When people realize that that they are involved with a sociopath, the standard advice from Lovefraud is that they should, as quickly as possible, cut the predator out of their lives. That means no phone calls, no e-mails, no texts, and certainly no in-person meetings. It means No Contact.
Of course, there are times when this is difficult, as when our reader works with the sociopath, or they have children together. In these cases, they need to implement No Contact as best they can. But let’s now talk about situations where it is possible to get rid of the person, such as in a dating relationship.
What is the best way to establish No Contact? Clearly, firmly and permanently.
The rules of No Contact
The book called The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker, devotes several pages to the topic of rejecting an unwanted suitor, and these pages are among the most helpful of the entire book.
De Becker writes in the context of a woman who decides she doesn’t want to be involved with a man. Do not, the author says, try to “let him down easy.” Here’s what he writes:
One rule applies to all types of unwanted pursuit: Do not negotiate. Once a woman has made the decision that she doesn’t want a relationship with a particular man, it needs to be said one time, explicitly. Almost any contact after that rejection will be seen as negotiation ”¦ If you tell someone ten times that you don’t want to talk to him, you are talking to him—nine times more than you wanted to.
Here are more points that de Becker makes in the book:
- If you get 30 messages from a pursuer, and finally call him back to say, “stop calling,” he learns that after 30 attempts, he will get a response.
- If you make an excuse like, “I don’t want to be in a relationship right now,” the stalker assumes you will want to be in a relationship later, and keeps calling.
- If you say, “You’re a great guy, but I’m not the one for you,” the stalker thinks you’re just confused, and will come around in time.
- Never explain why you don’t want a relationship. If you give a reason, it gives him something to challenge.
- A nice or delicate rejection is often taken as affection.
“The way to stop contact is to stop contact,” de Becker says. “I suggest one explicit rejection and after that absolutely no contact. If you call the pursuer back, or agree to meet, or send him a note, or have somebody warn him off, you buy another six weeks of his unwanted pursuit.”
Giving in
What happens if you’re wishy-washy about No Contact? Not long ago, Lovefraud received the following letter from a reader who we’ll call “Lenore.”
I literally had to count the days that went by as I refused contact with him, and on day 120, I celebrated because I felt healed. Well, on day 121, he emailed me, and against my better judgment, I emailed him back. He told me he had been in therapy, he realized what he had done wrong, he was on medication.
I was cautious and wary, and decided, amidst warnings of concern from my friends and family, to perhaps work on a friendship again. We worked on being friends for a few weeks, and everything was great and fine. I felt in control of the situation.
Then his old behaviors started creeping in. He installed a GPS app on my phone so he could track my whereabouts. He began calling and texting incessantly, and flipping out if I didn’t answer right away. The verbal and psychological abuse had begun again. Fortunately, this time it did not escalate to physical abuse. He began lying again, gaslighting and acting erratically, and began seeing other women on the side. Last night, it once again became too much and I told him not to contact me again because my heart and my spirit couldn’t take any more pain, and his inconsistency is so bad for my son.
So today begins Day One again without him. I am writing you today to tell you that your no contact advice was the best advice I didn’t take. For 120 days I went without him. It took a while, but by day 90 I was happy and free and at peace. Now I am back to square one.
No Contact is the path to healing from an entanglement with a sociopath. The stronger you can be about No Contact, the faster you will recover.
ONE of the best ones my H rented to was a lawyer. She told him she had this ONE little dog. Both properties were on the same piece of land so they were next door neighbors. She mailed her rent every month so I didn’t go check on it and the other renters were great and had been there for a couple of yrs and mailed theirs in. Well get a note in the mail from the good renters that the woman lawyer that H had rented to had more than 10 dogs, in cages and tied out—went down to the house and the p ool house AND the double enclosed garage and the house were full of dogs. She had almost no furniture in the 4 bd rm house and just a apt fridge and a box of papers….where she had checked out KENNELS and found that they were $12-15 bucks per DAY for EACH dog, so she rented my house FOR A KENNEL and saved a bundle. LOL I finally found her there (she was obviously not living there just housing the dogs but did come there to sort of take care of them) gave her 5 days to vacate and she looked me in the eye and lied and said she had told my husband about ALL the dogs!@....... I know that was a lie, even he wasn’t that big a dummy about renters. I kept her deposit to de flea and clean the house of mounds of dog hair.
Well glad your house is rented for the winter. Do you have the same summer renters every year come back? What are the months you rent in the summer (start and stop time, how big is the house? Furnished?) If you don’t have a summer renter I might be interested in finding a cool place to vacation next summer, the heat back here is awful and might be neat to just go to a cooler part of the universe!@.......!! Let me know.
Well, I’m off to bed it is midnight-30 and I have to get up at 6:30 to see the boy off to Kansas. See you guys tomorrow I guess.
I have had the same person for years in the summer. Except when spath lived there…..it freaked them out when he tried to get her to move in WITH him! She works for a client of mine when they come here in the summer. This is her first year back, and she loves the place. She asked me to reserve it for her for next year.
It’s a 3bed/2 bath and furnished. In the winter, I usually rent it for vacation rental. It’s a nice place, warm and cozy and in a very serene setting and very quiet.
This year I just want to put someone in there….so I don’t have to hassle with advertising and interviewing.
I’ve had peeps that watned to rent it long term, but unfurnished. It’s not worth removing all the furniture and whatnot, because at least I can always rent it short term for ski weekends and holidays. It pays the mtg.
I have an apt in my home that would be perfect for you if I can get my remodel done. I’m hoping a contractor will move in and rent a room and get that job finished! BUT….don’t want to put another dime into this house until I get the mod.
Spath demolished the whole floor….took down walls and removed the whole main kitchen……that was almost 4 years ago……..it’s still a shell. I’ve got the cabinets paid for and all appliances in garage……just need to ‘put it back together’……still in limbo. So for now we use the apt. kitchen and I just rent the room and we all share that kitchen.
I have to say, that’s one reason why I fought so hard for both properties……the rental income……aside from the fact it was the RIGHT thing to do!
I love my home…..but it’s hard to become settled when it’s such limboistic.
Something will work out!!!
I’d love to see ya…..I guess I don’t have to convince you how AWESOME our summers are…..come play with us on the jetski!!! 🙂
BTW…..it’s snowing now!!!
Hi Skylar – glad you like my name, I like yours too – protection through knowledge – very appropriate! Jupiter just happens to be a favorite planet of mine. I am intrigued by the universe and have collected some amazing photographs from the NASA website that I often use for my desktop background.
If you run, the chase is on. If you attack, they will counter. Play dead. HOW TRUE IS THAT?! (Very true I’m realizing)
I’ve been practicing emotional no contact for the past 6 or 7 months and at first that didn’t seem to bother him, I guess he was too busy getting supply from another source to notice. But recently, (as I am getting better at it and moving on more in my life) I sense that some of the contact he has initiated with me of late has been purposely and subtly ‘taunting’ my emotions to react. Not so subtle really when these are seen with the advantage of retrospect to identify the pattern and with my N spath radar turned on to full alert!
Since I have recently been able to remain more neutral and haven’t let him know that he may have ’gotten to me’, it seems he has amped up his tactics a bit and I will not be surprised if the next time is a little more overtly obvious and intense. It is so strange to me that he would need to do that. I have been one of his best friends and he knows it. I guess I should say I’ve been one of his best sources of supply and he knows it and he must be noticing I am not giving him that supply so readily as I had in the past.
My N ex is very good at acting like he is unaware of how I would feel when it serves him to be and he is also very good at pointing out why I shouldn’t feel bad about something that he reassures me is a false assumption on my part if I do (sometimes when I haven’t assumed anything or reacted at all). The last time this happened it was so obvious because I hadn’t jumped to the conclusion he thought I had, nor did I feel how he assumed I might as he told me I didn’t need to feel that way.
So in conclusion, if he implies he is aware some of the time how I might feel hurt or pain in reaction to something he says or does – then he must be aware ALL of the time what my likely emotional reaction will be to anything he says, does or doesn’t do that actually does hurt me.
I’m realizing the importance of being extremely vigilant in paying close attention and I think it will be helpful to document each instance in a journal to keep track of the tactics being used as the pattern enfolds.
Wow, so many light bulb moments!
Thanks all!
Dear EB, I might just do that! D works in the summers anyway, and I could get the dogs taken care of, or maybe bring the little one with me, and put the parrot in the traveling cage, and be free to travel. Or I could bring the RV and all i’d need is a KOA or a place to plug in and a water hose. I would like to spend time away from HOT HUMID SUMMER—by the end of January I should know what is happeningn with the parole. I’ll talk to you about it this winter..I really don’t need a big place, just a “dorm room” type thing with a small fridge and a microwave and I’m fixed up!
I would have bought a much smaller RV if I had known then that I wouldn’t have to live in it for the next 10 years.
Oh, well,. just a thought! WE;ll talk more about it over the winter.
‘
I thnink I’m gonna take one more quick peep and then go to bed. Love Oxy
Jupiter,
I hope you don’t mind me saying but WHY are you “journaling his tactics”? I don’t see how that serves to do anything other than keep you in it. The focus is STILL on HIM and what HE is doing to YOU.
I believe that the ONLY way out is to STOP them from ANY tactics. That’s why the no contact rule is so important. Don’t get me wrong, the NC rule sucks. It’s VERY hard to let go of some kind of communication with someone we care for so much. But it HAS to be done. It’s the ONLY way out.
Peace Sisters
Heres an update out of NJ on that case of the mother who disappeared with her 6 year old daughter 25 years ago.
Interesting comments.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/10/in_a_quiet_nevada_village_moth.html
Interesting story, amazing she got through 26 years with no SSN or anything. I kinda wish nobody found them. The comments are all over the map!! I hope the mom does not stay in jail… wishful thinking?
I know…heres a mother protecting her child and acting in the best interest of child…..and the ex spath hurts children, destroys lives, distrubutes drugs and has a chance to get off? WTF?
I hope she get’s a chance to walk from this one…..she could really do some good by telling her story and shedding light on the DV issues she faced and WHY she did what she did.
WE NEED REFORM!
SHMS
I don’t mind at all hearing your opinion and I understand why you say what you do about NC, but I am involved with him in a business we started and I can’t have complete NC at this time without giving that up which would be difficult to do right now and I’m not sure is necessary because I enjoy the work and he is always fair in dealing with me about it.
Writing about what I’m observing now that could be his tactics to get supply from me, is just a way to help me see more clearly what might be really going on if I feel something is ’off’. Our contact for the most part is fairly minimal and 95% of the time is focused only on work, so it is a just a few times recently when he’s initiated contact which has started me seeing how he might be just be reaching out for supply, because a couple of things didn’t make a lot of sense otherwise.
Until discovering this site (just 4 weeks ago), and after reading other info on the web about narcissists, I didn’t even know it was an option to consider while trying to understand him and the dysfunction of the relationship we had. Instead I was in an emotional fog and felt sad daily because I believed there was a true friendship and love which I have been missing so much.
Now I’m seeing that it may all have been an illusion from the start ”“ which is a shock in itself, but is liberating as well. I knew he has difficulty being in intimate relationships, but I didn’t know that there might be something far worse going on.
With this new perspective I have found the sadness about ’losing’ him and the feelings of self blame I’ve had for the failure of our relationship have been diminishing. I had been grieving the loss of our relationship for 15 months, while still hoping on some level that we might be together again one day because I believed the connection I felt with him was real.
As I look back and review the things that happened during our relationship, and at what happens now with this all in mind, I am feeling more empowered and less sad.
So that is just where I am in my healing. My Ex has withdrawn completely from our romantic relationship and lives in another town, so I rarely see him and he doesn’t hint at wanting to get back together with me. This alone has caused me a lot of sadness, but not so much in recent days.
So even though it keeps some of the focus on him, for me right now, the more ’tactics’ he shows that clearly support this new perspective, the more I’m feeling able to emotionally let go of the illusion I’ve had about him and move on with my life.
Peace
Dear Jupiter,
A friend of mine years ago was in both a romantic and business relationship with a psychopath—and he scammed the business until it went bankrupt, so be CAREFUL where the books are concerned and make sure that he is not able to access cash to not deposit or to withdraw phony expenses.
Another friend of mine just this past year got scammed pretty much like my friend of earlier years…business partner too in tens of thousands of dollars, cashed the checks and did not deposit in the business account.
These two scammers were not some “fly by night” just come through town guys either, but they were “upstanding” members of the community, and the second one was a CPA.
I could list you four pages of business scammer psychopaths and how they have worked to bankrupt businesses and individuals.
When you are dealing with a psychopath you must keep in mind that they have NO CONSCIENCE and there is NO level of lowness to which they will not sink. I’ve also been there and done that and been thoroughly reamed by a psychopathic business partner. Not only do you lose, you end up paying hefty legal fees to try to get it back….or not as the case may be. They count on that too. BE CAREFUL, doing business with a psychopath is like the old joke about the scorpion and the frog.
The scorpion begged the frog for a ride across the river, and the frog kept saying “No, you’ll sting me and I’ll die” finally the scorpion said “Now why would I do that? If I stung you in the middle of the river we’d both die, so it isn’t in my interest to sting you” so the frog finally said “Okay I’ll give you a ride”
So the scorpion got on the frog’s back and as they were in the middle of the river, the deepest part, the scorpion stung the frog.
The frog said “Why did you do that, now we both will die? You said you wouldn’t do that!” The scorpion laughed as the water rolled over each one and said “Hey, you knew what I was when you picked me up.”
So that is an example of doing business with a psychopath or giving a ride to a scorpion. Same thing.