March 3, 2013
M,
Today I long to reach out to you in love. I have always done my best to listen to you, to hear you. I want to hear you now, but my fear is so great that you will only take the opportunity to mislead me, feeding me the story you want to believe, forever hiding behind a mask of deceit. There is a part of me that believes that we have enough love for each other to heal this hurt. I’m so used to loving you and understanding you. I’m having the hardest time getting used to hating you and feeling confused by you. Everything always felt so clear as I tried to meet your needs to the best of my ability, giving you space and not prying into your life.
But then, maybe you never really wanted to know me, nor for me to know you. It hurts me so much when I realize how much of your life you were hiding from me. I truly believed I was special that you had let me in at all. Oh, how the truth burns! There were so many moments when I felt we truly understood each other. Don’t you miss that?
***
Note that this was written one day after the previous letter. I suppose that is quite indicative of what was going on in my brain at the time. From one moment to the next I was swinging wildly back and forth between love and hate for this person who had proven to be a lying manipulator. He had admitted to his treachery, yet I still wanted to believe in the illusion of love and confidence he had created. This was when I was still deeply suffering from cognitive dissonance. I believed in two M’s. One was the man that I had a deep and spiritual connection with and the other was a traitor and a liar who had never loved me and had only been using me for sex on the side of his primary relationship. One minute I would be in love with the soul-mate, but the next minute I would hate the traitor. This flip-flopping was extreme for months after I had made the discovery that I was the other woman. I started coming to the realization that speaking to him would deepen the illusion and that the more time I spent away from him, the clearer things became. If I was not being fed lies, I could examine the evidence without interference and see the truth of things.
This realization became the motivation for ultimately committing to “no contact” with M. The more I communicated with him, the more pain and turmoil I would experience as my brain futilely attempted to reconcile these two personas. In a sense, even my own personality was splitting as one part of me was still playing the part of the understanding lover that wanted to work things out and fix whatever was causing him to act out, and the other part of me was an angry victim of an emotionally abusive man. It helped me greatly to start communicating with others that had been through similar drama with their Narcissistic partners.
I stumbled across a forum entitled Psychopath Free where hundreds of members share stories and support every day. As I begin reading so many stories that sounded similar to mine, I began feeling anger towards these abusive partners I had never met, and felt empathy for the victims of their mind games. Eventually I was able to direct that same anger towards my abuser and give myself the empathy I had been withholding from myself. Only then was true healing able to begin as I accepted that I was not stupid for being a loyal enabler to an abusive partner for so long.
After reading story after story of the fairytale courtship turning into a psychological nightmare, I began to understand how so many victims are duped by practiced Sociopaths. Until you have been drawn in by one, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to see them coming. Because they take such care to present themselves as that perfect partner you have been looking for your whole life, it’s much easier to take things at face value than to approach with skepticism. It also appears that they hone in on people that are especially susceptible to falling for their act. In my case, M targeted women in their 30s that had been single for some time. Seemingly they had dated enough jerks and were holding out for someone truly special to come along. When M walks in on the scene pretending to have all those characteristics that we have been holding out for, it’s all too easy to fall for the deception. I thought “finally, here is the person I am meant to be with. This is why I have been single for years. I know this is the right person for me,” etc. etc. It makes the revelation that I was duped by a con artist that much harder to swallow. I was so sure that this person was someone special, yet in the end he did not have the slightest regard for me.
Ultimately I chose the route of no contact and have successfully avoided speaking to him for the past nine months. I have only run into him once in that time, and I have been able to keep myself from checking up on him via Facebook or any other social media. I finally realize that every time I see, speak to, or read about him I get thrown right back into cognitive dissonance as I begin mourning the loss of a partner I never truly had. Strict no contact has allowed me to slowly regain my sanity and peace of mind. That process was not easy. By far, M was the hardest addiction I have ever had to break. Through the process I learned how much intimate relationships truly mean to me and how much of myself I was sacrificing for the sake of maintaining this deeply flawed one. I’m hoping to take this knowledge and apply it to all my future relationships, ensuring that I treat others with the respect they deserve, while demanding they do the same for me. Never again will I let someone abuse my trust so thoroughly.
No comments:
Post a Comment