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.
God bless you all.
..and yes, I can understand the TOTAL “no contact” rule..that unless you keep with NC totally, he can still “rent” your mind.., and that looking to what he “still does” can keep you in a downward spiral. I know that. I found out, on line, that he had joined a pipe smoking club. I have a feeling that he did so so that he might use it as an excuse, to his THIRD wife, when he wants to PRETEND to have a “boys night out” .. when, actually, he might be having another kind of “boys night out” with DL boys, behind his wife’s back. But it does NO GOOD to ruminate on the “WHAT IFs” .. It is HER problem now, not mine. She will find out in time, the truth about him. He cannot hide it forever.
I also think that part of his daughter’s after-the-fact (seemingly “sudden” change in attitude..hatred???) toward me, after he left, was probably because, all along, she may have harbored a juvenile thought that her mother and he could have gotten back together, after his time with me. Very possibly, she was very shocked, to find out he had a new female victim after me. Perhaps that finally opened her eyes to his SPATHDOM.
Chelsea,
You just have to realize, have CONFIDENCE that you DID GOOD in helping to rear, raise or mentor that girl, and you probably set a BETTER example for her than the SPATH did as a parent, and possibly and even BETTER one than her own mother…even more so if both of the biological parents were using her as a PAWN or go-between in your relationship. That is what I finally realized. Chin up.
Yours truly, Zim
Chelsea,
I also developed a new network since him, plus deepened friendships that remained, after he left, for example, with the wife of a male friend of mine, who not only is a biological mother but also adopted a child after her first biological child. She fed forwarded kudos to me, told me that often, it is the kindest of all mothers, for someone not a biological parent, to give of herself the way I did, and a rare gift to be able to do that.
Zim
Donna’s right on the money. I’d like to echo what she says about taking care of ourselves physically and expand on the diet aspect of recovery.
In recovery from a FEMALE spath who seriously compromised my emotional and physical health over the years, I discovered I’ve been suffering from adrenal exhaustion, or non-Addison’s hypoadrenia. The shock of discovering her treachery, combined with the slow unraveling of her true activities while we were together, took a severe toll on my kidneys, liver, lungs, spleen, pancreas and, of course — heart. I was hospitalized and on anti-depressants all winter.
As our bodies go, so go our thoughts, so I knew that in order to give myself the best chance of healing, I had to embark on a total health-giving regimen, starting with an overhaul of my diet.
A book I recommend as a starting point is, “Adrenal Fatigue — The 21st Century Stress Syndrome” by James L Wilson, ND, DC, PhD.
In my case, I was risking type II diabetes by self-medicating with pastas and sweets, which only made my health — and my moods — worse. By switching to meat, eggs and fish, and totally eliminating starches and sweets, I felt an immediate shift in my mood. I sleep better, have more energy, and I’ve lost the tire I gained even as I lost weight.
The adrenals take a long time to recover from exhaustion: 6 months to a year or more. But if you’re like me, and have been a multiple-victim, you probably are suffering from adrenal fatigue and should look into it. Good luck —
Yes, Louise..it did hurt..terribly. When I think about all those years, throwing birthday occasions for her (which included her grandmother..the spath’s mother..and photos of the spath’s daughter obviously show her smiling and enjoying herself), and I think about how I was the one who attended her first violin recital (when, if I recall correctly, her own mother did not even show up for that one), ..I think about the beach trips we took together as a family.., I think about how my own father gifted her with presents at Xmas..when she came to his home.., I think about how she dined at my family’s expense, at his 80th B-day celeb with my biological family (another beach trip for her).., and I think about how I often doted on her..never denied her friends sleepovers at our home..(I even lent my fish net stockings to one of her friends, which I never got back), I feel sickened, still..and it has been more than a decade since the fall out. So, yes, he tormented my soul. Thank you for the hug, Louise.
I even took his teen son to get his driver’s license because, apparently, neither of his biological parents “had time” to do so. He adopted that son of his second wife. She had him out of wedlock. I think the boy was around age 2 when my ex spath began his relationship with her, so I think he glommed on to the next vulnerable woman, back then, too. I sometimes wonder if he did not sexually molest the boy. Whenever his adopted son came to my home to visit, he always had this dole look on his face, like he was angry, and only once or twice, in all those years, did the son ever give his father an Xmas present. My ex, BTW, told me early on, that his gay male cousin had oral sex with him when he was age 12 and his cousin was around age 15. So, of course, I worry if my ex is around any more children, given that often, males who were sexually molested later “re-offend”, to molest others.
zimzoomit-
I feel I am reliving your past. My BF was married to crazy. We have his 15 year old in our home who is now under the influance of her mother and I am watching her spin into a very toxic and unrealistic fantasy of what life her mother will provide for her. It is bad for her and bad for our family yet I am torn between working to help and risk being stabbed in the back or just letting her go and spiral into a world with no hope or future. How to do cut your losses when a childs future is on the line?
Zim:
You are welcome. You really did a lot for that girl. Sad. Why does it seem that the ones who give the most get the least? Life is always like that.
You know…I often wondered if my X spath was molested when he was young. Too long to go into, but there were just subtle things that made me wonder that. And some not so subtle.