what you have to realize is that non of this was your fault in the first place. we all come out of these relationships with this feeling and everyone asks this same question. you forgive yourself by accepting that you are worthy of better. you deserve a good life just like everyone else does. it wasnt your fault. what becomes your fault is when you finally know this but then never do anything about it.

but what does one DO, what are the actions we take other than looking at ourselves as well and working on the areas in ourselves that led us to get into this situation, what actions can we take to get well

read, read, read.and talk here.

I asked Bella and everyone here the same question in December last year I wanted to do something, I wanted it to be over and move on but the truth is Pendra you won't move on yet but you can GET on. The healing process is slow but you can help yourself by getting on with small steps of your life. Read, get a full understanding of what has happened you are a very intelligent person the more you read the more light bulb moments you will have and then you will have a day when you say "enough" or " I get it" it will happen. Talk to us and a therapist that has a full understanding of the P. You are so angry and you need a way to vent your anger talk to a therapist about the best way to do this for you, kick boxing, martial arts, running do something girl! You may be thinking that's all good advice but it won't work for me humour me and try just one thing.
In this group there are all kinds of people with varying backgrounds but we all have this in common...what has happened to us is WRONG, it's not our FAULT and if there was a magic pill to how you feel how we all feel I would write a prescription for all of us.
YOU WILL BE A SURVIVOR proove it. As for forgiving yourself....there's nothing to forgive.

exactly pendra, i wish i could make your pain go away but i cant. only time and work will. the cure is to read everything you can out there about sociopaths. thats the answer your looking for. it has healed many before you and will continue to do so but you have to do the work/ also if you can see a therapist. if you cant then read more and talk here. all the answers are out there. type in the words.....how does one heal from a sociopath?
then read what comes up in your search. your going to find you are not the only one who this has happened to there are thousands of us out there. and we are all healing together. you will make friends here until your ready to make them on the outside. it takes reading, talking here , and time. and i no thats the last thing you want to here but there is no pill, nothing else that will ease your pain. like star says there is nothing to forgive as far as the abuse it was not your fault he has told you its your fault and you believe him right now. he is wrong.

Tell yourself you are a wonderful person and that you will be okay. Keep saying it every day, and don't let that monster consume you in preventing you from receiving joy.

For me at the present, I've been mired down in avoiding acceptance of what's happened. My therapist has helped me to see the basic footsteps forward. I was given a homework assignment to open my own checking account and speak with an attorney. What helped me finally carry it out was being told to go through the motions despite the emotions I was feeling about it. I did it.

Honestly, afterward, I felt a very deep sadness that the steps were an acknowledgement that I really had been discarded and my life is going to change.

Again today, I was advised to take my heart out of the decision making process and to just focus on the steps forward. It hit home for me, that seems to be my path forward.

What really sucks, nothing I've read about this has shown any immediate relief. It hurts like hell and its going to be a slow, ongoing process. I'm sorry someone decided to leave you where you are, it's completely f'd up and not fair.

tohellagain, this is true good advise. do not show any emtion or how you really feel in court rooms, or in front of your ex. they feed of hurting you and if the can see its working they will push you over the edge. if you show no emotion or reaction to her it will be 100 % in your favor. do not show any emotions to these people the will only use it to destroy it.

Stargone is right. There is nothing to forgive. Your EX was a con artist by offerring you what you wanted for his own benifit, not yours. I personally never thought of blaming myself for the abuse I sufferred. Maybe because I knew the differrence between "perpetrator" and "victim". A lot of people who are conned seem to have a feeling of guilt for having been fooled so "easily". They all seek our trust and when they have it they steal from us whatever they want that belongs to us, including emotional and psychological integrity. Anybody can be conned. There is no reason for you to have to apologise for anything. You were a victim.....not a perp.

Thanks for your replies guys, i have absorbed them. I have found myself lying in bed and saying over and over let it go pendra, its over, finished, you are safe, move foreword, and also harden your heart. I hear you talk about how there is nothing to forgive ourselves for but i am not convinced of that. Do Sociopaths target certain woman who have low self esteem and self worth, can they smell it. Surely there are some women with a higher level of self value who would see the signs of a sociopath and in the least after their first beating or transgression of their values walk out.......surely not every woman can be sucked into this. this is why i ask to forgive myself - i was abused at his hand for 13 long years and yet i stayed, listened to empty bullshit promises and lies and accepted affairs and horrendous verbal abuse, no support, no touch, no sex, and switchblade behaviour, even to the point of a cocked gun being gel to my head, or not having a moment of empathy or his arms around me when my dearest sister died of a drug overdose. Why did I not see this was all inappropriate and disgusting then, when it is so clear to me now that that is what it was, disgusting. I think of the lunches I had with him, his ongoing dialogue, his need to dominate the conversation, how unpredictable his moods were, how he could be talking about his day one minute and the next calling me a fucked up cunt, in seconds. with the consciousness i have now, eyes wide open, i see how verbal abuse is tantamount to physical abuse as the threatening tone and words is as if you have been kick boxed to the floor - the experience makes you feel small and beaten - and thats why they do it, to get you into the exact position they want you in, so that they can operate and manipulate from there. i realise that the only way i could have dealt with the environment i was in with him was because it was familiar to my original family environment which was also fraught with incidents, fear, drama, and because i looked after a very sick drug addicted sister for over 22 years of my life and had to face her sickness (including developing mental illness) every day of my life, and put my needs aside to do that. had i not been exposed to that i would not have been able to tolerate the malevolent climate that we lived in, bear his footsteps along the wooden floor not know what was coming with them, or his switch from one personality to another. he came home one day and walked into the lounge and launched into verbal abuse out of the blue, with no provocation and that was the first time my eyes opened wide and i caught sight of the strategies he uses, which shocked me and they remained open long enough for me to go upstairs have my lawyer draft a letter saying i was not abandoning my furniture and my and instead they remained owned by me and to pack and leave. i left for five successful months and over time saw myself getting healthier and then as my be typical as the nightmare with him began to fade, i called him back into him life and set myself way back also because he had a new girlfriend on board then who was highly tenacious and who he had t eventually insist she stop contacting ( at my insistence it was her or me), only to have her preserve more and more.That was in 2010 when she wrote him a mail saying well if you going back to her after the horrendous things you have old me she did to (ya right), I wish you luck. so he had already started on his defamation campaign about me to break down my credibility and keep his in check the the extent the two of them were dissuasion institutionalist so i am removed as a source of danger around dimim (ya right) and accessing social workers and lawyers that they would brief to act as prescribed,This email came from the new on my cellphone which simon had leant to me - as predictable he had moved into damaging my creed with his new woman the the extent she believed i should be institutionalised and she was so far as making plans - horrifying as it is not impossible that the two of them could achieve this and have me put in. i phoned Raffaella said don't you dare ever get involved in my life in any whatsoever or i will go legal. i showed it to simon and he did not even blink -didnt give a damn - but the point is he had connived raffaela that i was dangerous to him and society and a menace in his life, harassing him and abusing him - all turned around. he has also been phoning social friends and undermining me, right down to that i don't fill up the dog bowl and more. It's shocking and I know well that he will turn his underminement of me into a capping amount friends and in his industry so that at all costs he will retain his mask and his charming squeaky clean character and mine will be damaged because the story of pendra and simon is already out there. aren't they smart fuckers!

who cares what they say about you pendra. your not crazy and no one can have you committed unless you act crazy and act like a threat to yourself. just look at people who believe him and act normal and as happy as you can even if you have to fake it for now till its so. the other thing you ask is if they pick a certain kind of women ( or man )? yes they do. it has nothing to do with if you are rich or poor. successful or not. they pick people with low self esteem, low self images, people pleasers. kind and giving and loving women ( or men. ) so let me put it this way the kinder the person you are and the more giving you are makes you a bigger target by a sociopath. there are many people out there who have boundaries in place and have good self esteem who will not take there abuse. once the mask falls they are gone. there are many websites that explain this in detail. what do you think you have done so bad in this life to deserve this kind of treatment from some rotten human being who isnt worth the ground you spit on? what could you have possible done? there is nothing. and there is nothing to forgive except forgiving yourself by moving on and make a better life for yourself. that is how you forgive yourself, by not allowing this person to ever disrespect you again. the longer you go without letting him abuse you , you will heal your wounds. right now you are your own worse enemy by thinking you did something to deserve being abused. try to look at the little girl you once were she is still inside of you. did that little girl ever do anything to have her life end up this way. i think not. love that little girl she needs you.