Editor’s note: The following was submitted by a Lovefraud reader whom we’ll call “LouAnn.” She had no choice but to deal with a psychopath.
1. Psychopaths need stimulation. They like “fireworks.” Don’t give it to them. Either do not respond to them at all, or give them very calm, professional responses. This is called “non-reward” and it will become much less fun to bully you.
2. When you do respond, respond slowly. Psychopaths need instant gratification. Making them wait for your response is not fun or stimulating for them.
3. Consider not telling them about the damage they have done. They may be secretly finding glee from hurting you if they are in revenge mode, or may find satisfaction from completing some other agenda. Don’t give them that satisfaction.
4. Find out where THEY are vulnerable. For example, they may have narcissistic tendencies and want to appear a certain way to certain groups of people. A threat of damage to that may be enough to make them back down. My psychopath likes to work with the police departments and hospitals as an expert. A restraining order slapped on him might not completely stop him from bothering me, but he knows a restraining order would embarrass him, so just the threat of that has made him back down in some ways.
5. Pray for them. They are haunted by many demons and intense prayer can make a difference.
It’s been a rough day for me. I need to get this out….
1-Psychopaths find their own stimulation. We don’t need to worry about ‘calm’ responses. We need to concentrate on having ‘NO RESPONSES’
2-There is no need to respond if you don’t have children with them. Making them ‘wait’ doesn’t sound like CUTTING THEM OFF to me, which I am trying to do now. 17 days NO CONTACT so far, but it does sound like making them wait is equal to keeping a back door open for them with an open invitation to walk on in.
3-We have already told them about the damage they have done, WHILE they were doing it! We cried, begged, got angry, explained, etc…and yes, they seem to like the heart ache on our face while we are doing it.
4-Who has the time to figure out what THEY are vulnerable to and why would we want to further provoke them anyway which keeps them in our lives that much longer?
5-Sure, pray for him. We DO care about people, remember? But the saddest truth is that they were made this way and IMO, no amount of praying will change THEM, but it may help you feel more at peace.
Maybe the 1-5 from LouAnn is good advice if you are walking out the door for the final time with all your stuff and they are home while you’re moving out, but it is not the best advice to have in your head AFTER you have gotten away from them.
It’s hard enough to stop thinking about all the what if’s and such, without having to worry about how to respond to them.
NO CONTACT is the only response you should allow yourself.
It’s like this: Spend every minute that you can working on getting them out of your mind and believe me, that is enough work in and of itself.
We cannot discourage them for they have no boundaries.
They don’t care if one single thing we do to try to discourage them from abusing us doesn’t work on them, because there is no end to their bag of manipulative tricks and they’ll just pull out another one and another one.
Be honest, after living through it and then reading about how sociopaths operate, we now know we have inadvertently given them so much ammunition about how to hurt us the deepest that to give them any more time to abuse us is self-torture.
No more sleeping with the Enemy.
GET OUT OF THE MIND GAME THAT THEY PLAY ON YOU.
STOP ASKING FOR HELP, AND THEN NOT ACCEPT THE FACT THAT THE ONLY ADVICE THAT MAKES ANY SENSE IS THE HARDEST THING OF ALL…..
GO NO CONTACT!!!!
While I work to get to day 30 of NO CONTACT, which is some imaginary milestone I’ve put on myself, I am going to try and keep talking to myself and survivors like myself as if I were my own best-friend. Without apology. I have to keep him out of my life and so do you. He hurt you.
Think this now:
I was hurt badly by a bad man and I need to love myself more than I ever thought possible right now and stay away from his abuse!
…..
I tried so hard to have a normal relationship with him. I never seemed to be able to keep my mouth shut most of the time when he would pull his BS on me, and I was compelled to point out a lot of things that he did that didn’t make sense having in a good relationship and could be eliminated if he would just make an effort.
And, or course my habit of actually letting words come out of my mouth when I speak, lol, yes true, (he didn’t like to hear my ‘opinions’) would send him down the list of sociopathic attack traits that I knew would happen if I ‘complained’, and I was as disappointed each time he attacked me, as I was the very first time he attacked me. He kept saying we need to learn how to communicate and offered his own suggestions on how I could try communicating with him in a way he could understand better and not feel frantic or like he was being “attacked”. I tried to form my requests for respect as delicately as possible including using some of his “suggestions” on how I might try improving on my ‘delivery’ of my requests (read: “complaints”) about how badly I think he was treating me.
What came out of all the efforts of better communication? A headache from banging my head against a Brick Wall named Michael.
He wouldn’t make any adjustments to his behavior and I made plenty sure of this judging by how much time I spent asking for him to make adjustments, with his encouragement all along by the way, on how we can make it better and have less fights.
I didn’t know I was on his never-ending amusement ‘pretending to care about making it better-land or nicer-land ride’, or that it was all a pathetic waste of time at the time to keep trying to find ways to talk to him about how important it was for me to be as respected back as I respected him.
How sick I must have looked to him while asking for the same things over and over expecting a different result. He’s always commenting on how people are so stupid.
He got my best effort at cooperation, but he has the traits of a Narcissistic Sociopath.
I knew my emotional state wasn’t as happy as it was before I met him for quite some time, and that just being in the same room with him meant that sooner or later he would be mean or rude or silent.
I have lied to myself that the times he hurt me physically wasn’t as serious as it was, and that it was just part of what was happening during that particular argument between us.
I know I should have kept him away from me after the first time it happened, but whatever it was we were fighting about at the time seemed fixable and nothing to have gotten so obnoxious about in the first place anyway, so naturally, I thought that he couldn’t get angry enough over that little of a thing in the future, so I let it go.
I’m not a quiet mouse and with him I have found that I tend not to back down when I am sticking up for myself while I’m attempting to tell him, while making perfect sense, what it is that I am not backing down about!!~ He despised the fact that he couldn’t get me to ‘shut up and listen to what he has to say’.
Yet, through all the BS I experienced with him day in and day out, get together’s and break up’s, I still woke up every morning as if there was a fresh chance for a better day than yesterday, no matter how awful yesterday was which made me keep trying to make things better with him no matter how crappy I began to always feel being around him waiting for his mood swings to happen.
Finally, after the last fight, he has used up the very last drop of my patience and my ability to find any thing that I actually like about him anymore.
It’s okay for me to give up on him now, and that it’s not He who is losing Me, It is Me who is losing his abuse.
We know the Spath went fishing for us. They found us. They lied to us. We had reactions to them that we’ve never had before and this made us feel things for them.
Yes, we ‘loved’ them. It was all just a trick on our Mind, and our Hearts fell for it Hook, Line and Sinker.
It’s been so hard for me today to stop thinking about the ‘illusion of me loving him’……but, I’m determined to be the Big Fish that ‘Got Away’.
It’s not ever going to get better with a sociopath. They will only learn how to push your buttons more effectively as the days go on and you will feel sicker with each passing moment of your life.
All day today, I have been having to remind myself that he was not good to me, he was not nice to me, he was sneaky, he played the disappearing act on me, he is a liar…..
It still feels like I am losing something good, but now I can accept this feeling as a temporary bummer, because the withdrawals from addictions are temporary.
What is going to take the most work and focus is AFTER the withdrawal symptoms have subsided and I have to learn to trust my own judgement of people and to not let my heart stay closed forever to possible future happiness with someone.
Time, Peace,
Jenni Marie
Jenni Marie,
Most of what you said could have been written by me. I tried so many different approaches to discussing my issues with him…lol. I’m not a yeller but I tried it, just to see if it would make a difference. Nothing ever did. I’ve been out of that relationsham for 3.5 yrs now, thank goodness. It takes time but you will recover…and you will love again. If you keep your heart closed, then that evil douche-canoe won….and you can’t let him win. 🙂 <3
ps. I have a child with my ex-spath so I can't go totally no contact, unfortunately. But I have limited his ability to harass me in a big way and that's all I can do…til he's in the ground anyways. 🙂 Stay strong!
Hi, Jenni Marie.
I’ve been on this site for about 2-1/2 years and can say, for the most part, I am over the spath. The Lovefraud community is a fantastic group of individuals that help us to change in a dramatic and wonderful way! At the beginning of our journey we do not see the light. NO CONTACT is so incredibly hard to justify and accept, but it DOES work. It is the ONLY thing that works.
In reading your post today, it took me back to the beginning of my struggle to survive. So much of what you said was me. Your noting of “What came out of all the efforts of better communication? A headache from banging my head against a Brick Wall named Michael,” made my stomach churn. Those were my EXACT words and the situation identical. My spath, Michael, said the same thing about how I should communicate with him. Your Michael isn’t, by any chance, from the Pittsburgh area, is he?
I completely agree with you jenni marie. NO CONTACT (28 days for me so far) whatsoever is the only way to recover and get your own life back. Besides the stress of talking to a person who doesn’t behave in a normal way, you have to remember all the time – is he lying or telling the truth? – why is he never interested in my welfare? – he’s a fake anyway, there was never any love. Only associate with people with the same attitudes and behaviour as yourself, a normal person with empathy and true compassion and friendship. NO CONTACT also keeps you in a more relaxed state of mind. You don’t need to think – I must call him today or he will make me feel guilty etc. He stole my heart and broke my finances but the worst was pretending to love me, pretending to care then slandering me to everyone who will listen to him after he left when my money was gone. We were ‘together’ including marriage for 7 years and I have not dated anyone else so far. He is very promiscuous and gave me an STI. But – he tells people as soon as he left me I was already living with a man and that I threw him out. Both blatant lies. He’s a compulsive liar. I just feel so stupid at 63 years’ of age to have lost my lifesavings and heart to an evil creature.
Jenni
wow!….thank you ….the trauma of my being in a relatonship with this sp…left me wanting to explain to someone what I have been in….but unable to find the words….hearing what you said was exactly what I experienced…”Trying to have a normal relationship…..compelled to point out things that didn’t make sense having, in a good relationship…asking for change…letting words come out of my mouth( complained)…would send him down the list of ‘sociopathic attack traits'”….OMG!!!!I would be trying express not wanting to be treated certain way…he would attack and say I caused it and should say things differently…every which way …came out to feeling of ‘Banging my head against a Brick Wall’ named E.W.!!!!
It has been so important to tell myself the truth…as he was always trying to minimize everything I said …or dismiss….I know I am not negative as a characteristic….I wake with passion for life and go do things!…I wasted a lot of time(7years) trying and I am determined to waste no more….
It is just so good to have my mind back….I used to say communication with him was a “twisty, miry, mess!!!”….which means…NOT possible….
Today I am choosing to be proud of myself for getting out…and for NO CONTACT…something I have never done or said to myself
thank you Jenni for putting words to the stuff inside I could not articulate!
Grace
Grace, u GO, girl!!! u are not a negative person or anything else he told u! i am not either! nope!
no more time wasted!
…to having our TIME back ~~toast glasses~~
YAY 🙂
Hi Jenni Marie,
Thank you for the advice. BOY, I AM TRYING TO CUT THIS PERSON OUT OF MY LIFE. It involves some contracts to be signed. Then I will be gone FOREVER… to the sea…
I did not have a romantic relationship with this person, but apparently he thinks he did… he had been telling people I was his girlfriend. Very strange, can anyone explain that one?
Please pray he will sign the contracts I have drafted! He wanted to make some modifications to my contract that would involve him more. Your letter, Jenni Marie, reminded me to not back down and allow those modifications. Thank you!
Jennie Marie,
I think there are some situations where you could send them a very concise request not to ever contact you again, perhaps stating what the consequences will be if he does (if applicable). If it sounds like you mean business, some of them will go away. Mine did, mostly.
Stargazer, that might be a good approach with this particular person. I know your advice was to Jenni Marie, but it might work in mine. I will have to give it some thought. Thank you.
Jenni Marie – I should clarify. I believe LouAnn’s experience with a psychopath involved a business situation, not a romantic situation. It was someone who she had no choice but to deal with.
You are certainly right, however – in romantic situations when no kids or legal issues are involved, the best response is to end it and have no further contact.
I’m not going to spend one minute of my life praying for the spath. I’m sorry if that offends anyone. Praying for him would keep me tangled up in thoughts of him, and I won’t do it. This is not based in anger or resentment – it’s based in cultivated indifference. I just don’t care about what happens to him anymore.
I think onmyown, thats my take on it. i expend NO energy on the spath. NONE. Ever. Again. i mite shud be praying for him, but im pretty sure he’s subhuman…as much as i hate to admit that.
i am so indifferent to him, he calls and if i answer (one time out of ten maybe), i just dont care — one iota what he says, threatens (if he’s stupid enuff to threaten, he rly doesnt), or doesnt say. i hang up wen he starts whining or complaining, about anything in his life. i just dont give a hoot. it bores me.
gee, maybe i learned sumthin from him? :p
What would I pray for anyway? That he miraculously be cured? It’s never going to happen. A swift trip to the county jail for all the illegal stuff he does? No thanks.
You’re at the same place I am. I don’t feel anything for him, except for the occasional vague sense of revulsion if I think about something he did to me in the past. I don’t think that’s abnormal. I just don’t want to waste my time and energy on anything involving him anymore.
I can relate to the boredom. Sociopaths are the most boring people on the planet once the mask drops and the excitement they artificially amp up is over. I used to sleep all the time from the sheer boredom of being around him. I used to feel some pity, soon changed to even more boredom, at listening to the constant complaining of someone who couldn’t and wouldn’t do a thing to positively help himself.
I totally agree about the boredom. I hadn’t thought of it when I was trying to work out what a socio was and feeling so depressed. When I think of the time spent on going boring places he wanted to, buying things he wanted to, talking about him and what he wanted. The victim role soon got boring too – everyday illness (fake), going to hospitals for checks to be told ‘we can’t find anything wrong.’ Moan, moan, moan. I did all the housework whilst he sat around or lay around watching tv or online and I paid for EVERYTHING. He only left me when my money was gone. He never asked how I felt, what I wanted to do. I feel the same as you onmyown – I don’t care anymore, I don’t want anything to do with him and if I do think of him it’s only to remember all the awful things he did to me. He’s boring and pathetic.
are many spaths boring? that wasnt my experience at all.
the narc was a little boring as he is addicted to tv and i kinda hate tv, esp the STUPID stuff he wanted to watch or the horror crap WEN MY KIDS WERE AWAKE (can u say SELFISH ASS?!)
he didnt have any hobbies tho (at least that he wud actually DO) or friends rly…so he cud be boring that way. but he’s a thinker so we had quite indepth convos, if he wasnt being defensive. and im not a high maintenance person and i need alot of time to spend with kids or work if i have a job. i never need a guy to entertain me…well ideally sumone wud be available from like 8.30 to 11p weeknites to relate to, relax with, decompress lol…unless he related well to kids and cud be part of our doings in the evenings–without the stinkin tv!
i think the narc is depressive and i excused alot of things becuz of this…i mean if u ARE, GET HELP. no excuse for abusing me and the kids.
i wonder if spaths are depressive and so mite come off as boring?
aintgonnatakeitnomore,
I’ve been around forums and blogs for 3 years now and I hear many of us talking about how dreadfully boring the spaths were. Is it universal? Probably not.
Mine didn’t have an original thought in his head. At first I thought he was clever, but then I came to realize that he takes things that other people say and uses them as his own. Intellectually there was just nothing there. It became impossible to have anything but the most basic conversation with him. He laid on the sofa for 6 months watching TV, refusing to work even though he was running out of money. Everything he watched was violent and stupid – Spike TV for 18 hours straight every day. I eventually made up excuses so that I could leave and just DO something.
Are they depressive? According to experts they can have co-morbid conditions but clinical depression isn’t typically one of them. I don’t think the ex-spath was depressed though I initially mistook it for that. I just think he’s flat when he’s not “on his game”. If there’s no profit for him in being upbeat, he just doesn’t bother doing it.
I know that not everyone believes in this type of thing… but you pray and bind demons in the name of Jesus. I can explain in more detail if you are interested.
I pray for my ex P’s repentance, and for the healing of any physical components to his problems. I don’t expect nor rely on an expectation that he will repent and/or be healed. God doesn’t need my prayers to act. I pray because it’s good for me, and it’s about who I am as a person and my spirituality, not about the Psychopath. I pray regularly about a lot of other things, too, so it’s not an extraordinary issue. It’s part of my life.
When I pray I thank God for helping me with NO CONTACT with my ex. The way I see it – how could a sociopath be on God’s side anyway? My ex pretends to be, but obviously isn’t the way he behaves. How can you pray for a person like that? They are evil in my book. I don’t think you would be offending anyone onmyown
Onmyown, I don’t personally think it’s necessary to pray for the spath. I never did. All that is really required is that you can work through the anger and then purge it out of your system. You don’t want to remain bitter or to let that bitterness prevent you from opening your heart again.
I don’t pray for my ex, the spath. But neither do I hate him. I feel neutral toward him. In retrospect, he was another experience in my life – one that taught me a valuable lesson. Just another chapter in my life that has been closed. The closest I’ve gotten to praying for him is to feel some gratitude for the lesson he taught me. But it took me a long time to get there. And I only dated him for about 3 months. It is an active process to purge all the negativity out of your system after such a trauma. And IMO, you cannot do it alone but need some sort of spiritual help.
hi my LF peeps,
Thank You so much Miss Donna, for realizing that I am thinking about things I am dealing with solely as someone who doesn’t have any business dealings with and has no children with- him. I can’t imagine how much more difficult it must be dealing with protecting children from them, or having business with- them. My heart goes out to those that do. ~Jenni Marie
I kind of went on and on yesterday. I’m sorry. One minute, I am laughing at how long of a post I wrote, and the next minute, I am feeling embarrassed by it. Going on and on like that only feels good at the moment, but it doesn’t really change the situation. I’m glad that we can get some of this poison out of us on LF. ty
I’m moving to another part of the city in 5 more days, and I’m packing and cleaning after work, trying to move away before he shows back up.
He comes back around after our break-ups. He hasn’t stayed away more than 30 or so days at a time in the 3 1/2+ years with him. I would fall for the fake love thing, and somehow we would be back together. Not this time. He won’t know where I have moved to unless he goes through the trouble of following me home from work, so I’ll try my best to notice any cars following me and drive myself on over to the police substation a few miles away if I need to.
But right now, I am here getting things ready to move and I’m on pins and needles waiting for and expecting his inevitable knocks on doors and windows. I am so uptight and stressed out it’s ridiculous. I know I don’t have to open the door or talk to him, but I don’t like the way it makes me feel when he does that. Sometimes he’ll come back a couple hours later or wait until between 2-5am and knock on the bedroom window.
-The last time I saw him was 18 days ago.
-He called me 13 days ago to tell me he had a heart attack the day before. I wished him well and made sure he was able to contact his mother and hung up.
-He left me a voice mail 4 days ago to tell me he was out of the hospital, doing better and of course he was wondering how I am doing and he hopes it’s good.
“He’s Out” is all I really heard. It means that he could show up at any moment. I’m feeling scared again. Doors are locked. Apartment complex guard makes rounds every hour or I can call them if needed.
He has been so enraged before that he would foam at the mouth during an argument.
Would he dare try his tricks on me again, when he knows I’ll call him on his BS, which pisses him off?
Will he show up and risk getting himself all worked up telling me how it didn’t seem like I showed much love for him during his hour of need or even go to see him in the hospital when he knows I will say it’s because of the way he is and how he treated me the LAST TIME we were near each other? I doubt it, but I just don’t know.
Maybe this time he won’t come back if he thinks it might kill him.
I’m am sure he thinks I will take him back again and that he will love using his heart attack as some sick reason to try and manipulate me into never again voicing any displeasure with him because it might give him another heart attack. I can hear it now. Has anyone had one come back after a medical scare?
Thank you Miss Donna once again, for having LF available to us, because I feel like someone out there understands and doesn’t think I am crazy for rambling on about things that don’t make any sense to those who have not gone through it.
~~
this Michael is in the Sierra foothills, Calif and he’s on the loose is all I can say.
Thank you to everyone for sharing your thoughts with me as I try and get through this final break with-IT.
It was a relationsham. I’ve never heard this, but it fits.
~Time, Peace,
Jenni Marie
Just curious, did he really get a heart attack? You write as though he did but were you sure? One of their classical act is this heart attack thing or having some medical conditions. Also, you say he gets very angry and foam in the mouth. As far as I know, these are just acts. Yes, he sounds, acts, and feels very angry but the whole thing is calculated to achieve some specific result. It is just a realistic sort if acting.
As to the advice given in “How to Discourage the Psychopath in Your Life,” with due respect, I do not think the writer knows a real psychopath. People tend to label bad people as psychopaths just because they are bad. There are all sort of hurtful people out there but a psychopath is a class by himself. If you have ever known a psychopath, you would have known that there is in only two ways of being with him: total in or total out. If you think there is a third way, then you are definitely not dealing with a psychopath.
Hi Fredomfare, I don’t think all Psychopaths are exactly alike. Some kill people and animals, some don’t. Some get obsessed with fame and fortune, some don’t.
The person I am dealing with:
Enjoys manipulating people. He does this with negative consequences if he doesn’t get his way.
He enjoys breaking laws, had multiple identities, driver’s licenses, etc.
He schemes. It once took him three years to execute a plan of revenge on someone. He waited that long avoid detection. What he did was very illegal and dangerous to the other person. He dressed in black and waited for a thunderstorm to pull off his evil deed.
He has poisoned and killed quite a few animals, including people’s pets. He killed my neighbor’s dog because the dog was barking at him and alerting people to his presence. He did this in preparation to his plan to come onto the property at night.
I believe he is capable of killing people. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has.
I agree with you, OUT is where I am working at being with this person!
I think any of them are capable of killing people and doing anything else that suits their motives without regard to harming others. Whether they do or not depends on whether they think they will get caught and whether they want to avoid the consequences. If they haven’t killed anyone yet, if it suited their motive to do so, they would. With respect to the psychopath I was victimized by, I realized that just because I didn’t know what he had or had not done in the past, doesn’t mean that he had not done a particular act.
Jenni Marie I loved your long process rich comments and I praise your strength! It has been over a year since I got a restraining order and extricated the sociopath from my life. I have immersed myself in healing which has included learning to trust others again, learning to feel safe and believing that I can and will protect myself now and in the future. In the beginning of rebuilding my life I remembered some of the good things about him but as I formed a network with his prior victims and learned all that he had done to them over the years(even while playing the nice-guy-victim with me) any compassion or empathy I ever had for him has been extinguished. He is pure evil and thrives on hurting and annihilating others. No contact is the only way to go. He and people like him see any contact as a victory and a challenge. He stayed away from me for over a year and just recently began emailing me again. In those emails he tried to push all the buttons that worked during our relationship, guilt, shame, hurt, rage and blame. Because I had stayed away so long I could see what he was doing and did not get sucked in. Here is the most important thing about my comment: since I had not heard from him I let my restraining order expire and now I cannot get another one because I have no address for him. Lovefraud peeps do not let your restraining order expire. I assume he knew about restraining order limits as he has had restraining orders filed against him in the past and he just waited until the order expired and I finally started to believe that maybe it was over.
People would ask me if I had heard from him and when I would say, “No but I know he is still out there and I am still at risk”, they would sometimes look at me with pity as if I was trying to hold on to this insanity. I know how he works, I know what he did to his exes, and I know that he will continue to blame me as long as he is breathing. If I can ever track him down law enforcement will serve the restraining order, an attorney will let him know the consequences of contacting me. He is lucky I do not pray from him because what I would pray for would not be his healing but his demise. He is beyond healing, he does not believe there is anything wrong with him, it is always everyone else’s fault. I have been so grateful to this website and to his prior victims who have been very sweet to me (we have had some healing chuckles over his tall tales). I may sound bitter in regards to praying for him but it was my compassion and empathy that got me into this mess and he will not get one more ounce of kindness from me. I have plenty for others but none for him.
I have also learned that the court system is very weak and you are your own best advocate. I have grown much stronger in this process and now do not let attorneys or judges bully me into the easy way out. I do not accept their opinions on my safety as most have no idea what I am up against. He has gone to court so many times and walked because of how he presents himself, how articulate he is and his fake humility. Luckily he has broken so many laws now there are warrants for his arrest in two states. You would think that would be enough to lock him up but he still usually walks. Recently someone asked me how someone in my field did not see the signs, how he got past me. All I can say is that he is good and that I chose to ignore the red flags that were dropping all around me: the two ex wives, no friends, no job, no home, no family support, and a history of legal involvement. All I saw was the wounded spirit with the beautiful heart who had been mistreat by others and for some strange reason would not advocate for himself. Yuck, makes me a little sick to my stomach thinking of how naïve I was. I could not see any secondary gain in him lying to me, I did not know that I was the prize, my home, my wallet, my trust. He, too, is a narcissist and he loved how much I believed in him. He loved that I bought his fake persona so completely. When the façade started to crumble and I began to see the man behind the curtain he started to change and threaten me. He blackmailed me for the last eight months of our relationship. The day I filed that restraining order was extremely pain on some levels but personally it was the day I reclaimed myself and began the healing process.
Mia M, I would be interested in any advice on obtaining a restraining order or personal protection order. I have tried to get one, but the court intake person thought that I did not have enough provable stuff to make a RO stick.
Most of the illegal stuff he has done he has not been caught at. All I have is a pile of letters from him, a boatload hearsay information from other victims, and my personal testimony. I live in Georgia.
Since we never lived together and were not in a romantic relationship, it actually makes it harder to get a RO or PPO. In Georgia, it is required that had lived with the person to get a Personal Protection Order. I think that law needs to be changed!
I would be interested in anyone’s advice on how to get some sort of Restraining Order.
You might consider other avenues of legal protection than a restraining order. If he is trespassing, stealing, or stalking, can you effectively report those crimes so that he is arrested and charged?
Can you swear out a warrant or report the crimes he has already done? Can you go to small claims court to get a judgment to recoup any of your losses?
Whatever you do, consider what is in your overall best interest. Sometimes it’s better for us to walk away and recover our lives without trying to get justice.
Yes, I have been reporting everything to the police. I am going to start a log of his behaviors in a stitch-bound book. This, apparently, can be submitted as evidence legally. I bought a security camera system and have it half-installed right now. I should be able to get the other four cameras running in the next week or two. If I catch him on video, that will be admissible, I think.
Dear Jenni,
By all means, use this forum to, in your words, “ramble on”. Lots of things are pounding in your head and heart which need and understanding ear. Here is where you will find those ears.
You sound conflicted…Nothing wrong with that: It’s the norm with a fresh break up. And with that, there is the shifting nature which is understandably illogical: Certain that he’ll be back to dog you, then asking if they come back after a medical scare… You going through torment. It’s peculiar, isn’t it: That you can’t access that “like hell” determination you had for the crap that made you raw enough to say “I’m done”. Would that it stayed fresh for a long while, right?
You’ve gotten past the first hurdle (Saw it as it was: Unpleasant, to say the least.)and now you’re at the next hurdle: This one about coping after the rawness has worn off. Everyone whose been where you are can offer you their tips and you can try those on for their usefulness to you. Mine are these: 1)Know that at any moment, you could have him back: Of course, he’s available to you. And remember this when you a wave of anxiety comes crashing upon you. Then, give yourself one hour doing something (anything) other than ruminating about him/the relationship. After an hour, you can do what you want…. even call him. Giving yourself this power and this stop gap can do a lot to quell your nerves. 2)Get a counselor stat: You owe you someone who does responsive listening. If ever you needed responsiveness, it is now. You are doing a BIG THING, you’re out to transform your life and going up against parts of you that aren’t all in line with this project. In order not to sell out, don’t sell yourself short: Pay for that responsivity. 3) LOL: Medical scare or the real deal of a heart attack, imagine yourself with an old man. Old men smell. You got to have a lot of good reasons to love the guy to put up with that. 4)Watch that channel “Investigation Discovery” for all the partner killer stories… to remind yourself that this could have been you because you’ve had a rabid, foaming at the mouth, partner. 5) When you start second guessing yourself about what you said/did that (ostensibly) went into his tizzies, ask yourself just this: Do you want to be with someone who brings out the worst of you or the best in you? If you had to stand your ground on your opinions, it wasn’t the right fit. Relationships that function smoothly, don’t have too many occasions where we must opine and do so tenaciously. That’s not to say that there isn’t differences in opinion at times or there isn’t conflict but if it’s frequent, it just isn’t enough of a natural meeting of the minds. You can get a better fit… and then be saved seeing the worst of yourself come out. (No doubt, Mother Theresa had a worst, too.)
If it’s any consolation to you, after this hurdle, you’ve just got two more to go and you’re done: You’ve done the life changing transformation. You’re 28% through the process. Not bad… not bad at all. Give yourself credit.
PS: There are some thoughts/doubts/ruminations to put on the back burner for now until you have a perspective from solid footing. Grant yourself that favor.
i think this was an excellently thot out post, viewpoint.
maybe its cuz im a step by step person but it made alot of sense to me.
its quantifiable progress. bring it! 🙂
After receiving so many unsolicited emails from G in the last few days (I’ve blocked him from my phone), and a ‘threat’ to ring me at work – he knows most of my colleagues, I broke my no contact rule to send him an email which read
“G
I want no further contact with you”
B.
Can’t make it much clearer than that…I was just annoyed that I had to break my no contact rule in the hope he won’t ring work…if he does I will simply and quietly hang up the phone.
Thanks to all of you who’ve helped me through what could have been a worse situation, being the empath I am, I would have stayed in this relationship way too long to try to fix this cold, calculating guy that I initially thought had been so misunderstood by other partners of his. If I hadn’t have done my internet research as to what was wrong with my relationship I may never have come across this site.
THANKS lovely people – hope you’re all spath-free!
Brit.
I think it’s okay to break no contact to make it perfectly clear one time, and one time only, that they stop bothering you.
Keep that email with the headers. If he continues contacting you then you can go talk to the police about harassment.
I agree with the posters who are reminding readers of how essential it is to avoid any non-legally mandated contact with a personality disordered person. No Contact -for survivors who have no children or legally binding agreements with a disordered partner, and Limited Contact – for survivors who mandated by the courts to facilitate access to children. These have always been the golden rules of the LF community.
I found the site a year ago. My ex partner is a textbook Borderline personality and as is common with Cluster B disorders, he also is high in traits of narcissism and for good measure is sexually deviant. I was seduced into a fraudulent relationship, was criminally assaulted, and suffered a breakdown ( as any one who I spoke with here 12 months ago might recall!). This man continues to harass me, every month there are new attempts to manipulate me back into contact.
I Do. Not. Respond. Ever.
I cannot stress enough how implementing and maintaining No Contact has helped me. It gave me a sense of purpose, day by day. It gave me a sense of acheivement, when my self esteem was on the floor. And most importantly it gave my mind respite from exposure to my abuser’s pathology. Being around pathology can make sane people crazy. I suffered panic attacks, derealisation, wept all the time when I was in the relationship. My body knew he was a danger to me. My mind caught up with accepting that fact when I went No Contact and regained, day by day, my sanity and self preservation instincts.
If you fall off the NC wagon ( I did, 3 times, thinking begging him to stop harassing me might work. It made it worse) just dust yourself off and get back on. Immediately.
Peace and love to all of you. Stay No Contact.
I do pray for him and all that are on this earth with us who are like him. That they will find some peace and leave me, my children, and all my loved ones alone. That their sickness will be healed and not spread about this earth so that all can live in peace and feel loved.
That is a prayer that frees you; it benefits you. If he wanted it to benefit him, it would; but being a psychopath he doesn’t make that choice.
Thank you for sharing it.
The Bible instructs us to pray for our enemies (Matthew 5:44) because it benefits us and strengthens our relationship with God. It doesn’t mention any benefit to the enemy we pray for.
1 John 5:16 tells us not to pray for someone whose sin is beyond forgiveness. The only sins that are not pardonable are when one does not want to change and does not want to be forgiven; which is a hallmark of sociopaths – they don’t want to change, they don’t care if what they’re doing is wrong and hurts others. They can’t be forgiven because they don’t repent (change, and ask for forgiveness.
It’s a matter of discernment whether to pray for them or not.
Ditto. After no contact for 3 years and not dating anybody I started to get my confidence back. Life was amazing. When I thought I was ready for a relationship, I met this kind, intelligent, success story of a man. Guess what? A fabulous date and after that intimidation and booty calls. Dejavu.
I thought initially we were just getting in synch putting all the difficulties on me being over cautions from the previous relationship. If it does not feel good. First red flag. Get out!