Hello Everyone,

I haven't posted on this site for a long time. Some of you might remember me as Blondie but I have changed my name because I forgot my password from many months ago.

Anyway, I am still with my P. I have no excuses except that I am not strong enough to leave. It's been three and one half years now for the second time around. The problem is that he is burning out and has no one but me now. And when I try to leave he panics desperately. I am all he has and I still have feelings for him but not like they used to be. He does try more than he used to but he is what he is and can only make that effort for a while then he goes back to the real person. He admits that he doesn't understand the emotions that I express but he says I am all he's got and doesn't want to lose me. We have never lived together and I would'nt even consider it. I am a lot stronger than I used to be and I leave his house if he starts being miserable or mean to me. But I go back the next day or the next week. I was told on this site that leaving a P is a process and those are the truest words I have ever heard. I will get there some day. I hope it is soon because sometimes I get so exausted trying to cope with this man and then I just have to sleep because I am so tired all the time.

My story is Psychopath In The Workplace or something like that if anyone wants to know more about me and my P.

Hello,

My story is under Almost Impossible To Get Away. Sorry, It's been so long I forgot.

Hi Blondie, it sounds like you are making some steps since you are ready to keep discussing leaving your P. It sounds like you are exhausted. It must be very difficult since it seems like he has a good "bag of tricks" to keep you in the situation. Keep in mind that he doesn't have anyone else because of him and there is nothing you can do to fix him. Please be careful. I hope by expressing your feelings here you can find the resolve to leave for good. You deserve the best.

Here is a link to your old thread:
Almost Impossible to get away

Di

P.S. if anyone forgets their password all you have to do is select "login" at the top and enter your name and select "forgot password" and the system will send you a new one.

Hi Annette

I read the link that Di gave. There were some really great discussions going on in those days weren't there. It would have been great to have been part of it. I wonder what happened to kris as I had contact with her on another board and was concerned that she said she was suicidal.

I agree that leaving is a process but if it goes on too long then I think that it means help is needed. And it is great that you have come back on here as this is a good place to find help. I must say that the fact that you have not lived with p yet still find it hard to get on with your life and find someone who gives back as much as they take from a relationship, something that puzzles me. I am not blaming you or anything just would like to understand the why's of your situation a little better. I understand your feeling sorry for him but don't you feel more sorry for yourself? Hope you are not offended by my questions. I have found it hard to stop contact with p too.

Hi Annette.

I'm going to be REAL with you. Getting away from a P is best analogized by looking at the situation of a herion/drug addict. The withdrawal pains are intense and horrendous!! It ain't no pretty picture. And in order to be rid of the addiction, there is no "easy" way out. No taking a "little" bit of the drug and weening your way out of it. Same goes for getting the psychopath out of your life. You need to make a clean break. If you want to remain a "whole" person, if you care about yourself and your family, you need to GET AWAY from the P. So easy to say and yet so difficult to do. I'm telling you now, it won't be easy and you will be miserable for a period of time, but you will be glad later down the road that you did it.

Unfortunately, at this time, NO ONE can help a P. We don't have the technology yet to do this. Your love and caring won't help him either. Psychopaths prove that Love DOES NOT conquer all. The best you can do is to help YOURSELF!! You do have the strength and courage to do it!! Believe me, it is in your capacity to do this.

Hang in there!!! A big hug!

MCN

I will answer some of your questions, although I admit that I am a little surprised that it is hard to understand "the hook" if I haven't lived with him. I didn't think that had to be a prerequisit before "the hook". Anyway, whether right or wrong I have been hooked. I have worked with him for the last 15 years and I guess there is a soft spot in me towards people with problems and he sure looked for sympathy all the time. You see, most of the P's I have read about here seem to be more outgoing and have a lot of contact with people or at least associate with them in some way. Mine doesn't. Has no friends and doesn't assciate with any co-workers. Has breaks by himself and lunch also. Only mingles with a few select ones that he has to during working hours and if the discussions are not concerning work then they are concerning how bad his life is and how people has done such horrible things to him. Well, most people avoid him because they can't stand listening to his complaints. But when you get someone with my dispostion who has this need to help the "sad" ones, then I gues you have the perfect match. When I go there, I tell myself that this time, I will not jump to the rescue, but His way is to look so helpless that I automatically jump in to help him feel better, no matter what self talk I have done before I get there.

I am not really looking for answers here because I know what is going on with him and I know that I need to walk.
Maybe you all think that weening away is not the answer and maybe it isn't but what I do know is that my feelings are definitely dying for him and in my case I know that I am getting sick and tired of him. He is starting to really turn me off. The problem I used to have is that when I tried to leave he would become this wonderful person again but each time that wonderful person would last less and less.

I am not saying that my way is the answer, all I am saying is that for me it has been the answer. I am not terrified to be without him anymore. I feel like a better person than he is now, which is not the way it was suppose to work for him. I feel sorry that his life is so bad but not enough to worry about it anymore. When I am not with him through the week, I feel just fine and enjoy my week without the longing for him I used to have. I have started to realise slowly that maybe it is a fear of being alone that takes me back there, more than a need to see him. I know that sometimes as soon as I get there I want to go back home right away and sometimes I do. Sometimes I look at him and think "what a loser". I don't take any crap from him at all anymore. I don't hesitate to say what's on my mind now and if he doesn't like it which he doesn't, I tell him that's who I am and I will not change myself for him or anyone.

But the problem is, he is burning out and has no-one else I guess and that makes me feel bad sometimes. I know it shouldn't and I don't doubt myself for a minute that some day soon it won't anymore.

Right now I am still doing a lot of self growth and working on my own feelings and fears to make that final break.

Hugs to all of you!

P.S. The last time I saw my therapist I told him that I now realise I have wasted five years of my life. He said "It's better than wasting ten."
When it's all over, I refuse to live with regrets, cause he sure has made me a stronger person now.

Hi Annette

Pleaase forgive me, I was not passing any judgement on you. Of course we get hooked before we live with them. I think it is good that you did not get dragged into that because I think it is so much harder to detach from them if you have shared day to day living experiences and become so dependent that you doubt whether you can manage to live alone again. But there again maybe I am wrong and perhaps it is harder? I was just wanting to understand. I don't think that we can really get to know someone unless we cohabit, and see them at their worst. In the end, it's the little things that drive us mad, in a normal relationship that is. I mean, he must still present his best side to you and be able to because you are not there all of the time with him. Or am I on the wrong track? Just trying to understand.

That sympathy card is so powerful though and I still feel the pull of it. I have written out a list of the strongest traits of psychopathy that he has and regularly look at it in order to keep things at bay as I still am forced into having some contact with him over practical details and I know that it is dangerous for me but my sons are still with him and my mothers instinct is stronger than self preservation, though I am managing to strengthen the self preservation bit at the same time, learn how to to give them emiotional support in this situation. It has been a hard struggle to get the balance. I have made some foolish mistakes by not recognising the times when I am more vulnerable to get sucked back by him, and to refuse to get drawn in to a conversation about anything other than practical matters. The only way I have managed this is through finding support to give me the strength I lacked. Seeing a Psychologist and hearing him say that H would never change certainly helped me. I know in my head that he will not but that does not stop my longing that he will. I juast have to control that longing. I also know that I will not get any answers from him but that does not stop the need for answers. But I am learning to live with that. I have been seeing recently that I have much more control over these things than I thought and the negative mind set I slip into and it's been all about personal growth. I see two counsellors a week, dealing with different areas with each of them, and I am doing a basic counselling course at my local college which is about self realisation, and I am doing a pre-degree course which is about finding ourselves and am reading a board about Post Traumatic Sress Disorder. All of these things are helping me recover from not just my relationship with p (if you can call it a relationship) but from the time previous and the traumas in my life which made me susceptible to tolerating an unhealthy relationship and the reason why I could not identify my own needs and make sure I had them met in a relationship, in order not to waste time, which is precious, in my life. One thing that was so helpful for me as part of the course I am doing, was to draw a 'Lifeline' showing significant points in my life, as a chart, for the past, then to do one for the future and what I would like my future to be, and to work out approximately how much time I can reasonably expect to have left in my life. This was a real eye opener. My thinking is now centred on doing in the present, what will lead me to achieve what I want in the future, a new thing for me. I always lived my life as a responder to what others wanted.

I do not contact p unless vital, and once the divorce is through (a few weeks time) and the house is sold, I will then detach further, but thank goodness the emotional detachment is about complete, so long as I recognise my vulnerable times and remember to contact the support network I have built that will give me the strength and resolve I need at those times. Having just come through a bad time recently, due to allowing myself being roped into taking my 13 year old stroppy grand-daughter on holiday, which I was absolutely not up to, and which has thrown me off balance again, I see absolutely the need to have this support network in place.

Previous to this, when I was still in contact with him and talking to him, I was still in the *addiction* phase, which someone has already mentioned. There could not be a process then, just an up and down time, with gratitude for the plateaus and hope being revived that things would change, and that he was on the point of a 'breakthrough'. Even though my head said no my heart said yes it was possible. And so the cycle would continue with me becoming increasingly sick and tired of him and wishing I was a million miles away from him. I would have thought that when the leaving came, it would have been easy due to my increasing dislike for him but in fact it did not and the bond was perhaps even stronger because of these feelings? I do not understand. What I do know is that it was not until after I broke that bond that I saw just how he had manipulated me in making me feel sorry for him and I had been sucked into his mindset to see things as he did ie that the world was against him and had never given him a chance and he had tried his best but it was a big bad world out there. I am shocked at how it had affected my own thinking, and how I had changed my world view. I now am back to my positive self and see life as wonderful, full of amazing possibilities even for those who are sick, and poor and without many things that we feel necessary due to being brainwashed by our materialistic cultures.

Life is too wonderful to waste time on losers. They have made their choice and it has to be respected. But there are some lovely people out there with whom we can have wonderful happy creative relationships, but to be dragged down to the ground, by those who will not change, is to do a great dis-service to ourselves, and it is to ourselves that we have our first duty to love and cherish. Sorry if I have rambled too much!

Mati

Mati,

It's okay, I am just so touchy about everything this week. You see, I am with him all weekend long and sometimes through the week if he lets me. I have seen the real him many, many times. Like the time when he threw me into the kitchen table or when he held a knife to me and told me he wanted to cut my guts out or when he tried to choke me on various occasions or held his fist to my jaw and said he wanted to kill me. Of course he doesn't remember any of it and told me I was crazy. But for some reason he never had me scared. I told him to go ahead every time and I would have the police there asap. He always stopped right away.

Last Sunday, after spending the weekend again, which we had a great time together all day Sunday, I headed home. That night on my way home from visiting my grandchildren, I stopped at Tim Hortons for a coffee. I decided to sit in the parking lot and enjoy my coffee. I was really missing him for some reason. All of a sudden I saw him drive by and go through the coffee shop across the street. I wanted to go and see him so bad but chose not to. When I got home I phoned him with some information that he asked me to look up for him. I told him that I saw him getting coffee. His reply was "I am so proud of you that you didn't come over to me." Well, I felt like I had been slapped across the face. I started to cry on the phone. He said he was sorry that he didn't mean it that way. He meant that he was proud that I was getting stronger and could control myself from running over to him. Still..... that's sick for any kind of relationship or friendship or whatever we have. It played on my mind all week. I couldn't get past that remark.

I thought and thought all week and phoned him last night. He had just gotten home from going out to supper with his mother. I asked him how come he could go out for supper when I am always told he is too tired to see me or talk to me on the phone during the week and he tells me not to bother him through the week now. I told him I wouldn't be coming up on the weekend and that it was over. He said I am crazy and shouldn't be jealous over his mother. I told him I wasn't and that was not the point I was trying to make. He kept insisting I was jealous and called me a few names. I told him I wanted to find a nice man who would treat me properly and that he should look for someone else too. First he told me that he was a very good man and that a lot of woman want to go out with him and then he asked me to introduce him to someone. I said to find his own person because I certainly intended to find mine.

Then the story changed and he kept asking me what I wanted him to do that would make me happy. I was just hating him so much then and I said to leave me alone and let me move on and I would be happy. He kept on talking and so I just hung up.

Now.... today.

I know in my head that I have done the right thing. But I feel so sad.I wanted him to call me and he didn't. I tell myself that it is good that he hasn't but my heart is crying differently. What you said is soooo true. The longing for him to change is burning in my heart even though my head knows it will never happen. I to, want answers so bad. I hope I can rest without them because I know I will never get them either.

I don't know if I can do this right now and walk away. I want to so much and I will pray that I can be strong enough. Right now it is killing me.

Annette

When it's all over, I refuse to live with regrets, cause he sure has made me a stronger person now.


Thank you for saying that Annette. I am new here, didnt know about this but it all fits now. This is what i did. Lived with him for three years. But even when I knew it wouldnt work, without even knowing he was a P, at the time, I had to wait. I had to be sure. And altho it IS like a heroin addiction [as i imagine it to be] it is right. It hurts tho. And mine is also anti-social, with no friends around here. I am the only person he has ever really connected with. I feel so bad for him really. But although i waited, i wasn't being abused as you have [in the past?] I might have stayed even longer then it's so hard to break that cycle.

Point is i understand you have to do it when it's right for you. Just don't wait too long. Please. the exhuastion is real... I feel some relief now not to always be worried about him.

You can do it Annette... you can do it. But if he refuses to accept your breaking up with him, would not some distance in proximity be best? It's the only way i've been able to breakup with my P. If he lived close he'd never leave me alone, it would be like we weren't split at all. Of course you have a life of your own there, but well just worried for you. Please do not take offense, i'm on your side