By Sarah Strudwick
Sarah Strudwick, based in the UK, is author of Dark Souls—Healing and recovering from toxic relationships.
First of all I want to thank everyone who commented on the posts that I’ve written over the last couple of years. Recently I did a post on How to speed date a sociopath. Whilst I make every effort to move on with my life after the psychopath, occasionally something will come up that causes me to think “Why do they do that?”
So the topic of this post is whether or not any of you have experienced the following:
In my book Dark Souls, I wrote about an occasion where my ex moved my cash card. A week later I found it hidden behind a bottle of sauce on the top of a very tall cupboard in the kitchen. At the time it went missing, I asked my ex if he may have picked it up by mistake, because he used the same. He commented that I was forgetful, and asked me whether I’d left it in the freezer.
This was a very strange comment. Later, I found a book written by a psychopath about how to manipulate people, putting the victim off guard so they question their own sanity. One of the suggestion was to ask victims if they left something that went missing in a freezer!
Being a complete idiot at the time, I looked in there, just to check I wasn’t losing the plot or going mad.
More items not returned
I also lent my ex some books and a heart-shaped crystal. At the time he was leaving his wife. He promised to keep it safe. When I asked for it to be returned, I got the excuse that he had let his children play with it, and one of his small children managed to drop it out of a two-story building and broke it. The story was preposterous—why would he let his kids play with something he didn’t want his wife to see?
I was also in a relationship with a man call Dan. I was doing acupuncture, and he as asked me if he could borrow my acupuncture books and also a book on Taoism. He also borrowed a cassette of a local radio interview I’d done when I was 19 about backpacking in India. When the relationship ended, I asked Dan to send me back the books and the interview cassette. He still has them to this day, and refused to give a reason for keeping them. Looking back, I think it was his way of keeping a little trophy of me.
Happening again
I was prompted to write this is because straight after I ended the speed date, I noticed something strange. Every day I wear a necklace, which I made myself out of resin and crystals. You could call it my “security blanket,” because I always feel happy when I am wearing it. When I bathe or shower I take it off and leave it in the bathroom as the string is made of leather. Lurch commented on the jewelry I make as he saw the resin and paraphernalia on the worktops in my kitchen.
A day or so after getting my head of the washing machine with all the mind games he played, I suddenly realised I wasn’t wearing the necklace. I searched the flat everywhere but couldn’t find it. I soon realised that a photograph of me was missing as well. It was an old photograph of me when I was about 16, dressed in fancy dress and looking reasonably young, fit and attractive. My son had seen it a few days before and commented on how young I looked. The photograph had been next to the computer, but was gone.
I like to think of myself as a rational person and don’t jump to conclusions before pointing the finger. In fact, I searched multiple times only to find nothing. Whilst I cannot prove that anyone took it, these were not items of value like money. But they had a lot of sentimental value, much like the cassette and the specialist acupuncture books, which, incidentally are irreplaceable.
Trophies
I’ve read before that the psychopath likes to closet their victims, and I’ve heard stories about serial killers keeping “bits” of them as trophies. Whilst we expect the sociopath to steal our hearts, money and valuable possessions, the difference is that all these items are irreplaceable. Which begs the question that they will intentionally go out of their way to take such things, because they know how upset we will be.
I am still searching for these items, just in case I haven’t lost my marbles. Whilst it’s easy to let them go because they have no real value, the whole experience points to the potentially sick and twisted nature of their personalities and has “creeped” me out. Even with such a good understanding of psychopaths/ sociopaths, it’s still beyond all my capacity to understand what motivates someone to do something like this.
It’s for this reason that I shared this experience. I wonder if anyone else had experience the same kind of “creepy” behaviour.
Tealight,
I could almost mark the day when my exspath first let his mask really slip, it was the day he first used the C-word in front of me. We had been together at least 8 years before he did that and after that, he used it more and more often.
People know how offensive it is, so anyone who uses it is using it for that specific effect. That’s the sign of a spath. It’s a red flag.
Louise, it’s interesting he insulted his assistant who turned down (what seem obviously) his sexual advances as being “a mouse” ie, connotations of his contempt that she was in his view too ‘scared’ or timid to take him up on his offer. There’s a lot of contempt and arrogance in that word, very revealing of his attitude to women and any woman who rejects him as pathetic or deficient. And he is married. Man, it’s a game to them. Hunter and chase and prey. Beware the man that compares women to any animal that’s my motto. x
..Or, as Sky says, who uses the c word. I hate that many professional comedians in the uk routinely use it in their stand up routines , it’s like a badge of being “edgy”
Tealight,
Some comedians are the worst! I went to a comedy club and couldn’t believe how offensive the comedian was. All he talked about was how he wanted to beat up his wife, how much he hated her, and all kinds of violence toward women.
I walked out.
Moon
I am so very sorry for what you are going through. I wish you peace in your life and the ability to dwell on the good memories.
You are a dear, kind and thoughtful man, please take care of yourself.
(((Milo)))
Moon,
My sincere condolences during this difficult time.Take care of yourself.The cold you have is difficult enough to recuperate from;certainly the many emotions you’re feeling will make it worse.
skylar,
BRAVO!If more people would walk out on such comedy shows or ANYONE making light of domestic violence….really ANY violence or abuse,there might be less of it!
Sky, the comedy circuit is a playground for the disordered, you’re right. The ultimate mask, the ” I’m only joking!” mask. Some of them clearly hate other people. I’ll throw this out there. Russell Brand is a s/p path, imo. The c word, the stare, the sex addiction/ predatory behaviour, the narcissism, the mask of buddhism and yoga, the pity play about his youth , his drug addiction, his father buying him a prostitute’s services (like mine), the “we’ll be together forever” bs marriage to Katie Perry. He’s always given me severe creeps.
MD,
I remember when my P sperm donor died, it was apply enough during the summer of chaos.
His estate sent me a copy of his will where I was left out not even by name, “My other children, I leave nothing, and they know the reason why”—yea, not even my name. LOL But I was also gratified to know that 2 of my 3 half sibs were also apparently NC with him as well. The third one is just like him.
Funny I had planned to hire an attorney and fight for a share of the multi-million dollar estate just to pith on his memory, but you know…funny thing…once I got the will I realized that EVEN IF (and there was no chance of that!) he had left me 100 million dollars I WOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN IT, I would have donated it to some charity that I knew he would have hated. As much money as his estate probably had (at one time he was on the Forbes 400 richest men in the US) I could probably have gotten a small sum just to get me to go away, and found some attorney who would have taken it on contingencey but I just did NOT WANT to mess with anything to do with him. I realized I was FINALLY OVER HATING HIM even. I had closure with his death and PEACE.
So, Moon Dancer, I wish you closure an peace with the physical passing of your maternal DNA donor…she missed a great opportunity to have a wonderful relationship with a caring, loving son. That is a big loss for her, but also a loss for the mother you wished you could have had. I think I feel like an orphan. My step dad is dead, the sperm donor is dead, and my egg donor is NC. It doesn’t matter that I am 66 years old, I’m still an “orphan” because I don’t have a parent any more.
Tea Light:
Professorpath…that is hilarious! Wow, he is really a mess from the things you said he did and said. A very disordered individual it sounds like.
Hmmmm, I don’t know how I feel about the OW who was duped by him. Yes, I guess I have to admit she was duped…she was, but the minute she started lying to me, that was a game changer. I wasn’t going to be duped by two people. I had enough. The history with her is that she is a liar. From the moment I stepped into that department five years earlier, I was told by the other women in the office to not trust her. Sooooo, I have to ask myself how much she was really hoodwinked. Despite being married, I don’t think he was the first person she had an inappropriate relationship with so it’s hard for me to feel like it was all him. Yes, I know how he pursues and stares down and I have no doubt he did that to her, but I have to really question what she must have been doing. Sorry, but it’s hard for me.
Very good observation about spath and the “mouse” turning him down. That is what OW said once…that if a woman turns him down, then he doesn’t like her. HA! That’s a joke…if you don’t turn him down, he still doesn’t like you!! Whether he gets what he wants or doesn’t get what he wants, he seems to treat everyone with some sort of contempt.
There’s something that still bothers me and I know it shouldn’t, but the last time I saw him, I ignored him. I was out and he turned up at the same place and was obviously excited and nervous that I was there…turning around to keep looking at me, etc. Then he jumps up to talk to me and we were walking toward each other and I just said “Hi, how are you?” and I kept walking. We never said another word to each other all night and he left before I did. I regret that night to this day and it was almost two years ago. The reason I regret it is because you could tell he was so happy to see me (hadn’t seen me at that point for nine months) and it was my chance for some type of closure and I blew it. I wanted closure so badly and had my chance. I tried to get it since then, but he won’t even barely talk to me. I think it’s his way of getting me back for ignoring him because we know they hate to be ignored, but I don’t know if this is the case. It just haunts me that’s all. x
TeaLight, what I’ve experienced with regard to previous spaths is that the “closure” has to come from me. Nothing that I can say to these people will alter what they’ve done, cause them to feel remorse, or even cause them to consider changing their disordered ways. I’ve TRIED doing this, in the past, and it was always disastrous in that my attempt to force closure would make me appear as a bitter, vengeful nutbag. I don’t agree that you blew a chance for closure because, as you continue reading (especially, archived articles), you’ll see that there really isn’t any closure with spaths. Even if an abusive spath dies, it’s a forced closure that doesn’t really provide “satisfaction.” And, that desire for satisfaction of telling the spath all about themselves cannot be realized simply because spaths do not care about other human beings. Other people are simply viewed as bugs on a sidewalk that the spaths are walking on – if some get stepped on and squished, so be it, because they shouldn’t have been traveling on the same sidewalk as the spath, in the first place (in the World of Spath).
So, journaling was a REALLY positive tool for me. And, I don’t mean typing my feelings on a technological device. I mean picking up a pen and setting it to paper, EVEN when my fingers could barely hold a writing instrument. But, using my own self to write my feelings down on paper connected me, physically, to the words and made it “real,” if that makes any sense.
The time will come when I actually “feel” closure from my exspath experiences. I believe this. And, I believe that this closure will be generated by myself, and other people who have helped me along this Healing Path.
Brightest blessings!