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.
I_survived_The_Bastard:
Yep, thank your lucky stars you never married him. Whew…you escaped that one!
I am not Catholic, but the spath was raised Catholic even though now he is an atheist. I wonder…is divorce really looked down upon in Britain if you are Catholic? I think it is here in the US, but divorce is so prevalent here that it really doesn’t seem to matter what religion you are. Just curious…
@....... eb92044 as to what he is doing now, I have no idea. In fact I think he might actually be dead. He moved away to another part of the country. He did tell me the address, but I never went up there. I used to hear bits & pieces via the friend, how he had people following me, how they had lost me and he needed to have my new details (I hadn’t moved from where I still live so it was just his way of trying to scare me & I laughed when I heard it as I had gotten wise to his manipulations, but it didn’t mean that I stopped sleeping with the pair of scissors under my pillow & the can of hairspray that the police had told me I could use).
I kept track a bit of him on the web searching for the aliases I had discovered and found he had posted on a couple of different web forums, one of which was a skateboarding forum? Why skateboarding I ask myself, given that he was into motorbikes, who knows, but I knew it was him, just by what he had written.
I haven’t seen anything on the web since 2007. He could be using a new alias, but I don’t know. He was still in contact with the friend (who he had threatened to kill. It was harder for her to change all her numbers etc. He used to send money for our Godson on his birthday, but she hasn’t heard anything from him for ages. I know he had health issues, he was an alcoholic, he had medical tests that he wouldn’t tell me the results of & his medical files went from our local health centre very quickly when the doc checked for me, so its my guess that he might be dead.
How does that make me feel? Sad really that he had so many problems, sad that he was so sick in all meanings, sad that what we had wasn’t as real as I thought it was, but also sad as he had his good points and was very kind at times, not just to me but his friends.
I don’t know about being looked down on specifically, in terms of divorce, but if you still go to church you’re not supposed to take Communion if you’re a divorcee.
As it was I’m not even sure of he was Catholic. My mum reckoned he just made him self whatever would suit me ie I have an Irish background, so he was also Irish, I was Catholic so he was, I was into history & he was, although I do think that was a genuine interest on his part. He read really academic history books & the classics such as Plato, heordotus etc.
He claimed to have gone to prep school & boarding school, as well as having read classics etc at a particular university, so of course I was really impressed. After I threw him out, I did lots of investigation in to his story. I discovered that his prep school had been a borstal!!!!! So had he gone there but its wasn’t what he said. As for the uni, I rang them up & told them the situation, they did a search for me and couldn’t find anyone under any of the names I gave them, or the course he was supposed to have taken.
I developed a story which I thinks is as close as I’m going to get to his history. I think something happened to him when he was 7, something to do with his mother. Another of his friends told me his mother used to burn his hand on the hot plate of he stole a biscuit! Then I think he got in and out of trouble in his youth, ended up in borstal, then ended up in prison where he met his friend. He was then taken under the wing of this family who were Irish and became their ‘cousin’. He was very well read and had a very good general knowledge. Where else would he have got this knowledge if he hadn’t been to university? I think it was in prison.
I never really knew his correct date of birth or how old he was – definitely a red flag, but hey he was my soul mate, the world had disappeared when we met etc etc
I_survived_The_Bastard:
Sounds like he very well could be dead. Especially because of his alcoholism.
I understand your feeling of that being sad. We still feel that pity somewhat for them because we saw the good points they had about them, but I have to ask myself if even those good points were only fake? Was ANYTHING real??
Yes that the question I too have asked many times & sometimes I still do. A very painful question to ask and one I’m not always happy to hear answers too.
I think in some ways it is real, in that is as real as they are ever capable of feeling. My friends did tell me that he loved me, he would often tell them that he did and in many ways he showed that.
I think thats the only way to cope with it, to accept that in his way he did. If i think otherwise I would get really depressed and upset.
There are certain things that we went through which I still find it difficult to think about, because if I think too much about the waste of years & time, its unbearable. I just have to accept that its gone & there is nothing I can do about it but go forward.
I_survived_The_Bastard:
Wow, what a story! Nothing was true about him. He probably felt so unworthy that he felt like he had to lie about his past. Sounds like he was very intelligent though as spaths usually are. Sounds like he was trying to mirror you and be whatever you wanted him to be. It also sounds like his mother abused him.
Hmmmm, yeah that was a huge red flag not knowing when his birthday is or how old he really was. But I know what you mean. When we meet someone we THINK is the one…we go kind of crazy and the rest of the world melts away…
I_survived_The_Bastard:
I am sure he did love you in only the way he could. I think mirroring you says that he really cared. I guess I feel the same way about my X spath. He felt for me what he could; what he was capable of. He had told me had fallen in love with someone a few years before he met me, but I wonder if he confused that feeling for something else…I don’t know.
I have thought of something else. I noticed that as long I was playing along with the game and flirting and playing with my X spath, we would have contact. As soon as I would tell him I couldn’t do this anymore (because I wanted more and he knew how I felt about him; I professed my love for him more than once so there was no confusion there), he would drop out. I understand that is kind of what I was asking for, but he never pushed. It’s almost like that would really put him off and then he would retreat for awhile. Just wonder what anyone else thought of that.
Here’s the rider though. This is when I realised that everything he had told me had been a lie.
It was about 1 month after he had gone. I had a call from one of his friends (not the one with the child) but one that owned a property where we had gone on holiday several times. She said to me have you seen or heard from XX? I said no, whats the matter? Apparently she had let him stay in her property but the cleaner had gone there & found all the windows open & him nowhere around. She asked if I thought he would do something ‘stupid’ ie commit suicide. I said no, he’s too selfish for that lol. Then she said….. wait for it…. she was sorry to see how much weight he had put on, he looked just like his mother!!!! I replied, his mother’s dead, NO she said she’s alive and living in XXXXX. I said What?!!!! he told me she was dead. (The mother who had prevented us from marrying in church and was supposed to be dead!!!!) then came other bomb shells. His dad had supposed to own a haulage firm, but apparently he was just a driver, his ONLY brother was supposed to have been shot in Ireland, but apparently his TWO brothers were alive and well in XXXXX and had kids. And other things all turned out to be lies!!!
As you can imagine I was devastated. It had gone from a normal breakup to something I had never had to deal with before. I didn’t know who i was anymore. I ended up begging the doctor for counselling to talk it over. Then the anger began and we’ve discussed that earlier lol
Great thread. About the addictive aspect, and feeling powerless, and wanting it to be over, and not being able to make it over…..about begging him to tell you to F off- I GET IT. I have been NC from spath for over 3 and 1/2 years, but this just goes to show that the only resolution is in accepting that there is never any real resolution. I have shared a lot of things, here, but this is something that has been stuck in the dark recesses of my heart, and I have revisited often, trying to make sense of it. (pointless.)
Spath and I, broke up, many, many times. Always to reconnect. We knew exactly how to accomplish that. We set it up in a variety of ways. I firmly believe we were both trauma bonded and/or addicted to each-other.
When the bottom was dropping out, the last time, I was exhausted, and I knew it was THE LAST TIME. I told him to leave me alone, to not call me, to not drop by, to not send msgs thru friends, to not send Birthday cards….that I never wanted to see him again! He said, “you don’t mean that.” And I said, “yes I do. I’ve been praying everyday for the last year that this would be over and that you would leave me alone!”
At the time I thought it was just a really big fight. He left, went MIA for a day or two…not in the least unusual since I was being evicted and was on my own as far as figuring out where to go and what to do….but he came back….extreamly mixed emotions….so absolutely confusing and crazy making. He begged me to just give up on us. We fought some more.
He had given me 150 dollars earlier in the day to give the landlord for another weeks rent, so, hopefully I could stay a while longer. We ended up out in the yard with the front door, (locked) and he wanted to get in, to get to the money he’d given me, (drugs), he picked up a cinder block and threatened to break the glass. I unlocked the door, he went to the money, and I said, “okay. I give up. I give up on you.”
This is one of those pivitol moments in my life that is permanantly etched in exusite detail. I can see it in slow motion. He was bending over to reach into a dresser drawer to retrieve the money, and he actually hesitated, as if shocked. He turned his head toward me and looked at me. “What?” he asked. I repeated, “I give up on you.” He reached into the drawer and got the money, and said, “thank-you.” He left, I was evicted, and it was over.
But here is something interesting: He told me that his father used those exact words when he was 15 years old and that he knew it was true. That something in his relationship with his father was permanantly altered at that time. Well, I didn’t really take it seriously, because his father was still enabling him, and we saw him almost everyday! I asked him, though, why? What had he done for his father to say that? I don’t even remember what his answer was…something vaugue and evasive and I didn’t push. I let it go.
So, it’s interesting that I got a very real, (if only momentary) reaction from him when I gave up on him.
So, even though I know it isn’t really important, I am still stuck in a WTF moment and have to accept I always will be.
Did I finally have some control, and did he finally respect a boundry, or had he simply used me up, and knowing ther was nothing left to be had from me? LOL (like a crazy lady) They ALWAYS leave you confused, without certainty and without closure.
Thanks for letting me share this somewhat trivial, long and complicated ghost story with you. I never shared it before because it just seemed to confusing and complicated. Didn’t even know how to put it in words. Whew. That’s recovery for you. It’s a process and it all happens in it’s own time.