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
“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.”
This is so true! So many times did I feel that the reason she wanted to become of part of my life was because of my own personal persona. She knew that I couldn’t leave once we had children, that I would never be able to leave. She might have been my guard but my children was the chain that bind me to her! Please don’t get me wrong, my children are not chains. No I love them more then my own life, I love them unconditionally. But I believe that my ex-sociopath knew this too and maybe even hated me for it!
“He went on talking to the rabbi for quite a long time and, the longer he talked, the more his voice filled with cold-blooded rage and hate toward the Gestapo. Finally, he was so emotionally choked with hatred that he simply could not speak.
There was a long silence.
Then the rabbi steadily looked the young boy in the eye and simply said, “Oh. I see. You’ve become them.”
This was my worse fear! Insomuch that I had to find a way to forgive her! That by forgiving her, I can forgive myself. It’s in this frame of mind and being that will help me not to become like them!
Great reading! For me it was Juliet bleeding!
Lil Orphan,
I am always happy if my thoughts touch others or help them in some way. :o)
I was just thinking how BM called me “controlling” all the time. He would paste this on my forehead anytime I would try to talk about how much he was hurting me and could he please stop that.
In the first month or so, we went to see Marshall Rosenburg speak about “Non-Violent Communication” and after that he would say, “You are so violent!” Oh Brother.
I am glad he will not read what OxDover wrote about the victim, rescuer, persecutor. BM would be ALL OVER THAT.
Did anyone listen to the YouTube link? Is it just me or does that kick butt or what? I LOVE THAT! I listen to is almost everyday and each time, when Barbara works herself up for the finish, I get this big grin.. stick it to BM for me Barbara! For some reason, this little clip makes me feel so good.
:o)
Aloha
I got called “controlling”, too. Never thought I was, although I do have issues with boundaries from growing-up in a boundary free home. But I didn’t want to control him. I just wanted him to talk to me about things, openly and honestly, what was bothering him. I wanted to understand his way of thinking better, to understand whatever it was he was going through that made him Jekyll and Hyde so much.
While I can see that maybe this is a little controlling, because I am a rescuer type, we had no intimacy left between us because he was so withdrawn – just checked-out of everything.
But I realize now this was not going to help, nor was it my place. If he wanted to tell me, he would have. The fact he did not should have told me enough about what he really thought of our “interaction” and of me.
I do have the tendency to “rescue” though. It’s part of being too nurturing and I have to work through it with my girls, even, letting them be responsible and fail if they don’t do what they’re supposed to do to succeed.
He said I had no right to control his life and that he couldn’t trust me. Oddly enough, those were 2 of the strongest hallmarks of his own character.
He was controlling/manipulative to an extreme, being a cop for 20 years – and lied so frequently and plausibly with no guilt or remorse that he was totally untrustworthy.
He refused intimacy while oozing charm and pretending that he was ‘connected’ to me, while saying (simultaneously) he has no friends and is so guarded.
His 6 year relationship with an alcoholic probably had very little real emotional intimacy in it, and since she was a consistently drunk, very little physical intimacy either.
He verbally attacked me when he was about to get called on the pretenses he put forth. As long as his mask was in place and he was in control, he was fine. But the minute the real him came close to being exposed, he’d attack.
James, you said:
“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”.
I believe myself to be a very candid person of integritiy. My S had no ethics nor integrity. I found it interesting that when he was signing up for dating sites, seeking a person of integrity was at the top of his list. I presume that he wants to be able to trust someone, although he is most untrustworthy, and that perhaps he thinks either some of his SO’s integrity will rub off on him or that he is believed to be a person of integrity by association.
I think the thing we need to keep in mind in looking at the “triangle” of rescuer/persecutor/victim—is that you can’t play one role without playing all 3 roles ultimately. You may have a favorite role, but the fact is if we play even our favorite role, we also play the others.
If you walk down town and you see a homeless man and you give him $5–you can either be a “helper” or a “rescuer” depending on YOUR motives and thoughts. If he gets up and you watch him move to the liquor store and you are ANGRY at him for spending it on booze–you were a rescuer—if you are NOT angry at him for “wasting” your “help” then you were truly a “helper.” Because once you give the $5 to the man without any strings, it is HIS DECISION what to spend it on. Though of course you would prefer that he spend it on food, you would think it was a better choice, the point is that it is HIS CHOICE to make.
My mother is a big time “rescuer”—but along with her “help” go strings (at least with me) so I have been one that didn’t like to give the “control” that goes along with her “help”—because when you allow people to “do things for you” that you should do for yourself as an adult—then they also want CONTROL. I have not taken a dime from her since I was 17, and I have said time and time again, I would (if necessary) live in a tent and eat out of a McDonald’s dumpster before I would take “help” from her. At least before the NC she would have given me any amount of money I had needed (thank God I didn’t “need” any) but the concomitant control that would have gone with it would have been slavery.
DIL took the money, the new car (that was her con) but when “mommie dearest” (or in this case, Grandmother-in-law-dearest) wanted DIL to wait on her hand and foot, DIL resented the heck out of it. She wanted the cash and cars, but she didn’t want to reciprocate. Since GM-I-L had “been so generous” she thought she was entitled to have DIL be her personal slave. The “law of reciprocity” is in all human cultures. You do a good deed to me and I will do a good deed back. In REAL friendships where neither is abusing the other’s generosity no one “keeps score” but if one of the two is abusing this, you end up with “enabling” and the enabler is the controller and the enabled is in the one-down position, and RESENTMENT will flow from both directions.
People who are MANIPULATORS rather than “game players” (which is unconscious) are out for the con. Many times our Ps are out and out manipulators, I think other times they are just HARD CORE game players. I know my P-son was definitely a manipulator, but my mother is simply a HARD-CORE-dyed-in-the wool game player. She isn’t “aware” of what her motives are, or why she does what she does or what her pay-0ffs are.
Sometimes if people find complimentary game players that like the “same games” that they do, the relationship can be stable for decades or a life time. It isn’t “intimate” but it is STABLE, predictable. If that is what you want out of life, it works I guess but it isn’t what I think any of us WANT. I think our P experiences have made us deeper thinkers, and searchers than simply “game playing.” I think that we are striving, I know I am, to have intimate relationships with all the people in my life, NOT games. Setting boundaries is the only way to achieve that, but because I have a lifetime of game playing practice, I must be vigilent not to allow myself to fall into the “games” again. Not to be coerced back into them by either new or old friends.
James, good quote on that about the boy and the rabbi–and we must not let ourselves “become them.” Or as Pogo would have said “we has found the enemy, and it is us.”
To All,
I see the word “integrity” a lot here. I heard this all the time. Using this word when placing an ad, say on Match, implys to the reader that the author of the ad has integrity. Our brain just fills that in, doesn’t it? I mean who places an ad saying, “I am looking for someone with integrity because I am a blad faced liar.” Haven’t seen that one yet.. but I guess that would have some integrity too it wouldn’t it? At least it’s the truth.
I decided a long time ago… post Bad Man… that if you find yourself constantly defending your character, you are dealing with a disordred person. Think about it… I can not recall ever doing this with anyone else.. explaining my motives, defending what I said, arguing in my defense like a lawyer!
Bad Man would call me out on absolutely ANYTHING. Once I suggested “let’s rent a movie tonight” and then later in the day, suggested something else because I had forgotten about the movie idea and his response was, “A MAN MAKE’S PLANS!!!” Again.. OH BROTHER!!! But of course, this was a BIG FAT ISSUE like everything else and it somehow pointed to character defects in me.
Somehow, anything I said was twisted and contorted in a way that left me defending my character.
How tiring.
Good point, Aloha, come to think of it, I can’t think of anyone I have had to “defend my character to” that wasn’t disordered. Not a single one! The ONLY people who have said my motives were bad, were people whose own motives were bad! DUH! Yep, another of those LIGHT BULB MOMENTS!
At the rate the “light bulbs are flashing” around me, I may go blind from the intensity of the light! Thanks for pointing that out Aloha! You are a strobe light girl! LOL ((((hugs)))))
This article is spot on about the tactics of verbal abusers, but please don’t chalk up honesty to astrology! The Narcissist I tangled with a few years back, who got me into so much trouble at work (he falsely accused me of sexual harassment when I sent a letter to his manager about his verbal abuse), is an Aries born in a Rooster year!
Lying for him is like breathing.
Allure,
Good point. I certainly don’t live my life by the stars and by the way, Bad Man was an Aries. I do find it interesting to read about astrology and I do sound a whole lot like an Aries when I read about it.. I have tried reading about other signs to see if they can fit anyone.. and they don’t fit me.
Anyway, it’s just an opener to an essay. wink wink…
I don’t know that Bad Man was a liar but he sure was a twister of the truth. I used to say, “There may be a grain of truth in what he says but it has been so twisted and contorted that it is barely recognizable.”
I learned all about “Spin” from the Bad Man. It’s all in how you tell the story, isn’t it?
Since you mentioned work… I had the misfortune of working for a Narccissist during my first year back from Maui. She owned a small Wellness Product company.. naturally. I noticed right away that I had a bad feeling during any interaction with her and she reminded me somehow of the Bad Man. She fired me, of course… no wait.. she made my manager fire me. He told me a week before that my head was on the chopping block and she had secretly interviewed the entire team about me one by one and they all stood up for me. I wasn’t doing anything wrong but she felt that I was incompetant because I asked questions. Uh.. hello… I am NEW HERE! I was stuck in a tough spot… I knew she didn’t want to answer questions but if I used my own judgement, I could potentially do something wrong that she didn’t like… It was a no win situation. I found out after I was canned that the place was notorious for having a revolving door… and my Manager called me a few months later to tell me he was fired as well and so was the guy he hired to replace me and so was the new guy in accounting and the other sales lady and on and on and on. She let me go the day a call came in to my sales territory which would have given me about a $1,000 commission. My manager was owed about a $15,000 sales commission but he got let go before that pay out too.
At that time, I was just starting to learn about personality disorders.