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.
Dear TB,
Yeppers, you are soooo right baby!
In school when I was learning about “stress” and the effects there of, we were taught that “good things” even are STRESSFUL and it doesn’t matter if it is from a good thing or a bad thing stress IS stress. Period.
CHANGE=STRESS
http://celebratingyourjourney.com/The%20Holmes-Rahe%20Scale.htm
Here is the link to the Holmes and Rahe stress scale. Keep in mind that there may have been stressful events in YOUR life that aren’t listed on here, so for your own informational purposes, put them on the scale and give them a “score”—the point is to find out YOUR PERSONAL LEVEL OF STRESS. Check it out it is very interesting to see where you stand.
Oxy: that is so cool! I do have some of the health issues they said I would. Wow….Thanks for posting this…I bookmarked it!
Here is another quote from another article about stress:
It is by now widely recognized that acute and chronic stress have an impact on the immune system. Ironically short episodes of stress may actually have a stimulating effect on the immune system setting off internal alarms for action whereas long-term (chronic) stress can impact negatively on the immune system. If you have a positive self-image, an optimistic outlook on life and good coping skills then the impact of stress on your immune system may be minimal.
T-Cells are produced in the thymus gland which works flat out for the first few years of life and then rapidly shuts down. Our lifetime supply of T cells diminishes with age and the process can be accelerated by stress and disease. After they go, so do we. That’s why it is important that we don’t get stressed over trivia.
END QUOTE:
TB I think (like the quote above says) that our immune systems are permanently damaged to some extent by our stress levels being high or horrible—I know I have had 4 serious life-threatening infections since my husband died in July of 2004, and in general I had been a healthy person.
The on line version doesn’t take in to consideration that you might have MOVED HOUSE more than once, so you only get one score for moving residences, and so if I use only the ONE time thing, I score like 900, but if I give multiple scores for the multiple events in a period of time between July 2004 and december 2007 it is like 3,000 points. In the last 24 months though I have only “accumulated” 150 points which is not bad at all. I can tell that I feel a great deal better as well….and things don’t “hit me” like they used to do. KEEPING CHANGE TO A MINIMUM and being good to ourselves PAYS GREAT DIVIDENDS in the end. That is why it is important to not stay in a constant state of turmoil and HIGH STRESS, HYPERVIGILENCE and so on.
WORRY is your enemy! PEACE AND CONTENTMENT is your FRIEND!
thank you Eden and all. I don’t know why it is, but your posts make me cry. I think because I am so used to being falsely “loved” by the spath that genuine love and concern makes me happy/sad, it is a light, an anchor, thank you. I will be back later to talk some more. I am going to go riding and then drumming. both help immensely. Thank you for reminding me of what’s good in the world. Love, b
Ox: That’s very helpful info! Thank you! You know I had a good self image [in spite of the fact that he cheated constantly-I knew it was not my problem], I was optimistic and had excellent coping skills. All these things were brought out by several counselors who said I was a VERY strong woman. But…..the last two years with him did me in. He was INSANE and I never knew what he might do or if he would clear me out of money and disappear, as he had done prior to this. His behavior became totally out of hand, erratic and to tell the truth, I wondered if he might get arrested for stalking. [think Mel Gibson, right down to talking weird sexual talk] It did prove true that he got threatened for stalking a girl at an in/out store. He loved to prey on these girls, as they were usually young, cute, broke, single, with small kids in need of money, so they were very vulnerable. Well, turns out this one was not…she was a stripper/hoe working to cover her wages on the side and was shaking down the oil/gas guys hooking and hoeing. She had a pimp boyfriend who threatened to beat my X’s butt and got my X fired from his high paying job. So, that’s what happens when two P’s collide. ;p I pressed my X asking why he did this, as he bought her several expensive pieces of jewelry and he violently shouted, on Thanksgiving Day: “So she would get me into their group, they have group sex and include animals!” I almost threw up! He had a world away from home/me that he circulated in, apparently. Anyway, it all took its toll on me and I was working and squirreling back money in all directions so I could get myself free. By the time I was able to walk, I was exhausted and dang near defeated and bedfast. I still had many hearings and it took a year to get the divorce. I was worn down and looked it. That took my ego down low and I lost some of my self esteem and mojo. The final straw was finding out how my older daughter had betrayed me so long. That took me totally off my feet. I live with it now…but it’s hard knowing what kind of people my kids are. I spent my life as mom trying my best, at great expense in many areas, to survive and do the best for my kids, only to have genetics claim the Aces. That’s what almost took me to my grave. I’m coming back by the grace of God, but I must keep my distance from these ‘kids’ of mine, or they start right back in making me sick.
Wow! That is a high score on that test! I got like 300, but didn’t know how to factor in the bizarre betrayals and blows dealt me by my kids. Those would most likely push me WAY up!
I am so glad to hear you are progressing so well! I would agree, we do have damaged immune systems…..and most likely won’t totally get over that. Afraid so….the blows were just too much.
Thanks and hugs!
TB, the “stress test” is just an in general indicator of things and for professional purposes you must do it like it calls for it to be done, but for your own personal “numbers” you can ADD whatever experience that you want and make up a number (using like “death of a spouse=100 points”) as a guide line. And “going to jail” is not the same number of points for everyone….for some it might be 15 points and for others maybe 98 points! LOL The point of the whole exercise is to show you how your STRESS amounts up. And it takes months and years for the effects to decrease, much less go away.
Dr. Hans Selye did tests on rats by stressing them and then giving them (the stressed and the unstressed) mice shots of nasty infective bacteria and the stressed ones got sick and died, the unstressed ones, their immune system fought off the bacteria and they got well on their own.
So it is very important that we eat right, rest right and exercise and do the best we can to keep our systems functioning and GET OUT of the STRESS ZONE.
I know it is disappointing to try to be a good parent and your “pay off” is kids that disrespect you or hate you, but trying to continue to make a “relationship” with these people is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE to your own health and well being. Even your VERY LIFE. ((hugs)))
Ox: Oh, ok, well, I need to go factor in: toxic family! AHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Yes, I can see that on the rats. I’ve been sick all week with upper respiratory. What I always get when I get stressed. I wasn’t emotionally stressed. I lifted weights and tried to resume some of my old exercise program. MISTAKE!
TB, TAKE IT SLOW!!!!! Don’t try to re-build Rome in one day! LOL I’ve been on this low salt diet and all this stuff since October, and I’ve only lost 30 pounds, but got to get back on the wt. loss part harder, but I am doing well on the low salt diet though, keeping it between 500 mg and 750 or 800 mg (AHA recommends 1500 or less) so I’m doing good and the food is tasting good too.
HOY! I scored 653……and I thought things were calming down……..
I looked at the screen and started adding it up…..as if it calculated wrong! YIKES!
TB…..It’s good to see you girl! Remember to breathe.
EB anything over 300 is HIGH, and with what all you went through YIKES….there wasn’t a category on there for “kids are kidnapped by X” or “X stalking me” or “parents help X kidnap the kids”
So in reality I think your score is at least as high as mine and probably over 3,000 if you add it all up! Personally I think “kids being kidnapped” is worth more than 100 points—hey what is DEATH OF A SPOUSE compared to having your kids kidnapped by your drug dealing x while you have cancer and radiation? Nah, I think you’ve got a good solid 3,000—-and the treatment you need is to come south where there’s some heat and humidity and me and Katy will HOUSE SIT FOR YOU…..hee hee