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 Molly,
I think I am safe in saying that NO ONE HERE will “think you are crazy”–believe me, there are people here who have lived through events just as “crazy”–but it is the events that are crazy, not you.
You have had more stress in your life than any one person can handle alone, and your reaction was “normal” to that much stress. “a normal reaction to an abnormal situation would be abnormal.”
Healing is something that you have to do for yourself, but there are people here to support and cheer you on, answer questions, listen when you need to vent, and just be “there for you.”
Yes, there IS HOPE, and the fact that you have stayed sober through all the deaths and other losses, proves to me that YOU ARE A STRONGER WOMAN THAN YOU GIVE YOURSELF CREDIT FOR. We all are and it is about TAKING BACK THAT POWER and STRENGTH!
Yes, he is a sociopath (psychopath) because no one would treat you like that if they weren’t. A psychopath has no conscience, and nothing is about you, it is ALL about them. They shift the blame for all their problems on to someone else in order to make themselves feel better—they abuse you and it is all about CONTROL., Believe it or not, the bEST thing he did to you was leave you…you WILL HEAL, but he will always be what he is—an empty box pretending to be a human.
(((Hugs)))) and prayers, God bless you in your healing path.
Molly,
It sounds like it feels as if things are spinning out of control. They may be. And it may take awhile to get som footing. I felt this too when I left Bad Man.
Your ticket reminded me of the little accident I had three days after getting home. I hiit a parked car while parking a friends new “dream car”, as if I didn’t have enough problems. The other car belonged to her client. Both cars were damaged enough to make a claim. I honestly think this happened because I was in a state similiar to the one you are in right now.
When you leave a Sociopath, I think you kind of go through shock a little. That basket case, barely can function.. feeling… been there.
Don’t expect to leave the situation you were in and start to feel normal right away. You have a lot of pain to work through. When I first left the Bad Man, I lost 4 jobs in the first year, moved 9 times back and forth between different friends and lived out of my suitcases which drove me nuts. I practically cried when my friends that I live with now gave me an old dresser. I like order and I like feeling rooted. I lived with different friends, most of which did not understand at all what I had happened and no one, not even me, understood that I was suffering with PTSD.
If you are concerned about drinking, find an AA meeting right away. That might help you to feel connected to some people in a new area.
Also, Molly, I totally understand the desire to find someone to hold you.. just hold you and not try to take anything from you. You are on empty right now. I had absolutely nothing to give anyone for a long long time. I used to do massage and still, I just can’t do it. And I still have that srong desire for someone to hold me. I guess it’s like a battery recharging.
But things did finally stop spinning out of control. This has not been an easy road. I have made a lot of mistakes and met a most unfortunate character that just about took me all the way down but I am bouncing back.
You will bounce back Molly. You will be a different person on the other side of this. Hang in there.
My heart goes out to you.. Aloha.
Dear Molly,
I hope you are having a better day today. The need to have someone HOLD YOU is so normal. We ALL I think would love someone to just take us in their arms like a mother comforts a child.
The need for human TOUCH is so strong in us, and I think it really doesn’t matter who that touch comes from as long as it is human and kind.
Take a child on your lap in your shelter–hold that child and comfort the child, and I think it will amaze you how doing that, just feeling the child there will comfort YOU. That touch.
Sometimes I get so lonely at night in my bed, just wanting someone—anyone—male, female, young, old, etc. to be there to touch me as I sleep. NOT sexually at all, just someone to touch me. After swearing for years I would never have another dog in the house, I now have a little terrier that I let sleep with me, and just the warmth of his body there against my legs comforts me. I didn’t get him for that purpose, but it just worked out that way, and I realized that feeling his warmth was VERY comforting to me.
I’m also fortunate that I have a son to hug frequently, and friends. I take advantage of any human touch that is available. It really does help. I am sure that if you are working in a shelter that there are other women there that need touch as badly as you do, so you can help youself and them too. (((hugs))) and God bless you! You ARE a strong person!
Hello everyone and thank you sooo very much for responding too my blog. I appreciate the warm thoughts and feedback very much. I felt very uncomfortable even putting my rambling thoughts out there for the world to see. I used to work at a womens shelter when I was only 19 years old. I was a Probation and Parole agent for 10 years and served on several DV and mental health boards. I felt and continue to feel a lot of shame…because, I should have known better. I use to stand up to convicted murders and high risk sex offenders all the time without an ounce of fear, still I feared my husband even though he had not laid a hand on me yet. I somehow smelt, and felt that the physical part was right around the corner as evidenced by his escalating outbursts. His posture, the inflections in his voice, the darkness almost manic look in his eyes, told me he was ready to explode. He could no longer even keep his composure regarding his dissatisfaction with me when he spoke to others. His “wonderful beautiful” wife who he so appreciated that she never complained and took care of everything so that he could just focus on work; suddenly became a f%^**^ Bit^$^%& once she started to stand her ground.
Molly is short for “The unsinkable Molly Brown”, a nickname I was given when I was only 19 years old. I know that I have been able to get through quite a bit in my life and I have heard the saying that God never gives you more than you can handle. However, sometime I just want a time out. Sometimes I think he gives me too much credit. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I have found a bit of strength in a old Bonnie Raitt song…. “I will not be broken” it says something like “I might bend, but I will not be broken”. If I break he wins. He has “broke” quite a few women prior to me. One would not even let him make a amends to her, another committed suicide/ od, another had a relapse.
As for the dog thing…I really understand. I am currently house sitting and the owner has a black lab…Tiger. She does not leave my side once I arrive at the house. She even sneaks down stairs to the basement and jumps in the bed with me at night. The other night I found my self crying to a dog. It is almost like she knows my heart and spirit are broken.
Thank you to everyone once again.
Dear Molly,
Don’t feel bad because you “should have known”—I am a retired registered nurse practitioner with mental health background—I should have known—Dr. Leedom is a psychiatrist for goodness sakes–she should have known—etc. but we sometimes forget that we are PEOPLE to, and when we are in the FOG all our “knowledge” goes out the window. Aloha called it “INFORMED DENIAL” and I think that sums it up. We were informed, and yet we denied—bottom line, we are HUMAN too, we have faults too, we can be in denial too. Just because we know doesn’t mean we can accept it any better than someone else. In my case, I felt quite frankly, arrogant that I would never let a man abuse me—and yet, I let my SON abuse me. Then after my husband’s death, I let a man abuse me emotionally—and who knows, if I had stood up for myself he might have made it physical abuse as well. Fortunately, I kicked him to the curb before that happened.
So being “informed” and “educated” to these things is no guarentee that we won’t volunteer to be victims too.
Beating up on yourself because “you should have known” isn’t productive, but I think most if not all of us do in retrospect ask ourselves “WHY DID I LET THAT MAN TREAT ME THAT WAY?” OR “I WAS SO STUPID TO LET THAT MAN TREAT ME THAT WAY”
Boy, o, boy! Was I ever MAD AT MYSELF for it all, beat myself up worse than any of the Ps ever did—but now, I realize that I ahve to let that anger AT MYSELF go, and heal. Put it behind me. Forgive myself. Forgive them (not trust them again, but get the bitterness out of my heart).
My 31 yr old son D told me today that I stay too “angry”–angry at people who abuse animals, turn them loose in the country side to starve, raid livestock, etc. and then I have to be the one to put them down. Yes, it DOES make me angry. And yes, I feel pity for the animals, and it isn’t their fault that they have to end their lives on the front end of a rifle. It makes me VERY angry at injustice that makes others (even animals) suffer for someone else’s lack of empathy compassion and good sense. I do think though, that my son is right—I do get too worked up about suffering engendered by uncaring people. I can’t take in every stray dog that someone “drops” in the country, and I can’t let it kill my livestock, so there’s not any other viable choice, but to humanely put them down. Still, it SUCKS….I think everyone on here knows how I love animals, and even animals that we kill for food here on our farm are humanely put down WITHOUT FEAR or emotional trauma. (Yes, even cows can suffer emotional trauma–I had a very gentle cow once that had to have surgery on her eye, and even injections to numb the pain were so painful that she suffered PTSD to the end of her life, and if you tried to give her any kind of injection or confine her to do so, she went CRAZY and would have killed herself or you in the process, so she ended up without any vaccines or wormers for the 7 yrs she lived after that painful episode.)
What the Ps do to us and others makes me angry–and maybe my son is right, I need to work on that anger more. I have been, but maybe I need to do some more. When I read about Amy’s three children being killed by her P husband to punish her even though she had tried and tried through the courts to keep him away from her children and the judge MADE HER LET HIM HAVE UNSUPERVISED VISITS and then he killed them, I was so angry and depressed for several days I could hardly cope.
I know I can’t “fix” the world, or even one P, but I can and will work on MYSELF and my healing. Even Jesus was angry at hypocricy, so anger itself isn’t a “sin” I don’t think, but letting it overcome us, infiltrate EVERY portion of our beings, isn’t good for us either. Letting our justifiable anger at injustice become WRATH, which is a smoldering, vengeful anger is not good. The Bible tells us to “not let the sun go down upon your wrath”—if you are wrathful, you need to control it, and I guess maybe I am a bit wrathful when I see or hear about injustice that causes pain. I’ll work on that.
Yes, Free, the empathy that a dog feels is REAL, they somehow know you are suffering and they want to comfort you. Lots of studies have shown that pet animals give comfort to humans, lowering blood pressure, and lots of things. I wouldn’t take anything for my “critters”—even watching the cows with their calves nursing is comforting to me. Seeing new birth each spring gives me hope—flowers, baby birds, kittens, calves, new green on the trees.
Hey Molly-
I loved your metaphor of the bobbing dog. And I apologize for not replying to you….because I recall what you wrote– I felt the same thing. Fear I’d be found out, but I learned psycho does not care. It’s a long story, but suffice to say I know I could print out leaflets, hand them out on the corner and he’d not flinch.
I know for a fact he paid no attention to his exwife’s online postings…I learned a lot about his behavior. Interestingly he is now taunting her online–I am sure it is aggravating him, but she he has not took the bait…I know that for sure.
Anyways- I want to say you are on the verge of better, hell…you are away from psycho…bravo. Your story is incredible and inspiring….I have this feeling reading your post- you are going to triumph. I am sorry I am not a psychic or a motivational speaker, but your life is timeless, I mean I read stories like it….struggle, despair and redemption.
Keep us posted. I want to know what happens.
HWS
Thank God for this website. In these pages I see my husband’s treatment of me. He has called me so many horrible things over the years. Eight years ago, I called the police on him because he was being physically abusive. To this day, he still accuses me of setting him up. I am finally divorcing him but it is a hard path and I fear he has gotten complete control of our 15 year old daughter. She has been manipulated by him all of our life and wants to live with him. Our son is more aware of what kind of a man my husband really is.
So many times over the years I felt like I was losing my mind. During our last separation, he convinced his attorney that he was the victim and I was mentally ill (bipolar or something). For a while he even had me wondering about my own mental health. There is so much to say, I cannot even start to write about it. I just want to thank all of you for sharing your experiences.
Dear Been There,
Welcome, and sorry you have to be here, but this is a healing place. READ and LEARN, that is your best defense. They try to put the “blame” on us to the point that we start blaming ourselves, but it is not about US, it is ALL about THEM–and CONTROL—-
Take CONTROL of yourself, your thoughts, your feelings, and don’t let his lies and slanders convince you that you are behaving wrongly.
Your daughter, unfortunately, will have to find her own “truth” and sometimes it is best to let them go with the psychopath for a little while and find it themselves. Especially teenagers.
God bless you in your healing! (((hugs)))))
Molly
I understand your pain so completely. So may times I wanted to kill myself because I just couldn’t go on any longer. The only thing that stopped me was the fear of what would happen to my children without me.
His favourite pet name for me was ‘f’ing bitch’ or ‘psycho bitch’. He told me that nobody liked me, that people only tolerated me because they liked him and felt sorry for him for being stuck with me. After my Father died of Alzheimers, he started telling me that I was forgetting things, that I was getting like my Father (very Gaslight!). He told me I needed to see a psychiatrist because I had mental problems – well I certainly did after he came into my life!
After years of this name calling (and this is only a very small sample) I was a pathetic, gibbering wreck. I clung to him, hoping and hoping that he would not leave me because nobody else would ever want me and I’d be all alone.
Eventually, he did leave because he’d taken as much money as he could get out of me and he moved on to the next one.
This was all several years ago and it is only now that I am getting back to anything like normal. Part of the reason it has taken so long is because I’ve had to work it all out on my own without any help from anybody. All my friends and family had been alienated and I thought it was my fault so I never approached them to help me. I only found this website recently and I wish to God I’d found it years ago, it would have helped me understand things so much more quickly. The understanding is one of the 1st steps on the way to recovery. Once you realise that its not YOU, its HIM, you can start to move forward.
So, what I want to say to you is stay with this site, talk to the people here, never be afraid to reach out for support.
I am still struggling horrendously in financial terms because of the money he took from me. However, emotionally I am stronger now than I ever have been. I believe in myself like I never did before. I enjoy every day and no longer ever think about ending it all. I never would have believed that this could be possible when I was in the depths of my utter misery and depression. My recovery really started to grow wings once i realised that it wasn’t my fault, I had nothing to be ashamed of. Once I realised this, I started to confide in new friends and also underwent some therapy.
Sharing with others will help you more than you can ever imagine, so keep posting!
Both of my exes have done this to me in extreme ways to the point where I really honestly started to believe what they said. And the second ex, because I had confided in him about my first relationship, actually did use many of the same insults, I guess because he knew they would work on me. This really does make me understand things from a whole new light. It’s awful that there are actually people like this out there- and they seem so charming at first.
My exes would say horrible horrible things to me for hours on end and then apologize later or pretend they didn’t say them and accuse me of just holding a grudge or making things up. Trying to stand up for myself was awful because they could never take it- it just echoed right back to me. “I can’t take this, please stop talking to me like this” was responded to with “I can’t take it when YOU talk to me like this! Respect my boundaries!” The most agonizing thing was constantly being called a liar. It didn’t matter how much proof I had or how official it was or where it came from- there was still a crucial missing piece that they were “sure” to sniff out, and when they didn’t, they’d throw their attention elsewhere or set me up for failure so they could point their fingers and say “I told you that you were going to do that!”
And it really is true that most of what they say is actually referencing their own flaws, but they’ve conned so many people around them who don’t know them well enough that no one gets it.
I have been called crazy, controlling, manipulative, disrespectful, a whore, a slut, an automaton (THAT one was particularly creative, I thought), a bitch, ugly, bad in bed, a person who “crushes other’s dreams underfoot” (he was a poet)- thank goodness I don’t believe any of it anymore. (Though I do have to look at positive affirmation flashcards everyday.) To add insult to injury, when I would sit there in stunned silence after all of this, they would have the audacity to say “see, you can’t even defend yourself!”
Despite all this, I really have faith that if he put his mind to it and really tried, one of my exes could get past this. The other one was a diagnosed soiopath and I know he’ll never learn, and that makes me really sad for him. Life is so beautiful and love can be so gentle- why do they have to go and make it so difficult?
None of us here need to be ashamed of what we have endured. I wish you all a healthy recovery.