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.
Skylar,
This round took my humor. I don’t know if it’s because my child is involved or because it’s hit me differently but I have deprived myself of food. It tasted like cardboard. I really had no sense of taste and watched so many not understand this but I would chew and swallow because I had to. It took my sense of humor. Nothing was funny. It took my life for a while here. I have no pictures from this time. I get very hostile with anyone trying to take my picture. I want NO memories of this time that “I can control”. Now in my past I had this feeling of “no pictures” but it was because I saw a picture of me during a different traumatic time in my life and what everyone thought they were looking at was not what I knew they were looking at and I promptly tore them up. The pictures were just of me so it had to have something to do with me. Music was another healing or debilitating mechanism so I think I let it go out of fear of debilitation. All coping skills were not working.
It’s all slowly coming back. When I say I can taste again, at first it was with question as in disbelief but I see the other questions on the face of whoever hears me. I am glad for them they don’t understand. UNLESS they are an abuser.
Skylar,
I am fine tuning my definition of what it means to be human (a work in progress!)
Like you said, “disconnected from feeling emotions” I have been thinking similarly, “disconnected from one’s source.”
Which could mean God, or Love, or whatever one’s view is.
I also think this is exactly what is in the Bible, “Love is patient and kind….” etc. and so, without love (or connection to source) everything else is distorted and perverted.
For example, the “power/control” motivation out of control in spaths, but with Love transforms to healthy Self-Power, or self efficacy, or the ability to BE a beacon or source of shining one’s light outward to others… in a spath, they become a sucking vacuum, sucking the energy out of the rest of us. Because they are disconnected from source, they seek what they feel they need in other people.
And in the “desire/greed” motivation also out of control in spaths, this is where they *may* (who knows, I cannot see inside their heads) feel that “love” lurks; but it is really just a perverted combination of desire and attachment (combo of “power/control” and “desire/greed”). Not Love. But with love, plus desire, you get joy. Not sadistic “pleasure” at someone else’s expense.
Remember the game: “I win — when you lose!”
Asperger’s, I think, the difference is it is not evil. What are you thinking?
I’m thinking you hit the nail on the head!
People can either give or suck. It’s about which direction the energy flows. Love makes us want to give. Without love, the direction is reversed, and we suck.
Sucking means sucking at everything, taking from everyone, and NEVER EVER giving anything. Sure, they will sometimes pretend to give but that is simply so they can suck some more. I know that my exspath “consoled” himself every time he did anything for me, by telling himself that he would suck more later.
I’ve actually read spaths on web blogs, chatting about how they like to do nice things for people because it helps perfect their masks. Without masks, they can’t suck. The better the mask, the more they can suck. They say, they don’t mind being nice. WHO THE HECK MINDS BEING NICE?
With Asperger’s, I was reading that it leads to divorce so often because the Aspie man just doesn’t give love or attention as required by his wife. Then he gets mad and feels attacked because he doesn’t know what she wants. So he becomes abusive. What this says to me, is that he doesn’t take suck but he also doesn’t want to give, or know what to give. To me, this is just someone who is too self absorbed to be able to care, but it doesn’t necessarily means he wants to take from his wife. He neither gives nor takes.
Love is like electrical energy, it has to move between people to create a circuit. But it can’t all go in one direction.
Skylar,
Yes, I agree. I’m thinking, with Asperger’s, no masks. But the truth is, I don’t know anyone with Asperger’s, up close and personal. I think that is probably so… no sucking/no giving, and being bewildered/hurt/angry/abusive for being misunderstood, but just not picking up on normal cues for the exchanging of energy.
One thing that I’ve consciously worked on for the past 4 years has been to be more aware of MY source, or my connection to Love, and to let it flow. Because the damage done to me by being in the relationship with the spath, and the aftermath of the spath relationship (co-parenting, hahaha)… my impulse was to withdraw, to lick my wounds but withdrawing in pain and bewilderment, NOT shining my light outwards because it had been vacuumed out of me before! And I didn’t know how to keep that from happening.
So I have gotten very good at having this awareness of my connectedness, and I think that goes hand in hand with growing development of spathdar and how to “spar” with one if you must. Basically it is what you say, you know “gray rock” but NOT the same as withdrawing and hiding (in fear) but rather just pulling the blinds closed. I can still shine — just not giving anything to him.
Yet…. one way of shining AROUND him without allowing him to SUCK is through LAUGHTER! I have found that if I can keep my mirth uppermost, I keep my power intact and he can’t suck any of it out of me! Because I have a bottomless source of it. 😉
But on a more sober note… he is NOT liking the maneuver I did with the school. He is now trying to get to my daughter. The whole thing is that he holds the doggie treat just out of reach and makes us jump for it. I’m talking about money to pay for school fees (required) that he is supposed to pay a certain percentage of.
There is no reason for me and my daughter to have to go through this continued charade of begging with him, for every little fee or field trip that comes up. That is why I handled it with the school (they will bill him directly for his portion or just give my daughter a reduced fee, if he won’t pay).
Why should my daughter have to go through this dance every time? It has been the only manipulative tool he has left. “Tell me why you want this? Tell me why it is important to you?” I think… for mandatory school fees, your kid comes to you and you just pay (or go to the school directly to work something out). Don’t lay this stress on the kid.
So he told me yesterday, “Thank you for your expression of concern. I’ve taken the possibility of our daughter’s getting stressed out about this into consideration in my follow up with her”
!!! And of course I read that the snarky way. That he has considered that she might possibly be stressed out about his insisting that she ASK him for the money, so that he can pepper her with thousands of questions, and he delights in the possibility that it might stress her.
As for abusive questions, I mean this:
Daughter: I don’t want you to come to my track meet, Dad. I am nervous and I won’t be able to focus if you come.
Dad: What do you mean “focus?”
Daughter: I wont’ be able to concentrate. You know, I need to focus and not be distracted. Please don’t come. I asked Mom not to come, and she isn’t coming.
Dad: What do you mean “concentrate?”
See…. this sounds like a sort of normal conversation… but it isn’t. It is the kind of conversation where you have to explain yourself endlessly, going over and over the same things, and it is never GOOD ENOUGH for him. What is the point of conversations like these?
And yes, this is a verbatim, actual conversation that occurred recently.
I should have said, regarding the begging for school fees.
I DID handle it with the school. It is handled.
The only thing that can screw this up is if my daughter caves to his pressure and agrees to “meet” with him to “discuss the fees.”
She is 16 and free to decide to do this, but I cringe at the thought. I just went through a lot with the school to set this up.
My daughter has dawning awareness with regard to her dad, but she is still vulnerable.
I am trying to teach her how to draw a protective bubble around yourself.
And here is how it works: the spath tries to entice you OUT of your bubble so that they can do their evil sucking on you. As long as you say, “haha spath, nice try. No way,” and stay in your bubble, then they can’t.
But you step out, you fall for that wolf in sheep’s clothing, and you are dead meat.
This is the concept of “consent” or “giving permission” which is what Evil requires in order to do its work. They keep this hidden from you, of course. This is the truth! They WANT you to consent, because without your consent, they cannot. I’m serious.
I think this is partly what is meant by “lead us not into temptation.”
20years,
CappuccinoQueen used the “smoke and clouds” explanation too which I found very helpful. She consciously knew there were smoke and clouds and in an attempt to take back her control, she would clear them to see the real issue or “the bottom line” and then decide if she would react or not or if she even cared about the bottom line.
I think you are probably right about your bible verse. I have heard of people successfully using the bubble to build their personal space so that’s a great way to teach your 16 year old boundaries.
OMG 20years, I feel so sorry for your daughter.
It’s hard enough for us adults to deal with the spaths, but being 16 just makes it so much more confusing.
When he asks her, “tell me why this is important to you”, he is asking her what she values, so that he can use it against her later.
If she can answer by saying, “Spath, it’s not up to me, this is required by the school”, then she can at least ditch the question.
I find selective gray rock to be the most helpful for me. I give the spaths other targets, other vulnerabilities to shoot at, so they can have fun with a game that I don’t really care about.
Lets face it, until they get someone to play with them, they will keep annoying us. So I give them a little game to play with so I can go on with my life.
Sometimes, you can’t hide what you value, so you need to mix it up and hide it in plain site, by adding other things that you don’t care about to the mix.
So for example, she can say she wants a fur coat because it’s the latest trend at school. When in fact, she doesn’t really care about that. This gives the spath a target to shoot at and not shoot at the things she really needs, like money for school.
Funny thing about spaths, they lie all the time, but they can’t imagine that we are capable of faking emotions too.
Skylar, you are correct and thank you for reminding me! In this game they play of “I win — by your losing!” this is how it is played:
1. by finding out what we most desire, and thwarting that.
2. by finding out what we most fear, and providing that.
Yes…. it is all intelligence gathering on his part!
We have tried the selective gray rock, and it works some of the time, but not all of the time. By this point, he knows us pretty well. What I “fear” the most is his doing to the kids what he has done to me. And he is doing that. (my move to handle the fees with the school was prompted by my wanting to protect my daughter and also because I am fed up playing the games).
What I dread the most: playing these games, and having my children hurt (and confused by his crazy, manipulative behavior that he hides so well from the rest of the world). So that is what he does.
He thinks I care about the money. I don’t. I have enough money. So that is not a tool he can use with me. He think the kids care about the money. They kind of DO because they want to go to college and don’t want to take out loans, and I can’t afford college/loans. But I know there are other ways to go to college. The kids will be much better off if they can learn to ignore his money (he is wealthy).
The kids have lots of desires: #1 is money to go to college. so he plays this as the “doggie biscuit” game, never making any hard promises, or saying one day “I will give you $100K for college!” and one week later, “The amount is $30K!” and yet another time, “well… of course I want a RELATIONSHIP with you…. but we have time to develop that…. there is still time before college….”
And money for their personal goals which has to do with valuable, interesting and educational summer camps/internships which I cannot afford, they can do without, but is a shame because he can afford them… but perhaps the price of the inquisition is too much to pay.
Bottom line is — if he finds out what they MOST DESIRE, he will thwart it or string it out as a manipulative tool for as long as he possibly can, and they may or may not ever get it. It is making my kids very stressed and anxious, and is a stupid game to play!
So I went to the school. At least all of their educational fees are now handled. They might have to do with the “nice to have” extras. Oh well. Like college. (or be creative, I mean)
oh yeah, and I have REALLY GREAT KIDS!!!! They are nice, sweet, hardworking students, have educational goals, are involved in activities, have nice friends, don’t ask for (demand) stuff like cars, cellphones, ipods, makeup, clothing — ANYTHING.
All they want is a good education including college.
And this *@.......!4%& is using THAT as a manipulative tool with them????
I watched an interesting scenario with my spath
When I desired him, he hid
When I figured out he was a spath, he pestered the hell out of me
When a friend was buying a car, he said he would not help her decide
When she bought the car, he criticized her choices.
Same deal.
Athena