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.
Also, I haven’t talked to him in over a week and although I think about him and give my self healthy messages I’m doing very well. This is my “umpteenth” time trying to not communicate. ” I’m getting better all the time.” (Great song by Brooks and Dunn).
so true, Oxy, no good deed goes unpunished. LOL.
Dear Sienna,
I think you are wise to stay away from her! The less you interact with them the safer you are, but that doens’t say she won’t target you for staying away from her.
The collateral damage that they do….your husband’s best friend is married to her, and obviously he at least at this point, doesn’t get it about her….
Fortunately, I am retired so no problem having to associate with them either at work or because of work, and have NCd the ones in my family as well. It was painful and difficult, but now I don’t regret it at all. Getting a P-FREE life is worth it to me!
Katy, CONGRATULATIONS for the NC, keep it up! One day at a time!!!!
Oxy,
YOUR VERY RIGHT….(as allways)….They do try to hit every button you have to resume contact. They know what works and what dosent….the S in my life got me hooked LAST TIME with a free cruise to the Carabean since he knows how much I like to travel! I, like a fool took it with the thought that I could “handle it” just for the moment. WRONG!!!!! …I got sucked in again and had to go through another round of the abuse cycle….only difference this time is it was short and I am more educated and aware of who he is and all the buttons I have 🙂
Katy,
You storing his stuff in your house is only a reason for him to have contact with you…..and for you to have contact with him. It’s bad energy, bad karma and rotton baggage!!! Get a friend to do the transaction or simply give it away if he dosent respond to the notice (as Oxy suggested).
I’ve done the “exchange posetions dance” every time we broke up. Every which way you can think of …crazy…the LAST TIME, I met him in a neutral place, a parking lot and we did a quick exchange. DONE. Good luck!
Thank you for the advice about my avoidant lover.
I love him. Why is it so FLIPPING PAINFUL.
I hurt when I’m with him, because he’s going to do something that just plain hurts
I hurt when I’m not with him, because I miss him
How stupid.
What is the best anecdote?
This sucks so much.
Dear Superkid,
What is the best antidote? NO CONTACT. GET AWAY from him.
It is like being around poison ivy! If you are around it it hurts and burns and itches, and if you get away from it, it still burns, hurts and itches for a WHILE, but it soon goes down and the blisters go away. BUT AS LONG AS YOU are around it, you will hurt! IT TAKES A WHILE OF BEING AWAY FROM IT for the hurt to stop, but it WILL, and if you go back even for a short time, IT WILL START IN AGAIN, BACK TO SQUARE ONE and you have to start over!
There are many wonderful articles here in the archives of LoveFraud (over 700) read them and learn what is going on with you. It won’t help overnight, but it WILL HELP you get a better handle on your life and your happiness.
This starts out about learning about them, but ends up learning about ourselves and how we can be better friends TO OURSELVES.
Read the comments written by Kathleen Hawks today–they are two of the BEST articles on here–they are on the “Living the Lie, the truth revisited” thread. Bottom line is we must be our own friends and not depend on someone else to make us happy.
Yea, you are right, it sucks, but it is part of becoming an independent human being…took me a long time to do it, but I’m getting there. (((hugs)))) and God bless.
Superkid:
The anecdote is to endure the pain of the end of the fantasy, go no contact in order to reach the ‘other side’, learn what you are being shown about yourself and move on through the journey.
good luck darlen……the pain does soften with time.
Hi all.
The No Contact issue is an area I have pondered many many times over the past 4 years of falling off this particular wagon. Why is it so hard? I have broken up with people before in my life and never had this issue before.
Why with this particular type of relationship is it so hard?
Here are some of my ruminations – I am not sure if they will help any of you but take anything you can use from it.
1. When the relationship started – I was not looking for any hidden agendas or behaviours that might alert me to possible sociopathic tendencies. I was, you might say, a vulnerable virgin to the pathalogical personality. Never occurred to me. Unlike some of you, I have not been exposed to people who are either NPD or sociopathic. Never crossed my mind.
2. The relationship was very good for most of the time in the first year. I felt incredibly lucky and blessed to have found such a wonderful man. (OK OK NOW I know it was too good to be true – but then – I didn’t. I didn’t think I had anything to worry about)
3. I fell deeply in love with this man, and he me (he was very good at this part – very good)
4. When the little inconsistencies and oddities first began to appear (they may have been there earlier and i didn’t see them straight away) I didn’t instantly think “Sociopath – get out” I just thought “at my age, no one is going to come along without some baggage and be set in some of their ways – none of us are perfect”. Those little behaviours seemed, up against the good stuff, not enough to get myself to concerned about.
5. Slowly, don’t know how/when, I became so enmeshed and involved with this man the lines became blurred, I lost sight of my self and everyone else but this man. I couldn’t see this then becaues I was IN it. I stopped being rational. I adored this man, but had begun to feel insecure, anxious, nervous, and didn’t know why. Something was off balance. Things didn’t make sense but I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. His behaviour towards me changed, but I thought it was me. I tried harder. He played every game in the book, but I didn’t know I was in the game, or that there were rules. Silences/gaslighting/withdrawal. Total confusion. Little lies. Big wopper lies. My world was full of smoke and shadows.
6. By the time you realise you have got yourself a problem, you know you need to get out of it, but you are hooked. You are hanging on by a thread for those lovely tender affectionate moments to return, to the man you thought you were living with and loving, to return. Not this cold, ruthless, uncaring individual hiding inside his body. You aren’t equipped with the tools you need to see what is happening, you are experiencing it, you are hurting, but at the same time YOU are still in love, still feel the same about him because that’s the point your were at when he “changed”. He might be able to turn a switch on and off, but you can’t. You love. You work at maintaining that love. You work at nurturing that love. When it doesn’t seem to be working, you put more into it and wonder what you are doing wrong. When you are so involved with this mind mess you can’t see what’s going on clearly, and you aren’t thinking “Sociopath” you are thinking “God what did I do? What happened? Where did everything go wrong? What can I do to change it”
7. The length of time we are prepared to put up with this before we finally get out varies depending on the circumstances, but most of us, it seems, have to literally wrench ourselves out of the hell hole because we know something is wrong, but we leave still loving. Still caring. Still hoping.
8. Then you have to move into No Contact in order to survive the aftermath. This is a toughie because you still care about the person you believed you were with. You still have those feelings inside. It just doesn’t beggar belief that he didn’t feel SOMETHING because he seemed so real, so genuine, so loving, so wonderful. So you engage, hoping to see something there, remorse, sorrow, empathy. You spend countless hours explaining how you feel, why you left, what hurt you to this empty mirror image. You get nothing back. Nothing. This adds to your intense pain. Not only have you left someone you didn’t really want to leave – but now you face the reality that he doesn’t really care about you and never did. He’s not sorry. He blames you for letting him down.
9. You might ping pong back and forth on this one for some time before you realise you have to break free again. So you do. But you still hurt. You still ache. You still want validation, acknowledgement, some sense that it wasn’t all in vain. It’s like a virus that just won’t leave your system until you get the right medicine.
10. Each time that you get drawn back into a war of words, you repeat the same things, you get the same back, and you see the same behaviour that hurts. You may even ask yourself why you subject yourself to this. You may start to frantically find answers anywhere you can and eventually you find somewhere like this site, with people saying what you are, feeling what you are, describing this abyss you live in, and you feel a certain glimmer of hope, and realise you aren’t alone, there is something to begin to understand.
11. Ok so you begin to get a grasp of what you have experienced and you begin to get some sense of what to do. NO CONTACT. NONE. EVER. You will simply get drawn back into the same game, same words, same result. YOU KNOW THIS. But still you find yourself wanting to believe that maybe it’s not that, that you might just get through if you try one more time. You won’t. Deep down you know that. I am not sure what this bit is and would welcome someone who can explain. What is this bit of us that just can’t let go no matter how many times we prove to ourselves that it’s a hopeless case?? Despite reading what we read here and knowing we are making a mistake to enter into any dialogue – we do?? What is that about??
And finally 12. The only thing I can say after 4 years of making this mistake regularly, I find I actually start looking for the behaviour and thinking, uh oh here we go, and it’s BORING. Not painful. When he starts messing about with his wordgames or whatever, I think “nothings changed, your still a weirdo” and I find contact peters out because I get fed up with it.
OK this is better – but I still wonder what the hook is that still lurks within because I really get annoyed with myself now if I get drawn back into it and can’t for the life of me see what I think I can gain from it. But I do notice it upsets my balance and mood for a while until I once again, get it out of system. The hook/draw isn’t so powerful, and my resistance gets stronger and I feel little pain – but I get infuriated with him for doing it, and me for allowing it.
Maybe it takes that long to get this particular drug out of our system – it’s hold so strong.
Love, peace and light to you all – you will get there. We all will.
LJ xx
Dear Ellejay, GREAT POST!!!!
You’ve just described trying to break free from cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, psychopathic “love”, trauma bond, Stockholm syndrome, or battered spouse syndrome, etc etc.
Seldom does a person quit any of the above situations the first time. With cigarettes I think is like an average of 6 tries before someone quits, but only a small percentage actually really try to quit. Ditto for booze and drugs.
Not everyone who takes a drink gets “hooked” or can’t quit, or everyone who does a drug, or dates and breaks up with someone, but some of us DO get hooked on a “substance of choice” that makes chemical changes in our brains that make us prone to have difficulty “letting it go.”
I quit cigarettes, FINALLY, and every once in a while I still want one, but not badly like in the past—and I am 99.9% sure I will never go back to them. But NO CONTACT with them (i.e. no “smoking just one”) is the one thing I know that will keep me FREE of cigarettes for life…for MY LIFE.
Staying away from people I know are TOXIC that I know I can’t trust, that I know will hurt me if they get a chance will keep me FREE from more injury from those people….why take a chance that I might get sucked back in again? Because if I did, I’d have to start ALL OVER AGAIN and I don’t want to take that kind of risk.
I KNOW THAT STAYING AWAY FROM PSYCHOPATHS AND CIGARETTES will keep me free from more injury, and I know that if I go back to being around them or interacting “just a bit” I can get INJURED AGAIN!
Alcohol isn’t my “substance of choice” so I may have a glass of wine every month or two, but I’m not worried about becoming an alcoholic because I don’t even have the Desire to over indulge in alcohol. There are those people though, who can’t even have one glass of wine because ALCOHOL is their “substance of abuse” but they can smoke a cigarette or two without getting “hooked’ (Not that it is good for them even a little) but whatever is our “substance of abuse” whether it is drugs, cigarettes, or some one, is what we must avoid!
NO CONTACT ROCKS!!! It will eventually lead to our safety and healing and STOP THE PAIN!!!