by Quinn Pierce
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the process of learning from our mistakes. It sounds simple enough. After all, it’s easy to look in the rear-view mirror and see exactly where we went wrong. Events always look so clear and uncomplicated when looking at them from a safe distance.
So, with a little self-reflection, we can identify those decisions that led us into unsafe territory and vow never to make them again.
Complicated Choices
But, this is where I run into a problem. I know which experiences I do not want to repeat, but the choices I made that led to those experiences are not as black and white as the experiences themselves.
For example, I chose to love someone and trust them to love me back. The problems arose because I chose someone who was incapable of love or trust, but, at the same time, that person was very good at pretending he could. I had no prior experiences to tell me that such people existed. Essentially, I was trusting in the goodness most people are born with, unaware my soon-to-be husband either wasn’t born with it, or lost it somewhere along the way.
I think this is why recovery from a sociopath is such a complicated road. Most of us did not make choices that need to be avoided throughout life, in fact, just the opposite. Love and trust are essential components of healthy relationships; we just chose people who are innately incapable of healthy relationships. That’s the part of the experience that needs to be avoided in the future, but it’s not quite so easy to detach those things from each other.
Discovering and Accepting the Truth
Once I knew my husband’s emotions were all a matter of convenience for him, I was angry, confused, frustrated, and sad. It’s taken me a long time to actually accept this as fact. I constantly held out a glimmer of hope that he was capable of, at least, compassion and understanding. If not for me, I wanted to believe this for my sons’ sake. But, it isn’t so. And the sooner I could accept this, the sooner I could move past all those emotions that were keeping me stuck and unable to break free of the relationship completely.
Necessary Steps
This was the most difficult step for me. I just couldn’t believe, despite what I had experienced, that another human being was incapable of loving his children. At least, not the way I understand love to be. He may feel obligation and some type of responsibility, but it’s only as much as he has figured out that society requires from him in order for him to be regarded as a ”˜good father’. The reality is he sees them much more as objects that belong to him than the beautiful, loving, amazing boys that they are. And, again, that is reality, and pretending otherwise does not help any of us heal, it just prohibits any chance of moving forward.
Today, I’m much more aware of the dangers hiding within some people in this world. So much so that I wouldn’t even consider myself to be an overly cautious person, just more alert to the signs I now know to be the red flags of behaviors and personalities. I’ve also learned to trust my instincts and stand up for myself.
But as far as the choices I made so many years ago that led to a disastrous and regrettable relationship, I’m not so sure those are things I need to change. I would say, instead, that my healing requires that I continue to make those same choices again, but only with those who deserve such important parts of me.
If I were to never to love or trust anyone again because of my experience with a sociopath, that would be my most regrettable choice.
Thank you Quinn. It is important for us to understand what you pointed out – we didn’t really make a bad decision in becoming involved with these social predators. We were deceived. The sociopaths put on a wonderful facade, and we didn’t see the cracks – until it was too late.
Ms. Donna:
It is really hard not to blame myself for being involved with my Spath. It is hard to accept that I was “deceived” to such an extent.
When you advised me to have NC I didn’t think I was capable of doing it. Now that I have had NC for over a month, I am a totally different person. I laugh so much more, I feel so much better both mentally and physically, I spend more time with my boys. It has been a wonderful month and I so look forward to the rest of my life spath free.
I just simply think I will always hate him and never fully understand the why behind the man. I won’t ever trust the way I did before and right now don’t trust my heart at all.
Kataroux – You’ve already made great progress! It really hasn’t been that long since you dumped the guy. Give yourself more time – you may find yourself feeling better than ever!
Ms Donna, do you think they could ever change? At times I am wondering if he treats the new woman/girl/co worker the same or will he have his mask on at first? Someone mentioned to me that he probably treats her much better than he treated me. I do question this? I am glad for this website. Often I thought it was my fault that I was so abused and discarded but now learned that it was all him.
Hi Kaya,
I know you addressed your question to Donna, but I feel like I want to give you some support.
Seems like most of us have thes nagging questions in the back of our minds: Can he change? Is he treating the new target like a queen?
No. Yes, until he ruins her life too.
Meaning, he won’t change. Not unless he is ‘faking’ being a psychopath. But why would anyone fake being a horrible human being?
Yes, he is probably love-bombing, or otherwise seducing his new target. He has to, to secure his steady supply of control, attention, and goodies. But, in the end, however long he draws it out with her, she will meet the same fate you did.
These sorts do ‘learn’, sort of. They learn how to pretend better. So he may be pretending better with her, and that looks like she is being treated better. But, you see?, she isn’t….it is just pretend. Just for the fun of it.
You could be Christy Brinkley and the Queen of England rolled into one, and he would still run his game. It isn’t about us, EVER. It is about them, TOTALLY.
Quinn is right. We needn’t throw out our decision to love and trust. But it takes some serious willingness to see reality, and adjust our beliefs, about life, and about ourselves; so we can protect ourselves from giving our gems to the wrong sort.
Take good care Kaya,
Slim
Thank you slimone for this explanation. It helped me a lot to understand. No, he was not pretending to be a sociopath. My marriage counselor diagnosed him after 3 visits. She said she has never met such an extreme narcissist in her entire career. She was astonished by his lack of empathy, his coldness, his superiority and just his entire behavior. She had advised me to file for divorce 2 years ago before I even exposed him in his lies. I guess she was right all along. I will never forget one of her comments, she said he was so deceiving that he seemed very dangerous to her. Thanks again slimone.
I don’t “hate” the other woman anymore. In a way she took my place and saved my life 🙂
Kaya,
You were super fortunate to have such a knowledgeable and straight-talking therapist! Who knows how long you would have stayed if it hadn’t been for her honest assessment. Since so many people tell us to be more patient and kind, and try to work it out, and other such good advice- that doesn’t apply to relationshams with disordered persons; it’s great when someone give us the straight s***.
I had a good therapist too. She helped me see him for what he really was, and then work on me, so I didn’t allow another him into my life.
She helped me connect some of my own issues and false beliefs about myself, and life in general, to create a better me. More aware, less vulnerable, more resilient, and less likely to allow mistreatment.
I found it extremely painful to acknowledge the existance of these People of the Lie. It shattered the world view that I preferred: that everyone was deep down honest and only behaved badly because they wanted to be loved. Then I would jump in and try to love them out of their atrocious behavior.
It didn’t work. I repeated this pattern for most of my life.
It was also painful to realize, though I didn’t ask for or ‘attract’ bad people, I assigned them ‘normal’ intentions, time and time again. I just didn’t KNOW that truly bad, irremdeemable people existed. I didn’t know that by not being aware of this I was unwittingly staying in no-win situtations.
I have been ‘free and clear’ for about 6 years now. There isn’t really any residual pain left. Much of what I feel now is a great sense of relief and gratitude.
Slim
Thank you slimone . I am still seeing my therapist who helps me a lot to recover from the 20 years of abuse. It has been about 8 months since he left and yes, I am starting to feel “alive” again. It feels great not having to worry about all the lies and betrayals and being blamed for everything. My therapist along with a few true friends are the only ones who are supportive. Most other people don’t understand why there is no contact and find it “unbelievable” that my 19 year old son refuses to talk to him. “He still needs to talk to him because that’s his father,” we hear this all the time. I made the decision not to associate with those people anymore. They just have no idea what both my son and I were dealt with for the past 20 years. I am still proud of myself for enforcing the no contact. This is the only way we can move on past this nightmare.
Kaya,
I like your statement “I don’t hate the other woman anymore. In a a way she took my place and saved my life.” I am 3 1/2 years out since ending my marriage to my spath. I am making progress and just taking it a day at a time. I can’t tell you how much time I spent agonizing over “the other women”. I now know, because of this website, that his MO will always be the same. He will never have a healthy or successful relationship. He will definitely treat them wonderfully in the beginning, but as soon as he gets bored or they are no longer useful to him, they will be disregarded as well. I can definitely say that no contact has worked wonders. Unfortunately I had to break all contact with his 3 daughters and everyone at the church he goes to because they were all huge enablers for him and I had no chance of recovery if I continued in those relationships. They simply do not understand who they are dealing with. But I can say with a smile that things do get better. We all heal at our own pace, but healing is possible. I am still picking up the pieces and putting my life back together. It’s difficult at times and I still occasionally have a short crying spell, but I don’t beat myself up for it anymore. Like you said, she saved my life…literally. If not for the other women, I probably would still be in the relationship fighting for my life because I am very loyal and believe that when you truly love someone you don’t give up. Finding this website saved me and has been the reason I have come this far. I would much rather be where I am now, picking up the broken pieces than where I was with the big house, fancy cars and all the stuff that doesn’t really matter in the end. I was absolutely miserable, scared, physically ill and losing touch with any sense of reality in that relationship. You made the right choice. No he CANNOT change. Once you can truly realize that and not let your emotions confuse you about that fact, you will be on your way to a new life of peace and happiness. Good luck and many prayers going your way.
Thank you for your encouraging comments. For about a year I agonized over this “other woman”blaming her, hating her. But just like you said if it wasn’t for her he would have never left me and I sure wasn’t “brave” enough to leave him. Yes, my big house, all the money he made dropped down on my “important ” list. It does not hold value in my life anymore. What matters most is that I am not being a victim anymore. 20 years was enough. I am sure I will have done crying moments at times but I have not cried in about 5 months. What an improvement from crying daily when he was in my life. I don’t feel “guilty” anymore for not seeing his evil being. Because I tried so hard to see the good in him that I almost lost myself. I now realize that there was nothing good in him at all. Thank you all for your honest stories and the support.
Kaya, when I first started dating my ex-spath who was having an affair with me, his ex mother of his child wondered the same thing. I would read emails where she would ask him questions like Why do you love her more than me? And why didn’t you ever do this with me?
I had the opportunity to be “that other woman” (not proud but it happened) Im sure she was wondering your question of “Does he treat her better?” I can be the voice as the other woman and say that he did NOT treat me better!! Totally in the beginning he love bombed me and I got hooked. Then guess what?? He started treating me the EXACT same way he did to her in the end(her and I had a chance to have a conversation about him afterward to compare notes)
When he eventually started cheating on me I wondered the same thing of course..(they are even engaged and pregnant and she is 13 years his junior) But it didn’t take me long to not give a rip and believe that yes he WILL treat her the same way…
Do you ever selfishly hope that he does treat her badly? Just to justify? I did. I feel guilty about that because I don’t want another human being to go through what I went through. But you know you are healed when you truly don’t care and you are just glad he is FAR FAR away from you and your life(even if you do have kids)
Thank you so much for this valuable statement coming from the “other woman”. Yes my therapist said the same. He just is not capable of treating any woman good because he thinks he is “God”. All people close to him are just an “extension” of him. I don’t worry much about him and his affairs anymore. I used to, with time it does not matter to me anymore. I know he will never be happy even if she was a super sexy model. And yes he will cheat on her once she loses her status and he needs new “supply”. At the end he will be a lonely, old man. He became his own father who left the family because he wanted to be happy with younger women . He is on his 4thmarriage now and none of his adult children talk to him. I just hope this behavior does not carry over to my son.
To Kaya and others….
I, too, was the other woman and he the other man. And I, too, am not proud of this. I ended up divorcing my husband and staying with the sociopathic other for almost four years. He ended up divorced as well. What he ended up doing to his ex-wife by cheating with me, he ended up doing to me by cheating with his next victim…and coincidentally, he cheated on his next victim with me, unbeknownst to me. I found out that information almost a year later. So, as you can see, the cycle continues.
I suffered a great deal of pain through all of this, and I realize I also inflicted a great deal of pain on others when getting involved with the soc. But, all that is over now and I’ve learned to forgive myself. I have moved on and become much healthier emotionally as a result.
These guys don’t change. Like many of us, I had no experience with sociopaths in a relationship, so had no idea what hit me. But now I know. I’ve studied and I’ve learned. But even more importantly, I’ve worked hard on myself to become emotionally stronger and wiser.
Stay strong my friends. We’re here to help.
carolann
Quinn,
Thank you for posting this article.Many times I asked myself if I was just too trusting;too naive.You’re so right…beyond knowing the red flags and thus being careful who you trust and love,we did nothing wrong.I did my very best to be a good mother.I knew no matter ‘how high I jumped’ I wouldn’t ever make my husband happy,though I tried my best.
Thank you Quinn for your posting. One particular comment really hit the nail on the head for me and in fact, is something I use over and over again when I go thru a “how did I miss that?” stage:
“I had no prior experiences to tell me that such people existed”
That’s really the crux of the issue for all of us I think – no experience = no knowledge and if you don’t “know or know of” something, you can’t expect yourself to be able to see that something. It, in many ways (even though there are signs but the those signs are meaningless as well without knowledge), is invisible, until, as Donna says, it’s too late. What we must learn from this type of experience, the MOST important thing we can learn, is that there are “dangers hiding within some people in this world”. Unfortunately, the “some people” does not mean the deranged person walking down the street talking to him/herself (wouldn’t that be nice!) but instead, the “some people” look and act just like the rest of us. That’s the scary part!
Since my brief involvement with the sociopath in 2008, I feel much wiser. I now know that these people exist, and I know the signs. I avoided an entanglement with another long distance disordered person who was love bombing me on an internet site about 8 months after I left the spath. The lessons I learned from this site have helped me to spath-proof my life. Donna hit the nail on the head. We didn’t know. None of us knew. Now we know. It took about a year to start trusting again after my horrible experience. I really didn’t trust anyone. I finally started letting my guard down again, and it has brought me a lot of happiness. I don’t think you can be really happy in life if you are always guarded. But I’m continuously learning that people have to earn deeper levels of trust from me. Some deserve it – some don’t. Being too open and just putting my heart out there indiscriminately has caused me a lot of suffering in the past year. There is no better place to teach me this lesson than the salsa dancing scene.
Thank you for these honest comments, including the ones from the “other” women. It almost makes me feel sorry for his mistress/coworker /deputy/new girlfriend. I admit that I find “happiness” in knowing that she will also be lied to, cheated on, manipulated, yelled at, cussed at, disrespected and eventually discarded. My soon to be ex husband grew up with a sociopath father who discarded his wife after 25 years of marriage and left her with 5 children. He had no empathy and left her on their 25th wedding anniversary because she got too old, boring, fat and would not give him enough sex. I guess it should have been a “red flag” for me but I was so sure my husband wanted to be the opposite of his father. I learned otherwise about a year into our marriage. I tried so hard for 20 years. Now I realized he was exactly his father, even worse at times. Today my attorney called and the court proceedings for the divorce are moving forward. And for the first time I felt this happiness about this divorce. No fear, no being afraid of the future. I know I made the right decision when I filed. I am grateful for one thing that came out of this marriage, my beautiful smart, caring, loving son. He is 19 and he told me today “don’t worry mom, I will never be like him.” I accomplished my biggest goal in life and that was to make sure my son is not continuing this family tradition of evilness.
Today I found out through my lawyer why my soon to be ex and his lawyer claim that he is poor and has absolutely in money. He took the coworker/girlfriend on 2 cruises, hd pays everything for her, buys her lavish gifts. At the same time he accuses his son for not talking to him. He stopped paying his college tuition the day he left did this other woman almost 9 months ago. I am not even angry. Like my lawyer said no money in the world , no going on cruises can get him the live of his family back.
Quinn – you write so beautifully and with such truth, I feel like we are ‘sisters’ as many of us who feel like this site (thank you Donna A)has validated the craziness that we called our marriages or relationships
Your line ‘If I were to never to love or trust anyone again because of my experience with a sociopath, that would be my most regrettable choice” really touched my heart. I too was raised looking for the good in people and my 11 yr marriage to the Me-Monster made me realize in 1000 ways otherwise. Just the other day, I thought to myself, it has been over a year since I have felt rage or cried or felt despondent. It is not easy but once we get them out of our lives it is nothing short of miraculous how our body chemistry can change. I probably look 10 yrs younger and my eyes sparkle again.My friend said that when I was on the phone with her my voice was even ‘lighter’.
I would love to meet so many of you. Share a bottle of wine and enjoy we are with others who get it. Many of our friends and family don’t know the hell we have lived with and in a way that is a blessing. You go to a very dark place when trying to understand it and/or explain it. And I really don’t want to. This is the only place I put time into recalling my ‘life lessons’. Thank you all for being brave enough to share and to love yourselves through the healing. Blessings,
D.