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.
EB, do you remember that case about the woman who took her children to Holland as refugees from her husband. When the kids were over 18 they wanted to come back to the states, but there was a kidnapping warrant still out on the mom, but finally, it was nol prosed and the woman and her kids were able to come back to the states.
The kids were old enough that they remembered the beatings and such, where this little girl wasn’t old enough to remember her father.
IF (and I am saying IF) this woman DID run to save herself and her child from abuse, then she should not be prosecuted,
BUT on the other hand, remember the guy in Florida I think it was, who WAS the Abuser and took the two kids and fled from the mother? The mother found the kids on FB I think it was.
That’s the thing, how do you sort all this out 15-20 years down the line? I think it would have to be King Solomon to sort it out.
Look at that “Clark Rockefeller” guy who kidnapped his daughter, there is NO DOUBT that he was the bad guy there, but let’s say he had managed to keep her hidden for 10-15 years, what would have HIS STORY BEEN? “Oh, I did it to keep her safe from her mean old mommie” Of course her mother’s story would have been 180 degrees different.
I think the FIX to this kind of situation is for the family courts to get their chit right so that parents don’t have to pick up their kids and run to keep them safe. That Amy Castillo type thing where one parent kills the kids to get back at the other parent is NOT ALL THAT RARE. I just found another news article the last few days where a father killed his kids to get back at the mother. I think I posted the link on the Amy Castillo thread.
Don’t you know that Amy Castillo must go to sleep every night wondering “why the hell didn’t I take my kids and RUN?” Well, probably because if she HAD taken the kids and run and been caught, she would have been in prison and the kids with the Psychopath 100% of the time. It is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t dance with death! Which way do you jump when you know your kid’s parent is a beast?
I wish I had an answer. I don’t even know all the questions.
shms,
I think its very wise for Jupiter to journal his tactics. Keeping records is very valuable because we are dealing with deceivers and manipulators who appear to be human beings. When you are in their presence, it is very easy to be lured back into “feeling” that they are being real, even though you “know” that they are not real at all. It is only the records/recordings of past events which keep us firmly in reality. That is why the psychopaths are always saying, “that was in the past”, “don’t bring up the past”, and my favorite from my exP, “THE PAST DOES NOT EXIST”. lol.
They do live in the present because they are children, their only reality is the con they are pulling right now. In the presence of these psychopaths, it is very easy for a normal human to be pulled into believing the illusion is real – even ME, who KNOWs my exP is a sack of shit, will feel emotion rising when he emails me sweet tender words. I will sometimes “trigger” myself by listening to the old recordings of his bs, just as an innoculation. It’s one of the reasons I keep coming back to LF, as a booster shot to remind me of what is out there.
Oxy, thanks for your advice about the business dealings – and I love that story about the scorpion and the frog. I’ve heard it before and it’s a good one. (my ex is a scorpio – lol!)
I am fairly safe regarding the financial risk of our partnership because it is a business not requiring ‘investment’ from me other than me providing the creative work I do. If anything, he depends more on me to keep the business going successfully than I do on him. He has always been supportive and fair with me regarding money and has never tried to take from me financially. Also, he has always had more of it than I do, and if anything, like we discussed in an earlier post, he uses generosity to make up for what are probably his feelings of ‘guilt’ for how he doesn’t always measure up in other ways in people’s eyes.
Skylar, I’m glad you understand how I feel about keeping track of what happens now and why this is especially important to me. My ex is very covert in his tactics and they are not easy to see while they’re happening. He appears to really care about me and I doubt I would have had any idea about them at all if it wasn’t for LF and the new awareness I have now to be on the lookout for any inconsistencies in his words or behavior toward me.
For me a part of it is also that I am still not 100% convinced he intentionally (or even unintentionally) does this, so keeping records is just another way to affirm for myself what the truth is. Mine also said “THE PAST DOES NOT EXIST” and lives in the present… I always thought that was an admirable trait, very Buddhist – lol!
Once in the early days of my heartbreak while on the phone with him I was very sad and said that I missed him and our lives together and he said to me “you’re missing something that doesn’t exist”… how telling is that?!!
I figure, whatever I need to do to now to understand the reality of my situation is worth doing, even if there is still some sting left in it for me. I loved him so much and trusted him – that is not something I can disregard so easily without feeling assured that what I’m seeing now is what is really happening.
With this awareness I feel he has less power to hurt me and so the more he shows his disorder to me, the stronger and healthier I feel I’m becoming. The more I am convinced that nothing was ‘real’ about our love relationship, the easier it is to stop mourning it and hoping he’ll realize his ‘mistake’ and come back.
And about keeping the focus on him… ha ha, I have been doing that way too much anyway, so at least now what I’m seeing benefits me and no longer him.
Thanks all!
Oxy, being a Scorpion, I know that story. LOL. I agree with what you are saying.
Skylar, Journaling is WONDERFUL. I WISH I had done it when I was IN the relationship.
Jupiter,
All I can say is it’s easier to read the label from OUTSIDE the bottle. The same way it’s easier to give others advise. I read what you are saying and I SO get where you are and understand why you are doing what you are doing. PARTICULARLY the part about him not trying to get back with you and how much that hurts.
I can see the way you “rationalize” the business relationship, the SAME way I rationalized all the times I told myself the “I don’t have any choice but to deal with him” stories to myself. The truth is, if interacting with him would have caused me to spontaneously combust, do you think I would have been able to find a way around it? It’s because we convince ourselves it’s not doing us harm.
If you are in with one of these guys, I don’t think you can AVOID harm. Even if the interaction APPEARS to be harmless at the time. Either way, your head stays in it and that ALONE is harm.
Please remember that I’m spouting here. I am only on Day 8 NC and it’s been a LONG frickin’ 8 days!
But just as I know right from wrong, I know what is good and bad for me….regardless of how I might be able to rationalize. And looking back at all the time I rationalized interaction, I was doing so for many reasons that included, needing to hang on….. desperate for SOME kind of contact with him. ANY kind of contact! HOPING maybe SOMEHOW during our exchanges he would remember/see what a great person I am and say “What have I been thinking?”. I didn’t admit this stuff to myself at the time (often), but later (if I’m being honest with myself), I KNOW what I’m REALLY doing.
So I guess that’s my advice to you. Do whatever you need to do. As someone here wrote that their yoga teacher said. “You are not your actions, you are your AWARENESS of them.” I know I still secretly want him to come waltzing through my door saying how he can’t believe he has been so crazy and I’m the best thing that ever happened to him. Denying that I feel that would be lying to myself.
I also believe, “you become what you practice most”. So while I don’t FEEL like I don’t want contact and while I don’t FEEL like looking after myself, I am DOING what I KNOW I “should” be doing and I’m waiting for my feelings to catch up….However, I’m also giving my feelings a leg up, but doing the soul work that needs doing as well. I think sooner or later it will all come into one and I’ll be in balance.
All this to say that I believe there is NO set schedule for all this. I do believe there are some fundamentals to follow and I COMPLETELY subscribe to the No Contact rule being necessary (much as I can’t stand it). I have 1000 bonafide reasons to contact my ex about things. But even though some things really should be addressed, right now I’m setting a 30 day no contact rule. When I get to 30 days (A FIRST in 10 years), I’ll reflect/assess and see what the next move for me should be.
I think what I am trying to say here is that there is NO good, or bad in where you are, there is only HONESTY with yourself. In my case, I STILL love the jerk. I STILL wish he’d walk through the door and say, “I don’t want a divorce, I’ve been so wrong…blah, blah….My ENTIRE life and IDENTITY was based on our union. We were a POWER couple. My business was entirely connected to his. In walking away from him and our business, I lost my work and my heart. But it HAD to be done. It just HAD to. All I needed to do was ask myself the Dr. Phil question, “So how’s it workin’ for ya? Truth was, as long as I continued to interact with him the scab kept getting ripped off the wound.
Oh sure, I PRETENDED like it was just “business only”, but my emotions were on high alert and i was aware of his actions during the day and while I was emailing “business only” emails to him, but I was SCREAMING inside, because I WANTED to say all the things I was NOT saying, while I was ACTING like I was cool with it all. Well, I’m leaving the acting up to him and I’m after 100% authenticity right now. I don’t need to get it right, as much as I need to get REAL about what I’m REALLY doing and feeling.
Peace Sisters.
Dear Soul,
I can hear what you are saying about the “reasons” for contact, and how easy it is to RATIONALIZE. Because I am co-trustee with my egg donor on our family trust there are occasions that I have to contact her but it is by E MAIL ONLY, and ONLY about business. I think it has been 8 months or more since that was even necessary, and she e mailed me only PART of the information I needed, and I know in my heart it was so I would CALL HER—but I bit my tongue—oh, HOW I wanted to call her, but I could SEE that HOOK sticking out, and so I just went around here withholding information that she KNEW I needed.
I agree with you that ANY contact with them can suck us into a feeling of being “safe” when we sure are NOT. It is a little bit like keeping a rattle snake for a pet—it may not bite you every day but boy when it does, it will be a DOOZIE!
The only reason her number is plugged into my cell phone is so I will know NOT TO ANSWER. LOL
Thanks Oxy,
I know you are a book fiend. I just ordered Beyond Betrayal and Deceived. Any other suggestions?
Dear Soul,
There are a bunch of book reviews here. Do a LF search for my favorites that I have done, and Donna has done a bunch. Look at the LF book store as well. I have read most of those.
Skip J. Reid Meloy’s books, he’s an “expert” but his writing is mostly so narcissistic word salad that even if his expertise is valid (and I’m not so sure it is) he words his books so deeply that you have to diagram the sentences to find out the subject of the sentence. Talk about run-on sentences, worse than mine even!
It seems to me that most of his stuff ascribes to the “If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullchit” literary form.
I also think he’s too much into Freud and some pseudo-psychology with ink blot tests and such. I’d rather have more hard science and more clear writing. Hare is hands above Meloy in my opinion and his stuff is understandable to anyone who can read. You don’t have to have a DSM IV and a dictionary beside your table as you read. LOL
Gavin DeBecker–every word that man writes is pure gold in my opinion. Very practical too. Plus, that man has LIVED with psychopathy from childhood, and so that helps I think.
Also, for me anyway, it isn’t just about learning about THEM, but also learning about ME–why was I such an easy con? What was it about me that made me rationalize their behavior? Why didn’t I recognize that bad behavior is something I don’t have to put up with from my nearest and dearest? Learning about how they operate is a good thing, but also learning about me and how I LET THEM OPERATE is the key, I think, to healing.
Learning first that I CAN stand up. Then Learning to stand up and be steady on my feet. It has taken time, but the standing up is more about me having confidence in myself not to let myself fall again. Now, the healing is about ME, not just about them.
Yes, the line I quoted that you said that I love.
“It starts about learning about them and ends with learning about ourselves”.
SO true!
I wish I had figured that out decades ago. I would think I had “healed” because I figured out that someone was dysfunctional but I didn’t generalize to ALL dysfunctional people. I didn’t see the PATTERNS in the dysfunction. I didn’t see the PATTERNS in my reactions to dysfunction to see how it all meshed into a bad situation for ME.
I spent too much time trying to control their behavior—and even though therapy in my 30s helped some, I still didn’t GET IT completely that I was allowing myself to be abused, that I still had some of the old IDEAS that were not working.
Our thinking can work for or against us, and if our Thinking is not correct, our actions won’t be either. So I fell into that trap.
Sort of like the old computer thing of “garbage in, garbage out” and since I was working with faulty information, the decisions I made were faulty….over and over. So, I had to correct my basic thinking,, then the decisions got better. Then I realized that the behavior on my part got better with better decisions, so I am no longer taking part in my own abuse by allowing others to stomp on me. Seems “basic” but for me it wasn’t. I had to learn from the ground up!
I’m just feeling fortunate that I didn’t end up dead (or worse) before I finally got a bit smarter…wiser..whatever term you want to use, but I got over the worst of my “cranio-caudal retroversion” (got my head out of my butt!) LOL
Hello All,
I keep coming back to this thread…I am learning so much and find solace that I am not alone in the difficulty of maintaining NC.
I am on DAY 15!!!!! It is a struggle, at times I do not think I can make it and have to put myself into a “time out” and try to find something distracting enough to keep myself from not picking up the phone or emailing him.
I am struggling with why I struggle, and just wanted to once again say Thank You to all the wisdom and knowledge and comfort I gain reading your comments.
Today, for the first time in over the year and a half since meeting the X-creep, I was given the most amazing gift. The creep had talked me into trying to refinance my home, ostensibly to get a better interest rate and lower payment, but it just was not happening (thankfully!, I am sure he would have found a way to scam me out of the equity) and has dragged out for over 4 months. Right after instituting NC, I contacted the mortgage co. and withdrew my re-fi application. Then last week I received a bill from them requesting payment of over $600 to pay for their costs to work on my application…..$$ I simply do not have and cannot raise any time soon. I called them yesterday and explained that I could not pay that entire amount and requested that they work with me on a payment plan. I tossed and turned all night, everything has been so overwhelming. And all day I felt my resolve crumbling, I almost texted him or called him a dozen times, he is intelligent and would have helped me problem solve this (that was the insidious battle I have waged in my head all day, because we all know he would not have helped me without some pay-off for himself), but managed to hold off until I could get home and get on this blog. I spent a few hours reading and catching up on all the posts, then realized I really needed to call a friend and just talk to someone. When I fetched my cell phone, I had a voice msg….did you all hear my heart pounding?! It was not his #, so I listened to it. It was from the mortgage co. apologizing for the poor service I experienced and the lack of their timely processing of my re-fi app…..and they were removing all the charges and would absorb the costs. WOO HOO!
I am back on it, all over this NC!! At times I am my own worst enemy, but it is so validating to read that I am not alone in the struggle. I hope someday soon it gets easier than it has been, I choose to believe it will. And I feel so blessed for the good fortune that came my way this evening, almost as if the Universe is telling me to keep up the good work. I just wanted to share that, and hopefully give others a bit of encouragement to keep going with it.
xoxo