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.
Anyone besides me think many of these guys (psychopaths) are closet gays and clearly misogynistic? The one I encountered sure seems to have a gay gait and butt…and it is not the cute gay guy look at all. It is flat out creepy.
Betsy,
spaths all hate their mothers, even the female spaths. So yes, they are all misogynists. My exspath hid that though. I never knew until the very end, that he hated women or his mom or me. When I realized that I was his substitute victim because he couldn’t kill his mother, I started to research substitute victims. That’s when I found Rene Girard and everything fell into place.
But spaths are not gay or bi. They will screw anything. If they act gay, it is only to lure another gay person. My exspath acted very masculine around me.
I think that spaths are neither gay nor straight because spaths aren’t anything, they change with the wind. They mirror what you want them to be. They have no core. Like vampires.
Sky
Alot of people have ‘mother issue’s’ that does not make them a spath. And then there are those who have mother’s that are spath’s. My X seemed to adore his mother, that didnt keep him from lying to her or taking advantage of her. She didnt want much to do with him, because he had been such a problem to her most of his life but I do think he liked his mother.
I agree most spath’s use sex as a tool to get what they want with men or women. My X did, and so did my mother. But at the same time I assume there are bi-sexuals that are not just opportunist.
Sky, your opinions are welcome but just like me they are just your opinion, not text book fact’s.
Moon,
that would be your opinion right?
😆
yes it is 🙂
My x-spath hated is father, not his mother. He would not go to his father’s funeral and he actually seemed proud that he did not go, although his sister did attend. His mother passed at the same time. In fact, both his mother and father where both in the same hospital at the same time (cancer) and obviously he never visited his father…
He showed no signs of being misogynist. Quiet the opposite, as for a gay man, he has an unusually high number of female friends — 60% of those on his FB are women and most have a similar look: attractive and blond. I think in them, he is searching for a mommy figure…
Nor is he bisexual. He never had sex with a woman and the way that conversion went, I 100% believe him.
However, other than being a sociopath and possibly BPD, he clearly suffers from a gay male version of the “madonna-whore” complex, where he cannot integrate sex and love or even any form of intimacy, since sociopaths cannot truly love.
BBE,
for 25 years, I had NO clue that my spath hated his mom. He told me that she used to buy him the best presents and she knew just how to put him to sleep by rubbing his ears gently.
It was only at the last con, when he called her a C-word, for no reason, out of the blue, that it all started to come to light.
The other thing I would NEVER have guessed is that he was doing guys. He has a very masculine demeanor. The strong silent type, like Clint Eastwood. He also showed a tender compassionate mask, who loved animals and treated women equally to men. riiiight.
For 25 years I watched these masks. They were what made me deny all the red flags I’d seen. Because a man this good and kind hearted, couldn’t possibly be a murderer, a conman, a rapist and a demon. No way.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying they are liars and deceivers beyond anything we could’ve imagined, so take everything you thought you knew with a grain of salt.
We’ve been taught to believe in words and that’s why psychopaths are often so succesful coning people with just one weapon: words.
Psychopaths probably hate anything that it’s alive because they don’t like spontaneity and free willing in others. They can in their sick manner “love” a car, a picture, even a dead body but never an alive and independent creature. They need control, that’s why a few of them can become necrophiliac, which is a extreme degree of dominance because of the total ability of being in control of the other “partenaire”.
Anyway, wish you all a merry Christmas free from too many intrusive thoughts about those nature mistakes 🙂
Betsybugs, the responses regarding whom spaths hate are spot-on. They hate EVERYONE.
The exspath expressed disdain (serious disdain) for his mother, father, grandparents, siblings, siblings’ spouses, coworkers, neighbors……everyone.
Eva, Happy Holidays to you, too. What a terrific gift to be free of “too many intrusive thoughts.” I’ll take that, even without paper and a frilly bow!
Brightest blessings
Skylar;
I do not dispute the notion that spaths are liars. This does not mean that everything they say is a lie.
You were not present in the conversation when the x-spath told me that he was never with a woman. I am not going into the details, but the nature of the conversation was such that I believe him. Moreover, I have never seen any other evidence of any attraction to women.
Many gay men, even sociopath ones, never have sex with a woman — fact.
More important is that this conversation, being very awkward, supported the notion that he was “reserved and sorted” when in fact he was not. Essentially, he used “female virginity” to distract from the fact that he was hardly a “male virgin” and more specifically, on the receiving end if you know what I mean, 🙂
In retrospect, this conversation was actually humiliating to me, once I learned the truth about him…
Truthspeak;
I do not remember my x-spath saying anything nice about anyone. He called is best friend a “c*nt”. This friend was in a LTR with a former boyfriend of the x-spath. Of course the x-spath was not talking to this guy…
He sees his sister very infrequently and did not say much about her. This seems to be mutual, as she only once of FB made any comments about him, in reference to a lunch she had with him. No pokes, likes to pictures he posted. Not even a happy birthday comment. On FB, his contact with her was even less. Zero. No comments or likes to any of her pictures, even thos of his nephews. No happy birthday or happy anniversary. Nothing.
When I asked him about the last person he dated and why it ended, his response was cold: “Because of my flight attendant schedule, I am only in London about half the time and he did not make much time for me.” He said nothing else about him.
Sounds like to me this guy tired of his BS very quickly.
The only people he ever said anything nice about were his two nephews, then aged 8 and 10. However, the way he talked about them made me uncomfortable, as well as the look in his eye when he was describing them. Perhaps there is a reason why his sister seems as distant with him as he is with her and it may have to do with the boys…