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.
I feel like this website will save my life. I just broke it off with a MAJOR sociopath, and am going through all the heartache and temptation. I believe whenever I have the urge to contact him…all I need do is log on to this site.
It is SO nice to have support and no that I’m not the crazy one…that others have experience the emotional trauma and bizarre behavior of these predators!
Thanks!
Mwillamon,
This site saved me too, and I hope you stick around. You are going through major grieving right now. You would be going through this at the end of any relationship, so give yourself a break. The obsessing about your ex and wanting to call him is part of the “bargaining” phase. I went through it too. If not for this site, I’d still be on the merry go-round with him. I found out AFTER I joined this site that my ex not only defrauded me over his marriage, but he is also faking an entire medical condition to get out of the army! And even knowing this, I STILL had the desire to contact him! What you are going through is quite normal. Even while you are healing, you will go through intense periods like this. And you will eventually heal from it.
You have to keep reminding yourself of the things he did to you. That and hanging out here will be a reality check for you when you start missing him. Once he is out of your life completely, your real healing can begin. You can ask yourself what made you stay with someone who was taking advantage of you and disrespecting you? This is the inner work you have to do to make your life sociopath-proof from now on.
My warmest wishes to you, and I’m so glad you found this place!
StarG
Stargazer,
You will never know how much your words mean to me!! I am so amazed that I can still care for him after all the TERRIBLE things he did to me mentally. It does help me to reflect on those in times of weakness. I have always thought myself a strong, successful woman…this is just mind boggling that he has such control over me!
But NO MORE….I will get through this!
nwillamon,
I like your spirit! I honestly believe there is a reason everything happens, and we can use this horrible experience to make us stronger. That saying about taking lemons and making lemonade does not just apply to the really sweet tasting lemons. Even the most bitter lemons can make a very nice lemonade. I have been making lemonade all my life, having been dealt a very difficult hand. But I just don’t know what else to do with all the lemons! LOL
It has been 4 months now of NC. I can honestly say I’m feeling better and even happy much of the time. In August, I wanted to kill myself. I could not get the P out of my head. I had to seek help from my friends and even a spiritual guru who happened to be passing through town. They helped me to cry. But getting the sadness out was not enough. I had to stay out of denial. You will begin to see later on that obsessing is a conscious choice. If you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your ex is bad for you, then you will find all of your fantasies about him lead to a dead end. Eventually, you will get tired of these pointless fantasies. Some people (myself included at times) find comfort in a fantasy world of the life we wanted with our ex. But I believe that the real world is much more satisfying, even if we are single and unattached. There are so many opportunities to give and receive love to/from others. Even here we can be of service to others and have our hearts touched by others’ stories.
My point is, mwillamon, stay true to reality, not fantasy. It probably hurts like hell to face it, but keep crying and raging. you will eventually break through it.
Hugs,
StarG
Oh, and don’t beat yourself up because you still love him. You are a loving person, and this is what these types prey on! They are not capable of the same type of love. But that doesn’t mean you can just turn your feelings off. It’s really hard to fathom the way these creeps think. That’s why it’s so hard to really grasp how hurtful they are.
Dear Mish,
I am so sorry that all this has happened to you and it is unfair, unjust and totally WRONG for you to be treated this way. I AM GLAD though that you found your way to Lovefraud. This is a healing place with people who have been through the same mistreatment that you have. You will be belived and supported here.
I hope that you will read about the Ps, all the articles here, and learn about them in your journey to take back your life and heal. God bless you and your children.
Thankyou for your kind words OD…As I read these notes so many things describe perfectly my ex and in-laws. It took me a good six years to discover the real P as he hid it so amazingly well. But what possible excuse does the rest of his family have for knowing exactly what he was like and not letting me know until after our second child was born? Their stories about things P had done when he was younger came like a steady stream, one less believeable and more bizarre than the next. They almost seem to enjoy, by proxy, the evil and nasty things he does to everyone around him. The most bizarre was when he did it to his own brother 5 years ago. He disappeared and has only recently been contacted. He still does not wish to speak to his own family. He must feel very betrayed.
When i met P I was a strong confident successful young woman with very clear boundaries. However now i realize i have never been able to utilize these qualities to actually protect myself from being taken advantage of, in personal life or work. It was always in the name of something honorable. Put the had work in to acheive greatness (but others took it), Strive through the marriage for better or worse and be the glue of the family for all to enjoy. And they did. I am still pondering this.
Your words about the pack of wolves describes Ps family perfectly. I was always frustrated by his mother. She would never tell him off when really needed. She delighted in his narcsism. Parents of adults (as mine will always let me know, down to the smallest thing) should gently correct their adult child , just let them know the correct thing to do and let them know when they have done something wrong even if they protest. P has no guidance what so ever. I remember when I first encountered it, I corrected him, and he had no respect for doing the right thing at all. Laughed at it. But I remember taking one approach with him in the early days which had a marvellous affect and kept our marriage very peaceful for those first six years. I just bluntly told him to stop shouting and getting upset over nothing and I would walk away. “or youll do what ?” I remember it clearly now. I stared at him trying to perceive what he was talking about. ” Or.. nothing of course! Just dont do it” He seemed peaceful, relieved like he had just discovered a new concept in how to be non antagonistic. You may be able to work this out. It stopped when I started to make him take responsibility for himself.
He and his family are all about forgiveness and ignoring bad behaviour within their pack,and P is the leader, his mother and sister the enablers. (His father is just plain broken.)
I have also discovered (remembered) that have narcisstic parents and maybe my behaviour of just ignoring it and bending to please is just a habit i grew up with. They have been practically helpful and generous, but emotionally i feel abused by them. They disrespect me for allowing P to do it to me and not realising ,when it is so bloody obvious – (and it really is and i feel stupid). Gathering financial and housing documents has been embarrassing , but at the time P had a very convincing reason for everything. I always trusted and had faith in my husband. Whats a marriage without it……mmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Dear Mish,
Did my mother give birth to a sister I didn’t know about? LOL You sound like ME–I grew up in a family of Ps that for the most part we played “let’s pretend none of this happened” and “forgiveness” (which was a REQUIREMENT) meant “act like it never happened or you will go to hell and burn forever” and “never hold the P accountable for any of their bad behavior, but if YOU behave badly, you will be berated for it for 45 years”
I am the daughter of a P-bio father and an enabling mother, and the family is filled with Ps for generations backwards, and I gave birth to a P son–but now I am P-FREE. I’m 61, and it’s been a long miserable struggle, but only in the last year or so have I finally FREED myself and started PRACTICING putting boundaries into place. The first boundary is NO CONTACT with the Ps. Even my mother (I am her only child) and my P-son who is in prison.
Plus, setting boundaries for other “friends” who would treat me with less than respect. Not a line in the sand, but a line inCONCRETE, “You WILL NOT treat me with disrespect and remain in my inner circle of trust.”
Forgiving them for their treatment of me though, is a “requirement” to me, but the DEFINITION has changed. It no longer means “PRETENDING IT NEVER HAPPENED” but it means that I GET THE BITTERNESS AGAINST THEM OUT OF MY HEART,, but I NO LONGER TRUST THEM. I won’t allow bitterness toward them to ruin my heart and soul, and come between me and God, I can and I DO forgive them, quit feeling bitterness toward them, and if they would repent we might again have a relationship,but THEY WILL NEVER REPENT. They have no intention of repenting, they are predators like wolves, and kill without remorse—a wolf though, won’t kill for “fun only” but for hunger. The psychopaths “kill for fun” and enjoy playing with their prey before killing it completely.
After my “summer of dark discoveries” (things I ignored for my entire life but finally saw) I am P-FREE for the first time in my 61 years and now I am walking toward the light. At first I crawled toward the light over shards of glass and stone, but I’m finally walking, and most days now I am skipping and singing as I go along the road of healing.
Hang in there my dear! The is hope, there is life, and there is happiness even after the devestation of the P-eperiences. (((hugs))) and my prayers for you.
Mish,
I think it’s very central to narcissistic/abusive families (mine was, too) to keep everything hush hush. When I became an adult and began confronting my mother about the things that happened to me, she kept saying “forgive and forget” and “why can’t the past be in the past”? After so many years of it, I realized I couldn’t live a double life, having a close present-time relationship with her, but having so much resentment inside. I made one last attempt to talk to her. She could not hear it, so she is no longer a part of my life. It’s very sad. I have forgiven her, but I cannot trust her.
The thing that makes me so sad about your story with your P is that it took so many years for the bad behaviors to come out. If you had seen them sooner, you could have gotten out sooner. I wonder if the P behaviors can have a sudden onset due to stress or age? This often happens in the schizophrenic personality. Or is a person continuously P-inclined from childhood? Anyway, it’s great that you found this site.
It took me some time coming out of my relationship with an NPD/Socio to realise a lot of what this article so clearly explains. In my befuddled messed up head, it took a long time to get there. I felt responsible for being involved with him, even though I know at the time I was in love.
However, one of the last things I realised is my lack of clear boundaries, and how to protect them. Now that I know this, it helps, but having been exploited this way, I am still very unclear what my boundaries are and how to protect them. I mean, if you lacked them before, it’s been a part of your nature for a long time and took a sociopath to make you wake up and notice. How do you work out what your boundaries are, and how do you know when you are protecting them and not just having a knee jerk reaction because of your experience?
My biggest flaw was believing him when he explained his lies. Rationalising is something I excel at. I could rationalise his behaviour even when I know that his behaviour was unacceptable. Why would I do that? How do I make sure I don’t do it again? This man cheated on me in despicable ways, and I found myself wondering what was wrong with me that I couldn’t just accept him as he was. I had a counselor at the time who told me that love is unconditional, and it’s acceptance. So, I thought, in other words she is telling me that he is not at fault for lying and cheating, I am at fault for not loving unconditionally and just accepting.
That one caused me no end of trouble as I found more and more layers of his duplicitous behaviour, his penchant for experimenting sexually, and his ultimate agenda to exploit me the same way and doubting mySELF because I found this unnacceptable and eventually had to leave because of it. In other words, he wasn’t wrong for doing what he was doing, I was wrong for not loving him enough for accepting what he did.
Between him and the counselor, I nearly went insane trying to be someone I simply am not.
It was a complete lack of confidence in my own boundaries and establishing them that let me down. How do you find that confidence in your own boundaries once they have been so violated.
Lj