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.
Thanks for your comments Skylar. I do see the blessing in this. I underestimated him for sure! He cries all the time and I wonder if it is because he knows what he is. I believed his every word! I wanted the love of this man and it never occurred to me that he could be this twisted. Nobody ever told me either.
I will recognize the next spath because I will keep my ego out of the way! I wanted to be loved and cherished and adored by this man. I was the perfect prey!
BBE, it’s really weird how your experiences with the spath unfolded. Seriously. Sometimes, I allow myself to wonder if there is some kind of Cosmic hand that puts things in place, in such an order, and at such a time for them to unfold in the manners that they do. And, I don’t mean that some malevolent BEING is out there setting people up. It’s just curious to me how nearly every story on this site has a clear purpose (for lack of a better word) that gives us the opportunities to learn important (albiet PAINFUL) lessons.
I’m just so glad that you discovered what this guy was, and in time to save yourself.
Revelation, later…..MUCH later, what the spath did to you won’t be so much of a focus as how to rebuild your own boundaries and restructure your systems of beliefs.
Right now, it’s a matter of making it through the day without giving in to the urge to “fix” things, or tell the spath all about himself – how completely he damaged you. This is a “normal” and painful part of the extraction process. VERY painful, I would say.
Skylar is 100% spot-on about spaths being “among us like a fungus.” A sociopath isn’t always a romantic partner. Many people on this site (and, in real life) have had spath encounters with coworkers, supervisors, doctors, attorneys (imagine that!), law enforcement (can you believe THAT?), parents, siblings, and best friends. In one year, I had encounters with 3 spaths, and one of them engaged in stalking, harassment, and vehicular tampering for a few months. So…..yeah……they’re everywhere.
Brightest blessings
These predators are personality disordered, and dangerous.
Woman are afraid to be alone, yet so vulnerable to another relationship. I, too became a victim. I was married for 31 yrs. and alsways felt something was not right, yet because your married, you think maybe it is a bad day, and start making excuses to yourself. These people are ruthless, without remorse, yet they put on the mask of sanity in front of others. When the day you realize you are the victim, the spath turns it around, and tells people you are the one that is crazy. I have somewhat turned this around,
and I gave the authorities all info on him. When they get caught, they disappear. Recently because of what information I had and turned over, the spaths mother and brother killed themselves. Spaths are not only men, but woman too. We are what we are, and we should not change, but we need to keep our eyes wide open, not shut.
Edgeofsanity, I am so sorry for your experiences, and I don’t know how to respond to the suicides of the spath’s mother and brother. Seriously, I don’t know how to respond to that.
I have to disagree with your statement, “We are what we are, and we should not change…” I “was what I was,” and I NEEDED to change. I needed to alter my core beliefs and address a number of personal issues that allowed me to be a prime target for a predator.
Sure, I would LOVE to be one of those people who have a successful and contented life – it’s a desire that I’ve had throughout my lifetime. But, my personal issues and core-beliefs required change for me to heal and begin recovery. And, I have to say that everything about my emotional issues has undergone “change.” I’m 100% zero tolerant of “bad behaviors.” I am 100% on-guard with my boundaries. I am about 40% improved on expressing my feelings. I am about 40% improved with separating my feelings from facts. The list could go on.
“Change” means risk. For most of us, “risk” means “pain.” We risk a hundred bucks at a Blackjack table, and walk away a loser. We risk driving above the speed limit because we’re late for work and wind up with a speeding ticket. But, change has been not only good for me, but absolutely necessary. If I had not made some of these changes, I would be looking for someone to replace the exspath and “save” me. Oh, no…..no, thank you. I have the ability to save myself, BY myself.
Brightest blessings
Revelation,
You sound just like me – meaning the position I am in how I’m feeling. The lies and deceit are so difficult for me, to this day, to comprehend. I wasn’t physically or “verbally” abused – my finances are still in tact, the exspath didn’t take my money – in the beginning he showered me with so many gifts that I recall thinking to myself, you barely even know me – yet here he was buying me expensive things – offering to take me places at the drop of a hat, wherever I wanted to go….at the time I did question all these gestures, especially when he started buying my teenage daughter things, yet he had never even met her! But I was so enthralled in the fantasy that a man like him actually existed that I failed to pay heed to the warning signs. Trust me, as soon as he knew he had me “hooked” he turned the complete opposite. I never received a gift, except on Xmas and my bday( which he forgot my bday anyways and got me the gift later).
Long story short, I feel emotionally abused because of all the mind tricks – When I would catch my ex in a lie, it was like talking to a wall w/ no emotions. I would be the one crying my eyes out and not one did he console me – often times I was left feeling hurt beyond words and wondering WTF just happened. Why am i the one who is begging to keep trying to make this work – he not once “begged” me to stay or “pleaded” with me to try to make things work – NEVER! It was always me and now I see it was because he knew he had “control” over me and that I wasn’t going to go anywhere.
He would tell me I was a very jealous person — yet I didn’t think I was jealous instead I was suspicious of his every move because no matter what….I would always catch him in a lie or find out he is cheating!
I am 2 weeks “sober” today- NO CONTACT! WHOO HOO! BUT……Why do I still wish he would call or reach out to me? Makes me somewhat sad that he hasn’t even contacted me and in a way makes me feel even worse than I did when I was with him? Why do i feel this way when I was in misery when I was with him???
Don’t get me wrong. We are what we are-meaning we started out trustworthy, loving, and caring, we are all of that, except we now know the red flags of the spath. It took all us down a road we did not want to be, but now we have choices, and are fully aware of this. I for one, continously covered up the emotional abuse and portrayed that I had the perfect family to strangers. I too had to cope with the illusion that was portrayed. It takes time, and every day I thank God that I had all documents to give to the authorties. Healing takes time, and we will survive!
Truthspeak;
“BBE, it’s really weird how your experiences with the spath unfolded. Seriously. Sometimes, I allow myself to wonder if there is some kind of Cosmic hand that puts things in place, in such an order, and at such a time for them to unfold in the manners that they do.”
My experience was beyond cosmic. Now, this is a bit embarrassing for me, but it is the truth:
Six months before I met the x-spath, I was wasting some time on X-tube. There, I see this guy had posted a video. The video was not well-watched. The person did not have a great body or any other porn-star attributes, but from a brief glimpse of his face, he seemed like the “guy next door” type, and I thought to myself, this is the type of person I should meet. To remind myself, I saved his video.
When the x-spath was first coming to my place, I decided I wanted nothing to hide, not that there was much. One thing I did was delete some files from my computer. I also deleted a Gay.com profile, not that I used it much.
One of the files I deleted was the video of the “guy next door.” I remember looking at the video and apologizing to him for deleting his video, but that maybe I had found my “guy next door.” I did not know it at the time, but the person in the video was the x-spath.
He lives in London, I live in New York…
The question is, what is to learn from such cosmic experiences?
Denbroncos says:
I am 2 weeks “sober” today- NO CONTACT! WHOO HOO! BUT—Why do I still wish he would call or reach out to me? Makes me somewhat sad that he hasn’t even contacted me and in a way makes me feel even worse than I did when I was with him? Why do i feel this way when I was in misery when I was with him???
You, like me, are addicted to the person. The ‘fix’ comes in when there is contact. Donna is right…the longer you have no contact, the better off you are. I pour over everything in this site. Remember, these people are NOT human. They are void of human emotion. They don’t think like the rest of us. Hurt, pain and anguish the cause to their victims mean nothing to them. And NO ONE can fix it.