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.
Okay Louise. One more idea. Whenever you are hard on yourself, reach your two arms around yourself and HUG long and solid.
KatyDid:
HUUUGGGGGS!!!!
Louise, perhaps you can fall a little bit in love with yourself?
Dear Louise,
You said:
“I am thinking though”we say they don’t care about anyone or anything and the next woman will be just supply and they will never really love them, etc., etc. Then why is mine still apparently in contact with the woman he “fell in love” with five years ago? I think she just moved here this year and he is still in contact with her even after five years! He’s obviously not tired of her. She must have something he likes. I hate this. Makes me wonder if she does everything right. I felt like everything I did was wrong. ”
The first thing I thought when I read this was that he is only with her or int. in her because he can’t have her-meaning he isn’t owning her- YET. When he has made her “crazy” just like the rest, he will move on. Somehow she’s not “victimized” enough for him yet and it’s only a game to him. If she’s not broken she’s a “harder” person for him to tear down which makes it even more exciting for him. The excitement lies in the game and the attention he gets from her during the game. Nothing more or less. Stop comparing your self to her. He WILL do the same to her as he did to you, if he get’s his hands on her. For her sake I hope she escapes his tactics.
skylar,
of course they make choices but they always choose to have the same behaviours, and I think that must be because they don’t do it on purpose, they follow some kind of natural instinct. And my intuition is that they do not feel they’re bad but rather the contrary, the others are bad because try to cut their freedom. When they say they’re evil they repeat what have heard many times from many victims. I think it’s a provocation, you know they like it very much to play with people, to have them twirling around. Are mental plays that give them that sensation of being in control that they like so much.
I was short time with mine but i was able to observe they say many things they don’t really understand. Remember Cleckley’s “semantic aphasia”? They use many words they don’t thoroughly understand, they have just observed some words get people’s attention more effectively.
The problem that probably all of us have is that it is impossible to understand them because they feel and therefore think differently. The only thing one can do is to detect them and to put them out of our lives, and warning others that if they didn’t know that most psychopaths are poisonous social predators but not usually obvious antisocial violent individuals, maybe they’ll have the opportunity of discovering it first hand because there’s one around.
Louise, yes, they have some characteristics that are not negative: the energy, the enthusiasm, which is real, is not faked, the problem is that it last little.
But don’t be obsessed, he, in his manners loved you, but just for a moment, it’s always like that and it can’t be helped. Sunflower is right, If there are other women that stay long time with him is due to their own psychology, because are themselves who keep on searching for the psychopath, lying to themselves, distorting their own perceptions, and anulating their own personalities.
darwinsmom:
I do love myself most of the time. I take very good care of myself outwardly. It’s the inside I need to work on I am sure. It’s a life long process I think.
Sunflower:
I agree. I posted something to that effect somewhere else here. I think he just has not broken her yet. I think she is very dynamic and therefore a huge challenge for him. I know I need to stop comparing myself to her. I hope she can escape, too, but I don’t think it will happen. The fact that she moved here is evidence in itself that she is hooked. Sigh. One more victim.
Eva:
Yes, the energy and enthusiasm is very real…you are so smart and in tune…how do you know this stuff?? 🙂 And yes, it lasts a very short time. Everything is superficial.
I agree…I think he did like me a lot. But of course it was for a short time; didn’t last.
So spot on…yes, I think if a woman is in his life, it’s because THEY are the ones pursuing him…searching for him, bending themselves into pretzels to fit into his life. He usually is just on to the next one. But if a woman wants to give up her soul to try to be with him, of course he’ll take it. He’ll only lead her on a long string, a VERY long string.
Thanks for your insight!!!
Louise
Not at all, I also learn many things from you all. What i tried to mean is that psychopaths we all met are useful in relation with us.
The relationship with them gives us important information about us, teach us about ourselves. And that’s the most interesting discovery: to know ourselves a bit better. Not if they should change because we don’t like their feelings because are weak, inconstant, strange or whatever.
To put up with them is mostly a torture, so rather we should wonder why the hell did or do I miss such a difficult person with so few qualities. It’s because of the few qualities, so that’s what it’s worth to investigate, why do we search for stimulation, do we want kind of to evade from reality, etc.
There are many questions more interesting to investigate than investigating if psychopaths are more of this or less of that or worse or better than us.
Eva,
I both agree and disagree with your statement that they don’t know they are evil.
I disagree that they don’t know. I’ve known MANY MANY spaths. Different types of spaths, male and female. They are all “intelligent” enough to ascertain that they are evil. In fact, all of them actively reach out to encourage others to be evil. That’s why my sister was trying to convince me that it’s OK to be evil. She wanted me to go down the slippery slope with her. My ex-spath wrote a letter to God in which he admits that he encouraged others to sin against God. He has an active vendetta AGAINST God. He believes in God and hates Him.
I agree with you though, that without a capacity to feel deeply, they can’t really understand what they are doing. You are right, that their shallow emotions preclude them from making other choices. Only evil feels right to a person who is so shallow that they can only perceive the material world and everything is a game to them.
My spath sister keeps score of every favor she does and the favors done for her. She is rigid that way. One day, I asked her to serve the salad into individual bowls. She started placing one salad leaf into each bowl, passing them out like cards so that everyone would get an equal amount. WTF? who does that? It really opened up a window into how she thinks.