Not long ago, I heard from a woman whom we’ll call “Rochelle.” When Rochelle was in her 50s, through a high school reunion, she reconnected with the first boy she ever loved. Rochelle had a crush on him when she was 14. They dated for almost five years, although he always seemed to have an eye out for other girls. When they broke up, Rochelle was heartbroken, but she moved on, married, divorced, and life was reasonably good—until that first love came back into her life.
He poured on the charm, and Rochelle felt like finally, after more than 30 years, she had her chance to be with the guy she always wanted. Rochelle left everything to move out of state with him. They eventually married.
Well, he lied, fabricated, manipulated, accused, took her money, ruined her credit, filed for divorce behind her back, and left her with nothing. It was the type of behavior we all know so well—sociopathic behavior.
Rochelle realizes that the guy is disordered; she was exploited; he never loved her. Still, she wants him. Yet she also realizes that she’s in love with a person who does not exist.
She asks, “When does it get to the point where he stops taking up space in my brain?”
Scope of the question
The first thing to understand is the scope of this question. “Getting the sociopath out of my head” is the ultimate goal of everyone who has been betrayed by one of these predators. Once you’ve achieved it, you’ve achieved full recovery.
So cut yourself some slack. This individual probably crashed through your life like a battering ram. Your emotions, finances, home, health and/or psyche may all be in splinters. This is going to take time to repair. If anyone says to you, “Just get over it,” this person has no idea what you’re experiencing.
Understand what happened
You were probably blindsided by this experience, so in order to move forward, you need to understand what happened. We have lots of material here on Lovefraud to help you. Many people have told me that my two books, Love Fraud and Red Flags of Love Fraud, were especially helpful.
Here are some key concepts:
- Sociopaths exist. They are social predators and they live their lives by exploiting people. They do not feel remorse for their actions, and they will never change.
- The sociopath never loved you. You were targeted because you had something he or she wanted. It could have been money, sex, a place to live, business connections or cover for his or her secret life. Or, the sociopath messed with you simply for the fun of it.
- There is nothing you could have done to make the sociopath treat you any better. The involvement was always about exploitation. You were probably targeted because you were good, caring, giving, responsible, and in some way, vulnerable.
- The blame for what happened rests squarely with the sociopath. This person lied to you, manipulated you and betrayed you. You were guilty only of being human.
Acceptance
Recovering from sociopaths is a process. The key to the process is accepting what happened. This does not mean that you excuse what happened, or that you try to forgive and forget. But you must believe that yes, he or she did it, and yes, the sociopath knew what he or she was doing.
You can’t make time go backwards. You can’t take back the things you said or did that enabled the sociopath to become part of your life.
Once you come to terms with the fact that yes, it did happen, you begin the healing process.
Addictive relationship
In the case I described at the beginning of the article, Rochelle said that she still wanted the sociopath. This is not quite accurate. The truth is that she was addicted to him.
Relationships with sociopaths are highly addictive. They actually cause chemical and structural changes in the brain, similar to what substance addictions do. Therefore, you need to treat leaving the sociopath like kicking an addiction.
The way to do this is to have no further contact with this individual—no phone calls, no email, no text messages. Certainly do not meet the person. Don’t even go to the individual’s Facebook page.
If you must have contact with the individual for some reason—like you have a child together—do your best to implement Emotional No Contact. That means you remain absolutely neutral in any interaction. Sociopath love to get emotional reactions from their targets, and will do whatever they can to engage you. Do not take the bait.
Staying away from the sociopath can be really difficult. But the longer you stay away, the stronger you’ll become. If you give in and have contact, you’ll have to start all over again..
Processing the pain
This was not a normal relationship, and it’s not a normal break-up. Even if you weren’t physically or sexually assaulted, you suffered massive emotional and psychic injuries. You have losses that need to be grieved, including your loss of trust.
I believe that you must allow yourself to feel the pain of the experience, although you may not be able to do this right away. In the beginning you may just be numb. This a protective measure taken by your psyche, because the injury is just so massive.
Eventually, you need to let yourself feel it. You cannot bottle the pain up within you. It will either poison your life, or it will make you ill. You must get the pain out of your system.
Cry your eyes out. Stomp you feet in anger. Take up boxing and hit a punching bag. It’s scary at first to face your own anger, embarrassment, rage, humiliation—whatever the sociopath caused. But allow yourself to feel the emotions, honor them, and then let them go.
Let joy into your life
Draining the negative emotions will leave an energetic void within you. How do you fill the empty space? You allow joy into your life.
Any kind of joy will do: Enjoying a sunny day, letting your pets comfort you, having coffee with a friend, letting a waitress be nice to you. Soak up any joy and pleasantness that you encounter.
As you drain the negative emotions, and replace them with instances of joy, you’ll slowly change your perspective. Gradually, you’ll find that the sociopath is no longer renting space in your head. And that’s what you want to achieve.
skylar
I see what the spath is [doing as] more of a game. That’s why I like “twist the hell out of it” it goes to intent. But we all do this to some extent.
The “act to feel” it does work for us too. Force a smile and hold it long enough and one’s mood will lift. But for those of us that “feel then act” it can seem not quite right to do this. Don’t know why. Maybe we normally take how we feel as fact. Or it’s going against our instincts.
How I go about finding what it is that I can’t get pasted is to anchor the feeling. Anchor is when you have the feeling and you reach over and lightly pinch yourself. Hold it and close your eyes and follow the feeling back in time. You’ll hit a bubble. You go pasted it. If the feeling drops off then you go back to the bubble. If not, you keep going too the next bubble. And it will take you to where the feeling was created.
Then I’d run the movie technique on it which blows it out and it’s no longer a factor. Like a itch that is no more.
spoon
Skylar, good for you for doing the purge! And, in having been on this site for a few years, I’m truly encouraged by what I read, every day. I think OxD responded to a desperate plea to know WHEN I would “get over it.” She responded that there was no clear timeline for anybody’s recovery, and I didn’t really understand that, until a year later. Hugs to you, this morning.
With spath “beliefs,” I rather think that whatever their “beliefs” are, they aren’t just shallow, but changeable to suit each moment and target. Whatever their targets “believe,” THEY adopt and then attempt to alter either overtly or subtly.
Just an off-topic question, but did anyone experience the spath practicing actual prophesizing? The exspath used to tell me, frequently, that he was going to die, first, because he had “seen” it. Now, in retrospect, I clearly understand what this was in reference to, and it played hard yet subtle on my own abandonment issues. BUt, he would go on and on about future events, as if he were Nostradamus. And, mysticism used to be a very big thing. Going “ghost hunting” with a camera, etc….suddenly, he no longer wanted to do that, and he refused to tell me why.
Just curious about that….
Brightest blessings
You are all dead on about spaths! They are so good at acting; I can remember several times when I would be watching a movie and I would see the man getting all sappy and saying all these over the top things, putting rose petals on the bed etc and think to myself and even remind my teenage daughter who was also watching these romantic movies with me that what we were seeing is NOT REALITY! Men don’t say and do those over the top Prince Charming things… I used to laugh and look at me now. My ex went so far (in the beginning) as to do the whole rose petals on the bed kinda stuff, and showered me with gifts, moving heaven and earth to be with me, I was his main “objective” even though he still had a bunch of i now find out he had plenty of women on the side too. How was I so blind and naive!
Can anyone explain or help me understand why I’ve also noticed that my ex targets married women? Even I at the time was married but going through a desperation. My thought is that he sees it as a challenge but I would have thought spaths would want these women to themselves not share with anyone else yet my ex doesn’t care…. But he seems to enjoy targeting married women and he claims it’s because he feels bad for them because they are bored- I told him how screwed up he was to mess with their emotions when he knows they are already feeling vulnerable but he sees it as a “service” he’s giving them that their hubby’s don’t give them – these women have no intentions of leaving their husbands either.
But they get so caught up in my exs fantasy – my ex doea have single women too who he uses like me before I dumped him to give him that companionship and can be more or less the “real girlfriend”
Truthy,
yes, my exspath actually had a tee-shirt made with a picture of him prophesizing. After 9/11, he said that he had prophesized it, ALMOST to the day. So his minions called him “Prophet Almost” and made the tee-shirt.
From the song, “Mr Jones” by Counting Crows:
Denbroncos,
Your exspath is looking to triangulate. They get more drama that way.
He doesn’t want emotional intimacy or commitment, so he makes sure that his victim is unavailable. Furthermore, if he can get them to break up their marriage, he has succeeded in taking away someone else’s love. Also, by convincing a woman to cheat, he has created another cheater, like himself. They all want to turn us into them.
DenBroncos007, committed people who have no intention of leaving their spouses or partners are a particular challenge to spaths.
An example of a “normal” challenge: I used to ride dressage, and I would learn new commands and riding cues to perform specific maneuvers. As I went from walk, trot, extended trot, slow trot, canter, to gallop and sudden halt, the maneuvers and executions became more and more challenging. I would fret and attempt to execute these things until I got it right. After I learned how to communicate the specific command, I would move on to the next challenging maneuver.
The challenge that a committed target presents to a spath is beyond my own ability to process, but breaking apart a “normal” human beings values, qualities, and successes is more orgasmic to a spath than any sexual conquest imaginable. It’s the pursuit, the wheedling, the manipulations, and the possible carnages that are so alluring to the spath.
What the spath is “giving them that their hubbys don’t” is only a MIRROR of the targets’ desires and fantasies. They MIRROR. Period. They aren’t “giving’ anyone anything. They’re just spinning their illusions for the ultimate conquest: ruination of their targets.
Brightest blessings
Skylar, that’s skeery about the spath. This, for me, opens a whole new view on how “predictions” and “expectations” are deliberately generated, as well as the same “issues” being exploited.
So, I guess the thing for me to take from this is that my own issues about attempts at “predictions” and my “expectations” REALLY need some attention. THANK you for opening up that window!!!
Brightest blessings
You all sound so well versed when it comes to spath’s — I feel like this “newbie”, but am learning more and more each day and piecing together the actions of my ex the past year 1/2. Things make more and more sense to me –
I remember my ex telling me that all these married women are just bored and some of them have been in their marriages for 26 – 30 years so here he comes along, Mr Knight in Shining Armour and sweeps them off their feet. He is so good with his words – I can’t believe that spath’s dont actually want to be with one person or commit. The more I became available to my ex the more he started to withdraw and treat me like crap. The more he started to twist things around and make me feel like a lunatic.
Has anyone read the book “Toads and the Women who Kiss them” – it is a wonderful book that made me laugh yet painted a good picture of what I went through w/ great explanations. The one saying that sticks in my head from this book was
“Kiss a frog, and he might turn into a prince. Kiss a Toad and he’ll pee on your hand.” Spaths = TOADS (and that is putting in kindly in my opinion)!!!
Denbroncos, I wholeheartedly agree with both Truthy and Skylar. How much greater the thrill for a spath to take down a whole family, then to take down just one gullible target. Now that’s power!!! And, it’s certainly easier for the target, and more comfortable, than addressing the issues at home, so the love-bomb is entirely effective, and the whole family is blown apart.
As Skylar says, at their very core is envy. They envy a committed relationship and family life…it is something they can never have. If there is trouble in paradise, they see it as an in-road, and will take advantage, of that chink in the armor….If they can’t have what they envy, they will spoil it in some way, so that you no longer want it, because it’s broken, or it stinks, or it’s ugly.
Spath puts another knotch on his (or her) bed post.
Hi Kim,
You got that right. Destroying families is a great thrill for them because they can’t ever bond, they don’t want anyone else to either.
Denbroncos,
they oppose cooperation, agreement, appreciation, gratitude.
They want competition, a winner (them) and a loser (you). Although I’m sure that they don’t mind being the loser either because that just goes to show that YOU CHEATED, and YOU are cruel and unfair and YOU deserve their loathing. Any kind of drama is a food source.
They want disagreements, fighting, pain and anguish.
They don’t understand gratitude. They don’t even want what is given unless it was acquired by deception.
Life IS a game to them. People are there as pawns in that game. To call them shallow is to give them too much credit. These people are paper thin. No, not even that thick. They are as thin as the ink on the paper. They are cartoon characters, no values, no substance, nothing real at all. That’s what makes them so desperate for attention. They need to be validated.
Denbroncos, here is a link that defines a, “drama triangle.”
This, I think, perfectly defines what you X was doing as he “rescued” married women.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle