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.
I wholeheartedly agree that coming here and just reading has been such an eye opening experience for me. I carried so much inside of me for years and didn’t know why everything wasn’t working. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t make a relationship work with the man I was married to, but my children and I were doing okay.
For so long I blamed myself, because in a very covert way, I was being blamed. All that I went through was as much a spiritual awakening as anything. That period of my life was such a dark time. And to put it into terms for me personally, I was being drawn into sin. I felt like a battle field of good and evil.
I knew my husband didn’t want me for me, and thought the man I met did, but he ended up just wanting to use me and being as broken as I was, I let him, thinking that I couldn’t lose this one chance. Then I had some people tell me that I might be his only chance to find a relationship with God, but I didn’t want that responsibility. I even had some who suggested that I was responsible for my husband’s soul. Lots of bad advice that kept me in a constant state of confusion. I come from a Pentecostal background and there is a lot of legalism attached to that religion. I no longer am into religion. I prefer to think I’m a spiritualist than a religionist. All I do know is that I’m on the other side of that darkness and have survived.
I can actually thank those who wanted to break me. My sister no longer speaks to me, because of my wanting out of my marriage. She thinks divorce is a sin, but yet her daughter-in-law is a divorced woman married to her son and her minister is a divorced man. Talk about convoluted thinking and these people are going to tell me I’m wrong. This is my life and I tried to be something for someone and they didn’t want what I had to offer. So I’ve finally reached that point where I can say if you want something from me, ask. I will decide if I will oblige. My boundaries are much stronger and I don’t need a man to complete me. I’m 58 and gave the most of my life to a man who didn’t want what he had. So I take it back and will be happy with me. I know I have less years to live than I lived and sure don’t want to spend them like I did.
I know I have forgiven those who wanted to harm me. Forgiveness is more for me than them. I read that forgiveness is giving up all hope of having a better past. The past is just that. Past. Got through the trials and with God’s help and blessing, much better than before. I try and process all the emotions as I go along. I am really enjoying the no contact. I knew I needed to do that. This man who insisted we were friends, wanted my friendship, but didn’t give me his. He has boundaries, and won’t allow just anyone in, but he has no problems stepping on other’s boundaries. I have issued a no contact and each day is giving me new strength and I feel so much stronger. His has a way of trying to tear down resistance, but the more he persists, the more I resist. And reading what all the rest go through and hearing their story, has been therapy for me.
Lots of the people I’m around on a daily basis haven’t a clue as to what I’ve tried to say concerning the happenings. Some have implied that I did this to myself. As I said, it’s been a spiritual awakening for me, and my faith is much stronger than before because I feel God won this battle for me. Weeping really does endure for a night, but joy surely does come in the morning.
Dear Sorrow, I feel strangely disturbed when I read your story, in that, and I dont know if i said this before, but I think there are pieces of the puzzle around your ex missing, which he has not been totally honest about. You may be better away from him and not to know what he truly is. They have this way of wrapping up their history in easily explainable ‘wrapping’. My ex told me (because I asked him more than once why he had finished with past gf/s) that they went back to their boyfriends – a tidy excuse that I couldnt check on. Maybe they went back to their boyfriends to get protection from him?!!
RRiinnaa, I am so pleased that you are feeling abit better and not so shell shocked. The rage that you feel towards him is understandable and quite acceptable and you will be smarting for a while to come. Its abit like having a crisis, an accident, there is the crunch, then the hurting and the pain, the crying, the thinking over and over, (I felt like I had been stabbed all over), but you will survive it and your story which was featured just so captured the pain and shock you were feeling so well, I think we were all rooting for you and if we were all there in person – hundreds of hands would have come out to support you.
Apt/Mgr: Well said and thank you for sharing these insights. It is a shame that people who seem to really believe in God use His word to try to beat others over the head. Believe like I do or you are “doomed.”
So much “religion” seems to lack SPIRITUALITY and for me religion-minus-spirituality=nothing. I too was raised in a very legalistic religion in which various words in the Bible were “defined” in such a way that I was never comfortable with them.
Since all of this chaos percipitated by the Ps in my family, I have looked at my thoughts and feelings concerning God, the Bible and spirituality in a totally different light than previously. I no longer let others “tell me” what to believe, but I study the Bible and I talk to people who are SPIRITUAL as well as religious, and funny thing, not a one of these very spiritual and very religious people is of “hell fire and damnation” persuasion, but people that preach the LOVE OF GOD, our heavenly FATHER. I see both myself and my God in entirely different lights, and no longer see a Hell-fire-and-damnation God sitting up in heaven waiting for me to sin so he can ZAP me with a lightening bolt because I am unworthy. I see “forgiveness” as removing the bitterness and wrath from my own heart toward those that “sin against me”—not giving them a free pass to abuse me, and then “pretending it didn’t happen” and letting them abuse me again. Forgiveness is for ME and my healing, at that point, God will deal with the rest of it. It isn’t MY responsibility. “Vengence is mine saith the Lord.”
I see LOVE as an ACTION, meaning to do good to someone, not evil, not a “squishy feeling.” So “LOVE your neighbor as yourself,” means to me now, that I should treat them with respect, no matter how they treat me, but it doesn’t mean be a door mat. I can walk off, get away from them.
“Honor your father and mother for this is right in the Lord” doesn’t ‘mean that I have to let my father or mother abuse me, it means to me now, that I should BECOME THE KIND OF PERSON WHO WOULD HONOR A PARENT WHO RAISED THEM. “Honor” does not mean blind obedience to a parent, or allowing abuse.
“fathers provoke not your children to wrath”—means that I should treat my children with the respect they deserve, and not make them so outrageously angry at me for lack of respect shown to them that they are “wrathful” toward me.
Spirituality gives me comfort, but “religion” without spirituality is empty to me. I too feel that God won my wars, even after I lost a bunch of battles on my own.
I have a good friend who is a devout Christian, she told me the other day that because she had a happy childhood, she wanted to share it with other people. She is a drug and alcohol counsellor. She told me that the book ‘Heidi’ made a profound impact on her. Unfortunately she married one of her ‘clients’ and has paid a terrible price for his appalling behaviour and I think because divorce is a no no in Christian terms, she has now come to terms with the fact that she will be divorcing him.
Dear Damaged, I was on that roller coaster too and you can get off. My ex didnt have an ex wife, but he had lots of women lined up at work, and I GOT TIRED of trying to work out what he was up to. When our relationship was at its zenith, he cut it down. I just decided to get off, I gave him one chance to meet me to explain things, he declined, and I cut him off ….and stayed off. Good decent guys dont create that kind of confusion.
Thank you, too, OxDrover, for your words of wisdom. And all the others here, too. I’ve found such a new found grace in God since I’ve been through all these battles. I told this man that I struggled with emotionally, that it was a moral dilemma I was going through. He said, ” are you saying you have no morals?” I just hung my head and sighed. He just didn’t get it, either.
I’ve found so few who really do get it. I was told several years ago by a woman I met, who has become a good friend, that I must be a rational person. I said I like to think so. She went on to say, and maybe Dr. Leedom could attest to this, that she was taught in psych classes that only 5% of our population is rational. I googled this and found further info on this subject that affirmed what she said. I have since read on “The Truth Project”, that through surveys and such, that only 5-7% of professing Christians live it. The writer went on to say what that means is that those professing believers live as non-believers. Could there be a correlation between the two? That enlightenment comes from finding God and having a personal, intimate walk with Him and fully accepting Christ as our Savior, getting rid of the old nature and taking on the mantle of Christ? I’ve wondered this.
I’d much rather be counted with the 5%. Maybe that’s why I can’t relate to so many. But those who are here, write in a fashion that we understand each other. So is this all part of a spiritual journey and we are working on our character? I don’t know for others, but I do know for me, that I feel like I fought with Satan and won. Praise to God. I never liked playing house, church, friend etc. I want real in my life and to me God is the real in reality. I have to stop and get off my soap box. I start preaching and try to drive my point home!!
It sure is good to “know” so many who understand. I can say one word here, and I can see nods of agreement, because I do that. I’m like, yes. That’s just what I felt, heard, did, reacted, etc. So as unique as those sociopaths think they are, they are cut from the same cloth. Don’t you wish we could get the word out to everyone so these wayward souls could be stopped? I know for me, from my experience, I’ve had a lot of “stuff” I had to learn to forgive. But I can pass along my faith and be able to tell others that God truly is my Counselor, Guide, Friend, Protector, Confidante, Healer, and so many more adjectives that describe the One who is everything. It’s not religion. It’s spirit.
Dear Laura, I was blown away by the fascinating article you wrote here, the descriptions of the vampire archetype is truly chilling, and I can see how I fell into it and I can sense the essence of what you say! I had a series of nasty dreams when I was with him, one was that he was kissing me and he was sucking my breath and suffocating me. My friend says that he was acting out his demon – same thing. Hence the descriptions that people often use about a fight between good and evil. When we broke up (we had many breaks) I had pictures in my mind of bleeding raw meat – I use and honour my imagination and work with symbolism too.
It really gets down to the nitty gritty of how the distortion occurs, whilst honouring the inner beloved. This has to be the kind of description that alerts us to the twists and turns of our thinking that gets us into dark corners. Just a quip – is that why my ex referred to the main mobile phone he had for me as the ‘bat phone??!’
Reading about attraction, it is well known that men are visual and women auditory, so women are more alert to what men say, hence the flattering tones of the emotional vampire.
I remember saying to my best friend at the time I was wanting out, was that this man will kill me if i stay with him – ‘its him or me and its gonna be me’ I then jumped the cliff. it felt like a life or death situation, I actually was aware that if i stayed with him, I would lose my soul, and I am FAR TOO rebellious for that!!
Just referring back again to Laura’s article, I read a statement recently that has really stuck with me ‘DEVILS KNOW ANGELS, BUT ANGELS DONT KNOW DEVILS’. By reading and contributing here, we learn, learn learn their ploys, I know this sounds dramatic, but it IS dramatic and people in mainstream life DO NOT understand what this all signifies. Know thine enemy – i sure do now.
Dear JaneSmith, I melted when I read your kind compassionate words. You are sooooo kind. Thank you (((hugs))). I am really happy to read what other people have to say about themselves and sometimes we CAN use the mirror of other people’s experiences to emphathise and learn, especially if common cords are struck, it makes us realise that we are not alone and I take in everything that is said.