Many Lovefraud readers experience the phenomenon of “losing yourself” in the sociopathic relationship. Before meeting the sociopath, you may have been, for the most part, happy, confident, successful and financially stable. You had a network of people who cared about you. Yes, there was some kind of vulnerability—perhaps you were a bit lonely—and the sociopath used the vulnerability to infiltrate your life. But, for the most part, you were okay.
Then, either suddenly or slowly, your life disintegrated, and the problems you face are so immense, and so interconnected, and so overwhelming, that you don’t know where to begin unraveling them. You don’t have the energy to start. Rather than the happy and confident person you once were, you are anxious, depressed and fearful. You don’t know how you are going to survive.
And you don’t know how it all happened. Trying to figure it out, you describe the individual’s behavior to friends or a therapist, and someone mentions the word “sociopath.” Or you do a Google search—perhaps on “pathological lying”—and end up on Lovefraud.
You are in shock. The description fits, and you realize that the individual never cared about you, that you were targeted, and that you allowed yourself to be scammed, either financially or emotionally. You’ve lost money, or your home, or your job, or your support network—or all of it.
Blame game
As you realize the depths of the betrayal, the blame game starts. And whom do you blame? Yourself.
You are furious with yourself for not seeing it sooner. You didn’t listen to people who warned you, or to your own inner voice that was telling you something was amiss. Instead, you believed the silver-tongued liar, the crying and pleading actor, whose real intention was to drain from you everything he or she could.
Besides everything physical and financial that you lost, you are most upset because you no longer have your sense of self. You feel like you lost your soul.
Now what?
The sociopath is responsible
First of all, recognize that you are not responsible for the abuse you experienced.
The sociopath may have blamed you for his or her actions, saying, “You made him (her) do it.” Understand that statements like these were all part of the manipulation. The terrible words were spoken specifically to throw you off-balance and break you down, so that the sociopath could maintain control.
He or she is responsible for the hurtful words—and for all abusive actions.
Commit to recovery
Next, know that you can recover. The key to recovery is recognizing that the fraud and betrayal is NOT WHO YOU ARE. The devastation by the sociopath is something that happened to you. The betrayal was an incident, an experience. Do not allow it to define the rest of your life.
Make a decision, a commitment to yourself, that you are going to heal.
This means you need to allow yourself to experience the deep wells of pain, disappointment and grief that the experience caused. You have to get it out of your system, and the only way to do that is to allow yourself to process the pain, which means feeling it.
Finally, you need to let the experience go. How do you do this? You accept that it happened, and that there is nothing you can do to change the past. This does not mean you excuse what the sociopath did. But you do recognize that the betrayal was an INCIDENT IN YOUR LIFE, and NOT LET IT DEFINE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
It is true that you will never be the same after the experience with the sociopath, and you may have, in fact, lost yourself. But by facing the pain, processing it and letting it go, you can find a new “you,” one with a richer, deeper understanding of the human condition, and more capacity for love and compassion than you ever had before.
You can recover. You can grow. You can acquire wisdom. And you can move on and find happiness—perhaps sharing the wisdom you acquired to help prevent others from going through what you experienced.
Louise
darwinsmom:
You are right…he is empty, very empty. I will always be a better person than he. Somehow I want to believe that he knows this…
Truthspeak
Strongawoman, I don’t know if “humiliating” was so much a factor for me as just plain hurt.
And, if I had not found this site 2 years prior to the discovery of the truths (completely different matter), I would NOT have had the fortitude or courage or knowledge to slam that door shut. This is a fact. Without the information that I learned right here and applied to different situations, I would have likely “accepted” the exspath’s deviant lifestyle and NEVER have discovered his true agenda: marry the broad for her money.
In retrospect, the exspath wasn’t bonded to me, at all. Not at all. Not one iota. I was a familiar presence, but there was no “bond” except the money. When that ran out, he had no further use for me.
Pfffft…..
Truthspeak
Louise, you will laugh, in due time – seriously laugh at what a jagoff the spath is!
I’ve typed this before, but I’ll type it, again:
Picture the spath in front of a Judge and he/she is naked and covered in mayonaise.
Okay, I get that some might gag first, and then laugh….but, DO laugh. Laugh because you aren’t like them. Laugh because you have the gift of empathy. Laugh because you simply CAN!!!!
behind_blue_eyes
My situation is very similar to that of Louise — short-term relationship with a sociopath who by mirroring convinced us that we had found a soulmate, when in fact we were merely the person of the moment…
While both of us are smart enough to realize we are better off without them, the soulmate mirroring makes it difficult to make new connections, because the one with the sociopath was so strong, even while being false.
skylar
It seems like every single word in the english language has to be redefined when it’s applied to a spath.
Bonding. What does that mean?
Jeffery Dahmer was “bonded” to his victims. He didn’t want them to leave, so he ate them. I felt like that toward some left over pizza in the fridge.
While it’s true that spaths approached us with every intent of destroying us, eventually, I think they do become “attached” to us, in a sense. It’s like, if you go to the store to buy toilet paper, that toilet paper belongs to you. Sure your intent is to use it to wipe your ass and flush it down the toilet, but you are ENTITLED to do that because it’s yours. If someone tried to take it from you, you would argue and maybe fight for your toilet paper. If you lost the fight, you’d go out and get more.
Really, this example is not so far fetched. They truly see other people as objects. Just as we see the objects on our desk or in the kitchen or in the bathroom. We judge each item’s value based on what it can do for us and how much we need it. Pizza has a high value and so does toilet paper, but they are commodities. Spaths can’t value people any differently than we value objects. That’s the type of attachment they lack.
Similarly, slave owners used to buy slaves and they would sometimes kill them if it suited them. There are muslim families who will “honor kill” their daughters because they can. This kind of attachment is a different definition than the kind we think about when we think of bonding. It’s more like bonding to a favorite pair of slippers.
Back_from_the_edge
He who laugh last, receives the last laugh…
(A saying from my dear old Grandfather…)
Dupers
Truthspeak
Skylar, perhaps, “bonded” or “attached” provoke nostalgic or intimate meaning to me, but whatever I was, it was nothing intimate.
Source. That’s the best term I can think of. We were altered into their “sources,” whehter it was for money, attention, sex, or whatever it is that they drain us for.
Dupey…..(snicker)……And, he who laughs first, runs the fastest! I just made that up. Dunno what it means, but I liked it….
Louise
Supply…we were supply.
Louise
BBE:
You said it PERFECTLY!! Thank you…that is exactly what it was and how I now feel.
kim frederick
Yeah, well….These slippers are mad for walkin’
and that’s just what they’ll do,
one of these days, these slippers,
are gonna walk all over you.
Ala Nancy Sinatra, with a little poetic liscence by me. 🙂