Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
By Shocknawe
As a fellow victim of a spath, I’ve been both heartened and heartbroken by the stories told on Lovefraud. Also, like many of us here, I have a natural inclination to feel for others and to do what I can to support and assist in whatever way I can to help ease others’ difficulties that’s a key reason we were targeted in the first place, isn’t it? My experience has caused me to try to understand the nature of suffering and what can be done about it. So if the members will indulge me, I’d like to share some thoughts that have come to me as I continue to process, and perhaps help those on a similar path.
In the immediate aftermath of the trauma of victimization, there is a palpable shock, a disorientation and confusion a feeling of suddenly being lost, without direction or meaning in our life. Combined with the actual physical trauma to our bodies, this period can be at turns, agonizing and terrifying. It is completely natural to seek relief from such pain and torment as quickly as possible in whatever way we think will work, and so we often become consumed by the urge to escape our misery; we may spend our entire lives in this search. We try to escape the pain in countless ways through analysis, trying to make sense of the senseless, or through some authority, or conversation with those close to us who may impart some perspective or rationale that will ease our minds, or simply through distractions of every sort to just help us get through our days and nights. (Hopefully, this does not include harmful alcohol or drugs.)
What these and other forms of relief-seeking share, and which we all understandably engage in, is a common thread: a belief that if we do something, we will bring about the end of our suffering, even if only temporarily, and restore to ourselves a sense of normalcy, before the storm. We in the West have a cultural bias towards self-determinacy in the face of adversity, and we are heavily conditioned by that culture to act.
I’d like to suggest a contrary approach for consideration to those currently dealing with our particular brand of anguish and misery.
The constant searching for escape from our pain is like digging in the earth again and again, in the hope we’ll harvest the fruit that offers the nourishment we yearn for. Maybe in a time of profound distress, what we really need is just the opposite: to cultivate receptivity and stillness, to simply provide the rich soil in order for peace to take root.
Rather than actively seeking escape, perhaps, as unnatural as it may feel to us, we need to be inactive to become inwardly quiet and allow the opportunity to focus on the purification of our hearts and minds. Instead of filling every moment with outward activity, chatter and escape, we could benefit from the solitude our situation forces upon us to create a space inside in which to heal. Through subsequent acceptance and openness, we become receptive to assistance from those aspects of our nature that have our best interests at heart, for some a Higher Power, which brings peace. In short, we don’t find it by actively searching, the relief we seek finds us when we create the space through stillness to allow it to happen. Not the space of a “time out,” but the eternal space we cover up and which is inside us all the time underneath our “lives.”
It may be that the infinite forms our searches for solutions to our suffering take, are in fact no more than escapes dressed in productive activity. Paradoxically, perhaps by dropping our active urge to find peace, and becoming quiet and receptive, we consent to allowing peace to find us.
Henry, you are 29 like I am a SIZE 8—I am a size 8 on the LEFT SIDE and a size 8 on the RIGHT SIDE. LOL
Thank you Oxy for putting me right, M/F ..spaths ..they are basically use the same ammo, ranging from a colt 45 (with/without silencer), sub machine gun or when they really go for it an artillery tank!
Hope its cooler!
Oxy,
That is hysterical!!!
Ana WHAT is hysterical? The “rosey colored glasses”? Yep, that is what that therapist told me and she was SO RIGHT. I wish I had put it into practice much sooner than I did and broken those glasses! Oh, well, now I have 20/20 HIND SIGHT!
Oxy,
NO, size 8 on left and size 8 on right LOLOLOL 🙂
Ana, Oh, THAT! But it’s true! LOL Actually I was a size 6 at one point and I got to buy all these one-of-a-kind designer model’s dresses at cut rate prices because they had been “worn” ….but now I am a SIZE 8. LOL ROTFLMAO but I’m working on cutting down a bit more, maybe to a size SIX.
And I DID have the rosiest rose colored glasses that there ever were, but I think I’ll let BBE have the honor now…I’m DONE with the rose-colored glasses from here on in!!!!!
Oxy,
I feel like I’ve been killin myself at the gym! But I only lose 1lb a week..lol. I’m a size 8 too but I was verging on 10!!UGh. I’ve nevah been a 6 and spose I nevah will be, oh well, as long as my cholesterol keeps going down I happy!
I had, my rosey colored glasses YANKED off my face! Either way, sooner or later, they just gotta come off. I don’t want them back on either.
Ana, losing one pound a week is ideal really, so just keep on doing it. I’ve been at a stand still on the weight LOSS though I have got my sodium and cholesterol consumption down to VERY LITTLE.
At least I have not gained any for a while, but am getting my metal up to quit the stand still and get back on the LOSING track! Good work at the gym! TOWANDA
Hi. Okay, here goes…
My divorce from my husband, a very nice man and great father to our three kids, was final in January of ’99. A few weeks later, a message popped up on facebook from my 8th grade “boyfriend.” The first boy who ever liked me, first boy I ever liked. Now he’s married, no kids, unhappy, lives in a separate part of the house, wants out. (This is all corroborated by a mutual friend.)
I’ve read that this is a very common post-divorce move, the relationship with a married man. Of course, I didn’t think that’s what I was doing… I was helping someone get out of the same situation I’d just come out of! I had the tools! I could guide the way and show him how easy it was to find happiness again!!! (FYI… read a great quote today, by Anne Lamott: “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”)
It was very important to me that the guy and his wife end things on their own terms. So I waited. Over the course of the two years… very passionate, intense connection. Like going home, really. I saw the 15-year-old him, and that’s who he saw in me. We saw each other when we could, he backed off when I needed to, I backed off when he needed to, we were best friends… it was everything I ever dreamed of.
Fast forward to today… His divorce is final in a few weeks. This is what I waited so patiently for, on the sidelines, my life on hold while the man I loved got his life in order so that we could move forward and ride off into the sunset. But guess what? Now (in his words) he is homeless, his business has tanked, he is miserable, he has nothing, he’s lost his family, his friends, everything. In the past two months, I’ve seen all of him — the REAL him — the parts of him I ignored and explained away, and I want nothing of it. I could list examples ad nauseam of all the crappy things he does and says. This is not the man I fell in love with. This is not the man who promised me so many things. This is not the way I want to live the rest of my life, or who I want my kids to be around.
Yes, divorce is hard. But I think during hard times is when you see a person’s true colors. When he moved out in June, and brought some stuff here, and started staying in a hotel the nights my kids were here, and is basically living like a nomad even though he has the money to get a place of his own — he turned into a bitter, hostile, resentful shit who blames me for everything. It is not fun. I’m pretty sure that he’s just passive-aggressively pushing me away so that our thing can crash so that he has “no choice” but to go back home with his tail between his legs. Does this make him a sociopath? I don’t know. I’ve armchair-analyzed this thing till even I’m bored with it. I think he’s a developmentally-arrested addict with ADD who snagged a rich woman who gave him a long leash. I think he got very bored very quickly, and started looking for someone else. And me? I was 3 weeks out of a divorce, and a sitting duck.
I’m here because I don’t know what to do with all of this. This label of “sociopath,” it all rings true. And of course, during the course of these two years, I saw all the signs. There’s a reason I read “Help! I’m in Love with a Narcissist!” a few months into the relationship… I don’t care anymore what he does. I don’t care if he goes back home. I don’t care if he has to live with his parents. I don’t care if he lives in a crackerbox. I just want his nastiness out of my life, and I want my joy back.
Now I’m trying to figure out how to end it. I don’t want a scene. I don’t want to give him that. My kids are gone this week, and I would like to simply box everything up and have it in one place in the house where I won’t see it. Then spend my week going to the gym, working in the yard, deep cleaning the house, seeing movies, going to the pool… whatever the flip I want to do. He’s pouting now and staying away, but when he finally calls, I won’t answer. I won’t respond to anything until he finally asks when he can come get his things. Then I’ll tell him when it’s convenient for me. Then that’s it. How does that sound?
And I just want to say again how much I appreciate reading everyone’s stories. I want to respond to them. But I’m (a) a newbie, and (b) in survival mode and unsure if I can even interact with people anymore, even virtually. Thanks, controlling SOB who stripped me of confidence!