Updated for 2019
Lovefraud recently received this letter from a woman whom we’ll call “Nina.” I’m posting Nina’s story because many Lovefraud readers have told me of similar patterns in their lives.
I love this man like I’ve never loved before. He seemed to be my soul mate. Â I have had two failed marriages (no sex in them).
I was touched by a neighbour starting when I was 10 and it continued for eight years. My father was totally controlling and I was not allowed friends or to go anywhere except to this neighbour. Both were depressed parents and did not show affection, only criticism.
I have always felt alone but now am — parents dead, sister dead within last four years. I am 57.
I met him seven years ago and he was totally charming and enchanting.
He pursued me for 11 months before I let him kiss me, and a year before I let him “make love.”
I have got myself totally embroiled in a situation with him and my life revolves around him. He has a partner now, his wife and seven other women that I know of.
He speaks to me in a terrible manner a lot and is demeaning and rude and cruel and thoughtless. Tells me he loves me all the time.
I can’t understand why I find it ok to let him treat me this way — I desperately want him to love me and can’t imagine not having him in my life. Feels not worth living.
We have good times together playing music and he is a good lover (I think, although I nothing to compare).
He doesn’t know I know about most of his other women but he often has us crossing paths.
I don’t want to lose what may be a relationship worth keeping, yet it causes me so much pain and torment I don’t think it can be worth it.
He owns a huge property and I live in same building paying rent. I help with any work that needs to be done, as my biggest dread is being on my own, so I work with him and his nephew.
I have myself totally tangled up with him. He sometimes seems such a caring man yet at other times a completely selfish one. Over these last six plus years I have let him become part of almost every bit of my life. I am trying to open other avenues, but have no family and no “true” friends.
I am trying to work out why it is so important to me to find out if he is a “sociopath,” as really, how he treats me should be enough for me to say that I deserve better. I have worked really hard on improving myself for over 25 years now, and although I have come a huge way, I still feel very stuck in myself a lot.
My problem is I would become homeless, know nobody and my greatest fear is being alone and rejected —can’t see a way out.
What is he — just a selfish, inconsiderate, narcissistic, thoughtless man, or am I too fussy? Sometimes he can be very nice and seems thoughtful.
Don’t feel other option/s are worth considering — all feels hopeless and useless and impossible.
I feel when I tell what I’ve allowed that I am extremely stupid and weak.
Roots of the pain
Why is Nina in this situation? I believe the roots reach back to the beginning of her life, which she explained at the start of her letter. Nina says she endured:
- Depressed parents, who showed no affection, only criticism
- A controlling father, who wouldn’t let her have friends
- Sexual assault by a neighbor from ages 10 to 18
After that, Nina had two failed marriages with no sex. So, as Nina says, she has “always felt alone.” And even though her parents contributed mightily to her pain, they are now dead, so she truly is alone.
Seven years ago the man Nina writes about showed up. In the beginning he pursued her with charm and enchantment. After she finally agreed to a physical relationship with him, his treatment of her changed. Now Nina experiences:
- Cheating — the man has a wife and seven other women
- He is demeaning, rude, cruel and thoughtless, yet still says he loves her
- He arranges for Nina to cross paths with his other women
- They have sexual relations
- Nina pays the man rent and does work for him
- The man is entangled in all aspects of Nina’s life
Cause and effect
I see a direct cause-and-effect relationship between Nina’s past and the mistreatment she is now experiencing at the hands of the sociopath — and yes, he is a sociopath.
This man’s level of disorder may be low- to mid-range — unless he’s also doing other things that Nina hasn’t mentioned. But he is definitely toying with her, cheating, and taking advantage of her. The guy is an exploiter, so in my book, he’s a sociopath.
Nina’s prior disappointments, betrayals and traumas primed Nina to be his target.
Hungry for love
Nina’s parents did not provide her with love, so I believe she did not develop a solid understanding that she, like everyone, is worthy of love. Now she is hungry for any scraps of love she may find.
“I desperately want him to love me,” she writes.
Inappropriate sexual contact
Nina was abused from age 10-18, and apparently her parents did nothing. (Her father may have even been complicit.) Nina then had two sexless marriages — which may have been her own reaction to the childhood abuse.
Then she meets the sociopath, who takes a year to get her into bed. Because of his diligent pursuit, Nina probably believed his intentions were sincere — after all, who chases someone for a year just to get laid? Well, sociopaths do — they enjoy the game.
To Nina, this sociopath seems like an accomplished lover. This may be true — many Lovefraud readers have said that the best sex they ever had was with the sociopath.
But that only covers the physical aspects of sex. Sociopaths are not capable of emotional connection, so that dimension is missing from the experience, although they can be good at faking it. But because Nina herself has not experienced healthy sex, she may not realize what it can be.
Fear of being alone
Nina says that she always felt alone. This likely resulted from the lack of warmth in her home when she was growing up, and the fact that her father would not let her develop outside relationships.
Now Nina’s family is gone, and she’s living in a building owned by the sociopath. If she wanted to end the involvement, she would probably have to move. Nina didn’t explain much about that situation, except that she fears being homeless.
Psychological love bonds
All of these issues created psychological vulnerabilities for Nina. And how do sociopaths hook their targets? They find psychological vulnerabilities and exploit them.
One way they do this is by hijacking the normal bonding process. When two people become a couple, a psychological love bond forms between them. Intimacy, both emotional and physical, causes oxytocin to be released in the brain, which creates feelings of attachment. This is all normal.
But sociopaths then create fear and anxiety in their partners, perhaps by cheating or threatening to leave the relationship. Surprisingly, this has the effect of making the psychological love bond stronger. The target wants the relationship to go back to the happy days of the beginning, and may beg, plead and appease to make it happen. Sociopaths may be willing to go along with this, if it suits their purpose at the time. So if the two kiss and make up, the bond is strengthened again.
Intermittent reinforcement
Another technique that keeps the target attached to the sociopath is intermittent reinforcement. This is classic psychology— if laboratory rats don’t know when pressing a bar will result in a food pellet, they keep pressing and pressing and pressing. The compulsion to engage in the behavior gets stronger and stronger.
Likewise, if Nina never knows when the sociopath is going to respond to her with affection, she keeps trying and trying. Any time he responds with affection, it reinforces her efforts and strengthens the compulsion she feels.
Tolerating bad treatment
Nina writes that she can’t understand why she allows the man to treat her badly. It’s because she has psychological vulnerabilities created by her family of origin and her prior experiences. The sociopath found and targeted those vulnerabilities.
Nina has experienced a lifetime of pain. The sociopath presented himself as the antidote to her pain. The love he expressed was fake, but Nina didn’t know that, so she became emotionally and psychologically entangled.
Now she feels like she has no choice but to tolerate his bad treatment. In fact, she questions whether she is being “too fussy.” This may be a psychological defense mechanism. Since she can’t change him, she may subconsciously hope that changing her own expectations will make her feel better so she can stay in the relationship.
Except that the relationship is not healthy. Nina, like all of us, is deserving of love. Real, honest love. She’s never going to get it from this man.
Full recovery
Nina’s story demonstrates a big reason why sociopaths come into our lives: to help us recover from a lifetime of pain.
Involvements with sociopaths are bad. Really bad. They are so bad that, unlike other painful experiences we may have had earlier in our lives, the devastation of the sociopath cannot be ignored. We have to face it, or we’ll fall apart.
If we examine the experience with the sociopath, we can often see that it is linked to previous life experiences. So to truly recover, we need to overcome not only the injury and pain caused by the sociopath, but the previous injuries and pain that made us vulnerable to the sociopath in the first place.
Then we can achieve real healing, and a life more brilliant than we ever imagined.
Nina’s story clearly and concisely demonstrates how her past created an opening for the sociopath to exploit. I thank her for allowing me to share her story.
The next step for her, and for everyone with similar stories, is to address all the pain the recent experiences and the trauma from experiences long ago.
Lovefraud originally posted this story on March 3, 2014
Despite my education, I knew nothing about sociopaths, says ob/gyn doctor
My heart goes out to “Nina” as I have been in similar loveless relationships. Just the fact that this sleaze-ball has Nina and the 7 others crossing paths, is proof enough that he is a sociopath that is purposefully making her and the others feel poorly about themselves, to keep them psychologically stunted from kicking his STD butt to the curb. Nina needs to ask herself, do I want to compete sexually with these other woman? Is he washing in between lovers and does he at least wear a condom? Ewww if he does not! Do I want to risk getting some potentially deadly disease (HIV, AIDS, HEP C), and if I do is he going to take care of me? This many women puts Nina in a high risk category.
I suggest going back to school, one class at a time. If there is little or no income, tuition is waived. She needs to look at getting an education so that she is not financially dependent on this clown or any other philandering cad that comes her way. Getting good grades would give her some self esteem back. It would give her the financial independence she so desperately needs.
Developing friendships is really important. Too often I hear women say, “I don’t have any female friends. I am only friends with men.” Then the reasons why come gurgling forth. Such as not having relational boundaries with the significant others of these developing friendships. Ladies! You have to learn to keep your hands to yourself and stop reliving your abuse by letting yet another use you like a public restroom. Are we still in the free love of the 1960’s? I don’t think so. If you want a true friend with morals, you are not going to find these women in nightclubs or in front of mirrors. Develop a hobby and you will find people with like minds who enjoy the same things in life as you do.
I too was abused as a child. Only I reported it right away to my parents who labeled me “a liar” and announced at the dinner table that “nobody in the family was ever going to believe a word I said again.” They all laughed and I ran to my room crying. I was also told, “Do not talk to your teacher, principal, school nurse, police officer, fireman” or any other person in authority to press charges of child sexual abuse. Their lousy parenting skills led to self esteem issues so that when I was viciously raped by my ex boyfriend’s friend in high school who claimed “he told him to,” I didn’t tell a soul. I followed their example.
Odd that years later when I went though therapy and talked about it with my parents, they pretended to not remember how they reacted when I told them about their friend, and that it ever happened at all. Denial! Also, I was shocked when my mother asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you were raped?” I responded truthfully, “It was because how you handled the situation with your friend when I was 9 that I did not feel safe to tell you.” I had also heard my parents say in their under educated minds, that “Girls that get raped are asking for it by what they are wearing.” I was a scrawny under developed girl, wearing baggy pants, turtle neck, parka, boots…nothing sexy and I still had a gun pointed at my head. Life sucks sometimes, but I rose above it.
All I can say to Nina is, find a friend or relative that can help you get away from this pig. You are worth so much more than this slob who has the business and the apartment house. Start documenting stuff. Get a letter of reference from him before you cut it off with him. Tell him you are applying for college. This is your proof that he values you as a worker and how long you have worked for him in trade for your apartment. I would record him too. Get a safe deposit box and put these things in there. Then make friends with ALL his other girlfriends, including his wife. You will find that that will give you the strength to drop tail and run like hell. Vibrators do a better job than sex addicts ever can. Invest in one. My advice might sound vulgar, but at this point, you have to cover your back and not find yourself evicted when you get older and he wants to replace you with someone younger. That is how these creeps work.
I totally agree that upbringing is key in setting a person up to get involved with a sociopath. I have spent much time connecting the dots in my own experience and find that I did and DO not have a strong model of what love actually IS
Since the sociopath experience in my life I have chosen to lessen/ cut ties with my Family of origin because I can see so clearly now how it’s inter related. My Family is a tangled web of mixed messages, double binds and dysfunction that prepared me to:
Not trust my basic instincts/ my innate knowing something is wrong- always doubting myself
Feeling unworthy and always in a state of proving myself/ justifying/ explaining
Believing lies readily because I was so used to believing lies from my parents and thinking it was truth
I thought love was sacrificing and giving and not wanting anything in return
I now trust my instincts and the first action I needed to take after the sociopath and recovering my equilibrium was to trust my feelings which told me I DO NOT come a loving family. They are Toxic and put up the front that we are a great family. I no longer agree. Communication is controlled, and any form of honest exchange is treated with suspicion.
Love is:
Being treated equally (not specially)
Trusting my instincts…my gut…my innate knowing something is wrong
Never sacrificing myself for the good of anyone again
Knowing I’m worth it, for myself
Calling a lie a lie, naming it and moving on/ Away
Love is never a demand or an expectation, love is a gift
I relate…and so does my spouse. We got together with my family after one of my brothers moved to my town (a very nice area…still a lot of country around…)
We were invited to his house a year back. Nothing surprised us. We decided to use humor, it almost always works.
My brother never bothered to thank us for coming nor did he say good-bye. We are much better hosts than he will ever be. He is the ultimate narcissist and will be marrying for the fourth time…poor woman.
Before we left I turned to face my family so I could douse them with my humor. “Nice time, I guess…if you don’t mind acting in a ‘charade parade'”. You could have heard a pin drop. Then I told my older sister (and that brother): “Now don’t go dissecting what I said or what it meant.” Then I blew them a kiss and we were out the door.
Anyone who is trusting can fall prey to a sociopath.
Anyone who produces oxytocin can fall prey to a sociopath.
Sociopaths know how to misuse social chemistry for their personal gain.
When we find out that we were used by a sociopathic predator, we are already deeply involved with them. There are life forces that can hold us fast and a betrayal bond can form and continue to glue us into the relationship even though we know it is a toxic one.
It can happen to anyone from any walk of life.
Joyce
Nina, you had it worse than me. At least my parents were very successful (two beautiful homes in a very wealthy town). They tried to love but could not…they had no understanding of it. But they set me up just the same.
They were never part of ‘normal society’. My father would say, “I don’t care” even though he knew his kids were in pain. I think that is horrific.
My mother said it too and would not accept her responsibility in her lack of caring for me. In fact, she hated me.
This dark side to them was not evident to many others, including neighbors, because narcissists are ‘nice’ and ‘normal’ to the outside world but go home to abuse their kids.
I fell into the hands of a female sociopath and it haunts me to this day. What a creep. I am out of work now so it is hard to get her out of my head; but I thank God for three decades of hardly thinking of her at all because I married and was able to hold jobs.
Thanks Barb,
I tend to believe there is no ” better” or ” worse” as feeling unloved, unwanted, and so on have a long lasting effect on our emotional stability. I managed to get two degrees, and had a good job for twenty one years, but ended up unable to do anything due to chronic fatigue thirteen years ago. I feel bettering last four years than I have and ironic thing was that I felt truly loved by this man for the first time in my life!
I’m glad for you that you have a good relationship now and know that inactivity means I’m ” in my head ” too much which is why I work with him! -I couldn’t hold down a proper job now as neither have emotional capability or physical. My best wishes to you .
nina
I clicked on “report this comment” instead of “reply”. Sorry!
Just wanted to say that no amount of pain can be “measured” or “compared”…
and my comment about having wealthy parents ‘helped’, in truth it did not.
I would have preferred a small ranch house that abounded with true love and concern. We are just a tiny fragment of the ‘walking wounded’ in this world.
Nina,
I too understand the feeling of being unloved, alone and unwanted. I never my entire life heard the words “I love you” from either of my parents. I don’t remember being hugged or held by either of them, even as a young child. There was a lot of criticism and physical abuse by my father. I remember being picked up and hurled across the room into a wall, and being spanked with a 2 X 4 at the age of 17. I also remember watching my mother cower and live in complete submission to my father, whom I now believe was a sociopath. I believe this set me up big time as a target. Knowing what I know now and looking back, every relationship I had was definitely with a sociopath. Even as far back as junior high. However, I am armed with the knowledge of these losers and tread very carefully as I feel I have a huge target painted on me. I can empathize with your feeling you can’t hold down a proper job because of the spath in your life. I was so ill for years and got to the point I could barely walk. I was horribly ill and no doctor could find anything wrong with me. I was finally diagnosed with PTSD once I found a doctor who took the time to really try and figure it all out as opposed to just stuffing me with pain meds, anti-depressants, sleeping pills, etc., etc. I had been very successful business-wise and was too weak to function in any capacity. You might try what I did. I was so over qualified for the job, but it was a job. I began searching for a job at a call center. I knew I would be sitting all day and I could at least do that and I knew I could at least repeat the scripts that they provided. It wasn’t what I wanted but for 2 1/2 years, it was income. Within 6 months I was promoted to management. It was baby steps like that which has brought me to where I am now. I am 52 and thought my life and future were over. I have nothing but great hope for what the rest of my life will entail. You will too. Just keep moving forward, even if it’s just an inch, it’s a move forward. You will get stronger, but it’s a process.
Me again. It is hard to be humorous when you are very devastated by abuse. But years later maybe (just maybe) you can find ways to laugh at your abuser. It can take decades but it is worth it.
ALSO: I used humor on my parents (my Dad was SO serious), but my mother loved it when I did…especially if anger was involved. So there are bright spots.
Have a talent night for women … ask them to ‘act out’ their former boyfriends/spouses…men are fun to laugh at anyway. It can get really hilarious when women bring out their humorous side.
jm-short
not everyone who is trusting falls prey to a sociopath- because they trust themselves first
anyone who produces oxytocin is ‘in love’ and vulnerable- we need education about this
sociopaths know how to misuse social chemistry until it is understood by all of us so that it is no longer possible to bypass this comprehension
It is attracted, it is summoned, it is a law of attraction tool to wake up and get real….understand it
Hi Bulletproof-
I could be wrong but it seems you’ve interpreted my comment as
“Everyone who is trusting “will”” instead of “can.”
Not everyone “will.” But whether or not they will depends primarily on the ability of the predator to seduce them. Some predators are much more skillful than others.
And yes, people who are capable of love are vulnerable. Romantic LOVE is an addiction. Society does need to know this!
The addiction to oxytocin is not much different than the addiction to any other mood altering drug. The difference is principally that we don’t knowingly ingest it, so we don’t knowingly recognize that we’re addicted to it. When we’re separated from it, we long for it in much the same way that a drug addict or alcoholic would when separated from their drug of choice. And once the betrayal is recognized, a victim can develop a Betrayal Bond that is extremely difficult to break out of.
I’ve been very interested in the Bachelor series this season. I’m not saying that the current bachelor is a sociopath, but he is very skilled at seduction, and there seems to be very little substance to the relationships. The result is that 2 women out of 27 walked away. And the reason behind their doing so was that there was no “cerebral” connection. Even the ones that walked away were emotionally torn, by virtue of their raised oxytocin levels, but recognized there was something missing.
Most of the women melted into his arms when he stroked their face or caressed them. His love for his daughter created a sense of trust for the man. And even though they knew he was seeing a myriad of other women, they hoped that their relationship, the way he stroked THEIR face and looked THEM in the eye, was “special.”
Even the two who walked away had to fight internally with themselves in order to do so. They were entranced with his seduction and the internal conflict between their oxytocin pulling them one way while their thinking mind tugged another was a struggle for them.
You are absolutely correct that society needs to wake up to this phenomenon. In order to be safe from a sociopath, we need to comprehend that our “chemical reaction” to a suitor can be falsely induced. And there are people who are extremely skilled at bringing us under their spell.
Not every victim of a sociopath has a weakness by virtue of upbringing or former pain. But having a weakness or former pain might make it more difficult to break free. Particularly because being abused seems a natural and familiar state. It does not bring about the same red flag reaction that it might with someone who had a strong, supportive, loving home.
I believe:
A. It’s the predator’s seduction, not the victim’s past that causes the problem, just like any other type of fraud. I think anyone can be seduced by a sociopath. Look at all the highly intelligent, even intellectual, folks who fell prey to Bernie Madoff. Do we blame his victims for their abused pasts?
B. Here’s where I think the person’s past fits in…. their past (including their moral compass) determines whether they will develop a betrayal bond and/or remain “stuck in it.”
C. Keeping stuck in it is why society faults the victims. Most people, victims and society alike, don’t understand the emotional and chemical connection that keeps them stuck.
D. If society began to recognize the impact of love “chemistry,” there would be fewer victims and more caring support for people who are victimized. (That’s one of the reasons I wrote my book. It’s an attempt to get this message out.)
Joyce
Thank you for this, it is really interesting.
I tend to view the whole event as a law of attraction event rather than perpetrator and victim. I still don’t feel like a victim, more the creator of my life.
It devastating to co create an intense loving relationship with a cold blooded liar, the shock waves 5 years on still impact.
I am seeing how MY past fits in and it is without any doubt in my mind, not so much to BLAME but it formed me and my childhood causal injuries that were never acknowledged were inevitably acted out in a repeat cycle till I got the message: There are people willing to exploit my vulnerabilities and rob me of something they want and they USE the impact of love “chemistry” to do it. My parents did it. it’s normal right?
As a society, due to upbringing and emphasis on ‘loving family’ ASSUMES we all have loving families. Many families are unloving dangerous places for children yet we assign some magical right to the natural parent that they are loving. We don’t want to get involved because well they are her parents etc. the parents know best….when the dog on the street knows home is far from loving…EVEN the supposedly loving ones and maybe especially the supposedly loving ones!
A man and a woman can have sex for 5 minutes, create a child and then we EXPECT them to be loving parents.
Rather than see myself as a victim falling prey to the cunning skilled sociopath I could just as easily link it to the way family treated me. Because I didn’t feel loved at home, I feel a hunger for being loved and I am willing to throw myself at someone offering the love I crave- thus leaving myself vulnerable to predator. Oh and the answer lies in loving myself and learning how to do that is a course in miracles in and of itself! because I was taught NOT to love myself, it was wrong…selfish and lots more baloney goes with that
The hormonal response is a powerful sedative effect to the danger yet that in itself could be taught. “falling in love” is dangerous because what if the person is pretending to love you and has activated this hormonal response and I thought it was “real” but the only thing real was the hormonal response! this can be learnt.
The feeling of being loved is directly linked to mother child bond…it’s as primal and unconscious as that. We crave that bond and if it presents itself to us in the guise of sociopath- we take it because we were taught it. We can be taught differently
What if we are forced to re evaluate the whole love phenomenon because we have got it utterly wrong on so many levels.
I believe when we know what love is, there will be no holes for the sociopath to slink in- but until then we are destined to attract that which we NEED to learn the lesson, to become who we truly are destined to become which is loving beings, and the sociopath is created by our desire to evolve..
Maybe I’m just telling myself a pretty story to cope?
Joyce, what I believe is this….and i can only speak for myself. What kept ME stuck is this…….I did not know WTF was going on, plain and simple. I had never met someone I felt the way I felt with Spathtardx. As soon as that illusion really took hold, I was emotionally invested. I was SO confused……it was his semi/ sometimes promises and semi illusion of really wanting it to work, my wanting it to work,,,,,,it was just a big pot of vegetable soup…..stirring and spinning and I stayed and stayed stuck because for the life of me i could not imagine someone saying all the things he said to me and spending all the time he spent with me and not meaning it. I’m still having a hard time digesting that! I mean if I don’t really like someone……I’m just not ABLE to spend time with them…..it’s like fingernails on the chalkboard (to varying degrees).
So, I stand by my belief…….it’s the not knowing what these monsters are doing that gets you hooked, keeps you hooked and prevents you from spitting the hook that you have unknowingly swallowed out.
“Nina’s story demonstrates a big reason why sociopaths come into our lives: to help us recover from a lifetime of pain.”
Again……it is the wording I’m having a problem with here. Sociopaths don’t come into our lives for any other reason than to take what they can from us. What about people who don’t have a lifetime of pain prior to being targeted by a sociopath?
I’m sorry if i’m being picky here but I don’t believe that this situation happened because I had “issues”. I’m not saying that i don’t have issues, but I am saying that I have a LOT of very good people in my life……..and along comes this POS and upends me issues and all.
Another way of looking at it is, if some elderly man is walking down the street (vulnerable due to his age)…….99% of the people he encounters are going to walk past him without incident. but along comes some sociopathic POS and mugs the elderly man. WHy? because the man was elderly and therefore vulnerable? NO! Because the sociopath is a sociopath.
There is not one “issue” in my past that I needed a piece of crap like Spathtardx to “help” me recover from! I don’t see one thing this involvement has helped me see or heal about my past! The ONLY thing this has done is to show me that there are people in this world who are different than anything I could ever never have imagined….
I understand completely. I now understand what I was involved with but sometimes still find it very difficult to accept that the man who told me everything I wanted to hear but was still living with his wife and had other women. I did not have proof of everything, but a lot,just instinct, as he was the most brilliant liar I have ever met. Before I met him I was a successful and confident woman but now I doubt everything. My childhood experience was not one of actual physical abuse but it was emotional abuse, I now recognise, based on withdrawal of affection for slight misdemeanours and having to be the main emotional carer for my mother who felt her life had ended because I had a sister with Downs and other huge problems which she was incapable of coming to terms with. My father could not help her in anyway so I became the main source of support at the age of seven and she blamed me for being who I was. I developed nervous tics and entered a fairy tale world of imagination and failed in everything I did. Somehow I came out of it and succeeded, married to a calm and loving man but I met HIM and somehow I could not resist the love that he seemed to give me in every way. I ruined everything, my relationship with my husband children and grandchildren. He has now moved on to his next trophy and I am attempting to pick up the pieces but it is taking a long long time. Sometimes I doubt sociopaths exist when I am feeling at my lowest but I can find no other explanation for his behaviour. Yes, I think I was a vulnerable child but I had managed to overcome this until he arrived and then I responded like a Pavlovian dog to what I knew. I hope this helps in some way.