By Ox Drover
Many of us here remember the pain of laboring in childbirth; we thought it was so painful we couldn’t endure any more without dying. Yet, even in that all-encompassing pain that wracked our bodies and our minds, in the back of our minds we knew we were giving birth to a New Life, and we were hopeful. We knew, too, that though we were giving birth to New Life, that it would not be an independent soul. We knew that New Life would require our tender nurturing to help it grow for many years.
I see our pain in recovering from the devastation of our experiences with a psychopath in a similar light to the pain of labor and childbirth, and caring for that New Life. I see that we are giving birth to a New Life, but this time, the New Life is within us, not separate from us.
Just as we had to labor with giving birth to our child, and just as that child was not capable at birth of caring for itself, we have the pain of the labor, and after the labor is over, even though we are still sore, we must nurture and care for New Life, which at first needs our total attention.
As the New Life, so fragile and delicate at first, requires us to completely care for her, and sometimes cries in a colic of her own that we don’t know how to comfort, nevertheless, we must continue to care for that infant New Life within ourselves. We must nurture this New Life and teach her as she grows to care for herself, to watch out for her own safety. In the mean time, we must watch out for the safety of New Life, keeping it away from the psychopath with No Contact. Even if she cries for contact, we must protect her from herself and her desires for things that are not good for her.
We must nurture and feed the New Life, and reassure her that she will grow and accomplish the things that she would like to do. So she can learn to walk upright in dignity and self-esteem, we teach her that when she falls and bumps her knee, she can still get up. We must teach her how to set boundaries and require respectful treatment from those around her. We also teach her how to love and trust others, but with reasonable caution about whom to love and trust. We must teach New Life not to trust blindly, because there are those in this world who will try to use and abuse her, but in spite of that, there are those who will love her tenderly. New Life must learn to spot the red flags of abuse and to avoid them, even in those people that she loves.
Teaching New Life so many things that she needs to know to keep herself safe from danger, and yet experience the wondrous joy of this world, will require much of our time for a while. Because at first New Life is so fragile, so inclined to hurt herself by approaching danger, we must monitor her continually, but as New Life continues to grow stronger and wiser each day, she accomplishes new heights in learning and growth.
New Life moves from anger and fear into reasonable trust and caution. New Life learns to smile and then to laugh and experience joy. New Life learns to love with total abandon, but not to let go of her healthy boundaries. New Life learns that she is worthy of love and respect. New Life learns discrimination and learns to reject those that would hurt her from within her circle of trust.
Then one day we realize that New Life, within us, is us. We learn that the fragile creature of New Life becomes out life! Becomes us. We are free from the pain and the trauma of the old us and have become the New Us, the wiser, the stronger, with confidence in ourselves to keep ourselves safe, and pointed to the future with a New Life.
Thank you again Kindheart for your words that really hit the spot. I have the book, Betrayal Bond but haven’t read much in it yet, but will have to get it out.
You are so right that we can’t wrap a sane mind around a twisted one. I keep trying but am realizing it just cannot be possible.
Part of me, until recently, kept viewing him as the person I thought he was rather than what his deeds have shown him to really be. These deeds are what I must keep in the forefront of my mind to move entirely on without him. Normal people not bambuzzled by the sociopath would know immediately, Hey you can’t treat someone like this. (well, by normal I mean someone not in a relationship with one of these persons) But as I gain distance from him this is becoming clearer, Hey you can’t treat someone like this! And that includes me. Got to keep that distance to gain reality about him and the relationship with him.
Isn’t it something like you said, we’re the ones suffering and ill and sleepless while they haven’t a concern in the world. But I guess it is because we care.
I appreciate your encouragement to keep posting and “get all the crap out”. Thanks for listening.
Oxy,
Wanted to thank you for your wonderful article!
I haven’t been posting for a couple weeks as I’ve been focusing on learning to “take care of my New Life, that true self that began to emerge when I posted at LF (http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2009/03/04/letters-to-lovefraud-she-turned-into-a-snarling-spitting-monster/).
Divorce, followed by having my life entirely disrupted by an n/p (even in a non-romantic context) was shattering, but I’ve learned that getting over someone else was actually easier than getting over myself, because that involves absolutely fearlessly facing who and where I am. That meant letting go of all those comforting assumptions and long-held beliefs. It meant waking up and discovering my own truths.
You guys as a group, and especially in posting and threads like this one, have helped me face the things in my life that made me a good victim for creatures like sociopaths and narcissists. These things, learned in the home of my alcoholic father and reinforced in two abusive marriages, also kept me frozen and unhappy, emotionally dependent, and attracted to emotionally distant people.
I’m at the point that Oxy has written about so well: I’m learning to care for and treasure myself, this bit of life that has been given into my care. It is amazing to focus on positives, like honesty, creativity, passion, humor, and being present in this n/p-free moment! I can’t find the words to express adequately what this place has come to mean to me, or the peace that has come into my life because of it.
Thank you again for the article, Oxy, and thank you everyone at LF for making this a place to heal.
Lots of Love,
Betty
Dear Betty,
I am going to print off your above post and put it on my refrigerator as a reminder of just how wonderful the people on this blog are, and how we are all on the journey together, holding hands and encouraging each other.
You write so eloquently about how you are doing and I am so happy for you that you are nurturing that NEW LIFE inside yourself. I realize too that the “NEW” life in there has ALWAYS been there but I have neglected her and she hasn’t grown, but she was always there, waiting to be nurtured so she could grow and learn. That wonderful spark of love and wonder that is inside each of us that deserves to be loved and cared for.
So glad you are here, Betty!!! And thank you for the compliment on this article. Love, Oxy
kindheart48:
It’s not just you — I still wonder why he felt the need to cheat on me with other guys. Not only cheat, but to do it so publicly that he knew I would find out. Then, irony of ironies, he would deny it and claim the friends who told me what he was up to were lying. Hell, I caught him IN THE ACT at a friend’s party and he still lied. And, stupid me, bought it.
Like you, I don’t really think about my previous bfs and whom they are with. I think it has something to do with the quality of our relationships. They were normal, loving HONEST relationships. And then, for whatever reasons, the relationships fell apart and the love died. While I was hurt at the time the relationships ended, I had good memories to look back on, and no reason to doubt the HONESTY in the relationship.
Not so with the S. I now realize that I never TRUSTED him — right from the get-go my gut was telling me that. I ignored a whole parade of waving red flags and kept getting in deeper and deeper and going further and further into denial.
Problem is, on some level we never can completely deny what we know, deep down, what they are — lying, deceitful, manipulative, thieving, abusive, etc. Then we get honest with ourselves and say BASTA!
So, we find ourselves sitting there, with completely distorted senses or reality and selves courtesy of their lying, manipulation and abuse. And because we are feeling people we keep obsessing about them and their new victims to see if maybe it really is us and they really are the wonderful person we thought them to be.
Of course, it isn’t us. But, the dissonance between our rational and emotional states is really severe by the time a sociopath gets done with you.
Matt,
I have so enjoyed your sensitivity and encouragement, as well as your ability to articulate your experience. The dissonance “between our rational and emotional states is really severe by the time a sociopath gets done with you”, or I should say “by the time I got done with him”, resonated deep within me. Your whole last blog was like having you read my mail. It’s so nice to know that what I felt all of these years was reality and that I was not distorting the truth. He still has friends in high places, and I’ve thought at times I must be crazy, because, surely if there was a problem, they must have sensed it, thereby making ME the crazy one. The most healthy thing I can do for myself is move forward with my life. I am struggling with what to tell my grown children, or if I should just leave it alone. Wisdom says to let go and let this evolve in its own time and way.
Dear Housie,
“I am struggling with what to tell my grown children, or if I should just leave it alone.”
I hae a darling little friend, who left her psychopath after nearly 50 years. He bankrupted her, swore revenge, etc. and 3 of her 4 children have nothing to do with her because he smeared her so terribly (actually, I think at least 3 of her children are like their father!) but in any case this lady is living her life in a town far away from all her family and her x even turned her sisters against her.
During the marriage she was physically assaulted on a regular basis but she hid this from her kids the entire time. It was only when he almost killed her that she finally was able to leave him. Her health is horrible and she is rapidly approaching the time when she will not be able to live alone any longer (I am not sure it is not already here as she is frequently falling and breaking bones and is at home right now with a broken hip) This wonderful, Christian woman, endured decades of abuse and her family is not supportive at all. Only one of her children even calls her on a regular basis here recently. It makes my heart cry that such a good person with such a good heart has suffered so much and her children have not supported her at all. It is tearing her heart up I am sure.
Her family is convinced that SHE is the “crazy” one because of her X’s smear campaign of lies—accusing her (the victim) of the very things HE is guilty of. How disenheartening to have her entire family turned against her…I fortunately, recovered a relationship with my one son who was distanced from me by his P-wife (now X wife) but not everyone is able to. sometimes we have to accept that the P’s smear campaign will alienate our nearest and dearest. I wish I had an answer for you, but I don’t. You will just have to decide based on your intuition and what kind of people your children are. Good luck and God bless.
housie:
Thank you. After the S’s convincig me that I was a stupid, insensitive, illiterate clod, it is nice to hear that I’m not.
Regarding what to tell your grown children, I have a hunch you know which of your children probably suspected what your S was doing to you. If I were a kid in that position, I would probably welcome having my experience validated. As for the kids who completely shut out the reality or let the S warp their reality, I don’t think you’ll ever accomplish anything telling them what really happened. They won’t accept it.
I was watching WE 20/20 last week and it had an episode about Stephen Fagan. If ever there was a sociopathic conman on this planet, it is him. Anyhow, he kidnapped his 2 kids 20 years earlier, changed his and the kids identity, told the kids their mother was dead, and moved down to Florida. Down there he married a very successful woman who is a Palm Beach multi-millionaire.
After 20 years the children’s mother tracked them down. The judge in Massachusetts, where the kidnapping took place, essentially gave this piece of work a slap on the wrist.
And the 2 daughters? They blame the mother for the father having to go to trial. They claim she could have found them earlier if she wanted to. These 2 little rocket scientists seem to deny the fact that HELLO – their identities were changed, and it’s only fairly recently that you can actually track people down via the internet.
My point is — their reality has been so warped by their father that they can’t accept or acknowledge what the reality of the situation really is. Only you can decide what, if anything, particular children of your’s can or will accept.
Dear Matt,
I hadn’t seen the recent telecast about that one, but isn’t that a WARPED situation? Kidnap your kids (or, I guess, anyone else) and if you don’t get caught for 20 years, it’s okay? I didn’t realize there was a statute of limitations on kidnapping. TWISTED. But they have been told from childhood that their mother didn’t care about them…she is the “outsider” and they rallied to their “parent’s” defense….I guess you have seen enough in court though to not be too shocked by it all.
Maybe you should have posted this one on the “psychopaths get out of jail quicker than normal people” thread! LOL
Kindheart and Matt,
Thanks for the thoughts, and I’m sory for your ongoing pain.
My therapist reminds me the powerful pain and anguish we suffer as a result from the deception of love from the S’s is like that of an addict trying to recover from any substance addiciton that is no longer there. They, the S become our addiciton, they made us feel so good, so loved, so needed, so beautiful, so validated….they took up sooooo much of our energy, when they leave us we are left with the void of time, space, energy and money. We are the same as an addict not having a fix. It’s just like any substance addiction, it changes the chemistry in your brain so much, that is why it’s sooo difficult to get over them. When you break the NC rule, it’s like an alcoholic going into a bar just to have 1 sip of a drink and try to walk away. I think of my S this way and my challange is to break the addiciton.
I did not leave my X-husband for the S. Our marriage fizzled out from frost bite, non emotional availability, and it was a mutual, amical parting. I met S a few years later and he swept me off my feet….he was passionate, charming, suave, took a tremendous amount of interest in me and gave me all the attention I never got from my X hubby…. At the beginning of course. Once he had me hooked it all changed.
I doubted his cancer for a long time, and still do at times since I know that the simpathy card is part of their mo…but at one point he sent me a copy of the doctors pathology report and I had a RN friend confirm it. He is a consumate narcissist in that he is now milking every one …all the women he comes in contact with for simpathy, attention and adoration. How do I know all this? because unfortunatly we travel in the same circle of the ball room dancing community in our town. and since the ballroom dance community is very small, I see him and hear about his exploits through the common people we know. I’ve avoided the scene on and off for a while, but I dont want to stop doing something I love because of him, this is giving him too much power….and this makes it so much more difficult to get over.
Keep fighting the addiction!
Hi everyone,
I was trying to take a break from my computer because there are so many minor traumas occurring though emails and websites I belong to that I needed a break. However, this is a safe and healing place so I braved all the anxieties and made my way here for a short time this evening.
I am currently reading “The Betrayal Bond”. I would like to encourage everyone here to read this book. It explains why it’s so hard to leave people who abuse us and why we got in those relationships in the first place. I realized immediately the pattern my sociopath tried to drag me into (which I did for a short while). The pattern of betrayal and then the “love bomb” where he tried to draw me back in. For example after the “no show, no call”, 3 days he started being nice and trying to get back with me again. I’m so glad I broke this pattern after the second “no show” and walked away. The book even used the phrase….”going back even when the person has gone too far” (or something like that). My ex used that exact phrase, “I know I went too far.” I believe now he was testing me to see if I would stay with him even through his betrayal. I thought he was breaking up with me by doing that. Now I realize he was trying to get control over me by betraying me and then being nice to me again. In a way, he was trying to break me. It didn’t work, thank God! I guess I wasn’t that desperate for love, which is a small consolation considering the pain I’ve been going through. When you keep going back to someone who hurts you repeatedly like this, it is a betrayal bond, also known as a trauma bond.
But there were other, more disturbing things I read in this book. Often people who have betrayal (trauma) bonds also have other compulsions and addictions. I don’t really have any addictions to substances but I can get addicted to the internet. But one particular compulsion jumped out at me: COMPULSIVE SELF-SUFFICIENCY. Bingo! This is it for me. Another thing mentioned was chronically being underemployed and neglecting my own needs (though I’ve gotten much better at taking care of myself). With few or no people in my life that I can call real friends, I’m thinking about trying to join a low-cost support group for people recovering from abuse. I hate that I am in this position at 48 years old.