Lovefraud recently received the following email:
Hi Donna,
I’m a huge fan of LoveFraud and can’t thank you enough for making it happen. I know from your story that you’ve found a wonderful man. So have I, and we’ve been dating about a year. He’s an upbeat, nurturing person with a great sense of humor and good boundaries!
Still, I’m finding it difficult to let go and love him. I’m really surprised how long it’s taking me to let go of my fear. (I’ve been out of my marriage 4 years and did a lot of healing before I met new guy.)
Could you address this in one of your articles? I see a lot of info on how to recover, and how to spot a spath so you don’t hook up with another one. But what about when you find a good guy? I’d love to hear about other people’s experiences, how long it took them to relax into love, and anything they did to facilitate the process.
First of all, I am very glad that you have found someone special. So let’s address the situation that you’ve brought up letting go of fear so that you can fully enjoy your new relationship.
Here’s the most important concept to understand: The key to finding and enjoying a good, healthy relationship always lies within ourselves.
If you’re still feeling fear about the new relationship, it means that you have more healing to do. This is not a bad thing. Keep in mind that when it comes to our emotional lives, another word for “healing” is “growth.” So as you move forward, you’re getting to the deeper issues that may still stand in the way of emotional fulfillment. When you address them, you grow.
Whatever you’ve been doing to get to where you are now, keep doing it, focusing on the last remnants of the fear that you feel:
- If you’ve been working with a therapist, ask him or her to help you.
- If you’ve been journaling, ask yourself what you’re afraid of, and write the answers.
- If you’ve been processing your emotions, allow yourself to feel the fear, until it is released.
- If you’ve been meditating, focus on the fear, and let the cause come into your awareness.
- If you’ve been using EFT tapping, state the fear as the problem you want to resolve.
Emotional growth is a lifelong process. All relationships are opportunities for growth.
Interim steps
Sometimes there are interim steps between getting rid of the sociopath and finding a true life partner.
If you’ve read my first book, Love Fraud, you may remember that I started dating a man, John, seven months after I left my sociopathic husband. John was a normal, affectionate, caring man. We had a lot of fun, and I truly felt love with him.
The relationship ended 10 months later. Quite frankly, the end of that relationship hurt more than the end of my marriage. My ex-husband had betrayed me. I grieved the loss of my money, stability and self-esteem. But I no longer loved him; I was glad to get rid of him. When John and I broke up, I was heartbroken. We did share a love, and it was gone.
Eventually I realized that my relationship with John was never meant to be permanent. We were both taking the initial tentative steps out of emotional disappointment. We cared for each other and supported each other for almost a year, and then it was time for both of us to move on.
Our partner’s problems
Even with Terry, who is now my husband, there was a time about a year into our relationship when it almost came apart. The problem wasn’t our relationship, but other issues in Terry’s life that made him feel like he couldn’t continue.
Sociopaths, of course, often have problems in their lives. So how do we tell the difference between a healthy person with a problem, who deserves our love and support, and a sociopath who will be an unending source of turmoil?
The difference is that when a sociopath has a problem, we’ll feel manipulated, deceived or bullied into fixing it. When a healthy person has a problem, we won’t feel used when we’re offering support.
I knew that Terry had to face his issues. I hoped that we’d be able to stay together, but there was a chance that our relationship would end. I knew that if that happened, it wasn’t because I was deficient. I’d be unhappy, but I’d eventually pick myself up and start again.
Always risk
Keep in mind that there’s always risk involved in entering a relationship, whether or not you were previously betrayed by a sociopath, and even if the other person is relatively healthy. When you reveal the contents of your heart, there is a chance that your feelings may not be reciprocated and you’ll end up with a broken heart. In short, that’s life.
If a relationship doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with you. It may mean that you and the other person were only meant to travel together for a short time. It may also mean that the person was just a stepping stone to the real love of your life.
Love is a leap of faith. As you heal, you’ll be able to find the courage to make the leap.
OxD, your response actually caused me to sort of tear-up. You lost your husband so tragically – that relationship ended. Wow…..now, I feel like a petulant child and I’m going to have to have a discussion with inner child about “fairness” and how Life simply doesn’t guarantee it.
Sobering moment for me, and I honestly and truly appreciate it. I mean it – I needed that wake-up, today.
Brightest blessings
Lou, it’s very, very , very hard, I know, I really do. I know he hurt you. There’s no easy way of getting through, we all know that’s the hard truth, but we’re better off without than with them, that’s the essential thing to always remember despite the horrible legacy of having those self critical messages playing constantly that you have been ‘discarded’, undervalued , mistreated, taken for a fool, etc. At my lowest points I still think he is the ‘solution’ to those feelings, that if I go back, he’ll magically make me better, make me feel lovable, valued, special, and so on. At my lowest, she is the ‘chosen one’ and I’d rather have the lies and the bubble, the illusion. But that’s all BS, that I tell myself to make the horrible facts go away, the facts I don’t want to accept, which are that I was easy prey because I am vulnerable although I spent years telling myself I was strong and clever and priding myself on my ability to read people like a book. Becuase I lived in books. Wrong. People can’t be read like books. They can trick you, and your IQ has nothing to do with it. If you are vulnerable, and are in need, then these creatures can take you for a ride to hell and back, and that’s the fact that has to be faced and dwelt upon, not the illusion that life with a disordered man could ever have been good, or nurturing, or romantic, or worth having. x
Truthy, there’s no guarrente that ANYTHING in this world is going to “last forever” even the BEST relationships, be they romantic or friendships. People die, people change, people move away…it just is a fact of life. A couple of years before my husband was killed I had what I thought was the “perfect” life…a job I adored and got up anxious to go to work, etc. the only “fly in the ointment” was Patrick was in prison but he was going to get out and go straight, so everything was wonderful in my life! Then my dad got cancer and My husband got killed in the plane crash and things started to spiral down hill from there. So it is back to the old about the one saying that is ALWAYS TRUE “This will pass.” If things are wonderful, it will pass, if things are bad, that too shall pass. So the only real constant is CHANGE.
My losses are not “worse” than others’ losses, because all pain is TOTAL per Dr. Viktor Frankl and I totally agree, the pain fills us entirely.
Oxy, my counselor keeps talking about Frankl. It was strange early on as he said ”I’ve been talking about Viktor Frankl as you’ll remember from the other week” and – I was in a diazepam / citalopram soup at the time – I thought huh? It’s Oxy on LF who talks about Frankl, not you. Lol. I couldn’t remember anything my counselor said for the first weeks. Not consciously any way.
Dr. Viktor Frankl was in a Nazi prison camp and lost everything in the world except his life. He wrote a book called “Man’s search for meaning” about the EMOTIONAL states he saw his fellow prisoners experience and it is an exceptionally enlightening book for me. I just found out the other day that he is still alive actually and gave a talk in Rhode Island. I had figured that like most of the survivors he was deceased. Anyway, you can find copies of the book on Amazon and I highly recommend reading it. It is a small book but wonderfully packed with much information that will help us with our own healing from trauma.
OxD, your words are true: things change. Life is a constant flux. I posted that it’s my own fear of being exploited that’s encumbering me. And, the more that I type, the more that it’s coming around full-circle that it’s my fear of my own vulnerabilities that keeps feeding that nasty Monkey. It’s STILL fear-based thinking going on in my brain and it’s getting pretty tiresome!
Strictly aside and insight would be appreciated: why do I associate my sexuality with what the exspath is? How does someone “get over” that association?
TeaLight……yeah, the “Aftermath Fog.” Eugh…..thank goodness it’s temporary!!!
It’s very interesting how certain themes always comes up here on LF when most suited. I have not dated, but I’ve had some very interesting experiences I’d like to share when it comes to dating.
To make a very long story short: I went to a course where I met alot of new people last week. There were alot of men I felt very attracted to, some was attracted to me. The whole incident triggered me alot (because they were offcourse very toxic people) and it was so easy to see how those men felt threatened by me/ exited by my resistance and started to use “control” to dominate me – cat and mouse play. Right then and there I decided I was not going to date yet and pulled my self out of the situation because it did have an attraction effect on me. For the first time I made a real choice about dating instead of something like “just happened”. It made me take a real close look at my self and my own choices in men, how I’ve never really seen the difference in a good man vs a “toxic” man. For me, personally, I’ve always chosen the “wrong” man, perhaps a good man for someone else, but toxic for me.
Last night, a previous ex of mine took contact again. We dated ten yrs back, but remained friends. He is currently in a relationship, but hitting on me as if I was his The One he was waiting for. I felt smitten by it ( a typical loophole to fall in love with “the care showing” person no matter who it is) and began to wonder if he might be the one after all? But then, it crossed my mind, that this man has been emotionally unavailable as long as I’ve known him. He’s always on the search for something better and admitted that his current girlfriend is not the one. To me, he repressents the all well too familiar pattern of my own history. An emotionally available man is what I know. If I choose to date this man I will be right back in the trauma again, because he will never change. When I’d thought this over again, I can clearly see his insecurity issues within him self, always looking to be validated by others- just as the men at the course. This is not what I need in my life. This is not what I want in my life. He is handsome, a “gentleman”, wealthy, has alot of friends and a great family – I’d be living a very “good” life with this man, if I want to. The thing is, I can now set a boundarie for my self and to him. I can actually make a real healthy choice for my self by my self. Even with all the things this man can offer me, he is toxic for me – again: just as the other men at the course. I will not date this man, even if I long for a relationship.
What is very validating for me, is that I can somewhat see now what and who is toxic for me. I can clearly see how I’ve followed a pattern in my choice of men, but now I feel uplifted that I can stay clear of such men. It comes with the boundaries within my self, the trust of gut instinct, the hard inner child work I’ve been doing. Offcourse it was so very tempting, but if I’d let my wounds lead me, I’d be fooling my self all over again. Taking the time in healing my self is the most important thing in my life. If I do not heal, how can a relationship with a healthy man ever work? The good news is that I now also see that there are some very good men out there, they just weren’t what I first thought.
I don’t know if this made anything clear, it’s just personal thoughts I’ve been going through lately. I think that somewhere down the road, after the hard work, we’ll be the ones with pockets full of rainbows.
Sunflower, I have to say that your recent experiences are profound and your ability and WILLINGNESS to learn the lesson is a very, very strong and encouraging epiphany. For yourself, and for me, personally.
Wow….just………………………wowwwwwwwww
Brightest blessings!!!! And, TOWANDA!!!!!!!
EDIT ADD: and, dammit, I WANT that, Sunflower!!! I want that experience of realization for myself. I want to actually feel that association between my boundaries and my issues. If that makes any sense, then YIPPEE.
You are a sweetheart Truthy, you really are 🙂
You’ve probably allready have, you just don’t know it yet. The trick is to take a step back when you’re in the situation. Oxy may explain this much better than me, but there is a NLP exercise you can use. In my language, directly translated, called: 3 position meta. It’s about stepping out of the situation, leaving you and the other person behind and take a good look into the situation from a neutral position. And another lesson is to learn to receive good things. People pleasers (not saying you are one, but I am) have a hard time taking what’s given 😉
Edit: “how to spot a dangerous man” workbook is also a very good help in finding the toxic patterns in the past relationships.
Sunflower, I agree with Truthy. I think you’re well on the way.