Editor’s Note: This article was written by the Lovefraud reader who posts as “Snow White.” She previously wrote “He is not Prince Charming, and you are not Snow White.“
After months of pursuit and ultimate seduction by a psychopath, which eventually lead to an affair with this man, I can now honestly see that I am making my way down the road to recovery. When I first started to open my eyes and began noticing red flags in the psychopath’s behavior, coupled with the deep sadness I was experiencing about ending my marriage, I took the first gigantic step of actually listening to MY feelings. Even though the love bombing was so intense and the psychopathic bond well established to the point that I completely believed his declarations: “We are destined to be together. You are my future wife. We are soul mates. You must leave your husband—¦well you all know the routine”¦. my gut instincts persisted, increasingly telling me to get out.
Although I didn’t know if our marriage could be saved at that point, I did know that I could not end my marriage because someone was telling me to do it. If my marriage is to end, it will be because he and/or I decide we cannot be married, not because someone else is pressuring me to do it. The control he had over me was so powerful that it rendered me helpless in thinking for myself—that is until I woke up and saw through his hollow eyes, the soulless person he is, the strange behavior, manipulation, and lies. Reflecting on the last five months of recovery, a pattern in the healing process has emerged, which I’d like to share.
First few weeks
The best way I can describe the recovery process so far is to separate it into months. During the first few weeks, I was in emotional turmoil. My weight was at an all-time low. I was so confused as to “what” he is, what had happened to me, who I had become, and if my marriage would survive. After much prayer, the first step I took was to refuse to see him and ended the relationship. But I needed answers. I contacted the psychopath’s ex-girlfriend. She was the one who educated me on his personality disorder. I had no idea what psychopathy was and began researching it. Over the next month, I read everything I could get my hands on such as the Love Fraud site and books. Claudia Moscovici’s work, Dangerous Liaisons, profoundly described what I experienced. Additionally, Red Flags of Love Fraud precisely delineated the process of the relationship and his characteristics. He exhibited all the traits except for defrauding me out of money.
I started simultaneously educating myself and working with a marriage counselor. Although I sought help from a counselor before my affair became physical, I was too far gone to stop it. In retrospect, I can see how the luring and honeymoon phases played out. He innately moved me through the process. While in the midst of it, I did see that what I was experiencing wasn’t normal and continued to see a counselor. However, either I wasn’t accurately articulating what was happening, or the counselor wasn’t schooled in psychopathy, or I was already too emotionally controlled to really hear her advice. When I learned I had been involved with a psychopath, I told her about the books I read, but she was not interested in reading them. Even though she wasn’t able to point out the possibility that I was dealing with an emotional predator, I do credit this counselor with helping to save my marriage. Fortunately, the marriage counselor we are working with was open to reading the books and resources I listed above to better understand what I had experienced. Never having sought therapy before, I now know that it is a process, and there isn’t a quick fix. It simply takes time.
Month 2 cognitive dissonance
During the second month, I continued reading and posting on blogs. On one site, I met a woman from the UK who experienced exactly what I did and was much further along in the recovery process. She spoke with me about her experience and provided so much support. I also began phone counseling sessions. Within the first five minutes of our session, I realized I had finally found someone who could explain what I was experiencing psychologically. There was a name for it—Cognitive Dissonance—and it doesn’t happen when normal relationships end. There would be no closure from him. He is simply not capable. I have to come to terms with it and create my own closure. Most importantly, I must know and feel that what we had and who he presented himself to be is not real.
Month 3 learning about me
While the first two months were spent on learning about psychopathy, by the third month my focus shifted to healing. I continued to read, but whereas before I gravitated toward reading about HIM, now I started reading about ME. Some might say it is unhealthy to continue researching, but I find that the more I educate myself, the more empowered I become. I also continued working with my counselor. Her goal for me is to eliminate any doubts about whom I was dealing with so that I could develop a clear picture of the dangerousness of this man. She had me complete a checklist of his behaviors. One would think that even after seeing it all in black and white and living it, there would be no doubt—not so simple. Cognitive dissonance is a tricky thing.
Month 4 feeling peace
By the end of month four, moments of feeling at peace within myself and my marriage are more frequent. I learned that I must practice mindfulness, or living in the moment. Focusing on the past leads to depression. Focusing on the future generates anxiety. Being present is the path to peacefulness. Learning to live in the present is a gradual process for me. Like learning to play a sport or an instrument, I must practice it. The moments of mindfulness are becoming more frequent. This is what it looks like: When I’m out with friends and it hits me, I look around and say to myself, “Wow! Look at me. I’m actually having fun surrounded by people who really care about me. I am not tied to my phone having to answer his incessant texts anymore.“ I started noticing myself enjoying the moment. For me, the moments of “noticing” my enjoyment with my husband, children, and friends is practicing mindfulness.
July 4th
The intrusive thoughts have not entirely ended. I still have nightmares about how I drank the Kool Aid and was so brainwashed and manipulated by some manufactured, fraudulent fairy tale. However, they are lessening. While watching July 4th fireworks on the dock overlooking the lake near our home I felt at peace, truly living in the moment. Last year on the fourth, the love bombs were exploding, I was being held captive by his texts, and the emotional control was well underway. This fourth, I said to myself, “Look at me. I actually feel peaceful and am enjoying the evening with my husband. I am at a good place. I’m free!” I don’t know why I have these internal conversations with myself, but they help.
The night before the fourth as I was lying in bed, I actually said to myself as I felt the breeze blew across the room, I’m ready to let this go. I asked the wind to take the intrusive thoughts of him and our relationship and blow them out of my mind and life. They say that psychopaths intuitively know when you are letting go. If that’s true, I’ll never know for sure, but that fourth of July, just as the fireworks were about to start, I received a friend request on my phone. It was from a man I do not know. I hit ignore. Half an hour later, I receive another request. The next day, I received a third friend request. The first two may have been a coincidence, but the third??? So I looked at his page, which was public. I know that looking at the page could be considered breaking No Contact. I got weak. I looked.
It was a fake page. The photo of the man was taken off the Internet. There is a website where you can match photos to photos posted on the internet, called Tineye.com I was able to identify that a fake persona was created using someone else’s photo. Other signs of a fake page I noticed were that he only had one friend, a Russian woman, sketchy biographical information, and the time of the postings corresponded within minutes of the time the friend requests were sent to me. The most disturbing parts of the page were the postings that directly related to our relationship. Two that smacked of misogyny and the other two were pity play tactics.
Minor setback
Fright was my first reaction to the FB postings, and I thought about deleting my Facebook page. Doing that would disconnect me from my family and friends. I refuse to live in fear. I learned how to lock down my page further so it is not searchable to strangers. I blocked him and will block any strangers who send friend requests. Should it happen again, I must simply click ignore and NOT look at the page or risk staying embroiled in his sick mind games. This was a minor setback for me, bringing more intrusive thoughts and nightmares. When the experts say maintain No Contac ”¦ they say it because they know that it is essential to our recovery.
Process of recovery
While I am not proud that I allowed myself to succumb to his pressure, cross boundaries I never imagined I would, and hurt the person who has always been there for me, my husband, I am committed to doing to the hard work necessary to getting back to the person I was before my involvement with the psychopath. The process of recovery involves:
- Awakening to the dangerousness of the person and his pathology and ending the relationship
- Educating yourself on psychopathy
- Leaving no stone unturned in your quest for knowledge
- Reaching out and seeking help from people who “know”
- Working with a trained counselor to learn the strategies to break free of the memories of the idealization phase
- Rebuilding the relationships in your life that matter, and
- Living an honest, healthy lifestyle.
Most importantly, it is not enough to just “know” what he is. The knowledge I’ve obtained about psychopathy and my feelings must be in synch, and therein lies the work to be done. Periodically, the cognitive dissonance surfaces, and when it does, I take some time to keep myself in check by reading from the Love Fraud articles or Claudia’s blog. Slowly my outgoing, energetic spirit is returning, and I am rebuilding the bond with my husband. Thanks to the work of Donna, Claudia and others, my questions have been answered. I must now use the strategies I’ve learned to continue moving forward.
Stargazer, yeah…..just enjoy what you’re doing and “dating” will come as it does.
I fully intend to maintain friends who are male – I always have. I simply don’t intend to allow another “romantic” entanglement.
I mean, I cannot envision a partner being comfortable with someone who will say it the way it is, and this old gal isn’t going to do any more skirting of the issues, for the rest of her life! I can just see it, and the visual actually cracks me up! I would probably say, “You know, I’m not interested in any personal tragedies of your life, so just get to the point of why we should even go out, together.” Or, “Listen, I don’t have any money, and I have no time or patience for predators – in fact, I”ll eat a predator alive while it’s still standing, so what’s your point?” 🙂
Star,
Ex is a spath for sure, and I pretty much consider the friends with benefits of years ago as a spath as well (since I learned he stalked, parasited, cheated and deceived his ex-gf that he got involved with when I ended our benefits). There is one guy I was about to fall in love with at some point that I dated and had sex with that I think is suspect. He worked supposedly offshore so he could live in his caravan wherever he wanted and go surfing, and I got to know him when it was going bad with his gf (it only went further than talking after he told me him and the gf had been over… but that could have been a lie for all I know). Eventually he got back together with her. By then his stuff was stolen and something was wrong with the caravan and he moved in with her, and I know she paid for the both of them on most stuff, including ski trips that he told me he didn’t want. I could see that in some ways he didn’t respect her when he talked about it. And then there’s a slimeball of a guy I dated who dated another girl at the same time who was very keen on him, but he supposedly wasn’t so in to her. I made sure not to be exclusive either at the time. When the time came to become exclusive he suddenly revealed he didn’t know who to choose, so I chose and told him to leave instantly. And then there’s this guy I had a crush on around 24-25. I literally called him the dark prince. It never went beyond flirting, but he told me once “I am dangerous!” and he meant it.
So, I know of 2 spaths and some very suspect guys with red flags screaming, and who are at minimum either jerks or toxic. Several of them slithered away and I know now why. Before the ex-spath, and after my big love of San Diego I suffered from reactive commitment fear. I was incapable of showing or revealing my feelings to these men. There was a moment where this surfer guy with the caravan seemed to want to have the emotional talk… and I put on Led Zeppelin’s “Baby I’m gonna leave you,” so he shut up. All these men would have to pretend to be someone they were not in order to hook me, but they simply had nothing to go by to create the proper mask, because I was an absolute closed book regarding emotions in that period. I had worked through my reactive commitment fear by the time I met the ex-spath and then had no qualms about revealing my feelings, so he had ample opportunity to create a mask for me. So for me a relationshit with a spath, or the very least a toxic man was an inevitable course I was on for at least a decade. And I had the near brushes with these guys because of my hard-wired scanner. I hava to face the thruth that I have a scanner that tends to pick out very wrong men for me. I can’t stop the scanning from happening, but instead of thinking the scanner picks out the perfect man for me I can reverse the conclusion and think it picks out the worst men around. I have put it to the test. There are some men that my scanner noticed, and I just waited and observed and did nothing… Before long I observed obnoxious and unrespectful behaviour packed in seeming flattery towards myself or others and an inflated ego to make me throw up. So, actually a good scanner (if it comes to finding jerks), but was used for the wrong purpose too long.
Darwinsmom and Truthy, I hear a lot of people here saying they’ve been spath magnets and seem to always be attracted to toxic men. It made me think to see if this is true of myself, as well. I have to say it is not. My tastes in men have really been determined by opportunity – by the pool of people I hang around in. I’ve dated and lived with some very toxic men and some very fine and wonderful men. When I was a grad student in SF, I lived with and almost married some really incredible men who have gone on to marry and have families and do great things in the world. And by the same token, some of the toxic ones were great teachers for me and mirrors of my own codependence. None of them were right for me at the time, and also I was not right for myself anyway. There have been a few that I’ve wasted a lot of time and energy on who probably never could have been right for me. The rock star neighbor is one of those question marks that I will never have an answer for, but I care less and less these days. Since I never took a risk with him, I never grew from this, so it was a waste of my time.
I don’t know what I would have or could have done differently given the life lessons I needed to learn. I never felt happy and complete with myself, so I could not have been in a healthy relationship no matter if it was the greatest guy on earth. But in trying, I did grow a lot.
At this point, I know what I want in a man and I recognize the qualities when I see them. The spath faked those qualities, and that is what threw me. But as soon as I found out what he was (it took a few months) I was OUTTA there. There is nothing about abusive, deceitful behavior that hooks me in. I did not stick around to try to save him or fix him. If a man treats me the least bit disrespectually, I’m done. My challenge is that if I find someone I like not to go into projection that he’s THE ONE. I need to stay grounded and keep a solid sense of myself. So I’m not in any big hurry to hook up with any of these salsa guys. If it happens, great. If not, I enjoy things the way they are. There are SO MANY guys I like in class and I get to interact them them in very healthy ways. “Relating” rather than looking for a “relationship”. I feel a lot of us project so much into a “relationship” that we destroy the very thing that is intended to enhance our lives and bring us joy. We destroy it with pressure or demands about how they should behave to fulfill our needs. What if we just knew how we felt around them? And when something feels bad continuously, we move away from it? And when something feels good, we move toward it? This is how I feel these days. I want peace and happiness in my life. Those people and experiences that are incompatible with that must go.
I’ve attracted all sorts of men, not just spaths and I’ve been with men who weren’t jerks either. It isn’t even about being a spath magnet. I don’t consider myself a spath magnet at all, but rather a certain type of spath is a magnet to me (in other words, they don’t even have to target me for me to notice them and feel attraction). At the same time I also know toxic jerks who never hit on me and I was never interested in them either.
I’ve been receiving emails from Lovefraud for almost a year now, I like most people believed that a Sociopath was someone who we hear about on the news or in the true crime section of the bookstore. In fact it wasn’t until I was watching the news and a criminal specialist was commenting on a woman charged with killer her daughter of being a sociopath and her explanation of a sociopath did I even consider that I knew a sociopath let alone was madly in love with one! Madly…a double meaning for sure, on one hand I had never felt such an intense love for anyone as I did this man, and second because I felt like most of the time I was going mad. After reading some of the letters by Snow white I gained some more insight into why I have felt this way for most of the last two years “cognitive dissonance” WOW!!! It wasn’t until I read the latest letter by Snow white that I decided to become more then just a reader of this blog, and actually blog. My story is similar to Snow White in that I too am married and had an affair, and my shame of this and my fear that people would judge me and think that I got what I deserved has kept me suffering quietly. I need help! I am addicted to this man, and I need to break free of him, once and for all. I read this posts and I’ve watched the video’s and it becomes too difficult to deny that this man that I’ve let consume my life, damage my self worth, and break my heart into a million pieces is a “SOCIOPATH” but to truly believe that would mean I would have to give him up, and then my addiction for him takes over and I look for all the loop holes in the 10 signs. If I can find just one that doesn’t describe him, then he isn’t one and it’s something I can keep fighting for and try to fix, why because my happiness depends on it. Just typing this I know how crazy that sounds, but this is the cycle I have found myself repeating over and over again. I don’t know if my marriage will survive my love addiction to another man, I know it doesn’t stand a chance until I can completely let him go. Only then will I be able to face and deal with that part of my life. I don’t know if my marriage is worth saving, although I do not believe my husband to be a sociopath, he is emotionally abusive. Weeks before meeting the man I had an affair with, my husband told me that he hadn’t married me to end up looking like my mother, and that if I gained anymore weight he would have to divorce me. I was 5’7 and 142 pounds at the time. This was weeks before leaving for Mexico on our holidays. At this point my self esteem had already taking a beating, I had lost a job that I loved because of a job transfer for my husband’s and my mother had come for a visit and had reopened some old scars of abandonment from my childhood, at the age of 6 my mother dropped me off for what was suppose to be a weekend visit at a strangers home, it ended up being three years. I met my lover on that trip to Mexico, he was my scuba instructor. We spent most of our holidays with this man, learning to scuba dive. I didn’t see it at the time but now I realize that he gained my trust 30 feet under water, while learning to scuba dive. At one point I was scared to death while doing a drill where you have to remove your mask, and put it back on and then empty the water from your mask. The mask didn’t fit me properly and I could not clear all of the water, while I tried and tried I started to breath in water and was finding it difficult to breath, panic started to set in and I for a short time felt that my life was in his hands. He got me through that terrifying moment and made me feel “SAFE”. Later in the trip while out for supper with him and my family, my husband decided to talk about physical attraction in a relationship and how much of an important role it plays in a relationship. My husband was trying to show me that he wasn’t alone in his beliefs, he was sure our instructor was going to agree with him. When he didn’t, and actually disagreed, it made me start to see him in a different light. What I didn’t realize until much later, was in that moment he also was looking at me in a different light because he also realized the message my husband was making and he saw the weakness in our marriage. Everything changed that night, and I didn’t stand much of a chance.
scarlett,
I can see why you fell to the diver instructor, when your husband made it so easy for him! The combination of your height and weight at the time gave you a healthy BMI of 22 where 20 is the minimum and 25 the max of the healthy range.
Diving can be pretty scary and dangerous! (I like scuba diving)
It sounds to me that mostly you need to save yourself!
Scarlett,
lose the weight and then lose the creep.
I found some Annie Chun Seaweed snacks. They are just paper thin seaweed with cracked blackpepper. yummy and low cal. I lost 1/2 lb by substituting that for my evening snack on night.
I’m going to buy more.
Whether your husband is spath or not, he is toxic to your emotions. You deserve better.
Scarlett
Let me start by saying that a 5′ 7 woman who weighs 143 lbs is NOT overweight! I understand the addiction. What I realized is that the pain I was experiencing with the P and the anxiety over leaving my husband would eventually be a whole lot worse if I continued a relationship with the P. No good was going to come from it. It would have ended like all his other relationships. While it was going on I told my friends and therapist, “I wish he would just go away”. I knew I had to end it, but didn’t have the power to do it. It’s when you really start to see the man behind the mask that the spell starts to break!
All I can say is try with a your might to disconnect. Regarding your marriage, you can’t make an informed decision until you break the P’s spell on you. Force yourself to stop talking g to him…..then with a clear head decide what to do about your marriage. I’m hoping we are able to save our marriage. If we can’t, ill know I did everything to try.
Scarlett
My P also made comments about my husband. When you’re in it, you don’t see the manipulation. Now that I’m out of it….i see all the manipulations and deceit. Each day I remember more and more….and I don’t mean the good stuff. I mean the craziness that I actually for! Once you have space it will all become clear to you!!!
I’m in the early stage of my recovery. I have been involved with my P for 2 years. I form strong attachments in all my relationships and so for me this relationship has been even harder to end. I was in counseling for a year, none of it covered under my health plan, the cost was getting to be too much and I had hit a plateau in my therapy. I’ve been 6 months without therapy and I know I’m going to need help getting through this. I hope to find another councilor. The hardest part is not having anyone to talk to about this that understands. I’m grateful to have found this blog, and for the opportunity to meet women who understand and our helping me to see that I’m not alone. That this is not ONLY my insecurities and unhealthy beliefs, but that I fell victim to a predator. Now I need to fight back, fight for my freedom, fight for my life, and fight for recovery.
Snowwhite, thank you, darwinsmom, thank you, to all the women who take time to read and comment thank you, I would appreciate any suggestions on anything you think would be helpful in my recovery.