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,
Very true – I never looked at it that way. My exspath did kill me in some ways, because I completely lost my identity. My world revolved around him, I quit hanging out with my friends (not because he told me too) and family, instead because I was so “stressed” and “scared” that if I didn’t spend the weekends at his house, he would go be with someone else. So I made it a point, a ritual if you will, to be at his house each weekend, even if it meant he was out working or got called out to work. It became sickening when I would miss my own brothers wedding and made excuses to my family as to why I couldnt attend; just to be with my exspath, so he wouldn’t “cheat” on me -little did I know, regardless of me being there on the weekends or not, he still cheated.
The stress I’ve endured the past year is unreal – I became depressed. I went into this relationship w/ my ex saying what you did “If you ever cheat on me, I am gone with the wind” but I didn’t leave – I continued to stay. Maybe I fell too hard for his prince charming tactics from the start that I continued to be blind to the fact he was a manipulating, self loathing excuse for a human being.
I disliked myself enough to where I felt I didn’t deserve any better and all I kept seeing was the intsy teensy bit of time when he was “nice” to me — and that was only in the beginning.
I commend you for leaving or finally seeing your exspath for what he really was – I can’t imagine the aftermath and the road to recovery you had to endure and probably continue to — at least you’re much more wiser these days, right? 🙂
You and Truthspeak are an inspiration and a great support system for those of us who are just now recognizing, realizing, and gaining knowledge about those spaths that have made our life hell…. so many thanks to you for sharing your story and insight 🙂
Skylar:
My “dwelling” in this case finding a “guy next door” type to be a partner, while founded with good intent, I still need to question my state of mind that I would think that somebody who posted a video of himself masturbating on X-tube would be in fact, the nice guy next door.
So, lesson number one — don’t judge a book by its cover.
Louise:
“That’s so weird that you found his video six months before actually meeting him.”
Yup, I made the connection when I came across his profile on the dating site. His profile name sounded very familiar “ABCboy” so I Googled it. His X-tube account used the same name.
Also, when I saw his taste was to bareback porn, that is when I realized he is HIV+.
And that of course is weird cosmic thing #2. Our first serious date was on World AIDS Day…
Then the ultimate weirdness that my own health issues led to a very real HIV scare for me, one that I was open and honest about to him yet he was not with me, to the point of him dumping me the next day.
But sociopaths do that. They dump you when they either find somebody else or you unmask them, even if you don’t realize it.
So, lesson number #2, for me as a gay man is that there are HIV+ people out there and don’t assume that because you meet somebody who appears to be reserved and charming, that he is also not HIV+…
Dear Truth,
I hear what you mean about not trying to fix things
That is a big problem for me! I do recognize it. I am so angry and having trouble realizing and accepting that there is no way to communicate to the ex spath how very “wrong” he is or the destruction he has caused because he has no comprehension of the pain of others. Living dead is a suitable description. Do spath’s ever hook up with another spath? One can only hope.
This blog is a true blessing. Just being able to vent keeps me NC. Going into the 2nd week!!! I felt powerless before. I do see the value of NC. My father raped me and had sex with me regularly for a year at age of 11. My first husband beat me. My second husband molested my daughters and the third is a sociopath. I don’t want any more relationships. It is obviously not something that God wants for my life. I’ve never known an honest, genuine or real romantic or decent man-woman relationship. It is not in the cards for me. No man has ever honored me so from here on out, I will honor myself. No more abuse! My soul is tired and completely fed up. I don’t trust anyone. I have been treated as a thing, more like a garbage can than a human being. I am tired and I see why it will be ok to be dead. This life has been horrible and I will never know what I would have been in life if my father had only honored me.
DenBroncos007, I believe and agree that spaths intend to kill their targets, whether it’s metaphoric or literal. The person that I was in 2011 is dead and gone. That person was killed off by a series of betrayals, plain and simple. And, given what I know from Skylar’s and OxD’s experiences, I have no doubt in my mind that the exspath would have caused my premature death in some manner. Because of where he works and the people that he works WITH, I am still wary that someone might appear at my door or on a highway, somewhere, to see that I’m rendered extinct. Why would I even entertain this? Because I know that the exspath has an intense hatred for women – intense hatred – and that it is far, far cheaper to pay someone a few hundred dollars than to pay a lifetime of alimony. For a spath, “murder” or legal consequences do NOT factor into their choices and actions.
Revelation, I would strongly, strongly urge you to consider some strong counseling therapy. I make this suggestion because your history sounds very much like my own, and my lifetime of choices and decisions have been based upon fears, attempts to predict, and flawed systems of beliefs. Until I took a long, hard look at these issues in strong counseling therapy, I never understood WHY I got myself involved with such malicious people and was so easily targeted and manipulated.
Being sexually molested as a child creates a ripple-effect that can span a person’s entire lifetime if they don’t choose to address that deliberate and vicious damage that was done to them. I know this from personal experience, Revelation.
Whether or not the abuses occured yesterday, or four decades ago, the damage is there and wants to be addressed. To find a good, strong, and educated counselor that “gets it” about what you’ve endured and experienced, you can contact your local domestic violence hotline for a list of names. You can also visit http://www.ndvh.org. Most of these hotlines have a network of resources that are in place to assist people in surviving their experiences.
What is important for you to accept and understand is that you didn’t “deserve” the things that have been done to you. Having typed that, you recognize that you’ve had unhealthy experiences and it’s now a choice before you. You can choose to take control of your own life and decisions, or not. If you choose to engage in strong counseling, everything in your life will begin to change. From making choices as to whom you want as friends, to refusing to tolerate workplace bullsh*t, you will see your whole being positively changing. If you don’t opt to engage in counseling…….well, it’s going to be a hard, hard journey on that Healing Path.
http://www.ndvh.org
Brightest blessings
When I realized what really happened — that I was the victim of a psychopath, and not involved in some “relationship gone wrong” — the next thing I found out was that I needed support, but that it was going to be hard to find. I immersed myself into reading about psychopaths and found 2 books I HIGHLY recommend:
The Emotional Rape Syndrome*****
Women Who Love Psychopaths***
I found a therapist who understands, which is a godsend
and, miracle of miracles, my mother understands and is supportive! No, not one of my friends gets it or even seems to want to try. Don’t waste your time trying to get support from people who can’t or won’t support you! You ex-path obviously will never be able to provide any understanding or compassion; cross him off the list.
Even if YOU are your only source of support for now, just believe that you WILL be OK, just believe that you WILL be able to love and trust again. If you have no one, read The Emotional Rape Syndrome. The author gets it, and expresses it with genuine care. And of course there is much support to be found here.
Arianna;
I am glad your were able to find a therapist who truly understands. That was an issue with my recovery.
BBE, the only way that I ever found a strong counselor that “got it” was by contacting my local domestic violence hotline. I had engaged in counseling previously, and was always referred by the insurance company’s list of counseling professionals.
While I believe that counselors are educated and understand the terminology and assessments, I do not believe that ALL counselors “get it” about spathy. And, finding a strong counselor that “gets it” is like trying to shoot the apple off of a soda can with a crossbow at 200 yards. It MAY hit the target by sheer, dumb luck, but it’s unlikely that the arrow will hit its mark.
Professionals on local DVH lists are recognized specialists that have a clear understanding of what victims of domestic violence and sociopathy experience. And, they also have a clear understanding of core-issues. Within the first 2 sessions, my counselor had pegged several core issues for me to explore, and she was spot-on.
She also began asking “hard” questions, immediately. She didn’t sit there, jot down notes, and nod her head while responding, “I see,” or, “I understand.” Oh, no. She was involved in our sessions and asked some very hard (and, painful) questions for me to consider. And, I found her by calling the local domestic violence hotline.
Brightest blessings
The therapist I am going to actually did ask me a lot of question, she did jot down notes, but also was the one who told me my ex was a sociopath – Here I was thinking he was just emotionally unavailable and a womanizer – but she told me out right I was emotionally abused and that we would need to do a lot of work to uncover why I felt the need or desire to be with someone like this man – Come to find out my very first husband (not my 2nd who I must add was the “boring/normal” man) was also a sociopath but I didn’t see it until I began therapy – so I have a pattern, but why I have the pattern and feel a need to be with spaths I still don’t know – which is why I’m in therapy
Time will tell how helpful this is to me, but for now, I feel it’s a step in the right direction to not repeating past mistakes.
So strange how I let the “good man” get away because I was bored – yet I had everything i ever wanted in a man with my 2nd husband, except for that “excitement” — My second husband was actually prince charming w/o hooking me in the beginning – he stayed himself from day one to the day we split — he was real.