From "The Ability to Love" Blog - After The Psychopath: From Victim To Survivor- You Are Not What You Once Were

Another great article about responsibility from The Ability to Love blog.

After The Psychopath: From Victim To Survivor- 

You Are Not What You Once Were

True Recovery Is About Cleaning Up You Own Mess - AMEN!!!

An extremely important article from one of tne of the best blogs I've found on recovering from a relationship with a narcissist or other emotionally unavailable partner.

True Recovery From The Psychopath Is NOT Just About Your “Good” Qualities

AMEN!!! Love and hugs, Laura

Sponge Bob Boundary Pants - The Relationship Between Setting Boundaries and Self Esteem

A large portion of my self defense class for women focused on self esteem and boundaries. In the process of developing my workshops I did a great deal of research on how to set boundaries. You would think that since I can teach these skills, I would also be able to practice them.

During my relationship with my It2 what I saw as my needs, values, and desires became blurrier and blurrier. This was also the case with It. I find myself asking how that happened. How does someone so well educated and skilled in boundary setting allow her boundaries to be repeatedly broken down and crossed. I’m still not sure exactly how it happens. What I do know is that it is a gradual and insidious process. I also know that it requires two things; someone selfish enough to want to cross them and someone whose boundaries are unclear and porous to begin with.

It’s one thing to state the requirement that a healthy relationship must include self-esteem and boundaries. It’s another thing to explore and understand the relationship between them. I realize that what I was teaching (or at least what I was learning) when I taught self defense was a set of skills (setting boundaries) that weren’t backed up by an essential component (self-esteem.) I don’t think this is a flaw in my course curriculum. I don’t believe you can teach self-esteem. But if it’s missing, no amount of  boundary setting will protect you from emotional abuse when you are involved with someone who doesn’t value you.

Boundaries are based on a set of pre-conceived values, desires, needs and beliefs. We all have them. It serves us to think carefully about them and decide exactly what we’re willing to accept and not accept in terms of relationships with others. But even if we formulate a list of boundaries that appear to be self-loving and self-protective, if we actually don’t love ourselves they become meaningless.

Think of it this way...

Let’s imagine that your emotional self resembles a vessel, like a cup or a bowl. The outer shell of this vessel serves as a wall of protection and is lined with your beliefs, needs, desires and values. How well this wall serves you will entirely depend on what it’s made of, which depends entirely on your level of self-esteem. If you have a strong and healthy self esteem the wall will be like a strong, but flexible, plastic. It will be able to protect your emotional self while not being so rigid (materials that are too rigid crack and break under stress) to keep all that approach it out. If you have no self esteem, your beliefs, needs, desires and values stand exposed and completely vulnerable. Most people’s vessels are somewhere in the middle. If yours is closer to the flexible plastic side, you have not only the skills to protect your emotional self, but  also the necessary armor as well.

So what happens when someone like It or It2 meets up with a healthy vessel. Pretty much nothing. Their attempts at crossing the wall will be quickly spotted and thwarted. But, consider what happens if your vessel is made of sponge. Inside your vessel of sponge, your emotional self starts as pure, clean spring water. On the surface the vessel looks solid and and protective. But it is porous. Eventually the clean water seeps out and dirty abusive water is able to seep in. The two become mixed up and murky. What was once pure clean spring water is now contaminated. Your boundaries have been broken down and violated. This is how it happens, sometimes so gradually you don’t even notice. Well at least not consciously! But you DO feel it! Whether or not you recognize these feelings and what you do about them is another story.

Over the course of my relationship with It2 I became increasingly confused and depressed as he withdrew and began to devalue, demean and dismiss me. Natalie Lue talks a great deal about Future Faking, which is exactly what I experienced. In the beginning I was told that “I was sent to him by God”. He introduced me to people in his community as his wife. He talked about apartments and future plans. The amount and quality of attention and adoration I received was mind (and heart) boggling. But once I was in with both feet, all of a sudden I was accused of rushing the relationship and being too “needy.” This is what Natalie Lue refers to as “Blowing Hot and Cold”. This behavior is (consciously or unconsciously) designed to keep you off balance and is a subtle method of control forcing you into the role of pursuer.

Mixed messages create muddy water that seeps through a sponge barrier, blinding you in muck. What did I do wrong? Why has it changed? Where did he go? Now it’s a quest to please him. To get back what you’ve already lost, and really never had in the first place. You are less able to see your own boundaries through the murky water. The sponge itself becomes clogged with negativity. Your self esteem plummets.

The last interaction I had with It2 was very revealing. One of my most well considered and very conscious boundaries is that I do not, and will not have what most people refer to as casual sex. I’m not making any judgments about those who enjoy it. It’s just not in my make up or ken. For me sex is one of the deepest expressions of myself, which I reserve for someone I am wholly in love with. I articulated this boundary clearly to It2 on several occasions in different contexts. This man is a self professed player whose history is devoid of a single healthy long term relationship, but I ignored this. It was clear then that this isn’t a value we share, but I ignored this too.



As an aside, these people do try to tell you the truth in very subtle ways. You have to be able to listen between the words and value actions more than promises. But once you’re hooked a kind of selective hearing sets in and you only hear and see what they first showed you. They can’t keep the mask on in a one on one relationship for long. The truth seeps out, and into your sponge. But by that time your blinders are up.

During the last month or so of our relationship I caught myself thinking that I was feeling more like a booty call than a girlfriend. I should have trusted those feelings. They were in fact very accurate.

My last communication with It2 was a text (his only method of communicating anything deeper than the latest basketball scores) informed me that he no longer wanted to have a “one on one” relationship with me. That it was just too intense (read, I was asking to be valued) and that a boyfriend / girlfriend relationship was out of the question. However, he would be interested in seeing me for “fun and intimacy.”  Given that he was fully aware of the importance of my boundary, there is simply no way to conceive of this other than a carefully targeted attack. Remember that emotionally unavailable people will continually test and push to see what you’re willing to put up with. Like a sparring match, they wait for openings and look for weaknesses to determine strategy.

  

You have exchanged the 'girlfriend' role for the booty call one. Never take a demotion in the hope that it will enable you to get a promotion! Natalie Lue

I thanked him for being honest (finally), but said that being demoted to his booty call doesn’t align with my values or self esteem. Of course he denied any intention of disrespect and I’m quite sure he believes that.  As hard as it was (I did consider the possibility at first, thinking it might be a way to rekindle the relationship) and in spite of my overwhelming feelings for him, by refusing the demotion, I managed to retain this final boundary and with it what little self esteem I had left.

Love and hugs,

Laura

With Tremendous Pain Often Comes Tremendous Clarity - Filling the Hole in Me

It’s been over five years since I wrote my first posting on this blog. I have done a lot of processing and healing during that time. I thought I had gained sufficient understanding and clarity about what had happened to me to be able to avoid such a catastrophe again. But I was wrong.

In 2009 I wrote a post entitled "There is No Hole in Me" directed at O. In it I said:

"Dear O,

There is no hole in me. After months of intensive research and consulting with several experts, I know that every normal human being is vulnerable to sociopaths. This is because, as Michael Fox (author of Emotional Rape Syndrome) points out, emotional rapists (malignant narcissists/sociopaths) exploit the four most primary human needs: health, achievement, love and faith. In the case of a man - woman relationship love is the primary (though not only) target for exploitation."

This is true..... BUT.....

O was absolutely correct. There are holes in me. Holes that attract and enable emotionally unavailable people to exploit me. I fought O on this because it seemed like victim blaming to suggest that something about me had caused It to do to me what it did. 

This post is not about victim blaming. Nothing I did caused It to do what it did. People’s behaviors rest entirely on them. That said, I have come to realize that until we accept what it is about ourselves that makes us attracted to emotionally unavailable people (diagnostically pathological or not) and that drives us to allow these people so deeply into our lives and hearts we will continue to repeat the same pattern over and over again. This article is about the holes in me.

There is a plethora of information out there describing the red flags to look for in the beginning of a relationship. These lists give us a baseline of the common types of behaviors we can expect from people who are referred to by many names: emotionally unavailable, users, narcissistic, selfish, womanizer etc. All of them share a lack of empathy to some degree or other and a deep seated narcissistic selfishness. If we are able to spot these traits before we get too involved all the better, so these lists serve a useful purpose.

But what if we can’t spot them? What if the behaviors are so well disguised in the beginning that the are truly invisible? What if the man you’ve met and fallen in love with seems like the most healthy, mature and loving man you could hope for?

As useful and accurate as these lists are, they are also troublesome. While the behaviors of emotionally unavailable people do devolve to include most or all of the characteristics found in these lists, each one of these people has a unique history and personality that often disables us from recognizing red flags until it’s too late.

About a year ago I became deeply involved with a man who turned out to be yet another emotionally unavailable narcissist. With all of my knowledge and experience I had accumulated, I had to ask myself how it happened again.

While the details of what happened are important, for they reveal just how unique yet alike these people are, the purpose of this post is to look at the other side of it. Of course the red flags showed up one by one. But once again, I dismissed them one by one. So I was forced to ask what is it about me that blinds me from the red flags that are so clearly evident behind the masks of narcissism. And I know I’m not alone in this. I suggest it is a deep seated lack of self esteem and desire to fill up a hole in our cores that we have, for whatever reason, been unable to fill ourselves.

Not ironically, at the end of our relationship this man demanded that I not write a blog about him. Does he know he’s a user? Of course he does! He, like all narcissists protect their image of being a decent human being at all costs. The idea that he should be found out and written about is unacceptable. This post is for you It2.

In time I will be grateful for this relationship and the lessons that are unfolding. The biggest of these is that of acknowledging, accepting and working on what it is about me that drives me to want to be loved by men who are incapable of loving in any real way. What it is about me that makes me lose myself in them so completely that they are able to mold me into whatever it is they want. But be clear! The fact that there is something in me that enables and allows this does not excuse the fact that these people take advantage of it. It’s an attraction of gasoline and fire; an extremely powerful AND always explosive and destructive one.

I intend to write more about this as I sort through it and learn from it. For now, I’d like to point you to two sources that have helped me to begin understand my part in repeating patterns of unhealthy destructive relationships.

The first is the work of Susan Anderson.  

The second is the work of Natalie Lue at Baggage Reclaim

The ability to recognize abusive behavior is important and essential. But equally important is the ability to set and maintain self protective boundaries based on self esteem. These men are attracted to the holes in us because they know that they can pretend to fill them. We, in turn, are attracted to them because we so desperately want these holes to be filled. Until we learn to fill our own holes we will continue to be devastated by destructive relationships.

I hope these resources help you on your journey as much as they are helping me. I leave you with them for now.

Love and hugs,
Laura