Editor’s note: The following article was submitted by the Lovefraud reader who posts as “Betsybugs.”
The term cognitive dissonance is used to describe the feeling of discomfort and confusion that results from holding two conflicting beliefs. When there is a discrepancy between beliefs or beliefs and behaviors, something must change in order to eliminate or reduce the mental conflict. Psychopaths use cognitive dissonance to entangle victims, to keep victims confused and docile and to create pain. My story is a story of cognitive dissonance.
My cognitive dissonance began in childhood when my father would go into rages, chase one of his daughters into a corner and beat the living daylights out of them while my mother stood and watched crying. When the beating was over, she consoled the victim (me or one of my sisters) and explained to all of us that Daddy really loved us but he just did not know how to show it. She was terribly emotionally abused too but drew the line at physical abuse for herself. I think that is why he beat us; he never laid a hand on our brother that I know of. It was a sick misogynistic thing.
First boyfriend
I had only one boyfriend before college and he broke my heart and was most likely a sociopath himself. He was a low class charming hooligan from the wrong side of the tracks, charming as in Westside Story or Rebel Without a Cause. He succeeded in getting me to fall head over heels in love with him and I thought it was “forever.” Stupid first love insanity but I was going to marry him and have his children”¦ in my deluded mind. All he wanted from me was my good reputation and virginity. After he got that he started lying, cheating, sleeping around and blaming me for not accepting what he was doing. His words kept telling me he loved me but his actions told a completely different story”¦at least in my book it did. Love was in diametric opposition to his behavior. More cognitive dissonance added to my book.
My mother was diagnosed with cancer when I was fourteen. I remember getting into a fight with my friend who I stayed with when Mother went away to the hospital. She knew and told me but I was not allowed to know; more cognitive dissonance. I had more and more cognitive dissonance as I went through high school seeing Mother have shooting pains and being told that nothing was the matter. I must have been told but then it was denied finally using Christian Science when she had six months left to live. My parents forced me to go to college knowing that my mother had six months to live. I did not want to go; I even tried to get kicked out of school and sent home. She always said she would have nothing to live for after her children were gone and I was the youngest and the last to go. It became a prophecy. She died before Christmas break. I blamed myself. It was cognitive dissonance again.
I tried dating but hated it. I was afraid of boys and badly burned by my first and only “true love.” I was love-bombed by a psychopath I met at enrollment my freshman year in college. He was a senior and was so overly attentive that it gave me the Heebie Jeebies. Red flag number one. There was a look in his eyes that I found terribly disturbing too. Red flag number two. I fled but to no avail. He love-bombed me until I finally just went out with him to just to get out of the dorm. I never loved him but he convinced me he was stable, caring and a good catch. I did not even want to love anyone again. I thought a nice platonic relationship would do just fine. I was alone in the world without my mother and no one in the family noticed. By now, cognitive dissonance was normal to me.
The big wedding
I guess we had sex a few times. It was nothing to write home about but I did not want that bonding sexual intensity again ever. I was afraid of loving again and he did not care or notice. He raped his roommate’s girlfriend while she was sleeping in her boyfriend’s bed and got thrown out of his apartment. She woke up with him on top of her raping her sleeping body. He was so pathetic and played remorseful and alone and I came to his rescue; I got pregnant and “had to” get married even though I did not want to. I was on the cusp of not “having to” get married I suspected I might be pregnant and just wanted to run away but he found out I was pregnant before I even knew and got his parents to plan a big wedding. I was still in shock from my mother’s death. I did not want a big wedding. I did not want to get married at all. I just wanted to have my baby and never tell him. But the wedding was planned in Kansas City where his parents lived and owned a jewelry store. All of their friends, colleagues and business associates were invited. We were registered for china and crystal at their store giving them all the profits. I had my family and three friends in attendance and all of the bills were sent to my father, all the way down to the bill for alterations for the bridesmaid’s dress we bought for his sister. That cognitive dissonance took me years to comprehend.
He violently raped me on our wedding night in a run of the mill local motel. No honeymoon, no romance, no expense for him or his money gouging parents; just violence and vulgar displays of his ownership of me. The cognitive dissonance was so bad I just wanted to die. How could I have made such a huge mistake? How could this be the same person who worshiped me, doted on me and wanted nothing more than to be married to me? Sex was his domain throughout the marriage and he wanted me to play dead. Now I see that it was just more rape. He tried arguing and anger to control me but I was smarter than him and better at both. He tried physical abuse and I told him if he ever did it again I would leave him. Finally he figured out how to use cognitive dissonance. I never heard him apologize, it was blatant mind control. He was Jekyll and Hyde but he knew what he was doing. The world thought we were the ideal couple. But I was being slowly driven insane. The marriage was nothing but cognitive dissonance. I suppose it is with all psychopaths and cognitive dissonance is what prevents us from getting out. It causes us to believe we are the crazy one, the one even at fault while all the time they are doing it to us on purpose.
Fortunately my Spirit was strong and my maternal instincts were stronger. I was only wounded, not destroyed and I finished college, got a job and got out. It only took ten years, almost to the day. I did not know that such a thing as a psychopath existed. I finally realized he was incapable of loving and when we moved and he started shunning my son and love-bombing all of his potential friends, the new neighborhood children. He had just graduated from law school and wanted all the children to call him the judge, invited them in to sing while he played the guitar and would not include our son. I finally saw the cognitive dissonance. I tried to talk to him to explain how much he was hurting out son and he denied there was anything wrong with it. That was his big mistake and my wake up call. I did not know what it was called but I knew it was very bad and then I knew that he was doing it on purpose. I also realized that he had been doing it to me on purpose. Before that wake up call, I believed that all people were good, if not on the surface, at least underneath. My parents were very dysfunctional, but they were very good people underneath. They were defective people, hurting people, hurtful people; but they were also loving, caring, and real. A psychopath is inhuman.
Learning about cognitive dissonance
I only learned the term cognitive dissonance a few months ago and the definition is very mild compared to what a psychopath can do with it. A psychopath can use it to destroy his victims, get what he wants and seem benign all the time he is deliberately sucking the soul out of his prey. Before the psychopath I did not believe that evil existed. He took that away from me. I believed all people were good. He took that away from me. Now he has taken my daughter and I am seeing her cognitive dissonance. She is convinced that I am the evil one. Very few people believe me. They continue to treat him with respect and call me crazy. It is easier than believing in psychopathy. Even I know that. Cognitive dissonance is their shield and sword. But this time I can see the cognitive dissonance as I struggle to disengage myself from it with my daughter. I am again an invisible victim.
Knowledge is a tool. The knowledge that I am experiencing cognitive dissonance helps me from believing that it is my fault; that he is not a psychopath. It lets me know what I know regardless of what others believe. It helped me get out once. At this time I am not yet willing to give up on my daughter but I am getting there. I am not willing and will never be willing to give up my grandchildren. I know the insanity of the cognitive dissonance and this time I am using that knowledge to survive until I decide which way the situation will resolve. This time I may make a different decision and play the game my daughter wants me to play so I can have a relationship with my grandchildren. It will not be easy, but at the moment it seems to be the only solution. I am still in cognitive dissonance about it but knowing that it is cognitive dissonance gives me the power of sanity to protect myself and wait until I am able to make the right choice.
There is a Russian saying: in the calmest waters swim the ugliest fish.
Dear Creampuff,
Welcome back sweetie, we do GET IT. You said from the frist that your husband was passive/aggressive but passive/aggressive IS AGGRESSIVE. It is his way of functioning and he is unlikely to change. Your choices are living in a loveless marriage with the “cold shoulder” or leaving and trying to make a life for yourself.
If memory serves me correctly, you have another daughter don’t you that is healthy? Excuse me if my memory is poor.
Only you can make up your miind what you want to do…stay and suffer or leave and make your own way. I can’t tell you what to do…no one can. ONLY YOU can make up your own mind.
Personally I applaud you for going NC and standing up to the psychopaths in your family. It took courage and back bone! TOWANDA!!!! (((hugs)))) and God bless and keep you.
Creampuff, long time no type!!! It’s good to “see” you, again, but I’m so sorry for your grief. Losing a child because they are spath is not the same type of grief that we’re equipped to manage. Other grieving makes sense – the loss of a parent or a radnom act of nature. But, when people deliberately choose to harm others for their own purposes, it’s unlike any other experience.
OxD is spot-on, Creampuff. A “loveless marriage” isn’t a marriage, at all. And, the Silent Treatment is one of the cruelest of abuses because, through silence, we aren’t even acknowledged as existing. This simple act virtually invalidates our very existence and place in the Universe, and it is VICIOUS.
I don’t do the silent treatment and I won’t tolerate it. If your husband cannot “get it” that bad behaviors are bad behaviors and tolerating them to “keep the family together” is bullshit, then he is lost to the games. There is no such thing as “family” in the World Of Sociopathy. “Family” is simply another weapon in the spath’s arsenal – “family” translates into minions, fence-sitters, and enablers, and TOWANDA for you for going NC for all of the right reasons, and sticking by it.
Brightest blessings
Betsybugs, I’m so sorry that you’re going through all of this, seriously.
I don’t have any grandchildren, and it is likely that I never will. Although I would love to have one to dote upon, I am grateful that there isn’t an innocent life being jerked around in spath games.
I cared very deeply about my neice and nephew and loved them both, tremendously. For whatever reason, I learned very early that my brother’s wife was NOT supportive of my forming any type of relationship with these children (now, adults), and I didn’t try to force the issue. It pained me, deeply, that I didn’t enjoy an extended family with them, but the ex-sister-in-law held SO much control that I understood that a relationship with either of them would be impossible because she would not allow it.
Today, I don’t even know these people. And, I don’t really want to know them. They are a product of a VERY vicious dynamic, and I can’t accept that simply because they’re my brother’s offspring.
I watched the ex-SIL deliberately prevent interactions and, right in front of me, disdain MY aspirations and talents as being “insignificant,” and supporting her family members as “good examples” of family. They’re ALL disordered to the point where my neice actually left the country to get away from the madness.
So, as sad as this is, Betsybugs, nothing that we can do or say alters bad people, even when they’re our own family members or offspring. And, it IS sad, and it’s okay to feel sad about it. Having typed that, my feeling sad isn’t going to change the fact that I will probably never set eyes on my neice or nephew for the rest of my life. And, the fact is cold, hard, and unpleasant. But, that fact is also just that: a fact. I don’t have to like it, but I have to accept it or grieve over this loss for the rest of my life.
Brightest comforting blessings to you
Truthspeak,
Thank you for your response. I was not able to digest all of the implications in your comments for awhile. It is so painful for me right now I can hardly function.
How can I deal with my sister dying and being forced into contact with my daughter who treats me like an outsider. She pretends a good team effort but is totally shut off from me emotionally and tells me I will never see my grandchildren alone again because she cannot trust me.
Trust is my highest moral principle. I base my life on honesty, integrity, truth and openness. It sounds like she is getting advice from a psychopath who knows that or it is an uncanny coincidence. I wonder if she cannot trust me how she can ever trust anyone.
I raised her, love her unconditionally, was always there for her, adore her children and have never been deceitful except about Santa Clause and that bothered me. All I have done is try to help and support her and her husband in every way in raising these lovely children and give the children joy and unconditional love.
What I have done is say my piece and I always have and she still holds it against me. I did not agree with all of her wishes and tried to discuss it with her. She everything she wanted and did it her way anyway and I am thrilled that she is happy. I did not prevent her from a single wish except for me to be forced to have holidays with the psychopath.
I have said at least two things to the children that she does not like and I either told her about it immediately to see if she was offended or did it in plain sight in her presence. And yet she still insists that my granddaughter told her. I do not doubt that my granddaughter told her but my daughter insists on the implication that I was breaking her boundaries and doing it behind her back in a secretive way. That is just not true. I admitted it as soon as I brought the children home first time…my granddaughter asked me if Granddad (the psychopath) was mean and I said yes. Daughter had no reply when I told her, maybe she just was not listening. The same question and answer was repeated a year later and daughter went no contact with me over it and took away the grandchildren.
The other thing I said was when I left my dying sister’s house the other day because I was so hurt by my daughter’s cruelty and attitude about the children and me. As I walked out I said out loud in front of everyone, your mommy treats me like dirt. Both comments were true and fairly minor in my opinion. That is not a violation of trust or boundaries. That is simply being human and her wanting to micro control me, deny communication and blame me for being human and everything I do and say that she does not agree with.
I am ready to make the no contact from this end too. I pray I can survive or a miracle happens before my sister dies or I will loses them all at once. My daughter is on self protection mode and does not even seem to register or care about the pain she is causing or feeling if she is feeling any. The attitude to me is simply sheer indifference and the most painful thing anyone can do to me.
I am sure not perfect, I have said hurtful things I shouldn’t have but I never intentionally hurt her or anyone. I did try to protect my grandchildren from her father. She is just determined to cut my husband and I out of their lives instead of trying to resolve it. I guess the psychopath is cut out of her life too and she thinks that is fair and honorable…equal treatment so she sees evil everywhere instead of good and evil. As he laughs and we cry and the children cry and miss out on the joy and unconditional love we so much want to give to them.
Yes, I am fed up, tired of this unbearable pain and see no hope of her ever coming to her senses. Time to cut my losses and pray my grandchildren will not forget how much we love them.
Dear Betsybugs, ((((ugs))))
You say “I am ready to make the no contact from this end too. I pray I can survive or a miracle happens before my sister dies or I will loses them all at once. My daughter is on self protection mode ***and does not even seem to register or care about the pain she is causing**** or feeling if she is feeling any. The attitude to me is simply sheer indifference and the most painful thing anyone can do to me.
Betsy I disagree with your daughter not knowing about the pain she is causing, she KNOWS and she is DOING IT DELIBERATELY. She knows the MOST VULNERABLE SPOT FOR YOU IS THE KIDS and that is what she is taking away. THE THING YOU VALUE MOST is what she is withholding.
(head shaking here) As much as I hate to say it Betsy, your cog/dis is still kicking in and “protecting” you from what the truth is…the truth is your daughter is punishing you to the full extent of her power to do so….and there is not a damned thing you can do about it except accept what the truth is, and cry..grieve…recover. God bless. (((hugs))))
Betsybugs, huge hugs of comfort for you…..
OxD is spot-on. Of course, she is aware of what she’s doing because she continues to pull those strings and simply sit back and watch (with glee) the drama/trauma unfold. And, your response to her actions by making public remarks and direct statements with regard to her actions are just the nightmare fuel that she’s delighted to pour upon this smoldering situation.
OxD is also spot-on that your grandchildren are your Achilles Heel, and your daughter not only “knows” this, but you’ve made it crystal clear that your love for them supercedes anything else. What she is doing is deliberate, malicious, and 100% machinated.
Please, I hope that you understand that I’m not attempting to add to your current misery, but I would like for you to consider one direct question: What empathetic human being would engage in reward/withold with another human being who is experiencing a long, slow, and devastating passing of their sibling?!
And, the truth is not pretty, Betsybugs – NO parent or grandparent wishes for this kind of scenario, but we ALLOW it because of cog/diss. Who want’s to accept that their offspring deliberately harms other people and uses their own children as tools to accomplish that harm?
My most sincere blessings of comfort are with you, Betsybugs
Betsybugs, to address your desperation as your sister is passing, we are equipped to process this type of loss. This type of passing allows for our loved one to be a focus of love, concern, and care – both my mother and father passed away and my mother’s passing was very slow and dreadful. But, it was my chance to hold their hands, tell them how much I loved them, and that they were good parents to me – to let them pass without negativity or concern for me.
You will endure this, Betsybugs. And, you’ll be able to focus upon the one who is leaving in lieu of expending so much energy dealing with the living. Right now, this very sad situation is about letting your sister go, and not about telling your daughter all about herself and trying to grasp at the grandchildren. We are equipped to experience and manage this kind of loss and grief. We are not equipped to manage the loss and grief that spaths generate.
One day at a time. One minute at a time. And, for now, it’s about the loss of your sister which is an immediate concern. Allow all other concerns to sit on back burners.
Again, brightest and most comforting blessings
Betsy, I agree with Truthy, focus on your sister….coming to grips with her passing and spend the last times you have with her letting her know how much you love her. In the end, Betsy, LOVE is all we have left in this world. Your sister is blessed…you are blessed to be able to say your good byes. I had 8 hours with my husband before he passed away, I had 18 months with my beloved step father and I treasure each minute of those times.
Don’t let your dread of what your daughter is planning on (or is doing) to you about the grandkids take away the opportunity you have with your sister to say your goodbyes and come to resolution of any confliicts with her.
What your daughter is doing to punish you for not doing what SHE wants you to do about her father, your abuser….that is deliberate and she sounds “just like her father” to me.
OxD, when my folks passed, it was a lesson in control – I could not stop the inevitable, and I experienced a bona fide helplessness. This wasn’t an experience for me to interpret as “humiliating” because I was powerless to stop my parents from passing away. It was an experience of acceptance and gratitude.
I still get very emotional (weepy) when I recall those final days and hours, and your recollection of your last hours with your husband and step-father is so sad to me. Bittersweet in that it’s a time to surrender, let go, and not only express that love but to FEEL it in the deepest part of our souls.
And, when people use those bittersweet and mournful times to their advantage is thoroughly disturbing. What kind of person does that? A toxic person, only, regardless of whom is influencing whom.
Brightest blessings