Lovefraud has heard from a woman who we’ll call “Sally.” Sally is dealing with a sociopathic man who threatened to kill her, sabotage her daughter’s career and injure other family members. She says law enforcement either doesn’t believe her or doesn’t care.
Sally has been in touch with another of the sociopath’s victims, and they’ve helped each other through the nightmare. Still, people in regular support groups don’t believe them, and friends and family members have backed away. A lawyer and a therapist have backed away.
Sally recently sent Lovefraud the following e-mail:
You just can’t imagine this, because I can’t either. The person that was me is gone ”¦ and no one has taken her place.
I know who I was with all my faults and history ”¦ I was comfortable there. I guess this is a journey ”¦ but to where I don’t know. There is no light.
For 62 years I was me and now I am gone. What will I be? Will I be able to live with who I end up being?
I’m sitting in my living room and I am crying and I don’t know why. For the loss of hope? For fear? Fear of the future … for breast cancer ”¦ for the loss of my two best friends? For being stupid? For losing my children? And I am responsible for these losses.
I am dull, I am inert. I fill my head with senseless TV – I don’t know what I’m watching.
I want to dance and sing and laugh. I want to ride bareback thru the fields and listen to the silence.
But I will do none of those things. They’re only dreams. I am too tired. They are too far away from my new reality. Reality is my home, my prison, the awake hours. My routine – sleep as long as I can – take pills to help me not to have panic attacks – sometimes I eat. Day is night, and night is day ”¦ there’s no difference anymore.
I am smothered in sadness – and I am so angry, at myself.
I used to accomplish so much in a day and now it can all wait for another day.
I remember the hopelessness. I remember feeling that I had nothing to hold on to, that everything I knew was gone. I had no plans for the future, no idea of what was to become of me.
And I remember coming to terms with it.
How can you possibly come to terms with the devastation wrought by a sociopath? My healing involved two related and intertwined adjustments in my thinking.
Acceptance
The first adjustment was that I had to accept what happened.
Everything I was told by my sociopathic ex-husband was a lie. I had been deceived, swindled and betrayed. He had convinced me to spend all of my money, and go into debt, to support his grandiose plans. I’d neglected my own business to participate in his schemes. I’d won a judgment against my ex in court, but it was useless. I’d spent money I didn’t have on collection agencies and lawyers, and came up empty. I would not get any satisfaction from my ex.
I was broke and had no prospects for stable income. I did not know how I would survive, and I couldn’t argue with my circumstances any longer. The day finally came when I had to accept that, for the time being, this was my life.
Present moment
The second adjustment in my thinking was to focus on the present moment.
We all spend a lot of time reliving the past and projecting into the future. We ruminate over everything that happened with the sociopath. We worry about what will happen to our jobs, our kids, our homes.
Although this is legitimate, the only place where we truly live is right now, in the present moment. We can only take action now. So much like recovering from an addiction, we have to take our lives one day at a time.
It’s not easy. We want to know that we’ll be okay. We want to know how everything will work out. But I learned that if we give up our expectations of what ought to be, life can bring us wonderful solutions that we didn’t even think of.
This is one of the big themes in my book, Love Fraud—How My Marriage to a Sociopath Fulfilled My Spiritual Plan, which will be published in the spring.
Suggestions for Sally
So what should Sally do? From her letter, it sounds like she is suffering from depression. This is no surprise. We all know that the devastation wrought by sociopaths, and the callous response of the legal and financial systems, can leave us depressed.
Maybe Sally is strong enough to cope with the depression on her own. But if she feels like she needs assistance, that’s one step that she can take right now, today—seeking treatment for depression.
It would be a step towards her healing. For Sally to continue to move forward, I lovingly suggest the approach that I outline here—accepting what has happened, and focusing on one day at a time.
It’s not easy. Accepting what has happened leads us to grief over what we have lost. The grief needs to be processed, and it’s not fun. Actually, that may be where Sally is right now. There’s no way to avoid the pain; we have no choice but to move through it. But it does come to an end.
The process is much more manageable if we only deal with this day, or perhaps this hour. For Sally to try to sort out the rest of her life right now would be impossible, and probably counterproductive.
Sally has dreams. She wants to sing and dance and ride bareback through the fields, listening to the silence. Sally should hold on to her dreams, even though, at this point, she does not know how they will be realized.
Right now she’s moving through the rough patch. But each day moves her one day closer to the possible fulfillment of her dreams. All she has to do is hold on, and gradually, her ability to accomplish will return.
Who will she be? An even better version of who she was.
Wonderful post Donna – thankyou – needed to read this today. Today is hard. Today is tough – today I almost smoked after 63 days of successful cold turkey. To those quitting – please go to this site and get some support in the way of videos … really helped me out
http://www.whyquit.com
and please be gentle with yourselves – we have all been through so much with these horrid relationships.
To Sally- I am so sorry for what you have gone through – blessings that your treatment seems a success – but what a journey through stress and extreme situations. We cannot heal your pain or give you back the time you lost, but we stand in understanding of your pain with you.
I was listening to a radio show the other night that said a major component of adult self esteem is when people trust in their own experience (which actually is the only experience we can ever truly know). The way adults GET this trust in their own experience is by having their experience VALIDATED in early childhood and throughout life. People who experience validation (who are LISTENED to and AFFIRMED for their perceptions) grow up trusting their own experience of life and therefore don’t grow up as people pleasers – depending on the responses of others to make their decisions about their own life. They understand that the only way to live life is through your own valid experience – what you want and don’t want, what feels good and what doesn’t, what they will accept and won’t accept.
I realise as so many others here I didn’t get that validation through childhood so grew up looking for signs in others as to what I should do rather than determining a life by my own rules. A difficult aspect of life after a socio / psychopath relationship is that it evokes the original wound of being hurt, abandoned and controlled through childhood by both parents. My father left when I was three and my mother had carte blanche with no witnesses, no family nearby and no mediators to step in on my behalf. She wasn’t cruel all the time, but I did experience emotional incest and poor atmospheres at home growing up. I felt guilty for my very existence. I see clearly the link that while the marriage wasn’t comfortable or healthy, the atmosphere and abuse were FAMILAR. So I can no longer tuck away the conditions that lead me to select this man and stay so long in such dreadful abuse.
To all new people and those who are stuggling today – I am sorry for all you suffered. I believe your story – the threads are so common here – money problems, lies, betrayal, distance, idealisation followed by devaluing. I hope posting here and reading brings you the comfort it does me as I go through the osychological states that are left in his wale. I hope it all moves you toward healing.
You may feel alone in your country where you are … but YOU ARE NOT ALONE. You have friends all around the world who understand what you are going through, care for your life, believe your story, and want only the best for you after this horrible experience.
Dear Sally/Lily,
I’m glad that you are here, and glad that you are healing! The psychopath knows no shame! Suing you! Yea, right!
I’m glad that you are here this is a very comforting place, and there is a great deal of knowledge and wisdom here in the articles. I suggest as you have time that you go through the archives and read every article. Knowledge is power adn there is a great deal of strength and power in those articles if we just take them to heart!
There are wonderful bloggers here as well, who will validate your feelings which helps. In the end, we must validate our own feelings but while we are working on that it is good to know that there ar epeople who do understand the devestation of dealing with a psychopath. God bless and welcome!
Dear Lily,
You already have helped many on here, including myself. Telling your story on here was a wonderful reminder of just how far a Path will go in order to get what they want. I’m not surprised he is suing you. That’s exactly the kind of thing they do, changing the whole story around to make themselves the victim. I too have children who are not speaking to me over my ex P. I can only trust and believe that God will help them see the whole picture. I have only been on LF for a short while and the help, knowledge and support I have received here is invaluable. I am slowly working my way through the articles on here. It’s a wonderful place with wonderful people who really understand.
Sending hugs and prayers,
Cat
The thing of it is; we want them to be sincere, remorseful and changed. And when we give them another chance [chance after chance] they appear changed long enough to get us in deep again and then bingo……the mask drops and here is the phantom keeping us in the dark…..”All I Want is Freedom” ……we start singing again. We are the ones that keep going back for more-buying the lies- moving on our emotions rather than our logic. I know it’s a war between what we feel and what we know….and emotions are strong and we usually yield to them. But, our survival depends on our logic winning because the emotions we are feeling are being manipulated by these insincere p’s=our emotions are real..but their’s are not. Just a hard cold fact. Ugly as it is….*sigh
Carla,
Like you, I have three children (4, 6 and 11). Yes, I believed in God. In fact, I named my daughter (the middle child) “Faith” because despite all the hardship I’d gone through before with my first S hubby, and growing up with a N/S mother, I STILL had faith! Faith was my mantra. It was what kept me going.
But my second ex was even worse than the first. He used the Church to con me, to project my values back to me to get me to believe we were “best friends and soulmates.” He pretended he was a vegetarian because I was. He spoke about “integrity” being the most important characteristic to him because that was what was important to me. He claimed to have been abused by his former wife, too. He appeared to be loving, caring and gentle, both to myself and my young child from my first marriage.
Two years later, my life was well on its way to complete destruction. Jeckyll turned into Hyde.
The aftermath of his “breakup” with me included taking my home (gotten with MY credit and funds), sexually abusing our daughter who was 2 at the time, joining forces with my first ex to convince the court that I was a bitter, angry ex-wife (of course) and eliciting such a terrible smear campaign that it was impossible for me to stay in the same town. That’s only scratching the surface.
In order to survive and, more importantly, protect my daughter (since the “justice” system failed abysmally on that account), I had to spend almost $100K – all of it loans – so I could move 300km away and reduce his access as much as possible. I’m facing bankruptcy, it is unlikely I will ever own another home again, and I’m not young enough to save enough to retire. I will probably have to work until the day I drop dead. Far from the health nut I was before, I am now a drinker and smoker, deliberately, because I simply do not want to live longer than I have to. My future is bleak indeed, even with a best-case scenario of getting a fantastic paying job, which hasn’t happened yet. I don’t want to die homeless under a bridge but that is a very realistic possibility now.
And where is God? I prayed about this man, asking God for guidance. There was nothing and I listened hard, believe me. Not only did this man turn out to be a bona fide loser, but he is the epitome of EVIL. Worse, I’ve made him an even BETTER sociopath by fighting him as hard as I have for my daughter’s sake. He’s in a higher socio-economic class now (thanks entirely to me) and is now able to woo wealthier folk. I’ve given him legitimacy. I, however, am one very small cheque away from permanent homelessness.
If my daughter hadn’t been abused, and wasn’t still at risk of being abused, things would be so much different for me. I could have dealt with this normally. But the abuse changed everything about me after I found out. The person I used to be is gone forever. I live in constant fear. I don’t know how to forgive and move on because I have to continue to send her to her abuser. It has never been resolved. She’s still at risk. If he does it again, I honestly don’t know how I’ll react. It will probably be violently, quite honestly. Molestation is the gift that keeps on giving, too: any grandchildren she or her younger brother have will be at risk with him.
The burden of this is too heavy to carry. My soul is damaged beyond repair. There is no pleasure in much of anything anymore. I don’t know anybody, not on any forum that I’ve found, not even here, that can relate or give me advice on how to “move on” when I still have to send my daughter to that THING masquerading as a human being, knowing she could be raped again. And I know in my heart of hearts that she WILL be if that THING can convince her to keep it a secret next time. He’s working on it even now – “don’t tell anybody; Daddy will go to jail; you’ll never see Daddy again; Mommy doesn’t want you to see Daddy ever again.” It doesn’t matter to the authorities. He’s convinced them I’m “falsely accusing.” Besides, it’s our daughter’s word against his. We lose and, as usual, he wins.
God seems to be asleep at the wheel as far as protecting the vulnerable is concerned. So, me and God aren’t on speaking terms. I don’t pray anymore and guess what? It doesn’t make a difference anyway to how things turn out. I’ve lost Faith.
Gack! I just reread my post and am stunned by how negative I sound. And this is an ordinary day! Sorry to be such a major downer, everybody. Looks like I need a big change in attitude. 🙁 Not sure how to go about it, though…
jofary,
You have every reason to be feeling between a rock and a hard place.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. Nothing is harder than having to accept that damage is being done to one of your children and you have no control to STOP it.
I can understand that you have no money to fight this in the court systems any further. But I am wondering if there isn’t another option such as Social Services that can provide you with an advocate for your child? I would try calling every agency in the phone book and see if you might not come up with something. Even try google searches.
I know this is a long hard road for you. And I have not had luck with agencies in the past in my situation either. However I would leave no rock unturned if I were you. If they say they “can’t” help you ask them for a number of someone who can.
Dear Jofray,
I am so sorry to hear your stories, it brings tears to my heart. I know you may “sound” bitter and frustrated and angry, but you have every right to feel that way.
I cannot even imagine how you must feel with the continuing problems of letting her abuser see your child.
Please start to take care of YOURSELF though, and stop the unhealthy behaviors as a “slow suicide”—it’s not a good way to go.
I wish I could tell you how to regain your faith. God (as I see it) does’t promise us a “rosey” life here on earth, but to be there to comfort us, to guide us. I don’t think He is going to “part the red sea” to strike our Ps with lightening, but I do think that we must realize that He says in scripture “ALL things work together for GOOD to those that love the Lord.”
I have have “bad” things and disappointing things happen to me, but later down the line, if I had not had that “bad” thing happen, a blessing would not have happened later.
God warned David to hide in the caves from King saul by having Jonathan warn David. God COULD I think have kept Saul from killing david and david wouldn’t have had to hide, but I think there was a LESSON for David in those caves. I don’t know what it was, but I think it was there.
David was very “human” and made lots of bad decisions, he committed adultery, murder and other sins, but the Bible says “he was a man after God’s own heart” WHY? I think because when David was confronted about his sins, he ADMITTED THEM, QUIT THEM and tried to do better, he genuinely REPENTED. He tried to follow God, but he did bad things, too. I think this is an exammple for us to see that no matter what we have done, that if we truly repent and TRUST in God that we will be able to trust in His word that it will all worth together for GOOD.
I didn’t see the “good” in my son’s crimes, and I depended on myself to “fix” those things (my son has his own free will) and I can’t fix others, it was arrogant for me to think I could. I should have “let go, and let God” but I didn’t. I had a lesson to learn. The fleeing for my life was to let me know, I think that my life doesn’t depend on what I have or where I live, but on God and on me.
Believe it or not, I found some humility there in that RV on the lake—and I realized I can do nothing without God, and with God I can do everything. I hope you don’t think I am preaching to you, because I don’t intend to do that, but to share with you the COMFORT I found in my faith, and that I think you had in yours prior to all of this. God bless you, and You will be in my prayers (((((Hugs))))
Jofray, I’m so sorry for your trials.
I will share my thoughts and experience in hopes that it might inspire you somehow.
I don’t have children with the xP thank God, so my trials are less in that respect. But I found it very empowering to learn as much as I can about sociopathy and read, read, read, every book I can find. I go to websites and meet people in my travels and we talk about it. I even go to his friends and family for information about what is happening and why. Everyone has a different piece of the puzzle.
Once the “profile” of your xP begins to crystalize in your mind, once you really start to understand what motivates him and how he thinks, life gets much easier. The fear goes away.
His mind will become as familiar to you as your own (not pleasant, but necessary) The only thing left to do is learn more about yourself. The encounter with a sociopath tends to reveal yourself to you. Suddenly so many things from the past become clear.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that you can learn and grow from this suffering. It’s all we can do because we can’t go backward, only forward.
So many of your stories have validated me…so many have broken my heart…many have enraged me because of the power the P has. They can be sooo charming when around others to the point that friends and family won’t believe you. After all, he’s really a great and charming guy…and what an interesting background he has! Even when provided with evidence that his interesting background is all a lie…people just don’t get it and can’t believe it. There’s something wrong with me!
Jofray…please keep fighting. Contact anyone and everyone in authority – preserve evidence. I too know, that justice has nothing to do with truth, I never knew that before – I believed justice was all about truth.
I’m sleeping 12 hrs. aday now and even that’s not enough to help my weariness. I just watch the clock until I can sleep again. I have not talked to one human today. No one calls me anymore. My friends have backed away and my family is not available unless I can be positive and cheerful with wonderful dreams of the future. It’s easier to talk to my dogs and my kitten…they listen intently and never disapprove of me or my feelings.
How did this ever happen to me? To you? Why are we targets for these paths? I believe as pollyanna no more said…it all starts with our childhood. I was the youngest and a total surprise when my mother gave birth to me at age 46.
I was an inconvenience. I was the ‘out of sight out of mind’ child. Yet as young as I was I always brought home the ‘broken’ things. A stray dog, a ferral cat, a bird with a broken wing even children from school who were being bullied. I never understood why my mother wouldn’t let me take care of these beings or while I slept they all ‘ran away’.
I don’t know if God is with me or against me – frankly, I am too tired to think about faith.
Wow, I could write forever – one thought leads to another. I do have a dream though…I’ll share it with you on one of my next posts. Because of your help and your words I do believe this dream can come true. Love to all of you.
Lily/Sally