What do we do when sociopaths experience no consequences?

Lovefraud received the following email from a reader who posts as “Salvation2012.”

Thank you for helping me decide when I needed to cut my losses during my divorce. I did cut my “losses,” yet the total I received tallied up to a number similar, just not in all cash. Because I settled in his eyes, he told everyone I was just proving how I was the guilty one and didn’t want to risk being exposed. To the end he will deny permanently injuring me and bleeding me of money, and cheating on me (which I only later found out about the extent).

My recent concern is watching him seemingly have no consequences. I’m not a vengeful person, so this is a distressing area for me, but I just thought karma or something would move in. How was he convicted of a crime, and given no contact and stay away orders from civil and criminal courts, and still have his job, and still be with the woman he was with (apparently for the last 7 years. We were together since January 2007, so their relationship lasted the entirety of our time together), and his friends are happy for him.

Maybe I’m staunch in my morals, but if I had a friend who was found guilty and the judge took away his first time offenders rights because 1) the severity of the injuries and 2) it was only the first caught act of violence, I would not support that person anymore. I would say that person dug themselves a big hole and it’s theirs to climb out of or stay in.

I am finding peace in my new location, yet struggle with reality checking and normal people actually being normal and trusting that. He seems to be just fine and has announced to all the love of his life, and he is finally happy happy happy, and has been with her since last May, which was while we were still married, and is the incorrect start date as her husband contacted me and has been following them for 7 years of his marriage (they are now going through a divorce).

It’s not a jealousy, but an envy of how he is so unaffected by what he did to me, even with law and court representatives telling him to his face what they saw in him. I don’t want to have to figure him out anymore as it prevents me from fully moving forward. So how do I turn off the switch when the spath is moving on easily and I am still finding my ground?

Salvation2012 brings up two issues here that seem to be intertwined, but they really aren’t. The issues are what happens to the sociopath, and what happens to us.

The sociopath

Chances are very good that sooner or later, karma will move in on the sociopath. At some point sociopaths usually screw up. They go too far over the line, anger the wrong person, get sloppy, run out of people to exploit, or suffer medical consequences after years of unhealthy living.

But this is not going to happen on our timetable. In fact, we may never even hear of the sociopath’s unseemly collapse.

In the meantime, sociopaths seem to be getting away with everything. And yes, they are unaffected. But think about why they are unaffected: They are hollow, empty shells of human beings. They have no heart and no conscience. This is what enables them to shred us and move on without a second thought.

I’d rather keep my heart and conscience and suffer the pain than live their eternally barren existence.

So what do we do? We let them go. We let go of our experience with them. Our goal should be to get to the point where they simply don’t matter. They are non-entities.

Our own path of healing

Letting go of the sociopath is actually one of the best things we can do for ourselves. When we stop worrying, or even wondering, about consequences for the sociopath, we can focus our energy on our own healing.

Salvation2012 asked, “How do I turn off the switch?”

The first step is to viscerally accept what happened to us. Usually the switch that connects us to the sociopath is jammed on because we’re still beating ourselves up for falling for the lies, or wishing that what happened in our life did not happen.

We don’t condone the actions of the sociopath. We don’t like what happened, either. But we do have to get to the point where we can say, “It happened, and there’s nothing I can do about that now, except move forward.”

Then we take steps to process the pain. We look for our vulnerabilities and address them, so that we never fall for a sociopath again. And as we go along, we make sure to be good to ourselves.

Yes, we were hurt, but that’s because we have a heart and a conscience — both of which we want to cherish.

Lovefraud originally posted this article on May 24, 2013.