Editor’s note: The following essay was written by the Lovefraud reader who posts as “Ms_Snowhite.”
I want to share with the readers at Lovefraud something that happened to me tonight, when I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t fall back to sleep.
You know, it was one of those moments when you suddenly wake up, your mind is clear of everything and you start thinking.
So I was lying on the bed thinking about the spath again and how there would probably never be justice for the things he has done to me, and then, I had started to think about other people that had hurt me a lot by intention in the past too. You know, friends that had betrayed me, co-workers that were unethical, etc., etc. Of course, what they have done can’t compare to the damage that the spath has done to my soul, but I was also hurt and devastated back then and I cried.
Well, it’s funny, I don’t know if that has happened to you too, but I realized that somehow, in one way or another, life has brought all those people back into my life, even many years after they hurt me. Some of them were feeling sorry about treating me unfairly, all of them were leading unhappy lives. It made me think that if I knew back then that those people would be unhappy in the future, then I wouldn’t feel so much pain and hurt. I was always thinking that after they hurt me, they would continue living happy lives like if nothing had happened. I could never imagine, in my pain, that they could lead miserable and unhappy lives.
Of course, I didn’t felt happy for that, I never feel glad about someone’s misfortune. But I somehow felt that the Universe has brought them back to my life to show me that Justice was placed, even if it was not important to me anymore.
I won’t lie, that made me think that maybe in the future, years after, life would bring the spath on my way again. Then he would be living alone in his misery and I would feel nothing but pity for him”¦ but that’s only a dream.
As I was still lying in the darkness, I started to think of people that I might hurt in the past too”¦ I have to say here, that I never had the intention to hurt anyone. I’m always careful with other people’s feelings, always trying to help when someone needs my help, etc”¦ So, except for a couple of boyfriends that didn’t work out, I thought that there were no other people that I might have hurt in the past. Stupid me…
As I was lying on the bed, names started coming on my mind, and I realized that in one way or another, I might have hurt many people’s feelings. I mean not in a way that the spath did to me”¦ I never had the intention to hurt anyone, but it’s still a hurt. As I was thinking, the list of the names grew bigger and bigger”¦ A sick aunt that I was ignoring her calls, a guy that was in love with me and I treated with cruelty, being rude to my mother and making her cry, pets that I had treated with cruelty when I was a child”¦ and the list goes on and on”¦
In the end I started asking for forgiveness of all those people”¦ I started asking for forgiveness even from those who had hurt me. I asked for forgiveness even from the spath for all the times that I lost control, even if it was him and his insane behavior that made me react that way”¦
By doing that I felt a relief. I guess it is something temporary, it was just some minutes of “light” and I would probably get back to my dark reality during the day – hating the spath, having the feeling of Injustice”¦ I just got up from the bed and I wanted to share it with you before the “magic” went away”¦
So, I guess that something good came out of this story—to understand my errors and question my behavior towards other people.
Blessings and love,
Ms_Snowhite
Ms_Snowhite,
I love your story. I have had a similar experience: Thinking about the Spaths, non-Spaths & semi-Spaths that have hurt me. But, then it dawned on me: Haven’t I hurt others too, whether intentionally or non-intentionally? That was a lightbulb moment. So, my Spath (& other hurtful) encounters may be like boomerang karma. I asked the universe for forgiveness. This experience also gave me a new point of view and made me feel more aware as to how I treat & interact with people. I think this realization is a sign of spiritual growth but now, I have to live up to it, so that my actions reflect this insight.
Dear Ms_Snowwhite,
How right you are! While we may not be psychopaths, and we may not set out to hurt others for our own amusement, we have indeed hurt others in the past. None of us is without “sin” in our lives. None of us is perfect. I can look back at my own life and see plenty of times That I can remember that I’d like to forget…that I’d like to have never happened because I am not proud of those memories.
Forgiving ourselves for being less than perfect. Forgiving (getting the bitterness out of our hearts) the psychopaths and others who have hurt us I think is definitely part of the healing.
Learning to TRUST ourselves again as well. Because we have let ourselves down in many ways.
Wonderful article! Thanks. God bless.
Snowwhite,
thank you for sharing that experience. I can relate to your thoughts. When I was 12 years old, I played some spathy tricks. It was something I’m very sorry that I did. At the same time, remembering how I was thinking and feeling when I did that, has helped me to better understand the way spaths think. So maybe it was part of God’s plan.
The difference though, is that I grew up, and realized that my behavior was wrong. Spaths never do. The growing up gives us a longer perspective and forgiveness is naturally part of that.
Thank you for everything,
I’m so glad that you can relate to the article. I was not sure that I could explain my thoughts right since English is not my mother language – I come from a small European country where people don’t know much about sociopaths. I didn’t knew about them either before I found this site.
It’s only now, after 3 years of being involved with one that I start to see a small light at the end of the tunnel. At first I was suffering so much that I couldn’t see things clearly, but now I’m starting to see things differently.
I can relate to everything that you wrote too. I wasn’t that much spiritual before, but now I’m starting to believe that maybe Karma came to teach me a lesson about being ignorant with people who loved me in the past. Now I ask for forgiveness from the Universe and I’m trying to be more kind towards other people. I still feel hurt and angry – it’s not easy to accept the fact of being used and treated like an object, but things are getting a little better with time…
We had lost our identity and it needs a lot of work to gain our trust to ourselves back. We would never be the same person again, but we could make a new one, wiser and stronger this time.
I think that the first step to recovery is to make ourselves a priority, to start treating ourselves with caring and love, even if it seems difficult and even if it is for the first time in our lives. It is never too late to start loving ourselves, because if we won’t do it, no one else will do it for us.
Much love and light to everyone.
Ms_Snowhite, thank you so much for your courageous article. And, I mean that it is a courageous thing to discuss, much less disclose for others to read about.
For a long time, my focus had been about what a skank the exspath was – what he had done to me. Well, I’ve done plenty of things for which I am NOT proud of, and those things don’t necessarily make me a “bad person.”
This is the miraculous epiphany that comes with recovery, I think. This has been discussed numerous times, as well. There comes a time when the focus isn’t about what he/she did. The focus shifts to ME and MY choices, actions, and behaviors. I have a responsibility to myself to keep learning and remain in recovery. Your article speaks to me, very clearly, about this fact.
Brightest blessings
Truthspeak,
thank you so much.
I remember you mentioning many times before that there comes the time when you stop focusing on the spath and what he did and start focusing on ourselves. It took me almost 3 years to come to this and I’m only just starting.
I’m trying to focus on my mistakes and I’m trying to understand why I had let the spath to do so much damage into my life so I won’t allow anyone to treat me the same way in the future.
I’m also not proud about things that I did in the past, but I think that the most important step for our self growth is to acknowledge our mistakes and make it sure that we won’t make the same mistakes again in the future. I’m glad that I have the ability to learn from my mistakes and the strength to ask for forgiveness when I hurt someones feelings, something that the spath will never be capable of. They just hurt, use and abuse and move on to the next target without caring about the lives they destroy.
Truthspeak, you said before that you don’t believe in Justice anymore, but I know that most of the people that hurt me in the past are living miserable lives now. Life has somehow brought those people into my life again even years after. I know that I got my lesson about hurting others peoples feelings too. So, I believe that there would come the day when there would be justice about what the spaths did to us too. Maybe not now, but someday, and I hope that when that happens we could share it here.
What is important now is to focus on ourselves!
Much love and hugs.
Here’s a thought: When we all did things in the past that was hurtful to people (we know we all have), did they think at the time that WE were spaths?? Did they hate us for what we were doing to them…hurting them?? Something to think about.
Ms Snow White, great article about forgiveness. I’m trying to get to that stage and be patient with myself. My experience is still pretty new and raw and I still feel the knife is jammed into my heart so I’m trying to read on hear as much as I can.
You said:
“I asked for forgiveness even from the spath for all the times that I lost control, even if it was him and his insane behavior that made me react that way””
I was speaking with Louise and Skylar earlier in terms with how I am starting to think about the loss of control I had many times and my spath turning it around on me saying that “it was my problem i acted/felt/went crazy because I can CHOOSE how to react to stressful situations…and that his actions were independent of my reactions as those were my choices…and that there’s no one to blame but myself for my out of control reactions”
I’m battling with feelings of “it was his fault I reacted this way” and “It was my own fault I had a choice” And many times I do feel GUILTY for some of the things I’ve said and done to him as a result of being hurt… and have even said sorry to him for that!! But then WHAM he sneaks back in with the same old lies and I’m back to MOUNDS of frustration!! And I’m the one that was apologizing??
Do you really believe you feel bad for your loss of control? How do you start to forgive yourself for that? Just wondering if you could expand on that a little for me. I’m trying to concretely define things here for some reinforcing self talk.
Thanks!
Louise, I know that I’ve done things that were dead wrong, and I had a feeling of remorse for having done them. The difference is that I know that I’m not spath, and I am not concerned with who may hate me, or who approves of me. These are the lines of thinking that left me open to spath entanglements, to begin with. It’s not that I “don’t care,” but I cannot be “all things to all people,” and I’m not going to pretend that I can. If someone hates me for the things that I did that were wrong, then it’s a waste of THEIR energies – unless they tell me, that hatred only burns in their lives.
Serenity12, yeah….we “re-act” to things in different ways but spaths drive “normal” human beings to the brink of madness and tolerance. There’s only so much that a human being can withstand, and most spath entanglements (especially contracts of marriage) result in behaviors that we NEVER though possible for ourselves. In a million years, I would NEVER have envisioned myself attacking my spouse for ANY reason, yet I did. I’m certainly not proud of what I did, and I paid dearly for my reaction. I was simply pushed beyond my ability to control myself. Does this make me a “bad person?” I don’t believe that it does.
Brightest blessings
Serenity12,
Forgiving myself was the most difficult part of it all I think, because I want to think of myself as “perfect”—because I was taught if I was not “perfect” it was not good enough. Now I realize (finally) that we are all HUMAN and that means we are NOT perfect, we do things that are not right, but…we learn from it and improve. The difference between “us” and “them” is that we feel remorse and change, they feel no remorse and do not change.
So forgive yourself for being human, for being imperfect. It is okay. (((hugs))) and God bless.