Return to Website

dr. robert forum




Welcome to dr. robert forum.



This Forum community is growing fast. Tell your friends.







Search:



Visit "ask dr. robert" to read replies to the latest questions.






Thanks to the help of a very kind Cajun amigo, the Dr. Robert Forum is back, better than ever, at:

www.dr-robert.com/forum.html

I look forward to seeing you all there.

Be well,
RS

robert's Forum
This Forum is Locked
Author
Comment
I cannot forget my lost (psychopathic) relationship.

Hmmm.... I had another night with intense dreams about her. Now that this has been going on for 8 months, I decided to write it off my heart, see what happens, if anyone out there has experienced something similar and maybe has a tip for me. My problem is that I just cannot forget about my ex-girlfriend. It has been over for 8 months now since I ended this totally tragic, dysfunctional and abusive relationship. Looking at it rationally I should be happy that it's over, that I have saved myself, my sanity and have exited while my children were not severely damaged yet by this person. Yes, I should be happy to be free again, not to be emotionally abused anymore, to be gaslighted, neglected, manipulated anymore by this psychopath. I am glad, in a way, but still, I just cannot forget her. I cannot forget her looks and appearance, how hot she made me, the sex, my desire for her, to first 6 months of that 3-year relationship that were just amazing. It was a storybook relationship between a co-dependent (me) and a psychopath (her). First it was heaven, or even better than heaven. She was everything I was looking for in a woman. I just came out of a nasty divorce, and she was there, ready to love me, to be my soulmate, to fulfil my every wish - so it seemed. Life was perfect for the first six months. Then she started to change. I perceived her as cold-hearted, callous and extremely selfish. Even odd, weird, the way she would be unable to relate to anything emotional, sometimes I thought that maybe she is a robot, she seemed not to have any emotions at all. She would be the sexiest hottest girl of my dreams, yes, and she would have sex with me everywhere, in the strangest places, and that all appealed to me immensely (coming out of one of these sexless marriages).... but yet it was all emotionless, there was no warmth whatsoever, there was no "us", only you and me, there was no support when times were tough.... then she started to become cruel to my children, calling them bad names behind my back, and the children openly started to withdraw from her, tell me that they feel unliked and even scared by her. Still, she had me drawn in, addicted to her in a strange way, I am unable to say what exactly it was..... it was not until I found out she had another long-term boyfriend bedside of me and led a double life that I was able to free myself and end this sad story. Now I wanted to understand - what was that what just happened to me, what kind of a woman was that ????? She seemed at odds with my understanding of humanity, so I started to dig for information. To cut a long story short, I believe she would easily score 28 points on Hare's PCL-R test for psychopathy. The woman was a psychopath, and all the red flags that would usually go up were there but I could not see them. She was cold as ice, had no empathy, would lie all the time, manipulate me and ignore my feelings, be completely devoid of any understanding or support on an emotional level. She hated my children because for them they were just an inconvenience. She had no goals in life other than work in her office job at that huge corporation, and she was a financial bloodsucker. Despite a six-figure salary I would have to start an argument about every little thing, be it her share in the rent or her share in holidays, no penny would come easy and everything was a fight. Wow. What a mess. As I said at the beginning, I should be so **** glad to be free again, to have freed myself from this predator &.. but I cannot forget her. Not a single day has gone past without me thinking of her, dreaming how good our times were at the beginning, dreaming of the plans I (not us) had for the future & & and not a single night has gone past in the last 3 months without me having intense dreams about her. These dreams are mainly sexual in nature, but they are long, intense, detailed and persistant. I just want it all to stop. I want to stop thinking and dreaming about my psychopathic ex-girlfriend so that I can start living again to the full extent, and find a new love and a new perspective in my life. But how ? If anyone has been through this, please tell me how you have done it, how did you stop this siege on your spirit that even follows you into your dreams ?????????

Re: I cannot forget my lost (psychopathic) relationship.

You will never forget someone you loved. you just learn to save them as memories. You have to learn to pack in boxes in your head each people who has gone from your life. save the good memories and move on, life is too short to live it trying to forget something.

Website: buscamusik.com

Re: I cannot forget my lost (psychopathic) relationship.

How can one forget someone that made them feel alive?

This woman wanted you to obsess over her. Her goal was to leave you wanting...and you are doing just that. Write your thoughts down, salivate and think of how good it felt, because it can't be duplicated. See her like heroin. She is the queen of your mind. And if you think about it, you are getting the same high as any drug.

From my experience with my sociopath, I understand completely. I long for a minute, an hour, just a conversation. But I know that the pain is real afterward.

I am compartmentalizing it. Savoring it if I need too, briefly, but then remembering why I had the strength to leave it.

If I could suggest one thing, leave it in the past for what it was. Intoxicating. Because often the worst things in life are like that.

Re: I cannot forget my lost (psychopathic) relationship.

I am going to speak only from personal experience, from recent events in the life of some very close friends and from generally accepted concepts. Small references to scientific points of view may appear as an example but they are not to be taken as a direct evaluation of your situation.

No relation is ended without leaving marks and no sex is completely without emotion (unless the person in question truly is a psycopath). Even in relations as strange as the ones which appear from prostituition there is usually some emotion attached, on both sides, for each other and, as paradoxical as it may be, some of these emotions may be good.

Think of the Stockholm Syndrome: people captured by criminals, or even terrorists, will sometimes feel empathy for their captors and go as far as to defend them at some point, even if they are in real danger, discomfort and fear. This is an instinctive defensive posture that can lead to persistant feelings of abnormal compassion towards those who did, or would do, harm to them.

These are extreme situations but they make it clear that bad or unwanted relationships can leave a paradoxical good feeling behind.

You said you were codependent: that is a very bad position to be in a relationship. In a way, you may have felt a skewed pleasure during the relationship you were going through, and I certainly don't mean just the sex, but you must realise that.

A close friend of mine went through a similar situation, although with someone who doesn't fit the profile of a psycopath, as far as my limited knowledge allows me to conclude. At first he was lured out of a very healthy relationship mainly by lust and the promise of intense love. When things started getting ugly he realised something was wrong but, even though some people advised him of the girl's true intentions, he kept investing emotionally in the relationship.

At one point he tried to end the relationship but he later confessed something inside him made him feel sorry for the girl, as she pleaded for him not to leave her, and he turned back on his decision. Finally, because we are like brothers, after he told me thourougly, many times over, how deeply distressed he was and how much he was suffering, I took him to the edge of total misery, forcing him to truly see what he was getting himself into. It was one of the hardest things I ever did. As soon as he truly felt how disfuntional his relationship was, I immediately encouraged him and did everything I could to make him feel as well as he usually does, sacrificing some of my own privacy to give him reasons to feel better. This led him to decide to break up with her at a startegically chosen point in time and he went through with it. He felt a new man afterwards.

I don't now if my young friend still thinks about his ex-girlfriend, not enough time has passed to evaluate the situation, but I will be trying to find out so I can help him avoid your situation. He is not codependant by nature, not in the least, although he behaved as such during some phases of his unfortunate relationship, but it is still possible he will suffer from an “abstinence syndrome” all the same. If you are truly codependent and the sex was that good for you, it is only natural you should think of her with longing, and here's why: now that you are no longer under her negative influence, although the reasons you left her are still in your conscious mind, you probably no longer “feel” them as you did before and only admit, at the deepest level, the positive sides. You “know” the relationship was negative for you, but you don't “feel” that way anymore.

For your sake and, most importantly, for the sake of your children, you must try to be assertive about this and reason your way into the deep belief that you cannot return to such a situation. Even if you don't bring her back into your life (which I hope wasn't what you were thinking of doing when you came here) keeping that obcession is going to result in three things: constant suffering, bad social relationships (for example, with your children, which is a terrible thing) and a profound difficulty to move on with your life and try to find a truly balanced and loving relationship with someone else. And there is always the risk you will end up in a similar relationship just for want of something equal to what you had before: abused women sometimes seek abusive partners when the original abusive relationship is over, if they are not helped, that is (although it is not for the same exact reasons you might do the same thing).

As I always do in these posts, I want you to be completely aware that I have no real authority to support my point of view in some of these matters, only my experience, and that is subject to my own relative, and fallible, point of view. Another thing I keep saying to everyone here is: when in doubt, find a therapist. You may be able to overcome this by yourself, but if these feelings persist you need to get a professional opinion. A therapist won't have a miracle solution, but talking to one will start helping you get a little perspective and can, at least, make you feel better quickly, even if only a little at first (which is certainly better than nothing).

If for nothing else, go to a therapist to get help for your codependence: it is a terrible way to live a relationship and, although technically they are benefiting from this behaviour, healthy women who are searching for an equal companion, and not a pet, will probably reject you once they realise this is how you are.

Meditate on this and plan carefully your next course of action. Your emotional life, and that of your children, may depend on this.

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear." - Samuel Clemens (a.k.a Mark Twain)


-- What am I doing here? --

I am currently doing research on several topics for a few books and articles I am writing. I would like to make a positive contribution to fora (plural of "forum") about such topics in order to get constructive views on those matters for a better perspective on them. This is why I came here. I will not indulge myself in flamming and will not respond directly to any clearly non-constructive replies.

I have read some of Dr. Robert's responses to certain questions and I find them lacking and biased. Still, I truly wish to know what people who come here, and even Dr. Robert himself, think about my points of view for three reasons. First: I know I can, very easily, be wrong and I should keep an eye out for other opinions. Second: all points of view are important to have perspective on any matter, specially the ones one doesn't agree with. Third: wisdom can come from very strange places and one should not underestimate anyone as far as knowledge and wisdom are concerned.

Please, give me honest and constructive replies: I will return in kind.

"The slumber of reason creates monsters." - Goya