Editor’s note: The following article was submitted by the Lovefraud reader Aloha Traveler.
Who are you calling BLEEP!?
I have always been a person that is hard-wired for honesty. If you are into astrology, I am an Aries and my Chinese sign is Rooster. This doesn’t mean much to me but a friend once wanted to know my birth sign and the year and then responded “Oh. Now I see.” According to my friend, Aries born in the year of the Rooster have a double scoop of honesty.
What does this have to do with a being the victim of a disordered person? I’ll tell you. When they are attacking you, they never say anything true about you. The Bad Man was always insisting that I was a very dishonest woman. How odd. No one had ever called me this, ever. He also insisted I was “rude” and “selfish.” This was early in the relationship while I still had some spunk left in me to fight back. I countered, “I am 35 years old. I have never heard this about myself before. Don’t you think that if it were true, I would have heard this about myself by now?” I was sure of this. I thought I had him. I was unsure of this—his response, “That is why your ex left you. Because you can’t see how you are.”
This was brilliant on his part. I was unsure as to why the ex, a Good Man, decided I wasn’t “The One.” Of course, I had already shared this information with the Bad Man in those early, deep, soul-baring conversations that are part of the Sociopathic Relationship Package. True to his nature, the Bad Man had already dug into my psyche like an archeologist and carefully uncovered every vulnerability within me. My logic, I was sure of. Why the man I loved for five years left me, I wasn’t so sure.
SCORE 1 for the Bad Man.
The Bad Man claimed that I communicated in “cunning and tricky ways.” If you have ever read anything I have written in the blogs or my other essays, what do you think? Is there anyone in Lovefraud land that experiences me as cunning and tricky? I have been told all of my life that I am very direct. This was so confusing. The Bad Man seemed to be operating in some other dimension… the dimension where I was cunning, rude, tricky, BLEEP, feisty, testy, BLEEP, BLEEP, BLEEPITY- BLEEP-BLEEP, sleazy-cheesy, dishonest, ornery, blah, blah, blah and on and on.
Romeo’s Bleeding
In the essay Romeo’s Bleeding, Part 5, the author, Roger Melton, puts it this way:
“Just keep one simple fact always in mind, regardless of whether a Controller is borderline, narcissistic, sociopathic or sadistic: Whenever any of them are criticizing characteristics in you, they are making autobiographical statements about themselves.
Blame is their way of unloading their character defects onto you. Listen closely to the hateful things they say to you about you. You are listening to verbatim descriptions of their character defects. This is extremely important to remember, especially in the midst of verbal attack. These are the only moments when you will hear the truth about the man who lies concealed behind the steel wall of his personality disorder.”
The Romeo’s Bleeding series explains a great deal about the methods, whether consciously, unconsciously, or instinctively, that disordered people use on their unsuspecting victims. I have found that accepting the Bad Man’s behavior as just part of the formula for an abusive disorder has helped me to let go of the horrible things he said to me. Honestly (there I go again), his attacks on my character no longer hold any sting for me. Letting go of all the horrible things that part of you absorbed is like performing a detox on your psyche and I believe it is a very important part of healing for all of us.
Never in my life have I encountered such a damaging human being. If I were to continue to carry his words with me, I wouldn’t want to get up each day and go on. There was a short period of time when I was with Bad Man where I remember looking in the mirror and feeling like I was the most worthless human being to ever walk the earth. This was when my sense of self was so weakened that he had nearly total buy-in from me about all the horrible things he said about me, to me. I believe that is part of the hook of carrying on with these disordered people; we want to prove that we aren’t the way they said we are. I know this was true for me. I would get so close to the proverbial door in my mind and then he would say something so outrageous that I couldn’t stand to walk away without defending my character and proving him wrong.
Ask your friends
In the blogs, I have advised a reader or two to ask friends or loved ones, people who have known you all your life, to describe you, to you. This is much more likely to be an accurate picture of you. You will be surprised at the generosity you may find among your true friends and loved ones. Some of the things people said to me when I was first out of this nightmare struck me so deeply in my wounded heart. I had been through such cruelty and the words of true friends were like a salve that reduced me to tears and reminded me that goodness does exist in me and outside of me.
Here’s a fun way to deal with healing that wound in you. Just to be silly, you can take the worst things your Bad Man or Bad Woman said to you and make your own game of MadLibs. Remember those? Write out one of the classics (one you feel you could never forget) that has been ruminating in your head for however long and delete all the icky parts and then read it to a friend and have them fill in the blanks for you like this:
Elise, you are such a ____________________woman!
Positive adjective here
Let’s close today with a little musical therapy. You are going to BLEEPING LOVE this!
Barbra Streisand sings Cry Me A River.
Links to Romeo’s Bleeding
I highly recommend the Romeo’s Bleeding series of articles sent to me by PeggyPseu. Thanks Peggy!
Romeo’s Bleeding: When Mr. Right Turns Out to Be Mr. Wrong
By Roger Melton
Part 1: Control
Part 2: The Malice Artists
Part 3: The Mirror Men
Part 4: When Love is a 4-Letter Word
Part 5: When love is a 4-Letter Word cont. The Clinging Apocolypse
Part 6: Conclusion: Counter-control
Dear Muldoon, and all,
Yes, a BPD CAN act under some circumstances like a psychopath, there is an ARTICLE HERE somewhere I am not sure where it is and don’t have time to search for it, but maybe someone can remember the exact name for it, but YES, BPDs can and do KILL just as PPDs can and do.
Under stress a BPD is I think can be JUST AS DANGEROUS as a P. I worked with the BPD kids (mostly girls) in an inpatient setting and I have seen them actually try to do grave physical harm (stabbing) to others (once ot me) and then five minutes later after the crisis was over, still want to be “best friends” with the actual or potential victim of their rage. It was creepy when one of these kids would try to stab me and then five minutes later, pretend that none of the earlier violence had happened. Sheesh, is that EVER CREEPY.
After the last attempt at stabbing BARELY failed and I survived, I decided it was God’s way of telling me that “I needed to find a new job!”
Of course not all BPDs are physically dangerous, as not all Ps are physically dangerous, but NO RELATIONSHIP with these people is without DRAMA and DANGER of some sort, and at the very least is detrimental to anyone having to associate with them.
I think it is just a good idea to be WARY of anyone with that diagnosis or suspected diagnosis. (i.e. “If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck” treat it like a duck) LOL
I wonder if the XS/P has BPD. After one session with a counselor he told me he and the counselor diagnosed me. i told him he needed to find a new counselor.
He exemplified projection. I recall when he said this to me I actually got on line to look it up and realized he may have been talking about himself.So I asked my therapist if there is something wrong with me and if I had BPD and he laughed. He said “classic projection”.
Thank you Aloha for this post.
My daughter is married to a p. He called her demeaning names and I stuck up for her (in July). I couldn’t believe she would let him speak to her like that. I couldn’t believe she wouldn’t say something. She made excuses for him. She still must be “in the fog”. I hope and pray she wakes up.
When I read the posts here, my overwhelming emotion is joy that you all are out of the grip of a p/s/n!!!
Aloha:
I’m going to have to read the Romeo’s Bleeding series.
My ex-S was a particular nasty piece of work. He used to tell me that I drove people away. In a way, S was right. By the end, a lot of people in my life were gone, because they couldn’t stand listening to my obsessing about S.
But, my friends are coming back — now that the S is gone. S, on the other hand, has few friends — he has burned so many people his dance card looks pretty sparse.
And the friends who have come back have, without my having to ask them, brought up what they consider my fine qualities. Good for rebuilding my shattered self-esteem.
I really enjoy reading Romeo’s Bleeding and have read it more then once. Of course when I read it I see “Juliet’s Bleeding”. But this part really hits home for me. For I know it to be true….
I always felt this to be the reason my ex S/P was attracted to me. And now after all the years knowing her I understand just how much she lack both integrity and conscientiousness even to this day…
For indeed:
“Integrity and conscientiousness remind Controllers of their most profound character flaw. They hate being reminded of what they do not have. They hate those qualities in others because Controllers cannot possess them. That is one reason that they are attracted to integrity. But their attraction is rooted in a desire to dominate or destroy. They must manipulate, rule or emotionally and psychologically annihilate anyone whose soundness of character reminds them of their own profoundly egotistical, selfish and empty natures.”
Revisiting old, old history at LoveFraud today. In case anyone remembers me, AlohaTraveler, I am now an LCSW and I work in Mental Health with the moderate to severe category of folks with mental illness like Bipolar and schizophrenia, and anxiety disorders and such. We get our personality disordered people too, asking for services. I can see them from miles and miles away. The last time I met a new one, I buckled my imaginary seat belt to get ready for the ride. It lasted one hour. (I am a therapist now) She fired me at the end of the session. Good. Fine. I don’t have to help everyone. That is what I tell myself. I am okay with it. Aloha….
AT- Good to hear from you. Good you are aware. The disordered can’t be helped. Work with those who can.
SG
Damn right! It’s called “triage”!
Aloha – so good to hear from you! Congratulations on becoming LCSW. With your experience, I am sure you are very good at your career.