Would you like to help others to know that they aren’t alone? To let them know that they aren’t crazy? To inspire them and give them the courage to break free?
By being a part of the next SOS Partners project, you’ll be changing lives and shifting how the world views the dynamics of predator and prey.
Every day another person realizes that they’re in danger and begins to break free. Your own horrific experience can serve some good in helping others and in bringing this surreal reality to light.
Turn Our Suffering to Support for Others
By sharing your story you can help thousands of men, women, families, and children giving them the chance to discover they are not alone. Giving them the chance to untangle the real truth about their isolating and terrifying situations.
If you’d like to consider being a part of the SOS Partners project, simply fill in the form below to be emailed the brief describing the SOS Project and how you can be a part of changing someone else’s world through your own experience.
Be sure to add these email addresses to your contacts so that you don’t miss a thing! jennifer@truelovescam.com and info@truelvescam.com
To be sure my emails land in your inbox, by adding my email addresses to your contacts: jennifer@truelovescam.com And: info@truelovescam.com
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach upholding coaching industry standards and ethics, I strive to inform, educate, co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. We decide what winning is. We win.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
Break up? More like an escape. And then how to get them off our tail?! Why don’t they go away?
Break up. Yikes. When we’re in a relationship and the words – I think I need to break up – the first flash in our mind, we cringe. Breaking up is tough. It takes ages to think about, let alone to actually do. Even under the best of circumstances, breaking up is hard. Really hard.
In the kind of situation, you’re likely experiencing since you found this article in your quest for answers… Know you’re in the right place. Landing here after much confusion, sadness, and maybe some huge unresolved or inexplicable fights is the usual way.
And if you’re here because you’re thinking: Wtf is going on…?! Well then, I imagine you’ve been feeling blamed, ignored, frustrated, dissatisfied, mystified, and have even felt used. With all this stuff going on, getting to the place where we really and finally-for-good break up is extra hard to do.
When we arrive here looking for answers and feel an urgent need to break up we’re pretty far down a twisted corridor of hell. You’ve known things were crazy. You know something’s wrong, and that you’re a long way from happy. And likely have been, and are in a maze of pain. A confusing place where nothing really changes for the better or resolves.
We finally muster the courage to bring up the break up and here they are sticking to us like chewed gum on the bottom of our flipflop. Where was all this togetherness months ago?
My hugest hope for you is that you’ll find yourself a deeper and maybe new way to think about your circumstances; that answers might begin to fill the gaps of wondering what’s wrong. That the thoughts and emotions can begin to make a different kind of sense and shift to benefit you.
In this tiny moment, I hope you can discover more about what it is you’re breaking up from, and how to go about it. – Let’s get to it and talk about the two difficulties in getting rid of crazy.
Break up From Crazy: A Break Up That Goes On For Ages
At the very mention of breaking up from crazy, they suddenly come back around and turn into Mr. Nice. or yes – Ms. Nice. She’s out there too!
Because of this, many of us try to end things many times before the final time and that’s perfectly okay. It really is. It takes as long as it takes.
Hopefully, we truly discover what this all was so that our cognitive dissonance and confusion can resolve. We all want to resolve each loss and heal the very specific trauma from this relationship that isn’t.
Let’s say you manage to tell them it’s over. The first issue is that they seem to not want to let go. They fight the break-up with an energy that’s light-years more intense than anything they applied to make things work.
We finally muster the courage to bring up the break-up and here they are sticking to us like chewed gum on the bottom of our flipflop. Where was all this togetherness months ago?
Breaking Up: Reaction Number One: Nice
Suddenly we find this self-focused person we’re trying to break up with is not ignoring us and is no longer ambivalent, nor emotionless. They’ve brought up the heat intensely, ramping up to keep us from our break-up goal.
They’re gonna whip out: Nice. Nice will be promises and slogans about how good we are together. This will be familiar. If they’re desperate enough they’ll throw in some begging. They might toss in something extra, tears.
When a pathological user is crying, take that as a guarantee that they’re in a tight position. In this scenario take this to mean that you’re very valuable to them as a resource.
Looking for support and answers? Recovery is filled with lightbulb moments. You’re not alone.
From their point of view hanging on and the histrionics make sense. Why would the person who’s using us – making use of us – for their own entertainment or other things easily let us go? Their interest in hanging on to us is primal and fundamental.
Now that you’ve mustered up the courage to leave or tell them to hit the road dig deep to understand the truth of their intense reaction.
The way they react to us breaking up with them is in direct relation to what they gain from us. As always the spot we fulfill in their “needs” determines how they behave towards us. It stands to reason that if they could they’d keep us all in a cupboard forever to pull out whenever they need something.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
On the other side of nice is mean. Once it seems we’re sticking to our guns about breaking up, the user brings on the second tool in their arsenal: Mean.
This is where they insult us and criticize us, and for some, this is when the violence comes in. They like to tell us we’re imagining things and that all the malarkey is our fault. This is what many people refer to as gaslighting.
Everything They Do Serves One Basic Purpose
Whatever we call it, this opposition, this word salad, nonsensical, crazy-making, gaslighting soup is extremely simplistic in purpose. Hold on to your hats for this one: insulting and telling us we’re imagining things has the same purpose as being nice. So, what’s it about? It’s to get us to shut up. This is all hot air and their own fear packaged into mean so that we don’t break up – in this case.
Here’s what’s going on: They respond with nice or mean depending on our importance to them in that particular moment. Just imagine for a split-second that love’s got nothing to do with it, even if they say it does.
Hold your own hand now, and just for a sliver of time imagine that even though we think they love us… Breathe into the idea that maybe their love isn’t what we think it is. Let that marinate for a flash of a sliver of time.
Questions open up the door to another world of answers: For example, what if we feel and see what’s between ourselves and them as love – because we’re made of love – rather than because they can genuinely express love or feel love?
Questions Bring Answers: But Which Question?
Ask yourselves, rather than, Why doesn’t he do this-instead-of-that? Or, Why does he say these things? For one millisecond ask, What if he doesn’t actually love me? Yep. Try that on. Think about it, What if he doesn’t…? Not even if he brings on the waterworks and cries like a baby. What do things look like then? Is there more room for an answer to their actions?
If you’re the gateway to a group of people they want to use, they’ll hold on hard.
There are answers; there are logical reasons it’s hard to break up with them: We may come to a place where we realize that within their minds we each fill a spot that answers their varying needs and nothing more.
Users Use Others For Everything They Need
What they respond to in a break up is in accordance with their needs. If you’re key to them for a cozy place to sleep, or as a resource for money, access to a car, the internet, or a place to shower: They’re gonna balk at parting ways. When you’re the one thing that makes them seem respectable to others, they’re going to hang on.
We can learn to do what needs to be done, and say what needs to be said so that they can hear and understand, and so that they respond in the way that we need things to be for a change. Flip the tables.
For example, if it’s their parents who give them money or give them a stamp of approval that keeps them looking normal to the world, the pathological user (aka sociopath, aka narcissist) will hold on hard. If you’re the gateway to a group of people they want to use, they’ll hold on hard.
When we’re the place they eat, shower, hang out, get high, surf the internet, watch porn, jack off, sleep, brood, get their laundry done, are the address on their driver’s license, and serve as their home front to the world. Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you hang on too?
Holding on for Goods and Services, Access to Others, or Respectability
They hold on hard if you’re the roof over their heads. When they have no one else ready on the side that they can quickly move in with, it’s us or the streets. Additionally, they hold on to us hard if this break up will make them look bad to someone else who provides something important.
A break up awakens the natural (for them) instinct to hold on to and continue to monitor their prey. Monitoring us is what hoovering is all about. In their minds it’s for their own safety.
Their point will be to get us to stop trying to break up. They want to get us to back off the break-up. to achieve this they’re going to use one or both of the only two tools a user has: Nice and mean. That’s all they got. – News flash: They aren’t geniuses or master manipulators.
The goal behind using these two tools is very simple. Because they need a place to stay, and along with that, likely a shower and that food in your fridge. To keep from being tossed out, they’ll be either nice or mean or more likely, a combination of both or a flip-flop between both.
Break-Up Avoidance on Their Part
So, it’ll be more promises; they hope the promises hit the spot in us emotionally leading us to soften and let them stay. Or they whip out accusations. They hurl insults. If this sparks guilt or shame or confusion or fear that it might lead us to cave. Either “nice” or “mean” can lead us to acquiesce and let them stay.
In Days of Plenty, We May Be of Little Value
On the other end of things, if they have plenty already, a breakup could potentially go more easily. If they have another place to hang out and play video games, they might easily walk away. If they have a “fiancé” eager to move them in… Well hells-bells, as my grandmother used to say, they’ll be gone before we can blink. – They can walk away so easily that we’re stunned.
Even so, their reaction to us ending the roller coaster with a breakup awakens the natural (for them) instinct to hold on to and continues to monitor their prey. Monitoring us is what hoovering is all about. In their minds, it’s for their own safety.
Looking for support and answers? Lightbulb moments.
Breaking Up is Gut-Wrenching
The truth is, breaking up with a pathological predator, a sociopath (quite likely that one you’re thinking of as a narcissist) is gut-wrenching and horrifying.
Here’s the thing: Just as “normal” behavior and thinking didn’t make anything better while we were “together”. Nothing normal is going to work in the breakup. Learn how to be, and do, and say what maneuvers them from our lives. Behaving and thinking from our point of view of “normal” will not work out well for us.
We can learn to do what needs to be done, and say what needs to be said so that they can hear and understand, and so that they respond in the way that we need things to be for a change. Flip the tables.
Break Up 101: Leaving and Lying: Break Up With Crazy
Here’s a bit of a start to what we can do… Leave ’em: Act as if everything is peachy. Have that (last) pizza together and then without them knowing it’s over, makes this pizza night your last contact.
Kiss ’em goodbye and then block them. Silence… Not a word to them. The effect of no contact is the hugest message we can send. This is not a message they haven’t “heard” before. Zillions of people have gone no contact with them before you.
Lie: Another option is one where we outright lie. Have that “break-up” talk and scenario. And tell them: You’re so great. I know it’s all my fault. – We’re lying.
When we say this line, we don’t really feel this way about all the malarkey that’s gone down. But say this or your version of this so that we aren’t seen as a threat to them. Their perception is that when we break up, then we’re a threat. When we end it they think we just might tell everyone how horrible they are.
“Normal” takes responsibility, and many times even when there is no responsibility to be taken. This is the true place for boundaries. We are not responsible for their inhumanity.
Users don’t want us to tell others how horrible they are. Not wanting us to blow up their house of cards existence… They know their life is glued together with our “normal”; with our great goodness and true-blue realness. They do get it that they and their life is BS. – This is exactly what they ensnared us for: To hold their life together.
If we go around talkin’ – this would keep them possibly from grabbing onto other souls to make use of. And they really think that all the things they’ve done – even all that stuff we don’t know about – is going to come tumbling out of the closet. This fear of what we’ll do and say is part of why they hang on. And this fear is what the hoovering and all the smearing is all about.
We’re letting them think they’re amazing. This is deliberate. – this makes us a non-threat and leaves it easier for us to walk away without them hanging on or hoovering.
We know in our gut that we did nothing to make this person do the things they’re doing. We just didn’t. If sometimes you wonder if it was your fault. That simply proves that you’re normal and that you’re doing what “normal” does. We give second chances, and third chances.
“Normal” takes responsibility, and many times even when there is no responsibility to be taken. This is the true place for boundaries. We are not responsible for their inhumanity.
Break Up Bravery Takes Us Through It
Now that you’ve mustered up the courage to leave or tell them to hit the road dig deep to understand the truth of their intense reaction.
Hopefully, we truly discover what this all was so that our cognitive dissonance and confusion can resolve. We all want to resolve each loss and heal the very specific trauma from this relationship that isn’t. ‘Cause you are real. You are normal, and you get to be exactly what you are, which is beautiful inside and out.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
What is coercive control? How does it happen? Why do we stay? Where does it come from and how do we break free?
Low self-esteem, or lack of self-love does not cause coercive control. After all, if we didn’t love ourselves, or have esteem for our lives, would it all hurt so sickeningly much?
Coercive control is defined as being forced to do something we don’t want to do. As being harmed by someone against our will. Does anyone willingly stand in harm’s way…?
The coercion comes about by definition when someone controls and harms us or forces something upon us when they: make jokes that are insulting, make direct criticism and insults, call us names; by physical harm or endangerment; in financial deprivation or control including creating debt we’re held responsible for.
Coercive Control By Another Name
This is also known as narcissistic abuse. It’s also known as toxic behavior, or dysfunctional behavior. Bottom line…? It’s fraud. The person carrying out the coercion is the doer. – The wrongdoer.
Yet, we so often blame ourselves. And, so do they. They get us to do all kinds of things, put up with so much nastiness, disrespect, lies, affairs, withholding sex or affection, or attention, mounting bills, disappearing funds, and they disappear. Even where they are and what they’re doing becomes a painful aspect of torture in coercive control.
Guided recovery sessions. Everything you’re feeling is normal.
And we stay. Maybe for a long time. And as we’re still there, naturally we do what normal humans do, we first look for the answer to why it’s happening within ourselves. We take responsibility for their behavior; we look to ourselves as the reason they do things that makes us feel bad or harm us.
Normal is Normal
At first, this makes some sense, early on with someone we feel we love and are in a relationship with, naturally, we do what humans do.
We adjust, compromise, try, fix, seek help to fix it, say no, say yes, apologize, try harder, cook better, do more, and want to have long talks with them about it all… And none of this works.
It’s normal to feel down and defeated when we’re controlled coercively, that’s one piece that makes coercive control work.
That’s when we start looking for different solutions; more answers as to why. This is often when we come across more wrong answers or solutions that fix nothing and don’t answer our question: Why is this happening?
In fact, these traditional answers cause more pain. These wrong answers as to the whythis happens are reflected in the concept of us being codependent, the idea of our low self-esteem, in the notion of having no boundaries, and on and on in a litany of nonsense ending with: because we don’t love ourselves other’s treat us badly. Nonsense.
We do love ourselves. Always. If you didn’t love yourself what they do wouldn’t hurt so badly.
I’m not sure how any of these blame-the-person-being-harmed-for-the-rotten-persons-behavior concepts ever made any sense, but they’re largely adopted as the way to look at situations where someone is stuck in coercive control or deceptive fraud.
Is it not possible that we’re influenced and yield to them simply because of what they are? If our hand is in the water, does our hand not get wet?
A human hand or a doggy paw for that matter, when dipped in water gets wet. Is this the case because there’s something wrong with us – or our hand – or the dog? Or is it because water is wet?
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
“He tried to convince me he had sex with Dawn because of losing the dog.” ~ Shannon O. Five women’s stories from the promises to hell to escape and healing.
The thrill of engagement; the excitement of meeting Mr. Right, The One, the one like no other is the sociopath effect. There are specific feelings and thoughts that well up. These demonstrate we’ve fallen into the trap of a disingenuous user; in the time of the experience, we call it amazing love.
There are people of inherent coercive control. It’s a quality they possess simply as who and what they are. You could say they’re people of inherent evil. – Just in the same way we’re inherently good and that’s just who and what we are.
How many of us had the opportunity to be cruel to them, or take something back for them but couldn’t do it? – Yah. Because we’re inherently good. It’s who we are.
These spontaneous and overwhelming feelings represent the common marker that we’ve met a person who’s interested in us for their own dark-minded entertainment or their personal gain.
Meeting a Person of Inherent Coercive Control Feels Like This
We feel we’ve met the most amazing person on the planet
We can’t believe it…we can’t believe we found this person
They’re like no one we’ve ever met before to an exceptional degree
We’re surprised they like us, though we don’t say it out loud and this thought surprises us
It’s hard to believe that they’re still single or that someone let them go
We really want this relationship to a point of feeling anxious about it
Some notice fears that the relationship won’t come to be
We do things we’d never otherwise do within hours or days of meeting them such as change our plans, alter our schedule, and make exceptions for them
Coercive Control is Elicited as a Natural Response to Persons of Inherent Coercive Control
We fall into a particular and unusual emotional state; an instantaneous unconscious transformation that is the stuff of coercive control. You could say, being hooked is a state of involuntary coerced agreement. Towards them and things related to them, we become a bouncing ball of, yes!
And they, the hunter in pursuit who’s just bagged us? They are thrilled. Ecstatic. We see it in smiles, a buoyant attitude, wanting to be with us, messaging, and texting lots… It’s their pride in ensnaring someone new which they see as an accomplishment.
We naturally mistake for mutual and genuine excitement that we met. In truth, it’s the thrill of engagement and just the beginning of a long hard Tilt-O-Whirl of crazy.
Coercive Control is Not Because of Us: It’s Really Them
Please embrace how good you are. Know that you do love yourself or you wouldn’t be on this page. Understand that codependency as an explanation for why we were deceived and used is a behemoth of outdated thinking… and results in feeling more beat up.
And further, codependency is a misconception applied to women. How many men are told they’re codependent and this is what caused a sociopath to hijack their life?
We Get Down and Low: Low Self Esteem Doesn’t Make it Happen
Low self-esteem can be an effect of time spent under #coercivecontrol. This is not a character flaw, it isn’t permanent. It’s normal to feel down and defeated when we’re controlled coercively, that’s one piece that makes coercive control work.
But low self-esteem or lack of self-love does not cause coercive control. After all, if we didn’t love ourselves, or have esteem for our lives, would it all hurt so sickeningly much?
We can sidestep and escape coercive control by understanding what it truly is, why it happens, and who’s doing it. Combine that with embracing your own life in all your goodness.
And please, never stop seeking evolution in your answers and explanations for life’s phenomena. Remember, they used to think the earth was flat.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
Breaking up with evil is an odyssey through hell on steroids. It seems that no one understands what we’re going through. How do we cope and recover when we feel so alone?
So, you got to the day when you knew you had to break away, and you did it! Congratulations!You’re amazing, courageous, incredible and gorgeous inside and out. But then: the aftermath… When the real hell breaks loose. Everyone of us finds this shocking since we’d been living in hell for a while by the time we ended this “relationship”.
…A relationship is hardly what we ought to call it at this point, and for good reason, which we’ll get to a little later. Let’s reserve that peek into the heart of the deep-darkside of this mess.
As for now, in the aftermath, when the “break up” has happened, after we’ve gotten either them or ourselves out of a shared home, we’re struggling. Confused, grasping, frozen, and so, so scared. This is the emotional landscape pathological predators and users inspire without their trying – it just is the way it is. Who can we turn to?
We Know Somethings Wrong: We Don’t Know What
Let’s start at the beginning of the whole schemer. We, each, naturally, entered into what we thought was a relationship with a kindred spirit. These hijackings are most often described as a dream-come-true kind of soul-mate match.
And to the next person that tells you this malarkey: That you had to know they and the amazingness of them was fishy because, if it seems too good to be true, it isn’t…You tell them from me: There are very, very good things that are very true.
Don’t let anyone tell you the reason this happened is because you missed something, or have a broken picker, or don’t have boundaries. It isn’t. This happens because evil people exist.
It happens like this: An ordinary day, our usual routine – or maybe we’re out somewhere we usually don’t go. We meet someone, like them, believe them, trust them. This is all normal and our right as humans on planet earth.
And with this person, we had a certainty that we’d met a person of amazing character and quality. As it turns out, we didn’t and they aren’t: and they know it. And further they know that we don’t know that they’re a lying, deceiving snake, and that’s just how they want it for as long as possible so they can use us and take things from us. That makes them rotten and wrong: not us.
The trauma and post trauma of being scammed by a pathological user that we loved and trusted our life with is singular.
Naturally, as we became a couple – still not realizing the pull of their influence of natural dark and hellish coercion – we stick with them and stay in what we think is a side-by-side love-match. We look forward to our bright future together. Yet unbeknownst to us, rather than side-by-side, we’re not on the same page…Not in the same book. Heck, not in the same time warp or galaxy.
It’s fairly early on that we feel weird. There are inconsistencies, odd things that happen, that they say… And we rationalize. Or ask and are rebuffed or worse. Or don’t ask at all. Because of what we are as normal humans – mixed with, colliding with what they are as sociopathic entities: we stay, we continue to rationalize or set questions aside. This is the normal way of things when someone is ensorcelled under coercive control by a sociopathic “person”.
This kind of entrapment can happen to anyone at any time in life. There are even those of us who have a sociopath parent, sibling, or child. For some of us, we met this evil as teenagers. We might have spent our teenage years to now, living in a slow simmering turmoil and chaos until landing here; arriving puzzled, in pain, and oh, so, so sad and exhausted.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
This pile of steaming confusion is something we can barely breathe inside of, or comprehend as our minds and bodies and stomachs churn every minute. Our friends…?
They didn’t understand when we were in it, and now, now that we’re making an exit, and mining discoveries that burn our eyeballs and bring up breakfast, they will understand far less.
It feels like we’re at the onset of a walk through the fire, a ride through a tsunami on a piece of cardboard.
Though We Can Barley Stand, We Need to Talk
We want, need and deserve answers that are real. Our chance at full recovery is within knowing the truth. A truth beyond the standard explanations.
As we go through the mind-bending maze of breaking up with evil, we need to talk and tell and retell…. because: we’re trying to figure out why this happened, what happened and how someone could do this to someone they professed to love. We’re mid-traumatic-event with more life-shaking discoveries ahead.
Real Answers: Real Recovery
Post Traumatic Stress is Real
We’re in post-trauma because the time spent as “a couple” when that other person is an antisocial psychopath is a traumatic event, yet not a typical traumatic event. Rather than a short-lived one-time event it’s sustained trauma and is in our daily life.
By typical traumatic event, I mean a natural disaster, a car accident, or physical attack by a stranger, or in war. The events which people often don’t want to talk about, can’t talk about and might be told by some not to talk about… yet these events are accepted. No one questions someone about the validity of having their house robbed, but sustain a life-jacking…? Somehow it’s supposed that we’re to blame.
Post Trauma is Where Healing Starts
The trauma and post-trauma of being scammed by a pathological user that we loved and trusted our life with are singular. This is someone we loved, yet now we’re absorbing: that they didn’t love us after all.
The discovery that they lied is traumatic. We do want and need to tell our story because we’re looking for answers at every retelling. We’re stunned and unwinding the maze to see more of what happened… we need to. We talk about it a lot. We need to.
This is No Ordinary Break Up: It’s a Life-Saving Escape
As we’re in real trauma, and post-trauma, trying to make sense of what happened, we go over and over and over it. It’s the only thing on our minds. After about three weeks, people tell us to move on, thinking we’re in a normal break-up.
Not only does this not help, but it also isn’t possible: not until we do get the answers to what happened and how. We want, need, and deserve answers that are real. Our chance at full recovery is within knowing the truth. A truth beyond the standard explanations.
Defend and Explain Ourselves to No One
The inevitable and unavoidable post trauma has set up camp in our lives. The good news is: this is not the new us. How we’re feeling is normal; normal and not permanent.
Our impatient friends might tell us we’re obsessed. We might have taken on the idea that we’re obsessed, or that we’re ruminating or fixated. Anyone who suggests that is wrong. They don’t understand what breaking up with evil is.
We need to replay what happened until we find the answers. It’s the natural healing process the body is searching for answers our friends don’t have, and neither do we, yet. Believing we’re ruminating or obsessing blinds the truth. – Our body s doing what it does to find answers. Plug in new information and answers will seem to fall from the sky…
So, keep looking, turn it over and over. Please keep asking questions and looking for answers that slow and then stop the merry-go-round in our heads. Add the real information and truth about this phenomenon, realign the view of ourselves with compassion and facts about what normal is and we’re on the way.
It’s Too Unbelievable and Just too Much
Not only do people around us not understand our agitation, the way our hand tremors as we try to take another sip of tea and tell more, well… it frightens them. It’s all too much for them from the outside looking in at us breaking up with evil.
We can see that they can’t believe that we could’ve believed this person. They don’t understand that it’s normal to believe people. It’s not at all in their awareness that evil people exist even if they didn’t like the person we just broke up with.
We try to explain. What comes back eventually or immediately from others is most commonly along the lines of, You gotta admit, you made a bad choice. The response of friends and family blasts us with another shock, another punch in the gut.
We explain again, It wasn’t like that, it’s just not a regular break-up… this is more than that! We see a silent sideways glance and a look between or between our friends or our coworkers or our parents for the 500th time. Another punch in the gut and still, we want to explain, again…
They Can’t Take It
What if we’re on the threshold of a new discovery? As if we’re a part of the team that discovered the earth was round rather than flat?
Try to stop explaining it to others. No matter how profound and accurate about these beasts what you discover is, it’s exhausting. Keep in mind that no matter what, there’s no need to explain ourselves to anyone. There’s no call ever to defend yourself to those who don’t understand.
And sad to say but our explaining can take us to more loss, rather than support. After landing on more explanations for the behavior and more discoveries about what they’ve done we want to tell our friends. Instead, we look up and see that after about three months of this that our friends, even the best of our besties, have vacated the premises.
And – truth be told, nothing, none of those partial answers or standard explanations has stopped the room from spinning or eased the pain. We notice one of these sad days, that our pants are sliding down, and we weigh about 20-pounds less than we used to.
Post-Trauma Sits Down With Us and Stays Awake All Night With Us
In post-trauma, part of us is floating somewhere off to the right side of our head, another part of us is heavy in our gut, another part is aware of movements all around us… like thinking he’s about to show up around the corner.
It could be, that we barely notice the exodus of our friends, or weep when we notice, but really, we’re too busy trying to figure out what happened and why we’re in a ball on the floor, and can’t seem to even do the laundry.
We’re Hit Hard in Every Realm
We suffer emotional confusion, anxiety, fear… And possibly face real physical danger. We’re hit hard financially, and all but collapsed under the two-ton truck sucker-punch to the heart, body, mind, and soul. No one can begin to understand what this was or why we stayed unless they’ve been in it too. – And even then, real understanding is eluisve.
It seems the inevitable and unavoidable post-trauma has set up camp in our lives and is here to stay. The good news is: this is not the new us. How we’re feeling is normal; normal and not permanent: if we take in the information and new perspectives that answer every question, and can resolve every loss.
Most of us shiver in vacillating doubt of everything we think and feel. Most of all, we’re wondering if maybe we’re wrong and maybe after all they are the amazing people we first thought they were and that all this is in our head. Or, worse yet thoughts that we’re the problem, that we’re the evil.
The Room Stops Spinning When We Understand
Who feels like they’re going mad? Did every hand in the dark, reading this in bed go up? This is exactly how you would feel right now.
We’re solely occupied with replaying the scenes and conversations with them. Rewinds and reviews of even those moments we thought of as “fun” cycle on repeat… Because we must know what that confusion, the head-spinning upheavals, and the gut-punch actually meant.
One thing we know for sure: no one understands as we do battle in breaking up with evil. We didn’t and don’t understand… that’s why we got online… that’s what led us here, to this page. Finally, we’ve found a place where understanding this is the pathway to restoring your life. All those questions, all those replays hold the answer when we find the keys to unlock them.
We’re doing something big here, we’re effecting paradigm shifts that will redirect the trajectory of our own lives, and of all humanity.
These vivid and haunting images and revamps with new endings of a happier ending (if only we’d done something differently), is an effort by the body to find answers. Please know, this is normal, and this will continue until we get real answers.
Talking about it, and seeking reasons that make sense is a necessary piece to unwinding the madness. Each of us is spinning, retching, crying, confused, panicked, maybe scared out of our minds. Frantically, we’re wondering if we are losing it and if all this isn’t our fault.
All of this is normal under the circumstances. How many of you are doubting your selves? – That’s normal too. Please don’t acquiesce in shame under the popular opinion that we allowed this. Please, don’t stop until you get answers that make real sense, and honor you.
There Are Answers: The Most Healing Answers of All
The thing is, if we keep looking at it purely from our emotional pain, we might not see the answers. We’ll want something to crack the mystery of the crazy… new information that plugs into our replay to reveal the pure and simple truth of what happened and why.
There’s more to this than gaslighting. Hoovering happens, or doesn’t happen for a very specific reason. Deflection, projection, and the silent treatment are not random nor what they seem. Every piece of this has two combined paradoxical and very simple explanations; a hideous one, and a gorgeous one. Those are the only two sides to the breakup.
The fact is, getting to this new point of knowing the answers and certainty of them and the why is full healing, but it’s a long walk from here to there. We need someone to talk to. There are answers. Real answers that leave us whole again, all of them, right here.
Discovery and Awakening
We’re each on a mission, together; and together, we’re not alone, and we do understand.
For most of us, breaking up with evil is a solo journey. The impending isolation and alone-ness are colossal on one hand, yet we’re among hundreds-of-thousands who’ve gone through this, and are part of a mass awakening: an awakening to the brutal depths of the sinister-side of humanity; we’re advancing all together, and alone as we evolve as humans.
Together, yet as individuals. Interconnected and interdependent and each on our own. There’s a collective transformation of consciousness underway, and we’re leading as the advance guard, as pioneers. So, no, everyone won’t understand, but we must; we must have answers.
Together We Understand, Heal, and Make Change
In breaking up with evil, others from the outside looking in, might think we’re only breaking up with some really bad guy or really awful woman… and have lost our minds, or should have known better… Think again world, because that’s no kind of answer; that’s founded in grave misunderstanding and missed opportunity.
What if we’re on the threshold of a new discovery? As if a part of the team that discovered the earth was round rather than flat? What if we’re part of a human revolution to avert the world from crumbling under self-absorbed destruction, and toward a unified realization that we’re of infinite value; that we each create our lives, and can make love-not-war, peace and joy, and happiness for all a reality?
We’re doing something big here. By finding the real answers behind these sickening traumas, we’re effecting paradigm shifts that will redirect the trajectory of our own lives, and of all humanity. – As I see it, we’re each a part of a much larger situation. We’re each of us who’ve been through this on a mission together, and together, we’re not alone.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
Bread crumbs and promises. Odd things we might or might not discover are lies. And, then there’s the truth. To really heal, we need to know how to decode their meaning.
What is it with the boyfriend and the weird things they say? What is it when they talk a lot. They toss out what turns out to be garbage in glittery promises in the form of hints. Mutterings about marriage, kids, a house, something they’ll never do again, or never would do – like cheat or lie. These are the bread crumbs, the dangling carrot.
Then, the majority of their words are more lies and misdirects, and gaslighting. Sometimes we discover the truth of the lies, sometimes we don’t.
There are lots of stories about other people, things they did and said, along with lots of bad things about others while they are so, so good. There’s denying something that happened, or that was said, or done. There’s telling us we’re crazy.
They Say Weird Things
I asked the man I was about to marry if he had any kids. We were standing together in the kitchen.
His head down, bent over the stove, stirring the dinner he was making for us. I waited.
A slow smile peeked from his profile. As he turned his face up, not towards me, but up somewhere between the stove-top vent and the top of the kitchen wall.
And lastly, there’s the truth. The bizarre, surreal, incomprehensible-in-the-moment truth. Truth to weird to make sense.
His gaze seemed to look out into the distance beyond the kitchen, a distance I couldn’t see. In a throaty, dreamy voice he murmured, I have hundreds of kids all over the world. Then, his attention went straight back to the stew his strange trance broken.
I didn’t understand. I stood, waiting on pause, looking at him. Waiting for him to say more… He said nothing but stirred the simmering tomatoes and chillis. He didn’t speak, didn’t look at me, just stood there cooking.
I tried to imagine what he meant… Then, still bowed over the stew pot, with gravity and a touch of what read from my angle as regret, he said, I had a four-year-old boy once, but I gave him back. – This did not clear things up.
The Surreal Lift-Up Out of Our Own Body
This made no sense. I needed it to make sense. We all need what people say to make sense. I thought, maybe he had a foster kid or… something…or… I factored in that his English wasn’t great… Ticking gears clicked, and whirled until I landed on, oh, he must mean that he loves kids like I do!
More comments that made me tilt my head in wonder, like a dog at a high-pitched noise came along throughout the time I knew him.
That quiet moment of oddness at the stove got swept up into some kind of attic space in my mind, some odd corner where we keep the odd things they say.
There’s no need to change who you are, or how much you love. They take advantage of our misunderstanding of their words that come from our great goodness.
There are so many nutty words that come out of their mouths. Most of it is lies, but some of it, the really strange stuff, that’s something else. The words they say that leave us unsure of what they’re saying… those words are true.
When we metaphorically and literally scratch our heads in wonder, when we’re at a loss for words over their words… That’s when their words are pure truth. Their truth about their lives… not ours.
For instance, months later I discovered that while he did exaggerate, he was telling the truth about having “100s of kids all over the world”, in several countries as it turns out, and that estimate short only by about 75 kids.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
Here are examples of true words uttered by real-life lying, using, and defrauding people without a conscience.
If I knew I wouldn’t go to jail for it, I’d kill you.
Step away, I’m about to get physical, and you don’t want to see that.
On the way driving back here every day, all I do is imagine bashing your head against the wall.
I don’t care like you do.
There are things you don’t know.
If you loved me you wouldn’t try to change me.
If you love me, you’ll take me as I am.
If you knew who I really was, you wouldn’t love me.
You’re afraid you’ll never see me again, aren’t you?
I knew you’d call me…
I can’t do it. I just can’t pretend anymore.
You have no idea all the things I’m fooling you about
You know this feeling is just a phase, right? It’s going to end. I intend to prolong it as long as I can, but it’s going to end.
Don’t tell people about us. It’s good now, but when it’s bad, it’s really bad.
I can’t make you do what I want, but I can make you wish you had.
I’m not who you think I am.
I’m not like other people. I’m a gray skin.
The Attic Corner in Our Mind
All these words of naked, bald, pure truth from a narcissistic sociopath glide right by our normal interpretation and comprehension of life.
As far as the weird thing my then “boyfriend” said at the stove, “I have 100’s of kids all over the world.” He did. He does. At last count, there are 16.
Three of them are the same age, in the same town, from three different women who each thought they were the only one while he was married to me, while another woman was getting an annulment from him, while another wife somewhere else waited at home for him as each of these three women with these three children did.
These Are Crimes Rather Than Relationships
How many phrases can you recall that rang strangely, but can now be flipped to ring true? It takes courage, but if we can take a look at these memories of these odd moments tucked into the attic, the cellar, and the back of the closet of our mind from a new angle, we can begin to see see what really went on.
If we can look at these hijackings for the crimes they are rather than a genuine relationship, we have a chance at deep recovery and can become user-proof forever.
Do your best not to get stuck in the lies. Walkthrough to the truth. The truth is a deliberate deception by a person who is, in truth, not at all who we thought they were. That person, the one we met, doesn’t exist.
Be Open To the Truth
Be open to the hideous truth. It’s how we step away from this being a personal relationship and realize we were targeted in fraud. A crime we can heal from. Someone we thought loved us and lied is something we might never get over.
Listen for it. They’ll tell you the truth, and we can hear it much, much later in the aftermath in the echos of their words. Those words, that truth is the key to healing, recovering, and healing.
There is Loss, Grieving and Much to Resolve and Heal
You’ll cry, and feel so, so bad that there are no words to describe the feeling. Go ahead and sry those tears that contort your face and come from the gut and the soul. Do your best to not get stuck in the lies, the promises, the moments they were “nice”. Know they are not good, they are not nice, and that the worst moment you saw in them…That is who they are.
That person, the one we met, doesn’t exist. Grieve what there is to grieve; with self-compassion, and awareness, gradually move into grieving not the person, but the crime.
There’s no need to change who you are, or how much you love. They take advantage of our misunderstanding of their words that come from our great goodness.
This doesn’t make our marvelous goodness bad. It does reveal just how bad they are. We are awesome!
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
The hoovering narcissistic user is calling, texting, dropping by. But, what if they aren’t hoovering? What if we kind of wish they were?
Hoovering is a con man classic. They all do it, always… Except when they don’t. Whether they do or don’t hoover, neither is random. It seems like it, but it isn’t. There’s nothing a sociopath does that is random.
For all the crazy they drag us through, it all has very specific reasons, that bizarrely, have nothing to do with us. We are in fact, in control.
You’ve Heard About Hoovering
Antisocial psychopaths – a sociopath or what is truly a psychopath, which is what that person you’re calling a “narcissist” is… usually buzzes around in the aftermath. They’re monitoring, probing, begging, sending messages of all sorts in all kinds of ways.
They’ll beseech, flatter, moan, coax, insult, blame, shame all in one message, flip-flopping like some hyper Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. They email, they drive by, they leave flowers at your door, they call from blocked numbers, and have “friends” call you on their behalf.
Hoovering sociopaths are in the very moment of hoovering… showing us their genuine absolute nut-so selves.
In no way is this kind of persistent hoovering behavior an expression of “love” from anyone, ever.
Normal People Don’t Do These Things
And, FYI, in case you still aren’t sure if this person is a sociopath… normal people don’t do this. Normal people don’t send 2:00 am text messages unless the house is on fire. Sociopaths do, and in particular, when they’re in danger of losing their prey. Losing prey is their world on fire.
If we aren’t being hoovered there’s a reason. Everything a sociopath does gives away their current circumstances, their fears, and their current needs. We can use that to free ourselves.
There are a few reasons the pathological user doesn’t Hoover. Or a combination of a few reasons. Nothing they do is random.
We end it they don’t. This is what zero contact is all about. Otherwise, any contact and a little bit of our emotional reaction is all it takes for them to stick around!
Every action a sociopath makes fits their limited mental capacity and true intention. Get on the right track to decoding these beasts. Let’s break it down.
Like everything else about a sociopath – narcissist, narc, narcopath – whatever you’re calling the pathological user: they have very specific and limited brain functionality. The tiny lump of gray-matter pulsating in their skulls leaves them in a constant state of “want”. Wanting to take what they want, and wanting to keep it, and really, really, really wanting to never be exposed.
A Quick Refresher on The Real Reasons Sociopaths Hoover
Sociopath maniacs don’t want to lose prey or objects they take.
This makes them want to keep our emotional connection to them alive.
So they can take and use more.
Ant to monitor what we’re saying to others about them after it’s over.
And that’s it. There is no more. Exploitation is the sociopath’s life-long work. If you’re ever thinking, “He’s doing this just to make me __ fill in the blank __ “, you’re on the wrong track.
Pathological Users Do Not Have Humanity
The sociopathic brain can only process the world and life around them in very specific and strictly limited ways. They can’t do anything but be what they are. From our perspective, our language for their behavior is that they’re liars, cheaters, thieves, blackmailers, rapists, pedophiles, and criminals. They, from their actual and sincere sense of self, call themselves, amazing.
Their only regret is in not taking more, and they ‘ll always go for seconds and thirds and… We end it they don’t.
It’s often said sociopaths are geniuses. To me this is ludicrous… After all, is having no limits in the harm and destruction you carry out on others equal to genius? They think of doing horrible things that aren’t in our scope of possibility. — This does not equal smart. Sociopaths are not smart. They do learn tricks.
And since we see through a lens of good, and have only our experience of human possibility up until this point that we encounter them, we can’t imagine the things they do, and then out of our great good and generosity label their debauchery and evil as “genius”. Oh, no. They are not genius, they aren’t quite sure if what they hope to do will work at each stupid and changeable thing they say. Hence the flip from compliment to scolding and insults, from promises to rage.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
The end is when the narcissistic sociopath’s deepest fear kicks in, especially if we kicked them out. Animalistic fear. They become desperate like a cornered demon beast. There’s only this on the sociopath’s mind: Get more and go free. Especially: Go free.
They do hideous things like file (false) protection orders against us. Ultimately, they go away because they can’t risk getting in more hot water.
The end of the scam hits the sociopath hard. The pathological predatory user is enraged at their loss. And scared to death they’ll be exposed on a grand scale; or any scale. If we kick them out they’re really, really mad.
When they take off first, they’re not mad, but defending their safety 100% they do everything to not be exposed and to get more if they can even after they’ve “left us”. Their only regret is in not taking more, and they’ll always go for seconds and thirds and…
We end it they don’t. This is what zero contact is all about. Otherwise, any contact and a little bit of our emotional reaction are all it takes for them to stick around!
Five Reasons A Sociopath Doesn’t Hoover
1. You weren’t of high value to the sociopath.
No one is genuinely valued by a sociopath; they have their own valuation scale. It’s based on the results keeping us hooked brings to their pocketbook, their social standing, a place to sleep, and basics like that. If we aren’t an open window to things they want they “value” us at about 600 minus subzero.
That sounds harsh, right? We’re truly fortunate if we rate subzero. It means they didn’t get what they wanted to enhance their life, their image, or whatever else they covet. The loser-leech couldn’t take the goods. Or we wouldn’t do what they wanted such as sponsor them for a green card, or give them money, buy them a car, or feed them. So our value to them is quite low.
More Reasons the Sociopath Isn’t Hoovering
2. They know you have hard evidence that could land them in the clink. This makes them think you know all the horrible crimes they’ve committed.
The last place a sociopath wants to be is in prison, yet so many are – and all of them have done things that merit jailing. Without a conscience, narcissistic sociopaths will do anything, including forge signatures, steal, use violence, commit fraud and bigamy, threaten, stalk, carry weapons, use illegal drugs, rape… sociopaths will and do break any law. Laws mean nothing to them.
These users do feel regret: regret at not taking more. At not lying better. Regret at not using deeper. And not being able to take more makes them mad – at us – because true to form everything is someone else’s fault.
And here’s the thing: These super-creeps have done things we know nothing about to people we’ve never heard of – but they know what they’ve done. If they get busted and investigated for one initial thing, the unraveling begins. Pull one thread and their world disintegrates.
The threat of this can send them running quietly, so we miss out on the Hoovering. When they know, we know a particular dastardly thing they’ve done, or when they’ve done it to us they really get scared because of what we know.
They aren’t sure what we’ll do about it. They do hideous things like file (false) protection orders against us. Ultimately, they go away because they can’t risk getting in more hot water.
3. They’re busy with juice-ie prey in their net and on the horizon.
Priorities shift quickly for the improvisational sociopath-snake. Since normal people are the way a sociopath survives, they need a steady stream of bountiful pastures; normal people who trust and believe them and don’t suspect a thing – yet.
And they’re lazy. They want everything to be easy. If we’re a bit too much work or unyielding, they smell out a more pliable target right next door. They’re distracted by the nearest shiny object (aka a person.)
If they’re not getting what they want, and think we won’t blab our suspicions they just might slither away without a peep.
4. They’re just done. And bored with the game we represented.
Sociopaths are notoriously bored and boring and they do move on simply for that reason. Or they didn’t like our shag carpeting. It could be the way we fry their chicken. Maybe they don’t like the perfume we wear. Or maybe we buy wine they don’t like. It’s all about them. If something isn’t to their taste, they hit the road.
5. They’re saving us for later. Sociopaths boomerang.
Give it a year, or two sometimes ten or even twenty years later a sociopath reaches out their slimy claws to try again. – Yep. Old college or high school or childhood sweethearts show up for round two. Or that creature who FB messages a year later as if nothing ever went bad: Hey! Let’s go out. I miss you. They’re lying. Do not doubt ourselves, second guessing ourselves is natural when the sociopath lies.
Hoover Proof Our Lives
Sociopaths always want more. Their abnormal brains feel no remorse, love, guilt, sympathy, compassion, or positive concern. These users do feel regret: regret at not taking more. At not lying better. Regret not using us more deeply. And not being able to take more makes them mad – at us – because true to form everything is someone else’s fault.
So, hoovering, not hoovering it all comes from the same motivation: sucking in and tying up normal humans’ emotions, either in love, or fear to be sure the sociopath can take and get away with it.
Sociopaths drop hoovering a specific target for three reasons: 1) Out of boredom, 2) Once our value to them hits subzero, 3) they are too busy with a full load of prey and new targets, 4) Out of fear of being exposed, captured and locked up when they know we have direct proof of their crimes, 5) They’re saving us for a major boomerang in a few years time.
Keep Your Intentions to Yourself
Never let a departing sociopath know that we intend to report a marriage scam to immigration, turn in a police report, or go to other authorities. Never make online or public disparaging or revealing remarks – even when they’re true.
Ratting them out publicly as we’re escaping serves no purpose other than to incite their rage and put ourselves in danger – and makes us look questionable – even to normal people. This can also hurt our divorce or annulment outcome or a domestic violence case. Just zip it and handle our lives. Do what it takes to be safe and give evidence where it’s appropriate.
Go no contact 100%. Really accept there are two kinds of humans on the planet. Good ones and bad ones. Know how to recognize each. Stay human, remain humane.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
Hoovering nut bags want to “stay in touch.” But we hesitate, stuck in yet more cognitive dissonance. We have decisions to make.
Hoovering narcissistic sociopaths (you might be calling them a narcissist without using the sociopath word, but whatever we call them they) keep up the masquerade up and the facade place as long as possible.
They do this even in the face of pure ridiculousness and obvious lying. They don’t care or mind if we know what they are…! Not one jot. They do care what we do once we know.
They mind very much if we “stay in” or bolt. If we kick them to the curb or leave the cookie jar open. If we tell others, or if we’re going to keep our mouths shut.
Any and all of this can only happen through contact. Hoovering is contact… and has the same motivation as any contact they’ve made since day one and the first hello. Isn’t this how the whole thing happened…? Them reaching out?
The real-deal answers and real information changes the whole scary schemer.
Con Artists Hoover: We Anticipate Hoovering With Mixed Emotions
Please make any and each decision rooted in a wish to rebuild your life… Focus on and look toward your well being… free your bones and heart and soul and life of the maniac.
Our stomach churns. They’re in our heads. They stay present at the surface and underneath every moment of the day. This is the antithesis of “over.” And if it isn’t over and zero contact, we’ve not yet put a solid step onto the long road of healing.
At this point in the sham, letting our phone ring with their reaching grasp is all-in from their point of view. If they can reach us, they consider us active prey. This is all it takes: buuzzzz-buuzzzz-buuzzzz. (That’s your phone buzzing.)
Hoovering Hits the Gut as Trauma and Harassment
Do you feel that? Even the idea of that phone vibrating and jumping on the table is nauseating. Listen to your gut. Trust yourself. What they care about is that we’re still “all-in.” As long as we leave a portal open, the narcissistic user has a chance to seep their way back in. Or step on in. And stay in.
To Block, or Not to Block the Nut-Bag: Or to Get a New Number?
All it takes is one more buzz of a text, one more late-night call. Another email. Facebook messaging. WhatsApp…another call. – Give ourselves every advantage in healing. Peace of mind, a truly fresh start can’t begin when any portal from them to us is open. We block them, we change our number, and also begin again with a new email address.
Do Know: Sociopaths boomerang; in a year or maybe five they can ring up your same-good-old-number from a new number of theirs and that sickening snake charmer dance begins again with: “Hey! Let’s get coffee…”
Top 3 Reasons for Not Blocking or Getting a New Number
Many find these points to be an obstacle to blocking them or getting a new number:
I can’t change my number because of my clients and my business
It makes me feel strong to see his call come in and not take it
It’s hard to block him; we were together for so many years
It Can Seem Impossible to Block Them: Consider Again
Oh, I get it. We feel like our life has been turned upside down and, it has. What we want to do is take all our reasoning, and all our decisions and turn them into moments of self-care, embracing our own life and building our lives the way we want them to be.
This is separate from basing our decisions on “fear” or “love” for the sociopath or because of not yet accepting what they really are.
Take no responsibility or blame for the presence of these kinds of pathological predatory humans in your life. You’re not responsible for the inhumanity of a sociopath. Do take your healing and the restoration of your life into your own hands. Take 100% responsibility for healing, recovering, and becoming sociopath (narcissist) user free forever. Let’s look at each of these seemingly reasonable reasons for not getting a new number.
Can’t Change Your Number Because Your Clients Use It?
I get how this can seem logical. But. Really….?! Isn’t this the very reason to change your number…? You need your phone. You need your phone. We need to conduct business. To continue building our lives. We need the freedom to create our business without fear, without hoovering, stalking, and mental and emotional torture.
Make this about ourselves. Use this time to change your number so that you can build a business and connect with clients freely; know that none of those incoming calls will be from bozo-the-user.
Have a client email list…? Write a cheery newsletter and send out your new number; maybe with a special offer for your product or service. Most business people strain to find reasons to reach out to clients…! Use this to our advantage. Make it a good thing. Let your phone ring freely.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
Some Say: I Feel Strong Not Answering the Sociopath’s Calls
Fell strong by not answering while the loon rings through…? I do get that. Okay. But, you always were strong, that’s part of why and what about you held their fake life up so well.
Let’s look at this a little. Are you feeling a little flattered that they call? That’s natural, but, does it serve you? Does the experience of the phone buzzing make us feel truly and genuinely good? Or does it leave you feeling pretty rotten over the next few days?
Are you still – somewhere inside yourself still feeling a connection to them that you aren’t ready to disrupt? Are we still in a surreal comfort zone? Are we wanting to see if they call out of fear of them?
Every Move We Make is Meant to be for Our Well Being
We can’t compromise our safety, well-being, and happiness for the benefit of the dark side. It’s a natural, second-nature skill we’ve honed during our time with the sociopath. Painting less-than-good circumstances into reasonable logic is the body’s beautiful, innate ability to make it through hard times.
This is how we survive and adapt to the confusion – technically this is managing cognitive dissonance. We all do this, usually daily. It’s decision-making. Let our decision land on our side.
Cognitive Dissonance is Normal: We Can Resolve to Cognitive Harmony
We weigh and balance, and sort through options as a part of life; We regularly feel cognitive dissonance, in many ways, even throughout the day. It’s essentially decision-making.
As we can’t resolve the things they say to cognitive harmony, holes show up one by one by one. And we fall into that chasm. There’s a ladder to climb out.
We need to make decisions in order to maintain working for a boss whose ethics we don’t fully support, for example. We may swallow what we prefer as a good or safe way to spend time when negotiating how late our teen can stay out on Saturday night. It’s simply resolving a conflict between one thought and another.
We settle cognitive dissonance when we’re weighing whether to eat potato chips and cream cheese for dinner or salad with some healthy protein. – We need this life-saving and species-preserving trait. It’s a great and gorgeous thing — it’s time to turn our natural protective instincts truly back onto ourselves in a pure way. Trust our own lives.
Think of this: Every time that phone buzzes we’re connected whether we pick it up or not. Each time that phone rings we’re being pinged in the soul. It’s up to us… each time we let that phone ring we’re in a battle with ourselves to pick it up and maybe say: “Hello…?” Is this how we want to carry through each day…?
We Were Together for Years
Uhmmm. Yes, and no. Not exactly, I know it seems like a relationship. In this circumstance, however, you were absconded heart and soul within a crime. Know what they were up to. Accepting that these beasts exist and what that means and what truly happened is the foundation of truly recovering.
How to get a new number: Get a new number by calling your phone service provider. They’re happy to let you pick the new number from a few they’ve got available. We’re welcome to do this every few months. In a big city with multiple area codes, you can even switch that up! Exciting.
Know This About New Phone Numbers
They’re recycled. Yes. That means we get a number someone else didn’t want. Who knows why they needed or wanted a new number?
Maybe the number belonged to someone in shoes similar to yours. This means our phone might ring with strange numbers in calls that are not for us. Anything from debt collectors to who knows who or what. Be prepared… but guess who it won’t be…?
Know that anytime your phone vibrates or chimes that the caller it will not be is the con man you’re dumping out of your life. The relief in this alone is unimaginable you get that new number. Feeling your heart rate stay settled and your blood pressure stay normal when the phone bleeps is incredible!
Follow these guidelines and you’ll fall off the pathological user, nutbag narcissistic sociopath’s radar.
How to Handle Calls We Don’t Want and Aren’t For Us
Never answer a call we don’t recognize
Take a deep breath and calmly Google the number after it comes in; you might find it’s a known number for fraud IRS (tax) demands; or just a bakery across town
Block all calls from such numbers
Never answer any call that says: Unknown Caller, Unavailable or Blocked.
Each time, have the confidence to say to ourselves: that call wasn’t for me
Trust your gut
Robo Calls That Make Our Gut Churn
Know those bill-collecting, robo-calls for Javier, Janet, or Dave will stop after a few months. And, P.S. Consider a brand new phone. And leave the old contacts on that old phone. – Start fresh.
Cognitive Dissonance is the Basis of Decision Making
Comfort and confidence in decision-making are some of the first things that go out the window in the confusion and chaos of life entangled by a sociopath. (And these people you’re calling some kind of narcissist.) Harmony in what’s around us and in what we believe to be normal or right and the far distant shore of what we experience with them becomes a chasm we straddle.
What we first experience as profound compatibility with these creatures changes drastically. One foot on one side, one on the other as the divide grows wider. As we can’t resolve the things they say into cognitive harmony, holes, and gaps of oddities show up one by one by one.
We end up stepping into those gapping oddities and nearly tottering to the bottom of that canyon. Fortunately, there’s also a ladder there for us to use to climb out. It’s our beautiful need for harmony that takes us into that dark abyss and lends us the way out.
The confusion escalates in post-trauma. I know the place you landed; I was once there too. It’s a hellish quagmire of quicksand and jello that is PTSD. Knowing what to do comes back slowly. It falls into place in great huge, encouraging chunks with each decision we bravely make.
Please make any and each decision rooted in a wish to rebuild your life for your own sake. Focus on and look toward your well-being as a Drishti point. This leeches the terror out of our bones; the terror wrought by the sociopath’s venomous deceit. You will free your bones and heart and soul and life of the maniac.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
Hidden traits, under the mask, behind the charm lurks the real-deal Monster. The sociopath-demon comes into view. Then he slips to hide behind a curtain of pretty only to flash a thigh of evil.
Hidden traits cover what at first blush in a true love scamming sociopath appears charming. They seem kind. Gentle. Genuine. Unique. Incredible. And so sincere our hearts hurt.
The predator can come across so devastatingly moving we’re humbled in openings into views and moments in life we’ve never seen before; under their uncanny power of influence, we reach what seem to be realizations about ourselves, about them – about how to be human – that endear us more deeply to them.
Honeymoon Hoovering
In the “honeymoon” phase with these creatures in tiny, brief, weirdly intimate moments with the sociopath, there’s a shimmer, a quiver that lasts no more than mere seconds.
This bone-deep shiver is subtle and unfamiliar so that if we notice it at all, we feel the ground move under our feet.
Our brains freeze, while we watch a small moment of confusion that feels like hours waggle and wave in front of us, like the way you can see heat waves radiating in the air. And then, it vanishes and we think maybe that oddness didn’t happen at all.
Knowing the truth sets you on the path to a restored life.
In stunned awe, an elevated in-and-out-of-focus sensation overtakes us – an infusion of imaginings washes through us, and we wonder: what is this…? And because we’re just people, regular normal people…we only have our normal real-life experiences to measure this new-whatever-it-is by.
Later as the odd things build up our friends might start to make comments. Or we might even begin Googling. Maybe a few things we’ve heard or read, or something a friend said slides into place and makes sense…and right back out again.
While we’re good and tied up under their spell, nothing offers a real answer that seems possible: and so we do what humans do: we come up with one. We create an explanation for the odd stuff. This is normal. Humans need cognitive harmony. We need the world around us to match up with what we believe in, feel is right, and what is accepted and expected. – Our bodies do this for us.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared, hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
True crime. Told in their own words with nothing unsaid. Find validation, and see new glimpses of truth as these five women share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
The millisecond flare of doubt is so quick – and we’re interpreting from our own goodness – with no clue that something as vile as a sociopath walks the earth. It’s no wonder we can’t see it for what it is… until we do.
If we could revisit those times – we might more easily see that gaping slit in the fabric of reality, that: opening to hell. A black cavernous infinite hole into the pits of despair. The place they truly live; the thing they truly are.
We Can’t Recognize Something We Don’t Know Exists
It’s said we can see only what we know. And so it goes that the inhabitants couldn’t see the ships of invaders into North America on the shore because no one had known such a thing existed – until a Shaman divined them shimmering from mirage into a shape.
An unrecognizable something. An unknown – assumed good and even God-like from their own benevolent perspective giving the strange-strangers the generosity of benefit of the doubt.
They had to learn the hard way that these shiny beings, rather like them, but entirely unlike them in these gigantic fantastical floating vessels, emerging up and toward them from the watery horizon as if delivered by the unseen beneficent powers of life were not benevolent, but were bearers of rage, disease, and destruction.
We do finally see them, the hidden traits and all. The thing is like the shamans, and like any human… We can see only what we know. Then, we pull one thing up from the inner realms of recall and place it next to the other, grab this other shard from that corner of our mind and then connect the dots.
Hidden Traits Lurk Not Far From their Sickening Surface
Sociopaths live in a paradoxical reality – a contradictory flip-flopping and internal push-me-pull-you in reaction to who’s present or what’s going on around them in a constant attempt to stay hidden, stay unrecognizable to keep people trusting them and keep getting the things they need to survive.
Sociopaths are unstable. Their world is house-of-cards fragile. Their posing is easy to topple. Here are five hidden traits of a sociopath that are their Achilles heel. – Traits we know well, though we might not have named them if we’ve lived through the nightmare of knowing one. And in the case of a sociopath – knowing one – truly is knowing all.
The constant fear of being caught. Alternating with flamboyant confidence in fooling people with their bragaddociousness.
Mentally inflexible. Are greatly startled by unfamiliar situations causing them to flail and change course or alter previously stated beliefs or convictions. And can hold onto a point of contention like a wild dog with a bone.
Easily distracted. Fixated on one target then distracted by another and anotherfrom moment to moment juxtaposed with an underlying unwavering fantastical “goal” derived from their grandiose perception of themselves and follow an improvisational rather than planned approach to the “goal”.
No nuance of emotion. Swings between highs and dark lows with their home-based state of mind is a vapid, bored nothing.
Believe other people’s lies. Their world is lies. If presented with a lie from someone else rather than act on it or call it out as a lie they go along with it as a reality. – The more fantastical the lie the more they buy into it.
Use the Sociopaths Weakness to Break Free Forever
Use their myopic minds against them for our safety. Let’s transform the experience. Let’s make use of it. We cannot be defeated by it. Because for all our compassion and empathy — isn’t it useless or even harmful without wisdom…?
Let’s embrace ourselves with compassion. Understand there’s much to stand up for: our very lives, our goodness. Humanity. We must win always, just as the sun outshines the night sky stars to bring us a bright and lovely day.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
A sociopath makes use of their children and ruins them for their own gain. Non-pathological narcissistic parents bring harm or pain from colossal to mild.
Nothing matters more to most parents than their children. Watching our children be hurt, or disappointed, ignored or treated badly is beyond heartbreaking. A parent who is a pathological sociopath – or a pathological narcissist – is something no child ought to have to endure or be subject to. Unfortunately, they do and they are.
The title of this article reads A Sociopath, a Narcissist and Their Children. I used the term “narcissist” to allow for those who feel they’re married to or dating a “narcissist” to find this information. In all realness: a pathological narcissist is a sociopath.
I’m going to take a few minutes here to explain this because this is so critical as it effects your children. This difference effects decisions you make for you and your children.
There’s so much to know that we don’t know we need to know. They aren’t what we think they are. Knowing the real-deal will set you free.
Knowing The Difference Between a “Narcissist” and Sociopathy Is Critical
The problem is that the ideas floating around in the recovery community about what people are calling a “narcissist” are very often inaccurate. This is not purposeful, but in the spirit of attempting to understand and to heal.
The mix up comes in confusing the pathologically narcissistic person with the non-pathological. In other words, people can have what I call “narcissistic glitches”, but not be “pathological”. Pathological is the case when the person’s brain is the cause of their bad behavior rather than the bad behavior being due to a bad childhood or intimacy issues or a “narcissistic wound”.
A Narcissist is Not a Wounded Kid Who Had a Bad Childhood
It’s so important to know what we’re facing. In order to unwind the confusion and untangle the pain, it really helps to discern if the person you’re facing is pathological in their narcissism or are in fact, suffering from a really bad childhood and horrible parenting.
A sociopath, or a narcissistic parent and their children… This delineation that we can make between a narcissistic parent or a bona fide sociopath matters so, so much when it comes to the kids.
A Sociopath in Behavior is a Sociopath in Fact
My thinking is, anyone who behaves like a sociopath is best thought of as a sociopath for our safety and recovery. Thinking of a sociopath – and that person you call a narcissist – as a sociopath is more useful in terms of decoding what is happening in a confusing, painful relationship.
Non Pathological Narcissistic Glitches
Narcissistic people who are not pathological – people with narcissistic bits or glitches but not hijacking you for all you are – are a variation of normal. What I call “narcissistic people” aren’t in the realm of a sociopath in that they are not pathological. The narcissistic person has some narcissistic hick-ups and it can be painful interacting with them at times, but they are not invading our lives like a parasite.
Even the most narcissistic of narcissistic people is not trying to take us for all we have. They aren’t leaving all the bills for us to pay; they don’t have that black bottomless set of eyes. – If the person you’re facing uses you for money, for a place to live, disappears or is unavailable, says odd things, is moody and darkly grumbling – and most definitely if you’ve ever seen those black eyes, then best think of them as a sociopath.
Life With a Narcissistic Person: Under Their Thumb
With a non-pathological narcissistic person, we feel under their thumb. We can feel like we just can’t win with them or there’s no pleasing them. Some non-pathological narcissistic people are barely narcissistic at all! Time with them, friendships and families can work.
The intensity of their narcissistic bit varies from narcissistic person to narcissistic person. This is light years away from a pathological narcissist: the sociopath. One is narcissistic from some sad bit of childhood or as a personality glitch. The other is pathological, and is willfully, deceptively, and deliberately making use of you. If you feel “broken”, they are pathological and a sociopath.
Life With a Sociopath: Under Their Spell
Within the adult dynamic of sociopath and human – predator and prey – (that’s the sociopath and us) we know things are weird, but we can’t figure out exactly what it is. We feel like they lie yet there’s so much we can’t put our finger on. Things run more smoothly if we keep quiet.
As long as a sociopath, a pathological user (that some call a “narcissist”) gets to keep doing what they want to do without any challenge, expectation, argument or opposition for us, things stay safely calm. Weird but calm.
With a sociopath, we feel as if we’re under their spell. There’s a big difference between a narcissistic person who is not pathological and the pathological narcissist aka the sociopath in a relationship. If we can get that sorted, we can then go on to understanding what the kids go through. We want to understand what this parent in question truly feels about the kids.
Breaking Up with Evil
“He’d give me the lecture and then go give the same one to my son. My son was left with the feeling he’d done something wrong…”
“When I did tell him I was pregnant, his attitude was a little off. He was extremely proud of himself for getting me pregnant, but his demeanor towards me was more like I had done what I was expected to do – get pregnant.” ~ Breaking Up with Evil, Chapter One, Caryn S.
Five women’s stories, “Dirty John” tales from real-life.
Our House Is No Longer Home
At home with a pathological user (the sociopath and that one you might call a “narcissist”) there are typically two variations of home life. The first is that they aren’t physically present very often with additional behavior that’s typical of this type. The second is they are there, a lot and even help with kids and make dinner.
Not Really Home
The sociopath who’s often gone from the physical home is also very busy when he is at home. They’re online a lot. They call this time online “work”, but most of us discover what they’re doing is watching porn and hunting prey.
They take the phone to the bathroom. They don’t participate in a real way with family life. We’re doing all the work. None of it is as fun as we want it to be, or thought it would be. We start to prefer them to be gone rather than be at home.
The Homebody Errand Boy
The other case is the sociopath who’s involved with the kids. They might drive the kids to school, and pick them up, and make their lunches and help with homework. They might run our erands, make dinner, and clean the house.
This looks good on the surface. And can seem good… yet inevitably there’s a time period where we talk to ourslves in our heads thinking we need them because how would we do all this without them?! Naturally – forgetting because we’re stunned in the fog of coercive control – that we did it all and did it better loong before we knew them.
Both situations have an oddness too them. We feel uncomfortable in the back of our mind, or pit of our stomach essentially, all the time. There are many problems in the house in both cases. Both include their rampant porn, confusion, money issues, uneasiness, unhappiness, deception, and issues related to our sex life with them.
A Darkness Prevails
This difference between a narcissistic person and a sociopath matters significantly. It matters so much in terms of the kids. A sociopath loves no one. The dark and heavy mood the sociopath (narcissist) makes within the household seeps into everything.
This is the case eventually, with both the absent sociopath or the homebody sociopath. The effort we have to take to keep things on balance, to keep things smooth and looking normal for the kids – all of it – is exhausting. We find ourselves not being truly present for our kids.
Kids Are Objects Too: Using Children
To a sociopath, their kids are just another target. Another toy on the table. A little something to use to make themselves appear normal. Additionally, kids provide a gate-way back into former prey. When we’re a parent and the other parent is a sociopath, we’re extremely vulnerable to letting that sociopath back in.
Sociopaths Pretend As a Way Of Life
Pathological users aka predators pretend to love their children. The sociopath can go unrecognized by courts, attornies, and can fool professional mental health specialists and psychologists. In therapy sessions they can be mistakenly perceived as bipolar, or as having PTSD – or as the total good guy. (Yes, fooled by those people who use the DSM to diagnose people.)
The misconceptions of what they are can lead to diagnosis or conclusions that they’re borderline – and holy-moley – covert, overt, or malignant narcissists. Which hello!… drum roll: plays out as a patholgoical person of narcissism behaving as a sociopath in daily life. Therefore, please think of a “narcissist” as a sociopath.
Sociopaths Make Loads of Kids They Do Not Love
It can seem illogical that socioapths – who hate kids – would have children at all. They abandon them, use them, abuse them. The children are a tool. This tool serves the purpose of leading other adults and people within society to view the sociopath or narcissist as normal and respectable.
When, in fact, male sociopaths abandon their kids fairly easily. Many kids. Often a trail of kids from many women. Female sociopaths have kids in marriage to appear normal as all sociopaths do. But more so, for the female sociopath they can use the kids as a meal ticket and a paycheck via alimony, child maintenance, property rights and more.
Kids and More Kids
We may not even know the number of children the particular sociopath who ensnared us has. They abandon them like litters of unwanted kittens. Here, a woman tells her story of discovering as an adult that she’s just one of eight children of her sociopath father.
The nutter I married has been discovered to have 18 known children and more like 23 that aren’t proven as his. But here’s what he told me about himself and children: 1) that he had no children, and 2) that he had 100s of kids all over the world, and 3) that he had a 4-year old little boy “for a little while” that he “gave back”.
A nonpathologically narcissistic person has the capacity to love. This is a person who is not pathological but has a tweak of emotional self-absorption in some area or other of their lives.
Narcissistic people do love their kids. There are days that their love hurts like h-e-double-toothpicks. And this informs many things about our lives as we grow up and become adults. It can be painful-love and not at all the best of parenting, but it’s our mom or dad. In divorce, nonpathological narcissistic parents can and will and do hang around out of genuine love.
It’s case by case and an individual experience as to whether this narcissistic parent’s love is enough for the children to remain in their lives. Each child weighs their fits of narcissistic glitches against the tiems that are good. Some narcissistic parents are just too much; too many narcissitic glitches that effect aspects of life or hurt too much to remain involved with. Others are not so bad.
Resolve and Solve Our Experience Based on Our Experience
The DSM and mental health diagnostic categories aren’t written for us. It’s for medical coding, court codes, social services and benefits coding. The DSM has no information that is the voice of or insight into our experience.
The DSM is ongoing, changing with the very heavy and slow machine of research and a very conservative industry. It’s a collection of notes made by an outsider looking at the bug. The bug… not at our experience.
So, if the person in question in your life lies, causes confusion and chaos, cheats, uses our money, contributes little or nothing, or only after arguments consider them a sociopath.
If they love bomb, blame, play victim, rage, insult, coerce, and in the end hoover us, consider them a sociopath for our purposes of escape and recovery.
A Few Differences: Narcissistic People vs. Sociopaths
Narcissistic people can have egos the size of elephants. Or not. People who are narcissistic can criticize and make hurtful “jokes”. Most especially this is hurtful to their families, but also to their employees, and other people in their lives. The non-pathological narcissistic person can sometimes – or regularly – say hurtful things in front of other people. The pathological narcissist (sociopath) will not, because they must seem like the good guy.
Narcissistic people are not pathological liars who are pretending to be people that they aren’t. Non pathological narcissistic people don’t live off of other people or make use of others as a way of life. This is what sociopaths do.
Sociopaths Use Others
Sociopaths – narcissists – only use others; they make use of others. Association with others who are neuro-normal, such as yourself leads other people to believe they’re respectable, authentic and genuine because you are.
Because you’re hanging out with the sociopath (narcissist) people believe they must also be a normal, and good person. For the predator, the narcissist aka sociopath, hanging with one person leads to access to another person to use. All the people around the sociopath (narcissist) are used as far and as much as the user can make this happen.
Sociopaths live in a false world built of lies. The lies paint a picture of a person that doesn’t exist. They deceptively and fraudulently misrepresent who they are and what they are in order to make use of others.
This is pathological in origin… meaning they do this because this is how they’re brains are wired. It’s not a choice: it’s what they are. It’s all they will ever be. It doesn’t change, it can’t be fixed. There is nothing about us that makes them do what they do.
This can be hard to observe, hard to take in, and is very hard to accept. Getting to this place of comprehension and a place of ease with this fact is where we go in recovery sessions. This takes us to a place where we see how the duding, deceiving, lying, cheating wasn’t about us as people but is wholly about them as people of complete and pathological narcissism.
Narcissistic people who are not pathological don’t have the abnormal brain that makes someone a sociopath. They do in fact, have feelings of like and love. Unfortunately, the parts of themselves that are unresolved pain and so then hung up in an emotional cycle of projection of this pain, can be painful to love.
No matter how nice or loving they may be in one moment the bottom-line is they want to be catered to regarding the elements that they are narcissistic about.
When they hurl criticism, some narcissistic parents know the extent of the pain they cause as their children’s hearts sink. Some kids remain unable to get out from under the parental grip of scanty affection peppered with dissapoinment, emotional neglect or emotional blackmail.
Narcissistic People as Parents
A narcissistic parent can cut kids to quick in a surprise attack. and are most of the time the genuinely loving. Or they may be so narcissistic that most of the time it’s painful and genuine love is rare.
When it’s our dad or our mom, we love them. We snuggle back into the parent-kid dynamic and then get punched again and again with hurtfulness. This can go on forever. Unless we step away.
Monsters in Human Skin: Sociopaths
A large percentage of sociopaths eventually abandon their children and most often abandon their children at a young age. Children are connected to a form of a paycheck or used to lend the monster the-look-of-normal.
Female sociopaths have kids as a paycheck. Many male sociopaths leave before the kid is born. Consider that a stroke of good fortune. For the ones who do stick around, love has nothing to do with it. Sociopaths (pathological narcissists) keep children in their lives only if they can make use of them.
Divorcing a Sociopath: Save the Children
In a divorce, a sociopath will claim they want custody of the children to make themselves appear normal. Male sociopaths will attempt to take the kids in order to get out of court orders child maintenance. Ironic since it’s much more of a financial demand to house, feed, and care for kids full time than to pay a monthly stipend. A monetary award by the way, that they do not payout.
If you’re going to court with a male sociopath and you have kids… that child maintenance money is what they’re trying to get out of.
They don’t want the kids, but they’ll fight you to take them in order to keep from being told by a Judge to pay money for the kids … that they don’t intend to pay. Because they don’t love or care about the kids. That is a sociopath. And this is something no one comes out of unharmed and no child deserves.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach (CPC, CMC) upholding ICF standards and ethics, I strive to inform, educate, co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
When we see through the façade we reach a moment when we want to breakaway and end it.
Ending it with a narcissist or a sociopath is a very scary hell of its own. They seem so all-powerful and in control. In truth, sociopaths’ lives are shallow and transparent. They fall apart as we begin to glimpse their empty souls. The scary part is what they do to hang on.
They let us think we’re in a relationship and we feel we are. Therefore, naturally, we do what normal people do: We give it our all. And then as time passes we see that things aren’t adding up.
We’ve had enough promises, sob stories, chaos. Enough lies. When the malarkey outweighs the good we thought was there, we come to a point where we’re ready to toss out the trash.
When We’ve Had Enough of the Lies and Abuse from a Sociopath
Trash is all they are, but because we’re normal people, the thing is, it takes as long as it takes for us to absorb this. As they take what they want, lives are destroyed for their own survival and it not only doesn’t faze them, they take it as a personal accomplishment.
They spend our money. Want sexual things we don’t. Include us. Exclude us. Entrust us. Suspect us. Play sick. Stay out late. Keep us from our family or friends. Don’t work. Are gone a lot.
They pretend to work very hard. Don’t answer our texts. Don’t pick up our calls. Block us from their Facebook. Keep us from our faith. Cry fake tears. Lie even more. And more. Then lie some more.
We begin to not quite believe them… We have doubts. We then rationalize more, because that is normal. And then, more doubts, more nuttiness…. And then. Snap. No more. Nope. The spell breaks. This is when it’s suddenly more terrifying to stay than to leave.
Making your way out? Find the safest, swiftest way back to yourself.
End it With a Sociopath: Sociopaths aka Narcissists Know Every Scam Relationship Will End
If you’re not convinced these are scams rather than relationships, read these words from a self-professed sociopath about how we can get how to get rid of them. They want out too.
They know each scam will end, and if we want them out before they fail and bail – which most people think of as being devalued and discarded – but is not in fact what’s happening at all… We can do this:
“The best thing to do is to make the breakup seem like it was his or her choice. Like with ticks or other parasites, you want to “poison the well” so the sociopath willingly leaves. Become a helpless, emotionless, reactionless burden. Start being useless or contrary, without being openly defiant… Pretend you’re tired, sick, depressed, say you forgot your keys, you forgot to feed the goldfish, be incompetent but make everything seem like an accident. If the sociopath gets mad, say sorry, but don’t fight back. Say “I don’t know what’s come over me.” Have long phone conversations with your mother or other people the sociopath hates. In general, let yourself go completely and be as intolerable to live with as possible without being confrontational. After about three months (give or take), the sociopath will be out of your life. You should be in the clear after your sociopath has been gone three to six months. By that time the sociopath will not need you to satisfy any of her basic needs.”
~ Advice on how to make them leave, from a sociopath
Guidelines to Break Free of the Sociopath Nut Case
If you’ve been lied to, used for your money, they won’t lift a finger, they’ve stopped being physically intimate with you… that’s a sociopath laying up there on your couch.
Here are guidelines to end it with a sociopath safely and as quickly as can be and with the least fallout. There will be fallout. We will be frightened. It will feel like eons before they go. After they go we’ll go through post-traumatic stress. Doing nothing would be much, much, much, much, much, much, much worse. We can protect ourselves. We can take immediate action. We can end this.
How to Leave a Narcissistic Sociopath
You’re going to become useless. Cut off goods and services. The sociopath will be baffled, taken aback, and pissed….That dinner isn’t on the table so to speak. And leave within weeks. Keep loving. Keep living like a real human. We are awesome. You are awesome.
Do not tell them we want out, and do not attempt a “break up talk”
Do not confide in them, confess to them how you’re feeling
Keep your feelings to yourself
Don’t confront or question them about anything; be silent or passively agreeable
Keep generally behaving as you have been
Be a calm, pleasant, passive blank when they’re in the same room
Do not allow your thoughts and plans of escaping roll through your mind in their presence
Pretend to still like them just the same as before
The Next Thing We Can Do is Lie to Them
As unbelievable as it might seem, sociopaths are each and all alike. Identical tactics and the same limited thinking. We can use their weaknesses to get them gone. – You might be thinking of them as a narcissist and reading up on narcissists – that’s okay, but if you’ve been lied to or used for your money, they won’t lift a finger, and they have stopped being physically intimate with you… That’s a sociopath laying up there on your couch.
Sociopaths steal. Consider getting a Post Office Box and redirecting all your mail there.
Keep our plan to ourselves. Protect ourselvesand our belongings immediately – secretly. Don’t hesitate. Do this now. Why…? – Because sociopaths steal and destroy at the end. They’re thieves. And liars. Psychopaths like to take things like a dog pissing on a fire hydrant – just to say: I was here. They want last-minute funding, a car, a credit card – and to leave us holding the bag.
They steal or sell identities. Do they all steal? Every time? If they feel like it – yes. They have no conscience. No guilt. No love. They’re criminals. And they’re mean. Better to protect ourselves than be tragically sorry.
Sociopaths Steal: Especially at the End of a “Relationship”
Remove all of the following from your home to a safe location such as a friend’s house, your workplace, or a safe deposit box. Use this checklist:
Anything we care about for its sentimental or monetary value: The first items that come to mind are the ones. If he knows you treasure them, protect them. They go through our things – our drawers, closets, cupboards, dressers – that secret p! ace – they’ll sniff it out, to find things to take.
Valuable jewelry in gold, silver, precious stones, watches, etc. Things they can pawn or sell.
Cameras, laptops, audio gear, guns, anything easy to lift, and take away.
Photographs of the two of you. Including evidence of his abuse, your marriage, and anything compromising.
Documents. All of them. Anything legal. Copy his. Make copies of ours and the kids. Then, along with the originals secure them safely out of the house.
You don’t believe they’d steal…? Think again before it’s too late. Protect yourself.
Secure Originals & Copies Where the User Cannot Find Them
Passports
Social Security cards and numbers
Birth Certificates
Marriage Certificates
Mortgage papers
Car registrations
Auto insurance
Credit card information and statements and all numbers
Bank account information
Stocks, bonds, CDs, and all banking, investment, or monetary records
Immigration papers
Change all our passwords, PINS, and logins
Have extra house or apartment, even car keys made and give them to a trusted friend to hold
Write down numbers or better yet photocopies or take pictures of:
The sociopath’s Passport, IDs, driver’s licenses, credit cards
Bank or credit card statements
Social Security number
Receipts or pics or copies of wire money transfers from or to him or her
If he has a car write down his license plate number, car make and model, take photos of it, take down the VIN number
Keep photos of his face to ID him in case law enforcement, FBI, DEA or immigration become involved
Community Property in Marriage
If we’re married to them, in eight states within the United States, all of our belongings – belong to them. They can take them and do anything with them if we’re married. Really. They call it community property. — This works both ways, what’s theirs is ours.
There’s another thing called common property. Look up your state. If he or she steals while you’re married chances are nothing is a police matter or considered a crime. – Take care of ourselves.
Take your property. Whether married or not, transfer your personal savings and checking to another account. You can open a new account in a new bank or whatever feels most secure. Sociopaths steal. Consider getting a Post Office Box and redirecting all your mail there.
Here’s what I did: Hands shaking I took his credit cards out of his wallet. – MY credit accounts that I’d made him an “authorized user” on – while he was in the shower. My heart was pounding out of my chest. Then – I lied. I said: The credit cards (three cards altogether) had been canceled by the card companies for going over the limit. –
He’d taken them over the limit – but I made no accusation, I gave no detail, no other explanation – I said it apologetically, but with conviction. I said I did it to protect him – I said if he used them in public they’d be confiscated by the retailer and, with a pathetic fake concern for him I passively whined, I wouldn’t want you to be embarrassed like that.
It absolutely worked: they believe anything you say. Was it scary…? Yes. Terrifying. I was saving my life.
Nothing Stops Them: We End It, We Stop It
Then a few days later I lied again. I said I’d lost my wallet so the checking account debit card had been canceled. I stopped putting my paycheck in our joint bank account – then I closed it. – Guess what? He knew how to reopen it.
I had to have the bank keep an eye out for 24 hours to make sure it stayed closed. I watched him stay in the game no matter what lie I told. The surreal mounts, but now we’re in control. Ride it out. The way will open.
Here’s the thing: sociopaths make all kinds of preposterous claims as they lie their way through life. – Amazingly I found I could say anything and he played along as if it were true, though I was sure he knew it wasn’t.
Simply say: Oh, gosh. Sorry, hon. And nothing else. That tiny line will do it all. Delivering it means you just graduated to “expert in deceiving a sociopath.” Be proud.
I’d stumbled on sociopath-magic-rules-of-engagement: any lie is true. It was almost a high to fly so near the fringes and outsmart this being I now called in my head: The Monster. It was pure improvisation – life-saving improvisation on my part… it was normal live-by-the-seat-of-his-pants-all-is-a-lie for him.
Underneath it, we both knew our dynamics were shifting like silently colliding tectonic plates deep within the foundations bringing inescapable unpredictable and life-threatening upheaval that I determined – no matter what – would settle as a forced departure for him – and freedom for me.
Protect Ourselves When a Sociopath Leaves
Passwords and PINS and logins. Change them. All. If we can – block him or her on social media. As in using the actual “block” function on Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and all the rest. They won’t be notified, but they’ll also no longer see any of our Facebook, or other social media activity. – We also will not be able to see theirs. It’s called going no contact.
Shut Down the Things the Sociopath is Enjoying
Become absolutely useless to them. If we usually make dinner. Stop. If we normally take out the garbage and make the bed. Don’t. Forget his dry cleaning. Stop doing his laundry or leave it lumpy and half-damp in the laundry basket. Passively, quietly, humbly, meekly, say, “Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry, hon.” And nothing else. Period You just gave a lifesaving Academy Award-winning performance. Keep it up.
Forget his favorite food. Sleep late, Stop cleaning. Disappear after work without calling him. Leave the car without gas. Forget to pay the internet bill – tell him it’s being shut off. Tell him your savings account is empty. Don’t talk at home. Keep to yourself. Sleep. Go into your room. Leave unexpectedly. Talk to your sister even though they hate it when we do.
Do whatever truly lifts you up and leads to breakthroughs. Go back to church if that was your thing pre-nutbag. Or step into meditation, wok out, make art, attend your book club meetings, or whatever faith or strength-giving endeavor they tried to stop you from practicing. When they talk look away, bored. Walk out of the room.
Think about replacing, swapping out the time you spent with them for an activity that you love… Something else. When they ask: Have something else to do at the times you used to spend with them. Add to that, zero cash to hand out. Pay no more of their bills. Simply say: Oh, gosh. Sorry, hon, implying vapid, passive stupidity on your part. Say nothing else. That tiny line will do it all. Delivering that kind of deflecting new reality for your safety and to maneuver them out of your life means you just graduated to “expert in deceiving a sociopath.” Be proud.
Prepare For Safety and a Smooth Exit
Consider carrying a change of clothes and overnight things or having spares at work. Just a precaution. – Again this is without their knowledge. – If the sociopath invading your life is already violent with you – all the more so take this precaution.
Make extra house keys. Give some to a really trusted good friend who had no connection to the sociopath. If you’re leaving the clutches of an actively violent sociopath please check with professional advisers on domestic violence.
Add these to your contacts so you don’t miss a newsletter! jennifer@truelovescam.com info@truelovescam.com
As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.
Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.
