If you’ve been romanced by a sociopath, you know how remarkable it can be. In the first moments—the courting phase. In the time when you felt more desirable and more perfectly matched than ever before in your life.
The time you fell in love.
I wrote about my own sociopathic romance in The Other Side of Charm. And it was really hard for me after fifteen years of bad to go back to the good. It was more than hard. I cried a lot while writing about my early days with my ex, holing myself up in my house during any spare moment to write and to cry into the loneliness.
And even though I’ve written it all out by now, I still cry if I talk about it. If someone asks what it was like. I cry because it was a captivating experience.
It was my biggest young experience of love.
And it was meaningless.
Yes, that makes me cry.
Because my heart was captivated by a disguise. Everything I was wholeheartedly believing and investing myself in was a big, empty sham. My experience of feeling loved didn’t come from someone who felt it. And long after he took off his mask, I kept myself believing that it was who he truly was.
That need to believe did a lot of damage.
But it still happens to me today.
It happens by accident. It happens all the time. Because I still have to see him regularly—we have children together. And even though he’s trying hard behind the scenes to devastate me for going on two decades now, he’s smart enough to behave well in public. Which sometimes makes me question myself.
Today, for example. I’m standing at a track meet, filming and shooting photos of my son’s jumps. My ex walks up beside me and asks how he’s doing. He comes in close beside me to look at my phone. I respond pleasantly and show him the video because I can see our son watching us and he really wants us to get along. So I smile and share photos and then find myself instantly jumping to the idea that maybe we actually could get along. Because in that moment, we’re getting along. And I make it bigger than it really is because I need to believe that there’s hope for peace.
Back to reality.
The reality is that I received multiple angry emails from Mr. Getalong earlier in the day that were both degrading and untrue, and I also had a call from my attorney this afternoon about an email he received from my ex. In it, my ex claimed that I was interfering with his custody case because I wouldn’t communicate with the psychologist who’s doing our assessments. Truth be told, I’ve called the psychologist six times and can trace it on my records. And he’s the one who hasn’t called—the psychologist complained about it himself.
Back to reality, again.
This game of “I’ll accuse you of what I’m doing” is common among sociopaths, but it still catches me off guard at times. I have to remind myself not to get caught up in his stories even more often than I have to remind myself not to believe that he can be decent to me just because he’s acting like it for a moment.
Someone recently described it to me as being like a cobweb. That when you’re regularly dealing with another person’s mental illness or personality disorder, their condition can be webby. It can stick to you. Imagine walking through a cobweb and then trying to get it all off, right down to the last strand.
It’s hard to do.
It’s hard to get the cobwebs off.
It’s hard to stay on the outside of their chaos.
It’s hard to give up the dream.
It’s hard to believe that a person is dangerous if they’re talking about family life while hugging people and laughing a good, deep laugh.
It’s hard to understand how a person could be warm and nice to you while taking everything you have.
It’s hard to admit that it feels shameful and lonely to realize you weren’t actually loved when you thought you felt it.
Because we want to be loved, not duped.
We want to be wanted for who we are.
Or at the very least, we want to get along. To believe that tomorrow can be better.
That the attacks can and will end. We want to believe they’ll end.
And that’s a beautifully human thing—a critical survival skill.
But on the flip side, it can make it hard to let go of the dream.
A challenge.
To think about how all this may fit into your own life, I challenge you to consider how believing in goodness (sometimes against all evidence) can be both a positive strength and a self-defeating weakness. When is it a strength for you? When does it hold you back? And do you see any patterns?
If you’re dealing with a sociopath, clear vision can easily be clouded. How to you keep things in focus? Do you have strong skills in this area, or do you need more support?
More than anything, I challenge you to live your own safe life. Free from sociopathy and filled with your own real dreams.
Google this name: BrenĂ© Brown. Bks on amazon. She’s done a talk on TedX also. Her words resonate with this site. “Until we believe we are worthy of love and connectedness, we will not be connected.” The difference btwn ppl who feel loved and connected and those who dont—if they feel worthy of it. thats it, period. she studied SHAME for 10 yrs, thousands of interviews and focus groups and this is wat she finds.
there is a wealth of wisdom in her words, esp for the hurting souls on this site. we have learnt firsthand we are NOT worthy, didnt the spath drill this into our heads over and over? didnt we watch our children splinter in spite of our efforts to combat this influence of the spath? we have the shame of self-regret and self-failure, along with the shame society throws at us for “letting it happen” or “falling for the obvious”.
we have to break free of this shame. we have other shames also probably. we have to forgive ourselves for these wrongs also. possibly truly horrible things we have done. becuz we have shame, we are NOT spaths. they do not feel shame, along with empathy. we ARE redeemable, we made mistakes but we are not shameful beings. however, the only path to connectedness and freedom lies thru wilderness of conquering shame.
shame does not have to be true, as in the case of our relation-hell with the spath or other disordered personalities. the lie of shame, however does not mitigate its life-quenching effects. to be loved, we must overcome shame.
brené brown is a good storyteller with whom to start this recovery.
Ain’t
I ECHHHOOOO ECHhhoooo EChhoooo your recommendation of Brene Brown. I mentioned Brene here on LF on a different discussion just recently.
So much of how a sociopath hooks his/her victim is based in shame. Abusers use our conscience against us, gaslight us by saying we over-react, or misunderstood. The ability to feel shame and guilt is proof we are not sociopaths b/c sociopaths don’t have that ability.
Brene Brown also makes an excellent point, that our response (at least mine) to an attack by my sociopath was to shut down, to numb myself because the pain was so overwhelming. The problem is, that sensitive part of ourselves is also the most valuable part. As Brene says, it’s where our creativity, our compassion, our humanity lives.
No wonder I used to say “I lost myself”. I responded to abuse by going into avoidance, by trying not to let it hurt me so much, and I cut off my own individual self.
Brene Brown is GREAT for encouragement and empowerment. She takes on those myths and manipulations head on. She’s easy to find, on youtube and has been on Oprah.
Bravo Ain’t. I love that someone else thinks Brene is fab.
Thanks ain’t,
I will look her up. I think I have had a problem understanding and recognizing how the shame applies to me so this book could be very helpful.
I agree with all your assessment of how we are made to feel by our Spath and the relationship with him.
I’m glad to hear that you are using positive self talk to guide your thoughts. It’s so easy to get caught up in the negative. Thank you for sharing.
Ain’t: My last therapist recommended Brene Brown, too, so I will seek out her book. I think there is definitely something for me to learn here about self-worth, so I am taking all of this feedback to heart. I hope with all my heart that I can change this pattern, and that maybe it’s just a projection of how I feel inside. Anyway, after teaching and dancing at the club last night I prayed to release this attachment to the last guy I dated who just slowly faded. I felt some of it releasing. I will never know why he disappeared – he acted like he really really liked me. He came back around after 3-1/2 years to tell me he always really liked me. After one real date that went very well (I thought), he just strung me along after that and slowly faded. I felt a very strong connection that was more than physical, but the physical was very strong too. I did put the brakes on, fully expecting him to come back for more. I cannot help wondering if there is something I did that scared him off. I will probably never know. But it is counter-productive to judge myself. Even if I did scare him off, there’s nothing I can do about it except to continue doing my personal growth. The self-judgment is what really gets in my way. It’s very disappointing how it ended – that I couldn’t even get closure. At least with the one before him, there was closure.
CLOSURE
it rly sucks wen we dont get closure
that is why sudden death is so much worse than knowing ahead of time that someone is dying. death hurts no matter wat, but that sudden, screeching jolt…we just cant handle that.
i got closure recently. it was a gift.
the jerk u were dealing with; well just try to be glad he didnt string u along longer. and i doubt YOU did a thing. pls try to realize wen ppl are jerks, it isnt us. he was stringing u along. bad bad bad HIM.
just jump on Tedx.com and find BrenĂ©’s talk(s). that alone will help u.
praying & releasing that dream, that hope, was excellent too. sex is usually wat soul-ties ppl together, but it doesnt have to be sex as u’ve discovered. i am driving a guy nuts right now becuz i am guarding my heart. he’s like–im doing everything ur saying u want! i told him–i know, but u have to keep it up, hon. my hearts not won yet. It Takes Time. Period. i will not give my commitment to only be with u, not yet.
consistency is the key. if its a facade, hes charming me, its going to fade. he cant keep it up.
idk wat happened with the man u knew, but my hearts a golden gift that no one will get from me without me being 10,000% sure i should give it.
I want some advice about my delemma….
I recently broke up with my fiance, and I now believe he might be a sociopath.
I know he is a pathological lier.
He swept me off my feet and asked me to marry him early on in our relationship.
Because he was a friend of a friend, and our daughter’s are the same age, it felt “right”.
He had been married and divorced twice.
We have many of the same friends, and live in the same community.
Then I started noticing some things that felt off to me, but I could never be sure.
I asked him about his “friendships” with other women and ex’s and he got very defensive and accused me of being jealous and triggering him.
I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt and tried to just trust him, even though my gut was feeling otherwise.
As time went on, I kept noticing more and more suspicious behaviors.
Intensely overly secretive and protective of his phone, constantly checking his phone, keeping all his personal devices within arms reach and locked with passwords all the time.
Eventually I felt so concerned that I did something very bad, and I snooped.
I checked his history on his computer and his email and managed to get onto his FB too.
I know, very bad, and I should have just ran at that point, but I didn’t because as described above, it was too hard to believe that he could possibly be bad, or not mean all the nice things he would say. He would always send me the sweetest messages saying things like” I feel so lucky that I found you”, you are “the one” I’ve searched for my whole life.
He knew all the right things to say to pull at my heart. And everyone in our circle thinks of him as the sweetest nice guy and most honest guy you would ever meet.
Anyway I found several things that confirmed that he was lying to me, so I confronted him.
And of course he created a very believable story and apologized and offered to go into couples therapy with me.
Now I need to tell you some disturbing things…
One thing I found out at this point was that he lied about many personal questions I had asked him about in the beginning of our relationship.
I asked if he had ever been unfaithful in either of his two marriages, he said no, but then he told me he had one affair during his second marriage and that was it and he learned his lesson and would never do that again. He swore he wanted to be monogamous with me.
He also lied about his sexual past. He told me he was straight, but then he later told me he had some experiments with men. Again he said it was in the past.
I wondered how those experiments took place, and he told me he did it through craigslist, with anonymous people.
I kept wanting to believe him, I was so in love.
He seemed to have this very tight grip on my heart.
When he went out of town one day, I decided to go online and read some of the CL posts in Charlotte NC to see if he was still doing this type of thing. I just had this feeling in my gut.
Well I found him, he had posted an ad, looking for a couple who wanted to come have sex with him in his hotel room. He very much wanted to do things with both. It was so explicit!
I immediately let him know that I found his add.
That it was over and then I moved all of his things out of my house.
But….yes there is more. Two weeks later he wrote me the most amazing apology and owned up to it. He told me all about his childhood and the sexual abuse he suffered. He told me he never told anyone about this only me.
Two weeks later I wanted him back. I know he is a crazy maker, and yes I started feeling like a crazy person. However after several emails he said he wanted to end the relationship. This didn’t make any sense to me, so i kept trying to convince him to go to therapy and stay with me. I read several books about sexual abuse and tried to offer him support. I also started going to SANON meetings for people affected by sex addiction partners. He refused to get help. he said he did not have a sex addiction, even though he said he did in his apology letter.
Today we have been broken up for 2 months. He now has a new girlfriend.
And for some strange reason I decided to try the only password I knew of his, and get into his craigslist account. It worked and what was there was completely horrifying. He had been posting ads in the casual encounters section for the whole time we were together, with both men and women, but mostly men.
He described such crude sexual desires, and he even said in one of them that it had to be on the DL, cause he identified as straight and has a girlfriend.
I have since been monitoring craigslist since then, this past week, and found several of his current posts, yes now while he just declared to have a new monogamous relationship.
BTW-seeing this evidence of the truth has finally helped me to let go. I no longer want him back.
I am also healing myself, and trying to get over the terrible feelings of betrayal. I feel validated, and violated at the same time. Its just so yucky!
I know I have to stop and let go, but now my dilemma is this:
I know I don’t want anything to do with him ever again, but what about the danger he is putting others in? Do I owe his new girlfriend any of this info?
I am lucky that I did not get a disease, but it seems that at some point someone might not be so lucky.
He also has three beautiful daughters that I care about. His ex-wife just wants to pray for him.
Should I expose him? Non of his friends even know that he is Bi.
I have told only my closest friends.
I spoke to his ex wife and she said she knew about this.
I wish someone had warned me, what if I had gotten aids!
This weighs heavily on my mind. Should I tell his sister privately and then let her decide?
I don’t know what to do.
HELP PLEASE!
Sage
this is my opinion…this man is extremely toxic, esp to you. u are way too close. u are not the one to expose him. u simply need to recover. that is a HUGE job u have ahead of u and will take ALL ur strength and energy. let him go. let go and let God. believe me HE is well-able to handle this sicko. completely.
u need to HEAL and recover from the horrific abuse u have endured at this “man’s” filthy, lying hands. this is no man, this is a childish pig.
Ok, thank you. I am slowly getting to the place where I know this is the wisest choice.
It is hard because even some of my close friends don’t seem to fully believe me.
I have anxiety attacks, and I am on the look out no matter where I go in town.
I’m always afraid that I will run into him.
I guess i feel like he is like a poisonous snake lurking in the grass, and I what to know where he is so I won’t get caught off guard.
Unfortunately he lives in the same community and we have so many mutual friends.
I’m trying to cut off the people who may side with him.
I am afraid.
Thank you,
Lori
You need to let it go…first, because continuing to check up on him is keeping you connected to him and not letting you move forward and heal and second, because it will do no good. Anyone you tell may not (probably won’t) have the reaction you want and it will just continue to spin you. This is a very bad person that you need to stay away from in all ways. I can’t emphasize no contact enough – and that includes social media and DEFINITELY checking into his craigslist antics. It’s keeping you connected to him – and twisted up. You will only save yourself through no contact. You know you don’t want anything to do with him but you’re still keeping connected via the checking up and you are vulnerable to him. I’ve been there. No contact!
another thing I was wondering about, is if there is a support group for women who where involved with men on the down low, men who were married but were sneaking around with other men sexually.
I think this aspect even further complicates this person.
He is in the closet and a sociopath? is it two different things? or does it matter?
I know there are many gay men in the closet that are not hurting people.
So I don’t want to generalize here.
It’s just so painful, and he has sucked all the energy and joy out of my life for a long time.
I am lucky that I have an amazing support group.
But people don;t seem to really get how disturbing this experience is.
Am I just playing the victim here or is this valid?
I feel like I was raped and deceived everyday for a year, now that I know the truth.
I’m trying really hard to do all the healing work, and I do have a good therapist.
I’m doing everything I can to move forward in a positive healthy way for me.
Thank you,
Lori
Sage, I also want to share with you something I’ve written on here before – it helped me to think of him as a demon, and if I even glanced in his direction I’d be instantly incinerated. And by glancing his way, I mean checking craigslist, fb, etc. and including thinking about talking to his family…about anything.
In my case I was close to his sister and leaned on her after the discard for awhile. I overshared. I know she was repulsed and cut him off (at least then, it’s been awhile so don’t know now), and eventually, she couldn’t handle the truth, or the complete turmoil that my life had turned into as a result of him. In my pain, I needed a confidant (or three) but found out when they would not or could not help the result was more pain.
HopingToHeal is right, he has probably already started his defensive plan and people will likely not receive you well if you do talk to them. If/when you find they think you are unstable, it is only natural that you will want to correct that thinking, resulting in more pain and prolonging your connection to him.
I sure do wish you the best. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. There is a lot of help here and be prepared for a long(ish) road to recovery. In my case, I find just as I master one thing, another thing I didn’t even know was there rears it’s head. But when I look back over the last almost 3 years and see how far I have come, the obstacles I have overcome, the sheer STRENGTH it took to get to where I am now, even in todays darkest moments, I know I will get through these too.
Sage,
I’m so sorry that you are having to deal with this pain and betrayal. I agree with Ain’t and Hanale. You need to let it go. But I also realize that is harder said than done.
One thing that this site emphasizes is that the Spath does not think like normal people. Because you are a person with empathy, love and trust in your heart, this kind of information can/will throw your brain into trauma. When in trauma, the brain goes into fight or flight mode. Our brain tells us that we are in enormous danger and it releases chemicals that cause us to become anxious and hyper-vigilant. These feelings lead us to search, investigate to try to find some reasonable explanation. Snooping activities only add to more chemical release. It’s an endless cycle. I really does just draw you further and further down the rabbit hole that he’s created. But it’s SO hard to stop the cycle.
From my own experience, I took the advice of counselors and those on this site and when I catch myself going to those places,I say to myself “STOP”. Then I distract myself with music, television or reading self help material. I also plan self care for the next few hours. Distraction is always best.
I can empathize with your desire to spare others the pain of dealing with him, Like the others advised, at this point, no one will believe you if you Out Him. Most likely he has already started his defensive plan by making you look unstable or irrational in the eyes of others. He’s a total ar$3. He has no heart and is a classic psycho. Even if others knew your truth, they have been suckered and scammed just as you were. He is probably wonderful in their eyes. Ewwwww!
I hope you can shut all this down in your brain. I understand where you are. It is an awful, devastating place of despair and disbelief. Please take care of yourself. Just your comments about his daughters is evidence of what a caring person you are. I hope you can begin to restore yourself and feel good again. Hugs to you!
Thank you so much for all the wonderful feedback!
BUT my friends have been telling me to let go for some time now, but it wasn’t until I knew the truth that I was able to stop believing in the illusion he created.
It’s like trying to walk away from a jigsaw puzzle that is incomplete, I just couldn’t do it.
Or like watching a murder mystery and shutting it off right before they reveal who the killer is.
Finding out gave me peace of mind, and I was finally able to change my mind from hoping that he would change, to knowing that it could never be.
Yes he is deeply disturbed. I see it clearly now, and now i can let go.
It actually helped me much more to know the truth.
You know the saying “The truth will set you free”, that is what I needed.
I still need to get tested again to make sure i am ok.
Then I will stop checking, I just want real proof incase something more serious happens.
Luckily I have many close friends who believe me and are helping me to heal.
I’m just glad to know that I was not crazy and this had NOTHING to do with me.
I have finally learned the hard way, that I just really need to trust myself and honor myself, form now on.
I will never need proof again.
Thank you all so much!
xo
Sage
Sage, the desire for justice and revenge can be very strong. You have to weigh benefit vs cost. They can be very vindictive and their smear campaigns can be very damaging. Also, They don’t play fair – they are capable of doing anything to get back at you. If it were me, I would probably warn the other victim if I could do it anonymously. But I don’t know if that’s the best or safest thing to do because it could backfire on you. She will figure it out soon enough anyway. I would not tell his family. In fact, I would cut them all out of your life.
If you wait it out, the desire to warn others will eventually go away as you move on with your life. One thing that helps is to realize that everyone has their own karma, and the new victim may need this lesson in her life for her personal growth. It is not your responsibility to save her. Taking care of yourself should always be your first priority.
Stargazer,
I hope I come to the point of realizing that this period of my life brought a lesson that I was suppose to learn. Those are wise words from you. I would think that being able to absorb that truth can take one from the point of being a victim on into recovery. I don’t recall reading how many years you have been in this process, but your stable insightful view of your circumstances give me hope that one day I will make it out of this. Thank you!
Sage …I totally understand….there is something that we have to figure out in our brains with finding out the truth….no contact is important after that but first we have to face the reality …I too had a strong gut feeling….I went to dating sites…found him advertized there…….he used my computer and stayed logged in by accident…so I looked at his instant messages….I had asked him one time if he instant messaged with anyone else…because he happened to be the only one I ever did…he said no…well, then looking at his instant messages…I see he was in conversation with some woman that he knew but I had never heard of!….when I asked him…he made up some lie and changed the subject….then he had messages from “My F— Space” …I never even knew that egisted!!…he made up some lie about how he doesn’t look at them…they were from before he met me….we had been seeing eachother for 5 years!…so many indescrepencies!!!Still we have such a hard time believing it!They always deny it and turn it around on us!!!I wondered if I should somehow expose this man…my suspicion is that he is a pervert…sex addict …and very disturbed….coming to terms with that …helps…to say NO to it anymore…not accept such an individual anywhere near us ….I don’t think exposing them actually happens…they deny any wrong doing…as with your guy…apology…admitting problem… then all that vaporizes and he does not have a problem…welcome to Crazymaking…NO CONTACT now will bring healing …you won’t believe how wonderful it is….to have your mind back….!!!!
Dear Sage,
It’s been a couple of day so you may not see this.
After my ex-husband’s mask came off, I wanted to live in denial. I wanted to find a way for truth to make sense, for the world to be what I thought it was before the big BANG.
After I finally accepted what he really was, and yes it took me a while and lots of repeating, you’d think I had amnesia because I fought the truth so much, but I became obsessed with uncovering ALL of the truth. I wanted to know who and how long and how it was done, why was I such a dupe, did anyone have a conscience.
In my ex’s case, I discovered he had either accomplices or victims. There were no other categories of people in his life. Many of his accomplices didn’t know that they were also dupes. They were participating in their own destruction. But I won the lottery. As his wife and with my values and character, I was the ultimate patsy.
You are correct. You are NOT crazy. You were in a CRAZY MAKING situation. It had NOTHING to do with you. You, me, we all were inter-changeable with everyone. My ex trolled for whom ever took the bait. He kept the biggest fish and threw the rest back in to a capture pond, and when he needed someone for a task, he’d net a previous fish to do his bidding.
What people don’t realize is that it’s ALL proof. Once you realize they really are a sociopath, there are no half measures. Everything is calculated. Everything is a scam. Everyone the sociopath knows is toxic, must be perceived as a danger to you. Even small things are proof because NOTHING was sacred. NOTHING.
The stress is enormous because the reality is so crazy making that it’s hard to wrap your brain around it. It’s emotional trauma on an unmeasurable scale. It’s trauma after trauma that you don’t know when it will ever stop revealing itself. A
And that’s when I said to myself, STOP. I said to myself, you will never uncover it all. You need to accept it was ALL bad and start to heal. You have to take care of yourself, the trauma does terrible things to your body. You have to decide to live. To be the counterweight to his evil. To have revenge by living well. You don’t let go when someone says to. You let it go when you want something else more. At least that’s the way it was with me. I wanted to LIVE a real life for however long I have. To do that, I had to literally think and plan and do things to heal myself, to reconnect with my humanity, to reconnect with my spirituality, and to reconnect with my dignity.
That’s why it didn’t work for me to have someone say, stop and move on. Because for me, such advice felt like it trivialize all I’d been through and all I needed in order to heal and do just that. Move on.
But when I was ready. I did.
Hope this makes sense and isn’t some big ramble. I like to think I am getting my act together, finally. 🙂
NotWhatHeSaidofMe, what you wrote makes perfect sense and is profound and right on. Bravo!
Sage,
I understand about how confirming the things he was doing that you suspected helped to end your cognitive dissonance.
With respect to warning others, you might consider contacting his new victim to let her know if she ever wants to talk to you or has any questions for you that you’d be happy to talk with her. This way if/when she is ready for the information you have, she knows that you are open to talking with her. When I was suffering in the midst of the worst of the ‘marriage’ with my ex Sociopath, I wanted to talk to his first ex wife to see what her perspective was to help me resolve the CD I was experiencing, and also to vindicate her by letting her know I knew he lied about her when he smear campaigned her. I wanted the support we may have been to one another. I did not contact her because I did not know how she would have felt about it and I did not want to cause her consternation.
With respect to you contacting your Sociopath’s sister or other family members or friends, I think that you don’t have a responsibility to do that since these are people who have had enough experience with the Sociopath to know enough to be safe from him. Also, these people are more likely to feel comfortable contacting you if they want to talk.
HopingToHeal, I was only involved with the sociopath (for whom I found this site) for 3 months in 2008. It took me a year to recover. But I grew up with narcissistic/sociopathic parents. I began the healing path 30 years ago when I went to my first 10-day meditation retreat. It was life-changing for me. I’ve been on the healing path ever since. I think it was because of all the healing I’d already done that I was able to get out of the relationship with the sociopath so quickly.
Thank You for all of your comments. I still feel very angry. I hate that he will just get away with all this, and continue to hurt others.
But I am trying to take care of ME and move on with my life. I am going to put my safety first.
I am a bit nervous because I don’t really know what he would do if I out him anyway.
For now i am gong to print everything out, incase I ever need it in the future.
I will only talk to people if they ask me.
If anyone contacts me, I will tell them the truth.
I think that is the best course to take for now.
Because if someone comes to me, it means they already have some doubt and concern about him.
The others probably wouldn’t believe me anyway.
It is all sinking in, and I am very thankful to be able to have all of you to share my experience with.
Friends don’t want to hear about this anymore, so I feel I have to heal all by myself sometimes.
I just hope I don’t run in to him around town. I am going to distance myself form people who consider him a friend.
But I still feel like at some point he is going to try to play me again.
I’m still very shaky, litterally shaky, and nervous.
Like post traumatic stress i guess.
My therapist is trying to help me.
I don’t want to be a victim, but I am still not clear on how to be a survivor, if he gets away with it all, and is able to continue the allusion in my community.
This is the thing I am still stuck on.
I just don’t feel very empowered if he gets away with it all.
It’s like I know he is dangerous, but I can’t warn anyone. There are other innocent people who will get hurt. Maybe even get AIDS. It just feels so wrong to just do nothing.
I want to contact a lawyer and at least try to see if anyone is trying to write a new laws in this area.
Or create some legal way to warn people.
After all we did create that for pediifiles.
I know for sure he is a sex addict, my therapist says it is hard to know for sure if he is a sociopath, because the behavior of serious sex addicts is very similar.
I think he is both. A sociopath, with a serious sex addiction, and also pot, and alchohol too.
Sorry for all the typos, I am just too upset to spell check right now!
Thanks for all your support.
I’m going to try and focus on my work for the rest of the day, and
take deep breaths, and eat healthy food and go for a nice walk.
Thank you,
Sage
Sage, what you’ve written here is very powerful. The details of everyone’s situation are different, and I have felt most of the things you’ve felt here at one time or another in this journey of healing. One in particular you wrote defines the first year plus for me: Friends don’t want to hear about this anymore, so I feel I have to heal all by myself sometimes. I felt it was a very lonely road. I have always been a sharer, someone who wants to talk, talk, talk things out with others. This healing process taught me to rely more on myself and realize that people weren’t in my shoes, couldn’t understand my shoes, and had little to offer…even the ones who wanted to listen. Over time you will find you will want to talk about it less. As you understand (and accept) what happened to you, you will be able to let more things go and move on.
Your post helped me today. I’m in a transition phase and I thought I was ready and could handle it like a piece of cake. It’s proving WAY harder than I imagined, and I’ve fallen back into my old, bad habits…wanting to talk it out over and over with people who are not in my shoes, obsessively thinking about it and I’ve worked myself up into a frenzy of discomfort and fearfulness. I am my own worst enemy. After three years of having no choice, I am now in a position to make my own choices and am terrified of making the wrong one. The first one I’ve made feels all wrong and I’m afraid that if I go back on it, people will be angry or disappointed with me. I was a secure and confident person in life before this experience, and need to rebuild the damage that was done. I look back and say to myself, remember how you felt after the discard? Like you couldn’t go on? And you did…and found ways to heal. It took time. It took patience. There were setbacks but there was also steady progress. Someday soon I will look back on this current difficult time and be able to say the same thing.
I’m 2 years out of having been with the “dream” for 5 years. The love bombing as it’s called, was incredible. Hours upon hours of non sexual seduction leading to an evening of sexual adventures, some of which I will never repeat (and don’t know how I succumbed to them in the first place).
My regular battle currently comes in the form of believing in my choices, and differentiating between normal bickering and red flag signs. Bc nobody really wants to hear any my struggle anymore, I just ponder to myself … A lot.
I find that I get “retraumatized” by present day situations that throw me off balance. There a was anime period when my kids sibling rivalry would send me into a panic and I would retreat into my room not being able to be round their back and forth… Fortunately that passed, but wow, it showed me how little tolerance I have outside of a smoothly flowing routine.
I enjoyed seeing your experience in words as it shows we aren’t alone in our struggles even if we feel we are…
Salvation2012, what you are experiencing is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is very common after being traumatized by a sociopath for 5 years. Feel free to talk about it all you want here. This is a good place to do that.