Editor’s note: This article about the importance of boundaries and belief in herself was submitted by a Lovefraud reader.
It has been about a year since my story was posted on Lovefraud, Not one thing about him was real. It has been two years since I broke off the short relationship with this disordered man. It is a year and a half since he stalked me. I hope to share at least some practical points that have helped me in the healing process. It does get better. And it is a process.
I wish I could say that others may be helped PRIOR to involvement with a sociopath, but as we all know, sometimes the inevitable entanglement occurs before we even realize we have been manipulated. This entanglement would have ended much earlier if I had had clear boundaries, zero tolerance for lies and bad behavior, and the will to walk away alone and create my own closure.
There are many events and bizarre experiences with him, his family, his indiscretions, the pathological lies. I now realize that the ONLY purpose to ANYTHING he did was to make himself look good, please himself, hide the truth, devalue others for his own perceived greatness, impress people and get off on his lies and deceptions. He loves that he manipulates people to admire him as the hero, and to come to his defense as the broken victim that he plays so well. He doesn’t want you to realize he IS the stereotypical villain. He was just good at imitating the qualities that are truly admirable like modesty, bravery and dependability. Telling people he was a Navy SEAL hero, working for the NSA, CIA, using aliases, killing terrorists, giving away fake medals, telling stories of being tortured. It’s always about him. And what he calls LOVE is more like an OBSESSION.
He surrounds himself with people who are weak, easily manipulated and vulnerable. They WILL turn their heads to the truth. He wants them to need him. It’s tantamount for HIS very survival. Smart people will question him. Weak people will live the lie, sometimes because they need something from him and sometimes because they are just too weak to admit they have been conned. It’s tantamount for THEIR survival. I know because I was there for a short time. It’s a vicious circle and a world of denial that feeds his sociopathic hunger. In reality, he needs his victims more. He is only as good as the reflection he sees in the eyes of the victim. When I questioned his veracity, I was disloyal. But I was right. I asked good questions (eventually) and he could not keep up the rotting facade of his fabricated life.
Back to basics
I had to get back to basics in order to trust others, myself, my instincts, my intuition, my belief system, religion and all the rules I used to live by. I had to respect myself, gain back my self-esteem and learn to be tolerant but ONLY of those who do not violate my beliefs and boundaries. I also had to learn to stop accepting bad behavior much earlier and stop the self defeating behavior I recognized in myself.
I made lists of those “boundaries” and used them along with real life examples of behaviors that were no longer tolerable. The will to keep those boundaries safe came from the anger I felt after revisiting conversations and events and learning all of the lies. It was painful. I needed to forgive myself, not him, and I decided I would never allow that behavior again EVER.
Read more — Quiz: Are you a target?
I was mind raped. No doubt. I lost an innocence, not unlike being a rape victim. The abuse and exploitation is so ambient at times that you don’t even realize what has happened. It is ridden with intermittent generosity and professions of love while your thoughts, actions and behaviors are so closely controlled through undermining manipulation, guilt and shame. You are in a whirlpool of words and actions that are so inconsistent. And manipulation that has you believing you are wrong, and that everything you learned to date is wrong and that what you are witnessing must be real, while all you know to be right and good has defied you. My intelligence and good rationale failed me. Still I wanted to believe and have hope and faith.
I made lists
It was therapeutic for me to make lists:
- Things he took from me.
- Things I gave up to him.
- Lies he told.
- Red flags I ignored.
- Names he called me.
- Things he did and said to violate me and my children and friends and all the things he did (behaviors) which were inconsistent with the things he said.
I was too manipulated for far too long. NO MORE. Finally I understood that there was nothing of substance there in him to begin with. I thought he had more to offer me than I had to offer myself. But it was I who had what he wants and needs desperately. Perhaps he saw an innocence, a vulnerability, a naiveté about me and he knew I could be conned.
As much as I read and studied narcissism, sociopathy, and any number of disorders, I still could not comprehend why he lied and cheated as he did and why I allowed him to keep coming back for more. Someone told me that normal, healthy people cannot make sense of irrational, impulsive and sometimes delusional behavior because we simply rationalize. People who are disordered and impulsive just do what they do because they can and it benefits themselves in some way. It truly is that simple.
Creating boundaries
There are things I have learned to practice that have allowed me to find closure, take my power back, regain my confidence, which hopefully will keep me from EVER making this mistake again. I don’t need someone else to provide closure to a bad relationship or situation I never did. It was in me all along.
Creating Boundaries: These are mine:
- HONESTY — I ignored my instincts and the facts even when I caught him in lies.
- INTEGRITY — He was not and never will be a man of his word.
- FIDELITY/LOYALTY — The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. (He cheated constantly on his previous wife, on me and on his current wife. I have been told she is wearing the same engagement ring I wore.)
- RESPECT — (The verbal abuse, the cheating, the lying, the inability to do as he says are ALL encompassing of issues of respect). The bad behavior, spitefulness, drug abuse and allowing all of the above with his adult daughters.
I learned all over again to verbalize my rule of zero tolerance. I didn’t always speak up in the presence of the sociopath because he HAD to be in control and raged or had a tantrum for days.
The closure I seek these days, which I learned as a practice from my therapist, is that when someone is disrespectful, lies or doesn’t treat me well, that I need to close it off with direct communication about what I think and feel and to NOT let them back in again. When I do, I feel like I am in control of my life, my beliefs, and displaying respect for myself (and in an appropriate way). I have truly taken my power back. It is important for me to say, “Don’t contact me again. You are behaving inappropriately. I am not interested in you any longer. I don’t like what you just said to me.” IT IS ok to protect yourself first. I explain this at the risk of sounding juvenile or patronizing but I truly had to relearn these practices, which came so naturally to me previous to the sociopath.
Recognizing my value
All of our lives are eventually a result of the decisions we make. This is particularly true of the sociopath. In fact, I prefer to believe that his life is like a constant panic of desperation to gain what others have, what he needs to see in our reflection to fill the emptiness of his disturbed soul. He can’t fulfill his own fantasies fast enough and so he scrambles daily to find victims to manipulate in order to feel superior.
Listen now — Don Shipley: Exposing phony Navy SEALs
Recently, this man’s family and new friends found the truth about him on an internet site where he has been exposed as a military impostor and con man. He has known of the exposure for two years after an investigation. He chose not to respond then. He has dishonored those who served and gave of their lives. Other women/people have now come forward and also identified him and his stories. Justice comes in strange ways sometimes. He counted on all of his victims to cower to his intimidations but HE is the coward. Those who continue to live the lie are the cowards. Yet he still has potential to be prosecuted for his crimes. HE IS EXPOSED. I prefer to be on this end simply observing the drama that he is creating with his new followers and family, with no involvement.
At some point I saw more value in what the sociopath had to offer me than in what I had in myself. And I was willing to give myself up to be what he wanted, demanded, expected. The abuse I suffered as a target of a sociopath has taken a toll. To recover, I first had to clear the fog, find myself, and understand my value and importance.
There is a kind of confidence that is exuded when we know who we are and what we want and don’t deviate too much from that. People see it in us and respect it as well. The road is long and this experience with this dysfunctional man will stay with me for a long time. I found myself through recognizing my value and making sure it is respected and appreciated, if not by someone else, by ME. After all, I am the one who has to face me every day.
Learn more — Survivor’s guide to healthy people and healthy relationships
Lovefraud originally posted this story on Dec. 9, 2009.
Advice for dealing with sociopaths: Don’t take it personally
Dear Luv,
Dear, that was one of the reasons to keep your things is to keep you tied to him. So he would still have control over something you wanted.
By giving up the expectation that you would EVER get those things back, you have FREED yourself. NOW he has NO HOLD on you.
NOW YOU ARE FREE, TO BE AND STAY NC!!!!!! TOWANDA!!!! GOOD FOR YOU! NC FOREVER! TAKE BACK YOUR CONTROL!!! (((HUGS)))) AND GOD BLESS YOU!
Thank you OxDrover, I need God to Bless me right now!
Dear Luv,
God helps those who help themselves and act wisely, so this is the time for you to be STRONG in NC….St. Paul advised the early Christians that if someone persisted in doing bad things and would not listen to “treat them like a heathen, don’t even eat with them.” That is NC if I ever heard it, and so stick with your NC and you can start to really heal. When we giv eup on the HOPE that they will be reasonable, and accept that they are EVIL and will not change, then we are FREE of them. We may still grieve for a while, but we are FREE of that unrealistic “hope” which keeps us tied to them. (((HUgs)) and my prayers for you. Lvoe Oxy
recovering,
There was a NAME for this? Hallelujah! That’s how I felt when I could finally connect the dots. I was SO ready to connect those dots, too! The name led me to the understanding and that led me to freedom. BUT before that, there were many years in which I was hesitant to put a name to it. I just kept explaining away the ugly nasty behaviors he exhibited.
OX and Luv, I had what I could perhaps call “pre-healing” in that I started changing my thinking and behaviors before he even left. Once my eyes were open, I couldn’t move fast enough to be free. I now know there is MUCH more to be done, but I remember the relief I felt when I realized I didn’t HAVE to put up with his crap, that I had choices and I started exercising that option. So, I guess, Ox, you could saying I started “treating him like a heathen”. I’m completely for NC and while we have a child, I have a feeling he will just vanish, albeit with all his “fanfare”.
Dear Cat,
I knew, I think, from childhood that “something was wrong” but didn’t even have a concept that it was even POSSIBLE to disconnect from crap if the crap was from “mommie dearest” I didn’t even realize that I COULD “treat her like a heathen” I thought all TRUTH came through her…and I couldn’t even imagine NC with my offspring. What good would life be if I wasn’t in contact and close to my offspring, no matter what?
When my egg donor actually SAID out loud, the words of the “family motto” (though up until then unspoken) “Let’s just pretend none of this happened.” It was like a LIGHT GOING ON IN MY HEAD—HELLLLLLLLL–OOOOOO!
I realized I had played “let’s pretend” all my life, and it was inly a game of let’s “pretend that what we did to Oxy isn’t important, because she isn’t important”—-and I was TIRED of that game, I never won, I was always injured, but pretended II was “okay.”
It was only when I realized FINALLY that I didn’t have to “live up to” (or down to) my egg donor’s opinon of me, I realized that MY OPINION COUNTED—to me if no one else!
Dear Ox,
Yes, yes, and yes! My ex husband’s family had the idea that if you didn’t talk about it, it never happened! It was the famous “white elephant standing in the middle of the living room” and it used to drive me mad! And this is PRE EX Spath. I’m realizing now it’s been the patter the better part of my life that this stuff has gone on.
My ex Spath was a pro at this. He could be insane all night long, throwing fits, etx and then get up the next morning and cook breakfast like nothing happened. It HAD happened! I was tired too, tired of acting like the awful things he did didn’t matter, didn’t hurt.
Today, I am NOT pretending and there is no more rewriting history. The only one living in my body is me, the only one thinking my thoughts is me and the only one who can criticize me is ME.
Hugs!!!
I first noticed the “it didn’t happen” part and consciously THOUGHT about it when I worked with adolescents (especially female) borderlines, who one minute would be trying to claw your eyes out and seriously wound you (in an in-patient setting) and 5 minutes later, would be trying to HUG you and tell you how much they loved you. NEVER acknowledging that they had actually tried to claw your eyes out and if you had not had TWO BIG BURLY mental health techs to drag them kicking and screaming and cursing off of you, they WOULD have injured you.
Working with these kids, especially the girls, who actually were as violent or more so than the males, opened my eyes to the “let’s pretend it didn’t happen” game, and to an extent made me realize what my egg donor had been doing my entire life!
I had there-to-fore thought this pretending game, this “keeping a stiff uppper lip” and “not airing the dirty laundry” was actually a GOOD thing.
It was only when it almost turned fatal that I finally had the back bone, moral courage and good sense to ESCAPE from this dysfunction and start to see and act on REASON.
While I see others from time to time that are as bamboozled or in denial as I was, and I realize what is going on with them, until they are READY TO ACCEPT it, no amount of “preaching” will “convert” them. No amount of therapy, or anything else got through to me until IT GOT THROUGH TO ME. Until I was READY to accept what I was SEEING.
As Jesus said, “they have ears but hear not, they have eyes but see not.” I have been both blind and deaf, and I realize my egg donor is both blind and deaf, but there comes a point when I have to give up any hope that she will ever “see the light or hear it thunder” and I can’t waste any more of my time trying to help her see. I had to accept that she is just as unchangeable as my P son. Just as toxic, as she is a “psychopath by proxy” helping him to hurt me.
The truth WILL set you free, but you have to be prepared for it to pith you off. It did pith me off, but recognizing it SET ME FREE. But we all do it in OUR OWN time, and for some it may be that the “time” is NEVER because they can’t/won’t face the pain that goes with accepting an unpleasant truth.
Sometimes (and I am aware of a case right now) a person will be so sure that THEY cannot be “fooled” by a psychopath that they will deny that someone’s behavior is psychopathic because to admit that THEY were “human” and NOT infalliable, would mean the loss of their own self esteem. They will take all kinds of measures to keep on “believing” that the disordered person is NOT a psychopapth, even in the face of GOOD EVIDENCE of that person’s behavior, that it is almost funny, if it weren’t so “sad.”
Sort of like Witsend’s MIL finding 50 vodka bottles in her son’s room, but denying he had a DRINKING problem. DUH!?
So I haven’t talked with my exS since a few days before Thanksgiving when he brought me my new camera and you know what? It feels GOOD! I haven’t gone this long without talking to him. He has not called to see our daughter and that is fine with me.
Our daughter had a Christmas show this morning and I almost started not to go because I was going to be by myself but I said to hell with it. She did such a great job and I didn’t care that she didn’t have her father there.
I know he is going to try and call right before Christmas to bring her presents but I won’t be answering the phone. She needs a father not presents. My goal is to not talk to him for the rest of 2009! This is his birthday weekend so I am sure he will be out getting drunk and partying. I hate him so!!!
OxDrover, I really cannot fathom the resolve it must take for you to disconnect totally from your mother and a son, although you did indicate your life had been endangered at some point. I was wondering, when you have some time, why total no contact is also recommended with family members who are sociopaths? I can understand NC with intimates/significant others since love relationships like these can bring one down big time especially if living with such a person, since involvement is often body, mind and soul. But I have not had to actively do a permanent detach from any of my toxic relatives — just have very limited contact with them. For me things have worked out by just keeping the very toxic/personality disordered relatives at arm’s length.
Given that you’ve gained balanced perspective with how your relatives behave, do you see being able to reconnect with them but on different terms in the future.
Part of the reason I ask this is because one could possibly feel very guilty to totally stop communication with a child or parent, especially if someone dies and it becomes too late to connect again.
While growing up, I lost several relatives to death at a young age and this history made me feel a need to at least be at peace — even if from a distance — with those still alive even if we couldn’t be part of each others’ lives in a close way. Could be a guilt-induced thing, but by reaching out to some extent — and I agree with your point that some people cannot be reached — it made me feel at peace knowing I did all I could with the relatives that I had difficulty with due to their unwillingness to be respectful.
Dear Recovering,
I felt the same way you were talking about, that it was not really “possible” to completely disconnect from a blood relative. “Family”–or at least the concept of it–was drummed into me as THE most important and UNending thing in life.
However, Yes, my son did try to have me killed (for an inheritemce–he is in prison for another murder, and had a freind of his try to kill me) my mother enables my son who is in prison with monetary payments and with provision for him after her death so that he will have money. With money he has more leaway to try again to have me killed.
My other sons and I will be at nis next parole hearing in a littl eover a year, begging the parole board to NOT let him out. He is a psychopath, has proven already that he is capable of violence and murder.
I am my mother’s only child, but in my family male children are valued above female children. My mother is an enabler who keeps up toxic hope that her grandson will “reform” she is perfectly willing to lose her other grandsons and her only child, in order to enable this proven murderer and to “support” him. She devalued and discarded me when she thought she had one of my other sons “on her side” along with the P-now-X DIL who with her BF, tried to kill her husband.
We are a “respected” family in this community—but we are the poster family for disorder and dysfunction. It has gone on for generations and I am determined to STOP it HERE. My other two sons, besides the one in prison, are with me 100% and are also NC with my egg donor (as far as I am concerned she did not EARN the title mother) Unfortunately, we live on the same farm, but we stay 100% NC with her and it is only SINCE I saw that in order to heal I had to keep away from her. What is the use of a FAKE relationship with someone who cares so little that they would support those that tried to kill you? Whatever her “reasons” or “excuses” she REFUSEs to acknowledge what she has done, or how she has treated me and her spoken intentions are “let’s just PRETEND NONE OF THIS HAPPENED AND START OVER” NOPE, not me, not again. I’ve done that all my life. BLOOD is NOT “thicker than water” and I am only going to associate with those that actually LOVE ME, respect me and care about my welfare. Obviously she doesn’t. he doesn’t. If I sound bitter I’m not really bitter any more, though I admit I was very bitter, very angry, but I don’t want to live that way either.
Being bitter and angry all the time is not a good way to live. but recognizing that someone does not have your best interest at heart and will not treat you with respect, that their only concern is can they control you—recognizing that, accepting WHAT IS, not what you WISH WAS, is the only healthy way to look at the situation.
Living in denial of the truth, puts us at risk of all knids of things.
Accepting even an un-happy truth at least frees you from malignant HOPE that is not realistic.
As far as her death sending me into regret? Nope. I won’t even attend her funeral. A funeral is for the living, not the dead, and as far as I am concerned, she died, and my son died, when I realized they are toxic and dangerous. I had a “memorial” service for my love for them and the false hope I had for a relationship with them. It was a painful “memorial” and a painful time of grief, but once the grief is worked through, there is PEACE and NO more injury, no more pain, no more sorrow. I can leave them to God to deal with.
KNOWING the truth, ACCEPTING the truth, once you have accomplished that, leaves you FREE of pain, and gives you room for PEACE, HAPPINESS AND JOY and time to spend with those that do love you. That respect and appreciate you.
Believe me it is wonderful now that I no longer “miss” the “love” and so on that I THOUGHT I had, but just with with an S. O. it was all fake, and why would I want contact with my P-X-BF? Same with blood relatives. And NO REGRET! No looking back. Just PEACE.