Lovefraud recently received the following e-mail from a reader:
How do I process a relationship that had so many lies in it that I don’t know really with whom I was involved?
I miss the person I thought I knew so much, but at the same time, he was involved with someone else, and others, since at least last June. I thought he had had one affair—but not anything to the extent that it looks like now.
How do I process a relationship I never had? Was he lying the whole time acting out the “I love you’s”, the romantic comments, and the idea that we should be together? Is it all an act?
Most of us are reading and posting on Lovefraud because we were intensely, callously, brutally deceived in a relationship with a sociopath. The betrayal was so deep, and so profound, that all we can say is that the person we thought we knew, the relationship we thought we had, didn’t exist.
Much has been written here on Lovefraud about the different aspects of recovery. But in response to this reader’s e-mail, I’ll review some of the key points.
Understanding sociopaths and “love”
Sociopaths do not feel empathy for other human beings. Therefore, they do not have the ability to love as we understand it. There is no emotional connection, no true caring for the target of their “affections.”
What is going on when sociopaths say, “I love you?” They are not all the same, so there is a range of explanations for what they mean.
At the clueless end of the range, sociopaths may view the target as attractive arm candy, or may like the attention they receive from the target, or may enjoy sex with the target. Sociopaths may label as “love” whatever it is they feel with the target. So, “I love you,” means, “I like how I look when you’re with me,” or, “I like the fact that you’re showering me with attention,” or, “I like having sex with you.”
At the sinister end of the range, sociopaths know they are cold-hearted predators and view their targets the way cats view mice. These sociopaths play with their targets for awhile, then, when they tire of the game, abandon them, leaving the targets battered and gasping. Or, some sociopaths will go in for the kill, usually figuratively, but sometimes literally.
The reader asked, “Is it all an act?” Often, the answer is yes.
Accepting reality
The sociopath may have painted a picture of an exquisite future of unending togetherness and bliss. Or, the sociopath may have latched on to our own nurturing instincts, and convinced us that they can only survive with our caring and support. Then the mask slips, the story unravels, and we learn that everything we believed was a lie.
We must accept this reality. We must believe our own eyes and recognize the truth.
This may be really difficult. We thought we were working towards our dream. We made important life decisions based on what we were told. We may have spent a lot of money—maybe all of our money—at the behest of the sociopath.
We don’t want to believe that it was all a cruel mirage. We argue with ourselves—there must be some other explanation, some other reason. We may say, “I must have misunderstood; no one can be that heartless.”
Yes, sociopaths are that heartless.
The reasons they are heartless do not matter. Yes, in some cases they have had bad parents and a terrible childhood. But as an adult, they are not going to change. They are what they are, and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can begin to recover.
Time and permission to recover
The psychological and emotional damage that we suffer because of our entanglements with sociopaths is often extensive. We may experience anxiety, depression, guilt, self-hatred, and perhaps even post traumatic stress disorder.
Some of us are so angry with ourselves for falling for the scam that we punish ourselves by blocking our own recovery. We say we will never trust again; never love again.
Please do not feel this way. If you never recover, giving up on trust and love, the sociopath will have truly won. Deny him or her that victory. Give yourself permission to recover.
Recovering from this damage is not an event; it’s a process. Readers often ask, “How long will it take?” The answer: It will take as long as it takes.
We may need to move forward in several directions at once, but it’s okay to move forward slowly. Some steps to take:
- Protecting our physical safety, if the sociopath has made threats, and what remains of our financial assets.
- Taking care of our physical health—eating right, getting enough exercise and sleep, avoiding alcohol and other substances.
- Finding a way to release the pent-up anger and pain within us, without showing it to the sociopath, because that will backfire.
- Rebuilding relationships with family members and friends that were damaged because of the sociopath.
- Letting moments of joy, no matter how small, into our lives. Joy expands, so the more we can let in, the more it will grow and the better we will feel.
The Lovefraud Blog has many more articles that focus on how to recover from the sociopathic entanglement. You’ll find them in the following category:
Believe in yourself. You can do this. You can get past the experience. You may have lost your innocence, but in the end, you’ll gain invaluable wisdom.
eb-I think that my spath was super excited about thinking that he turned a gay woman straight. He built my horrible self esteem so high by constantly telling me I was the most beautiful woman in the world. He was telling me that I was his soulmate and other stuff. He would text me all the time telling me how much he loved me. The beginning of our relationship was all about text messaging. He would try to fight with me by text message.
eb-yeah I’m hoping I don’t get in trouble. I have been feeling so bad that I forgot about it being a holiday. I hope they don’t think I was just trying to get out of work now. I’m worried about it. My only problem is that if I go to work like this, then I will only get worse. I don’t usually get these and I had a bad one three weeks ago. It came back this weekend because I had too much caffeine and not enough water-I guess. Now I am stopping all caffeine and beer and only drinking water or juice.
nolarn:
Of course it was all text messaging. Texting is the perfect communication for someone who is not free to be having another relationship and needs to keep things quiet. It’s much easier to text than to talk when you can’t talk because the wife is there. Mine would text to me for hours on end while he was at home. I don’t know how they get away with this. Again, I guess because we had let them.
eb-when he would go home to her at night he would text with me all evening while he was watching tv. He would be telling me how much he loves me and how he wished he was with me instead of being there. I would sometimes tell him to just leave and come over then, he could make that choice if he really wanted to, but he would say that he couldn’t. He would say sometimes that he was so close to doing it but he stopped himself. That would hurt me SO bad. It hurt me so bad that he went home to some else. I hated sharing him-even though nothing was happening with her. There were so many times that I tried to break it off but I was too afraid of the pain I would feel if I did it.
The wife later told me that they shared a kingsize bed at home and that he made sure that he slept as far away from her as possible-so they weren’t touching each other at all. She said that if she tried to show affection/touch him, he would scoot away from her and practically fall out the bed to keep her from touching him. That should have been her first clue that something was wrong. She claims that she didn’t know a thing until the night she got a hold of his phone. He never let her anywhere near his phone. One night when he was in the shower she grabbed it cuz it buzzed. I had texted him to say I love you and I miss you and she found it.
His story that he tried to tell her was that I was a lesbian and we worked together and my girlfriend’s number was only one off from his number, and that I texted him by accident when I was trying to text her. BIG FAT LIE!!!
nolarn:
Wow, he sure came up with a good one about the text to him!!! Very slick liar. Crazy!!! It is absolutely amazing to me all the stories I hear on here.
For me, and I am talking personally here, it is making me so much stronger. Making me realize to never be that stupid again. Sorry, but we were all stupid. Yes, we were being manipulated and yes, that was not our fault, but what is/was wrong with us to fall for it??? Never again. I am waaayyyy too smart and good for it. No one will ever use me like that again. I have too much self respect for that and am just too smart! 🙂
eb-me too. He also had the nerve to email me when she found the text and ask me to talk to her and to please go along with his story. I refused. That was where I had to draw the line. I knew that it was over at that point and that he would never choose me, so I refused. Then he ended up moving in with me the next day when she threw him out. I wasn’t expecting that to happen.
I just ignored all the red flags and my self esteem was so low that I fell for it. That’s my only explanation I have and I know that it will NEVER happen again.
Nolarn, you said:
“There were so many times that I tried to break it off but I was too afraid of the pain I would feel if I did it.”
I think this pain avoidance is the number one human motivator and what keeps us all from being happy. If we turn around a face our pain and go through it, we can potentially be free.
I used to read a lot of science fantasy when I was in my 20’s. A favorite was the EarthSea Trilogy by Ursula LeGuin. It was the story of a young wizard who learned how to have power over anything just by learning its true name. (There are certainly implications here in dealing with a sociopath, huh?). Though the young wizard – named Ged – was very powerful, he was haunted his whole life by a very dark fog, a dark shadow that seemed to always follow his ship on the sea and always be lurking when he least expected it. Whenever he encountered it, he would retreat from it as fast as he could, returning home to safe ground. He was afraid of it his whole life, and he feared that if he traveled too far or sought too much, he would encounter it and it would kill him.
In the last book of the trilogy, he decided to go out and look for this dark shadow – he called it the Fog. He searched the ends of the world, because in those days they believed the world was flat and you could only travel to certain limits. He finally came face to face with the shadow. He observed it and stood up to it. Then he called it by its true name – Ged. It was him. It was himself that he was afraid of. A very powerful story. I think we spend so much energy running away from what we are afraid of, which is usually some sort of pain that is inside of us.
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eb-when she found the text she kept calling my cell I wouldn’t answer it. THen her psycho friend started calling and leaving theatening messages and cursing me out on the voicemail. I finally agreed to talk to her at like 2:00am when she called again. I told her that I would talk if she called off her friend. She talked to me and asked me all kinds of questions about the relationship and told me that he was in the room with her listening. I told her everything and that’s when she told me that I was the 4th one he did this with-all younger prettier women. I told her about how he swore that I was the first and only one. She told me about them sharing a bed and all that and refusing to touch her. When he slept with me, we were always wrapped up in a ball and slept like that for hours. I told her that he was the first person I was truly in love with and she told him that he was going over to my house first thing in the morning. She told him that he was going to be a man and started going off on him for lying to me and breaking my heart.
In the morning he showed up bawling like a baby talking about how he screwed everything up-he hurt me and he hurt her-HIS BIG PITY PARTY, and I fell for it. He pulled out a paper that he wrote out a paragraph explaining his relationship with me and asked me to sign it for her attorney-that was one of her demands. I then wrote out a similar paragraph explaining our relationship and he signed it for her lawyer. He brought those papers home to her and came back hours later with all his belongings plus three cats. She demanded to keep his dogs but demanded that he take the cats.
He cried a lot after that. One minute he would be crying about how he screwed everything up by hurting her and ruining his marriage, and the next time he would be saying that bitch is gonna take me for everything I have. Jekyll and Hide-it was the first I saw of it. He totally turned on me though when he discarded me. When he moved in with me I was doing all his laundry, cooking for him, ironing his white coats and caring for his cats, and he turned on me.
eb-mine was leaving the hospital campus to see me when we were together. According to the rules, he was not supposed to leave campus-he was paid a certain amount for everynight he slept on the campus for call. He got in trouble when they found out that he was having sex with me and being intimate while he was being paid. He even wanted me to get an apartment across from the hospital so I wouldn’t have to pick him up and go to secluded places at night to be together.