Editor’s note: This article was submitted by Steve Becker, LCSW, CH.T, who has a private psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and clinical consulting practice in New Jersey, USA. For more information, visit his website, powercommunicating.com.
You really need to admire yourself for surviving an exploitative relationship. I say this very seriously, not flippantly. We all, of course, hope to minimize our involvement with exploitative individuals. But in the course of life, as we know, that’s not always possible. It is vital, therefore, if you’ve been victimized by and/or are recovering from involvement with an exploiter, to fully, genuinely appreciate (and remind yourself constantly) that you are indeed strong, impressively strong, because only the strong survive exploitation.
Many clients with whom I work (really, most people, I think) tend to see personal strength and insecurity; personal strength and low self-esteem, as incompatible. They balk at the idea that you can be a very strong person and insecure at the same time; that you can be a very strong person even with low self-esteem. For instance, when someone violates you (especially chronically) and you don’t defend yourself properly, the tendency is to attribute your failure at self-protection to “personal weakness.” The thought is something like, “If I was a strong person, I wouldn’t have let that abuse occur. I’d have asserted myself, defended myself, drawn the line.”
But it’s not personal weakness that explains the failure to protect your boundaries; it’s more often a lack of clarity, in knowing precisely what your boundaries are, and precisely what constitutes an unacceptable violation of them. Victims of sustained exploitation/abuse aren’t personally weak, quite the contrary. My experience has affirmed again and again how remarkably strong and resourceful most of them are. What they lack, however, often is a clear, secure sense of their boundaries; this insecurity of boundaries leaves them vulnerable to compromising themselves. After all, you can’t assert and/or protect your boundaries unless and until you’ve established them very clearly and securely (in your mind).
This explains what for many can seem so confusing and dichotomous: how a victim of sustained exploitation/abuse can, on the one hand, lobby so effectively for others’ interests, while, with respect to her/his own, appear stuck in circumstances he or she would counsel anyone else to reject and escape.
But I restate: You can’t protect your interests if they aren’t, in the first place, clearly defined. And you can’t defend your boundaries if, on any level, you’re uncertain, or ambivalent about, what they are. This disadvantaged position helps explain how an otherwise strong, resourceful adult can find her/himself tolerating and enduring the meanness and nonsense of a defective partner.
When my clients who have been in exploitative relationships discover confidently their boundaries, they often feel sad, on one hand, not to have done so sooner; but thrilled on the other to find themselves, as if miraculously, just as skilled at protecting their own interests as they’ve always been at protecting others’.
It’s a kind of bittersweet discovery. The bitter part, if grieved properly, is usually short-lived; the sweet aspect is long-lasting.
Oxy, you’re welcome. I love the analogy of the raft. I will remember that one. I hope you don’t mind if I use that at work too. It’s a great analogy to explain how our old defense mechanisms and repressed emtions keep up from moving forward where we want to go. In it’s most pathological form that would be the P woudn’t it?
You are in my thoughts and prayers as you work through your feelings about your mother. I started that journey a long time ago regarding my father. It is a worthwhile journey and one where you will find peace.
I was blessed with a wonderful therapist when I was a teenager. I was the one in the family system who showed the dysfunction of the whole with depression. Ye olde scapegoat. My therapist asked me when I was 16 why I believed any of the horrible things my father said about me and why I internalized his abuse. Hmm….good question. She said he’s human and filled with flaws. His words are coming from his perspective and not necessary the truth. Nuh-uh. Aren’t parents supposed to be perfect?
Fast-forward a couple years and I eventually saw a pattern here. My father abused his family, his parents abused him, their parents abused them, etc. My father functioned from what he learned what he experienced. It doesn’t make it right. But who was I to be angry with? Him? My grandparents? Great-grandparents? Exactly where did this pattern evolve from? I resolved that by the grace of God I was somehow spared from repeating it regardless of where it originated. Perhaps I didn’t get the defective gene? Who knows but I am thankful to be spared.
I have distinct boundaries with my father and so I am able to interact with him safely now. I had to have distance from him periodically and little to no contact at times until I could navigate things better. I think I would have cut him off at one point if it weren’t for my mother. They come as a package deal. So I’ve had to figure it out. I have no doubt you will figure it out too Oxy. I sounds like you are 🙂
I think the sad thing about the SP is it looked and felt so good for a very short time, then came the verbal abuse and the wanton displays and the lies, even then i could not imagine that this woman could do these things, PalTx welcome to Donna’s place to share our heartfelt feelings on these evil wrong doers, we have something they never will have, Love, empathy and compassion.
I don’t trust myself anymore… is it just me, am I crazy, am I the one who has the mental problems?… or is there really a repeating pattern in my life of association with sociopaths? How do I know if I am just feeling overly sorry for myself or if I have actually been the ‘victim’ of several sociopaths??? I don’t know…. I just want to be in a ‘partnership’ where we are both relatively equal and I am actually liked for who I am… am I so disgusting that only the scum of society would ever look at me.
If I ask him “what does he like about me” it is always “because you are kind”, never any flowery words or quoting something specific about me. He never looks me in the eyes when we are having a ‘conversation’. He is always upset if he thinks I have embarrassed him in public, he does not see my worth unless someone else compliments me first.
Is it an imagined sideline whereby these people seem to focus on the negative side of life? They suck dry the small bit of joy you may feel for any accomplishment and make you doubt the motives of others. I tell a funny story of something that happened at work, or express happiness at a compliment or small accomplishment and before I know it.. it has been twisted and suddenly everyone was actually laughing ‘at me’ because I am so stupid and I just did not know it.. or bizzarly enough, it is about my Partner instead and how those people think they are better than him… even though they have never even met him. Everyone is a racist according to him and all stories seem to come back to this… When I told him my Mum said someone looked tired, we eventually got back to how my Mum was actually thinking that he is taking drugs and then he proceeded to rant for 40mins solid about how she is a racist and she looks down on him and how dare she say he is taking drugs…. What tha????! I often find myself shaking my head wondering how the hell we came to a particular point in our conversations… If something makes me feel happy now, I just keep it to myself lest he take away my good feeling.
I know my previous boyfriend was definately a sociopath and my current Husband was actually a rebound relationship. I thought he was different and he truly loved me but now I think that I may have rebounded straight into the arms of another sociopath..or something else, he is somewhat different from the other, less extreme but still ugly… as I said is this true, or am I the one creating these disgusting experiences????
I wonder about my Mother also, she always seems to be looking out for you when you are down but, then she also seems to find great pleasure in seeing the negative side of every situation and telling me all the reasons why my partner does not actually like me etc. She runs around to tell everyone in the family all my personal business and gossip about me, then coming back to tell me all the negative things that other family members are also saying about me. She actively promotes the dislike between me and my only sister. If I start to tell her a story about something that happened, she cuts in and lectures me about how I did the wrong thing and how I should have handled the situation and gets all breathy and full of drama thinking of all the dire consequences… regardless of what actually happened and ignoring the actual ‘non-dire and positive outcome’ of the situation….. Is that just a normal Mother-Daughter situation??? or is it something else???
At first I thought he loved me and that he was happy to be with me but now… everything I do is wrong, I can’t cook properly, I don’t dress right, I am stupid, my perceptions of others intentions are all wrong…… We have the same arguments ad-nauseum with the same empty promises that things will change… Gambling at the pokies is a big problem, responsibility for household bills and the care of our children is another… He won’t help around the house unless I have a screaming fit… He is obsessed with reading sexually explicit material and I have been forced to put a password on our home computer to stop him trawling through porn whenever I am not at home. We have a HUGE argument full of dramatic emotion and then 10mins later it is as if nothing even happened?????
I seem to always be the one to pay for his actions in anxious emotions & worry.
My eyes were opened recently when I returned to work after looking after my young children for several years. I have met some other men who are also in training and even though they are strangers to me, they are nicer, more respectful and more interested in my thoughts and life, than this person who is supposed to love me and be my best friend.
How is it that a person who feels no love or strong emotion is able to garner intense emotion in others? Why did I fall so deeply in love with this person, when I was previously such a level headed person? It must be me with the problem, I can’t just blame everyone else in my life because I am the one constant….
Dear Helpmepls,
I hear your pain and confusion, and it definitely sounds like you are married to a psychopath, and may have been involved with them in the past also. That is not uncommon for people who have been victimized to go find another when they get out of the relationship with the first psychopath.
It also sounds like your mom may have a dysfunctional relationship with you as well.
I understand why you don’t trust yourself as well. That is one of the things that we “lose” in a relationship or a series of relationships with psychopaths. WE get to the point we don’t trust ourselves to make good decisions. NO, YOU ARE NOT CRAZY. What they do though, is convince us that WE are the CRAZY ones, by twisting reality until we eventually began to wonder if we might be crazy.
I assume you are also still with this person. First off, NO ONE WHO REALLY LOVES YOU TREATS YOU LIKE THIS. This is ABUSE.
Secondly THEY WILL NOT CHANGE. They will make promises to change but they will only PRETEND TO CHANGE for a little while if they think you are going to leave them. They are INCAPABLE of LOVE.
Read here on all the archives and the articles and LEARN ABOUT PSYCHOPATHS and educate yourself. You will learn how to deal with this in the only way that you can deal with these people if you don’t want to be abused, and that is to GET AWAY FROM THEM and HEAL YOURSELF.
Everyone here has been in your shoes (or pretty close) and we are trying to learn and heal. There is so much good information on this blog, so go and read and read. Knowledge is POWER. You can take back your own power!!! God bless!
My ex is sending me things via email and you tube, we would have been married a year this month, i am know finding out from my relitives that she was not happy with the way we were intimate, imagine her telling my family this, my family member asked her that why did she marry me ? she answered i thought he had more money, it is my thought procees she does this to alot of men, i would have given anything to get her cured because i loved her so much, instead i am looked at as a fool and ended up with a broken heart, there is alot more, but i have trouble talking about it , i wish i could get my brain erased, everything else in my life is great. I wish she would go and torture some other man.
taken for a ride,
you are not the fool, these people are manipulative. She is still trying to get at you, just dont react to it or express any hurt or anger to anyone who may have contact with her. Do not have any contact yourself. I am relatively new to all this although married to a P for 21yrs, he’s still here but not for long hopefully. The advice I have been reading says that you must try to have no contact with them if you are to heal. I’m sorry that you were so hurt but it is important that you embrace all the good things in your life.
just to add, change your e-mail address and make sure people know not to give it to her, I dont know much about U tube so maybe someone else could advise you on that
good luck
Taken for a Ride, can you block her from your email account? I really cannot say enough about NO CONTACT. Even a brief email from the ex can send your head spinning while you’re trying to recover.
I remember at the beginning I had a hard time with NC. I wanted to keep him somewhere in my life because I still had a shred of hope that somehow miraculously things could work out for us. I knew if I broke off all contact completely, he would never come back, and I wasn’t ready to make the break. Today I can say I am so glad I got him out of my life. Even though I miss him in ways and still have some feelings for him, I know I can never have any contact with him again. Period.
Dear Taken for a Ride,
I hear your pain and I feel it must be intense. The Ps leave so much hurt behind, and are like some vampire that feeds on other people’s pain.
My DIL who had married my son for a meal ticket and then found out he was not “rich” and she was quite disappointed, she had a lover, and when my son discovered the lover he told her he would go to counseling with her and that they could work it out, instead she tried to convince him she wanted to work it out, but instead she was planning on killing my son. When the police came to haul her away, she turned to MY MOTHER (my son’s 79 yr old grandmother) and she said “I even had sex with him last night, but IT MADE MY SKIN CRAWL” WTF? To say something like this to her husband’s grandmother? After she was arrested we found photographs of her naked and tied up by her boyfriend with whips and chains and a gag in her mouth.
And having sex with my son (her husband) made her skin crawl? Well, she was just wanting to get the maximum amount of pain from our family that she could.
For your wife to say such a thing to YOUR FAMILY is because she is EMPTY inside—making “love” to them is not normal, they have SEX but never can “make love” to anyone. It is just like two dogs “doing it” as far as they are concerned. Normal people can make LOVE to the person they love, it is MORE THAN JUST SEX, it is a bonding between two people who love each other, but not to the Ps, to them it is just SEX, like two animals. But even some animals actually “make love” to their mates, but NOT THE PSYCHOPATHS.
“How” you are intimate is not a “contest” and if two people love each other IT WILL BE WONDERFUL, but only if there is love there. If there is no love (and Ps can’t love) then it is never satisfying.
Take heart Taken for a Ride, SHE is the loser. She lost someone who really loved her, the only thing you lost is a GOLD DIGGER! ((((hugs))))
I just wish I could find love, real love.