Sociopaths engage in calculated seduction. Donna Andersen explains their most potent weapon. Watch the latest Lovefraud Lesson:
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How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists
yup a pure example of cog dis. However in those 2 days in between quite a lot of things happened that started to put the thoughts in my head that he did not care one bit for me. The two options of – he cares, he cares not – were starting to diverge quite significantly. It had started to become clear to me that it was bigger than him just being impossible to live with.
He had organized some free getaway for us at a hotel at a beach down south because he had tried to help the expat owner with getting his stolen wallet and passport and papers back (tried, didn’t succeed). He ended up taking a cab all the way back to his town (after nagging me for weeks that we never got out of there) and spend the night there. There I was at this romantic honeymoon place all by myself. When he returned almost by noon with some jail story I knew he lied (he had taken a villager with him who had returned during the night by himself, after almost the whole village was in uproar of them being so gone for so long) and I didn’t even fight him. I felt cold inside and getting tired and just looking forward to going home all by myself.
Not to mention that that last evening a couple of hours before his pity play act I told him that I believed he was behind my robbery the year before.
That love I felt that evening was a compassionate one, because when he cried he did say he was sorry he wasn’t treating me well enough. It was very well acted pity play with big puppy eyes, I’ll give him that. Of course that he got up and just went on as per usual shows how much it was an act.
After that it was months of long distance, where I struggled with believing that he loved me and had loved me more and more. And in that time I stopped enabling him more and more… I certainly stopped the financial enabling and pushing his responsibilites back to him.
But those last few scenes were the beginning of the end for me, and surely for him. Yup, it’s horrific and at the same time comical now to me. How sick and twisted things can get, hey?
Donna,
I can’t thank you enough for your work. I love the video series and the articles are always well written. Maintaining “No Contact” is the best advice ever!! I see and hear parts of “my story” every week – it makes me sad that so many of us have been preyed upon by what I can only describe as evil. It’s been three years since I left the sociopath and he still tries to make contact. I don’t know if I will ever recover. It feels like everything that was good or kind about me was systematically destroyed for no reason and trying to find “normal” again is sometimes really hard. I am still embarrassed and ashamed of what I allowed this person to do to me. But your articles and advice always help me put things in perspective and keep me from free-falling into the black hole of depression. Thank you so much for caring about all of us.
Darwinsmom…..yikes.
Just a general question for everyone: is cognitive dissonance a “disease,” or is it something that I can retrain myself to avoid?
Even in the most “innocent” situations, I find myself STILL excusing people or attempting to explain their behaviors. This goes for females, as well as males.
Everyone has a sad story to tell, and everyone is in dire straights. I don’t wish to discuss my situation(s) with anyone, at this point. I don’t want to give anything away about myself, and it’s a boundary issue, but also based upon a fear that someone will use that information to harm me.
Just curious if anyone else fights this on a daily basis.
Brightest blessings
Hi Truthy,
IMHO the cog/diss thing is not a disease. I have a tendency to “make allowances” for inappropriate behaviour. Recognising that tendency and acting upon it is, in a way, retraining my self not to accept that which I did previously. If you get my drift, lol. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but being able to recognise times when boundaries need to be imposed and that it is ok to say no to something or someone. Even if you’re just saying no to a night out with your friends. Do you know what I mean?
I’m guilty of not being able to say no, sometimes. I used to think I needed to make an excuse. Why can’t I say no, just no!
You don’t have to tell anyone what is happening in your life, Truthy. It’s private! It’s your private life. A quick “I don’t want to discuss that or I can’t discuss that at the moment should suffice. If they don’t accept that they aren’t worth worrying about. I do understand what you’re saying and yes, I do think I have to fight these tendencies ….
Hugs
Thruthspeak,
It’s an everyday normal trait for every normal human being. It’s what marketeers and salesmen use to do their job. It’s actually one of the things I learned about in my 3rd bachelor industrial design in ‘design methodics’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Spaths use cog dis extremely well. They often have us actively choose for them (commitment, marriage, engagement, etc). After we made the choice it starts to become clear in their behaviour we might have made the wrong choice. This creates a dissonance, a conflict. But we’ll downplay the evidence against our voluntarily choice to be with them and make the evidence that supports our choice have more weight to us. Hence we start to accept the unacceptable and live on the few (seeming) gestures they do for us. Once we make a choice we are bound to be happy about it and defend the choice. Because it would be literally be more painful to our ego and the way we view ourselves to admit to ourselves we made a wrong choice and that it didn’t make us happy at all, than it is to blame ourselves for not trying enough, for not being kind/loyal whatever they blame us for.
We come to experience the pain of dissonance after the discard, because then we are in a situation where we are confronted with a reality that does not match our previous beliefs and we have no way of resolving it in favour of our belief and past choice, because they’re not there anymore.
So, cog dis is not something you can really avoid doing in everyday life, and it has nothing to do with saying ‘no’ or boundaries. It all has to do with self-image, forgiving yourself that you can make mistakes and wrong choices against your benefit, that you aren’t perfect. The only thing that imo helps against cog/dis is humility for yourself and to yourself.
And when it comes to spaths it means you must alter your beliefs of the social fabric around you.
Truthspeak, You know, it becomes more and more amazing to me, how all the toxic tactics work together to create a syndrome in the victim. How the relationship cycle, complete with love-bombing, then leads to devalue and disgard…how gas-lighting undermines our sense of self reliance, and self trust…how blame shifting sets all the responsibility on our shoulders…how cog-dis is the result…a system set-up within ourselves…a normal reaction to an abnormal situation….denial, dissasociation, power imbalance…trying to wrapp your head around what happened, make sense of the lies and inconsistancies.
The seduction, the promise, the betrayal. The story, the reframing of the promise, another betrayal. The trauma. The bond. Cog-dis is the beginning of recovery, because it is the inner truth screaming to be heard.
I appreciate the responses to the off-topic question. I am at the point where I don’t want to talk to anyone about anything, if that makes any sense.
I’m going to get involved in some intensive counseling as soon as I’m able – my “trust issues” are enormous. I feel that everyone has an agenda. This is not healthy, at all. I know, on an academic level, that not all people are sociopaths, and that I’m suspicious of just about everyone, even people who have given me no reason to distrust them.
UGH……I’ve got so much self-work to do and I need a vacation from myself!
Brightest blessings
I hear you truthspeak. studying this made me look at everyone in a different light. it made me realize that our politicians are more than likely disordered. but, armed with knowledge, its amazing how one can simply flick away those who we recognize as disordered. so, at various times during this ordeal, i have considered writing a book with the view from my point. i think it would be a cliffhangar. like start out at my wifes tenth class reunion. where i first met him. he snubbed me and her too. but he hung around and watched her dance. back then she was a real looker on the dance floor. he just stood there watching her. i now realize that she became a target at that moment. over 21 years ago. he would use and abuse the younger ones first including his own children. and through the years plant little peices of doubt in my head through anonymous phone calls and later a note left in my car at work. all the while planning for the day she would become usefull.
Desertlily – you are very welcome.
Donna I just discovered all the new videos you have out. I really liked them when I first saw the initial ones on the site. So glad there are more and it looks like more to come.
It’s much more personal to see a living and breathing person talking about this rather than reading the words alone.