Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following essay from a reader whom we’ll call “SnowWhite.”
He is clever and cunning. He has many talents. He sees you before you see him. It may be something you are wearing that attracts him. Maybe it’s your laugh or your spirit. You are vulnerable. He knows it. You are trustworthy and caring. He knows it. You have only been with two men your whole life. He knows it. You are lonely. He knows it. You have been married for 25 years. He doesn’t care.
He is a carpenter. He builds your trust and friendship. You see him weekly in your workout class. One day he smiles at you. The next day he says hello. Months go by. Each day he shares his story and hardships with you. You are compassionate and feel his pain. He knows it. He becomes your friend. You start to text each other. He becomes your confidant. Before you realize what is happening, he is becoming your best friend, one by one replacing all others. The bond with your husband begins to loosen. He has been saying good night to you for weeks in his texts. You are addicted.
One fateful evening he tells you that there is something special between you. It is more than friendship. You agree that there is an attraction but cannot act on it. You are married. He persists. You are confident that the friendship is more important. You are strong. You can handle it. He is stronger, more powerful. You don’t want to lose the friendship.
He is a gardener. He plants the seeds of doubt telling you your husband and marriage is broken. He cultivates them until they grow, taking root in your mind. You start to believe.
He is a poet. He tells you it’s love. His words are sweet. You start to fall.
He is an architect. He builds and lays out what your life would be like with him. He will give you everything you need as a couple. You will be happy.
He is a painter. He paints a beautiful picture of what could be, a picture of you his “future wife”.
He is relentless. For months you resist but are afraid of losing the friendship and connection. He knows it. He wants more. He threatens to end the friendship if you cannot be with him. You seek therapy. It doesn’t help. He is powerful. You feel helpless in controlling your own emotions. You agree to stop talking”¦..one too many times. You agree to end it and meet one last time. Then it happens. You have no control. The connection is too powerful. He now controls your mind and body.
The weight of him telling you he is waiting and alone bears down on you. He tells you that you must leave your husband. The pressure builds. You feel his pain and want to heal him. You are confused. Your life starts to unravel. You start to lose your soul. You are confused.
He is NOT a cardiologist”¦ he cannot fix your heart. For the heart will always find its way to love that is true, real, honest and everlasting. The heart knows. It is resilient. My heart will recover.
Oxy,
I don’t think it matters what you have written in bits and pieces to people. I think ONE overall article would be so helpfull, don’t you? Everytime you mention a piece of it, someone wants to know more.
I think you would do a great job of this article. I hope it happens. If more people would just get this little bitty paperback their lives would improve greatly!
Oxy,
I’m so sorry if I came across as requiring you to do work. I’m not. I just love the “Dr. Frankl and the baby’s binkie”. I did not intend to make you do research. I simply loved the analogy and how you explained that our pain fills us completely. It really stuck in my mind and made me see my healing in a new light. Thank you (again & again) for helping me to heal.
Oxy and Ana,
thanks for asking about me. I responded to both your emails. It’s very nice to be missed. ((hugs))
I’ve been doing some writing on my blog and thinking things in a different way. Writing seems to force some ideas to congeal. It’s not always comfortable though.
Growing up is hard enough when you’re a kid, but doing it as an adult, with so many years of denial under your belt, I think is just that much harder.
Oxy, I agree that an article on Dr. Frankl’s book would be very fitting. That man lost more than most of us. He certainly serves as an inspiration.
Goldie,
I’m sorry that you feel left out. I’ve been gone for a day or two but you should know that there is nobody here who doesn’t care about you. It’s just hard to keep up all the time as the number of blog members get bigger.
Posting your thoughts is as much for yourself as it is for getting a response. It’s kind of a way of journaling. That’s the reason why I blog.
Keep posting your thoughts, there are many more readers than posters and you are helping others when you post.
((hugs))
Goldie, sometimes, these boards move VERY quickly and a plea for help is sometimes missed. I promise that you are not being “ignored.” Please, don’t allow spath triggers to cause you to feel someting that isn’t factual. If you need IMMEDIATE responses, it may be an option to engage in counseling therapy which is not meant to be a slap in the face to you. Sometimes, it’s much better to have a scheduled appointment with someone who is available to you, and you ONLY, and can help you find answers, etc.
OxD, I believe that the “black cloud” is a gut-feeling that I have when people are simply toxic, at the very least. When I was out in the midwest, I saw the onset of a supercell – the storm front on the horizon was as dark as gunmetal. As the front swept over the plains, the very atmosphere became charged with electric tension and everything between the cloud cover took on a lime-green tint. Within seconds, hail began pelting down and a tornado formed – far enough away that there was no danger, but I have to say that I was enthralled and terrified at the same time.
Black clouds warn us of impending disaster, or a potential for disaster. For me, I MUST learn to pay attention to my gut instinct where those “black clouds” are concerned. If someone seems to carry one with them, then I should recognize it as the warning of potential harm.
Oxy,
I agree with G1S that the black cloud is shame.
It isn’t shame that belongs to you but you sense it over your egg donor’s house because she has been trying to undermine your sense of self-worth since you were a child. It makes me hate her to know that.
The reason I agree that it’s shame is because you said “I feel her eyes watching me, and if she is where she can peep out, she will do just that, or even stand and watch me as I drive by”or herd cattle or whatever I am doing.”
The idea of being watched is one of being judged and compared. When one is being judged one is automatically in a lower position. Parents are particularly good at making you feel that way, but spath parents are even better. Shame is an automatic response because of the POSITION it puts you in. The position of being the one being judged.
I was reading about a therapy session. I can’t remember the author, but it was one who wrote about shame. In this session, the woman therapist welcomed her client, a man. The man immediately told her he would be watching her to see if she met his expectations.
This was obviously a man who turned the tables immediately on his own therapist. rather than be judged by a woman who was paid to analyze him, he put himself in the position of the judge. Although the book didn’t describe him as a spath, I feel that he was. He needed to dominate.
The therapist felt unsure about her abilities. If I recall, she wasn’t able to help him very much.
My spath-brother told me, “when I meet someone, I always feel the need to dominate.” This is typical spath. They are so filled with shame that they have to turn the tables and make you feel what they feel.
Seriously, I could charge money to meet these proto-typical spath that I know. They’re classic.
Goldie5,
I looked for your posts from the other day, and there are so many posts on here now I couldn’t find them. But I do remember reading them.
You’ve been through the ringer, and your guy certainly sounds like a sociopath. I am sorry that he came into your life.
I agree with what Sky said, sometimes posting on here is therapy for me, even if I don’t get any responses. Writing in a way to help other people understand my experience is therapy in itself.
You might want to try adding punctuation and spacing to your blog posts. It makes it more readable and then more likely to engender a response from other members on here.
When I first came to this blog, I had soooo many questions. Oxy directed me to read all the prior articles on here. I spent months doing that. Piece by piece by piece. And that alone was great therapy.
Hope you’re still around.
Athena
Yes. About the black cloud. I have, at several times in my life, run across people who intimidate me. It’s not a physical intimidation…it’s something different, and it causes a gut instinct in me. It is related to what Skylar refers to as being slimed, and it does involve a feeling of being shamed or found to be lacking in some way. It often has the componant of feeling watched and judged.
My last experience was with a female room-mate. We were going to run errands and she waited in the car while ai was locking the front door and I felt rushed and inept and I felt her critisisms on my back and my gut filled up with bats, or something like bats, and I recognized the feeling as the feeling I had had in my marriage to N x hub.
It was uncanny. I moved out the following week. 🙂
I know everyone is being serious about the black cloud and there have been many times I can feel one over my head, for sure.
But, whenever I think of a black cloud following someone, I always think of the character on “Peanuts”, the one with the dirt cloud following him. It so reminds me of my Grand, he literally has a black dirt cloud following him. LOL
Milo, that is funny!
For me, the “shame” and the “black cloud” is just knowing that I let somebody abuse me like I let the spath abuse me. I actually sought it out.
He said things like “I’m evil” and “I will ruin your life” and I’m like, “oh, you’re just fine!”. Talk about rose colored glasses!
I can’t believe I was so stupid! He got me to compromise my integrity. And I did it willingly.
I am so glad he’s gone.
I want the shame to go away too. I am working on that by listening to THE POWER OF NOW, an audiobook, but it is hard, hard work.
Athena
Milo, there was a character in “Lil Abner” a cartoon strip that most of the people here will not even remember but the guy had a last name that was all consonants and he was “unlucky” and he had this black cloud over his head. Of course every where he went bad things happened, lightening struck, whatever, so people threw rocks at him to make him go away.
One day he was able to trap the black cloud which caused all his bad luck and lock it up in a cave and his bad luck was gone, but people still feared him and treated him badly anyway, and he was still not able to make any friends and not be lonely, so he went and let the cloud out, and he said something to the effect “you are bad company but you’re better than no company.”
I think sometimes the psychopaths get their victims to feeling the same way…you’re bad company but no one else would want me.
My son C was like pig-pen from Peanuts too, Milo, always dirty and his clothes in rags! LOL Patrick was Mr. Clean! We used to call him “Little Peter Perfect” because C would spill his milk at every meal and Patrick would say very self righteously “I didn’t spill MY milk.” LOL He never got dirty even as a small child.
I think that Sky is probably right in my feeling about being judged by my egg donor looking out. She is probably just more curious than anything as she can’t see me or know what I am doing because the only time she can see me is when I am out in the pasture doing something.