Healing from a relationship with a sociopath is hard, often brutally hard. Don’t add to that by being hard on yourself if your own path is filled with dark days and setbacks–even setbacks you may have caused by diverting from a path of “no contact.” We are human. We are imperfect. Seek support from those who understand and will not judge. It’s okay. All we can ever do in life is to move forward.
No Contact/No Emotion
Yet, as soon as possible, no contact with a sociopath is important. If no contact isn’t possible for legal, custody or other reasons, keeping the contact minimal and totally devoid of emotion is critical.
Why? Because sociopaths feed on emotion. I just finished reading a book published by a self-proclaimed sociopath, and he described it as needing “fuel.” Just as we all need oxygen to breathe, food to eat, and shelter to keep us at a comfortable temperature, sociopaths need to trigger emotions in others because sociopaths are fueled by controlling others. Your emotion (just knowing you will react emotionally even if the sociopath cannot witness it) is evidence of that control. They are truly emotional vampires.
Our Emotion is Like a Drug to The Sociopath—It Fuels Them
That’s one of the reasons sociopaths strive for continued contact with former victims. Just as the sociopath is like a drug to you (you know the relationship is toxic, yet you crave it anyway), the fuel your emotional reaction provides for the sociopath (positive or negative) is like a drug to the sociopath. To get it, they need people in their lives–they need you. At first, during the love-bombing stage, the emotion they created in you is positive and that’s fuel for them, too. But as your feelings naturally evolve from giddy, over-the-moon being in love to more mature love, it’s not enough to keep the sociopath fueled. At this stage, they purposely trigger negative emotions and ruminations in you to create the fuel they crave.
Yes, They are Setting You Up
Why was he so nasty to me this morning? Was she really flirting with my best friend? Was I really being inconsiderate by going out with friends after work? And so it goes. Their subtle and sometimes not so subtle behavior triggers a reaction in you. That reaction fuels them, as it is testament to their power and control.
Will the sociopath ever admit to doing this. Heck no, because if you realize you are no more than a puppet to them, then you might leave and the puppet master would be without his/her primary source of fuel, fun, and satisfaction. Why ruin a good thing? To keep the game going, there has to be “deniability” and they put the onus on you–you really are too sensitive, you didn’t understand, you can’t take a joke, you really were flirting, etc. See where this is going? In the end the only conclusion is that you really are a horrible, incompetent, neurotic, fill-in-the-blank, person.
Please Don’t Feed the Animals!
If you live in the country, you’ve probably learned not to put food out for wild animals, because they’ll just keep coming back for more. A sociopath is the same way. Provide him or her with fuel, and the sociopath will keep coming back for more. For your health and sanity, you cannot feed their hunger for your emotional reaction. Just like a wild raccoon that once found a tasty tidbit in your backyard, a sociopath will keep revisiting a potential fuel source. Again, please don’t feed the animals. You want them to stop coming around. They are dangerous—they bite and carry diseases.
Don’t Make the Sociopath Addicted to Your Emotional Pain.
As discussed in my post last week and in my book, intermittent reinforcement (i.e., random acts) of love and attention by the sociopath is part of what makes you “addicted” to the relationship with the sociopath. I’m guessing that probably works in reverse.
If we are inconsistent–contact, no contact”¦. contact, no contact, no contact, contact etc.–with the sociopath, aren’t we training the sociopath to be addicted to us as a source of something that fuels them–emotional pain? You don’t want this.
Perhaps I’m over simplifying it, but there may be the only two ways out once a sociopath considers you a great source of fuel for them. Either:
- you go “no contact/no emotion,” knowing you will be tested, and the tests will be both brutal frontal attacks as well as sneaky Trojan-horse attempts, and you endure without reacting until the sociopath is convinced there is no more fuel/emotion to be extracted from you, or
- The sociopath drains you so profoundly that you become so depressed that you are no longer capable of emotion. At that point you are discarded, as you are no longer a useful source of fuel to the sociopath.
Neither road is easy, but if those are really your only two choices isn’t the first option a whole lot better? I don’t mean to be harsh, but perhaps framing it this way will help us stay on the no contact/no emotion path no matter what.
My own sad tale of unwittingly investing almost twenty years of my life into a relationship with a sociopath and sometimes diverting from the best path, is chronicled in my book Husband, Liar, Sociopath: How He Lied, Why I Fell For It & The Painful Lessons Learned (available via Amazon.com). It is a cautionary tale of how much one’s life can be train wrecked and one’s soul can be depleted. As I don’t get a “do over,” hopefully some of my painful lessons can help others impacted by these masked vultures.
Identifying names, places, events, characteristics, etc. that I discuss here and in my book have been altered to protect the identity of everyone involved.
Q&A with Amber Ault, PhD, MSW – clinical social worker specializing in personality disorders
NO EMOTION is the way.
Fantastic post.
Still working toward no contact.
going no contact/no emotion is best.
this is very true.
this is very true indeed.
It has been 3 months no contact today, and I am struggling so much, I have been having flashbacks and keep seeing his face and hearing all the bad things he used to say and all the abuse, yet I long for him today, I wanted to unblock him but I know I CANT…. I think I am progressing because I still haven’t unblocked him, it’s like a constant struggle everyday some days are better than others, today is a bad one, sometimes I feel as thought the pain is too much and I’m not going to make it, but that would be the ultimate prize for him he is a very sick, twisted, sadist psychopath, plus he would be justified in saying I was the crazy one!
He would be so happy right now if he knew how bad I was suffering he would actually get off on it..
I hope I can save at least one person to get out before this psychological damage as I have happens.
I wish I would have got out of it in the beginning when my gut told me he’s definitely not right but I thought I could fix him, it would be him and I, if he realized how much I loved him everything would be ok, but it can’t be, I have a lot of guilt I did start to doubt myself I thought maybe it is me, but it was him he’s he one with the personality disorder and I just got sucked into his craziness, I know all this that’s why it so hard to take those feelings of missing him although everything says “it’s normal” it doesn’t feel normal and I am my worst enemy because I get mad at myself that I could ever have these feelings of missing him and wanting him God I get so sick, is this ever going to end????
Congrats on 3 months. it will get better!!
Thank u Sunnygal… it’s been crazy last Tuesday to the day it was 3 months no contact, I felt miserable I wanted to talk or see him, I never contact him first yet I respond normally I even thought about unblocking him… well I didn’t and I was very proud of myself, so Wednesday I’m at work and checked my email HE had emailed me Tuesday night it was so weird thank GOD I didn’t see it or I would have broke, I didint even know he had my email, out of 3 years he never once emailed me!!!! Then Wednesday he emailed me again and FaceTimed me at night well I have not responded and I’m so proud of myself, he is freaking out because this is the first time I haven’t responded by now!!! You know it does feel good to have the power for once and it also feels good to know he came to me again thinking I would just let him into my life and I didn’t! And he can’t figure out where my head is at that’s why I think he’s just not showing up at my house, I do think it was premeditated you can’t tell me that was just a coincidence, God or the universe saved me on Tuesday night it’s the weirdest thing.,. Yesterday I felt a little as though I was slipping but I didn’t I haven’t heard from him today, hopefully he will just say forget her and move on but my gut tells me different, I can’t let him in my life anymore I can’t my soul and sanity are at stake!!!!!
distarr keep up the good work!!!
Distarr, the only way out is through. Take some time to be alone and quiet and invite the pain to wash over you and just feel it. It’s kind of like an addiction. The pain compels you to want to reach out for the person who discarded you. But if, instead of reaching out, you just withstand it, it will come up and take you over for a while. Then, like a nasty thunderstorm, it will move on. In the process, you may need to scream, hit pillows, and cry, or any one of those things. Sometimes, you just need to direct your attention to the place in your body where you feel it the strongest. Give that place some love and attention because it is a part of you, too. It may take a little time, but please be kind to yourself. If I have learned anything in my nearly 58 years, it is to simply accept and be kind to myself.
Hi Stargazer..
Thank you for your reply, if you have time read my response to the last response to me it is so crazy!!!! I’m glad for the moment I am in a good place and haven’t responded to him it was so shocking seeing his name in my email like I said I had no idea he even had my email!! God or the universe is trying to save me for not looking Tuesday night at my email it was so strange because I always check it why I didn’t still amazes me but I was blocked by something not to read it until I was strong enough!! Please send me good vibes and strength I will need it because even as I hope he will just leave me alone I highly doubt it, I think he’s losing it to be honest and the only reason he’s not at my door is because hes trying to figure out where my head is at and he thinks I have neighbors now that’s the one things that are saving me!
I was thinking about the word I just used in the last post – “withstand”. It means to “stand with”. If you can just stand with your pain, you will eventually have some mastery over it. There is a book a therapist once recommended for me. I admit that I still have not read it. It’s called “Lean In”. She described to me that the book is about “leaning into” whatever is going on in your life rather than trying to resist it. I think of that concept often when I am going through something difficult and trying to resist or control the situation.
Great post and a must.
So true and well said.
Hello Donna, and all my fellow survivors, Im here to post an update on the Spath. THIS IS FANTASTIC NEWS, it’s all closing in around him now. Backstory since it’s been several years….I was married to a spath for 28 years, we have 1 (now adult) child together. 16 Criminal and Civil extended orders of protection and one divorce later…. I was successful in protecting my child, my business AND assets etc….I went NO CONTACT immediately. I’ve fought like hell, made smart moves, exposed his behaviors in court and came out successful! He’s NEVER stopped contacting me, I still get phone messages regularly from him. He remarried and had a child, who is now 5. He lives in the tropics. HIs new wife contacted me 2 months after him rushing her to the alter, asking me “Please tell me who I married”?? I wasn’t sure he hadn’t put her up to it, so my response was “When you choose to remove the rose colored glasses, the red flags will shine through like fireworks-Good luck to you”. I decided after he remarried, that she needed to initially get to the point of ‘getting it’, before I offered help. His calls continued…..(12 YEARS)!!! One day I received 6 calls and was fed the hell up! I made a decision to ‘expose him’. He still spoke horribly of me to everyone…..and I decided to let the new wife and my parents (who, to this day have been relentless at trying to control me through the spath, and STILL have a relationship with him) I decided that everytime he called me……I was going to call the wife. That day I also called my parents with the goal of speaking so vial, using the ‘F’ word continuously and telling my father what a fu7c9ing idiot he was, continuously, ONLY to upset them…..(I knew it would) and I played a few of his recent messages to me from SPath, for them…..(I Love you, I miss you blah blah, blah) Keeping in mind that he had portrayed me as mentally Ill and faking cancer to alienate me, as I was VERY sick and battling him in divorce. THey were blown away that he ever called me….I told them….MAKE IT FU&*CKING STOP!!! I knew they would hang up the phone with me and call him immediately to question him about the calls….he would be exposed, and his calls would stop. (Now,the wife knew and my parents knew) It went down exactly as I hoped….and my phone was silent for 8 months!!! GLORY!!! Then he reappeared. About a year and a half ago, I was sent a video of spath attacking new wife’s teenage daughter. Horrible, vial…..and ALL ON VIDEO! (gotta love the kids these days!) 🙂 Wife/daughter filed for a restraining order and Spath filed for divorce. SPath hasn’t worked since he left me, 12 years ago. His goal was to find someone willing to support his lazy, drug dealing ars! He found her. Fast forward. The ‘baby-4’ went to the therapist and his school…..and told both that “My Daddy put a balloon in my butt and it hurt real bad” “My daddy is mean” ‘My daddy is disgusting” he was also seen pulling the tail off a lizard and putting in the child butt and laughing as the freshly pulled off tail wiggled around. The witness’s were disgusted with those actions. SPath thought it was hilarious. CPS get’s called and the case is opened. Then the wife’s daughter speaks up…..He had been drugging and raping her when she was 14 ish. Detectives did their job…..and it’s now in the hands of the DA. Cops recommended 10 counts of 5 FELONY Sexual abuse, terroristic threats against a child etc… CHARGES! If convicted (and we know how slippery Spaths are) he’s looking at 25 to Life on some of the pending charges. He’s also violated and been arrested for 13 Restraining order violations against the new wife. The trial for 4 violations is next week. The violations won’t get much jail time at all, but they’ve got several more cases to charge against, that are coming down the pike….SOON. The DA’s goal on the violations is to get a conviction…..and tie him up with Probation for 2 years each violation…..and they know he will violate probation….and those violations will be classified as felonies! IF HE”S NOT incarcerated already for the Rape and sexual abuse felonies. They don’t want him there in the tropics, they completely ‘get it’, and have been amazingly communicative and responsive. They witnessed his crazy outbursts and posturing during his arraignment They brought several attorneys and advocates to that hearing to watch his described behaviors, based on what I had said….and they were not disappointed. I can’t praise this office enough. THEY GET IT!!! Rare! The other glory to this is he agreed to have their divorce judge preside over the violation hearings/trial. DUMB MOVE!!! LOL! In the beginning of their divorce the judge gave him ‘chances’….he construed that as she liked him, he thinks he’s got her charmed and bedazzled. So now….the same judge who must preside over custody will hear about the numerous TRO violations….and hopefully the Felony criminal charges will come soon. As soon as he’s charged withe the felony, the DA said they will put out a press release asking for further victims. I will MAKE SURE that goes viral in all the /areas/states he’s traveled/stayed in….because I know there are more victims. (I contacted the FBI about 2, back in ‘my day’. When he left me, he would target women or old HS friends that had young teen daughters. I know there are more victims. Since my time…..of alienation….his whole family, and his childhood besties and many others,have all reached out to me. We are NOW, all speaking, sharing stories and putting the rest of the puzzle pieces together in order to protect the new wife and her children. I have been coaching the wife for over a year…..and she’s come so very far. She’s working her case, and cause. About 10 months ago, I got up and went to the kitchen for a drink. I had a memory that stopped me dead in my tracks…..I remembered when I was about 17, him coming over to my parents house unannounced. (we were broken up at the time). He handed me a large envelope, I opened it and he said he got married/or was getting married. It was a certificate with a shiney emblem on it. I took a lighter and burned it in my parents driveway. (yeah, I guess that’s what immaturity brings!) :). But I’m suspecting that he got married to a hispanic housecleaner. He said it was to get her citizenship. I know spath, I’ve studied him for years…..and IF he indeed did marry her…..he would have NEVER bothered to divorce her. Too lazy. I did all the clerical work in our relationship. He’s ignorant and illiterate. He couldn’t have maneuvered the process at that age. NO WAY! I also know that he wouldn’t have gone to the courthouse to get a license, and gone home to let the housekeeper what…. find a dress, plan a pretty wedding and get her parents here from Mexico. Nope. WHY? It was a marriage of convenience. IF he took her to the courthouse, he would have gotten a confidential marriage license, gone next door and said “I DO” right then and there…..a confidential license back them was to avoid the blood test. We’ve hired an attorney to file to unseal all of his records in that county. I am optimistic we will find what we need…..rendering her marriage illegal, (mine too!)him a bigamist and it’ll cut him off from ALL $$$ he is legally entitled to with a 50/50 asset split in his current marriage. NO MARRIAGE-NO MONEY arshat! I have a vision of this going down….he will NOT remember telling me about this housekeeper situation, back in the day…..and he will be freakin blindsided!!! That takes care of her divorce-boom-annulment and nothing for spath! The custody should be taken care of when the Felony, criminal charges are filed…..(he currently has 1 hr. full sup. visitation weekly). Then it’ll free him up to fight the good fight in his own criminal proceedings. LOL! The Da is also looking into his finances…..still claiming -0- income/assets etc…. But curios why he needs a public defender for his criminal cases and just paid 20K to his new divorce attorney. HE also seems to have no problem self posting CASH bail. THey are asking questions!!! During my time and beyond LoveFraud, I was adamant he had cash stashed in paint cans buried in our yard. Cash from years of his covert drug sales….and guess what folks….that has ALL been confirmed now, by all the folks he hid $$ with, spread out, watered down….and also that he always buried paint cans of cash in the yard, and still does it. Again, my suspicions were confirmed! Others have SEEN the cash. I ‘may’ have let the DA know about this, so when they search his house…..bummer for him if he can’t launder $$ by buying attorneys through others ‘loaning’ him money for them etc…. We’ll see how this all turns out. I told the new wife, i’m all in, I will see this to the end for her and her children. I will offer up my millions of documents, work with her attorney for strategy and be 100% available to the authorities. What a gift it will be…..to be present in the tropics with many of his people and family from his past who he’s alienated himself from by his abuse…..and all of us together at his trial!!! Along with his adult son, who’s not had contact with him since he was 14….and is now 26….and changed his name legally prior to getting married, because he wanted his beautiful bride to not have to carry Spaths name. I actually, never legally changed mine because it bugs spath to NO END that I go by his name. That’ll change as soon as he’s finally caught! Changing my name will be that gift I give myself- when this is finally….ALL OVER.
And in regards to my parents…..the shit is hitting them too currently…..THey are being confronted by other family members and cut off because of their continued affiliation with Spath and their lying about it…..I exposed them, and sat back and just watched their inability to control me through others…..and it backfired BIG TIME!
FINALLY!!!
It’s been a lot of years. This hasn’t consumed me in recent years, it was ‘sport’, I have a great son and DIL, I have a fantastic 4 year relationship with a man who adores me, we have fun, he respects and honors me and celebrates my quirky, silly style – and celebrates me. I rebuilt my business and am enjoying great success and freedom. Life is good……I have one more order of business to see to, and knowing spath is incarcerated and can’t hurt another person will be the Icing on the cake….and the time I step aside and let go.
Keep the fight up, be smart, buckle down and GETERDONE my fellow Spath Warriors.
LoveFraud was an amazing place for me to learn and get support! Thank you Donna you are doing good work!!!
XXOO ErinBrock
good for you!!
Wow – ErinBrock – we haven’t seen you in years – what a story! I’m glad he is getting what he deserves. If there’s a press release, keep us posted!
Thanks Donna, I certainly will. I love how LF has grown and where you are taking it. Power on warriors…..keep up the good fight!