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/ Kim
You both couldn’t have pegged my ex any better. I know I sound like a broken record on some of my posts, so accept my apologies in advance. This is all still so new to me, although it will be 2 weeks this Sunday that I haven’t had contact w/ the spath, so I feel somewhat on a roll towards recovery! He hasn’t contacted me at all, thank goodness for that!
Even up until i left him, he could be so nice – and thoughtful, but now come to think about it, I wonder was he doing all those little nice things because he knew deep down he was “wrong” in cheating on me and still wanted to cheat but he also needed to keep me around? After all, I was the “girlfriend” who nurtured him, was there waiting for him when he got home, took care of him, catered to his every whim, he knew he “had me”, I was the “image” he wanted to portray to all his friends and family, that he could have a committed relationship; but deep down he couldn’t. He liked the fact that he had many other women on the side who he could sleep with and who gave him that feeling of “needing” him — and w/o thinking of how it would make me feel, he could have cared less how I felt. The one problem the spath had with me was that I didn’t depend on him like most people should when they are in a relationship – I would NEVER ask him to do anything for me because I knew deep down he simply wasn’t the dependable type, yet I stayed with him, being the one who kept on giving and giving and giving.
Skylar — Love the comment “They are cartoon characters” — i think that depicts them very well! Thanks for the chuckle
KIM – Wow! I never heard of this before, but makes such perfect sense! Thanks so much for sharing — In all truth, one would think that a spath would get so mentally tired of playing all these games…..My ex used to tell me I loved the drama — yet it was him who loved it. The drama made me so emotionally drained, yet he was the one who would always “Act” emotionally drained and it would perplex me because I never created the drama to begin with! Wowzers, these people need to be placed on a remote island, far away from normal civilization so they can have at each other and leave the innocent alone!
Yeah…cartoon charactors for sure. I just read another article about drama triangles and they used the example of the dynamics between Dudly Do-right, Snidely Whiplash, and Nell Fenwick….funny. 🙂
The OW in my office was married and so was spath. I don’t think he cared if she was married or single. I was single so he just takes whatever he can get, but I must say, she WAS ready to leave her husband for him! She would have given up everything for him, but he wasn’t going to get a divorce even though he was separated. She even separated from her husband and was also going to divorce him, but when she finally realized spath didn’t want her, she stayed with her lowly husband. To this day, as far as I know, she is still married although I did hear this past spring that she was now getting a divorce for sure, but I still think she has not. I don’t know though since I have no contact with her whatsoever and will never again.
Louise – sounds all too familiar. My ex-spath was married for 26 years and was divorced for 5 when I met and became involved with him. A part of me believes now that his ex-wife probably experienced the same issues as I am now with him – he always talked bad about her, how she was the one that put them in debt and off spending money left and right. And how she was the one who cheated and was always lying – but also she was the one who was always accusing him of cheating and becoming suspicious too. He would always tell me he lived under suspicion with his ex for years and he refuses to live like that ever again. Looking back now I am starting to really believe that she wasn’t the problem at all – it was him. He didn’t just become this way overnight or due to a “bad marriage” right? The cheating and constant lying doesnt just start due to bad experiences — I would think he has always been this canning, uncaring, showing no empathy or care about how his actions affect others. It’s all about him and always has been since day one.
He also told me that when his ex-wife would plan weekend trips, she would be the one who would take the motorhome/boat out to the camp sight on Friday’s then he would always come out on Saturday night — I thought to myself why would you do that? Make her take all the kids out w/o you — he said it was because he had to “work” – he had to provide for his family and the lifestyle they wanted to lead so he HAD to work 6 days a week — yeah right! This has been an excuse of his since day one and it was an excuse he used with me too (work) as a reason WHY he couldn’t EVER plan anything ahead of time – it was always because of his work. Planning with this man was impossible!
DenBroncos007, no, the behaviors don’t just suddenly appear.
When the spath said that he had lived “under suspicion” for years and “refused” to ever live that way, again, that was a screaming, flapping, waving “Red Flag.” He was describing how you (or, anyone else) would be obligated to TRUST him if they were to win The Prize Of Him. It’s just like a person saying, “I’m a good person. I would NEVER _____!” Well, what kind of person needs to alert others that they are, indeed, “good” people? What kind of person makes such sweeping assertions that they would “NEVER” do thus-and-so? Why, someone who is laying a groudwork, that’s who!
And, his thwarting plans is designed to keep his targets off-balance. “Yes,” doesn’t even mean, “maybe.” The first exspath used to respond to planning vacations or holiday events with, “We’ll see.”
Brightest blessings
denbroncos007:
It’s opposites day! Everything he told you his ex-wife was doing, he was the one who did it. They turn everything around.
Yeah, WHY did he live under suspicion??? Because he was a cheater! UGGHH, they just all make me sick.
Truthspeak – Happy Friday! As always, so great to hear from you and your input is soooooo soothing to my ears!! :):) I now see things as “Red Flags” — everytime I would accuse him or catch him in a lie and have proof of that lie, I was told he wouldn’t live like this because it was toxic and he lived that way for 26 years and he won’t do it again. He told me that his wife was so suspicious and so jealous – and stupid me assumed it was because she was insecure since this is what he said about her – never really saw it as another women feeling exactly as I do and that it could possibly mean that I was dealing with a spath! I wish I had spoken to her about it but always felt like she wouldn’t tell me the truth since they were “cordial” with one another– plus I figured I was the lunatic and talking to her about him would make me look even more nutty than I already felt.
Ha! Ha! My ex would never ever plan anything with me except the one time we got back together – I forgave him and he said everything would be different and that we would go places together – blah! blah! blah! That lasted a week! Thereafter, he would simply tell me he couldn’t plan anything with me because his work didn’t allow him to — yeah right! He could never plan in advance because his job was so unpredictable – I even remember telling him several times and not in a good way either, that I had never dated anyone like him before – I made sure he knew that I meant it in a negative not fabulous sense too! I said they don’t make manuals to date people like you – And he would just tell me that his life is like no one else’s and being with him is different than being with anyone else — He made himself think he was “special” or whatever —
Anyone who ends up with this moron is going to have to be naive like i was for about a year and then start picking up on all the signals or be so dumb to go along with all his bullshit stories and put up with all his chaos! Either way, I guess I should thank my lucky stars that I wasn’t as naive as he thought I was! 🙂
Denbronco,
my exspath is a bit different from most spaths. I KNOW that it’s a huge red flag when they slander their ex-wives or ex-gfs, but my exspath put a twist on it. He didn’t exactly speak badly of them.
He would speak of his gf that committed suicide like it was so sad and tragic.
Then there was another one, who took off in her car to escape him and he chased her on his motorcycle to try and “save” her from hurting herself. He would say that she was very dumb and without him, she would have ended up doing drugs and living on the street. He said that she ruined her life after she left him. Again, speaking tragically about it. Then there is me. He was telling everyone how tragic my drug and alcohol addiction was and how he desperately wanted to prevent me from committing suicide.
Instead of slandering the ex-gfs, he “paints a picture” and lets you come to your own conclusions.
He did the same with his mom. I don’t know how, but he made me hate her before I ever even met her. He told me about how tragic the break up of his parents was. It was all because his mom couldn’t stay faithful, while his dad was in Alaska working to support the family.
Actually his dad was screwing every whore on the alaska pipeline, where he worked. His mom told me before she died.
The stories are still 180°, he just tells it differently.
Skylar,
Sounds like you’re much much much much better without him in your life! Come to think of it whenever I would talk to my exspath about my ex-husband and my relationship with him I had nothing ill to say about him. I can’t recall what book it was that I read where the author listed qualities of a spath and then qualities that most women want or seek in men- the list consisted of something like this:
Good looking
Egotistical
Charming
Overly attentive
Arrogant
Overly Confident….then there was a list that looked something like this:
Honest
Genuine
Sympathetic
Compassionate
Reliable
Flexible
Sincere
Loving
Faithful
Now when you look at those two lists most women will tell you that want a man that has the qualities in the second list and any man who has those qualities in the first list are not what women desire yet that’s what most spaths have…the ones who have the second set of qualities don’t exist in spaths! And when I read this book and looked over the list I was struck by how true it was and there it was in black & white starring me in the face.
Here I was a successful, smart women who knew what she wanted in a man yet I went for those qualities in the first list!
It was a small revelation/ realization that my ex husband had all those right qualities; we had other issues but looking back nothing that couldn’t have been fixed…then while separated the ex spath came into my life and my life’s never been the same…. Not to mention I let a very good man get away while going with the bad man