Lovefraud recently received the following email from a woman whom we’ll call “Peggy Sue.”
I feel hopeless. I’m a target for sociopaths, or I’m addicted to them. My ex-fiancé was one. I was with him 7 years and was abused everyway possible. I was so confused with the lies and double life. He said I was crazy and I went on tons of medication and was completely isolated.
I finally was able to leave after 7 years with the help of police, only to move back to my dads with nothing and to start all over. A month later fell in love with another sociopath. My friends and family think I’m gonna end up dead by him or killing myself.
I have been to therapy they all just say move out and leave. I can’t that’s the problem. If I leave I always come back, like I’m addicted to sociopath men. If I finally get to the point of leaving, I just meet and love the next sociopathic man.
My life is passing me by. I’m depressed, lost, confused. Please help. Is there any hope for me?
Yes, Peggy Sue, you can turn this around. The key is to focus on your own healing.
Addiction and the brain
A few weeks ago, I explained why involvements with sociopaths are so addictive. The article includes a video of Dr. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist, explaining how romantic love affects the brain. You can read the article here:
Love addiction with a sociopath
Here’s another article written by Dr. Liane Leedom on the same topic:
Why you can be addicted to a sociopath
Okay, so addiction to a sociopathic relationship is a known psychological phenomenon. It causes changes in the brain. It causes you to feel compelled to stay involved with destructive individuals.
To overcome this addiction, you need to focus on your own healing. Here are the steps to take.
1. No Contact
First, you need to break away from the current sociopath. That means no contact with him or her.
- No phone calls
- No text messages
- No emails
- No in-person meetings
- No visits to his or her Facebook page
Take all necessary steps to prevent the person from contacting you. Block phone calls and email. Don’t let anyone who knows the individual tell you what he or she is doing or saying.
Establishing No Contact can be difficult. Why? Because you’re addicted! So, just like anyone who is trying to break an addiction to smoking, drugs, alcohol or anything else, take it one day at a time. Promise yourself not to contact the person today, and get through the day. Do the same thing tomorrow. And the same thing the next day.
This advice assumes that you were in a dating relationship and you can walk away. You don’t have to have contact because of kids, working together, or some other unavoidable involvement. But even if you can’t totally block interaction, you need to strive for emotional No Contact. That means you want to get to the point that the person simply does not matter to you.
Just like an alcoholic trying to get off of booze, you need to stick with the program. I’ve heard from many Lovefraud readers who felt they were “strong enough” to interact with the sociopath, only to find that any contact sent them into a tailspin.
The longer you stay away, the stronger you’ll get. But if you break the No Contact rule, you may need to start rebuilding yourself all over again.
2. Do not date
If you are ending up with a succession of sociopaths, it means there is pain or vulnerability within you that attracts them. And of course you are wounded you’ve been involved with sociopaths!
So, for the time being, do not date. At all. Do not join an online dating site. Do not let a well-meaning friend fix you up. Do not go places where the primary activity is looking for someone to pick up. Give yourself a breather.
This does not mean you should isolate yourself. On the contrary, fill your life with family, friends and activities that you enjoy. Keep yourself busy. Earn a certificate or degree that will help your career. Do volunteer work. Fill your life with fun and supportive people—even if they aren’t dates.
3. Heal the vulnerabilities
The secret to finding a good relationship is to become whole and healthy yourself. This doesn’t just happen it requires effort on your part. I urge you to commit yourself to healing the vulnerabilities.
This means looking at your actual experiences, not sweeping them under the carpet. It means acknowledging that you were injured, and figuring out how to move past the injury.
You may need assistance to do this. Use whatever method works for you psychological counseling, self-help programs, prayer or meditation, peer groups such as Lovefraud. Just be sure that anyone you ask to help you understands what it’s like to be targeted by a sociopath, or at least believes you when you tell them what happened.
It can be scary and painful to face your experiences, but it’s worth it. The process may take time, because sociopaths don’t just cause one injury, they inflict a multitude of lies, manipulations and betrayals, and you’ll need to excavate many of them. Please be patient and gentle with yourself.
The good news is that once you process your emotions and release them, you are free of them. In time, with the vulnerabilities healed, you’ll feel much more happy and peaceful. And your hard-won wisdom about the behavior of sociopaths, even if another one does show up there are so many of them in the world that it is certainly possible you’ll quickly spot him or her, and have the strength to get away quickly.
Focus on building a happy and joyful life for yourself, even if you are temporarily unattached to a partner. If you do, the right person will come along, and you’ll be ready.
Such great advice – thank you so much!
Idealism is a drug……it makes you feel good while it is killing you.
I too thought I was strong enough to have “contact” with him, its to emotional and draining, it took me so many times to learn!! NO CONTACT is the Most Important!! Good Luck!
It was hell after breaking up with my spath, cause he put me through hell. I stuck to my guns and time healed.
I am still looking at men, not looking hard, just playing it safe. I have wrote off so many and wrote them off quickly! When I write them off it is for good reason. If he’s being pushy, he’s gone. If he turns a innocent conversation about gardening into a sexual one, he’s gone. The guy asked about my tan lines when I was talking about the pumpkins I grew from seed. I wrote him off so quick! Or if he says he is broke this week. Or if he complains about his ex. Or if he wants me to drive across the state to meet him.
None of this means the guy is a spath. or it could mean that very thing. I don’t take the chance.
I did get a boyfriend briefly, back in January. It barely lasted a month. I’m not happy about the outcome, but more good came out of it than bad. He fixed my broken pipe. We had a deep freeze and a water pipe broke inside the wall. And, I enjoyed my time with him while it lasted. In person he was great, but on the phone he was crabby and bitchy at me. He even bitched at me about the flying squirrel that got in my house! Anyway, there was no damage done to me from this brief relationship. I learned more awareness.
I am happier to be with friends than with a date.
This is my 2nd go-around with a spath. For all intents and purposes, it was over in January 2013 and in March 2013 I was taking steps to put the NC effect into place. I changed my #, and blocked her on Facebook. Before it actually dawned on me that she could still email me, I received 3 DAYS worth of emails asking me, then demanding me, to give her my new #. She actually went to my closest lady friend and asked her for it and she refused. She deleted her and blocked her on Facebook. I finally gave in. It was a HUGE mistake. After 2 weeks, I realized she had no interest in obtaining my new # to communicate with me (90 % of our communication took place through emails, Facebook posts/messages and texting) – it was all the pursuit and reward. I changed it again back in April, and sent her a nice text letting her know I’d be there for her if she needed someone to talk to. She said she didn’t know why I contacted her – she didn’t ask me for my new #. That’s when I knew she was done with me. I became friends with someone she knew but it was as if I was still contacting my ex. I had a major falling out with the friend over her betrayal of my trust in her and deleted her from my phone, blocked her on Facebook, blocked her IM screen name and her emails also. I learned the hard way that NC with a spath includes anyone in their circle of family and friends. Yes, it’s incredibly difficult and exhausting but it feels miles better after the smoke clears. I hope Peggy Sue has the strength to keep NO CONTACT on the top of her list while recovering.
I have been as deeply entrenched with a sociopath as is possible, having been married to one for more than 30
years and having nine children with him. Eight years ago I finally broke
away from him and separated. Because of the children, and now grandchildren, no contact has been impossible. He is capable of manipulating the children and using them as a means of punishing and isolating me. Even though I don’t live with him, he has continued going to my mother’s house for family dinner every Sunday. Because of work, I would sometimes be absent from these dinners while he continued sitting at the head of my mother’s table as the family patriarch. Because of his former abuse, emotionally and financially, I keenly felt the injustice of this. After one last recent and particularly vicious manipulation involving one of our daughters I finally mustered the courage to set one more boundary. I spoke with my mother and gained her support although she still feels “sorry for him”. I told the husband that he was not to come to my mother’s house for dinner ever again. I expected a terrible fall-out, but he remained silent on the other end of the phone. He texted me two minutes later to speak of an entirely different subject. I was amazed at his impassivity.. I was also amazed that the adult children and one last minor child also accepted the fact that their father was no longer welcome at my mother’s
house. I had dinner last Sunday with the family for the first time
without him. No one spoke of him. Life went on. I thought this would be impossibly difficult but it was as easy as setting the boundary. I just had to tell him. There may be future fall-out, but I’m relieved that this blatant encroachment is over.
Cherith – good for you! That is great news! I’m glad you found the strength – and I hope you can continue to set boundaries.
I thought I was over it. Three years later, almost to the day, last week he came back in and crushed the air right out of my chest. I began hunting him down on the internet. Five sleepless nights later, I collapsed from exhaustion, the feeling of PTSD AGAIN, terrible grief, pain and anguish. He’s started a new life with yet another “famous” artist, they are traipsing all over Europe together, and I feel useless, used, without answers, torn, twisted, and still a prisoner. Back to square one, this mail arrived and I thought the timing to be a spiritual gift.
Reminder of NO CONTACT. NO FB, NO GIRLFRIEND, NO VENGEANCE. Now to pull the poison dart back out. Went out with a group of friends, and back into the land of the living. Came home, slept deeply, but dreamed once again of being abandoned, unloved, beaten, tortured, and made to feel that utter insignifance.
Rode the wave in the dream, woke up this morning, and began healing again.
When does it end?
HurtTerribly – I think that sometimes these relapses are reminders that WE have to make decisions that are best for us. We can’t wait/hope for the sociopath to leave us alone – WE have to take the steps to get the person out of our lives.
Another thing – sometimes we’re still carrying residual pain from the experience. If they show up again, and upset us, it brings that residual pain to the surface. It is an opportunity to squeeze it out of our system.
So you’re healing again, and you’ll be more healed than ever!
Hurt, they have many lives with many people don’t they? The lives are shallow, and largely meaningless….masks that they don to cover the emptiness!!
Take care of your own heart Lost! Deal with this episode to say a final farewell to him from your life. He is not good for you and not good enough for you!!!
Imara and all this is my most abiding impression of the disordered man who stole 18 months of my life, that his life was a series of mask changes ( ‘ husband to x’ ‘ father to son a’ ‘ husband to y’ ‘ father to son b’ ‘ diligent employee’ ) , the masks allowed him to present as ‘ normal’ and ” stable’ for periods of time, to the outside world ( neighbours, employer, other parents) but he resented wearing them as he resents routine and loathes not be the centre of attention. Even his children have been devalued and discarded for ‘ stealing his limelight’ by the simple fact of requiring constant care, love and supervision. Under his masks he was empty, devoid of values, interests, causes, goals. This emptiness manifested as what looked on the surface like depression to his wives but really it was just simple boredom.
The solution to his boredom was to abusing his wives overtly ( sexual abuse, psychological abuse, mainly blaming, withdrawal, controlling through finances, threatens to divorce ) and covert ( porn use, infidelity, scheming to hide assets). The masks always fell off with this man because effectively he pulled them off himself, bored of wearing them and the effort of appearing to be normal.
This is why I believe psychopaths need – like we need food and water – people to abuse. Abusing gives them an intense rush , which momentarily makes them feel alive. Their true nature is visible when they are abusing, that is the closest to pleasure they getfrom what I saw and know of my abuser.
Cherith,
I’m so glad you set that boundary of not allowing your husband to be at family meals…THREE CHEERS!!! I’ve often found that people are so busy with their own lives that they really don’t make much fuss about what you’re doing in yours;sometimes they may even wonder why it took you “so long” to set that boundary!
Hurt,
I can’t imagine my husband coming back after being completely gone for 3 yrs!But so glad you’re healing again!Focus on healing!
Thank you Donna and Blossom. Sometimes if you push back, the walls come tumbling down. In fact there may never have been a wall to begin with. Next step is to file for a divorce. He may be just as impassive, as lifeless about that. He may not care — and neither may anyone else. The question I have to ask is “Why is so hard for me?”
Its hard because youre a feeling, compassionate individual who loved. You love. Your inability to love is not called into question. And letting go of being someones emotional prisoner, is a very very difficult thing to do.
I have the divorce papers unfilled sitting on my desk. Tell you what, lets jump over that bridge together. Strength in numbers.
Oh Hurt, That touched my heart!!!
Yes there is strength in compassion and in holding another’s hand in hurt!!! Robert Hare calls to “circle our wagons” while dealing with a psychopath. Hold hands and reach out in and for support…its quite the difficult ride, and always made easier with a little help from our friends.
I survived the past 8 months largely because of the hand holding and compassionate friendship of LFers. I couldn’t even tell my counselor what had happened. I was broken mentally and physically for months. It was only here I found the vocabulary concepts and recognition I needer to rebuild. Long live the Love Fraud blog community!!
Imara,
This is the only place I have to come in, talk, and tell the truth. There are parts of what happened to me that I cannot even discuss with my own family. Their attitude would be to brand me an incompetent loser. At 50 its hard to take. I feel so safe here, because all I’ve done for the last 12 years of my life is look over my shoulder.
There has to come a point when we break from the psychosis of what happened, and walk free. Walking free, sounds so simple, and yet it is often the last and most difficult step.
How many times have I come in to help others, to comment, to read and read the NO CONTACT rule. I wish so much to walk free. I’ve thought about going to the media with my story, writing a book, you name it, and there are just such personally horrible things that happened, I don’t think I could sit in a room with a camera in my face and say what happened. Im still so ashamed of what happened.
I had a very good therapist who worked with me for three years. It was the only, only way I made it this far. That and periodically coming in here, reading books from here, etc.
You help me. Im not alone. I need to know Im not alone. I lost all my friends, I was sequestered in this house for 12 years without a friend.
Thank you all for that, and each person needs to know its okay! Its okay.
Sorry for the rant, I feel so passionately about grabbing anybody’s hand, looking in their eyes directly and telling them “look at me, come on now, just look in my eyes. You see compassion, love and understanding, if I can help you, I help me too, and we can and will survive, we will walk free”.
Hurt Still
Big virtual hugs to you hurt!!!
I am over 50 too and the only way I can make sense of what happened to my life is to understand that our experiences happened to us to allow us to grow as spiritual human beings. Those that deliberately inflicted harm on us may end up being our best teachers!!! In opposing and understanding their wickedness we define our ability to be caring contributing loving people!!
Very moving and positive posts Hurt Still and Imara, just what I visit LF for, to be reminded of the presence of good hearted people whose trauma leaves them more not less loving and compassionate to others.
PS 50 is the new 25, no?