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.
SK –
Let me know if you get an answer that works for you on that question –
I do think there is a form of attachment for them – just not an emotional or affectionate attachment.
Mine is also still cyberstalking me – it’s been 16 months since I walked out on him.
I don’t get it – I really really don’t. I think it’s their way of seeing if they are still effecting us in ANY way – it’s their way of making sure that somehow someway they are still in our lives, even it’s not right next to them in bed anymore.
They feed on the ego part of it – does that make sense?
To me – it’s pathetic. I mean really – like he doesn’t have anything better to do than go online and see what I’ve been up to since I moved on with my life?
Superkid,
it’s natural for human beings to desire attention from other humans, since we are social creatures. It comes from needing attention as infants because infants are so helpless and dependant and without attention, they die easily. The emotions of this dependant state, never go away but we build other structures in our awareness, so that we don’t feel as needy and dependant on others. The spaths never actually build any different structures. They stay emotionally infantile and demanding. They seek people who willingly give and give and give, so that they can take and take and take.
But one thing they do is lovebomb us, in order to prime our own need for attention. By giving us a lot of attention, and a lot of drama, our hormones respond with adrenalin and dopamine. Then they withdraw the lovebomb and attention so that we go into withdrawal from those hormones. On the surface, it seems that we need the spath. But in fact we just feel the need for those hormones.
They are masters of this behavior because they are adrenalin and attention junkies themselves.
Sky
Thank you.
I understand what you are saying, the “infant” in them – they want to see cause & effect. It makes them feel powerful.
I get that.
So he’s not just sad that I’m gone because he loved me, he’s sad that I’m gone because he liked to TOY with me.
I really wonder HOW planful they are: the lovebombing, the withdrawl, the witholding of sex. They’re so selfish, I wonder if they’re doing it for their own internal reasons (which I can’t understand) or if they are actually understanding that they push our buttons & anticipate the response.
Thanks for being there. Today is a tough day.
SK
SK – With spath it’s ME ME ME. It is always about THEM.
Spaths cannot love, it’s not in their make-up. They can feel rejection and hate it when they are ignored.
Yes, they are selfish because the only person they care about is THEM and how their needs are going to be met.
They want a response so that they can feel alive. Like a junkie needs a fix. Spath craves his/her fix in the form of attention/drama.
That coffee pot/cat story is hilarious and so true! I was actually going to ask how your Spath treated animals because one clue I should have taken was the way mine responded so indifferently to the most cutest possible animals. The kind we all see and go “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” in unison, he would just shrug or whatever. He might say “aaaaaaah” too, but not in the way that we feel it; it was contrived.
Come to think of it, he was not blown away (moved by) by much of anything (sunsets, acts of kindness, nature, babies, etc). I knew I did not move him, but I tried and tried… because I did at first, during the love bombing, but I never truly moved him after all… But I moved me! And it certainly did not diminish all that i was moved by out there while with him. Can you imagine seeing a brilliant sunset or having the most loving cat or dog sit on your chest, nuzzle into your face and not be one bit moved by this? We suffer “momentarily” considering how much they truly suffer living an apathetic life, missing out on the love that make us human. I say this not to pardon them or to diminish our own suffering at this betrayal, but because it is so hard to fathom that they cheat and hurt themselves as much as they do any other living being (irony being they are clueless to it, naturally…)
Bodhi,
some spaths are more narcissistic than psychopathic. These do not hide how shallow they are because they think it makes them superior.
The really scary spath is like my exP who hid his evil CONSTANTLY. He pretended to love animals, but now I know that he beat our dog. He pretended to love the cats so much and he put my cat on his computer desktop so that women would see it and think he was a such a kindhearted kind of guy. He spent all of his time polishing his facade and took great pleasure in using it. It was this constant, over the top, love of animals that kept me confused and believing that he was a good person who loved me. It never occurred to me that anyone could lie so much, for so long and so consistently. He showed tears and emotion when it served his purposes. He was truly dr. jeckyll and mr. hyde. and mr. smith and mr. jones and “steve” and “jerry” too. This guy had so many personalities, it would make sybil’s head spin.
And yes, they know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing it too long to be unaware of it.
Bodhi –
You know, I think that’s when it really started hitting me about my spath – like you just mentioned…. not noticing or appreciating the sunrises, sunsets, pretty clouds, the scenary, the view, nature and cute stuff in general.
he did make a comment to my then 15 year old dog as I was packing about how she outlasted him. He had wondered time & time again out loud whether she was going to outlive our marriage as old as she is.
that would be a “yep”
My PX’s both loved animals. My second P was very good to all the animals I brought in and my being an animals rescuer, there were many. All three of my kids that show many selfish characteristics, are major animal lovers. In fact, they would far more likely take an sick or injured animal to a vet than they would me to a doctor.
Hi Skylar and Light,
Light: It’s subtle isn’t it? Subtle, but then “oh my god!” I’m relieved to hear that you and your amazing dog were able to leave him, “outlast” and hopefully thrive without him! Big yep is right. Mine did a lot of that “out loud” bs too. Just to create fear/play with me.
And yes, Skylar, I recall how good my spath was at first overdramatizing how he loved animals, all living beings, etc. He actually does healing work–reiki, hands-on, spiritual counseling, etc, –which is really f’ing scary considering how convincing he could be in his “love” of all beings. He polished this quite convincingly. It was his over the top love and performance love of all beings that confused me too. It also made it convenient for him (and for me, frankly) to pardon his cruelty to me by rationalizing: It must be me after all since he loves everyone else so much, etc.” I never deep down believed that, but it was easy to slide into that thinking to keep him.
I am so sorry that he did that to your animals, so very sorry. Truly heartbreaking. (My mom beat our dog growing up and part of me freaked out and silently rebelled, but the part of me that loved Ma, that thought she was right, that had been love bombed and discarded by her, had no choice but to love her regardless; no wonder I fell for a spath, huh?) I can’t even imagine how cruel and awful. I will never stop shuddering at the fact that this is “normal” to them. Thank you for telling me your experiences! B
Animals…no empathy there.
Spath was cruel although at the time, in my presence, he appeared to be kind.
Towards the end of the relationshit I found out he was faking. He told me he’d fed the dogs – looking back I do not think he did. He never gave them water, he shouted at them.
BUT the biggest ‘tell’ was that he broke a bone in his foot a few years ago. When I asked him how that had happened he said he kicked the radiator when aiming for the his dog!
It sickened me. He made a fuss of the cat but then one day he said ‘if ever you are being burgled throw the cat – have you ever seen the claws on a cat when it’s thrown’. I remember thinking what a strange thing to say and I expressed my displeasure at such a horrid thought. Again I believe it was a ‘tell’.
Spaths have no REAL feelings for animals in my experience.