The two most recent Letters to Lovefraud both had the same theme: Sociopathic men who relentlessly pursued women, proclaiming their love, making glowing promises of a committed relationship. The men pushed for sex, and although the women resisted, eventually, believing they were involved in real romances, the women succumbed to the men’s physical desires. With that, both women were dumped.
Read the letters here:
I met him on Facebook, was used for sex and dumped the next day
I felt bonded, even though this made me nauseated
Both women were astounded at how they were unceremoniously booted. They had a hard time coming to grips with the idea that they’d been used and abused. How could a man say all those wonderful things and not mean them? How could a man who talked so eloquently about love be lying? How could a man paint such a beautiful picture of the future and then discard me? Was there something wrong with me? Wasn’t I sexy enough? Smart enough? Pretty enough?
Both women tried to get answers from the men. The men, however, never admitted the true reason that they did what they did:
They wanted to.
Core of a sociopath
Sometimes it’s hard for us to get our minds around how truly different sociopathic individuals are from the rest of us. This is understandable. After all, 96% to 99% of people are like us—capable of love and consideration.
But that 1% to 4% who are sociopaths—well, they might as well be aliens. These people:
- Feel no empathy at all towards other human beings
- Have no conscience
- Are interested only power, control and sex
This is the core of a sociopath—no empathy, no conscience and desiring only power, control and sex.
Implications
So what does this mean? It means sociopaths feel entitled to take what they want, regardless of how their actions may damage others. It means they get no satisfaction from connectedness with others, they only get satisfaction from winning. It means sociopaths view the world as predators and prey—they are the predators and everyone else is prey.
This is shocking. Mind-blowing. Impossible to understand.
So we cannot try to understand. We can only accept. This is how they are.
They do not want us as lovers, partners, friends or family members. They want power, control and sex.
Melanie, no you can’t. There is only one way to stop abusers from abusing: get the hell out. Don’t try to beat a spath at their own game. Many people end up dead for their efforts. And, if you’re looking for ways to “get even,” you’re on the wrong site. This site is about healing not paybacks.
Brightest blessings.
what i mean to say, Melanie, is that their greatest fear seems to be that they are worth nothing. They do all they do to feel like they’re worth something. If you show them that they are nothing to you, it cuts right through their disgusting fantasies of grandeur, and they start howling to high heaven.
Don’t get me wrong, if you do walk away like they’re nothing, they’ll do everything they can to drag you back in, and ruin you even more.
If and when you cut and run, you gotta be ready to really be cleared out, have everything that still matters to you safely out of harm’s reach, as much as that’s possible. Doing this half-way wouldn’t get you very far.
Psyche
Melanie, I’m clearing out for the night, but before I go, here’s just another way to look at it…
What gives your Spath pleasure? Answer: YOU
more specifically, abusing you, and watching you come back for more. That’s what he loves. The power you have here is to take that pleasure away from him, forever.
And if you can clear out when he has no other supplier of this kind of energy available, his system, which is addicted to the high he gets from abusing you, WILL SUFFER. If he has no one to abuse in the exact way he abuses you, he will feel those pains of withdraw for a change, instead of just you. It is a chemical dependency thing, as much as it’s anything else (psychological, physical and spiritual entrapment, etc.).
Sad news is, you will hurt too. Leaving him, despite the abuse, will probably hurt you a lot, not least because your body is chemically attached to the experiences you have with him. That kind of withdraw puts burning pain in all your cells, I’ve felt it, and it’s hideous.
Since you’re already in hell though, leaving, for you, will just mean another kind of pain. The choice comes down to whether or not you’re willing to go through the fire to escape the hell you’re in.
When you’re ready, don’t give him a clue, don’t give him a chance to prepare a counter attack. Set money aside where he can’t touch it, have a safe place to get to and stay for a while, and if you can disappear from his life without a trace, so much the better.
Until you’re ready for that, I’m sorry I can’t think of anything that can help you. I wish there were an easier way.
Take care,
Psyche
Dear Psyche, and Buttons, you are both so right, believe me I KNOW from hard experience you can’t out path a psychopath! I wish there was a way. The best chance I have had is to keep mine in prison, but not even sure yet that will work. If he gets out, I have got to cut and run! That’s all I can do! I have to turn my back on my home, my community, and most of my friends and associations.
Psyche, the rebuilding “family” is a one day at a time project. I have left my adoptive son, and distant relationship (but not fully trusting) with one of my 3 first cousins. I also have my sperm donor’s cousins, but they are quite elderly though, (in their 80s) very much with it and great people! I do keep in close contact with them via e mail on a daily basis. I also have a wide variety of trusted friends, which unfortunately for me, are scattered all over the globe! Thank God for e mail and cell phone free minutes.
Most of all though, I have MYSELF as my family, my best friend! That in itself is the biggest benefit I have gotten from distancing myself from my toxic relationship with the egg donor. I have close neighbors and people around me that a simple phone call would bring in a minute’s notice.
I reach out to others through volunteer work, and through my friendships here at LF. While they are “cyber relationships” they are important to me. LF gives me a chance to give back, and it also gives to me. I get a lot more than I give.
It has been a long journey back from the abyss, but it is making p;rogress each day. There are set backs from time to time, but they are less frequent and less devestating and I bounce back quicker.
I do my best to take joy from each day, however small that joy may seem to some. Sometimes it is simply laughing at the antics of my cat or dog, or the lovely colors of my yard back in the woods. Other times it is simply the good comforting memories I have of the past times with friends who are deceased. Thinking of the fun times we had and the joys we shared. I dwell more on the positive things in my life, and the negative things are no longer so painful even if I do think about them. I guess it is sort of like our memories of child birth, we remember it was painful but we can’t actually recall how that pain felt any more. If that makes any sense. The detailed memories are there but without the pain.
Making the decision that I had to walk away from my delusion of what my “mother” was and realize she has never been a true mother to me was definitely painful. But I also realize that I knew as early as 5-6 years old that she didn’t love me.
I used to have a recurring dream about that when I was little, it started when I was 5 or 6 and had a high fever, I was in trouble, and I knew I was in trouble, and my egg donor was outside my door, but I knew she would not help me. In the dream I hid behind a chair waiting for the bad people to come and get me, and I knew she was there, but I also knew she would not help me because I had been bad and done something bad (I didn’t know what). Now, I can look back at that dream from over 50 years ago and realize I KNEW even then she would not be there for me, would not protect me, and didn’t even feel an obligation to. It is amazing what we knew, even as young chikldren.
That dream has troubled me some all my life and it is only now that I can see the true meaning of it. It is odd that I would remember that one dream out of how many thousands of dreams I have had? I remember it as clear as a video. It no longer makes me sad though, no longer troubles me. The interpretation is pretty clear.
But I no longer feel like a “neglected” child. I am me! I am ok! I don’t need her protection any more. I can protect myself. I can nurture and approve of myself. I’m my own awesome self!~and that’s good enough for me! I’m also no longer an orphan either, I have a loving heavenly FATHER tht loves me, and I had and still cherish the memory of a wonderful “Daddy” and though he was not my DNA relative, he was my father of my heart. He was family. Even today I can ask myself, “What would daddy have said?” and he will give me the answer!
That’s the kind of forever family we can never lose, even to death!
{{{OxD}}} You’re such an inspiration. And, I guess the only “revenge” I would vouch for is to live a happy and productive life. Spaths HATE “happy” or “productive!”
You know we gripe and bitch about them not having any empathy or compassion for us, and in a way we do the same thing for them…we don’t have compassion for them, we enjoy seeing them twist and turn and hurt because we take away their supply. In a way sometimes we do the very thing that we accuse them of doing…we fail in compassion. However, I caution both myself and others to be aware of the diffrerences in pity and compassion, and between empathy and pity.
No matter how much empathy we feel for them, we must not allow that to keep us from walking away. It is only by walking away that we can save ourselves. There is nothing we can do to help or save them. Just ourselves.
Jeannie I was the first to respond to your comment about guy’s hating their mothers. I was not offended in the least. And I think your point of view has merrit, there are alot of men who hate women period, and that does not mean they are gay either. Also men who love their mothers [momma’s boy’s] are a red flag also. I put my mother before anyone for most of my life, yes prolly a momma’s boy, but she was evil, everyone but me could see it. It is painful for me to explain the effect she had on me. My sister killed herself and I blame my mother for that. When my sister was not much more than a toddler and would tell my mother that my father was having sex with her, my mom would go into a jealous rage and beat my sister. My mother has had so many plastic surgerys she looks like a barbie doll and is now in a rest home angry and bitter that she got old. None of her dozen or so grandchildren want to be around her, evil seeps out of her pores. No I dont hate her, I feel only terror at the mention of her name..I think I just wanted to explain why I dont love my mother anymore…
{{{Hens}}} Bless your heart….anyone can produce offspring, and we see it every day if we go to Walmart. But, just because someone can birth a baby doesn’t predispose them to being a mother. You don’t have to explain your feelings, Hens, EVER. Brightest blessings.
I wouldn’t waste an opportunity to hurt an N, because a severe injury to the supply system of an N is the only slim chance the N has at improving.
Walking away from an N or an Spath causes injury to their supply system. We’ve all heard that the few Ns who can be helped, can make small improvements if they’ve suffered severe N-injury (acute deprivation of N-supply).
If a victim is coming to terms with the abuse that she is receiving from an Spath, anger and a desire to lash out are a natural and healthy response. They indicate a growing self-respect that can HELP her escape the cycle of abuse.
If the worst the victim does is want to hurt her Spath by leaving, she’s got me behind her. I consider it a great thing when someone denies evil the pleasure that it takes in harming others. Evil SHOULD squirm, if we’re doing right by ourselves. An Spath will squirm if you deny him the pleasure he takes in abuse. I say GOOD.
When a victim can look at things from a safe, calm distance, it’ll be clear enough that walking away really just amounted to her taking the high road, rather than descending into the trap of trying to hurt the feelings of someone who had no feelings to hurt in the first place.
And it is possible to want to hurt an Spath out of compassion, when you still suffer from the delusion that they may have feelings to hurt.
When I walked away from my lover, I did it because I knew I couldn’t help him by staying, I knew I only hurt him the longer I allowed him to feed his nasty addictions to degrading me. I was sure that I was just helping him pave his path to hell, the longer I stayed in the cycle of abuse. So this sense of compassion is one of the major reasons I ended the relationship (it actually ended three different times, each time for a different reason, but it’s a long story). I also hoped that down deep, he might actually miss me, and maybe even change and feel sorry for what he’d done, if I hurt him enough by leaving. I saw the impact of the N-injury, and it was GOOD for him. I’d never seen him less confident, less sure that he was the center of the universe. He was shaking. It broke my heart to do it to him, and I don’t know how it turned out for him because I’ve been on the run to salvage my life ever since. Whatever, I digress.
Most victims can’t see clearly when they’re depleted from years of abuse. The fact that they’ve had more compassion for their abusers than they’ve had for themselves all along is a huge part of the problem.
Bottom line, walking away, for any reason (anger, delusional compassion for the abuser, half-baked compassion for oneself, fear for one’s life, false hope that the abuser may come running after you, whatever), is the high road.
I, for one, am happy to make evil squirm, whenever possible. It’s a GOOD thing if, just by taking the high road, we can cause the people who host evil to feel uncomfortable for hosting it. No one hosts more evil than an Spath. And if you can hit an N where it actually can hurt him, it just might give him what he needs, a chance to FEEL something real.
Psyche
p.s. sorry Hens, that I always say ‘he’ when I’m talking about an Spath. Some of the nastiest Spaths in my life were not actually men 🙂
Jeanne-I wasn’t offended at all about what you said about guys hating their mothers. I have such a strong dislike for mine that I understand. My mother was mean to me when my ex discarded me and I was in so much pain that I wanted to do die. Thank God for my stepmom-she was married to an spath before my dad so she gets me and my daddy was right there for me. My parents made my life miserable as a child because they were so controlling and I was terrified of my dad. My mom will not own up to how she messed me up. She thinks she is perfect and my daddy was the one who admitted his responsibility for my anguish and apologized. He expressed guilt for what he did and what my mother did. He felt bad that he was always working out of town and did not know what she was doing at home. If I did something she thought was bad, she would wail on me or say-“wait til your Dad gets home”. That reinforced my fear of my father and made it worse. Bottom line-daddy gets to me in my life and momma does not.