beenthere,

Ah, yes. Trust.

Why do we...

Trust the untrustworthy?
Believe the liar?
See the cheater as faithful?
Accept blame from the blameless?
Allow the perpetrator to claim they are the victim?
Love the unlovable?
Cry over evil going away?
Feel pain inside, caused by someone else?
Try to make real the unreal?
Mourn the loss of a psychopath?

Do we do any of this for others? Would it not take one lie, one act of unfaithfulness, one victimization of us to say "go away!" Would any other human being on earth get our forgiveness, our sympathy, our love, after even one such horrible display of evil? If they do, would they get another chance?

Probably not. Something about the psychopath provokes in us a deep need to forgive, forgive, forgive. We forgive the unthinkable, the unimagineable, the unforgiveable.

Until they are through with us. Then we cannot forgive, not ever. We cannot forget. We cannot forge onward. We now remember the lies, the deceit, the cons, the empty promises, the cheating, the pain inflicted upon our souls. We remember it all too well.

Why do we forgive WITH them, can't do it WITHOUT them? Because they are that good at wearing the Mask. The one that loves, cares, will always be there. The one that takes care of us when we are sick, holds us when we need held. The one who loved us so well. So well, it almost killed us i.e. Loved to Death. Now we know who started that expression, "I love you to death"...a psychopath.

The whole thing just bites. I know what you mean about wanting to call the wife and tell her. I wouldn't be able to not do it. I would call in a heartbeat. When I told him "the Wife is the Last to Know," I meant it literally. I always "knew", I just didn't know WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY...but I knew. Thats why I spent 8 years telling him to quit lying to me.

I am trying like heck to find out "why" I care that he is gone. As many friends have told me over these last 14 months, "What do you miss? The lies? The criminal activity? The serious financial problems? The stress? The crying? The worry of another abandonment? The deceit and manipulations? The job-hopping? What part of all that do you want back?"

All of it. I want my life back. I want my 8 years back. I want my ex husband to NOT be a psychopath. I want a chance to be more aware, not so naive, not a victim. I want to do it again, because now I know...that he IS a psychopath. I want to go back to the day we met and not meet him. I want it all back, so I can stop it from ever happening.

They just don't get it though. They have never loved a psychopath.

Laura

Laura,

Your line "I want him to not be a psychopath". Do you know how many times I have wished that too? The "if onlys" have ran through my head till they make me sick. I have prayed to God and asked him why this had to happen to me. What have I done that was so terrible to deserve this. Did I need to learn some kind of a lesson this bad?

You know Laura, I loved everything about him. His looks, his hands, his smell, his hair, right down to his feet. I felt so proud to be seen with him. I felt so proud that no one knew the "real" him except me. He only talked with me. He was so secretive with everyone else. I felt so priviliged. But......

This week has been terrible. He seems to have turned on me. Told me he is so sick emotionally, even went to a therapist. He said the therapist told him he has to be more assertive so he has been very nasty this week. Told me he has been trying to get rid of me for 3 years but I won't go away. Yet , he has been inviting me up just as much as me asking him if I can come up. He says he wants to stop our relationship for now until he feels better and then we can see each other again. He says no more sex, I said okay but I didn't plan on waiting till he feels better, that it was over for good. So 2 hours later he came to me at work and said we can see each other once in a while and for me to come up Fri. night. He said "but this is your last chance lady, you had better treat me right this time." So the rules are... to come up when he says, not to argue with him at all, sex only when he says, be friendly at work and not to call him very often.

Laura, I can't do this anymore. I am so sick emotionally and physically. It hurts soooo bad. I guess I don't have to tell any of you the kind of pain I am feeling tonight. Tomorrow I have to tell him goodbye for good, everything, relationship, friendship, everything. What makes me so sick inside the most is that it hurts real bad and I haven't even done it yet. And the fact that no matter what he has done to me so far, a part of me doesn't want to do this. That makes me so disgusted with myself. Am I crazy? To still want such a monster? Someone who looked me straight in the eye today and said "I want away from you!" And yet tomorrow will be another story. I'm sure. Or maybe not.

I don't sleep well anymore, I can't eat much of the time. My stomach hurts a lot lately, my head hurts, my back hurts, my heart hurts. I feel numb inside. I don't know how I treated him badly. By wanting to be with him? by wanting to talk with him? by wanting to help him? Yes, I have argued with him when I caught him in a lie, or when he tried to tell me that he was sick because of me or when he pulled me in and then pushed me away. Every flippin day the rules change. Now he is bound and bent that I chased after him and he never wanted me but was too sick to say no. Sometimes I would tell him that I won't call all weekend but then by Sunday, I would break down and call. He always acted like that was such a terrible thing to do, and he got so mad, so lately I did try to do everything the way he said, didn't argue, agreed with everything, didn't raise my voice, didn't ask for anything, stayed away all last weekend, but I slipped up and called and now all this.

I pray that I can do this Fri. night and end it without too much pain and without him trying to change my mind. God help me.

Blondie

blondie,

My ex had a "twin", a man who spoke with other women. I have told all about this "twin." From what I read here, your post, I have a twin too. You are thinking and feeling exactly as I am. The physical ailments even match. I too suffer daily headaches, stomach aches, can't eat. Of course, this is nothing new, except the headaches.

The desire to end it forever, eating you alive. I ended it forever, about 3 times or more. Then he ended it forever. Just when I was ready to start over.

It is very hard to believe they are actually a psychopath. It may always be hard to believe. I have said that I would assume my ex would have changed, become a truth teller, a debt payer, a law abider, now that he is gone to me.

I guess that is part of the blame we place on ourselves, the "if only I had done this or that...." They want us to blame ourselves. It is part of how they operate.

In a relationship with a non psychopath, a person will say, "Don't blame yourself. I did/said this or that and I will take responsibility for it..." Those are words that will never cross the lips of a psychopath. They do not know the meaning of blame on theirself or responsibility for their actions. To know that, would be to know someone needed to change their ways. A psychopath does not need to change, they love theirself just the way they are!

I know, speaking for myself, I hung on for dear life to him. No matter what the stakes, what the price I had to pay, I was not going to "let go." The harder I hung on, the more I suffered, the deeper in depression I sunk, the easier it was for him to slip away.

As I found out, when a psychopath is through with you, they are through with you. In their time frame, on their terms. They especially love being the one who ends it. In fact, they will have it no other way. Unless the victim beats them to the punch.

That is part of their magnetism. To have seduced our soul to the point that we cannot let go, no matter how bad it gets.

Well, this is Friday night, actually now Saturday morning. I wonder how you are, how it went. I would not want to be going through what you are, I have already been there, done that, and it is not pretty. The emotional pain is unreal. What are we afraid of? We are afraid of letting go of something that is evil and mean to us. Why? I do not know. Maybe because we first must let go of the good stuff? The good times, the love, the memories?

Pain holds onto us more than happiness. I do not know why that is. We may forget a truly happy moment in our lives, but we will always remember breaking a bone. I think its like touching a hot stove. We know how bad it burns our fingers, so learn not to do it again. Ever. But if we smell a flower, only remember the smell for a little while, we gravitate towards that flower again, because we equate something good with that flower. But...if that flower is a rose and has thorns, we know not to touch it on the stem, it will hurt.

I guess with a psychopath, we keep smelling the flower and forget about the thorns?

I wish you all the luck and strength you need to do what you feel is best for you. Okay, not best right now, it will hurt like heck, yes. But in the long run, best for you.

I wonder sometimes if I had to have more strength inwardly to live with him or to live without him? When I quit "smelling the flower," I will have the answer.

My thoughts are with you now and always.
Keep us posted.

Laura

(((Blondie))),
Reading your post brought those memories flooding back of the end times before I left the Psychopath of my deep love, confusion, bewilderment, numbness, desparation, shame, hopelessness/hope, fear, and all kinds of weird physical symptoms. Your words could have been my own. I felt like a puppet on a string.

I left him, Blondie. My body was "screaming" for me to leave, but my heart was broken. I am not going to tell you it was easy. The pain was excruciating and recovery long. It was worth it though. Your words remind me so much of how I felt. Blondie, you are not alone. So many of us here have been through those same feelings. I pray you find the strength to leave him and start the recovery process and a new life.

Praying for strength and peace for you Blondie,

Neverthesame

Blondie, I am so sorry for the hell you are suffering. And it is hell. Life with a psychopath is life in the down under. As Laura said, they have a talent for claiming your very soul. Then they subject it torture such as those who have not experienced it can not imagine.

It is hopeless to try to make sense of the things he says, or to twist yourself into a pretzel shape which he would find acceptable. He is purposely designing your task so that it is impossible to fulfill. One of the ways that psychopaths claim us is by hooking into our vulnerabilities, and absolutely everyone has some fear of not measuring up, of not being acceptable, not good enough, not able to "do it right". Who on earth has not found themselves wanting, at various times? It is a fact of human nature that we long most to please those we cannot please. He is also hooking into your fear of rejection (another universal human fear) by rejecting you over and over and over. He's a sick bast__d and I'd like to put my foot on his face.

Something I personally reacted to strongly in your post is the thing about him going to a therapist and her telling him he needed to be more assertive. Gag. They paint themselves as the victim. When my psychopath husband was torturing me beyond all human imagining, he had our entire community holding his hand and helping him with his "low self-esteem" due to his abuse from his wife.

They are vile beyond belief.

But I still loved this one while he was doing these horrible things to me, too. And I understand, and my heart goes out to you. The pain is just ghastly. I know it is.

I want you to know that when you get away from him, you will feel such an amazing sense of relief. It is like being let out of hell. No. It IS being let out of hell.

I will be thinking about you, today, you will be in my heart.

((blondie))

kris

p.s. Blondie, I had some more thoughts. How do they capture our souls? They take all of our control away, all of it, every last shred. Then, since they have all of our control, are the keepers of our selves, our autonomy, we are bound to them, sensing intuitvely that they have the thing we need for our surivival. We flounder and writhe, in their capture, unable to leave them alone, because, truly, when we ARE alone, we are missing to ourselves. We feel the reality that the self we so desperately need, in order to get comfortable, to even be able to sit still with ourselves, is in their possession. And we are driven back to them, again and again, because we cannot endure the emptiness and the craving for our essential part. We think that essential part is them. That is the illusion they have woven into us. It is not them. It is ourselves, which they have stolen, by stripping us of all that belongs to us, by God's design.

The agony that you are experiencing is a hallmark of the psychopath victim's experience. I know that agony is so intense that you would do almost anything to quell it even for a moment. I chose this path for years and years and years. The thing that finally got me past it was getting mad enough. My rage had to get bigger than the agony of being without the psychopath. I think I am trying to get you mad through these posts of mine, today. How dare this s.o.b. do this to you? He's a cockroach! Squash him!

As you go through the withdrawal, your self will come back to you, your precious, God-given, lovable wonderful self. You will feel human, again. That he has it is just an illuion. He is only able to make you unable to feel it, and long desperately for what you can feel only when you are with him. Really, your self is with you, now. The longer you stay away from him, the more you will feel your self.

Blessings, sweet Blondie.

kris

Kris, Laura, all of you,

I know you have been waiting for my post and I am so sorry to have to tell you that I FAILED miserably. I don't know why.

I saw a bad sign in me on Friday. The anxiousness, the excitement of going up there, seeing him again. I was weakening. So afraid to lose the last crumb of happiness that existed in my life...once in a while.

When i got there he warned me he was in a bad mood, that I was making him sick. I listened for a while and then suggested that I leave, that it was a bad time for me to come up.

Then the transformation slowly, slowly began, as I see it now anyway.

He said to come in for coffee before I go. Begged me. After coffee he suggested we go to sit in the park, (where we first met). We sat by the river and I got a gentle back rub without even asking for it. He of course told me about his illness and stress. He is trying to feel better, if only I treated him better. Back to his house and I said goodbye. With a pleading look in his eyes and the softest voice you have ever heard, he asked me to come in for a short while. More coffee and then the suggestion that we sit on the couch. A short while later and he wanted me to lay down with him. Hugs and kisses (which I never get anymore), calling me by his pet name for me, said "what am I going to do with you, you are such a devil and you're so hooked on me baby". HOOKED? try putty in his hands, mush. He was so gentle and tender. Upstairs we go, afterwards, he held me in his arms, kissed me goodnight (I NEVER get that EVER). In the morning more hugs, more coffee, telling me he enjoyed being with me. We can do that again every other weekend, as long as I prove to him that I will go with the flow, not argue, not display a temper, till he feels better and he is trying to. The idiot, idiot blondie replies "ok" wondering.... who is this man?

The one who screamed at me on Thursday that he "wants to get away" from me. You know I believed him when he said that. He looked so sure, so real, so sincere, like he hated me. There was no doubt in my mind that it was over for him. I was shocked, surprised, confused, HAPPY, on Fri. night

I look at myself and it makes me sick. Why do I only exist with him, I feel, I love, I am happy...for a while. It was like the beginning, the part I want so deperately back. The only part that wasn't real and yet I can't seem to accept that. I walk around like a zombie, numb, a robot... until I go up there, then it's like you couldn't peel me off the ceiling, I am so alive, my life has a purpose, my heart explodes, the withdrawal is gone, the pain dissapears.

I am so sorry to all of you, to ME. I MUST keep trying, I WILL get away. I just don't know when.

I can't thankyou you all enough. I live for your posts, your encouragement, your enlightening. Please bare with me as I try to get it right, to get my life back, to get away. It seems to be taking me soooo long. I need to find a way to hate him.

)))))hugs to all of you(((((

Blondie

Oh Blondie, Don't be sorry for us. You are the one who is suffering so deeply. One of the things that I found hardest during my years of pain was others' inability to remain supportive through it. In my case, it was different because no one knew he was a psychopath, not even me, thus all that was apparent was my chronic misery. If there is anything I can do to avenge my former situation, that I did not get the support I so richly deserved and desperately needed, it is to offer that to someone who is in that situation, now. You will have my support for as long as you need it.

The situation is the situation. He is a psychopath and he has the ability to make you feel the way you feel. Even once you know what is happening to you, the struggle to get free is overwhelming. They are worse than crack/cocaine, which though I have never used it, sounds like the most addicting thing imaginable, short of a psychopath.

A psychopath works on his victim in the exact same way as a dangerous drug. The first experience is euphoric. After that, you reach a point of needing the drug just to ward off hellish pain, even though the hellish pain is the side effect of the drug. It's a vicious circle. I see it as a miracle when anyone breaks free. Blondie, I know that miracle is going to happen for you. I know it. Let yourself know it, too. Immerse yourself in that absolute knowing. It is going to happen.

Until it does, don't ever worry about disappointing us. We are here for you.

Hugs, kris

Blondie,

You don't owe anyone here an apology. You are doing the best you can to live with and accept an impossible situation. That is about the best way to describe the relationships and life situations that a P creates for everyone close to him.

All those feelings that you are having right now, all that he is putting you through, (and yes, it is him who is creating it), all of those feelings and the withdrawal, misery, elation, self blame, all of it, many if not all the folks here here went through the same feelings too. I did. Please don't punish yourself for it. You are where you need to be at this moment in order to learn what you need to learn. Even though you are re-engaging, you are doing so with greater awareness of how he operates and of the dynamics that are in place. The addiction to the P is so difficult to deal with, but when the time is right for you you will handle it in YOUR own way, and in YOUR own time.

One question, and you don't have to answer it, the p seems to have a whole set of conditions for you to meet in order to improve the relationship. Other than being more assertive, does he have any conditions for himself? And if he does, are they based on what you've expressed as your own needs? Are your needs considered, asked about, discussed or respected at all in this? It sounds as if as long as you "behave yourself" he will bestow upon you some minimal involvement.

Take care, and no matter what path you take, this forum exists for YOUR support and validation. There is no need to apologize to anyone. You are loved here, but no one here is your parent, so you don't have to worry about disappointing anyone here. This forum is about people who are at different stages in the same journey.

((((((((((((((((blondie))))))))))))))))))))))

-Leti

Leti,

In respnose to your question which I don't mind answering at all is....
He has promised that he will invite me up instead of me asking him all the time. He will ask me too. He has promised that he will no longer carry on about how guilty he feels "the next morning" after me spending the night with him. He said he feels guilty because he worries that I am going to become attached to him again and he said that he doesn't want anyone. But he won't do that anymore. You know he never ever used to feel guilty about it until about 2 months ago. I don't believe he feels guilty at all. I think he is just trying to make me think he cares about me and that he has high morals which he will never convince me of that. He asked me if I was okay with seeing him once every two weeks, would I be alright and not go into a deep depression or try to commit suicide. I, of course told him that I would never do that over him or anybody. I told him that I had no problem with that at all.

Now the truth is that I have a big problem with that but there is no way I am going to let him know that. If I did, then, he would know that I am suffering in between and he would feel so good and powerful. I will not give him that. I keep thinking that maybe with so much space between visits, I can distance myself from him emotionally and brake the hold. That is what I am striving for. I do know that I am going to keep my word and not call or go up for two weeks. I need to test him to see if that suffices him and makes him keep his word with me. If not, then I will be one step closer to realising that he wants me off balance at all times like my therapist says. He is going to make me hate him at this rate eventually.

Do you think that it throws him off when I agree with him about this? Doesn't he want me to be needing him all the time and suffering?

I have so many questions running through my head.

To anyone out there, what did your P do when you decided for sure you wanted out? Did they let you go or become wonderful to try to get you back?

Leti, thankyou for saying that I am where I need to be right now. I believe that to be true. It seems to end in stages with a P, never a quick decision that it is over with a P. Everyone seems to go back and try something different until they have exausted all possibilities. At least that it the way I see it.

Thankyou for your kind words, Leti

You and Kris and Laura and everyone here seem to be such wise, compassionate woman. Every hope I have that someday this will end and I will once again feel happiness in my life has come from all of you.

Thankyou, God bless you all!

))))hugs(((((

Blondie