who was only 4 at the time. At the advice of a family law attorney and a therapist, my husband and I were told to sever the relationship between the two family’s.
I wouldn’t even look her way, we stayed as far away from her and her family as possible.
She, on the otherhand, seemed obsessed with me. When she would see me driving, she would try to catch up to me. She cried to my friends, who she considered mutual friends, asking their advice as to how to get back in my good graces… I started receiving cards, letters, and gifts from her. It got to the point where it was actually frightening. Her last letter begged me to forgive her in one sentence and then accused me of being the cause of her not being able to be a good mother to her children in another…
Our next step, at the advice of our attorney, was to send her a letter asking her to stay away…wishing her and her family luck… He was trying to set things up for a restraining order. It seemed to work for awhile and then she began to become very aggressive again…
Here is where I just can’t find the strength to relive it because it became so much worse…I danced with the devil herself.
It was almost 2 and 1/2 years ago that I found out – my husband had been having an affair with her.
This woman has moved on. She and her husband picked up their family and moved, for the second time. It was found out that she was also having an affair with another man when all of this was going on. She was ‘best friends’ with this wife too.
Constant reminders everyday. We live in a small community so to completely disassociate myself from people that we both know is impossible. Too many families involved.
I know that this post probably seems nonsensical. Organizing my thoughts is not something that I am very good at these days and as you can imagine, the details, all of the stories are CRAZY.
I just wish, pray, that someone could give me the answer as to how to live my life with no closure to this.
Deep breaths is all I can do at this point.
Thanks to everyone on LF that posts their stories. To know that other people understand is truely life saving sometimes!
Somebody here said the other day that they take our loving them as controling them..it’s just a big loss all around. It’s better to have loved and lost than to live with a physco the rest of your life. The author of the Aeylah books was writing fiction, it was her imagination, her illusion of love. Some find it some dont, I often wonder how her husband compared to Jondular. Personally I will stick to reality, my illusion’s are all fantasy, fairy tales and gumdrops.
Stilltrying – Oh My what a tangled web. You have my sympathy and understanding. Let me say this, I will never forget, never get over what the toxic people in my life have done. I can not undo it, but I have let go of the hurt and anger, all I can do is live the best life I can with them out of it, life is too short to let them have anymore of me..
Stilltrying;
I am suspecting your ‘angry’ at your husband and this keeps it fresh in your life.
I suspect you can’t trust him and maybe your trying to ‘save’ a marriage of fantasy and your not ready to depart it just yet?
The affair explains her obsession with you……
In your world…..HE brought this in.
You never ‘asked’ for any of this.
Am I warm?
Hens – I pray every night that I can get to that point. I honestly, just don’t know how…