UPDATED FOR 2024. Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following e-mail from a woman who we’ll call, “Cybil.” She was married to a sociopath, and is now raising two toddlers, paying 75% or more of their support, and being run into the courts, stalked, threatened and harassed.
Today I was thinking about this comment I get a lot from the supposed “resources” I have. What I have found is that there really is not much in the way for resources out there for abused women. Even my family, who have been helpful and are starting to “get it” little by little, can be a little backhanded in their support.
The comment goes like this: “Well, you chose this guy. You chose to have kids with this guy.” It is always said after they are frustrated at your upset or stress, or after they have gotten stressed, or when they realize they really can’t help you. I guess it’s a kind of guilt deflector. A way of saying, ultimately it’s your own damn fault so take the drama somewhere else. Even if the drama is externally created and you’re trying your best to have the boring, drama-free life that is SO attractive now. I would love boring.
I did not choose this guy
The thing is, I didn’t “choose” this guy. He chose me. I chose a different guy, the one he was pretending to be. Yes, maybe I got involved too quickly. They are good at moving things along. So yes, I made a bad decision. It’s true. I would undo it if I could. Some people make hasty relationship decisions and have it all work out fine, like my parents did.
But is that one bad decision I made as bad as all the things he has done: the emotional and physical abuse, the con, the isolation, the crazymaking, the fact that I had to give up a great career, my life savings, my car, the fact that I am being run into court on an almost monthly basis, the fact that my good reputation is now sullied with the lies he tells.
No, I didn’t choose this. I was smart, successful, maybe a little vulnerable, but not stupid. And I was nice. That’s why he chose me. That’s what people don’t get. I am not this psycho-bitch he keeps telling people I am. If I was, he would have moved on to an easier mark. The reality is that I was a semi-Pollyanna, who believed in helping people, giving the benefit of the doubt, being NICE.
Only a little bit my fault
So, no this is not my fault. This incredible nightmare that has become my life since I met this man, is not entirely my fault. It is a little bit my fault. I am more cautious now. But his behavior is not my responsibility, as awful as it is. And nothing I did was so bad that I deserve what has happened and is happening.
No, I didn’t choose this. Even though my mother said it today. Even though the cop that was supposedly on my side (after I received a death threat) said this after they brought him in for questioning, and then reduced the whole thing to a “domestic matter.”
I didn’t choose this guy and this nightmare. It chose me. I was just a little too naive to tell. I am not anymore.
Learn more: Sociopathic seduction—how you got hooked and why you stayed
Lovefraud originally posted this story on Nov. 16, 2010.
Dancing as treatment for depression
dear dani sister loon – you said:’ It is the most frustrating thing! I would speak in riddles and then give up and look like a loon. Then I would have a hot flush, head spin and want to vomit! All symptoms of PTSD’
oh my, do i ever hear you! i was in a converation the other day, and i thought, WTF am I saying? SHUT UP. I am having trouble with words too. I have had touble finding words since a trauma in 86, worsened with peri menopause, and menopause, but since the spath – well, last week i said things that weren’t any words i know to be in the english language – my work is all about talking with people – and i am so stressed by losing that ability to be calm and to talk properly, read the political under/ over tones and respond properly, takes breaks, step back, think regroup…it’s f&^king gone. I make more sense via email, so I try to do more work that way – mind you someone dressed me down for being too ‘strong’ in my emails. ..but i know a part of that is projection – he’s dealing with something that intimidates him, so any overbearing by me is going to look huge.
i feel a bit like i am losing my mind – i can’t control my emotions, my words, my stress response. i kinda don’t feel like a person, at least in the way i would usually define myself. if my work didn’t require so much interaction, i could calm down more easily. it’s easy not to swaet it, if messing up doesn’t mess up my job, or my prospects for continual employment.
i was thinking about how i am interacting with people – i realize i see most people as ‘the enemy’ now, full on distrust, and it’s getting worse the more people i interact with. 🙁 i don’t trust anyone who i feel has a facade (even a bloody ‘normal’ social one), and i seem to loath people who are crappy to me. it’s getting worse – hmmm, i remember the PTSD doc saying that the flashbacks would get worse…I wonder if this is part of it?? flashbacks are about emotional connection to an experience – and i think when people are a bit shitty > a lot shitty to me, then it is triggering my PTSD (the emotional connection to having been treated badly by the spath). sigh. ergh.
best,
the loon, one step
Dear Onestep,
Yeppers, there’s been a lot of research done on the effects of stress (that I can remember because I learned it a long time ago SNORT) and the chemicals that are released by stress in the SHORT TERM are beneficial –they channel the blood flow to the muscles and the lungs so you can run faster, and fight harder, they release powerful anti-pain medications (in fact broken bones don’t really start to hurt for a couple of hours after the break) but in the LONG RUN, these chemicals are NOT productive because they almost shut down your immune system (thus you are much more likely to get infections when under stress long term) and the chemicals released by stress play havoc with just about every system in our bodies.
Think of a 5 gallon bucket. You can dump 5 gallons of water in it all at once, or you can fill it up by drips over a long period of time. Think of stress being the water…so a little stress over a long period of time=a lot of stress all at once. 5 gallons of water = 5 gallons of water no matter how you fill the bucket.
SOME little bit of stress is good for us, necessary in fact. but Long term high stress wears us away like the water erodes the stone, just a little bit at a time.
We ADJUST to high stress levels that are continual, sort of like an alcoholic adjusts to drinking a 5th a day…and if you take away the guy’s booze suddenly he will go into the DTs and can literally die from them.
People with untreated diabetes can ADJUST to high sugar level like the drunk adjusts to the high alcohol level, and if you get them down to “normal’ their body reacts like a normal body would with NO SUGAR, and can literally die.
WE ADJUST to the high stress level and our body says “well, I don’t like this but this is obviously what “normal” is.” Then when a real BIG EMERGENCY comes along, it has NO RESERVES to throw out there for the fight or flight response so you can’t run fast or fight hard for your life. Your body is weak, your adrenal glands are over loaded and burned out. Your muscles don’t respond to the stress hormones right and you are in general, over all, in not good shape.
Getting to NORMAL from the HYPER stress state takes TIME and PEACE and REST…and you wind down slowly and in my case I didn’t even realize that I wasn’t under such a high stress load, and then when I ran into the egg donor in the grocery check out line and GOT A BIG DOSE OF STRESS HORMONES!!!! K-ZAM, it actually made me SICK TO MY STOMACH, for about 18 hours. What we here in the South call the “shot at and missed, chit at and hit” syndrome, you feel WASHED OUT AND WRUNG OUT, I DID AN ARTICLE BY THAT NAME some where here on LF, anyway.
WA-LA! That experience made me realize that I had turned down the stress level and that I had in the past been USED TO LIVING UNDER THE HIGH STRESS 24/7.
Now, I generally live in the LOW levels of the stress on a day to day basis, but I have learned that WHEN I do get blindsided with a BIG dose of stress (like last year when the son C lied to me) it knocks me to my knees, or when I get a longer medium level dose like preparing the parole papers, it too knocks me to my knees and IT TAKES ME LONGER TO RECOVER if I get “hit” by a load of stress or get into a stressful situation. I don’t have that “resilience of youth” any more, it takes me longer to recover it seems.
I know I am preaching all the time here on LF about “take care of yourself’ do “good things” for yourself, but that is a big part of lowering your stress levels. NC is another BIG part of lowering your stress level. Getting rid of the BITTERNESS (I call that forgiveness but you can call it ONIONS if you like, but whatever you call it, it helps lower the stress to get rid of the bitterness) no matter how badly the psychopath has screwed you. Harboring ANGER and BITTERNESS is counter-productive LONG TERM.
Jesus said “be ye angry and sin not” and he also said “don’t let the sun go down on your wrath”—being angry is not a sin in my book, and obviously Jesus didn’t think so either as HE got angry at injustice, but He shows us that the WRATH which is a sick kind of vengeful anger that is STEWED over for a great deal of time, should not be kept in our lives. Not because it is so much a “sin” but because it HURTS US, not the person we feel wrathful toward.
The book of Ester in the Bible tells the story of a man who was a psychopathic narcissist palace official who plotted and planned and harbored wrath toward Queen Ester’s uncle because the uncle would not bow down before the Psychopath. He plotted and planned how not only to kill Ester’s uncle (not knowing the man was kin to Queen Ester) but the entire Jewish population in the country.
In the end, the psychopath was hanged on the same gallows that he had prepared to hang Ester’s uncle from. The story is a good read and shows how harboring wrathful anger can be the UNDOING of even a psychopath. It is also uplifting because in the end the psychopath “gets his!”
We can’t control the universe or stop events that are stressful from happening. We have flat tires, we get abscessed teeth, in short chit happens. We can control our responses to things and our environment and plan ahead so that we decrease the amount of stress by decreasing the amount of stressful thinking.
How we think adds to our stress. We have a continual internal dialog going on and we can control that dialog by how we “talk to ourselves.” We have that choice and exercising it helps us to moderate the stress we experience in our lives.
The effects of stress take TIME and PEACE to repair themselves, good nutrition, good rest, good exercise and quiet reflective time alone. Spiritual thinking (whatever your beliefs) and meditation about yourself and how to take care of yourself.
I’ve had so many different aspects to work on, physical, financial, spiritual, emotional, mental, social, that I’ve had to work on each one a little bit at a time, and spread the efforts out over the entire spectrum of things I needed to work on. sometimes it seemed and impossibly large task, but I’m getting there one step at a time…ONE STEP forward…one task, one goal, one day at a time. It’s called healthy living and I’m working on it every day. Haven’t gotten it down perfectly, but I’m sure a heck of a long way better off than I was 3 years ago Christmas when I had just returned to the farm from being gone hiding out from my son’s henchman…even after I brought the RV back to the farm it took me almost 6 months to get comfortable and feel safe enough to move back into my house. For six months after I got back here I lived in the RV parked beside the house because the house was too “scary” to move back into. It also took that same six months to learn to set boundaries with some “friends” who were abusing my hospitality (along with stealing from me) and doing a pretty good job of taking over my life and bossing me around in my own space. I told them to take a hike that June as well. Took another 6 months before I went NC with them completely. Also had to go NC with the egg donor during about that same time too.
Now that I have WEEDED the garden of the CHOKE WEEDS that had a strangle hold on me and kept pumping poisonous stress into me, I’m feeling better, thinking better, and able to funnel my energy into HEALING MYSELF rather than fighting off the alligators in the swamp. My brain won’t ever be like or work like it did before all this mess of stress but that’s okay too. I’m not gonna stress about it! LOL ((hugs)))
one step,
You are in the same shoes as I am. Perimenopausal. I wonder just how much of this is PTSD or being peri? Hang in there!
notcrazzee1
Here’s what my family court services evaluator wrote:
“The mother is adamant that the father has been emotionally, verbally, and financially abusive to her and has been physically intimidating; she says that he lied to her about other relationships during their relationship and maintained he is a “compulsive liar”. Though obvious unhappiness and discord was experienced by both parties, there is not a clear pattern to indicate that the father was guilty of domestic violence against the mother. From her report, he did not treat her with respect and he admits he was not candid with regard to other relationships; however it must be noted that the mother chose to remain in the relationship with the father and to re-enter the relationship even after it was seemingly apparent that it was not a healthy relationship. This pattern in itself is not an indication that domestic violence does not exist in a relationship and it is often the case that a domestic violence victim will choose to remain in an abusive relationship because of a lack of other options. However, in this case she was the primary provider for the family, made more money than him, and in fact chose to financially join with him in the purchase of a house which has subsequently gone into foreclosure” (because he STOPPED PAYING THE MORTGAGE!)
So you can see what I’m up against. Blaming the victim is alive and well. She even ADMITS that I was the primary provider, yet now she’s recommending joint custody. How could she believe my sweet, innocent spath ex (who is so viscously being accused of being abusive by bitter me!) can do ANY harm to our child???
I did believe the lie, which is why I took him back twice. Did I KNOW he was lying? Did I know he was literally incapable of changing at the time?? No way. I do now, but apparently I am not going to be allowed the luxury of doing anything with that realization. According to the court, it’s too late for that.
I guess I just have to wait and see what happens, and be relegated to telling everyone “I TOLD YOU SO!” after it’s too late. My poor son. I feel like I utterly failed to protect him.
FML!
Dear Freemama,
(((hugs)))) I hear your frustration and more frustration! However, don’t beat yourself up, you did the best you could with what you had at the time….((((hugs)))) and my prayers for you and your son.
One step…
Big hugs to you! It really is horrible all these PTSD symptoms and harder for you having to deal with people all the time. I went under ground when I was diagnosed. I spent a year at my parents with my children and saw very little of anyone except very close trusted friends.
I really feel for you having to keep soldering on in your work, that takes a massive amount of strength. Little bit by little bit you will start to feel better and feel you have more control! I still sometimes dont make sense and start prattling but I try to remove the stress from the situation and take a step back and breath. It has been a long time now that I will burn up, get the head spins and want to vomit, thank god because I was too stressed to go out for a long time as I never knew when or where these feelings would arise!
I also even after 3 years post spath do not trust people, I think in my mind that every new person I met has ulterior motives. My mother thinks it is stupid that I cannot trust and she would like me to get out and meet a new man, although I think she is starting to see that that is not going to happen in the very near future. I have dated and hated it it just causes me stress, dating is a trigger for me because I think even no I no it is stupid that they will hurt me but I cant change the way I feel at the moment and being like this atleasts stops me from being hurt again!
I love my friends and family that I have now and dont want to let anyone else in as frankly people terrify me now… But I will get there, in time I believe bit by bit these feeling physically and emotional will get broken down. I am just happy I am not looking like I am going to vomit on strangers that talk to me anymore lol You will get there One Step just relax as much as you can in your down time, be kind to yourself and day by day you will see improvements!:)
hi dani – some things have gotten better in the last year, and others much worse. my 0 to 60 stress is now 0-80. I have lost three freinds – 2 who i was very close to, and the third in the last week. I have very little support outside of this blog (although i have had email connection with some lf folk), and the one of the spath’s other dupes has been a bit helpful also. i gave up my family (freaking N’s!) in the last year. I am not well and generally very isolated.
the stress seems to be getting worse. i don’t remember making so many mistakes before – i am always worrying about performing well enough to keep my job – but i have done a couple of bonehead things and am having trouble remembering things – and now i am afraid of being fired. people think i am exaggerating – i am not. i am really sucking at some things and i am organizing something big, and if i don’t do it right i will cost my company a lot of money – i can barely handel the stress i am under now, and i am stressing about ho it will be when i am even under more duress. exhale.
so today, i am watching tv on the web, and not doing another damn thing. i met a new friend for lunch and had an infrared sauna (it was a going away lunch – she’s moving away) and got a few groceries and i have crashed for hours. and that’s all i am going to do tonight – go numb watching tv. (thanks for the hugs!)
One step, I know what PTSD is its a KILLER! BIG hugs to you darlin, stay cool, be good to yourself, BREATHE, do whatever feels good.If you feel like hot chocolate, or ice cream HAVE IT!!
Lotsa love,
Mama Gem xx
PS It must be HELL working with these arseholes!Try noto beat ourself up re these stress symptoms, thy are all NORMAL.
One Step – The mistakes are prob due to not being able to concentrate very well! Frankly I think you are amazing! Trudging on in the work place when things are so bad! I don’t think I could have because of the stress and racing thought ect! I had to have 18 months off work, didn’t help me that I was in and out of court the whole time back then. I was a wreck!
If you have lost friends there is a reason, they may come back, they may not and the loses are hard to cope with, but I believe you have to strip yourself bare. Remove yourself from all the is negative, people, situation and re build with a stronger foundations of what you need, want and who is worthy of being apart of your life! You are best with one friend or no friends than ones that dont make you feel good at the moment! That includes family as well! I used to give all my support and love to my brother and now I dont as it doesnt seem to make a difference anway and I need all my own strength still and I am not giving away all my energy anymore when I need all I can get for myself… Sleep and rest lets the body heal, I hope you have a relaxing night and feel a little better tomorrow!
hi dani – if i could not work right now, or work at an easier job i would do it. this is too much for me. My concentration has imporved a great deal in the last few months, but the stress keeps piling on and it’s too much. i have too many projects on the go at work – i have offloaded a bunch of it, but it is still too much. i have to focus on too many things at once, and as those of us with PTSD know, multitasking is a thing of the past.
i have been financially devastated in the last 2 years. i have been under so much $ stress. a few months ago, i did not know how i would pay my rent. i was going to the foodbank. it’s been a hellish year. i only have a contract and it’s over in the early spring. work is hard to find here. i need to work, i have a huge debt load given my capacity to earn. People I have met in the last few months are stunned that i keep going. they see it as strength – i am starting to feel brittle under all my strength – close to breaking. I think sometimes that my ‘keep going’ attitude makes me look more okay than i am; much in the way the toxic burns i experience on my skin gives me a rosy glow and people (not in the know) think i look ‘great’.
but…. i need to find a way out of my mind set – not the PTSD, that will only change over time and with treatment and love and stability, and less stress, time to heal. but my mind set – that’s about how i relate to all of this. i need help with that, just not sure where to find it. i am trapped within my own mind to a large extent. and my poor health is a huge part of that. i am overwhelmed. and numbing out last night might not be the most productive or loving thing to do, but it was better than some of the alternatives.
thank you for your vote of confidence.