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
Aloha and all,
Remember about “truth” and “lies,” that RAT POISON is 99% PURE CORN MEAL, but it will KILL YOU IF YOU EAT IT.
Many lies have a “grain of truth” to them, or even can have 99% “truth” but the “spin” the “additional ingredients” makes them poison, and if you ingest it it will be fatal.
So many Ps, my X-BF, my bio father-P, my P-son, the Trojan Horse P, my X-DIL-P all use this “grain of truth” type of LIE to put the spin on and draw attention away from the fact that what they are saying is DECEPTIVE.
TH-Ps favorite tactic was to not answer the question. I asked him if my mother gave him the money for the truck and his response was “I have friends in Texas.” Implying, of course that one of those “friends” gave him the money. He later, when the truth came out, said “I didn’t lie, I just didn’t answer the question.” It was DECEPTIVE, and if you look up the definition in the dictionary it is the SAME.
I finally got to the point that I could tell when he was lying by the fact he used this “non-answer” technique on any question he didn’t want to answer, but by then he had wormed his way into my mother’s mind to where I couldn’t do anything about it.
I saw a letter written from my P-son to my DIL and though I don’t know exactly what her letter to him that he was answering was, I can pretty well tell by his response, what was in her letter. He told her how that “lighting one candle from another one didn’t diminish the light of the first candle at all” This was apparently in the context of her affair with the Trojan Horse P—like DUH! He went on to say that she had two parents and loved them both, so it was okay for her to “love two men”—well, I am sure my son C (who at that time didn’t know about the affair) would not have felt it was OK for his wife to have a lover and not feel diminished from her “lighting that candle” LOL
He sounded so “caring” to her, yet the letters he wrote to the Trojan Horse P about their affair (the TH-P and she were into the bondage thing) he was laughing about the TH-P’s “personal slave.” I’m sure she had no idea that the TH-P was sharing the details of their perverted sex life with my P-son. In fact, the TH-P had taken photos of her naked and bound and the P-son was expecting copies of them to be mailed to him. We found these photographs after the TH-P’s and the DIL’s arrest. Along with the letters which TH-P had saved, thank goodness. It laid out the entire scenario.
What kind of a brother promotes his brother’s wife having an affair with a psychopath? Of course, a psychopathic one! What kind of a woman has an affair and when it is discovered, plots of kill her husband? A psychopathic one of course. So when you get 3 Ps working together they not only screw the victims, but each other as well. All in the name of ENTITLEMENT. I’m entitled to your money even if I have to kill you for it because you gave birth to me. I am entitled to have an affair with my friend’s wife…I am entitled to take money from a trusting old lady because I drove her around for a few months (even though she paid me)…. I am entitled. I am entitled to the title and possession of the truck I defrauded her out of because I was smart enough to tear up the loan agreement.
Aloha, I guess she figured out it was easier to fire someone than to pay the commissions on sales. Good policy for HER. Yep, she’s a P all right.
this article really helped me. the things they say are complete reflections of their own insecurities. i can think of different instances of this.
like once when he told me that he was talking about me to his friend (living off her mom’s government housing) who said something to the effect of i needed my daddy to help me. haha? meanwhile he was living off of my father and the rent he paid. much later he suggested we were meant to be together and i said ‘you don’t even pay your own rent.’ and he said ‘you can’t talk to me that way, you bitch.’ why the hell not? finally i got him. 😉
peggywhoever
“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.”
Yes, I agree! I believe they need to be associated with people who indeed show personal behavior of Integrity and conscientiousness. It’s part of their cover. Like, “you see my partner! What a good person she/he is, I am like her/he or we wouldn’t be together, right?” Wrong! I also believe that they try to incorporate (act and behave) us.
This would explain why so many people tell stories of how much their ex-partners changed (personal persona, personality and their style in general) in a short time while being with their new (victim) soul mate.
I did see this happen in her (ex) as well. In fact she even stated that to me, saying “he is more like me”. Okay? What does that mean? More like someone else? Well after learning more about Him, I found out that his wife left him and moved about 3 states away from him, leaving him with a child. He is a know drug user. After being a manual laborer for many years his body is shot! The only commonalty I saw was that both of them had very little education and both are blue-collar workers. Guess he is more like her?
OxDrover
“I think the thing we need to keep in mind in looking at the “triangle” of rescuer/persecutor/victim”
I agree, but please OxDrover allow me to state this. You see when I decided to stop being a partner to this dysfunctional dance, i.e. rescuer/persecutor/victim.
That in fact I did resolve to stop being a rescuer: example (she wanted a car, I told her to please have someone else co-sign for her this time.) *Please remember that she refused to marriage me and felt that because she wasn’t my “legal” wife I had no financial responsibility toward her. Plus something just told me not to do it and thank God I didn’t because you know who would have that car today!*
That in fact I did resolve to stop being a persecutor: example (If I saw her do something wrong, like lying. I refused to call her on it)
That in fact I did resolve to stop being a victim: example (I told her more then once that I will not be verbally abuse anymore. And if she didn’t stop I would call the police. Well, she would just unplug the phone, but it gave her a message loud and clear. NO MORE!)
Unbeknown to me, because of this decision, I was on my way out! I believe in my heart and soul that this is why she left me. That in fact she started looking for a new partner who would in fact be a dancer in this “triangle”. I believe this so much that in fact at the time of me writing this blog, she is still going thru the motions of this very dysfunctional dance, i.e. rescuer/persecutor/victim. Just with someone else.
“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”
Yes, Yes! I believe there are many relationship (maybe like the one she has now and that would explain why he is more like her with them both being “players”) like that. And I guess it works for them, but for me it will never work. I want more then games/players in my personal life and relationships.
I am sad to announce the death of Kathy Krajco author the blog “What makes narcissists tick.”
Her work opened my eyes. And her insight was uncanny- she knew narcissists/psychopaths better than anyone I read.
Here’s to you Kathy! Godspeed.
Please pray for her soul. http://obit.schneiderfuneraldirectors.com/obitdisplay.html?id=541468&listing=All
ps
I suspect she died in the middle of April because I had been in correspondence with her and did not receive a reply in April.
I say this because it is a final lesson of sort for us, those who deal with psychos, we sometimes end up alone but at peace. Reading Kathy I know she was at least happy with the knowledge that our own company is better than ANY company, for me she was a role model par excellence–and that is something coming from me a orthodox Catholic and she at her death an atheist.
Pray for her soul.
I was told I had a ugly face, that I stunk, that I sweat too much, that my butt was really big (I weigh 110 btw), that I was not as smart as some people, that my breasts were too small, that my son did not behave as well as some, that I was not loved as much as he loved a past a girlfriend. Then when he started to devalue me and discard me when I was 6 months pregnant, he said that he didn’t know if I was his type. Then he told me he was in love with another women and he wanted to try it out with her. Finally on the day he was leaving, I was 6 months pregnant, he looked at me with plessure in his eyes and said “no one has ever left you for another women, have they?”
Bird-
He’s a loser in every sense of the word. If he never came back—that was the BEST day of your life.
I’m saddened to learn of Kathy’s passing. She was a bright light and very great resource for so many of us. I hope she is very peaceful and if there was a P in her life, that she now can rest assured in Heaven he will never be able to bother her there!
She will be missed.