I can’t believe that it is Labor Day. Here in the U.S., it’s the holiday that marks the end of summer, and all I can wonder is, where did the summer go? Yesterday, my husband, Terry, complained about a “time leak”—he swears that an hour is now only 40 minutes long.
Actually, of course, time keeps moving at the same pace, with the exception of the “leap second” added on June 30, 2012. (This apparently caused software problems all over the Internet.) Yes, time marches on—and we can use this to our advantage in recovering from the sociopath.
Involvements with sociopaths cause serious damage to our emotions, psychology, health, finances, social connections—to our very lives. We can recover, but it will take time.
How much time? It’s impossible to predict because every case is different. The short answer is that it will take as long as it takes—but there are steps you can take to make it go faster.
No Contact
First, and most important, have No Contact with the sociopath. Cut the person out of your life. No phone calls, text messages, email and certainly no in-person meetings. Why is this so important? Relationships with sociopaths change the structure and chemistry of your brain, much like addictions. In fact, many people experience these relationships as addictions. Therefore, you must break the addiction.
The longer you “stay on the wagon,” and maintain No Contact, the stronger you become. This is using time to your advantage. But as anyone who’s struggled with other types of addictions knows, if you give in to your addiction a little bit, you have to start all over again. The time you previously spent maintaining No Contact is lost.
In situations where you must have some type of contact, such as shared parenting, your goal is to do your best to minimize interactions. More importantly, you want to go for Emotional No Contact. This means you get to the point where the sociopath simply means nothing to you. You know and accept what the sociopath is, and when you see that typical behavior, you just roll your eyes.
Because No Contact is so important, it is one of the issues you need to consider when deciding whether or not to pursue holding the sociopath accountable for his or her actions. I believe sociopaths should be help accountable—they get away with their moral or actual crimes far too often, which emboldens them and harms society. But the truth is that going after the sociopath keeps you in contact with them, which can slow down your recovery. So you need to decide—is it worth it?
Hastening the recovery
The other thing that can make your recovery faster is consciously deciding that you are going to heal, and taking the necessary steps to do it.
First and foremost, take care of yourself—eat right, get exercise, get sleep, don’t smoke, drink or do drugs. Involvement with a sociopath may have left you with anxiety or depression. Healthy habits go a long way towards combating anxiety and depression.
You then need to decide that you’re going to deal with the emotional and psychological effects of the involvement, using whatever method works for you. If you can find a therapist who gets it—great. If you find comfort in church, prayer, meditation or spiritual practice—fabulous. I used both of these approaches—plus my personal favorite, pounding pillows in which I envisioned my ex-husband’s face. However you do it, you must get the toxic emotions and energy out of your system, or they will eat you up.
I also believe it’s important to look deep within ourselves, beyond the experience with the sociopath, to discover why we were susceptible to the sociopath in the first place. These human predators target our vulnerabilities. In fact, they can spot vulnerabilities that we don’t even know we have.
Did we have wounds from our childhood? Did we have mistaken beliefs that we were unworthy or unlovable? Something made us vulnerable. To truly recover, we must find out what it was and heal it.
If we maintain No Contact with the sociopath and focus on our own healing, over time, it will happen. And sooner or later, we’ll discover that our lives are happier than we ever thought they could be.
Strongawoman & OxD – thank you so much for the boost and the sound suggestions. Yes – grey rock EVERYONE! LOL
Katstalker, welcome to LoveFraud, and I’m sorry that you are a member of this group for obvious reasons. No Contact is a powerful tool and, in due time, it won’t be as difficult to maintain.
Brightest blessings
Truthy, when I dumped my spath, I was also very concerned about what he was saying to my forum friends behind my back. He was very charming and had a lot of people who liked him. This is one of the reasons I didn’t expose him in a big way there. But in the end, nothing happened. He just went away, and if he ever smeared me, I never heard about it. I was worried for nothing. I think they only want to smear you if they know it will hurt you. But if you rise above all the drama and become too busy and detached to bother, there is no reason for them to waste their time trying to get your attention. They only want someone they can get a rise out of.
Time and decision to recover is required, and recovery requires to understand relationship between spath and yourself first.
I agree 300%, that relationship with a spath is like a serious drug. Another post was why I can’t let go. One person can’t let go an addiction easily, it requires a serious motivation and total NC. NC is very hard to spath, when there is a mirage, you will attract to it.
After 3 years finally I understood the situation between me and exspath and reason of breakup, basically one of my friend is going through breakup with her spath and she asked me these questions, similar issues forced me to look deeply inside out.
Which sums up all of yours responses to many of my questions, now I understand my, situation with respect to spath. Let me summarize what I understood, and hope to hear all of your opinions as well:
They are charming ,successful, dress tastfully and know all social manners.
They treat us like queen and king initially.
They like independent partners so they can take that away from them to manipulate it is more fun.
They live private and secrete life.
They really love us first because we promised them our loyalty and commitments, commitment to keep our issues between two of us, commitment to keep our mouth shut, in the name of open communication between couple. They truly need this, because image is important, they will not marry you if they think their secrete life will be exposed.
(Expath told me, no matter what happens I can always count on him and should come to him. But he never said issue can be HIM and he is totally closed when it comes about HIM.)
The day they find out YOU opened your mouth to a third person, you are no longer a partner to them, basically you breached the sacred vow. Once you do this, all their crime goes to zero and your crime about opening mouth is highlights and you will find defending your self for your crime, which is you shared what happened with a friend or a counselor or your family anybody.
In my past life I think we both betrayed each other. I betrayed by talking to a counselor first and then to a family member, when his actions didn’t make sense and I was feeling enormous anxiety. He betrayed me by breaking all humanity rules.
Today when I think who am I, I know I am not a private and secretive person, so there was no chance we would have survived. I need more flexibility to breath, and exspath loved to breath in fog.
Chemically we are two very different people, I would take help from village to solve an issues, and he would take help only from himself……
Just something to think about, this realization has given me a tremendous peace.
I need help/advice from someone out there. I am so frustrated with the legal system. He just keeps getting away with his financial crimes. I am a professional women who is married to a path for less than 2 years before separating. No children, no joint property and I have been physically,mentally and financially abused. Can’t take it anymore!!! Ready to throw in towel and let him take everything just to rid myself of his poison. I have a PO which he is appealing, but considering letting it go and just give him whatever he wants just to get rid of him, especially since he has a nice NEW female victim he wants to concentrate on and he’s lost his job.
I am finding that NC through a PO means nothing when the P has an attorney that has sent Interrogatories and such that are whispers of ALL the threats the P said he’d follow through with if I left him. Why, when he knows he’s not entilled under the law?
It’s like my attorney is asking me to stripe naked FIRST because he DID NOT file for my Discovery (from a convicted con man ) or Interrogatories when my attorney convienced me to file for the Complaint for Diviorce first. Thinking about droppping Divorce Complaint also and just waiting for the one year required. Good/Bad
I believe that ALL the divorce attorney’s I’ve hired think I should not give up cause I’m a “cash cow” for them. We ALL know that a P is not afraid of the legal system and NO JUDGE will EVER get a P to pay his debts evenif it means jail time.
I just wanta be FREE so I can move on with my life and be happy again. Does cutting strings like this help?
– K
Hi K, I am pretty new here, so may not be the person to respond to your need for advice, however, based on the fact that you have no children, personal property, etc. to divvy up, my suggestion is to leave everything behind and RUN as fast as you can, away from him and NEVER ever look back. Get the divorce as quickly as possible. All the best to you, and may you have a most peaceful & happy future!
Hi K,
I did, I left everything, even lawyers said he owes me at least $25K, I left with nothing, because it is a game. He was willing to pay lawyer more than $50k so he doesn’t have to give even one cent, he wanted this to drag forever, which was costing my health and peace. I had to make a decision, based on when we were together he kept me confused and in secured all the time, now even during divorce he is doing same, and I wanted to take that right out of his hand, and signed the paper faster than you can think off. Thanks god we have no children together, and I have not seen him for than 1 year, last time I saw him when went to court to sign the final papers.
Your peace, safety and life is more important than money.
Hi K,
Shane and Myheart give the perfect advice. Cut your losses and get out and away – the sooner the better.
Why? Because I can tell you what it’s like on the flip side of not getting out. The differences: we have children x3 and property. Married 10 years – I told him to leave 6 weeks before birth of our third child. He thought he could manipulate his way back into the home but friends helped me. We were living in a foreign country then (7 years ago). When he realised he couldn’t get back in he tried to threaten me with legal action. I was unable to return to our (his and mine) home country as he threatened to invoke the Hague Convention on child abduction – in the meantime he was setting up a job in the Middle East to get himself far away from any UN maintenance obligations.
I filed for divorce and property proceedings in my home country – he attempted to stop it by arguing that I intended to live forever in the foreign country. He lost. However he transferred all capital from our property overseas before proceedings got on foot. He started property proceedings in the foreign jurisdiction as he has heaps of money to fund it. He said he would see me and the kids in the gutter and rather all the money go to lawyers (not a big asset pool anyway).
The court ordered me the amount in a joint bank account $125K in 2008 – however he appealed that and then did not run his appeal until it was dismissed last year. When I tried to get the funds from the account I found out he had transferred the full amount earlier (he was under court orders not to touch the account and the bank had supposedly frozen it… so how did he get it??? Well he’s a sociopath).
He is now ‘out of reach’ in the Middle East in a job earning +$200Kpa +bonuses, he was apprehended in Switzerland and charged by police twice for not following maintenance orders. However they let him go after he paid the fines.
He owes me +$300K in maintenance, +$50K in court costs, and +250K in property things (including money he stole). He is in contempt of more than 20 court orders in two different countries. And there have been no ramifications for him at all.
He has remarried and converted to Islam. Possibly changed his name. All the court has, is an email address but his location (city) is known.
Seven years down the track and the court things still drag on.
He does not contact the children… three years ago he sent our 10 year old son an email with great detail about a remote control aeroplane he had ordered for his birthday. He gave details and a picture and told my son to check the post in the next week. For three months that little boy ran to the letterbox (even on the weekends). Of course it never turned up. It has been a long road but I can walk away and must be resigned to the fact that there will never be justice in the legal sense… However who has won?
I have, because:
I can now walk away;
He has no contact with the children;
I have integrity;
The children have love;
I have learnt a lot.
Don’t do the lawyers thing – you are the meals on their tables. I don’t know how many children of lawyers I have fed and clothed instead of my own!
If the $ deal is not too debilitating then choose your freedom now and cut the strings.
The legal system will not bring solutions when a sociopath is involved so you bring your own solution by taking away his control.
I truly believe peace will come…I hope you make the decisions for yourself that help it arrive more quickly than I did for us.
Cheers!
K, I’m still not divorced, and money is the issue. The exspath doesn’t want to pay a dime and he committed outright fraud through forgeries and coercion. Having said this, he will face not one consequence for his actions aside from the possibility of paying limited alimony. Not one consequence.
The first thing to be grateful for is that you do not have children together. If this is about money, property, and Things, try to imagine if another innocent human life was involved.
The next thing that is the hardest and most wretched to accept and process is that the Legal System and Family Law, in particular, is not fair or just. It just is.
I would suggest that, if you have personal assets that he has not defrauded you of, take what you have and run with it. “But, what about the car? What about all of the money that he took from me?! WHAT ABOUT MY HOME?!” Well, the fact is that none of these things matter, ultimately. There will never be a “fair” judgment or decision, nor will there be one that is “equitable.”
If you have a secure position of employment, a roof over your head, and your own transportation, you are in very fine shape. Victims of sociopaths rarely “win,” EVER. And, if they do happen to “win,” it’s at a huge emotional, financial, and spiritual cost.
I have lost everything, K. And, I mean from my home to my job to transportation to personal financial resources that would have allowed me to walk away and rebuild my life at this late stage. And………the Judge isn’t interested in what I’ve endured. He wants his docket cleared, the parties out of his courtroom, and the ability to move on to the next case. That’s it. That’s all. None of what I have endured will factor into “equitable distribution.” Not ever.
Understanding what you’re dealing with will help you to process facts, K – and, facts are not “feelings.” Feelings are valid emotions, but they are not necessarily factual. Accepting the facts is painful, humiliating, degrading, and anger-inducing, oh yes. But, once we process these cold, hard facts, we have the information necessary to make educated choices about our recovery and healing processes.
Brightest blessings to you
I am new to posting on this site, but have been reading the blogs for a few months. I feel like I know many of you. Love Fraud has been a God-send to me as I felt as if I was losing my mind.
Briefly, I was married for eight years to my high school sweetheart that I knew my entire life. We had two children and he left on our eighth anniversary, to be with his then 17-year-old girlfriend. He was 28 at the time.
I remarried three years later. I was 29 and my husband was 21. That marriage lasted nine months as I felt he just didn’t treat my children properly and had developed a rather nasty attitude. I attributed it to his young age.
He and I stayed in touch over the years, only seeing each other a few times and there was no sex involved. I eventually met another guy and was in a relationship with him for 14 years, not talking with the second ex at all during that time.
In January 2010, my path crossed with my second ex, due to work. We both had several hospitals within our business accounts. I agreed to have dinner with him one night to get caught up on families, etc. I had no intention of anything else. We talked for hours and closed down the restaurant for the evening. Three days later we met again, during a snowstorm, briefly talking and deciding that we still had feelings for one another and that we wanted to see where it would lead.
He told me that he was very unhappy with his third wife and that they hadn’t had a life together in eight years, which did turn out to be true. Long story short, he divorced her, I left my 14”“year relationship and we ended up living in the same apt in August of that year.
He had joint custody of his 10-year-old son, who was actually with us five days a week. We lived 45 miles from him, in my hometown.
He wanted to marry me, but I put on the brakes. We did look for and buy two homes, getting out of both contracts before signing the final papers. Regarding the second home, he told me I just took up space in his life, that he was unfaithful to every woman in his life except me, that he could not promise me that he would not cheat on me. I was devastated and when trying to talk through this, he decided to break two fingers, smash my toe and dislocate my wrist.
On the anniversary of our first fateful dinner, he told me that he and his son were going to spend the following night in a hotel close to where his son lives. We had often stayed in this hotel, which was close to an airport, as I frequently flew out-of-town for work and, more often than not, there was a snowstorm on my return. What made this so strange was that he lied, made many excuses for wanting to stay in the hotel. My stomach turned to knots as I knew this was a red flag. To me, it wasn’t that he wanted to spend a night alone with his son, which would have been fine with me, it was that he had so many “excuses” for doing so. My trust was broken that night.
I left on a business trip the following Monday. He took me to the airport and begged my forgiveness and then went to my son’s home that evening, very distraught that I no longer believed in him.
From that point on, things became a nightmare. This man, that I sincerely loved, started telling me very strange stories, started cutting me out of his life in many ways, barring me from his son’s sporting events and Cub Scout events (of which I was very involved).
On the anniversary of our first year of living together, he moved 45 miles away from me, around the corner from his son. I bought a condo.
Three weeks later he wanted me back, promising me the world. About a month into that, he tried to choke me because his son wanted me to go with him to his grandmother’s house and I told his son to check with his dad. The emotional and physical abuse had actually started when we were living together. I thought he had a brain tumor or there was a medical reason for what appeared to be insanity. I “stood by my man” and the situation deteriorated until I was pretty much an emotional vegetable.
Last November, after going to Disney with him and his son, and him beating me while there, I decided I had enough and ended it.
In January, on what would have been our second anniversary, he showed up, professing his love and wanting to get back with me. That lasted three days and he was gone. He sent me a valentine, telling me how much I was loved. I ignored it. He came back and did it all over again about six weeks later.
At the beginning of May, I was driving down a street in my development, taking my granddaughter home. He was driving up the street. I stopped because I didn’t want him to follow me to my son’s house. He told me he wanted to talk and he would wait for me to come home. We talked for hours and he said he wanted to work this out. That lasted five days. He went to Chicago to a trade show, asked me to call him and he started saying very strange things to me. I decided then and there that it was enough and I went NC. He emailed me every other week since then and I ignored him. The last email was last week, also ignored.
Today, my doorbell rang and it was him. He asked if he could come in. He stood in the doorway, admiring my handiwork at remodeling the kitchen. I then asked him to please go outside. We sat on the steps of my front porch and I asked him what he was doing here. He said that he wanted to talk, so I told him to talk. He opened up about many things and told me I didn’t deserve what he had done to me and he was truly sorry. I told him I agreed, I didn’t deserve what he did.
He put his arms around me and I flinched. He tried to kiss me and I turned my head, with him kissing my forehead. He hugged me a couple more times, the last time not wanting to let go. We both are leaving Monday for business trips. He will be gone three days, I will be gone two weeks. He said he wants to talk with me when I return. For the first time, he truly seems sincere. There is something very different this time. We have both dated other people, if you want to call it dating. Go out once with someone and find we don’t want to be with that person. Go out with the next person. He told me today that neither he nor I will ever again find what we had together and I do believe that. I will always love him, but I certainly didn’t tell him that. As sick as it sounds, there is a bond between us. It is there on both sides. I just don’t know what it is. It has been there 31 years.
As we all do, I want to believe there is hope that he isn’t a spath and that he can get help. He is almost 53 and I will be 61 next month. Even though we are active and physically fit, I know we don’t have that many years left. In knowing myself and what I feel deep inside, I don’t think I will love again, that I will go to my grave loving this man.
Love Fraud gurus, give me your advice and wisdom. Can he possibly NOT be a spath? Why did he show up after four months of NC? He did tell me that he had followed me on FB until I blocked him. He knew everything that was going on in my life.
I’m not the mushball that I was previously with him and have learned so much from all of you on LF. I do love him, though—. Please help.
One other thing I failed to mention….while he was here today, he was shaking the entire time. I don’t know if this can be attributed to anything, but it concerned me…