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?
Sexual perversions are very normal for spaths. My ex Psychopath cross dressed for sex with himself, was addicted to horrible porn including child porn, and probably more than I never found out about. I suspect he was into gay porn too.
He would have discarded you eventually no matter what you did or didn’t do, because that’s what he does to everyone. Good for you for saying no; you saved yourself from even more harm.
Good riddance. That’s one less problem you have to deal with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx8x3LCnYZw
I would rather be you with PTSD than be him driving around in his Porsche. Who cares what he drives? He is scum and the Porsche doesn’t mitigate that. If he doesn’t appreciate you, he’s an idiot anyway.
He has not taken away your ability to be a nurse, nor has he taken away your beauty, nor your ability to love. You have those things with you whether you’re using them at the moment or not. You will work again, your beauty will come back out of hiding, and your capacity to love and bond and care for someone remains. He doesn’t have that and he never will.
I have a confession to make. Im still in the process of MESSING with the mind of my Spath. JUST to give him a taste of his own medicine!! … (Does this make ME a Sociopath, now)? LOL!! I know he just tries to manipulate me for sex and daily phone companionship, but I know his game, now. When I realized WHAT he was, my entire body cringed & all I wanted, was the nearest STD Clinic. SO DISGUSTING!!
Im repaying him,for how he treated me!! I lie to him when he calls, make excuses why Im too busy to see him, tell him hes stupid and ugly, & that Im dating another guy…. NOW hes meeting me for dinner, & spending $400 to take me shopping!!…All in very busy public places, for safety. He treats me like he should have been, all along…HA!!! Im enjoying the revenge, as I see him BEG to have me back. I know this is SO WRONG on so many levels… but it sure does make me feel like Ive retrieved some of my dignity and self worth!! I know…Im BAD for doing this…but he DESERVES IT!!!
Hes attractive and owns an investment company, so Im sure he has women all over. He wont think anything of my payback, but I feel justified to have this sort of closure. He says he wants sex with me so bad, now…he cant stand it. TOO BAD!! ID USE HIM, but I dont wanna contine this. For me, itll make no contact so much easier…as will imagining HOW MANY women hes been doing this to. NO THANKS!! Im finished with him.
You’re probably not a spath, but spaths want us to lower ourselves to their level. It’s satisfying to you now, and he deserves the worst of everything, but consider if you will regret wasting more time on him rather than with good people. Consider that even if he’s treating you well, is it because he cares about your well being. In the long run, what makes No Contact easier for most survivors is focusing on things other than the spath. They are so negative, they poison everything they interact with. In the end, no good is likely to come from more of him, even when the tables are turned.
What is really best for you and your life in the big picture? Best way for you to really win is not to play the game. Spaths thrive on interacting no matter how negative – they win when we think about them, interact with them, no matter how negative.
I get it. I am struggling with trying to get the rest of my personal property from my predator ‘ s house or just let it go and stay forever in the no – contact zone. I have an expensive painting. The rest is just crap I don’t want his next victim to be preyed upon in the presence of thus adding to his museum collection of victim personal belongings. I would have to consider aa civil standby. Am I just trying to hold on? For a strong, independent woman I am a train wreck! This site has been so helpful. I wish there was some way to warn future victims.
There are some interesting buzz words in your post. Where revenge fades but justice can be served to aid in the healing process. Justice may possibly only accessible through letting go. If we communicate the truth it is not slander, liable or harrassment. I do not want to limit my need to process out of an irrational fear of punishment for speaking the truth and warning others. I dismissed many red flags too.
Lying is bad, it’s against just about every religious doctrine, and some lies like slander are against the law.
There is nothing wrong with believing someone. It is likely the ex spath put a lot of effort into deceiving you. He probably made a study of you and what tactics would work on you. He probably used hypnosis on you and other tactics to control you. You’re so not stupid that his evil didn’t work and you had enough presence of mind to tell him no about the threesome. I did so many things I regret, allowed my ex P to harm my son and manipulate me into neglecting my son. I wish I’d been as strong and clear headed as you and told my ex P no about a lot of things.
Jenna, I am a lifelong professional woman who has supported herself since the age of 21.
At one point during my marriage, I offered to share my husband with his other woman.
She was not willing, in fact he wanted to leave me for YEARS but she refused to go. Guess who he hated on for that?! Right: Me and our daughters. We were not her and HER daughters, and she teased him until he went insane….at OUR home. She got Mr. Wonderful trying to tempt her while we got — well, the same guy you did, ha ha….I’m sure you would recognize him even though my own had a different name and PROBABLY not as good-looking a body either — as I would come right out and confess to y’all that mine was bald and it DID bother me all those years, SO THERE!!!!!! 🙂 Ha ha, also he was five years younger and that bugged me too.
The fact he turned out to be a TURD??!!! omg I coulda had a guy with hair and put up with the same stuff only from a GOOD looking man, lol.
Keep in mind that when the spaths triangulate, it is not because they have a preference for a particular woman; it is because they enjoy torturing both women by playing the situation and each of them against the other. My ex P triangulated with other people including his adult daughters instead of other lovers. They are using the fact that love relationships are generally meant to be monogamous and committed, so they bring others in to the situation in various ways, and they keep letting us know they are not committed. It is crazy making.
If your ex wanted to leave for years, he would have. He would have just once said he was sorry but…(whatever his reasons are)…… and left once and stayed gone, leaving you to get over him and get on with your life with someone else. Not a good choice to leave a marriage, but well accepted in today’s culture.
He did exactly what he wanted to do which was stay with you and torture you emotionally for years. That was his first choice – to enjoy the power and control he felt when he hurts your feelings.
It seems that it is common for spaths to be with and marry women who are 5-10 years older. I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to be a pattern.
My ex P’s first ex wife was about 5 years older than him. I happen to be younger, but I have never been interested in men my age or younger, always older by a few years. I perceived that men mature slower than women, so I found men my age too immature as a rule. Maybe an inaccurate perception but it figured into my dating life, in my younger days…
Jenna, it IS hard to tell ourselves the right stuff and easier to tell your friends instead.
I have really focused on that as a big part of our problem in dealing with these people: as a collective, we don’t seem to take very good care of OURSELVES.
So YES!! if you would comfort ME, then just ask yourself why you don’t deserve the same break. Trust me, I DO have bad breath and COULD use a boob job…..but no that is not why he acted like a turd. Instead he took advantage of my THINKING I had bad breath and flat bosom, and used my own insecurities to let himself into my life. From then on, he was the Turd From Beyond, and from the sounds of it he has a lot of brothers out there just like him! and at the end of 30 YEARS with him I was total mush.
I sincerely hope that at 62 you are not Mush, Jenna 🙂 and those who love you most would deeply agree. At least I know who put me there … and I am totally SURE that if I called you crying you WOULDN’T MAKE ME FEEL WORSE! right? as he does! but encourage me instead to use mouth wash and call a plastic surgeon if those things really bother me THAT MUCH, that I’d let someone treat me like You-Know-What. 🙂
Love and support from N/c, Jenna!! and fellow sisters and brothers, all of us trying to hit the right Balance and KNOWING FOR SURE this last relationship of ours was not it.
You put it exactly: they take our whole being away.
Jenna I feel weird looking at the photo albums that I put together myself.
How many photos of him are there, in which he was thinking something different than I thought? Having said he’d never bonded to me or our kids (!) does that mean he wasn’t BONDED to me when the daughters were born?!
It’s been enough to drive me insane and like you, the fundamental element was trauma in my birth family that made it seem OK for me to have an emotionally distanced husband…which I always knew about him…I just didn’t expect or imagine that he could turn against me. Instead I kept trying (and encouraging the children to also try) to LOVE him into being a better person.
At the end of it, I ended up in the emotional AND FINANCIAL gutter, after having out-earned him x3 when we married 30 years before. One day he suggested I could get a job cleaning houses. ?? Is this ME?!
No, it is a Projection of his hated mother who “left him and never came back,” whereupon he was adopted out, and never forgave that birth mother of his. I am only five years older but ended up with grey hair and wrinkles as though I’d been a Cougar with a partner 30 or even 40 years younger than me. ??!!
But you are right: I am in here someplace! and by the blessing of the angels, SO ARE YOU. Just imagine what this would do to people who were NOT nurses or other professionals, and had NOTHING to hang onto at all?! My heart bleeds for you, and me, but also for them.
Jenna, mine was not an infant an adoption but a somewhat older child (maybe 2?) and the longer I thought about it, the more it seemed he’d been in foster care or possibly in the care of a grandma who got too old to finish the job and didn’t have a daughter who was “in a position” to mother him.
The adopted parents were maybe a little old? at 40, and his adopted mother sadly was dec’d by 55 or so, there was no family funeral! I think I was more upset by that than anyone on his own side of the family. In truth they were a little expectant of what he should act like, so I think he got more subversive until he was just Acting the whole darned thing.
Years later, I married a Pretend who pronounced himself an artificial husband (!) 30 years later once he’d met somebody else who was really More His Type. NOT a professional woman at all, in fact a person that I don’t think would be in our circle of friends. Someone easier to dominate, in other words, less independent and self-sufficient…a real house keeper.
In fact Jenna, a telling Clue is that my ex’s new woman did not even drive a car, and that was NOT because she’d had too many DUI’s or something….she simply did not drive a car and therefore had to be taken everyplace.
Without revealing my location for public info, please let me merely comment that this is NOT A PLACE where you can live without driving a car. There are some places you can get around on public transport or via cab. This is not that place, ha ha.
So she was TOTALLY dependent on him AND HE LOVED IT! that is a clue for us all about “why it happened.” “Women who can’t get away are easier to abuse” is what it means. We professional women have a status they just have to drag DOWN….this other lady was already there.
They don’t bond with anyone. My ex P told me once, a ‘tell,’ that he didn’t think he ever bonded with his mother. This was before I understood the whole Psychopath paradigm and I thought that was a weird thing to say. I told a good male friend, who said, well if someone doesn’t bond with their mother, they don’t bond with anyone.’ Made sense.
I wasn’t married to my ex P as long, but I did have trouble processing that the whole experience meant nothing to him. I have had by now some success in accepting that the experience I had was real because I bond and love and commit and care for another, even though he was doing something else. I rewrote the memories by replacing who I thought he was with who he really was. Recognizing what was going on in his viscous, evil, and deceptive mind, made the memories make sense and relieved me of a lot of my guilt. Then I replaced him in my mind with a cardboard cutout – that is the way I think of him now, as a dangerous but not really human personage. I also would imagine chopping up the life size cardboard cutout of him into tiny tiny pieces and throwing them up in the air and the wind starting to blow them away and they sort of turned into glittery sparkles of nothingness.
Totally different than how I dealt with the death of my first and wonderfully good husband. Grieving for him was painful but meaningful and integrating my memories of our life together into my present life gave to me, despite the extreme trauma and sadness. He passed away unexpectedly and I experienced PTSD for about a month, but it was totally different than the PTSD from the spath trauma.
No Contact, Maybe this doesn’t apply to your ex P, but mine made up stuff about his past in order to justify/explain his abusive and hostile character. Is it possible that your ex really wasn’t so traumatized by being adopted, or that it didn’t even happen like he says it did? Did he ever seek counseling to mitigate his resentment? It’s possible he’s telling the truth, but I found that with mine everything he did and said was for power and control and to justify his choices. But he never chose to change as he likes what he does and he likes his motivations.
You are seeing pretty clearly, sad and disgusting as it is. He wanted you to think you were his only girlfriend and he wanted it to look that way to some people. Even though you were being his girlfriend, he was not being a boyfriend in a committed relationship, and you were not his only intimate relationship. You are so right that you were his main target. You didn’t know at the time, and you did the best you could. Now that you know, you are doing your best for yourself and others who care about you.
Incredible as it is, he is not repentant. He doesn’t feel bad about what he did or how he hurt others. He is probably feeling inconvenienced because he got caught; or maybe he doesn’t mind or even enjoys the added drama and suffering of getting caught from time to time, and then he moves on to new victims.
If he ever does apologize to anyone, he doesn’t mean it. He says he is sorry in order to get something he wants. In your situation, he decided it would be most enjoyable to him and most convenient to him, if he just ignored you once you found out the truth about him and his choices of words and actions.
Very typical of a spath to turn cause and effect around. You were rightly suspicious because he was cheating. He turns it around and says he’s cheating because you’re suspicious. It is crazy making.
He may not have really thought you were cheating on him; he may have just accused you to make you feel like it was your fault he was abusing you.
You didn’t know how he was abusing you and manipulating you and gaslighting you. When you understood what he was doing and how awful he is and how you were being harmed, you left. That is something to be thankful for, and you can depend on yourself to take care of you and to protect you. You have a lot going for you in your own choices, and you have a lot to offer to people who are worthy to be your friends – those who appreciate you and care about your well being.
Jenna please do not miss Annette’s earlier point: people who act bizarre can do worse.
This has been my point too. I look back and see how Disordered it seemed “back then” and shouldn’t really be surprised at how Deranged it seems “right now.” It’s a calculation like a graph you would set in your job so just imagine I have hit 105 in 20 minutes and your heart will race AS IT SHOULD!! with the Danger Ahead that your brain has instantly calculated, right?!
Please Jenna, listen to yourself and see the Hazard in this person, this is a temp rising so fast that people can practically hear the pulse across the street. Really..I am probably 3 states away and if I turn off the tv I can hear his racing heartbeat myself. IT IS NOT YOUR IMAGINATION instead!!!! nope, that racing heartbeat is NOT JUST IN YOUR EARS, you are fine….it’s the guy you are standing next to, with a bomb in his soul.
Jenna, I’m electronically unable to respond to your post so I’m responding here instead.
Here is why I think you are at risk and I have not read very many of your posts — for which I’m sorry but of course you understand as I’ve been dealing with the same sort of person a very long while.
1. You are SMART.
2. You speak your mind. You are so articulate that your words virtually jump off the page.
STOP HERE.
You are a lot more threatening to any sort of disordered person, than a bimbo.
Now, let’s go on, ok?
3. You are professionally connected to people who could theoretically get him into trouble. If you made the right calls to the right people, you could make his life something other than it is right now, if only by TELLING THEM that this person pulled your hair. PERIOD.
STOP HERE.
THIS PERSON PULLED YOUR HAIR TO HURT YOU WHILE YOUR NECK WAS ALREADY HURT. Is that something you are supposed to get over?
Come back to Nancy. Here I am, my neck in hurting, my boyfriend grabs my hair and holds on until I am squealing and begging him to let go and it takes MONTHS for me to physically heal. Meanwhile my SOUL will not, because my NECK IS A SPECIAL PLACE TO ATTACK ME. I can be killed there as every mountain lion knows. IT IS NOT THE SAME AS KICKING ME IN THE SHINS.
4. You know things about him that are fairly outrageous and seem to feel pretty raped by having committed sexual and other acts that you wouldn’t have if you had UNDERSTOOD THE LEVEL OF HIS COMMITMENT. I know that this is a “special” feeling and it’s the same as the bride who comes down the aisle and…..???……wtf?….where is he?
Again, stop there. In criminal law, if that is a Repeat, they call it Fraud.
5. You are terribly emotionally and possibly physically damaged by this experience. Those who feel my lengthy exposure is worse because it was so extended, should remember that I got two WONDERFUL DAUGHTERS out of it, and that is why I STAYED. If you had gotten pregnant, wouldn’t YOU have stayed?!! of course. Does that mean that either one of us SHOULD HAVE??!!!! Trust me, the answer is NO just as soon as the first Weird Thing showed up — and it was not a whole lot further out than the year you spent with your spath. It’s just that I had already made “other plans” by then….that I’m not really sorry for because of those kids, right? so it puts Moms in a difficult space, being grateful for being attacked is sort of putting it oddly but essentially how we feel at the end of it all. And Confused, like you, and Damaged and wondering who to trust.
6. Studies show that the best predictor of a woman’s risk is the level of her own fear. The fact that you are not enjoying the holiday but rather focused on how unfair it is that he’s hurt you, suggests he will return to do it again. I’m so SORRY to tell you this, but the more that you MISS him, the HUNGRIER he becomes for that feeling.
And THAT is why I have been afraid for you, WITH LOVE.
Jenna, in response to this comment about his karma — he won’t want to take it alone so make sure you do not get in the WAY of what that karma will bring to him. SCOOT! you don’t deserve HIS KARMA, dear! in fact if you stand there then how are the angels going to DELIVER it?! move so they can Do Their Thing.
That’s my advice from the Outsider’s Perspective out here in the Loving Gallery of Life. Guess what?! the Universe has GOOD surprises too. Here is Some Love, drink up: (_______)
xox N/C
Jenna, the big problem is that you are thinking like a rational professional person, while your attacker is none of those three elements.
He can be trusted to hurt you.
Period.
Again, I AM SO SORRY but he can be TRUSTED TO HURT YOU and that is what you have learned and why your soul is In Rebellion as soon as you wake for the day. Am I right? Of course I am, Jenna. People do not ATTACK US INTENTIONALLY unless they are disordered, and as a nurse you know we are hard-wired to pull our hands away from a hot stove. It is AUTOMATIC, it is INSTANTANEOUS! so what you are experiencing is the inner RECOIL!!!!!!! at finally recognizing your hand is burning hot with pain raging down your arm, through your heart and out the other side.
The problem is three-fold.
1. Your burns need to heal.
2. You need to re-learn what a stove looks like.
3. You need Justice psychologically which may not be obtainable, so counseling will be required to help you Live with that until he meets his Karma. WHICH HE WILL! however, your life CANNOT rest on that result in the interim, rather a continued focus on what happened will KEEP YOU IN THIS DAMAGING EMOTIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAP and he will just as predictably notice you are in there. And WHY did he put you in there, lock the exits and let you think you were Inferior and Damaged and Leftover Goods, dear? so that he could attack you some more.
The Facts of Life are NOT what Mama told us. So please take here from Nancy with the SCARS ON HER HEART. These men and women are DANGEROUS!!! His ability to attack you is based on two simple elements, so please go back to Nursing School #1:
1. You are a Human Being equipped with a conscience.
2. Your untreatable male patient IS NOT. He is DEAD and sucking out your human blood.
THAT is why you wake screaming!! he is not “ALL THERE” and should be locked into a facility where he cannot hurt anyone — and maybe at some point Society will wake the heck up and SEE THAT IS TRUE. Meanwhile, it’s a matter of Dancing Away and understanding you are lovely and strong enough to do so….and SO AM I AT 62, believe it!!! Even now I make him look like crap and I have been pretty used up by now, still my skin is glowing (and secretly I am finally glad about those flat boobs since at least they’re still “up there) because I AM NOT CORRUPT INSIDE AND NEITHER ARE YOU.
NOTHING done to your body is as important as what has been done to your TRUST in your HEART. That was put there by Nature, you are intended to BOND and not be worried about protecting yourself, so in this process you have been MADE ILL. Many victims say they’d rather have just been hit with a fist, and Jenna I am definitely among them. What I recall is not the fear of bodily injury but rather, the things he SAID to me and about me behind my back, like a 14yo girl in junior high.
All this is why your skin crawls, so just name it and make sure your windows are locked and that you do NOT ANSWER THE PHONE. REMEMBER my sign-on poster name when, not if, he comes back to upset you again. HE WILL! but let your heart beat in a wish that he had NOT called, as opposed to being glad to have temporarily “won his interest” because his INTEREST in you IS INSANE just like the “man” himself.
As for “leaving be” his other friends….
OMG LEAVE THEM BE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You do NOT want to be responsible for his LOSS of anyone or heaven forbid, his reputation or status at this perilous point in time FOR YOURSELF.
My ex’s new friend never wanted him, he nearly killed ME for that AND NOW SHE IS DEAD HERSELF.
MY poster name should be NO KIDDING!!!! instead of JUST No Contact, Jenna.
Jenna, please let me add this top-off cherry to the whipped cream of this guy’s risk to SOCIETY, it is a quote from your post (that may or may not be above, ha ha):
“Other than his best friend he really doesn’t have any close friends.”
HMMMM….. AND WHO DOES THAT LEAVE WHEN THE LAST WOMAN WALKS OUT, JENNA? MAKE SURE THAT WHEN THE MUSIC STOPS IN THE GAME OF ‘MUSICAL CHAIRS’ YOU DO NOT GET LEFT OUT OF A SEAT. CLAIM IT NOW!! AND DO NOT LET HIM GET PUSHED OUT BECAUSE HE HAS RUN OUT OF OTHER RESOURCES AND YOU HAVE NOT RECOVERED ENOUGH TO PUSH YOURSELF!! that is actually the best benefit of this website.
HERE IS THE PUSH YOU NEED. FIND A SEAT IN LIFE! CLAIM IT NOW!!!! At some point in the very near future, the new person will figure him out, and he will be RIGHT BACK. You have not had nearly enough time to recover from this and CANNOT BE EXPECTED TO FEEL BETTER THAN YOU DO, so instead of beating yourself up about it, LET ME MOTHER YOU TODAY TO THIS LIMITED EXTENT: DO WHAT YOU ARE TOLD RIGHT NOW, AND FIND A SEAT!!!! OR HE WILL PUSH YOU OUT OF YOUR SEAT, SINCE THAT IS WHAT HE DOES TO PEOPLE. AND SHE WILL FIGURE THIS OUT. BE SAFE!! AND COUNT ON HER SEEING THE SAME THINGS YOU DID instead of imagining that she will be an easier Sale than you, because the collective VOICES out here are saying NOPE!!! we would NEVER go for that guy unless we had a broken wing, so please hear N/C and SCOOT AWAY BEFORE HE COMES BACK TO GET MORE NURSING!!!!
He will never pay you back, and at this CURRENT point his stinky character won’t last with a new person more than just a few months, tops. As I said, this is a Graph you can draw and so can your virtual audience out here….you are a GOOD PERSON and he is NOT so duh…once his new friend sees how rotten he is, he’ll be OUTTA PLACES TO GO!!!! Doesn’t your place look so sweet and pretty, just like the nurse that you are??!! sure and where’s the passenger in that Porsche??!!! golly she looks more and more like Jenna to me out here, TEMPORARILY smiling while he cruises along at the wheel, renting her beauty and her presence while he SHOPS FOR OTHER VICTIMS not because she’s unsatisfying but because he wants a Cow in that seat.
Hey, at least my ex was honest about it, he wanted a dumb cow. AND THAT STRATEGY WORKED FOR HIM, let me point out, ha ha. He made no pretense about it at all, mooooooooooooooo. 🙂
Jenna dear, I THINK YOU HAVE DONE GREAT WITH THIS.
IF ONLY!!!! I had lost less time.
Naturally I don’t regret the years in which the kids were born, but those thereafter…..I couldn’t get out.
So YES! I totally support your plan and WISH IT HAD BEEN MY OWN and congratulate you on taking better care of yourself than SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE here, who have lost decades and fortunes and the trust of their children and employers….all for a single relationship that SHOULD HAVE only lasted as long as your own.
GOOD JOB JENNA! and may everybody else get Free as fast as you. Unfortunately, “we should be so lucky,” ha ha ha.
xox from N/C with Love and Thanks!! for mutual healing, in your experience I have seen a clearer vision of my own, and not identified any better way out than the one that you set forth too. It hurts, but better now than later — after we have grown a big wart on our foreheads.
Jenna,
You are doing a good thing for yourself in not letting him know how much he has harmed you. It is best if he doesn’t know anything about you at all ever.
The less you think about him, the better. There is really no figuring a psychopath out, and who wants to understand them anyway.
Jenna, you matter so much to us all, that I have checked in today on Christmas Eve just to say HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU!!!!**** and may the New Year ahead be ever so much brighter, and SO much more like what you really deserve.
xox from N/C
He has no reason to apologize because he does not regret what he did, and he does not care about anyone else. He lied when he said he cared. That is extreme betrayal, and it is the most painful thing in the world, I think.
His ‘best friend’ is probably not really a friend. If they are both disordered, they are probably using each other. He doesn’t be a friend to anyone. If he were a real friend he would be a real boyfriend.
He might or he might not come back, and it could be years from now. It depends on what he wants and what he thinks he can get. Even though you’ve exposed him to other victims, once it’s done, he really doesn’t care that you did it in a personal way. The degree to which he wants to exploit you and the degree to which he wants to hurt you are the same regardless of what you did. Spaths are completely impersonal and although they use punishment to control the victim when they are in a series of interactions that make up a fake ‘relationship’ they usually don’t care enough about anyone in a personal way to desire revenge. They are just as happy to torture anyone. Other people don’t really exist as real individual people in their paradigm; and I am not sure they experience consciousness as a person like we do.
It is chilling, but understanding how they ‘think’ and what their motivations are make it easier to predict their behavior on some level, although their behavior is always somewhat random because no one is an individual person to them.
When they are looking for people to exploit, they do tend to come back to people whom they interacted with in the past, maybe because the familiarity gives them an advantage and it’s less of an effort with them.
uhhhh…..No Jenna….this is NOT ALL THEY CAN DO.
…..the WORST was being called the wrong name at “the critical moment” and after the words “I love you” and being SLAPPED UPON as though calling me a Cow “during the act.”
And then — being called a Dumb Cow.
Just in case I hadn’t Noticed — RIGHT?
Now, please go back to my earlier suggestion and pretend that I’m Nancy and have CALLED You about this dude. WHAT ARE YOU GONNA SAY TO ME JENNA?!! lock your doors sister Nanc! that guy is INSANE and TOTALLY reminds me of somebody that I used to date once, and boy did he nearly put me under six feet. Pick ya up in an hour and this time let’s have suitcases packed and a note for the landlord, or at least make an affirmative new Plan to DO SOMETHING ELSE BESIDES THAT.
You’re kidding, right?!!
Not only are you nicer to me than the spath that faked me out of my life in 1983 — but you are also WAY WAY WAY WAY NICER that our elder daughter.
Between the TWO of them (she was Daddy’s Girl) I have been Pinched nearly to death and that girl has not let go in ALL THESE FOUR YEARS since I separated! so that this will be my 5th Christmas with a snotty daughter who is now 30 years old herself.
So ha ha! please let me THANK You!!!! for your kindness to me at the holidays. THIS IS GOING TO BE TOUGH TONITE AND TOMORROW!!! so please wish me luck, and if I totally can’t stand it anymore, then expect to see me posting and not spelling very well.. however all the words will be spelling THESE PEOPLE ARE DRIVING ME OUT OF MY MIND!!
LOL, enjoy the Day, dear! N/C
Hi Jenna,
I’m going through it too. The worst thing in the world ever. I just need to meet people and keep reading these blogs. I’ve tried the no contact and its not working. I dont know why I even want to contact him. My head is so f**ked up right now. I’ve never been this way. I’ve always been strong and now im so weak. After the fall I was left like WTF just happend? So. I started reading up on his behavior and i found sociopath and it nailed it to a tee. He’s also a sex addict. Ripped my heart out and stomped on it.
Girl just try to have a Merry Xmas. If I can you can. I’ll also give you my # if you want we can text or just talk. IDK. All I know is I have to pull my head outta my ass and do it. Trust me I have thoughts of destroying him on a daily basis. But then im just going to look like the jealous psychotic ex gf. However, once i started noticing his odd behavior i started making copies, screen shots, texts you name it. I have them all saved. I could hang him right now If I wanted to. The more I think about him the more control he has over me. I need to put an end to the madness. Hang in there girl.
Me too Jenna, and I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.
Yesterday my daughter did what has turned out to be “the usual,” specifically she wants to shun me from my family because she VASTLY PREFERS her spath father.
I am so ruined by this that there are no words for this. Every time I have started to heal, the daughters he taught to batter me, make it impossible. I had to bail out of the family home in 2010 and went into what I thought was “my family’s” duplex where our daughter was living.
Instead of welcoming me, knowing her father had been cheating on me, she made me feel SO TERRIBLE and believe it or not, CONTINUES TO HARP ON ME FOR HAVING DISRUPTED HER LIFE when I showed up battered and destroyed by a spath who threatened to kill me, wanted another woman AND HER KIDS and to dump our kids and me. The kids are either spaths too (it’s only the waste of MY WHOLE LIFE since I’ve been on my own since the age of 19 when my mom died) or just horrible people and either way, I don’t have a family anymore because I didn’t want to share my husband with another woman.
Good question you ask as to why he didn’t dump other women for refusing to go along with his perversions. It proves that the reason he discarded you is not that you refused to participate in a threesome. He gave that as a reason in order to blame you, but his real reason is something else. Whatever the specific reason he discarded you, it is based on his motivation for exploitation, power, control, sadism.
Given that you are certain that he lies to you, does not care about your well being, nor does he appreciate you, nor does he bond to you personally, and he does not choose to change; the specific reasons don’t matter all that much. The reason he discards people is because he is a bad person; it has nothing to do with you.
Righteous anger can be a motivation for change. You’re angry at injustice done to you, so you remove yourself from the situation, you determine not to allow yourself to be abused anymore, and you do what you can to bring about justice if possible and if it doesn’t stress you. When you get to the point where there is nothing more you can do, feeling angry uses up one’s energy and doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s difficult to just turn it off like flipping a switch. You don’t want to be burdened with the intrusive thoughts and the anger; you want peace. I found it very difficult to unburden myself, it’s not possible to go back in time and undo the damage done. I allowed myself to feel anger and to think about things, and I tried to balance that with focusing on other things. It takes time and it takes work. I listened to a relaxation audio made for survivors of psychopathic abuse in a love relationship.
It is possible that you may feel better when you work through and heal from the other psychopathic abusive relationships you experienced, especially the damage when you were still a child. That can be so deeply entrenched.
The book, Getting Past Your Breakup by Susan Elliott, was helpful to me.