I am not sure why I am still shocked when people choose to blame the psychopath’s victim. I have heard that this is normal from others who have suffered from an encounter with psychopath, but I still get a bit shocked each time it happens to me. From friends, to family, to the courts, to complete strangers — people seem to want to find something wrong with me to somehow better explain to themselves how I ended up being fooled by my psychopath ex. It has been happening so long that sometimes I find myself wondering there is something wrong with me that made me ignore the red flags and believe the completely fantastic story he was telling me.
The Judgements:
This week alone, I have experienced both friends and family trying to psycho analyze me and question how I ended up with such a monster as the father of my son. I am not sure how to respond to people when they ask me absurd questions or decide that it was somehow my fault that I ended up being conned by Luc. Here are some of the things I have heard over the past year (the first two were said just this week):
1) “CQ, really”¦how did this happen? What were you thinking? I mean, please don’t feel as if I am blaming you”¦but how did you not see this coming?” – An old friend
2) ”I know what happened”¦.I think CQ must like to be controlled by an abusive man.” – A family member (behind my back)
3) ”Let’s be honest”¦you wanted a bad boy”¦so you are now getting what you asked for and deserve. My daughter, who is your age, would never be in this situation because she doesn’t like bad boys. She is marrying a man who wears suits and collared shirts.” – My Lawyer
4) ”You are not without fault here CQ, what you saw in this man”¦well, it must have been fairy dust”¦and now the fairy dust has disappeared and you are going to have to deal with him for at least the next 18 years.” – The Judge in our Custody War
5) ”You didn’t have a problem with him touching you, so you shouldn’t be so bothered that he is now touching your son.”
– Family member
My Reality:
The hardest thing for people to understand, it seems, is how a person can be conned by someone who is so clearly dysfunctional. My response to that is, “when a person’s full time job is to learn everything about you — your hopes, dreams, weaknesses — in order to exploit and con you — you will likely end up conned.” I have used the analogy before of the frog and the boiling water and in this case I can’t think of another analogy that would prove my point any better. Psychopaths control the boiling water. They know that if they threw their victims into a pot of boiling water, most people would jump right out screaming and cursing at them. Instead, they slowly bring the water to boil with the intension of burning their victims alive.
Every time I walk into court, I feel like I am holding my heart inside of my chest with my bear hands. This process, this war, with Luc has torn me apart from the inside out. Luc’s boiling water effectively ripped me apart, but sometimes I feel as if the judgement and misunderstanding I receive from those I love (and society at large) is worse. I went from being a beautiful, self confident, intelligent, and successful woman — to a victim of a completely misunderstood abuse. Luc burned me alive, but society continues to blame me as if I willingly jumped into a burning fire along side satan.
The Future:
I want my son to know his mama as the woman I was — but wiser. I dread the day when my son might join society and make judgements about what happened with his father. Will he understand how his father used my kindness against me? Will he understand why I tried to hold the relationship together even when it seemed clear to the rest of the world that it was a hopeless situation? Will he understand why I fought so hard to protect him from a man I once trusted?
It’s easy to think about all the horrible things Luc is and ignore the things that attracted me to this man. While many of the things that attracted me to Luc were not real (most of them were completely fake actually), there are good qualities in Luc. (Yes, you read that correctly) Despite the fact that my family refuses to see anything of Luc in baby boy, this is not the stance I will take as baby boy’s mother. Luc wasn’t born evil — he made choices. He took his talents and used them for evil. For example, being charming is not a bad thing if you don’t use it to manipulate and control others. Being a good actor isn’t a bad thing as long as you use it on stage to entertain instead of to lie and cheat.
I love baby boy for everything that he is and that means that I accept the fact that he is the product of what now feels like a violent emotional rape. I refuse to make my son feel bad for carrying half of the psychopath’s genes and I also refuse to lie to him. So while I kick myself every day for not paying attention to the now obvious red flags of Luc’s psychopathy, and I suffer through the constant judgements I receive from others, I would do it all over again for baby boy. I didn’t choose what Luc really is — but I will choose baby boy every day for the rest of my life.
Eralyn and Kim,
I understand. I didn’t know that I was being abused either. We had verbal fights and that didn’t seem strange to me because that is also what I had at home with my parents. And they fought verbally with each other. At least my spath didn’t hit me like my parents had. Further, my parents never spoke lovingly toward me, but spath did.
Instead, spath went into covert abuse, poisoning, gas lighting, and slandering me. Financially devastating me while eliciting pity for himself.
So we had 2 things against us. We didn’t know what abuse looked like and the spaths were extremely covert about the things that we WOULD have recognized.
I think that this is where their testing comes in. They test to see where our boundaries are. Then they abuse overtly JUST to that boundary. The rest of the abuse goes on also, but it’s hidden.
Perhaps the best strategy is not to show any boundaries and let them show their true colors. I don’t know. Spath showed his true colors the first time I left him but he came begging me for another chance and I gave it to him.
That’s the biggest mistake and one I will never make again: second chances.
Skylar,
I had no boundaries or barely any. It nearly got me killed. The grand finale consisted of 4 cop cars an ambulence and a paramedic although it seemed like an overreaction to me.
Here’s how good spaths are: He’s in the home I own! They are taking me away as something snapped in him and he knew I could die and as he was stating “I’m going away for a while” (I think it was the amount of blood) Then he comes up with a story (I am incoherent and wishing I would just bleed to death already) his story was I was attempting suicide and he was fighting me to stop me!! HUH?! He was yelling “she couldn’t take it anymore. It was the drugs”. HUH?? So they drug tested me. (clean) There’s their first clue they had the WRONG damned person. They left him in MY HOME!!! He was good enough to call my counselor from the back room and when he asked if he beat me, spath1 said “YES” because the police would only hear “yes”. He also wrote a letter that was very incriminating which I still have today.
Thank God my counselor is who he is. He came to the ER. He explained to them what happened. I have to say there were some seriously cruel people there who thought I was a repeat in their ER!! I thought “this was so degrading, if I had tried to kill myself, I would make sure to do it correctly just to avoid their disrespectful treatment!”
My counselor told me the story the police heard. I went to the police two days later with 30ish stitches, black and blue all over and they said “it’s a he said, she said and we don’t know that you didn’t do all that to yourself!” This was back in 1996 so they’ve singin’ that tune since then. I am so sick of paying for crazy women I could throw up.
wow Eralyn,
This is why we need to document, document, document everything. Spaths are such great liars. Presentation is everything.
I wonder if you could sue the police for failing to protect you. The moment they said “we don’t know that you didn’t do all that to yourself”, they fail to protect you.
Skylar,
They have failed and failed and failed until I could no longer deny the descrimination. They wouldn’t do anything when the order of protection was violated. There was always an excuse. It got so ridiculous that I actually was checking prices to have a human (man) sit at my residence in a body guard position and he could hold down the abuser until the police came and then testify to what he witnessed. I probably should have gone that route as we never believe the money is worth spending. After all is said and done, that would have been less expensive than what came in the future……………….
This (Lovefraud) sure is a nice place. As I’m reading over the past few comments, I’m thinking… I sure wish there had been something like this back when I was going to the domestic violence support group. It was VERY HARD for me to FORCE myself to go to the group, and then I ended up feeling like the physical abuse I endured was nothing compared to the women who had the broken bones, stitches, bruises… and honestly in a small town, it was not anonymous which was one of the things that would have been helpful. I’m not saying it wasn’t helpful, but Lovefraud is waaaaay better. I know the “purpose” here is not specifically to deal with “abuse” but rather “sociopaths who perpetrate Lovefraud.”
But this is a supportive, gentle, encouraging place and I appreciate all of you. No one here compares notes on whose abuse was worse. That sounds like a simple thing, but truly everyone here is incredibly validating. Thank you.
And one thing I have found over the years (it has been about 14 years now since I left my abusive ex-spath husband) is that there are layers of abuse, layers of recovery. I have spent YEARS now going over and over this, sometimes feeling like I’m spinning my wheels (a plateau?) before I pierce through another layer, getting deeper to the core. I have come a long way in my understanding, and I know I’m not done yet.
It is just so complicated! And, speaking to the topic of this particular essay… it hurts real bad when people blame you or don’t believe you! Or minimize what you’ve gone through or try to explain it away. Now, I always just say, “well Bless You that you have never gone through something like this, I realize it is not possible to understand if you have not experienced it yourself.”
I also recall, over the years, random meetings (I’m thinking of your “gray rock” guy, Skylar) at various random places (bars, waiting in line, wherever you might strike up a conversation with a stranger) where all we do is exchange a glance, a few words, or sometimes even a light pat on the arm — these are the knowing and comforting gestures from someone who HAS been there. This is true compassion.
Yes, Eralyn, I’m sick of the “it’s a he said, she said” comments.
Yes, Skylar, I know what it is (as you put it well) to not realize you are being abused. In my case, no one else realized it, either. They thought my husband was a nice guy. They had never seen his “other” side, the one he reserved for me (and, now that they are older, the kids).
I had another fantasy this morning while driving to work. In this one, I was “shopping” for a therapist, but I was interrogating beforehand with some very pointed questions:
1. what do you believe is the healthy response if a person is married to someone with a personality disorder (this person lies, manipulates, gaslights, appears to take sadistic pleasure in messing with their spouse by keeping them off balance, and maligns their spouse’s reputation by spreading lies to the community and family members)? Do you see your role as trying to facilitate a healthy relationship between these two people? How would you do this?
2. what kind of relationship would you try to encourage, in the case of teenage children who have a sociopathic (lying, manipulative, controlling, sudden rage-attacking, blame-shifting) father (parents divorced), the kids want nothing to do with him? Would you try to help the kids and their father reconcile?
3. what position do you advise the mother to take, in this case?
———-
I also am remembering back to my own father’s reaction when I told him I was divorcing my husband because of PHYSICAL AND SEXUAL AND EMOTIONAL ABUSE. My dad said, “Can’t you try to work this out?” And I said, “I want you to understand something, Dad: I am never sleeping with this man again!” (this shocked him because I guess even though I was married with a few kids, I’m not supposed to let on that I had sex….)
So I am going through the horrible pain of the divorce, with no support, and simultaneously taking on the job of EDUCATING what should have been members of my “support team” about what abuse “is.”
It’s hard to look back at that time, sometimes.
Skylar,
To really add insult to injury, my health insurance company denied the claim due to a “self inflicted wounds”. I fought that for a year while paying the bills off. My friend and I were constantly yuckin it up about “hey don’t do that, they may say it a self inflicted wound and not cover it!” lol I was tubing down the river and a rope got wrapped around my neck. I got untangled and we laughed and laughed about what a field day they’d have in the claims department with a rope burn around my neck and me claiming it was an accident. (this was AFTER much time and healing and laughter got me through)
The insurance company called me a year later and the girl who read my letter was choked up and said they were paying the bill and apologized for giving me such a hard time. UGH! But that, too, was validation and more healing.
Eralyn,
So glad you found the approach of laughing at it — sounds weird, but whenever we can do that, it really seems to work! Because yep, what your insurance company did in denying your claim is a terrible insult to the abusive beating (injury) you received at the hands of a “loved one.”
My God. What a world.
I gather you wrote a letter after they denied your claim, and it was your letter that got through to them? Good for you for not giving in and giving up.
20years,
In my opinion, the mental anguish hurt more than any broken bone. Maybe that’s why we don’t minimze others. Plus I think I look at other people like their abuse is worse than mine!! You know how we are our own worst critic? I kind of wonder if we are our own worst minimizer with abuse. I know I need validation that things are what they are.
Yes Donna has done a major service to us making this website. We can more freely tell what happened to us I feel. It seems someone always understands here and makes a point TO validate…… So I agree with you about this being an excellent resource!! YEAH!
Have you ever heard of coercive control? The definition reminds me of the equivalent of a molesters grooming process. The signs of coercive control can tell the court that abuse is occurring in my opinion.
20years,
I meant to say as far as teenage kids go, I would promote any good quality they have from your ex and lightly touch on good qualities about him. Other than that, I wouldn’t bother doing much else. Don’t bad mouth him and validate them when they need it. It’s very difficult when the ex has made themselves an outcast. Since they do know him and have some kind of relationship with him, they may be mixed up with anger and you don’t want that to ever get flung on you.
20 and Eralyn,
When I first came to LF, I used humor to cope. I made fun of the spaths but some people became very upset with me and told me it was not a laughing matter.
It’s true that this is a serious matter but laughter is very healing and protective. The spath could never mess with me when I was laughing, so I learned to laugh at him in private and it helped dissolve the tension.
20years,
Yes, the layers! Rarely a day goes by that I don’t learn about another layer. I’ve been researching Aspergers lately and some of the descriptions are similar to borderline behaviors.
I think what we have is a cluster of symptoms and behaviors which can be grouped in different assortments. Depending on how you group them, they end up with a different label. But not every possible grouping has a label because each human is unique.
About the only thing that they all seem to have in common is the disconnection from feeling emotions. Then the person becomes emotionally arrested and unable to grow up or move on.