Life continually delivers up opportunities to grow, to learn, to shift my perceptions, to experience new things, to embrace new ideas, to let go and let change happen. Since the sociopath has been gone from my life, the lessons I’ve embraced are ones that support me. They’re lessons that enrich my life with love and laughter.
I’ve been dating C.C. for four months now. Known him for three years. I know who he is. I know his values. His beliefs. I know he is true. And still, sometimes, I feel the fear of the past haunting me.
Recently, I stayed late at the office trying to clear up a project I need to have finished by the end of the month.
It was dark by the time I got home, but the house was lit and welcoming. C.C. had come over earlier to feed the dogs and when I entered he was busy hanging the toilet paper roll holder in the bathroom. The old one had fallen off some time ago and I had not gotten around to replacing it. A delicious aroma of food cooking permeated the air and on the stove a stir fry simmered. The dogs raced to the door to greet me, C.C. gave me a welcoming kiss and I had nothing to do but come in, take off my coat and sit down to a delightful dinner.
What could be more perfect? A handyman and a chef all in one waiting for my home-coming!
Some experiences are so delicious they need to be savoured slowly. After dinner I took the dogs for a walk while C.C. listened to the hockey game on the radio and then left to go play a game of his own.
Coming home to a man who is doing things for me is a unique experience. Never had that happen with the sociopath. I was always doing for him. I was always the one cramming everything in, continually taking care of what needed to be done so that he could relax, destress. unwind. To have someone do that for me is a new experience. A new sensation.
And sometimes, that can be scary.
Consciously, I know the past is not the future — unless I make it so. My subconscious, however, doesn’t always keep time with my heart beat in the moment. Sometimes, my inner voice, that beast inside who gets scared when I step out of the narrow corridors of its comfort zone, whispers disruptive comments like, “Uh. Uh. And why is he doing that? What’s he want? Don’t trust this sensation. You’ve never experienced it before. It can’t be trusted.”
Sometimes, the beast can be even more strident, blaring alerts like a submarine warning sailors about its imminent dive. “Alert! Alert! Batten down the hatches. Hang on. Get your head down. We’re going under! These waters are too dangerous.”
Sometimes, there’s a lag between what my mind perceives and my heart knows. I know that was then. I know this is now, but my subconscious is still terrified of having the past repeat itself as it perceives me to be busy daydreaming about a different future with a man. Like a soldier who has come back from war with hyper-sensitive responses to any sudden sound or noise, my senses are on hyper-alert, continuously scanning the horizon for signs of disorder and disruptive behaviours that may or may not be a precursor to danger.
I breathe.
Sometimes, things are exactly as they seem. So are people.
I have known C.C. for three years. In that time he has always been a kind, caring, thoughtful, honest and honourable man.
How I perceive him to be is how he is.
My fear is not of him. It is of me. Of trusting in myself, and my feelings. Of trusting that I am safe within me. Of knowing that no matter what in the world happens, I can trust myself to listen to my intuition, to be confident in my heartbeat and know it beats steady, sure and true because I am always safe within me.
That was then. This is now.
In the past, I did not know what I know today about me. About who I am. About how I am. My hungry heart drove me places I dared not go, but went anyway. My hungry heart kept me still when lies abounded and terror reigned. My hungry heart left me at risk of being abused.
Today, my heart is full. Today, I love myself, exactly the way I am. I accept myself, warts and all, as the perfectly awesome human being that I am, because the truth is, I am perfect in all my imperfections.
Long ago, my fear of never being enough, of never having enough, left me exposed to the attentions of those who were untrue. My fear of being unworthy set me up for the sociopath. It kept me trapped in his web of lies.
Today, my courage keeps me breathing freely as I step surely and confidently into unknown territory. My fear is the opportunity to be courageous. My courage is the gift of love I give myself when I open myself up to having all that I want, and all that I deserve in love and life and living freely.
Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!
In taking steps toward healing you are helping me to heal too.
I will be thinking of you and sending you big giant bubbles of strength!
Aloha… E.R.
I’m with Aloha.
YAY!!!!!!!
In your healing, you help all of us to heal. In your words, you offer comfort to all our hearts.
Be strong. Persephone. Be bold. Be brave. Be your most incredible self.
And Aloha — love the giant bubbles of strength!
ML
This website has been such a blessing the last month, thank you all for sharing your experiences. As I try to recover from a relatively brief (four months) encounter with a borderline/sociopath that almost ruined my life, I can’t get over how hard it is to get through the emotional devastation. Although all the red flags were there from the beginning, and he basically told me what he was, I still attributed it all to his pitiful stories. I have seen sociopaths up close (nephew, wife of a friend) but still fell for this guy because he seemed so honest, although clearly with emotional problems. The flat-out lie was that he lived with roommates and wasn’t involved with anyone…until his wife called my cell phone when he was with me. Then he first tried to say it was a roommate he had been involved with before me, then after I heard her message and confronted him he said they were separated. Needless to say, they are very much married. They married in November and he began hitting on me in May.
The phone call was a month ago, and I’ve only talked to him twice (and to his wife twice). I’ve never called him (but then I didn’t call him when we were together, he had that control). I’ve been alternating between kicking myself for not seeing it when it was there in front of me, relief that I don’t have the anxiety of waiting for his daily phone call, missing him terribly, fear that he’s following me, grieving that I’ll never have those amazing feelings I had with him again. I know what he is, I know (because bascially he told me with his stories of past relationships and his wife told me about herself) his targets are older, nurturing women who can financially/influentially benefit him. I feel guilty for not telling his wife everything, especially that I think he’s already identified his next target at the school he works at. But I’m afraid…if you push a crazy person there’s no telling and I have family to protect (he was my son’s teacher, although he graduated last year, so he knows him).
I’m trying to get through each day, amazed at the emotional damage done in such a short amount of time. I’m hoping I’m strong enough, and that he continues to stay away. It’s been two weeks with no contact. Whenever I feel weak, I read all of your wonderful posts, read “the Sociopath Next Door” or watch movies with sociopaths to remind myself that he is scary. I’m going to try the golden scissors, if I can just stop thinking about him so much I think I’ll be able to recover much faster.
Hello Dorkgirl,
It is one of the challenges of these relationships — the timeline becomes so compressed. Their ability to create emotional bonding in a short period of time distorts our sense of reality — and creates a sense of bliss beyond comprehension in a way that rocks the ground beneath our feet, and sets our world upside down. And all of it is predicated upon the truth — He is the lie.
No Contact is the greatest gift you give yourself. For me, no contact began in my mind. In those places where thoughts of him slithered around the sweet breath of freedom and threatened to disturb my peace of mind.
Please use the golden scissors with abandon. Whenever you feel or see a thought of him slither in, stop, take a breath, think — oh look, there’s a thought of him — and SNIP.
Do not judge yourself for the thoughts. Do not judge the thoughts. Just be aware of them, and snip.
You sound strong, aware and determined to heal. Don’t judge the length of the relationship or yourself for having believed him.
Accept it happened, and now the responsbility to heal is up to you.
After having been free from that relationship for two years, the sociopath was about to get out on parole. I met with a man who is a security expert to talk about what I needed to do to create a safety perimeter for myself and my daughters. One of the things he asked me to do was to ‘measure’ the sociopaths actual ‘scariness’ against how scary I perceived him to be in my mind. The monster in my head was far greater than the man.
Yes, they are capable of anything — we all are capable of anything we set our minds to. IN the case of the sociopath, however, he was more cowardly than courageous. He was in truth, a weak man who preyed on women to get what he wanted.
After putting him into perspective, I built a safety perimeter that ensured I had done everything I could, everything I needed to do, to be safe.
I could not take responsibility for his actions, what he would do.
In the end, he did try to find me — and he did go back to prison.
And the greatest reward of all — regardless of where he was, I got to live free of him — in my head, my heart, and my life.
Don’t count on him staying away. Count on doing what is right and caring and loving of you by you. Count on yourself to do the right thing by focussing your efforts on building strong boundaries that keep you free of his manipulative, lying, cheating ways.
You are strong beyond your belief — believe in you. You deserve your belief in your ability to be strong, to be courageous and to be free.
ML
Dorkgirl:
Be so glad you’ve only been into your situation 4 months! Mine has been over 5 years – and there are what seem to be some nice memories but it’s only now hitting me how little I’ve gotten from it and how much suffering and wasted time it has cost me. And sure there’s another older, nurturing woman out there – why should you be the enabler and let your own good energy be sucked dry? I also wish I’d had (or even
have now) the clarity of knowing what has really been going on with him with a wife or girlfriend calling, etc. I still question myself that perhaps if I had the larger picture I’d fault myself for being ‘hard’ on him. So you’ve had the good fortune of having things pretty well spelled out for you.
And yes, it’s so hard getting over someone – but in your case, do it right the first time (like NOW) and don’t look back!
Oh, those golden scissors…We’re all sending each other strength!
What can I say? Knowledge is power. The more I read and inform myself about the personality of a psychopath the more I thank God for everything He is been done in my life. We can consider ourselves survivors and blessed people, because God gave us the opportunity to free ourselves from the evil. There still millions of people living under control and oppressed by this snakes and don’t have a clue off what they’re dealing with. I still on the early stages of my healing process after I broke up two months ago with the evil one I was with for almost seven years. I was married for eighteen years with the father of my daughters. I met this ex-boyfriend one year after my divorce and I can say with all certainty that the last six years were the worst in my life. I feel emotionally tired. He was sucking out all the energy of my soul. It is like I’m waking up off a long nightmare. On the back of my mind I knew something was wrong with him but I didn’t know what. He doesn’t drink or do drugs. He was not the violent type, but I wish he was because I would walk out long time ago after the first slap, which would save me a lot of pain. He was worst. He had a clever and elaborate method of displaying is aggressiveness and psychological torture. His method of torture it was to kill my self-confidence, criticizing everything I say, the way I walk and talk, eat, dress, everything, correcting my slights mistakes all the time. I started thinking twice before I opened my mouth to say something especially in public to avoid problems and verbal abuse. He use to give me the “torture of silence”, (I call it), which was to talk to me only in front of friends to show them that we’re the perfect couple. As soon as we’re alone “there’s no talks” sometimes for days. I was never good enough. I never knew who will wake up beside me the next morning. I would go to bed with Mr. Sweet and wake up with Mr. Sour the next morning. (No talks today!)
The worst part is that your friends and family don’t understand why you’re complain because …”He is such a charming and nice guy, Soft-spoken, articulate, he even goes to church and everything, everybody loves him” … You scream but nobody listen to you.
He manipulates everybody; to makes you feel “the foul one” on other people’s eyes. Everything he does is in a very cold and calculated manner. Besides all that he cheated, lied, tried to take many financial advantages of me. I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I started questioning my sanity. I didn’t know why I couldn’t finish the relationship and break free and away of him.
Finally God gave me the strength to do it after I learned about his last cheating. After I cut all contact with him, he went crazy. His first reaction it was to continue with the lie, but because it didn’t work this time he decided to offer me trips, gifts, begged me to go back and work on the relationship again. Still didn’t work, decide to accuse me to create the all story for my convenience. Still didn’t work start begging my family and friends to convince me to go back to him. Still didn’t, work told my friends that he was having heart problems because I left him and even was seeing doctors and so on. Still didn’t work went to the priest in his Church to confess that he actually cheated on me, and finally came to confess to me the same, and asking me to forgive him using the exercise off my Christianity. He was not lucky this time, because I was already getting myself powerful with knowledge about his evil personality through this site and after reading Dr Hare’s book. Finally all my questions of all this years were answered. If this is a “disease” I think only hell is the treatment for this people.
Hello Pitanga,
You are so right. Knowledge is power — and you sound very powerful.
You are awakening from the nightmare and because you are choosing freedom, you have the power to create the life of your dreams. For me, it was as if I fell in love with Prince Charming and awoke to the Prince of Darkness raging in my head, shattering my dreams of happily ever after. In freedom, I create the life of my dreams every time I step away from his darkness into the light of living fearlessly.
Good for you for having the courage to stay true, to stay strong and to stay in No Contact. You are powerful!
ML
Hello Pitanga,
Thanks for sharing your story. I loved to see “still didn’t work” over and over.
This is a triumph for you and all that come here to heal. You are a wonderful example of putting knowledge into ACTION! You are an example of being-out-of-denial!
You are on the fast track to healing!
Aloha, E.R.
Thanks for that story and all the others. It really helps to have someone relate to what you are feeling–like the huge emotional damage after a relatively short time.
Even though my relationship with this creep has been over for 6 months, and only lasted 6 months to begin with, I’m not like I was before we met.
I have read Hare and several other good books. I had therapy and completely stopped any personal contact. I have no choice but to see him every week or two in my church group–he did catch me alone once during the last 6 months, and he immediately started trying to manipulate me–but it didn’t work.
He can’t influence me anymore, and he seems to sense that. I am not leaving my church group–he is the one who drifted in a year ago, and he can bloody well drift out again–I am not giving up bonds with people I have trusted for over 20 years. He should leave–that is what I am praying for.
Last week I met someone truly kind and wonderful who wants to be with me–he is truly interested in me.
He is not pretending to be interested so he can control and use me for his own personal gain and gratification. Yet I am really struggling with those awful feelings of fear and mistrust. When he said he cared for me, my thought was, “what are you after?”
It isn’t fair to this guy to not trust him, but I guess I’m still shell shocked from that horrible realization of the depth of deception that I was subjected to. I’m also angry all over again because the creep robbed me of ability to trust.
My new friend doesn’t know about this horrific relationship. I keep telling myself I will get past it, but I am worried. I hope I don’t blow it with my crazy thinking (that is, sane thinking with regard to the creep but crazy for everyone else).
Thanks for letting me vent.
JMB
Hi JMB,
Thanks for posting!
Give yourself time. Give yourself the grace of patience and love to be whomever you need to be.
For me, the ‘memories’ of then and there lurk in the here and now. It is up to me to know my feelings, my reactions, my triggers, my fears.
If you only met this man last week, it is understandable that you do not trust — trust takes time to build between people. Trust needs to be built, established, founded on a common ground. We cannot know that common ground without spending time with someone getting to know them on our terms, to our timetable.
With C.C., the man in my life, I celebrate my progress, and applaud myself whenever I recognize a trigger from the past and step lovingly into its pull. In those moments, I expand into my fear and let my courage draw me out.
You’re okay jmb. What you are experiencing is normal. Natural. Give yourself the gift of time to feel what is true for you. Give yoruself the space to be true to who you are, what you want, and need to have a deeply satisfying relationship with another.
And btw — I believe venting is extremely healthy in a safe place like this!
ML