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
James: The new guy (victim) will be blogging with us sooner than you can blink your eyes … LOL.
I’m glad you took the high road.
Peace.
Dear Muldoon,
That’s what I mean about “KNowledge=Power”—the more you learn the TRUTH about the situation, the more you will be able to be strong and control your life, rather than having HIM control it. It is scary to be “in control ” of your own life, and relaize that your life depends on YOU, that there is no one out there that you can just put all your faith in and they will take care of you. It would be nice if you could just let someone else make all your decisions and be good to you, provide for you, etc. but GOD is the only one we can completely depend on except ourselves. Being adult means making your own decisions. YOu can share love with someone (if you are fortunate enough to have someone) but even then, in the end YOU are responsible for your own life.
I’m 62 years old, and I have an “adult” my entire life, but at the same time, I have let my happiness depend on others, and sometimes those others are NOT trustworthy. There have been good and trustworthy people in my life, but because not all were trustworthy I didn’t TRUST IN MYSELF to take full responsibilityl. Now I am, and life is much better. I will no longer let anyone abuse me. I won’t abuse others, but I will take care of ME. I must be able to depend on myself.
I am so glad that you are learning that there is NO hope for you and your X together, he is not going to change. You don’t like the pain of life with him, so you must trust yourself to do good things for YOU and your children. You cannot trust him. You CAN make good decisions for yourself and your children.
Good luck and my prayers for you—keep reading!! Keep learning, and keep strengthening your own inner power and strengths!! (((hugs))))
Hello Muldoon,
I see you have read Romeo’s Bleeding. Eye opening isn’t it? Life changing isn’t it? These articles knocked the air out of me. I wrote this essay simply as a way to introduce those articles because they were so critical to my getting it about Bad Man. I was starting to get it but boy did the author spell it out! I wanted everyone to read these!
I did hold out a teeny tiny hope for a long time that the Bad Man would come around in his thinking. Before I met him, it was unfathomable to me that human beings could act this way, or be wired this way. Now I know.
There are a lot of beautiful articles about healing written by M.L. Gallagher. You can read them all by going directly to her tab. She is one of the official authors. When I first found LF, there was only 23 articles if I remember correctly and I devoured them in a few nights. You have a lot of material to wade through here. If the “Romeo’s Bleeding” articles are striking a cord with you, you are definately in the right place.
You will feel better with time. I am so glad you found LoveFraud.
Take care,
Aloha
Dear Oxy,
The first paragraph of your post… this is my lesson boiled down to it’s essense.
I wanted to rely on someone else so bad. My family let me down. I thought a man would make that up for me one day. I will be 40 in April and I am just now getting it, that this really is it… and it really is up to me to take care of me.
:o)
Dear Aloha,
I think it is a lesson that many people never get. I took “forever” to truly get it. NO one can “make me happy” and NOTHING can make me happy, I a responsiblle for my own life, and my own happiness. Circumstances are usually not in our control…as the Bible says, we can’t make ourselves taller or change that sort of thing. The apostle Paul counseled his disciples/christian brothers to BE CONTENT in whatever situation they were in…i.e. I think he meant that no matter what “circumstances” you have that you CANNOT CHANGE (he even mentioned if you were a slave and could not get “free”) that you need to accept them and be content and satisfied anyway. Good advise I think.
I worked with lots of people (of all ages) who were spinal cord injured and many of them never adjusted because it was always “If only I could walk….I would be satisfied.” So since their “dream” couldn’t come true they were perpetually unhappy, dissatisfied etc. and bitter and disappointed in life in general.
My best friend (I met her when her son was my patient) treated her son like he was still a human, who just HAPPENED to be in a wheel chair. He today is a fully functioning human being, he is still paralyzed from the neck down, but he LIVES LIFE AND IS HAPPY, and well adjusted—just happens to be in a wheel chair. Finished college, got a GF, then married, etc.
There are many things we can’t change about ourselves that hamper our “dreams” being fulfilled. I’m 62, and not likely to have another “soul mate,” but I cna’t change that, but I can live a happy and contented life for what remains to me. After my husband died I was NOT CONTENT to be (at that time) 57, and “alone.” Now, I am CONTENT alone, and if per chance I find someone, fine, but in the meantime I am CONTENT and not grieving over what I cannot change (my wrinkles and gray hair and sagging boobs! LOL)
I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR ME. My sons are resonsible for themselves, I am so glad that we have each other and can SHARE that love and respect for each other and help each other in other ways as well, but I am NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THEM, NOR THEY FOR ME.
I loved my husband and I miss him, but I should have depended more on myself for my happiness and contentment and less on him for that. So though it was a GOOD relationship, I put too much dependence on something that I could not control. Something that was external to me.
I am so glad that you are making so much progress, Aloha, I am glad that we all are. I am glad that LF is here and I have met so many courageous people here..people who are strugging just as I am to heal and move forward. To support me and whom I cna support, but in the end, it all boils down to we have to take responsibility for ourselves TOTALLY. (((hugs))) and God bless!
The “providing one’s own happiness” concept seems to be one that is so important. And critical that we actually commit to this, rather than pay lip service to this. Certainly for years I have known from all the spirituality books I have read – which have been quite a range from old world shamanism to tenets of the new age movement (which all have the roots in old world faiths), that we need to provide our happiness for ourselves, by connecting with ourselves and God within us. I knew this, could speak about it, and even give others pep talks about it. But I didn’t truly get it.
I know that now for certain because I put my happiness in my ex S hands. Certainly in the past I had looked to men and romantic relationships to feel whole, but in my last relationship, with the ex S, I took it to a whole new level. In part because he ardently promised that he could make me happy, and in part because I was willing and eager to believe. I loved the idea that bonding with this man would bring me happiness for all subsequent years of my life. How easy is that!!!!
But I knew, at some level, that it was never going to work.
You cannot get your happiness from a romantic partner or a romantic relationship. I think that was one of the huge lessons that God needed me learn. I’d been dancing around that one for a while, but apparently wasn’t getting it.
Now, I get it.
It’s really exciting in some ways to think I could make myself happy. TRULY happy. I have much more faith in me than any of the scoundrels and clowns I have looked to in the past to do this for me. There is a good chance I may make myself happy!
Dear HH,
Last night I was reading a few passages in the Bible before I finally went to sleep (it was one of those “I have to get up early mornings, but I’m lying here AWAKE worrying about it and the worry about it won’t let me go to sleep” nights! LOL) and I read where Jesus told His disciples that if they had the faith of the (size) of a mustard seed they could move mountains! FAITH! Faith in our God (or higher power as we see them) and FAITH IN OURSELVES.
I read on about so me of the healings that Jesus accomplished and the one where the woman said to herself “If only I can touch the hem of his garment I will be healed” and she did and she WAS healed. When Jesus spoke to her he said “YOUR FAITH HAS MADE YOU WHOLE” FAITH!!! Faith!!! YOUR FAITH in yourself will make it SO!
I have had traiining in hypnosis, biofeedback and in meditation and other “alternative” medicine aspects and I can, simply by BELIEVING IT, raise the temperature in the palm of my hand–BECAUSE I BELIEVE I CAN. I can slow my heart rate to 40, dampen down my respiration rate to very very low BECAUSE I BELIEVE I CAN. I know that “gettiing rid of warts” (which are caused by a virus) is easily done PSYCHOLOGICALLY if the person BELIEVES (medical science has now proven this with testing) THE POWER OF OUR SUBCONSCIOUS is AWESOME!!!!
WE CAN HEAL OURSELVES if we WANT TO, and if we BELIEVE WE CAN, if we HAVE FAITH IN OURSELVES TO DO IT. I don’t think it is some “way out miracle” or some hoo-doo, or hocus pocus, it is REAL, I have seen it, I have experienced it, but I for whatever reason DIDN’T HAVE FAITH. Faith in myself, faith in my higher power. Mostly I think, faith in MYSELF.
I accept that not every cancer, or every human ill can be cured by “wishful thinking” and that is not what I am talking about with “FAITH IN MYSELF” I think sometimes I at least and maybe others substitute “wishful thinking” for FAITH in ourselves.
“I wish (or I just know that) if ‘John’ would quit being so mean to me, we could be so happy. Maybe if I did _______(fill in the blank) he would see how he is hurting me and making us both unhappy.” THAT IS WISHFULL thinking, not “faith” in anything.
FAITH in ourselves is “John seems to be getting pleasure out of hurting me. I love him, and I am sorry and sad that he is chosing that path, and our relationship must end because he doesn’t see or care that he is hurting me, but I WILL STILL BE HAPPY WITHOUT HIM. I will still be OK.”
The “funny” (odd) thing too is that you can be both sad and happy at the same time. You can be sad that your puppy died, or any other loss, but yet over all your life, your contentment and your happiness and security need not fall apart because there is a big or a small loss of any kind in your life.
Thank you, HH, for your comments, they have given me a RENEWED RESOLVE for today to BE happy, to BE content, and to BE okay no matter what comes along. (((((hugs))))) Thank you for that affirmation!!! Love, Oxy
Beautiful Oxy, Just Beautiful!!!! XXOOOO
What an article. I still have the damaging names she called my husband going through my head. When she’s in a good mood, he’s a good dad, when she’s mad at him, he’s a horrible father that denies his children. He’s a selfish @.......$$hole, etc, etc. The funny thing is that her catch-line is “I can’t stand people who are rude or inconsiderate.” But she reserves the right to throw a expletive-filled childlike tantrum whenever the mood strikes her. I still remember how she cheated on him more times than he could count, and happily admitted to years of it after being caught, not caring about his emotions, then when he talked to me on the phone during the divorce, she threw a massive fit– he was having an ’emotional affair’ which was ‘worse than what I (she) did.’ She threatened me, saying that I had ‘never seen the wrath of a ticked-off jealous wife’ and she ‘couldn’t wait to get her hands on’ me. But the police chose not to arrest her.
Every time she goes on a rampage, I have to stop myself from going to her door and beating the crap out of her. It’s damaging my soul, and who I am. But thank you for your article. Now I can see what’s really going on when she’s ranting and raving. She’s making outward discoveries about herself. It’s still hard to live through, though.
To all, particularly James and OXY. The things you wrote have hit home for me today. I had not seen this article before. I just read it and the comments and it sums up so many things for me that I can’t even explain. I had several light bulb moments just now. It occurred to me……that, as independent and strong as I am and always have been, I became a wishful thinker……Not a victim or a blamer…. I was hoping more than I was taking action or even mentally focusing on to protect my mental well being.
I DID go to my friends and asked them to verify the things he said to me and about me and they all said, “you are strong and I have never known you to take shit from anyone. You are taking shit from him.” Still I did it anyway. I have never been accused of all he accused me of. The names he called me were incredible.
I think sometimes we have to hit bottom to get back up. I am extremely persistent. With that said, I do think our greatest strenghts ARE our greatest weaknesses. We do need to explore that. Whether it is our level of persistence, integrity, conscientiousness, reliability, etc….. whatever it is, it can hurt us if we don’t help ourselves first and truly REALIZE our weaknesses even around our strengths. I too wanted reliability in my life. Didn’t have it so much with my parents, never had it with my x husband….certainly would never see it with the XS/P boyfriend. But in the beginning he WAS the most reliable person I have ever had in my life. I DID feel that my persistence and ability to prove him wrong about me was going to make it OK. Obviously, that was not the case.
I have been having nightmares about him the last several nights. I come here and read and I feel as though you are all reading my mind and putting in writing all the same things that have happened to me and all of my thoughts.
I had one friend who protected me when I did not protect myself. The S/P called her one day, early on in our relationship when we had, what I would call, a small disagreement. The S/P behaved badly and my friend advised me then to ditch him. I didn’t listen for another year. When he called her she basically told him not to call her to talk badly about me because I am her friend. (He was telling her how crazy I was and hated his daughters and that;s why he said and did what he did and how he loves me and she should get me some help. )She didn’t buy it even then.
A year later while he was stalking me, after I had ditched him the last time/…….I went to the gym with this same friend. He saw us and walked by us, near us, around us. As soon as I walked away, he went to her and said hello and she said “get the fu*& away. You should know better.” He walked toward me ranting about how I was hurting his reputation by talking badly about him to people and telling lies, because all I have ever done is lied to him and about him……HE WAS TALKING ABOUT HIMSELF. She came to where I was and stood in front of me so I could not see him and said “ignore him and keep working out.” He left. He stalked me for a few more months, contacted me again and I basically told him he needed help and walked away. THAT’s what it means to be a good friend. I wasn’t being that to myself. I was weak when it came to him and I think I actually started to believe the nasty things he said about me. Particularly, because he would call and tell me that EVERYONE he speaks to feels the same way…….it’s hurtful and you feel like you have no one to trust or believe in you ! That stays with you for a long time.