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.
Tea!!! You gave me my laugh of the day!!
25?? My aching old bones need to hear that! I shall pass the message on!!
Hurt & Imara,
I agree so much that it is the compassion and love in us that the sociopath couldn’t destroy (although I’m sure my spath was determined to try),and our walk through their evil paths led to some severe lessons that we would only learn much later.But survive we did,and we can be proud of that…and we may feel we lost much in the beginning.But now we have the chance to rebuild our lives and plant there what we want! ((( HUGS )))
PS As Tea Says “Everybody Danth!”
I see my situation just the opposite, i think exspath did kill come of my (overactive) compassion and love and i don’t feel that was his agenda. I think he wanted me as loving and compassionate as possible, so he could use it against me. If it wasn’t compassion and love that he killed, it is probably that he taught me to set unmovable boundaries and lose all patience with BS.
R
I am a long time reader and only made a few comments under name of ThickSkullThinSkin. Thank you for telling me how to change my name to a nickname. My previous name was HIS opinion of me. This nickname is more descriptive of me as I am now.
I just wanted to thank those who are posting under this article, some are writing about being over a certain age (50)and unable to speak our truths even to those close family members – who know about the abuse – we can’t tell them details without fears that they would conclude we are incompetent losers. It is hard to overcome opinions of those people who matter to us! Our loved ones are not abusers so their opinion stings when they lack understanding of the nature of how we were abused. (took me a long time to dismiss the opinion of my abuser but once I realized who and what he was, it was not hard to say he was wrong!)
I’ve worked out so much of what and more importantly HOW I was caught in abuse and I’ve used certain words to describe my life with my abuser.
Thank you to those who write even better phrases and descriptions than I came up with. Your phases fit what I try to say. Hurt Terribly wrote the words “emotional prisoner”.
YES. That is what I was. His emotional prisoner. YES. A prisoner. YES. He had trapped me in an emotional prison. Hurt Terribly encapulates what I was in two words. And yes, like you Hurt Terribly, I spent years and years living life looking over my shoulder. It so so nice to look forward. Thank you for your hand. I use my other hand to hug you in gratitude.
Okay HurtTerribly, Imara, and all of us who are struggling together, let’s hold hands and “circle our wagons”. HurtTerribly, could we do this on the count of three? I feel a mix of guilt, doubt, and fear but deep in my heart, I know. Time to jump.
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you for supporting each post that fell beneath the “Peggy Sue” statement with the ensuing article by Dr. Leedom.
At the beginning of this week, consumed with despondency, and remorse for falling into a baited trap 3 years later. After all the work it took to crawl out of the abyss, it took but a phone call to unwind the work and send me sprawling to my knees.
You have each reached out to me, and to each other at the same time. As negative as the experience was, the power to heal as a group, is as positively one of the most astoundingly real and beautiful things we witness together.
That positivity is a a step to another, each comment, each story is like an flower unfurling, its petals respond to the rays of light coming in, and that flower, each one of us, reach toward the sun and begin to grow anew.
For much of the last thirteen years I have lived in darkness. Beaten, tortured, emotionally tortured, given less dignity than the family dog. I had moments where I did recognize the me still inside, but fear overtook every single day of my life.
Sometimes, late at night, especially when he started sleeping in a separate room and I could shut that door, and be in my own space, I would try to stay up all night to experience freedom. Clinging to the window sill, I would look up at the moon, through the passing seasons, and pray to God, to set me free. My words, were exactly that…..”Please Father in Heaven, set me free”.
Providence is a funny thing, arriving when I least expected it. My moment came. I acted quickly, using every emotional tool in the arsenal. I had a good teacher. I outwitted, outsmarted, and played along, I held on during moments where I thought I was bargaining with the devil himself for my freedom. For two weeks, this went on. He was running around with other women, he had a new woman ensconced in Europe ready and waiting, jacked my cell phone bill to 3000.00, tried to rob money, while every day berating me openly, humiliating me in front of my family, and children.
The day came and with his bags packed, he left this house, this country, and the door to my cage was unlocked.
The withdrawals were intense. In six months, I had full blown Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Clinically diagnosed, I spent three years in therapy. It took at least six months for me to even address what happened to me in the present. I remained a third party observer in my own life. I could not talk about what happened here, in the first person.
Today, I am here because I survived. I count. I am a human being worthy of the RIGHT kind of love. Any love. Love from a pet, a friend, a stranger on the street who smiles. I struggle with self identity and battle with self loathing. But, I know, in my heart, I am good person.
Thank you for listening to me. For caring, for responding, for helping. It is lonely sometimes, but I am very aware I am not in a position to ferret out another psycho/sociopath, and feel terribly selfish about sharing myself so intimately with someone else. There are wounds still, left to heal.
Last night instead of spending hours playing Plants Vs. Zombies on my Ipad, I started to read a book about an angel, and a book about harnessing positivity and self awareness.
Today I went to the beach! I thought of all of you, and wanted to tell you how beautiful it was to simply sit in that beach chair in the sun, and smile.
Thank you, thank you, each of you. I have never spoken about what happened until now, and I have been on this site since before spath psycho maniac left.
I do believe the strength in all of us. I lived it. If it were not for Donna, I would not have been aware that what was happening to me, wasn’t because I was fat, ugly and unworthy of love. I read, I learned, and was able to take that moment, make the right decision finally, and get that horrible evil man out of my life.
Yours,
Hurt Terribly and trying to heal.
MAKES ME SPIT FIRE!!!!!!!!!!
R
Imhope, are you expressing your anger that Hurt was abused?
Wow, Hurt Terribly, Thank you for sharing your experience and your healing path. I can so feel how sitting on the beach in the sunshine, smiling at the world, felt like a radical transformation after all you endured.
This site, and the good work of Donna, Steve, Joyce and others who bring us together has also been what saved me from years of self doubt and recrimination I am sure.
The hair raising stories of betrayal and abuse, emotional rape and fraud, together with the shared stories of survivors who have found their joy again has been a bulwark against the challenges I have faced since jumping off that cliff when I told the Spath it was over.
Like you, there is no one, not one friend or family member I can share it with, at least not the “effect” of what the emotional prison did to me. I can share the mechanics of what happened, but not what it did to my being, my sense of self.
Out in the real world the spaths are running things, and “empaths” as they like to contemptuously call us are considered naive, soft, impractical, uncompetitive.
In the shelter of this place we have all found that the human spirit and the outreach of love can traverse the ether and bring us together in solidarity, not in righteousness or victim hood, but in a head held high attitude of love, love for every being that is innocent and truthful, including ourselves.
Peace and Love,
Hurt,
As I read your post,I found I could Identify with much of what you wrote,and have had similar experiences.
I didn’t start staying up all night until close to the end with spath.Like you,I found I needed that time to refresh my mind with prayer,and to think peaceful thoughts.It was yrs ago that after the children and spath went to bed,I’d go outside,look up to the starry sky and pour my heart out in prayer.
The day I walked out on him,I didn’t have to give it a thought or gather my courage.After fixing his breakfast,and trying to relax enough to eat mine,I choked on rice.He started calling me a drama queen over and over despite the fact that I could have choked to death in front of him!That was it! I walked out that door and the next time I returned it was with the police to gather my clothes!
I was never able to describe my abuse until coming to Lovefraud,and going to counseling.You and Cherith describe it well when you say “emotional prisoner”.I always told people I would rather have been a battered woman.Broken bones,bruises and wounds heal in time.Pictures of those injuries can be taken as records.But emotional abuse is TORTURE!It is unseen,and most people find it hard to believe this is going on right ‘under their noses’…especially if spath wears the mask of charm around them!Once in counseling,I began to understand it was more than emotional abuse.It went beyond to encompass financial control and withholding affection for yrs.But I am healing now.Able to smile,laugh and joke again…be me!
Speaking of Joyce, I can’t recall seeing a post from her for several weeks now. I hope she’s OK. That murderous son of hers was due for a parole hearing some time this year…
Redwald, you’re right. I remember reading about that son and haven’t heard anything since. I hope she’s safe.
One more thing has happened, on top of so many previous things. My son and I went to the bank to check an account he shares with his father. It is Zack’s savings account. All his summer earnings are directly deposited into the account. He has trusted his dad. Sure enough, withdrawals had been made without my son’s knowledge. It sickens me that money is siphoned even from a 17-year-old’s account. I know how the husband will rationalize. He will say that he did it to help someone else or he was under enormous pressure and intended to pay it all back. And the terrible thing is that Zack will forgive him. He wants to trust his father who has taken him completely under his wing after years of neglect. If anything, this gives me the last little push toward the divorce. This story is just the tip of the iceberg.
Blossom, as I read your story it was as though I was reading my own story. Thank you for telling it.
Blossom
There’s a song by an English band I cannot remember their name, but the lyrics go something like “I need someone to recognize the pain in me yeah”.
When others do not see bodily harm, they see on the surface, a happy family, whatever the case is, everybody is lulled into a sense of complacency, no one more than us.
I always found it amazing how far I would go to protect that complacency! To keep the veneer on, so no one saw in at all. Meanwhile, everyone goes home to their little corner, and they live their lives, and you are in agony almost every minute of every day. Your being emotionally waterboarded. How many times does your head have to be submerged, before you realize you are going to drown? Then you become the prisoner, the prisoner in a not so gilded emotional cage.
The ugliness and horror of emotional abuse is unseen to most observing eyes.
I think you are strong, you got your moment, and you went straight for it. Thats you, recognizing the pain in you, and responding to it.
This week was a real eye opener. I thought I had it together, and I didn’t. Im still wounded, still somewhat of a prisoner, in that I reacted to conditioning and it worked. It exposed every vulnerability, I was angry. ANGRY! How could it have been that easy for him to slide in and wreak havoc in a two hour conversation? Then, I thought this, but not until I came in and started talking to everyone, and read those rules: If It took 12 years to condition me, it would be very easy to do it again. Part of me still responds to that conditioning. The difference is we are continents apart. Thank Jesus. I can be despondent, and ponder why, and get up the next day, putting my feet on the floor, slip on my sandals, and start walking in a straight line toward the sun again.
We are all here because we survived/are surviving, are in the beginning of the biggest revelation of our lives, and doing something about it.
Smiling, laughing, joking is an amazing thing. One thing we can all be appreciative about, (great believer in turning a negative into a positive where its applicable): Laughing, joking, smiling is more rewarding now, its also more poignant. It comes from a deeper place of understanding of its intrinsic emotional value.
To be connected to that on a higher level, is very intense an experience.
Hurt
Hurt,
I always tried to keep that “normal appearance”.I realize now that it wasn’t helpful;not to me and not for our girls.Had I let people “see” what was really going on,we never would have stayed as long as we did.I tried to leave many times.But spath,like a mindreader,could always figure out when “something was up”.So to keep the peace,I finally just gave up for awhile.My daughters like me,smiled and laughed,had their life at school,and when they were old enough,at work.
I laugh inside when I remember how we got away once.The oldest daughter was already out of the house.My sister came to visit from out of state.I had been praying again about getting away from spath.Anyway,long story short,my sister knew spath loved to eat,so the night before we left,she bought KFC;lots of it with sides!The next day,the police showed up on the doorstep and asked if it was true I wanted to leave.Threw my husband for a twisted loop!!! 🙂 My sister picked us up and we stayed with her until I got settled.I stayed away for 5 yrs (during which time the other 2 girls finished school and got out on their own).If I hadn’t had an accident and needed someone to live with,I would have stayed away from spath.But we got back together for 4 yrs,during which time he got his revenge!
I have to say, once if realized there was something really wrong with exspath and that the marriage would not work out, which was less than 6 months into it, i no longer put up a front to anyone. Geez, i probably acted like a nut, if a stranger would compliment my wedding ring i would let them know that the ring (that i bought) might be nice, but the marriage was all but nice…i wanted the world to know! I guess i felt if i kept it out in the open that i wouldn’t backslide. Once i caught on, i was done emotionally, unfortunately as usual it took longer than a few months to dig myself out of the hole, but at least my heart was out!
R
Imhope, I can relate to your words quite a bit. My spath knew that according to my value system and the high regard for the sanctity of marriage that my faith holds that once we said ” I Do ” that I would go to extreme measures to make it work. We had constant problems while we were dating regarding her contact, and or conduct with other men. I called the wedding off weeks before and she lied and convinced me that we had finally resolved the issue. Within 2 weeks after the wedding I knew I had a pathological liar on my hands. Like you within 6 months I no longer loved her and didn’t really care to fake it for others. The political posturing and character assassination assaulted my value system, isolated me, and crushed me down spiritually to the point that I no longer felt that I had anything good in my life left. I considered ending my life. Struggled with that for about a year and a half. I even shared that with a few. The fact that I knew pretty early on and was not shy in confronting her and in speaking to others was not that difficult for her to overcome. She had active allies to help her but that is not uncommon. Bottom line is not physically, but in every other way I was crushed, defeated. While I have no malice towards them, many who I have spoken to and known for a decade or even decades include her in their most intimate groups. Who do you think they believe ? She is kind of like a small time local celebrity. Think about it -who’s voice is more powerful, a mere mortal, or one who is godlike ? The winds appear to be shifting here very recently blowing the sweet smell of escape. I’m gettin out one way or another.
Oh for hell sakes Shine, flee that spider’s nest! Don’t let anyone get you that far down! Get up and go. Do you have children? What is keeping you there? You can’t believe how much thinner the air is out here! There is life after psychos, believe it. My feet might not dance but my heart does. Take the step, go….
R