The question was, “When can you trust your man?”
A reporter who was writing an article on the topic for a major women’s magazine asked the question. It showed up in my e-mail because I subscribe to a service that distributes questions from reporters to experts all around the world who may be able to answer them.
I knew what the reporter was looking for. She wanted succinct little tips like:
- “You can trust your man if he always shows up when he says he will, or at least calls to tell you he’ll be late.”
- “You can trust your man if he introduces you to his mother.”
- “You can trust your man if he shows you his income tax return.”
But, after being married to a sociopath, and hearing the stories of so many Lovefraud readers, I knew that these external signs may not be accurate.
The luring stage
In the beginning of a relationship, the luring stage, sociopaths can be reliable and punctual. They may seem proud to introduce you to their families. They may appear to be financially solvent.
Sociopathic individuals can appear to be deserving of respect, love and trust as long as it suits their purpose. These predators know what they are supposed to do to win over a lover. And they are capable of actually doing it—at least until they feel like they no longer need to.
Once they have their hooks set in you, they may be late—or even disappear for days or weeks with no explanation. Their families may trip over themselves to be good to you—probably because they want you to take the parasite off their hands. And they may flash cash and financial documents—cash taken from the previous partner, and documents that are forged.
So how do you know when to trust your man—or woman? Here’s my answer: You can trust your partner when you can trust yourself.
Trusting yourself
When it comes to romantic relationships, there are two dimensions to trusting yourself.
The first is your own sense of self. You know who you are, what you want, and where your boundaries are. You know that you deserve to be loved simply for being yourself. You understand that a relationship involves giving and taking by both parties, not one person doing all the giving and the other all the taking. You will not jeopardize your well-being in order to have companionship.
The second dimension is trusting your intuition. Your gut, your body, your sixth sense, will tell you when something is wrong. You must have to have enough faith in yourself that you can hear or feel the intuitive messages, and pay attention to them. We get in trouble when we allow ourselves to be talked out of what our intuition is telling us. When a person or suggestion makes us feel uncomfortable, that’s our early warning system, and we must trust ourselves enough to listen.
I responded to the magazine reporter’s inquiry. I told her than the time to trust a man is when we trust ourselves. She didn’t reply. I assume that my answer wasn’t what she wanted.
EB
LOL!! aaaawww I think you’ll miss your little friend 🙂
Good luck my dear and happy digging!
LL
Keep in mind…….
“Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. “
EB
LOL!!!! Welp, guess I better get bendin and flexin in that room I’ve been wanting to clean OUT forever…………UGH!!!!
LL
EB, fill me in! What’s going on, darlin’????? You seem to be doing great! I’m so happy to hear! Ya know, I just may throw caution to the wind and go. You do know that I went in September, right? Met the most incredible lover of my life there (from Canada) and then had to say good bye to him. 🙂
LL,
To answer your question of how did I get out so soon….his behaviors were so bizarre. He stood me up twice – the second time with no explanation. I took it as him breaking up with me. But then he tried to come back. Still with no explanation of the no show. It was the most bizarre game I’d ever seen. He would say he was gonna call and not call, but he always had a logical explanation. Though I was hooked, I knew there was something seriously wrong with him after the second no show. I didn’t know he was a sociopath until I told a friend the story. She turned white and told me to google “seductive sociopath.” She’d been married to one. It was not until AFTER I told him never to contact me again that I found out the depth of his deceit. Long story, but he’d lied to me about his divorce. And he and his wife were playing the army for a phony medical discharge. He’d lied to me and the army about an alleged head injury that he didn’t have. He faked very obvious symptoms with the army but not with me. The army told me they thought he was faking but had no proof. Thanks to my LF friends, I found the courage to turn him into the army for adultery and fraud. The last I heard, he was “charged with fraud and adultery and appropriately punished”, whatever that means. This is one of the few instances where the victim got to really have immediate vengeance on a sociopath. That didn’t take away the intense pain I felt and the year it took to recover.
Star……the treasure hunt is on……got a person with all equipment….comeing tomorrow. 🙂
My modification was denied…..opening up the hornets nest with spath….through attorney/courts to force signiture for shortsale….movine to rental….in the process…..life is good!
Not how I hoped….but good!
I did read you went on the love trip…..and how it ended….bummer….but good lay! 🙂 More than I can say….still connecting with the ol battery op friend! 🙂
Spaths case in xx state is in front of the supreme court…..he’s not off the hook yet!!!! This one may just stop him in his tracks…….or at least cost him a bundle to get off~! HA….fucker…..and he may even think he’s got backup cash in my yard to come to once I move out….or lose the house……tha’d be classic!!!!
Life is turning corners for me…..we’ll see what’s around this one…..
I SAY GO….DAMN IT! GO, GO, GO!
Dear LL,
Back before my husband died, this place was always full of his friends, and the friends of ours, and the friends of our hired hands, and my kid’s friends…some of them would stay for days, but I always treated them like “hired help”—if you eat here, get your arse to work, there’s plenty to do….that weeded out most of the dead beats pretty quickly, and there was always the pick up after yourself rule, but one year I had a college kid friend of my son’s who decided he didn’t want to get a job for the summer so he was going to come here to the farm and stay all summer. He visited for a few days and then except for showing up for meals I never saw him, and then I realized he was avoiding me, because if I saw him I always had some chores for him to do. Finally I realized what was going on so I brought him in and informed him that He would have to go home to his parents’ house because if he didn’t get a job he wasn’t going to be able to go back to school in the fall. He was TERRIFIED of getting a job, had no idea how to do it—well he has his PhD in classic studies now and teaches at a University, but for a year he was so angry at me because I didn’t let him stay out here for the summer and be a mooch.
Believe me, also I FELT GUILTY AS A DOG SENDING HIM HOME because actually his folks did not want him home, he knew it and I knew it—but it was not my responsibility to take him in and feed him and he wasn’t about to “earn his keep” either. (I blame that on his parents who told him because he was smart (he is really smart) that he didn’t need to learn mundane things like physical labor.)
I realize though that I did the best thing for HIM and for me because I NO LONGER do for others what I do not want to do. If I feel “put upon” or that someone is “invading my space” then I tell them to go away. I do NOT do for others what I resent doing.
That is a tip off there, if you RESENT doing something for someone then you are enabling them and it is not a healthy thing for you to continue to do.
YOUR SPACE is YOURS—you get to set the rules. If you are in someone else’s space, THEY get to set the rules. My house. My rules. I do NOT OWE anyone else my space or to let them take it over. My husband used too talk about the “golden rule.” HE WHO HAS THE GOLD MAKES THE RULES. So if you pay the rent then you get to make the rules. If you buy the food then you get to set the rules on who eats there and what and when.
Your kids do not set the rules in YOUR house. YOU are the parent, therefore YOU set the rules.
I told my kids when they were teenagers that I am the parent and the law says I have to furnish them with clothing, housing, and food. 2 sets of clothes from Salvation army is “clothing.” Oatmeal is “food,” and a blanket and a pillow on the floor is “housing” and ANYTHING BEYOND that is is “gravy” so they should not biatch about what I provide for them. Anything beyond what the law mandates is because I WANT TO DO IT FOR THEM, not because I have an obligation to do more than the law mandates. My P son thought this was TERRIBLE and that I was an ABUSIVE parent for saying this. LOL In fact, a while back in a letter to a minister friend of ours, he quoted this out of context to show how mean I was to him when he was a teenager and that I said “that was all I owed him” (and presumably that was all he got! LOL Poor baby!) LOL
LL, What Star said about doing what is right,, even if it is not popular with those that would mooch off us, or with our kids, then we do what is RIGHT even if it isn’t popular. Your kids will resist you setting boundaries with them or with their friends, but that is what parents do, they set boundaries and they teach by example.
Star is right, if you can’t “say no” then you Can’t say “yes” either. My egg donor bowed up her back and threw a fit when I told her I would say “no” to her if I had to take care of my own business, she said “Well what if I don’t like that?” I said “well, you’ll just have to get over it” or words to that effect, and she did not like that at all. That was when she started the D & D with me, but I no longer give in to black mail of “if you do that I won’t like you any more.”
Tuff!
Oxy
GUILT has run MY life since I can remember!! It’s VERY frustrating!
In my heart, instinctively, I KNOW what feels right and what doesn’t, but it was my GUILT that prevented any action that was MAJOR in saying, “um, NO”. Period.
Well, I laid down the law last night. And I gotta lay down more because right now, I need the SPACE to deal with what I”m dealing with. They push and push my limits. I’m DONE being pushed.
Oxy, it took FOREVER to realize that my kids friends were ultimate mooches. They always had a ready excuse and it’s interesting because they KNEW they could come here and “chill”. So funny, because just like I had to do about exPOS and his motives, I also have to do about the children that show up here now. It’s always the story of how screwed up their parents are and that they feel “safe” in my house. To an extent, that is true. The children I provided foster care too, went to live with their older sister because of what my son had done at the time and the fallout from that. I have ALWAYS felt badly about that because the sister, although she loved them in the most vague sense, was also much like their mother. She let them drink, smoke pot in her home. Even though the authorities at family services were aware of it, they wouldn’t remove them or her own children from her home.
THen they went back to their mother, who recently dumped them again for her boyfriend and her addiction, left to fend for themselves, going place to place. I wanted SO BADLY to take them in, what happened and what I realized is that the children that I once knew, were not the same. It was three years later and because they were both addicts, they could not live here and not expect to behave like addicts. It is SO SAD oxy because the girl jumps from home to home and with EACH place she stays with friends, the parents LET THEM DRINK!!! How could this happen? My youngest son tells me it happens more than I know. The nicest kids, kids that I dearly loved, not just those two but also other children who have been in my home, or that I have taken in briefly, are ALL messed up now. Only ONE do I have hope for. The rest are lost. HOW does that happen? It breaks my heart…………it truly does, but I know I can’t fix the world, hell I can’t even fix ME right now…but it doesn’t mean that my heart doesn’t break when I hear what’s happened to my foster kids, as well as other kids whose innocence were lost…and a lot of it to uncaring parents who just give them money for their drinking/pot/cigarettes, food in the fridge and netflix and call it good.
I would never win a mother of the year award. Ever. But I want my children to be happy and healthy and also learn how to assert boundaries for themselves as well as RESPECTING THE BOUNDARIES OF OTHERS!! This I failed to show them. I let them walk all over me to a certain extent, where in other areas, there was no way they were going to get away with anything….
Ox, I gotta tell ya, I did something the last couple of days that I’m really proud of myself for. Remember I told you about my daughter who I think is slightly Narcissistic in traits? Yea, well she and her man are having issues once again, ensconced in all kinds of drama. So she texted me and told me that “b” was going to kick her out within three days and that she has missed periods she so stressed, blah blah blah….”i’m sorry you’re stressed, honey, but call blankety blank tomorrow and they can give you a list of shelters to go to for women who are abused”.
Never heard anything back of course. It was like bait, ya know? Manipulative bait. She tried it again too. Again, the same response. Again, nothing back. I held my boundary. I held my ground. Even though I know my grandchildren are in a very perilous situation, I still maintained my ground. I love those little ones, but I also know that if I get sucked into the drama and say no to her, she’ll use the children against me. I can’t go through that pain again. I just hope that at least my granddaughter knows that I love her.
This is definitely a process. It won’t happen overnight. But little steps that I take to get myself back, amount to BIG gains in obtaining the goal of some peace in my life.
It’s hard to let go of kids that I love. Not mine, but others who are hurting or been abandoned and abused. It seems to me, it’s more often the case than not.
That’s really kinda scary.
LL
EB, you crack me up! I will have to stick around now to see how all of your situations turn out…. I’m trying to raise the other $1,000 so I can go on the trip.
Talking about boundaries, here is my first family dynamic when I set my first boundary with my stepfather. I was 16, and he’d been beating me for the previous 9 years, so I was afraid of him. One day, he picked up my barette that I used for my hair from the counter and began using it to dig wax out of his ear. I asked him very politely not to use it. It was, after all, mine. Well, in the past, I could never say this because I would be beaten. He got angry and said, “What did you say?” as though he were going to beat me. I repeated what I said. He started to puff up like he was about to pull off his belt. I rose to the occasion and picked up a frying pan. I called him every four letter word I could think of and almost killed him with the frying pan. I HAD FINALLY SET A LIMIT. NO MORE ABUSE! When he saw that he had no power over me any more through fear, check out the tactic he used: He then said, “You are crazy. You are sick. Why would you come in here and upset your mother like this?” (He was always using the guilt trip over my mother). My mother, of course was having a panic attack and acting like she was going to die.
This is how they tried to manipulate me when I stood up for myself. I walked out and never went back. I did try to have a relationship with them over the years, subsequent to my mother’s half-hearted apology, but you see how that worked out.
LL – i am not a queer boy, but a queer nonetheless and have spent lots o’ time with gay gays. So, I am putting my 2 cents worth in, from the field so to speak.
i’d have a talk with your son about spaths. grab a couple of articles from LF about their traits. i think queers are more at risk for the smear campaign – if this guy goes bad, he may well get your son fired.
don’t mention the guy – just give him some info. about spath characteristics – the love bomb, the compulsiveness, the need for stimulation (no pun intended), the promiscuity, etc. he needs to know this stuff to navigate well as a gay man.
One,
YIKES! Hadn’t even thought about that. And I claim to be somewhat bright. Sheesh.
great idea. I don’t want to overwhelm him with it. But I do think he should be informed so he can keep himself safe. I’m certain that his first serious bf was def a spath.
LL