A Lovefraud reader asked me what I thought of advice offered on a website called “Womensdivorce.com.” In a post about relationships after divorce, the website says women should start dating as soon as possible. It also seems to advocate that women engage in brief sexual affairs, and find a transitional partner who can help a woman heal, but whom she shouldn’t marry.
Read Your first relationship after divorce, on Womensdivorce.com.
My reaction is that this advice may be okay for someone involved in one of those amicable divorces, where the partners simply grew apart, are still on speaking terms or even friends, and want what is best for their children. The advice is terrible for someone who has been heavily damaged by marriage to a sociopath.
People who have endured marriage to a sociopath need time—perhaps a lot of time—to rebuild themselves. Healing may have two distinct dimensions.
Recovering from the sociopathic relationship
First, you need to recover from the sociopathic relationship. The difficulty of the recovery depends on the psychological damage done.
I now know that I was relatively lucky in the type of predator that found me, although it sure didn’t seem that way at the time. My ex-husband, James Montgomery, only wanted my money. He lied to me, he used me, he betrayed me—but he didn’t try to destroy me. When my money was gone, he just abandoned me.
Many Lovefraud readers had experiences that were far worse than mine. Some of you endured physical and sexual violence, gaslighting, threats and brainwashing. Some of you continue to suffer because you have children with the sociopath, and your ex purposely tries to use the children to hurt you.
If you are raw from one of these extremely damaging relationships, the last thing you should do is try to find a new partner. Instead, you need to focus on personal healing.
The first step is to take care of yourself physically—eat well, find time for exercise, avoid drugs and alcohol, get enough sleep. You also need to rebuild emotionally. There are two different paths of emotional recovery. One is allowing yourself to grieve, and feel the anger and pain. The other is finding ways to bring joy into your life, however small. Nourishing encounters with friends and family whom you can trust will help.
You’ll find many articles to assist you in this section of the Lovefraud Blog: Healing from a sociopath.
People often ask, how long should it take to recover? There is no standard answer to this question. Recovery takes as long as it takes. But until you are feeling stronger and healthier, it is best not to get involved in another romance.
Here’s an important reason why: Sociopaths target vulnerable people. If you are not yet healed, you are vulnerable, and a prime target for another sociopath.
Recovering from deeper injury
Many Lovefraud readers, as you make your way through recovery, have realized that the marriage to a sociopath was not the first damaging relationship in your life. There was an older, deeper injury that made you susceptible to the sociopath in the first place.
Some of you recognize that a previous romantic relationship was exploitative. Some of you realize that one or both of your parents were disordered. For you, the games sociopaths play may have seemed normal, because that’s what you grew up with.
The pain caused by the most recent partner may cause you to realize that you have a long history of mistreatment. In fact, sometimes recognizing trauma in your past helps clear up one of the big mysteries of involvement with a sociopath. It answers the question, “Why did I allow this predator into my life?”
There may even be spiritual reasons for the dangerous encounter, which I talk about in my book, Love Fraud—How marriage to a sociopath fulfilled my spiritual plan. So before looking for love again, you need to recover from the sociopath, and you need to recover from any deeper traumas as well. Thankfully, you can do both at once. The process is the same as described above—slow physical and emotional healing.
So as you walk the road to recovery, be careful about listening to advice from others. As we well know, most people have no clue about what it’s like to be involved with a sociopath. They have not walked in your shoes, so however well meant, their suggestions may not be helpful or healthy for you.
Twice betrayed- whats wrong with you? Do you like being cruel?
Sick shit
Oh, dear…I see some huge misunderstandings here…
coping: What on earth are you talking about? I didn’t even read your posts and certainly never posted anything to you or would ever laugh at someone’s pain. My posts were responses to Ox’s posts to ME. We always tease each other. You misread/understood. Again: my posts were NOT in ANY way directed to YOU. The bottom part of my comment was from a movie and Ox and I were talking about family back and forth and joking in a funny way.
As for Oxy, she was trying to be honest, kind and encouraging. You have misread all of this…reread and rethink. We would never hurt anyone or laugh at their emotions and pain.
coping: It’s very important to keep an open mind that not ALL posts are directed to the one above it or to YOU personally. There are usually several conversations going on at the same time and if you read and see who the comments are directed to, you won’t have that problem of misunderstanding posts. I hope that helps you understand NOBODY would hurt you in any way. We are all survivors here and help each other. We do tease and make jokes out of some situations we cannot change, but it’s all in helping each other in good fun..no malice intended. And those are directed to each other that understand what we are talking about. None of these posts are directed with malice or unkindness to you. I hope I’ve made this clear. I’m going to let this alone now as I’ve explained in two different posts: I WAS NOT commenting TO YOU OR ABOUT YOU IN ANY WAY.
What I have learned about spaths is like in the scene in the movie, “2001, A Space Odyssey” .. at the end, where the lone space traveler [Interpret: object/subject of abuse or object of a spath’s vengeance..[in the the movie, the “spath” is a cold machine that caused problems for the man who hurls through space at twice light speed. The “machine” is the cause of his victim thrown into a life journey, not by the victim’s choice .. a machine incapable of empathy, throws a human into chaos and mind F***s, for infitinity..or at least the “machine” hopes it is for infinity!] hurls through space at probably more than twice the speed of light, ends up seeing (himself?), at the end of his journey, as an “embryo. Uh huh. That is what transpires, at stress levels under which spaths put their victims through. That explanation may seem “crazy” to some folks, but victims of spaths will understand, I think.
TB
(Hugs)
Have you done any gardening lately?
I’ve built a lovely rock garden this year.
So correct that a PREVIOUS TRAUMA has possibly made us susceptible to SOCIOPATHIC personalities.
I am finally dealing with childhood experiences in a State run Institute called WANSLEA where I was placed as a young child when my mother was seriously ill and my father had to work away from home to pay for my mothers hospital treatment.
I was frequently locked into a large dark cupboard, for how long I do not know.
Why? I dont know.
Often I was denied meals because I had been “naughty”?
I was frequently taken to the office of the Institute and the woman in the office would yell at me, and take a thin black cane she kept in the corner behind her desk, and whip me across the top of my hands, which I had to place on the desk top.
Then she would make me turn my hands over and she would whip the palms of my hands.
Then she would lift my dress and cane my buttocks and upper legs.
I realised after the first few times this happened, that the woman seemed to like me crying, so I refused to cry for her.
I never knew what I had done wrong?
There never seemed to be any specific thing I had done wrong she just seemed to enjoy whipping me.
I was only 3 or 4 years old at the time.
Once she had my baby brother about 18 months old in the room and she hit him with the cane to try to upset me.
I remember deliberately not speaking to the staff at the Institute because I resented the way they treated me.
I refused to cry in front of anyone.
I spent most of my day time trying to avoid the older children who would bully us younger children and beat you up.
We were put out into a front yard that was hot and dry and had a metal pipe playground climbing frame and a rocking metal pipe frame with two wooden seats.
The older children would beat you up if you dared to play on them.
It took a lot of effort to hide out of sight of the older kids.
If you went round the back of the building you could see the babies and toddlers confined in a grassed area that was fenced off.
If I went over to the fence to try to talk to my baby brother I would get smacked and told off, as we were not allowed to go near the babies who were put into that area for most of the day.
When my parents recovered us from the home we had dreadful impetago sores all over us and head lice and my baby brother had the worst case of nappy rash our G.P. had ever seen.
His backside was raw from being left in wet nappies all day long.
My older sibling, baby brother and I were seperated the whole time we were in the Institute and could only see one another across the dining hall.
My older sibling would sometimes meet me in the yard after they went to school, but most of the time they were with the big kids who bullied the younger children.
The only ray of sunshine during my incarceration was the relief cook who would come in when the full time cook was off drunk.
She would sit at the back steps of the kitchen and she coaxed me over to let her comb out my matted hair.
She filed my broken dirty nails and taught me how to use her nailfile.
I learnt the word “Disgusting” as she kept telling the young teen girls who were her helpers, that it was disgusting the way the children were neglected at the home.
I had forgotten all this experience, except to remember that I had terrifying nightmares throughout my childhood and early twenties of being walked up the dark timbered passageway to the office and the door opening to see the big dark wooden desk and the pink curtains on the big windows in the room.
There would be a figure of a woman behind the desk and my heart would be thumping and I would feel totally terrified.
Then the dream would end because I would wake up in a terrified state.
Only now, since being encouraged by a friend to attend a Counselling group for adults who were Institutionalised children, have I remembered some of the details of my term in the home.
I now understand why I am so uncomfortable if my fingernails are rough, broken or dirty, and I just have to fix them straight away.
I think I now understand why I have always felt helpless when anyone abused me verbally or physically, and I never spoke up to defend myself for most of my life.
I can see how my damaged childhood enabled others to manipulate me, and guilt trip me, so they could control my life.
It has been a constant uphill battle and sometimes I slip and fall back down, but I am keeping to my goal of recovery.
Most of my life has been heartache and pain, being abused by others when I have tried so hard to always do the right thing by them.
I would defend anyone else I saw being hurt, but never thought to protect myself or defend myself.
It is as if I thought I did not have the right to be TREATED WITH RESPECT!!
I hope other members and readers of this blog will take the steps to reclaim their lives and recover from whatever traumas life has thrown at them.
Even if you are getting on in years and feel most of your life has been wasted, why not get some counselling to help yourself, and learn to enjoy what is left of your life, instead of still being enslaved by the past.
Hi Skylar,
I love summer because I get to plant flowers. Many are in pots made of gray rock, but I don’t mind cause the flowers are JUST so pretty.
Planting a garden is no easy task let me tell ya…first you have to get the right soil, then you must keep up with it every day…goollly geee…who knew it would be so hard. I surround my garden with lots of gray rocks…TONS of them.
😛
skylar:
Yeah, hahaha!! We all need a rock garden I see. Geez. 🙂
zoey:
That is so, so sad. Oh my goodness. It sounds like though your are getting help or have gotten help so hallelujah to that!!! You survived!! Is it OK if I ask…are you in the UK?
My heart is with you x