UPDATED FOR 2021. Just about all Lovefraud readers share the feeling of being shattered by the sociopath. You just can’t get your arms around the experience.
“How can someone who claims to love me be so cruel?”
“Do you mean he (she) never loved me? It was all a lie?”
“I never knew people like this existed!”
When you first begin to realize that you’ve been involved with someone who has a serious personality disorder, you may feel shattered by the sociopath, like you’ve lost your bearings in the world and you’re drifting.
You’ve had your heart broken before, but no previous relationship compared to this. Even if you’ve managed to get away from this toxic person, you feel lost. Your well-meaning friends and family are urging you to get over it, to put it behind you, but you can’t.
Why? Why is it so difficult to overcome the sociopathic experience?
I believe it’s because nobody talks about the fact that sociopaths live among us. It’s a giant, malevolent skeleton in humanity’s closet.
Society’s myths
All our lives, society bombards us with messages such as “everybody is basically the same,” “all men are created equal,” “we all just want to be loved,” and “there’s good in everyone.”
Read more: Explaining everyday sociopaths
We strive to follow the Golden Rule — “Treat others the way you want to be treated” — believing that if we’re good to people, they’ll be good to us in return.
As much as we would like these ideas to be universal, they are not. But no cultural institutions, such as schools, churches, or even women’s magazines, tells us that there are exceptions to all these truisms.
No one tells us that criminals and terrorists aren’t the only bad people in the world. No one tells us that our neighbors, co-workers, or fellow church members, who look just like us, may, in fact, be human predators.
So when we run into these human predators, we are totally unprepared.
The big contradiction
We don’t know about sociopaths — people who live their lives by exploiting others. Professionally, they may be diagnosed as antisocial, narcissistic, borderline, histrionic or psychopathic. The official estimates for the number of people who have these personality disorders average about 12% of the population.
For this segment of the population, all those feel-good messages we get from society simply don’t apply. These people are not the same as us. They do not just want to be loved. Deep down, there is no good inside.
World view
We all have a certain Weltanschauung, a word borrowed from German that means “world view.” We have ideas and beliefs about how the world works, the nature of things, and the nature of people.
After a lifetime of absorbing cultural messages such as “everyone deserves a chance” and “love can change everything,” these are the lenses through which we view the world. They are also the lenses through which we approach our relationships.
Then we are shattered by the sociopath.
Here’s why this betrayal is so devastating: It demolishes our world view. It contradicts everything we thought we knew and understood about the world and the people in it.
We learn, much to our horror, that our world view is not accurate. There is a certain percentage of the population — the sociopaths — for whom everything we thought we knew about humanity simply does not apply.
This is why we feel unhinged. Not only our heart is broken — our understanding of life is broken.
Wisdom
Along with emotional healing, therefore, recovery requires that we change our most fundamental beliefs.
Yes, for 88% of the population, everything we always thought remains true. But for the remaining 12%, we need to accept a new reality.
Sociopaths are totally different from the rest of us. They have no ability to love. They are motivated only by power and control.
Learn more: Start your recovery from emotional and psychological abuse
But now we know. We’ve know that although the majority of people are good and loving, some are not.
Having been shattered by the sociopath, we learned this lesson the hard way. Now we can approach the rest of our lives with the wisdom of a survivor.
Lovefraud originally posted this story on December 15, 2014.
Is Your Loved One Dysfunctional or a Sociopath?
Can a formerly good person become a sociopath, or do you have to be born one? Sounds like a strange question, I know, but I feel that I don’t want to be bothered with people much of the time but would not deliberately ‘use’ them…
I have a ‘friend’ who routinely has used me, taking advantage of my passivity and feelings of ‘lost’…but she has also been there at really bad times in my life to buoy me up.
So an admixture of good and bad does not relate to sociopathy?
Interesting question. I think there is a fundamental difference between normal people and spaths that has to do with the deepest motivation. Circumstances can bring out bad behavior in normal people; however when they learn that they are doing wrong, that they have hurt others, that there is a better way of interacting, normal people change. Psychopaths do not change no matter what new information they get, because they know they are harming others – it is deliberate and they don’t care.
Consider whether your friend has been there for you in bad times as a tactic to keep you engaged in the friendship, rather than out of genuine concern for your welfare. Consider how she reacts if you tell her that you feel used and taken advantage of.
Spaths do ‘nice’ things for others when it will get them what they want, and they will just as easily treat others harmfully if they think it will get them what they want. For a spath, being ‘nice’ is a tactic, not a genuine concern for the well being of others.
That article was a piece of wisdom, indeed. I slowly learned that spaths are nice in public, like a spider doing a dance on its web to attract. Once it gets its clutches on you, they drain you slowly. I was left thinking for years that there is something wrong with my spath but could not put my finger on it. Whatever strange behaviuor it was, I would rationalize it with my own emotional center. Because the concept that someone doesn’t have an emotional center, doesn’t compute. So where does the flowers and gift showers come from. To us that’s love. When we are only married once, wheres the base of comparison to what a marriage is.
I had to follow a rationale that was learned on this site
they are con artists-experts. My spath can talk to someone for hours on..and..on. I get like 5 words a day. I don’t get informed of things until too late. Then he says, I told you about it. I was always to blame for everything, to the point of absurdity. When I say,I honestly don’t find him too self centered, I would have to stand back and interpret the whole picture under a magnifying glass, then I would find something. They do for some part go around dorment, with this generic personality till the needs surface…
I’m still learning…but good article.
they will always turn things around in their favor never forget that.. saw my ex wife do this to her own family..pretty sad eh
Hi Donna and all,
When I was in the phase of the initial betrayal, I confused my total devastation for how much I loved him. I remember thinking that I could only be this heartbroken and despairing BECAUSE he was so amazing, and because I loved him so so much. This guy’s con was pretty fast, so I didn’t get many facts to back up my gut feeling that I was being royally screwed over. In that way I really had to trust myself, and, like this articles says, lots of folks were just telling me to move on, that he was a ‘player’.
I had a very hard time managing my feelings of despair and longing. I didn’t think of him as a player. More as someone who was trying to create a life that was just ‘beyond’ me, that I wasn’t deep enough to understand. Even though my insides were on total high alert: sleeplessness, no appetite, stomach aches, back pain, exhaustion, mood swings, etc…My mind was CONFUSED. I still believed if I was given another chance to show him how much I loved him, how much I was willing to be his ‘anchor’ (in his otherwise stormy life), that he would be changed. I believed that ‘loves cures all’, and that everyone was looking for healing.
It wasn’t until some months had gone by (and my hormones began to return to normal, and not the ‘love bomb’ hormone levels), and I had done enough reading about personality disorders, and had hung out here at LF, that I understood that the devastation truly did come from the complete destruction of most everything I thought was true, and used everyday to problem solve, communicate, and help.
I had to consciously rewrite my belief system. It was not easy. Some of this stuff goes so deep, and is so much EVERYONE else’s belief system, that it felt pretty isolating to have a different set of understandings about human kind than most people around me. Since that time however, I have found other people who do have an awareness of sociopathy, and have an understanding that is more in line with my own. Some of the friends I have learned about the subject from me, and have re-framed some of their beliefs too.
Recognizing the red flags, my gut feelings, defining my values/morals, and making myself clear on what I believe about other’s has definitely saved my rear since my last entanglement with a spath. I have avoided several run-ins with spathy co-workers and such. It has also helped some friends who were having problems, when they have specifically come to me for validation of their own experience.
My friend, who was entangled with the same spath as me, ran into him yesterday. She said it was like he was NOTHING to her. She had no fear, no bad feelings, no CONFUSION. She was CLEAR about him. He tried to engage her like they were merely long lost buddies, and she said she just breezed right by him and out the door. She said she giggled when she got in the car and drove away. This woman was in therapy for 2 years because she couldn’t figure out her relationship with this person. Now, she says, he doesn’t even exist for her any longer. So, it can happen. With time and clarity.
Jenna, poor girl..i am sorry for that..relax..you want to get over it . be happy..that took me 3 long years..i know it hurts to see other people holding hands with their kids and being happy but ya know, your going to be fine. everyday gets better I promise!!..hopefully you can find YOURSELF and not another freak like that.. its hard for me to be in a relationship other than fwb I just cant put myself out there any more I cant take the chance. my relationship was 8 years. constant lies, cheating , manipulating etc etc…. thank god for this site. it brings fourth all of the truth about these freaks of nature. one day you will be helping someone else in the same boat. keep your stick on the ice.. I worry about you….Michael
I am so sorry you experienced this nightmare. How long has it been since you made the wise decision to leave him?
You believed he loved you because he lied to you and deceived you to make you believe it, because he wanted to exploit you (and every other woman he could exploit). Congratulations on doing a good job taking care of yourself by getting away from him when you came to understand he was harming you.
You probably got hooked by this psychopath gradually; and you will probably recover gradually. When it is difficult to even get out of bed, try to get up and do one thing even if it’s a challenge. Try to do a little more every day. You will get back to a full life.
I am a lifelong astrologer and from that perspective would comment that the psychopath is in a stage of soul development in which his/her/its function is to more plainly describe our own paths.
The path of the psychopath is essentially Negative but its FUNCTION is in order to illustrate the Positive, in other words.
None of this makes them any easier to take, however. They are still the ultimate pain in the you-know-where.
Dear Jenna,
Yes they do get what’s coming to them, it’s called karma.
Secondly, don’t push yourself.
Third, love yourself. We’re all there stuck in bed with you on many days and nights, don’t hate us all, lol. 🙂
Love you, hang in there, N/C
Oh absolutely NOT, Jenna.
Just the opposite: I think spaths are botn spaths and we can often see this in the chart itself. It’s not really susceptible to being “fixed” — just “moderated” by really good parenting or therapy or something…..in other words, being a spath is sort of different “perspective on life” that is not the same as the result of ours…..including yours and mine.
That said Jenna, YES! I do think that all experiences EVENTUALLY teach us something.
That does not mean it was “intended” we would get spath’ed. Rather that we would learn how to NOT get so treated in our future, and much better, relationships.
Bravo!
Jenna, I’d say that my own spath has turned off MANY people at this point — although it took a few years to do it.
Now it is not just me who thinks he is a spath, instead his former co-workers, semi-friends and other victims that he’s run over, have turned into quite a Force against him!
So YEAH, it may take awhile but being a spath means ending up as a spath, and more of us become aware of them out there, they have less and less Safety in Society cuz we are finally speaking up.
However, I don’t think they are “freaks of nature” but rather, they point out for us what men (and women) are not supposed to act like, and eventually gross us out until we say YUCK, I KNOW I don’t want to be like THAT. And as I said, not just lovers but everyone around them….we ll end up going YUCK until finally we’re not alone anymore….they are.