Come Valentine’s Day, many unattached people, or people in less-than-fulfilling relationships, may be willing to accept less than they really deserve, just to have a few crumbs of “romance.” Sarah Strudwick writes that perhaps it’s time for a change. Read:
Happy pathological free Valentines Day, on WakingYouUp.wordpress.com.
Welcome Tin Angel,
And you are completely right, the Portrait of Dorian Gray is a perfect example of a psychopath’s mind set…they have no conscience, and so whatever they want to do is “right.”
I’m glad you are reading because reading and learning and educating ourselves is the only way we can protect ourselves in the future from being attacked again, and to heal ourselves from the wounds from the last attack.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, and by educating ourselves we can find that power, the power to heal and secure from attack.
God bless, and again, welcome to LoveFraud.
I don’t understand the association of intuitive introverts in regards to psychopathy as stated in an earlier post. I am an intuitive introvert (ISFJ) and we’re known for our kindness.
Please don’t paint introversion as undesireable characteristic associated with psychopathy. I can assure you it is not related to psychopathy in any way……any more than naturally extroverted people are associated with psycopathy. Introverts live an internally rich and happy world. Psychopaths cannot live that way because they are empty and need people to manipulate to alleviate the boredom. Boredom isn’t typically something introverts regularly face. Also, P’s strive to be the center of attention, introverts strive NOT to be the center of attention. There is NO correlation.
Quoted from an ISFJ personality profile:
“As an ISFJ, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you takes things in via your five senses in a literal, concrete fashion. Your secondary mode is external, where you deal with things according to how you feel about them, or how they fit into your personal value system.
ISFJs live in a world that is concrete and kind. They are truly warm and kind-hearted, and want to believe the best of people. They value harmony and cooperation, and are likely to be very sensitive to other people’s feelings. People value the ISFJ for their consideration and awareness, and their ability to bring out the best in others by their firm desire to believe the best.
ISFJs have a rich inner world that is not usually obvious to observers. They constantly take in information about people and situations that is personally important to them, and store it away. This tremendous store of information is usually startlingly accurate, because the ISFJ has an exceptional memory about things that are important to their value systems. It would not be uncommon for the ISFJ to remember a particular facial expression or conversation in precise detail years after the event occured, if the situation made an impression on the ISFJ.
ISFJs have a very clear idea of the way things should be, which they strive to attain. They value security and kindness, and respect traditions and laws. They tend to believe that existing systems are there because they work. Therefore, they’re not likely to buy into doing things in a new way, unless they’re shown in a concrete way why its better than the established method. “
New Beginning, intuitive introverts was about an ex of mine who is NOT a spath at all. And he had a very bad year. I hadn’t heard from him for over a year… he feels so rejected and a loser at the moment, recognizing he got carried away with his judging, and he knows what happened in my life, and he feared that I might regard him as a “parasite” as well. First thing I replied was that I would never view him as a parasite, because I know he has deep feelings, including shame and guilt.
Sky, pointed something out about him possibly being the scientist profile.
That is all…
Only issue for me, is that he’s my big love, and I lost him. I actually know he loves me as much as I love him, but we’ve never been able to reconcile, both afraid that he might hurt me again. A part of me wishes we could. He chose to “tend our fire” (that is contact me again and reach out) on Valentine’s Day. So, in a way it does mean a lure to the roller coaster for me.
Darwinsmom,
I don’t know if he is a spath or not. He may actually be wonderful in every way except his ability to express his love for you.
I can completely relate to your loving someone who is intellectually compatible. It’s sad when that person is not emotionally compatible. Why do we always have to make compromises and sacrifice one or the other? Can we sacrifice the part of ourselves that needs affection so that another part is happy? Only way to find out is to jump in with your eyes wide open, I guess.
Darwinsmom, thank you for the clarification.
Being an introvert myself, I am often misunderstood by people in my life because there are times they feel “excluded”. Not sure if applies to your situation but these people are not excluded…..quite to the contrary, because they mean the world to me. It’s just that I require extra space and time to myself to recharge and others take it personally, but it really has nothing at all to do with them as people or what they mean to me.
There is an excellent book titled “The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World” which provides a great deal of information for both extroverts and introverts alike as well as insight into relationships where one is an extrovert and the other an introvert. Introverts are like cats, extroverts are like dogs. One requires “space” to be alone, the other is always in the midst of the action.
I hope you and the person you care so deeply for will eventually find a way around the wall that currently seperates you.
Be well.
~New
I was 26-27 when I met him, the second boyfriend, third man I ever shared a bed with. What the hell did I know of the different ways people could express their affections? I only knew the one I was raised in: hugging, cuddling, kissing. And by the third day of sharing space and time with him, I became immensely insecure after jumping a plane to see him, and I showed it, because he didn’t physically communicate in that way as much or as often as I needed it. Confronted with that need of mine, he backed out. One of those principled things stood in the way: I had a fever blister, and he didn’t want to get infected, so he wouldn’t kiss me on the mouth anymore. He was young too, though. He wasn’t at an intimacy stage where he could handle seeing me in the bathroom for example, doing what every human being needs to do. Anyway, too much expectations and it blew up in our faces. I pushed him too over emal, in the 2 months that followed, until he roared at me and broke all contact.
3 months later I was in the worst stage of my reactive depression, being pre-suicidal, not knowing what to believe (had I been the fool to believe he could ever love me, or did he love me but had he chickened out?). It just wouln’t stop hurting. Every day I got up, it felt like I was gutted with a hunter’s knife and slowly bleeding to death. This emotional pain was so physical, it would even wake me up. At my darkest hour I cried for someone to help me at the ceiling. I had a vision of my guardian. Picked me up like a little baby in his lap, and rockabied me as I cried my heart out. Explained me why it had happened: he was put on my path to find inspiration for my purpose in life (teaching, tourleading, working with people), but not for keeps. Nor had they expected such a response of mine (going on lifestrike). So, he my guardian had come to make up to me. He gave me my first kundalini experience (and I only learned to put a name on the experience days later). Within 2 weeks I had climbed out of my depression, and Daniel was there always as a soothing presence. On the first group meditations I had (several months later), people noticed him and described him as I saw him (looks like a dandy) who didn’t even know about him.
By late December I had a dream about this love and relationship. I landed with a plane on an airport. In the patio garden in between the halls I saw two Middle Eastern women (sisters) “guarding” a toddler in a push-cart, a man in a wall street suit and trenchcoat walked by and strolled off with the toddler, with the blessing of those 2 “guardians”. That’s when I realized the toddler was me, and now I was walking next to this man and noticed it was this man I loved. But he only picked me up to bid me farewell at the next plane take-off. This take-off hall was old and shabby though… it was in that 70s style without restoration. The plane I was supposed to take was going to leave, and I saw all these people in work clothes and workcases go down into the worn-down depressing looking tunnel that woudl lead to the plane. And they looked as depressed as the tunnel was. He was about to kiss me goodbye, when I was struck by blindness (literally)… I even opened my eyes physically in order to see and nothing. And as he kissed me, a strong impulse arose in me… I didn’t want to take that depressing tunnel, I didn’t want to say goodbye. All of a sudden I could see again, and as he hugged me, I could see the rest of the hallway behind him: it lead straight to the tarmak, and had polished, sparkling, new white tiles. That part of the hallway was so sunny, light and sparkly. And it was EMPTY. Everybody was doing what they were supposed to do: getting over the love that went wrong with a broken heart into a depressing dark tunnel. But there lay this wide, shining road right in front of us, going straight to the tarmak, and nobody took it. I pushed him ahead of me, through that hallway, until we reached the tarmak’s garage gate with a door inside. He blocked us from going outside there. And then we fell on the floor together in a hug. I laughed and told him: what the hell are you wearing a tie for? He laughed along. He actually looked scrawny and had a beard, looking a bit unkept. I commented on the beard too jokingly.
I woke up then, with the thought I’d hear from somebody very important to me within a couple of days. I understood that the way I dealt emotionally with the separation was my choice: I could choose to expell my feelings for him by taking the depressive road, or I could follow my heart and choose unconditional love. I chose the latter, obviously, and it would make me a happier human being irregardless.
3 days later I received a Christmass email from him. It was sent to many people, and read like a poem. What nobody else would know though, was that the poetic proze used imagery of actual things we did together, places we visited. I replied in similar poetic proze manner, but using the image of a soaring eagle whose attention is caught, and almost plummeting out of the sky in sheer surprise by the message. Then the bird (me) tried to put the ruffled feathers back in order, and greeted him. The next response was personal and he begged forgivance for having caused so much pain.
We were at least friends again after that. He visited Europe by the next fall. He landed from the US in Amsterdam, only a 2 hour train ride away from my city. Instead of going to Belgium he took a train and boat to Denmark (chickened out imo). Then he invited me to travel together in Poland, but I was back at work, only for 9 days already (after a year of absence). So, I couldn’t do that. But we had a weekend in London together, just before his flight back to the US, early December. I needed to see him. It was 1.5 year after the break-up and so far I couldn’t be intimate with a man in any way. I expected I would see the things that would make me understand why we were ‘incompatable’, that I would start to gain the ‘insight’ of, ‘I’m over him.’ I saw the opposite: I saw all the things that had made me choose to love him unconditionally anyway. As soon as we stepped into the elevator to our room, after not having seen each other for such a long time, we talked as if it had been yesterday since we last saw each other. Though we shared a bed, nothing physical happened. He didn’t want to cross that boundary. He had met a woman just before going to Europe, and he had decided to be exclusive to her. I also think that he acknowledged that anything physical between us was not just a fling. The weekend was great though! And we both commented over the fact that it couldn’t be that much time between the last time we saw each other. He was even convinced it was only half a year. But I returned partly shocked. I loved him as much as I ever had done before. I would never move beyond him I feared.
By the end of December I intended to travel to some warm country to get away from winter. Only cheap flights in my budget were to ski resorts and San Diego (his town). So, not a month later I was in San Diego. I had intended to break all contact, and promised myself not to contact him while I was in town. I was going to rent a car and drive down Baja California and camp there. Little problem after problem occurred and I seemed unable to get out of town. I was so fed up with the stalling, that I eventually wondered: perhaps I’m stuck here, because I’m supposed to see him. So, I called his mom, who gave me his number and he met me. I told him of my discovery because of that weekend in London. He was sympathetic, but adament of not being in love with me. It was that little push I had needed to take the first step beyond him. The next day, all the little itty bitty issues that had kept me in Sna Diego were solved and I had my road-holiday in Baja, as well as the first time I had an affair with another man: garden architect from San Francisco. However, this time he was the one who fell head over heals, and I felt like I couldn’t give what he wanted. It was an experience of the other side of the other pov. When I was back in San Diego, I called my ex, just for a friendly conversation. It had been going bad with the gf before I left, but now he was moving in with her. Didn’t last though.
We kept mailing in our specific symbolical way for years. It’s always been an uncanny intutive mail relation. We wouldn’t know what was going on in each other’s lives, but somehow always end up saying exactly that what the other needed to hear.
In 2006 we agreed to meet in Mexico, during my Christmass holidays. He was working there as tourleader, and would have some off-time in between trips. However, I had promised myself not to plan all of my two weeks into seeing him. I was gong to visit my Mexican sisters (two women I lived with for a month when I volunteered at a museum to train my Spanish), possibly pass through San Cristobal to meet a Belgian friend there, before heading down to the Riviera Maya. A week before I left though, he picked up hig bags and went back to San Diego: he had been going through a depression and needed his family… and once again I think he chickened out. I had a blast of a holiday anyhow though.
I never tried to meet him anymore, and never gave him a chance anymore to bring it up. Aside from that, at least one of us was in a relationship in the last years: either him or me. And he referred to me as his “sister” when I chatted with him while I was with the spath. Not totally, because he admits to the romantic and sexual attraction as well. But I guess it’s safer to consider ourselves soulbrother and soulsister.
So, I don’t jump anymore or take initiative in that romantic direction anymore… We might both profess unconditional love, we might feel it, but it’s all airy, not grounded. And it’s not up to me to ground it. I tried a few times in the past ten years, and he chickened out at the last moment each time again. It’s his wall, his shield. It’s his to take down. And I doubt he ever will.
Still glad to have heard of him again… I was really worried, and obvously for good reasons.
Jumping in a couple of days late, but Valentine’s Day was also the anniversary of the day the spath and I met. This is our first one in 6 years apart, and it was very difficult for me, more so than I even thought it would be. I hope by Valentine’s Day 2013 I’ll be in a place where I can celebrate that we’re not together anymore! My head knows it; my heart has yet to follow.
It’s strange how it’s taking me SOOOO much longer to get over a relationship that was alternately miserable and wonderful than it’s EVER taken me to get over the relationships that were mostly wonderful.
Doesn’t help that we live nearby and at least a few times a week I drive by him, run into him at the store (where he smiles at me like he hasn’t just almost destroyed me andI ignore him), or run into one of his friends, etc. There are constant reminders of the good times everywhere I look, and far fewer reminders of the bad times except inside my head (and my reduced living conditions as a result of him!).
I know he’s also in a new relationship (all his relationships begin less than a month, usually MUCH less, after the previous one ended). Ours began only a few days after his previous girlfriend of 3 years moved out. At the time I thought it was because we were meant for each other! lol
So every time I leave the house I’m filled with anxiety that I’ll run into them together. It makes no sense; I should feel sorry for her I know, but still the thought of it kills me. I’ve haven’t seen them together yet, but I’m sure I will.
All this despite the fact that I’m in therapy with a nurse practitioner who’s very familiar with victims of sociopaths, and I STILL can’t let go. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Two months ago, right after Christmas, a woman who I recently learned had been seeing my spath off and on during our many breaks (always initiated by me because of his lies, but I always took him back later) hung herself. She was the mother of 4, including 6-year old twins. Her 19-year old found her.
She was a nice woman; I always liked her. Filled with emotional issues, bipolar as well, but good-hearted and well-liked nonetheless. Turns out the night before it happened she went over to his house and saw me there with he and his kids.
She had also attempted suicide other times, and I recently learned that at least one of them was related to my spath.
A few days after her death I realized the role he played in her suicide (telling her he loved her, lying to her about his relationship with me, leading her on, etc., knowing how fragile she was) and broke it off for good. But instead of feeling better (or at least the same) each day, it gets worse each day.
And he’s all over town with his new victim, and I’m afraid to leave the house because of it. And most people in our fairly small town don’t even know he was seeing her, so he’s gotten away with that as well (a typical sociopath, he’s VERY charming and gets away with SO much, everybody loves him!). In fact, he was the second person this woman’s daughter called after finding her mother (the police were the first!). She even called him before she called her own father!
In fact, she learned afterwards from her friends that he and I had been together for 6 years, and her mother was just a side dalliance, so now she dislikes ME as if it was my fault (I didn’t know at the time of her death they even knew each other, let alone had slept together) and has turned her peer group against my daughter, while he still walks on water in her opinion! So I’m the pariah and spath is still adored. This is mostly what keeps me awake at night crying.
This bothers me more than anything, that he continually fools so many people, many of them people he’s turned against me with his lies. I can MAYBE someday forgive all the money he owes me, the jobs I’ve lost because of him, all the pain he’s caused my kids and me. But I JUST CAN’T STAND that he keeps getting away with it. Because the harm he causes isn’t illegal (mostly), just immoral, and he can talk his way out of anything, so I’m left a shell of the woman I was 6 years ago and he’s having a great time as usual.
My bitterness towards that is what I’m afraid I may never lose.
Wow, didn’t mean for this to be so long–just needed a little post-Valentine’s venting!
abbri:
That poor woman committed suicide because of him? How sad is that??? I know she had other issues, but geez and she left behind four children including six year old twins…what a tragedy…a pity! Does anyone care?? Sounds especially that the spath does not! This just infuriates me that they can go around literally destroying lives and they just keep going on with their lives.
Thank God you broke it off for good when you realized her demise was because of him. So sad. How sad that woman’s own daughter still thinks he is so great. Does she know why her mom died???
what a horrible story, abbri. How awful. And that the daughter takes it out on your daughter shows more about the daughter. Sorry though, your daughter is having to take the brunt of it.
You are well rid of him. And if you want to take revenge on him: work on your healing so that you enjoy life again, especially without him.
Louise–
The town was shaken–she was well-liked and grew up here, as did spath (Chris), unlike me (although my kids all grew up here). But she had other issues–acrimonious divorce, legal and financial issues–that most believe were too much for her. Neither I nor the few who also understand the truth about what happened feel willing or able to expose it since it would only cause more hurt to the family. I imagine in time people will figure things out, but until then it’s hard…
Darwinsmom–
I don’t blame the daughter; she’s 19 and Chris is funny, charming, and manipulative. She hasn’t been around the block even once, let alone as much as I have! He fooled me, and I was 46 when we met (he’s 9 years younger). So she’s only acting on what he’s told her which, of course, are all lies.
Weirdly, beginning a week after her death, her other daughter, who’s 16, my daughter, and Chris’ daughter all took driver’s ed together. They would hang out during their breaks. They all seemed to get along, but such a strange situation.
Yeah, it’s the revenge thing I can’t overcome yet. But your advice is sound and I will work on it, thank you!