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.
Sky –
thanks for laugh! I needed that!
I’m out for now – hittin the highway for the weekend and getting the heck out of dodge!
And I have no one to answer to while I am away – what a lovely lovely feeling!!
Be safe everyone!
(((hugs)))
Twice Betrayed
Birds of a feather is so right on.
It’s like Oxy’s post about honor among thieves. No such thing. Truth is criminals don’t rat on someone who has the power to take revenge on them. Take away that power and they turn on each other, like pack dogs on a wounded pup. But they do hang with each other, it’s like they don’t have to pretend to have feelings so they can be themselves and no one freaks.
KatyDid: agree on the fangs on the butt! ;p
I understand the motives are not always pure/good why some people do good things. As you point out so well. Still; the job gets done. Kinda like morticians. Never could figure out how anyone could do that job or WHY. Still, it’s got to be done, and thankfully somebody does it. I’m not one who could..
Yeah, KatyDid; all thieves and criminals understand is higher power. Fear…
back: be safe, have fun and send postcards….
That “not all good things” are motivated by good intentions is part of the posit of Dr. Barbara Oakley’s book “Cold Blooded Kindness.” Bad people do “good” things sometimes but not for the reason a “good” person would do them.
Jesus talks in the Bible about how the Pharisees would donate large sums of money to the Temple, but they would hire trumpeters to blow horns to call attention to how much money they were donating. Jesus said “they have had their reward” already…because their “kind donations”were for SHOWING OFF not for the good the donations did.
When I worked at the college we had donors who donated money for buildings to be built in their name and they were PAINS IN THE BUTT. They would drive the staff crazy and because they were BIG DONORS we had to go along with even the most outrageous “request.” Then we also had BIG donors who donated the money but were not there to over see how every light switch was installed or where every shrub was planted. They were truly generous folks who were not out just for the glamor or having their name on the front of a building.
TB….there may be some thieves and criminals who understand “fear” but some psychopaths don’t seem to have any fear. That might be why they seem to do well in jobs where there is a high risk, or danger.
Ox: interesting on that book!
Yeah, I can imagine on the college money!
I meant fear of a higher authority that can render judgment/power. But, even then some don’t fear that, I guess. No, I can see many don’t have fear of danger. Mine was pretty fearless along these lines.
I remember my X telling me his dad got a new truck and my X took the cigarette lighter and burned all the knobs off and the dash to shreds. Which he knew his dad would beat him beyond and he did. He said it was worth it cause the old man was so cruel to him anyway. He got him back tho in the end. Old man was on his deathbed, giving out his death rattle and reached for my X’s hand. X’s mom said: “He’s reaching out to you.” My X refused the hand and death claimed the old tyrant. Shortly after that, my X seriously melted down and never returned to a level of functioning ‘sanity’ he had prior to this. My first X had daddy issues as well. Same type of old man……
This is the best thing I have ever read as far as describing a psychopath:
http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/psychopath_2.htm
Why we do things. I don’t think a lot of people understand what gives their life meaning.
I never really thought about why I chose what I did in life other than I didn’t want to be “like them” (my family). Then at university, I took an ethics course that posed questions that revealed who I was inside; those answers explained why I gravitated towards certain things.
When I was going through the nightmare with my husband, I came to a point where I realized with total clarity, that I needed to hang on to who I defined myself to be INSIDE b/c honoring that person connected me to my humanity, and I needed to believe there was something worthy in life.
NOT being able to connect to my humanity is to be alone for eternity, the epitomy of HELL.
KatyDid: excellent post. We all come to a choice-P’s do too, they just don’t know it. They make a choice by default.
Louise,
Thanks for the link. I always want to learn.
BUT, when I read that a psychopath “plateaus at 50 and tapers off” ….that phrase is so patently untrue that the author loses their credibility with me.