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,
and they will cut off sex too.
Nothing works better for avoiding sex with a spath.
Thanks Skylar,
Yes my whole relationship with him was through trauma bonding pretty much.
Trauma 1 I got very ill while I was seeing him
Trauma 2 The relationship with my friend
Trauma 3 His constant fighting and breaking up and sob stories about how miserable his relationship was
Trauma 4 very INTENSE gaslighting…….the list goes on and on.
When I started to ‘feel’ feelings for him, I actually had the sense to sit back and think WOOOOOOO! You have only met this guy FIVE TIMES for a total of about 12 hours and you are MADLY in love with him. Something just wasn’t right and I knew it.
I have never contacted my friend about it. I have never spoken to anyone about it all except my partner who I felt had to know about it to help me heal. That may seem harsh as I probably now know a lot more about the situation now than he does or probably ever will unless he too has a lightbulb moment that something just isn’t right. But my first priority is ME and MY relationship and getting that back to full health again before I worry about anyone else. I believe he was still seeing him when I pushed him to end it and I do not want to risk talking to him about things if he is still involved with the ‘thing’. Chances are he wouldn’t believe me anyways as he has been with the ‘thing’ for much loner than I was and I’m sure is much more ‘attached’ than I was.
This is what I honestly struggle with most in this whole thing ‘telling’ people about this person. His partner is very wealthy and TOTALLY under his control, as are his friends. I call them the B-Brothers. The bimbos, the bank, the brawn (definitely another spath who likes to ‘rape’ his sexual partners) and the brains. He hacks his partners online accounts and knows all his passwords and everything and he rips his friends off blind financially. He is a TOTAL parasite and they all worship him blindly as he has them all totally segregated from anyone who is a danger to his ‘scheme’.
He is a VERY dangerous little man, so I just want to stay away from him and anyone who has anything to do with him.
My sister and I were both married to psychopaths in the early 1970’s living in Annapolis, MD. When the two met, they became like evil bosom buddies. They both worked in DC and got drunk every night before coming home from work “to avoid rush hour”. It was the most sickening thing I have ever seen in my life.
I had a 4 year old son who never saw his daddy. My brother had gotten my husband a summer job at a very high ranking law firm in DC and the moron was a humiliation to all of us. He clearly did not get an offer to come back after graduation from law school. They feed off of each other and became more than twice as bad.
My sister’s psychopath was more blatantly offensive and corrupt and the show off comedian. He physically beat up my sister and threw her out when she got pregnant. Mine only tried to seduce the woman next door.
Our brother got the family tickets at Kennedy Center in the President’s Box, what a special honor. Everyone came including the children and the psychopaths arrived late, drunk and obnoxious.
Thank God they are out of our lives forever.
Never Again,
I can totally relate to him being a “very dangerous little man”. Mine is the same. Compartmentalizes all his victims. It’s amazing that his minions are all working toward the same goal, yet he tells them each a different story, a different angle, no two minions see the same thing.
ugh, it gives me the creeps just thinking about it.
Skylar,
When I say ‘dangerous’ I only mean in what he is capable of via manipulating his ‘useful idiots’. HE himself is a gutless, pathetic little pissant!
He followed me home from work about 2 months ago and by chance I just popped my bag into my home and went straight back out again so as I walked out I saw him right across the street, but he was a little ahead of me so I wasn’t 100% sure it was him. I started to walk faster, so did he, I started to run after him, he started to run away like the sad, pathetic little worm he is. I lost him because he hid somewhere in a side street, but I know it was him. I am pretty sure he’d been tracking me via the GPS on my phone which I have now disabled.
I have no fear of him on a one to one level, it’s more his ability to lie in a heartbeat and manipulate that scares me. He is VERY bad at what he does and he will slip up at some point and it will all come tumbling down and THAT’S when you get them! I can wait 🙂
Never again,
Yes, I understood what you meant. Mine is dangerous is many ways but his ability to manipulate, even the police, is what makes him the most dangerous. He will set up his minions to do the dirty work and take the fall. Nobody every speaks up because…Who would believe them? And since the stories everyone has are all a little different, there can’t be any corroboration.
Mine is actually very good at what he does. He feels nothing. Everything is cold and calculated, but the mask of sanity hides that. He appears so kind and warm.
skylar:
Yep, he cut the sex off, too. Not that I was going to do it with him at that point anyway, but he just kept dangling the possibility of it like a carrot.
I don’t think the mask really slips until they want ‘rid of you’. I think once that happens that they actually just want you to go, but will put up with you until you’ve had enough and that is why they get so cruel. I think the second the mask comes off they are done personally, then it is up to us to get away. You’re then just the dying mouse they toy with for fun.
I have been pretty lucky really. Spath 1 kept coming back (for sex), but 2 & 3 all but disappeared once the game was ‘over’. Weirdly 2 had given me a mobile phone in HIS name that I still used (& paid for) for a year until I left the country. The day AFTER I left, the phone was disconnected, yet I’d had no contact from him or anyone who knew him for well over 18 months. 3 may be doing stuff, but if he is I certainly don’t know about it.
Never again, you talk about “his partner” and “your partner” and I am a bit confused, are these romantic partner relationships or business partner relationships? I’m unable to follow your story because of the different meanings of the word partner possible.
IN any case, the lies and the dishonesty are the hallmarks of psychopathy, and the “instant” bonding is the “love bomb”
I am concerned though about him STALKING YOU and that sounds more dangerous to me than it may to you. BE CAREFUL, he may not always be so cowardly.
Louise,
I still got the sex, but it was like fucking a corpse. Each time I saw him after he was under the impression he’d ‘won’, it became more and more pointless. It really did feel like he was only doing it to keep the ‘game’ going, there was nothing to it and that was enough for me to play my final card.
The last time I saw him he looked at me with those dead eyes and said ‘I bet I am stronger than you’. It sent a shiver down my spine and I got rid of him quick smart. As I rushed him out he said ‘this is the first time I’ve ever been kicked out of someone’s home’ I thought to myself, ‘why do I not believe that’…..