Saturday night, the Lovefraud reader “rriinnaa” posted the following under Heeding the Exploiter’s Earliest Warning:
I cant stop crying .. and I dont know what Im crying over ! Im crying over the happy-go-lucky joyful loving warm Rina.. the woman I once was .. THAT I POSSIBLY won’t be again ”¦. i want to be held and rocked until this pain goes away, but i have to work, i have to pay bills,i have to bring up my children ”¦ all the PROMISES HE MADE TO ME, “when you cry Rina, I will cry with you” ”¦.. “I would die for you Rina—¦. “such simple things make you happy Rina”.. “Rina, you are the light in my life—¦ “Rina, you are strong and I believe in you” .. AND AND AND AND AND AND AND .. oh my god AND I BELIEVED EVERYTHING HE EVER SAID TO ME”¦ I believed him .. he hated me because I was strong and he did everything in his power to crush that.. he didnt have that sense of fun, that wacky sense of humour, that friendliness that everyone fell in love with THAT WAS ME, THAT WAS THE GIRL HE MET”¦. and I have lost that girl i once was.. i want it back, i want to live and laugh and be happy .. he has turned me into his apprentice monster ”¦ oh my god !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TELL ME THERE IS KARMA.. TELL ME HE WILL HURT ONE DAY PLEASE TELL ME THAT HE FEELS .. yeah right ”¦”¦”¦I still can’t get it in my head THAT HE IS A SICK SOCIOPATH.. I STILL CANT BELIEVE I FELL IN LOVE WITH THAT THING ! IM GOING CRAZY .. i cant get my head around it .. i saw a psychologist.. it was the worst thing i could have done last week ..IS THERE A GROUP MEETING WHERE I CAN TALK TO REAL PEOPLE IN MELBOURNE ABOUT THIS MONSTER ????? can someone guide me to somewhere, someone that understands what I am going through ????????????????????
i am sorry”¦ i am ranting”¦. maybe i have finally gone over the edge ? nooooooo NO NO .. i never will. I will find the strength.. .again .. im up and down and my kids are suffering.. as much as I try to hide it ”¦”¦. they feel it, they see it and I HATE HIM FOR DOING THIS TO ME I HATE HIM ..
I remember feeling like this. In fact, when I read Rina’s message, I got that old tightening in my chest, that inability to breathe, that constantly-on-the-verge-of-tears feeling again.
I remember the rage, the hatred, the utter despair.
They’re normal reactions to the betrayal of a sociopath.
Why it’s so bad
We’ve all had romantic relationships end before. Why the end of a relationship with a sociopath so much worse?
First of all, the scale of the deception is beyond what most of us have ever experienced. These people don’t just lie about where they were last night. Their entire lives are lies—everything they ever did, every human relationship they ever had. In my case, as I started to unravel what was really going on, each day brought another fabrication, another betrayal. Recently, nine years after I left my sociopathic ex-husband, I discovered yet another lie. It never ends.
Then, the degree to which we were used is unbelievable. My ex-husband wanted a place to live, reliable sex and someone to finance his dreams of grandeur. All his love notes, his little gifts, and his forever promises, were designed to make me provide those things. It worked. Then, two and a half years later when I was used up, he moved on.
But perhaps the biggest reason why it’s so bad is because sociopaths steal our dreams and use them against us. In those heady early days of the relationship, as the sociopaths listen intently, we’re spilling our guts, telling them what we really want, what is really important to us, what we want out of life. We think they’re listening because they truly want everything that we want. In reality, they’re listening to discover the deepest places within us where they can set their hooks.
Sooner or later, it all collapses.
At that point, we lose our trust—trust in other people, trust in ourselves, trust if life itself. And as Karin Huffer writes in the Legal Abuse Syndrome, “the most profound loss is loss of trust.”
Dealing with the pain
We’re left with the emotional wreckage—along with very real problems like physical illness and injury, financial devastation, caring for children and legal issues. And all of it was caused by someone who supposedly loved us. What do we do?
The only way out of the pain is through it.
People often call and ask me how to cope. I suggest that you hold yourself together while dealing with the practical, financial and legal issues. Somehow, you have to keep your emotions in check so you can think and make decisions.
But after those concerns are handled, and you are alone, let it rip. Allow yourself to cry, yell and curse. Get physical—stomp your feet or twist towels. My personal favorite was envisioning my ex-husband’s face on a pillow, and punching the crap out of it. (For more information, read Releasing the pain inflicted by a sociopath.)
Why do we need to do this? Because emotions are physical. They are not intellectual concepts that will dissipate upon discussion. They are physical sensations, and must be dealt with physically. The tears, yelling and punching are the means by which the emotional pain is drained from the body.
What you’ll find is that there are layers and layers of pain—you’ll release some, and more will rise to the surface. So you do the exercise again. And again. And again.
Older, deeper pains
Then what you’ll find is that older pains—injuries not inflicted by the sociopath—will also rise to the surface. Perhaps they were injuries from your family of origin, or other relationships, or profound disappointments in your life.
When you find these pains, you have struck gold. These are the pains that made you vulnerable to the sociopath in the first place. They too, must be released. When they are no longer buried within you, you will be able to move into a new life of peace, contentment and happiness.
It’s hard to believe this when you are in the midst of the trauma. But it is true—you can pass through the pain and come out the other side. The process is not pretty. A therapist, if you can find one who gets it, may be able to guide you, but you alone must do the work. And it will take time.
Many of us on Lovefraud have talked about how we’ve become stronger, wiser individuals after our run-ins with the sociopaths. This is how it happens. We persevere through the pain, and then we are set free.
Wow, gang, some heavy stuff, but I think because we have fallen prey to all this is BECAUSE we got a dose of it as kids from one direction or another.
Chaos, my mother is an ENABLER OF TOXIC PROPORTIONS and I have “dubbed” it a “Psychopath by proxy” because her behavior allows the abuse from the P to continue. In my son’s case, since he was in jail, she did it FOR HIM as he directed.
My mom isn’t a psychopath or even an N, she is an ENABLER and without an enabler 99% of the abuse wouldn’t happen is my opinion.
Your mom didn’t protect you from your father, so she “enabled” him to continue with his abuse. Sometimes the courts become the enablers demanding that the child be made to visit the P or N parent.
RINA, just get down on your knees and thank God that he is GONE, God has given you the gift of getting him out of your life! MORE IMPORTANT OUT OF YOUR CHILD’S LIFE!!!
Yea, rage and scream and get the anger out, but I think sometimes the very GIFTS that God gives us, AT THE TIME we think they are not what we want and we are angry about it or think it is bad, but if you turn it around and look at the situation—THEY ARE WONDERFUL GIFTS. because they are WHAT IS BEST FOR US and in your case BEST FOR YOUR BABY! As lolng as he is satisfied with that other woman, he will leave you and your baby alone and not hurt either of you.
When I lost my job at the college which I loved because they cut the position to part time, I cried and cried because I had put my entire life into that job and it meant so much to me. I saw it as a terrible wound, but then I took a part time position with insurance benefits and got to spend 5 days a week home with my family the year before my husband died, and the year my dad was diagnosed with cancer and I was there for them, and I am SO GLAD I got to spend that time with my husband and my dad before they died. What LOOKED LIKE A HORRIBLE THING to me was a BLESSING FROM GOD. I would never have quit that job I loved, and so would have lost all those prescious days and hours with my husband before his death and I was there to comfort my dad when he was diagnosed and to help him through his illness, and his own grief.
Look back at your own life and see things that have happened that at the TIME you thought were “bad” and then it turned out it was really a blessing? I bet you can find some. I can count them on my fingers and have to move to my toes to even get most of them counted that have happened in my life.
So, yea, you are angry at him for being such a heartless creep, but BUT BUT, he is GONE, be thankful, and then scream your anger or post your anger here! LOL (((hugs))))
I feel sick. I have just accounted for my latest conversation with my P (ex-boyfriend) in the forum “Differentiating the narcissist from the psychopath”. You can read it there, if you like. So I’ll cut this short.
As I wrote in the other forum I am pretty sure that my P has, among other aquantainces, deceived me with a young female student of his.
Come to think of it, he has on several occasions asked me, if I thought there could be such a thing as a happy incestuous/pedofile relationship? I found that to be an odd question – especially since he knows that my former brother in law molested me (even if it was in the light category) when I was a child.
Now I also remenber that his former girlfriend – she, who committed suicide, had been seriously sexually abused by her father. Could it be that she did this because my ex at that time had shown indications that he might be a pedofile?
I have always thought that he was wonderfull around kids. His whole being seems to reach out to them when some of them passes in the street or whatever.
I know he has been looking into some strange sexsites on his computer, where older people mix with younger ones fx. I won’t even tell you the names of these sites.
He has time after time spoken about the beauty of young firm bodies.
Boy, I hate this. He could not perform sex properly with me and at one point he gave up.
Yes, by now I believe he was right when he told me that he was not erotically attracted to me. I am 44. He enjoys the younger one’s and though one might say that this doen’t exactly make him a pedofile, his interest in this subject turns my blood cold.
Sorrow,
In my book that interest does make them pedophiles. My psycho stated he dumper a woman b/c he knew “later on” he’d want to date her daughter. He made comments about when this and that child “was”legal”…not to me, but to his exwife. He stopped saying those thing when I shut him down immediatedly.
He’s a pervert Sorrow, mine is too. Sex is more than “bodies” as you know…their interest is complete objectification.
Beverly,
Thanks for thinking of me. I’ve found my children, cats, fish and those whom I’ve not had the pleasure are kinder and gentler than those I’ve given my all to. But I hope you are well. I wish I could meet with all that I read of here. I am saddened that so much pain and disillusionment are the common denominator. Sure shot a lot of theories I had. I thought people were people and men were men.
I’ve found for me that the really weird started once sex came into the picture. Reading Sorrow’s post says that, too. I was cherished, adored, cared for, prior to sex and that was the time frame of my and my husband’s “courtship”. We wanted to be chaste so as to please God and that’s not to say we weren’t into petting, but back 40 years ago, for someone like me, that was even a lot. I wasn’t introduced to sex until I was around 20. That was 38 years ago. I had no idea you could do that with that. I was very sheltered and came from an unenlightened era. One didn’t even hear the word pregnant in mixed company. So I virtually knew next to nothing. Once I got married and we consummated our love, I thought it was the greatest happening ever. To me, it strengthened our bond. To my husband it meant nothing but sex.
That I have found to be more true than not. Shortly after marriage, the anger started. Very subtly but there. It would escalate, then he would apologize and say, “I’m sorry, if you are”. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was setting the groundwork for some sort of mind control. Then there would be sex afterwards, so I was constantly getting mixed messages. I was hated, then loved. My mind was so messed up, that I didn’t know who or what I was. It was breaking me down, emotionally and mentally, not to mention the stress it was causing on my physical health. Constant tension. No kinds words unless the occasion called for it or I was in the hospital. So much chaos and confusion. And all through that, being called on to perform. There was no passion. Just lots of negative emotion. And there are some who question as to why I’m where I’m at today.
And that is why I was left so vulnerable when I came out to work. Met this gorgeous man who noticed me. I thought I can’t be all bad if this good looking man sees something in me. Sure he did. I was just someone to prey on. Turned out I wasn’t as weak as he thought I was, even though he did exploit me. And that didn’t happen until a year after we met and I confided in him that I found him sexually appealing and I didn’t want that to interfere with our friendship. That’s all we had. He was my insurance agent, and self proclaimed friend. Long story. But when I confided in him, instead of being a gentleman and saying we will be careful of our talk and such, he took that one phrase and ran with it.
He taunted me and kept tempting me and asking me what I wanted to do with him. He just had me on fire and all I wanted to do was touch him. I did and almost had sex, but “something” prevented me from going there. But that was all it took to tear down whatever barrier was between us. He took that little moment in time and built a mountain out of it and played on it to get money out of me. It was emotional rape and I didn’t know what to do at that time to stop it.
He played all sorts of games and it all led to mind control and emotional blackmail. I fell for it. But I started looking behind the scenes as to what sort of man this was. I thought he was my knight etc., but he became a knightmare. I came so close but just couldn’t totally let go. Since I’ve found out a lot about him, I know why. I guess it was my spirit keeping me from making another drastic mistake.
I think when I told him I was sexually attracted to him, he figured I viewed sex like he did. Not so. I just wanted to consummate what to me was the love I felt. But I’ve found out he has been a swinger the most of his life. He’s had 4 wives and cheated on all of them. He’s best friends with two gays and that left a lot of questions around town. He doesn’t pay his bills and uses other women to do that. Like me. He wanted to exchange sex for the money he owed me. I told him I had had lots of sex in my life, but I needed money. I think he has a very dark side from things he said and had I gotten with him, it’s hard to say what he would have tried to talk me into. As they say, familiarity breeds contempt. That’s pretty much what I feel right now, since I’ve finally learned who the real man is.
I went through the horrible jealousy for a time, imagining him with all the others and I wanted to be one of them. That was way before. Now I get ill thinking of him out doing all these women. He could have a disease that has been dormant. But the bottom line is he can’t be trusted. Actually what I’ve had to do is turn myself against him. That comes hard for my nature, but I have had to finally admit that he is a danger to my sense of well being and it’s okay for me to say that. He’s done this to all women, but I keep having to say, why me. So now I’m a statistic, and have a story to tell.
But I like the idea of no contact. It’s like having total control, even though I’ll never find out that it bothers him. He’ll just move on to his next victim. This is a small town but we don’t run in the same circles so I can avoid him. As I picture him with other married women and doing to them what he did to me, I don’t wish him well. I wish impotence on him for the rest of his life! And sad to say, my eyes are now opened and reality isn’t always pretty.
Beverly,
Yes, you were abused, neglected, abandoned as a child. And ALL of us know that verbal abuse especially can hurt the same or worse than physical abuse. And if you’re a sensitive man/woman, those cruel words pierce the heart like a knife. Causing severe damage. Life long damage.
I knew even as a 5 year old child, my bio-father was just damn wrong! He didn’t make any sense to me. My mother was the one who provided for all our wants and needs. Feeding us when we were hungry, comforting us when we had boo-boos, caressing us at night to help us sleep. My bio-father? His favorite place to be was on his beloved couch watching his beloved tv for hours & hours, even days! He used my mother for a place to live, eat, and sleep. He was also verbally and physically abusive to her, but my mom is a scrappy fighter and she would fight back. Which I realize now was a mistake and she should of just left him, but that’s for her to think about, not me. She DID finally leave him and as I said in another thread, was the happiest day of my life. My Psychopathic father died last year from lung cancer. He was still in prison where he has been for the last 15 years. I never visited him, nor did my 2 sisters. As Alohatraveler says…”He was a Bad Man”…When my mother told me about his death, I cried. I was having a very vulnerable day anyway, so the tears flowed quite easily. I cried over the man he could have been, the man who loved epic movies and classical music. The man who was an excellent machinist, but chose to be a bum, a loser. That’s who I cried over. Not the evil psychopath he was for all of his wasted life.
My mother’s not perfect. She can be sarcastically mean sometimes and I eventually put a stop to that years ago by candidly stating to her that it’s not right, fair to say mean things to me and she needs to stop it right now! She has because I placed boundaries before her and confronted her regarding her words to me. My mother loves her children and grandchildren very much. That I do know.
I didn’t write my experience for attention, to distract you from the pain you going through right now. I wrote it to show you that I’ve been where you are. That I’ve felt exactly what you feeling now and what you felt then. Of course, you are your own unique person with your own unique gifts, talents, qualities, life experiences that are different from mine. But..seeing as we are both human beings, basically with the same wants & needs & desires, we are in this together. We have journeyed the same roads, the same paths emotionally. Therefore I can honestly say that the incredible disullisionment in your childhood and into your adulthood can be overcome. You are too beautiful, too strong, too smart, too important to succumb to the suffering of yesterday. It’s over, Beverly, and as you and everyone else on this compelling website have written, we are all worthy of love, respect, consideration, kindness, compassion. What we give back in positive, caring energy will return to us threefold. I truly believe that as it has happened to me, and continues to happen.
Be good to yourself, sweet. Because you are a wonderful woman. **HUG**
Jane that is a wonderful post…very moving, and very true. Thank you.
Just another thought…to those here, when you initiate no contact, do they hear you loud and clear or do they still try to bait you? I think the most frustrating feeling I have going through this life is not having someone to belong to who doesn’t want to intimidate, manipulate, exploit, use me, etc. I only ever wanted someone to share.
P.S. to Sorrow, If you are interested sometime, Google fetishes, and read of all the different avenues some take to get turned on. That really freaked me out, knowing that someone who looks like they are totally on the up and up, has this other side. I’m not a prude by any means, just prudent, but it sure would take someone much different than myself to want to go there. I think that’s the dark side of life and I want light in my life.
Reading this post and the accompanying comments was a revelation. There are people who KNOW what I’m going through and what I’m feeling.
On Sunday 1 June I discovered that the man I met 18 months ago, fell in love with and who moved in with me last October is a psychopath who embezzled and defrauded many people, used who knows how many women and who conned a woman into marrying him while he was still living with me.
He is in prison now, found guilty of fraud, and that’s how I discovered his true nature. I visited him on Sunday and while waiting to see him fell into conversation with a woman. We talked for some time before discovering we were there to see the same man – her husband of three months, my live-in boyfriend. She is pregnant with their child.
I subsequently spoke to one of his sisters and we unravelled numerous awful hurtful lies. His wife and sister have vowed to cut him off and I am pressing fraud charges against him.
I still find it hard to believe how he infiltrated every aspect of my life; vowed undying love, sent me loving text messages, picked out baby names for our future children and told me over and over how happy he was to be a part of my life.
Family and friends are supportive but they don’t really understand how I feel. I feel like this psychopath raped my life. I am full of rage. I want to break his bones and cause him neverending pain. People mean well when they say I will get through this but that infuriates me even more. I know I’ll get through it, I’m a strong woman, but I’m feeling rage and pain now.
Odette
I only discovered this site a few days ago. I met my sociopathic ex husband 12 years ago. I slowly started to realise there was something wrong with him 5 years ago. Until then, i thought everything that had happened was my fault. I was obviously such a bad person that I deserved to be beaten up, lied to, cheated on etc, etc etc. I know now that I was a perfect victim for him because of my total lack of self esteem. This lack was caused by my pathetically inadequate mother.
I understand exactly how you feel and how everybody else feels who posts on this forum. I have felt how you feel. I know it is infuriating at this point when people tell you you’ll get through it. It’s totally impossible at this point to ever be able to envisage that day coming.
I am a lot further along the road than you are. I’m not completely healed yet, but I’m most certainly getting there.
The best advice I can give you is to stay with this forum to help you through. I had nobody, absolutely nobody to help me through and my recovery has been much protracted because of that. I have never read posts like these. All the people on here are obviously highly intelligent and very articulate. I wish I’d found them years ago.
No-one can help you more than those who have been through the same things as you.
So come here every day. Cry, rage, scream. Do whatever you need to do. No-one will judge you. No-one will tell you that you’re mad/weird/overreacting etc.
Much love.
Dear All,
I am a new member as of today but, of course not new to the damage and destruction of loving a sociopath. I don’t even know where to begin with my story. I’ll start from the beginning (boy, I can’t believe I’m blogging).
Anyway, I’ve been in and out of this crazy relationship for about a year now. It was wonderful in the begin, of course. In fact, I nicknamed him Mr. Wonderful.
Slowly but surely the controlling stuff started to enter the relationship. He’d say things like, “it’s okay or nice that you do those things now but, when you’re my woman I don’t want you to do this or that.” I being a strong single mom, I thought how nice someone who wants to take care of me and wants me. If any of you have ever had a pet, I compare this period to “Breaking” them. He would pick and demean everything I said and did. Again, I thought awe . . . he is making me the woman he wants me to be. Oh and did I fail to mention, he used religion and would say how I needed to be “obedient” and a woman should be submissive.
Anyway, I BOUGHT it hook line and sinker. So here I was under his control and oh so happy to have a man who was really in to me. I had to check in and let him know my whereabouts at all times and if I was somewhere I should be I’d have hell to pay. This went on forever but eventually I got use to it and again being the strong woman (or at least I thought I was) I dealt with it but I also made him check in and do the same thing. I thought I was exercising control as well, when really he didn’t mind checking in because that meant he knew where I was at all times.
So we move in together and we are talking marriage and a future. I and my two boys move into his place and almost immediately, he starts picking my kids apart and telling me that he wouldn’t allow his kids (he has two boys, as well) to do the things my kids do. At any rate, my boys (16 and 17) wanted no part of this and begged me to allow them to move in with friends temporarily. (I am so ashamed of this part of my life). I allow this man to alienate me from my very own children. He was in heaven when they left (he didn’t want to share me with anyone). I stopped talking to friends and family. In February, my mother and sister came to check on me and the kids and were very disappointed in me and my behavior. Everyone who was dear to me couldn’t believe what I was doing and how I was living. But, I was happy as a lark that this man “LOVED” me.
Finally, in March I’ve just about had enough and missed my kids so much. So we start looking for apartments for me and my boys. We make an agreement that I will spend time with the boys after school and in the evening but then spend my nights with him.
So I mentioned that he had children earlier, his oldest son (16) and my son play on the same basketball team and that is how we met. Anyway, through the relationship I always thought that he and his “so-called” ex-wife had an interesting relationship. They would talk everyday and seem too nicey nicey for ex’s. So I ask, “why do you feel you need to take care of her and your obligation is to the kids not her.” Boy did that piss him off. “She is the mother of my children and how can you be so selfish, I spend the majority of my time with you but, you are upset because I call her and care about my kids.” Needless to say, he made me feel like pond scum and as if I had done something wrong and so, I would skirt around the issue and try not to get upset when he was doing things for her and the kids.
In April, he took me on a day trip to this spa and we had a great time. It was wonderful and what made it even more special was that it was his weekend with the kids but, he didn’t go pick them up (the so-called ex-wife) was pissed and I thought, how great he is putting me 1st.
Well the next week he tells me that he needs to be there for his kids and so his so-called ex is moving in with the kids. I am devastated of course and asking him doesn’t she have someone else she can depend on and what does that mean for us. He gets upset and again tells me how selfish I am and I am asking him to choose between me and his children.
It is the end of April and the wife and kids are do to move in on May 1st. I’ve accepted the fact and we create a “3 year plan” stating that when his oldest son leaves for college, we will be free to be together and I just need to wait and be faithful until then. Anyway, he isn’t as available as he use to be and he is telling me that he needs to spend more time with the kids and so he is spending the night at the ex-wife’s home (please say it with me, STUPID). So here I am waiting and willing to deal with him moving his wife back into his home and him seeing me when he can. All the while, he is telling me it is for the kids and he doesn’t want her and she doesn’t want him she just wants what is best for the kids. Early in our relationship we exchange email passwords and so one day I send him an email but he didn’t reply quick enough and so I get into his email to see if he even received it and what do I find? An email from his so-called ex-wife saying how she loves him and calling him honey. I was a mess and I mean a MESS.
I would pick up his calls and I would respond to his emails. I knew he had plans that evening and I still had a key to his place and still had clothes there. So I drove over to his place right after work (thinking he wouldn’t be there) but, he was. I walked in and gathered my things without any explanation and gave him back his key. He was confused and couldn’t understand why.
Unfortunately, we attend the same church and so I see him Sunday and he asked to speak with me. I return a few more items and tell him what I discovered in his email and ask him to leave me alone. I LEFT – I was so . . . hurt. Anyway, he continued to call for about two weeks straight and finally the last week the calls decrease. He calls me at work one day and I like a DUMMY, I answer. He is telling me that he can’t live without me and he isn’t going to let the wife and kids move in, how he wants to marry me. He pulls me right back in.
Now we are up-to-date, it was yesterday that he once again starts talking about how his kids need him and everyone is telling him that he needs to do what is best for the kids. I’m upset and now he has conditioned me to feel guilty when he talks about the kids and how they need him.
Remember, I told you our children play basketball together and so I decide to email his ex-wife to say, “I’d like to talk to you about Danny and us. I want us all to be happy and if I am keeping you from your happiness please let me know.” He calls shortly after pissed and saying “How dare you email her, why would you want to upset her like that, I told her we weren’t seeing each other anymore and so when she calls you better tell her that we are not seeing each other. I was speechless, he finally somewhat admits that he has been
lying to me and to her by telling me she knows we are together and telling her we are not together.
Now, if that wasn’t enough – I still want to be with him. PLEASE HELP ME. Stop the ride, I want off. HELP!!!