I have wrestled with this question for a long time. While with him, I sometimes wondered, ”˜what on earth am I doing here’? Since gaining my freedom, I have looked back on those 4 years 9 months and wondered, ”˜what on earth was wrong with me that I stayed so long’?
I know there are the physiological/psychological factors that compounded my convoluted thinking causing me to believe that I was incapable of leaving him. I know these factors attributed to my inertia and the resultant trauma bonding that held me pinioned in his unholy embrace. But none of these factors explain why an intelligent, well-educated, articulate woman did what I did — before the trauma bonding, the Stockholm Syndrome, the depression, the pain.
Why did I stay?
I stayed because in the process of burying my truth beneath his lies, I turned off my inner voice of reason. I quit listening to myself telling me I had to leave, I had to get away. I gave into despair, helplessness and confusion and gave up on me. I wanted the rosy sunrise of his promises, the gilded cage of his castle in the air, the perfection of his promises of happily ever after.
I stayed because I didn’t want to take responsibility for what was happening in my life, my daughters’ lives and to me.
I stayed because it was easier to stay than to leave. It was easier to take the coward’s way out by staying locked into his machinations than to take the leap into the unknown by leaving him and his lies behind.
I stayed even though I knew he was lying. I knew he was deceiving me. I knew he was manipulating me. I knew all of this but I refused to look at the truth because to look at the truth meant having to look at me — and I was too frightened to do that.
I stayed because I was a victim and I didn’t want to admit it.
As I write this I think about those who will say — but you can’t blame yourself. You didn’t know who he was when you first met him. You went into that relationship with your arms wide open in love and expected to have your love reciprocated in equal measure.
And all of that is true.
None of it matters though when I look at the reasons for why I stayed.
I could walk into a hundred relationships with my arms wide open and still find them empty — because my arms wide-open were filled with my own empty promises that I would treat myself with love and respect, truth and honesty. My lack of clarity in my beliefs, my values, my principles trapped me in his lies because I didn’t know what I stood for.
I stayed, not because of him, but because of me. My weaknesses brought me to my knees. My weaknesses kept me locked inside the web he wove around me.
On the other side of the relationship, revelling in my freedom today, I am willing and able to stand in the naked light and love myself as I state, unequivocally, I stayed because of me.
He abused me. He lied. He deceived. He used terrifying stories to hold me silent. He manipulated my mind and smothered me with his untruths.
But I am the one who chose to believe him. To let go of reason and accept his unreasonable words and actions. Accept his unacceptable behaviour and compromise on myself — not because of who he was, but because of who I was and who I refused to be — independent, strong, uncompromising in my belief in me and what I deserved from love and life.
In my world, post sociopath, I am 100% accountable for me. Post sociopath I cannot hold him accountable for what happens to me today —Just as he is accountable for what he did, I am accountable for what I did, and what I do today.
I stayed because I did not have the courage and strength of character to stand up for me without fear.
I stayed because I believed he could make up for the past. He could make my life all better.
Today, I let him go in peace. Holding onto resentment, bitterness, anger keeps me from living the beautiful life I deserve. Today, I stay away from holding him accountable for what happened to me because I have the courage to take charge of my life today, to be 100% accountable for me today and to make choices that love and support me today.
In stepping fearlessly into my life today, I leave him behind because I know that the past is gone, today is alive and tomorrow is just a dream away. A dream that will come true as long as I walk my path with dignity, grace and ease, 100% accountable for me.
Oh, my ex S children spoke the truth to me. Early on, his son said “my Daddy’s a cheater.” And the first time I met the daughter (this was still during the idealization phase), she looked at me, almost like an adult looking at a child, and said, in a sad voice “He won’t always be this nice.” I remember thinking “WHAT?” What a weird thing to say – he’s the sweetest guy ever.
Sweet little guys were warning me. I feel so bad for them. They have a string of “stepmoms” – women they become attached to, and then get ripped away from.
My husband (we are almost divorced) called our 2 yr.old at 9:30 last night to say Merry Christmas. What is that? The day was almost over.
He came over today and brought her gifts which were very expensive. He also bought my oldest daughter a video game and he stayed for a couple of hours and played with them.
I completely lost it after he left. I took a shower and just cried. I miss being around him. It is like we were all craving his attention and time when he was here. He then left and I am sure he went to the OW. But then I prayed after crying and remembered all of the horrible things he has done to me in our marriage (cheat, lie, had a child, hit me once, left me and didn’t talk to any of us, etc.) and now I am better.
He wants to pick up our daughter tomorrow because his brother and oldest daughter will both be in town. Ok, he hasn’t asked to get her on a weekend and so now he wants to get her. I am debating if I am going to let her go or not. He is supposed to get her every other weekend but he only gets her once a week. It is upsetting that he just wants to get her because of his visiting family.
And my husband is really good around children also. People love his energy and personality. I am sure the OW’s 4 kids love him too and her family. They probably think she has found her a real catch but it is only a matter of time. He is a great actor.
Nic – that is so sad. I know that feeling – like you are “all craving his attention” when he does appear. That used to make me feel like a stray, starving, mongrel who was just dying tohave her head patted. And like he was this god who bestow affection, in small doses, on whomever he was valuing at the moment. I was so heartbroken when it became increasingly clearer and clearer that I was falling on the list. Not only did he not pay attention to me, it actually seemed like he was repulsed by me. And just months before he couldn’t get enough of me and I was on top of the world.
What these guys do to us is horrible. We would never do that to someone we loved. I’d never do that even to someone I disliked.
And that he’s doing that to his kids must be so sad for you. My ex S was several years divorced – and I could tell that his kids were starving for attention from him the way that I was. I think his ex-wife (they were several years divorced) is caught in hell- he keeps her close enough to prevent her from dating anyone else, while he goes through girlfriend after girlfriend. She keeps taking him back, and he does it to her again. Nic, I hope you are able to get out and stay out. There is a really great guy out there who is going to be your future partner – get away from the loser. (easy for me to say – it was much harder for me to do. )
Healing Heart,
I do plan to stay out. That was a great analogy “stray, starving mongrel”. That is what I felt like. He knew it too so I think that fed into his ego. I think my husband would probably try to keep me close enough too so I won’t date. He had the nerve to ask if we could still be friends after the divorce. I just simply told him no because a friend wouldn’t treat me the way he did.
I know there is a great guy out there for both of us!!! (not the same guy of course…lol).
Ha! As long as we both have learned our lessons and stay away from S’s, it won’t be the same guy! But if we keep attaching to these guys, the next dumbass could well date both of us at the same time! WE WON’T DO IT.
It made my ex S nuts when I did No Contact with him. His ex-wife did for a while, and that also made him crazy. If mine felt discarded by me, it made him want me badly. It maybe wrong, and not a very spiritual thing to do, but I took some pleasure in his emails saying he was “devastated” over the loss of our love. I have no doubt that he was still sleeping with other women while being “devastated” over me….but still, I was glad that for once he was wanting me and I wasn’t giving him the time of day.
I know NC is for our own health, and not to punish them. But I think its an added bonus that it makes them hurt. You have children with yours – so you can’t do NC the way that some of us can. But I think there are several women with children they share with S’s on this site who are able to do some form of NC – with strict rules around drop off, pick up, of children.
Making us into stray, starving, mongrels, is incredibly cruel. Can you imagine deliberately doing that to someone? And yes, I think it fed mine’s ego, too, to know that I was longing for him. I’m so glad that part is over. I still long for him sometimes (though very rarely now, mercifully), but he doesn’t know it. He just knows that I want nothing to do with him and ignore ALL of his communications. As people have said on this site, the one way to regain and retain your grace and dignity in a relationship with an S is to go NC.
I just had a funny thought. My P aka the “the DumpsHer” (like dumpster) love bombed me and dumped me 4 times. Here were his excuses for dumping me, after saying he was in love, needed me, and when apart he claimed he was trying to breath my molecules in the places I had been, etc.
1. I met someone better over the weekend.
2. I need to concentrate. I’m not retired.
3. I read a book on the plane that made me change my mind.
4. My life is different now. I’m retired.
And the really BAD part is I was in such a fog that I understood each time!!! Yes, of course it is fine to do this totally sudden and complete reversal in a matter of TWO DAYS (or less each time….once it happened in 15 minutes…passionate love making, he went out for a cup of coffee and came back and dumped me at the start of a vacation we had planned for months). It is fine to dump me, I totally understand! Yes, I know you didn’t plan this. Yes of course. GEEEEZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Then I’d start crying after a it really hit me, try to make him see he was being cruel (like THAT was difficult to see and if I just pointed it out to the poor man, he’d understand and surely rethink things….Well, apparently it WAS difficult for ME to understand that was not only cruel but a complete deal breaker after the FIRST time!!!!!!!!!!!) and on and on.
And there was a discussion on one of these blogs about the funny things they say. Once he told me he was going to have a heart to heart talk with his son and tell him that he really loves him. When I saw him later and asked how it went, he said, oh really great. I said, “What did your son say, how did he react?” and he said “OH, he wasn’t there when we had the talk” LOL! I asked him about that and he said, “oh I told my other kids that I love him.”
argghh. Not to get too graphic, but even just writing the above post gave me instant diarrhea, which I still get if I even think about him too much. I’m truly going to get off this site awhile and try the emotional memory containment AGAIN and see if I can get rid of this PTSD. He is out of my life, and believe it or not, other than 40 years ago, I only was face-to-face with him FOUR times….but the whole betrayal bond and PTSD thing is still going strong, though I’ve not saw him for 1.5 years and not talked to him for 11 months. So I am doing this to myself now.
I’ve not SEEN him, I meant. He even makes my brain stop working!
Healing Heart said, “Although he was very friendly to my family at first, after a short time he was grouchy about any family visits – probably because they got in the way of him having sex with other women.”
HH, this just cracked me up. I’m sure it wasn’t funny at the time!
Henry, my neighbor David is single. He is the sweetest guy you’d ever want to meet. I’m having a New Year’s day party. You are more than welcome to come here (to Denver) and meet him! And me of course! We can fight over you. 🙂
Justabouthealed: Why do they always dump us after a night of passionate lovemaking? That is also when I got discarded by my S–the very next day. He was too cowardly to take responsibility for the discard, so he just pulled a no-show, no-call, then wrote to me and said, “I have no excuse. I’ll always love you though.”
Even eerier, though, was realizing that an ex bf (who I now recognized as emotionally unavailable with S tendencies) did something very similar. We were living together and (I thought) planning to marry. After a morning of passion, I left to run errands. When I got back, he was on the phone with his new conquest, telling me I “wasn’t his girlfriend.”
I am still astounded how little lovemaking means to a dangerous person like this. It’s really inhuman and inhumane. Even many animals bond to a certain extend after mating.
Fortunately, I did not take either one back after that debacle.