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.
Louise,
yeah, it seems as if they are in heaven with us at first doesn’t it? They are just faking it. The only thing that is making them happy is that they are on the hunt and they’ve begun the game again.
My exspath had many different kinds of victims: young innocent girls, middle aged millionaires, an elderly billionaire, street walking prostitutes, drugged up methheads and average people who had no idea that he was targeting them.
One might wonder what all these victims had in common. They had nothing in common except that they have emotions and he wanted to feed off of them. He wanted to watch their faces as he manipulated them for supply.
When I met the guy in the sushi bar, I asked him, “What did the spath want from me? I was just a 17 year old girl.” Sushi Guy said, “he wanted something you had.” I pressed him for a more specific answer but he wouldn’t say more. Now I know that he wanted EVERYTHING I had that he didn’t, including and especially my emotions. Spaths envy us everything and anything. When I was with him, I learned to eat very quickly because he would inhale his own food and then just take the food right off my plate. He was so envious he couldn’t bear to see me eat…even though I had just paid for his food too.
It’s all about envy and its counterpart, shame.
KatyDid – what you said makes so much sense and when I first joined LF, I read others stories and thought to myself, “well, my exspath didn’t so that, but he did do this…..” so I was often confused. You’re right that one trait all spaths have in common is having no regard for others – inhumane!
I do still find myself questioning myself as a person because of what my ex did and said to me – I am the first to admit that i haven’t made all the best decisions in my life and that I haven’t always done the right thing, I have lied in the past, I am first to also admit that I have cheated on someone before, but I feel I am different than my ex because I recognize my wrong doing(s) and I took responsibility for those poor choices — however, according to my ex spath, I am “destined” to always be a cheater, to always be unfaithful/dishonest — and he says this because I was open with him about my past because I explained to him the wrong I have done in previous relationships and what I expected in return. I will never forget him telling me that he is the man for me and he would never hurt me like that – yeah right!
In any case, why do I still question what the exspath said about me to my face? Why do I still think maybe he is right? Although I know, all he was doing was blaming for how he is…..
Many spaths are able to ferret out that which is our most vulnerable trait, a core wound. They are able to do this b/c as a being who is not emotionally involved, they are able to stand with the perspective of an observer, and watch your unconscious reactions.
If an spath says something about you to your face that seemed right, it’s more likely a core wound that you haven’t processed. Mebbie such a core childhood wound that you weren’t aware of it, b/c we tend to put such painful thoughts into the back of our awareness, esp if we think we can’t do anything about it.
For whatever he said that stuck with you, process the truth of it. We tend to horriblize and the truth is, we ain’t angels, but neither are we spaths (whoo hoo for that!). We’ve all done bad things, but I bet we knew it was wrong, that we weren’t entitled. IMO, Karma comes from FAILING to learn the lesson. If you cheated on a partner, it’s not destiny unless you don’t learn NOT To. Learn the lesson and poof, that needn’t affect you ever again.
SOME very intelligent spaths have this ability to zero in on our core wounds, and others are complete clueless thugs and just say whatever until they hit a sore spot. Even a dead clock is right twice a day…. Sorry your spath got into your head this way. IMO, if you Process the wound, his poison will be purged. As Maya Angelou says, (paraphrased) when ya know better, you’ll do better.
Thanks KatyDid — This is exactly what my spath did to me;but i learned from all my past mistakes, I grew from them, I saw the pain it caused those close to me and I didn’t repeat those mistakes. I also knew what I was doing was wrong – but I did it anyhow, however felt like a gnat after I did those horrible things (i.e. cheating on someone).
Thanks for the words of encouragement – Like I stated, the spath was very good at getting into my head and twisting the conversation to being on him and his actions, to somehow it being on me – I would tell him that he is untrustworthy because of all the lies and deceit he fed to me time and time again – and to that notion, he would bring up something I told to him when we first met about something I did like 5+ years prior….and why I told him that was because there were mistakes I made, that I learned from and now expect honesty.
I almost wish I didn’t open up to him about past relationships, but he somehow got me to start talking about it and it felt comfortable talking about it – he made me feel comfortable that he was different than anyone I had ever been with — yes he was different….HE IS A SPATH….
KatyDid – hope you’re having a wonderful Xmas! 🙂 Thanks so much for your insight, it’s uplifting to hear!
🙂
KatyDid:
I realize they are all different, but from what I have seen and read, they do have an awful lot of the same qualities in the way they operate and the things they do. Even the things you told me above, I thought uh huh, mine acted like that, too. They are all individuals and they are all unique. It’s just like I can sit here and write and tell you that mine was the most charming man ever, but until you met him, you could never experience it. I guess being charmed lies in the beholder though. So many people on here talk about how charming their spaths are, but I bet if I met them, I personally wouldn’t think they were charming at all! I am not easily charmed. Never was. So that means that my spath had to be charming for me to fall. Yep, me and a ton of other women…all just falling at his feet. So kind of an example of how we all look at people differently.
Thanks for your post. I hope it’s OK to say this, but mine did a lot of what you said…the being absolutely superior, the not doing these things consciously (I posted something about that a few weeks ago…I said that I know mine didn’t start out to destroy me…he just wanted what he wanted and he did whatever he had to do to get it, but he wasn’t thinking about ME…it was all about HIM…it all comes very naturally to him…it’s just how he operates).
So yes, I agree…of course they are all different…they are all individuals and of course it’s not how they ALL are. I get it. But I still have to believe that there are a lot of similarities after all I have seen and read. How can I not?? 🙂
skylar:
Oh, yes…heaven. I could see it in his eyes. Wow. It makes me kind of sad for a moment to know it was all fake. Of course I have known this for a long time now, but to think about it again…to think of those first moments of the relationship and to know it meant nothing…it’s just tragic to me.
The something I had that the spath wanted was only sex. I hate that. Because once they get that, it’s over. The discard comes pretty quickly when it’s only about sex. At least with money or something, they stick around longer. But I know, I know…having them stick around is not a prize…haha! It’s better for them to be gone.
I am so glad that in about 30 minutes for me, it will be December 26 and Christmas will be over. I hate to say that because I love to celebrate Jesus’ birth, but when you don’t have a “normal” holiday, it’s hard. I know a lot of us on here don’t have “normal” holidays so I bet a lot of us are having a sigh of relief that it’s over.
Louise
I look at your query as a pursuit of logic.
Are there similarities? Well yes, IMO, I do think there are similarities. But similarities wasn’t my subject. My subject was about strong personalities making declarative statements, but those statements are OPINION, NOT FACT. We don’t want to get carried away adopting a belief based on someone’s OPINION.
I just wanted to caution you that just b/c one person makes a statement “THIS is what an spath is”, don’t take that as gospel b/c it’s NOT gospel. Such statements are valid, or not, depending on what kinds of spath YOU have experienced. I’ve seen people INSIST that I was wrong just b/c I have a difference perspective. No. I am NOT wrong. I merely have a different OPINION, no LESS valid than someone’s statement, just as they are no MORE valid than my opinion. It’s important that we not give power to someone’s OPINION.
An example of someone’s belief:
I’ve read some statements that are just nonsense. Like spaths are left handed. Well, some are. BUT such a statement is statistically SO vague (and the study was undefined) as to be unreliable. It’s a “SO WHAT”? So many spaths are left handed. But “SO WHAT”? We can’t use that as a guide b/c there is such an enormous population of left handed people that ARE NOT SPATH.
ps OF COURSE it’s okay for you to say your opinion. It’s just as VALID as mine! And as VALID as ANYONE’s! AND important for you to share b/c how can I learn unless I get to hear someone else’s perspective? That way I can ponder and if I have something I think should be said, I will respond. As should you. We are ALL wise women (and men) here.
KatyDid:
I just thought of something else. A lot of women on here talk about how their spaths were violent. Mine was never violent. Actually, he was very gentle…I don’t think physically he would ever hurt a fly, but emotionally, he will destroy you. So yeah…they all have their certain characteristics. And I agree with what Oxy has said before about how the term “Psychopath” puts a bad name out there because people associate psychopath with “serial killer” and that is the farthest from the truth. The one I know has caused so much emotional damage to so many women it’s pitiful. He has destroyed so many people, yet never physically killed anyone (as far as I know). Sometimes I have to wonder if the emotional killing isn’t worse.
KatyDid:
I see what you are saying and I get it…I agree.
Aren’t you glad Christmas is almost over? 🙂
Louise,
Yes, he wanted sex but he wanted something more. He wanted you to pine over him when he discarded you. That would be the proof that he won the game. It’s always a game to them.
If he only wanted sex, he could have that with his wife or with a prostitute. He wanted sex with YOU, so that he could “hook” your emotions. Furthermore, after sex with you, he didn’t just leave you, he kept you on a string while cheating with the OW. He wanted to hurt you.
Something about you drew him to you like a predator to prey. While I’m sure you are beautiful, I think it was more than that. I think it was your innocence and the fact that you hold yourself in high esteem. It is apparent in the way that you post, that you take care of yourself. They notice these things and they want to take that away from us.
Your spath finally gave up on you when he saw that he couldn’t suck anymore out of you. You were so lucky that you had good boundaries.
Yeah, the spath was as giddy as a kid with a new toy when we first met. Duper’s delight, I’m sure.