Almost three years ago, Lovefraud published the story of a man from the UK whom I called Tom. Tom’s wife left him for another man, took their children, had him arrested on false charges nine times and wiped him out financially. Here is the original story:
UK man says sociopath stole his life
Now, three years later, Tom still hasn’t seen his children. His ex-wife and her new husband, who also sounds like a sociopath, have removed the children from the UK. They live in France, at a small town near the Swiss border. “My heart bleeds every minute for the loss,” he writes. “It is a living bereavement and a nightmare from which I may never awake.”
I asked Tom if he was taking care of himself. Here’s his reply:
I have taken care of myself and for the most part I am okay. Some days are worse than others. I do have my very depressed and painful days ”¦ but I close my eyes, dream of days and memories of long ago, sleep and they pass.
I have to deal with my health and look after my parents. My mother phones me and cries about her grandson all the time. She has post-traumatic difficulties and says she cannot connect with her other grandchildren because of what she feels for my son. She feels a deep loss and is constantly worried about the kids. Every open discussion starts with them [opening the scar] and ends with them.
I am holding my own and my health has deteriorated but I am stable. I hold my family in the balance on many fronts. I am keeping it together but the pain is immense at times.
I am working and seem to have bounced back somewhat to where I used to be”¦ the years have been tearful, painful and costly. I don’t think that I will every really recover.
Releasing the pain
How do you cope when there is no resolution in sight?
I asked Tom about how he is taking care of himself because that may be, for the time being, all he can do. Emotional pain weakens us and makes it difficult to continue the battle. So somehow, Tom needs to alleviate the pain, even though his circumstances have not changed.
This seems counterintuitive—how can he feel better when his children are still kept away from him? The solution is to deal with the pain directly. Pain can be processed and released, even when the source of the pain has not changed.
Pain comes from wanting things to be different. The solution is to accept what is, for the time being, reality. This does not mean giving up hope. It does not mean quitting the legal battle. But it does mean letting go of the internal upset that keeps us trapped, and makes us ill.
How do we do that? We allow ourselves to feel the pain and grief at our loss. This is best done privately, or perhaps with a skilled counselor. We allow ourselves to cry, moan with the anguish, perhaps pound pillows in our anger. We continue until we feel a release, and then we stop.
Tom will probably have to do this many times—the well of his pain and grief is deep. But each time grief is released, it makes room for healing. And from a place of healing, it is possible to find the internal resources to continue the battle.
henry,
the plot thickens. it was interesting to hear of your children and that the missing of them may have been replaced with your ex-s/p.
i had a baby boy when i was 16, and my family forced me to give him up for adoption. i had a large, extended family who lived close by and i just wanted to raise that baby. but no, i was an embarrassment and that was that. it wasn’t an ‘unselfish act’ or ‘the best thing for the child,’ it was just hell — then and now. (i found my son when he was 22 and his a-family forbade him from having a relationship with me — they are wealthy and threatened to take him out of the will or something. he doesn’t want to speak to me. i now have a granddaughter whom i will mostly likely never see, but that’s a whole other story.)
my point is that there i was, a childless mother, and … enter spath-hole. he was 12 years younger than i, very childish and adorable and charming (and all those spath-hole things) and i was hooked from the second i met him. there was, amidst the passion and sex and intensity of feelings, a subtle mother/son thing going on. i did everything for him, forgave every transgression (agregious or not), and really thought that we were ‘forever.’ that our relationship lasted more than 20 years speaks to that.
and i find it interesting that he began the big discard just months after his own mother (who was my best friend) died.
you also wrote: ”I had someone to cook for, clean up after, take care of, rescue, fix, and when he got bored with it all, poof he was gone, I remember the pain of that, and I remember the pain of living with him, missing him hurts…”
exactly. i put all my energy into making (keeping) him happy and well-taken care of. meantime, i was slowly dying inside from not being well-taken care of.
listening to that song last night was excruciating. it said it all. that there was nothing inside him for me, really. he just, as he would always say, ‘do what i wanna do…period.’
so he got female #3 pregnant with baby #4. but this was the first time he did this while we were actually together. i never thought he’d hurt me this way. i was his soft place to land, and now that’s gone for him (although i’m sure he’s found it with someone else. i don’t believe now that he ever loved me.)
i never had other children. so here i am again, a childless mother x 2. i know that i have to be very careful not to fall in the trap of taking care of some man to fill up the hole left by my son being taken from me 35 years ago. amazing how trauma lingers in the heart.
thanks for that insight. it hurts, but is important for me to remember.
i’m actually doing pretty good overall. it’s exactly 1 year of NC. i don’t want him back, i still hate him. i realize how sick he is and that he’s just a two-bit player with a gorgeous exterior and a master’s ability to be flirtatious, manipulative and charming.
i do believe that his new gf and baby are being given his royal treatment. and i also believe that i just got too old and fat for him. hopefully, the pain this causes will also fade away some day.
henry, thanks for reminding me. you are blessed to have raised your children. you have something to show for your years of love and caring and generosity. let that be great consolation when you are saddened by the loss of the spath.
i also hope that mine sometimes things of me, misses me, realizes he made a great mistake. but i know in my heart that he doesn’t … even after 20 years.
moving forward is hard. but what else is there.
i send you — and all my LF friends — blessings.
Lostingrief . Your exchange with Henry here is exquisitely beautiful and exquisitely painful and incredibly humbling to read.
The need for me to have something to take care of, I think started early and I believe that it was a coping mechanism I developed at a very young age. It has not left me. I got pregnant at 16 too, but I left home and lived in the back end of crapsville to start the family I intended on building by myself to make up for the one I didn’t have. Making up what you need by creating it yourself for others”
It is amazing how trauma lingers in the heart, how we are shaped by it.
(I hope that made some kind of sense because I am not sure)
Lots of love.
xxx
Dear LIG,
I am so sorry that you are hurting, but I do know that the pain will eventually end where the X is concerned. I thought I would DIE of grief for my X-P-BF, I felt like NO ONE would ever love me again….and at that time no one did…not even ME, now I am loving myself and have never been happier.
Hang on ((((hugs))))
blueskies,
you were incredibly courageous, even at 16.
hold on to that knowledge as you clear the path to your divinity. most women forget that within, we are warriors and beings of light. we let it be challenged and superceded by all this nonsense about physical beauty and desirability and weight. we all buy it to it on some level.
it’s time to clear our hearts of the judgment of others and remember our truth, and trust our inner wisdom.
i was SO strong when i got back together with my ex-s/p/n six years ago. it only took him four to obliterate that strength and turn it into abject misery and self-loathing. but, i must take responsibility for letting him do it. even though it was subtle and nuanced, i felt it. i knew my heart was dying, and i felt the crushing of my spirit.
so we turn within and back to remembering who we are at our core. daughters of earth. women of substance.
TOWANDA!!!
ox:
i’m getting there in the ‘loving myself’ department, but know that until i stop hating him, i won’t be okay. i haven’t figured out how to do that yet; i’m still sort of praying and fantasizing that he crashes and burns in 1000 ways.
the thought of a man in my life right now is sickening.
i guess i’m no where near ready, huh?
thanks for the love …
Lost – Hate takes alot of effort and energy away from us. I find it hard to believe that anyone could take advantage of good people like us. Especially with all the childhood trauma that some of us cope with on a daily basis. But my X proved to me that there are people that do that as a way of survival. And he made me see the truth about myself and the people I loved…it’s a scarey world out there and we best look after ourselves…
henry:
i don’t believe the world is a scary place … and even if it is, i refuse to walk in it that way. that, too, takes energy away from us; being wary at every turn.
these days, i purposely put my head up high and — fat as i am — walk like i’m a freakin’ queen. it works well for me. it’s admittedly sort of a fake-it-til-you-make-it move. but if i walk the way i sometimes still feel; weak, vulnerable, hurt … then it’s a lose-lose proposition.
yes, of course i know that hate is a terrible emotion to put out there, but i’m no where near forgiveness with that beastly eff. there are many days where he is just a fleeting thought now, and it makes me smile to know that in just a year i’ve been able to do that much after having him by my side for so long. yes, i hate him, and i just have to move through that now. no fate is terrible enough for him. it wasn’t just me he devastated. he has a wide and long path of destruction behind him. and when i think of how i saw that and took his side so many times, it makes me furious.
i often wonder: doesn’t ANYONE else see him for what he truly is??
guess what’s important is that i do. and maybe that’s all that matters right now. i’m tired of trying to fix the world.
i’m just focusing on fixing me. you’re right about that; we must look after ourselves. far as i can see, i’m the one that’s truly worth fixing.
TOWANDA!!!!
Dear LIG, dear Henry, thank you for sharing these very important thoughts with us all, I was moved very much by them.
One thought came into my mind: as the X tend to hold a mirror in our faces (as for instance we see OUR wonderful love in them), you LIG hate him so much because he holds the mirror of your child you gave away? My thought now is that you maybe never truly mourned your own child as everybody told you then that he/she “has it better than you ever could have raised him” and so rationalized your deepest feelings away.
Your child later also made choices not alleviating your unbearable pain by contacting you despite the danger of being poor.
You hate the X for the exact reason I hated “my” X, as he did not allow me to “heal” the “relationship” with my father but devalued me as my father did. He hold teh mirror of my father and myself, and I had to resolve this problem first to get ANY peace of mind. I later talked with my father on this subject and was able to “make peace” i.e. acknowledge that my father does what he does and that I could not alter ANY of his actions. So you can’t change any of your X’es actions, and also the decisions of your child are beyond your responsibilities, will or no will. It is as simple as that, but the simple things are always the most difficult in life, aren’t they?
You are completely intertwined in a gruesome pasticcio of feelings. You can see these feelings but they do not belong to you but to the X, but I think it really is pure self-loathing that has not yet turned into tears for the lost child and the terrible choice you were forced to make by pressure of ALL the others. It is no excuse at all to your subconscious as you still feel having abandoned a child but were not allowed to mourn but to “be greatful that it has it so much better”, and rationalize it away. I am sure when the healthy tears of mourning this terrible event come and clense your soul then you make not a baby step but a step as big as Armstrong did 40 years ago on the moon.
I have a patient who also gave away her baby as a teenager, and when she got cancer she sent a sign to her daughter, and the daughter allowed to reconnect, and now they made their peace. They have no strong relationship, but peace. It though takes always two to tango, and if the other part does not want it is very difficult. Then we have to make peace on our own, mourn and let go/let God.
I hope when the time has come, when the will has been effective in the favor of the child you might meet; (such a gruesome decision by the “new” parents! Jerks in my eyes). Can you give him/her a sign that you are there if he/she wants make contact? Or send some gift to the grandchildren by some friend?
I wish you a peaceful evening, and send all my hugs and love
Lost – I live in Oklahoma and I hate tornadoes, they kinda sneak up up on ya and if you are in their path you can be destroyed. I have seen homes completley wiped away and right next door a house remains standing, not a scratch on it. Why and how can that happen? Force of nature? God’s sense of humor? Some thing’s just happen..If we are lucky we can rebuild a stronger house or dig a hole in the ground and jump in it when another tornado comes our way…tornadoes are what they are and they do what they do, kinda like a spath, I just got in the spath’s path and was almost destroyed, so even at my age (youth and good looks behind me) I keep building a stronger house..sounds like you are doing the same thing – Towanda
guess I am rambling again..but too sum it up – shit happens – I am to a point where my past does not predict my future – what happened happened – wish I could go back and change things or go back and kick some ass but I cant – how I feel today is up too me – lemonade anyone?