I guess you hurt so bad because it really makes no sense to you how someone could be so nice but also so terrible,I expect you are going over and over it all in your head but still coming back to the same answer-why? I don't know if you ever really will make sense of it as it makes no sense to "normal" people to behave in this way. I really feel for you, I still live with my N and ask myself daily, why why why!! Just take some comfort in the fact he is out of your life and it will get easier, although of course it doesn't feel like that now :(
I think they hurt us the most because we just didn't see what was really happening and I don't know about you,but I feel like I have been tricked big time and that grates! keep strong. xxxx

Hi Harmony7. I have noticed in my own journey that I kept "trading up/down" in my choice of partners over the years. In my situation, I was choosing worse, more manipulative and deceptive men as the years went by. My last ex was the most harmful of all. It made no sense to me at the time. I thought I was making an effort to stop making bad choices. After my third significant relationship I took a long break and thought I was abstaining in order to carefully choose a healthy partner. No such luck. In fact, like you, my last relationship was the most devastating to me. I used to say that he was the "king" of all of the narcissistic men I had allowed into my life.

It's been almost 2years since I have been in serious recovery from being a wwl2m. In retrospect, I can see the part that I played in my own demise. When I think of the relationships now I am able to identify all of the red flags that were present early into the relationship but I was in a place of low self esteem and I didn't heed them. If I hadn't stopped the madness and started addressing my own issues, I am positive that I would have repeated the same mistakes all over again.

I know so well the pain and confusion you are feeling. I finally had to stop trying to figure HIM out. I would never know the actual truth about him and his behavior. I started to heal when I realized it didn't matter why he treated me so badly. What mattered was why I allowed it to continue for such a long time. What was it about me that didn't make it easy to run as soon as I was sure of the first lie or indiscretion? I'm still answering those questions. While it's painful to have to face myself with such honesty, at least I will benefit from this pain. xo

I have read countless books on Narcissism and Emotional Unavailability, and I highly recommend Men Who Can't Love by Steven Carter and Julia Sokol. It really spells out the conflict between the man who seemed to worship the ground you walked on .....and then just discard you for Miss-Whoever, what happened to the once-in-a-lifetime dream relationship you shared????????How could just some cute airhead chick take the same place as you - the soul-mate???? Really spells it out.!!! I still reread it when reality thumps me and shakes my peace. Blessings.

Here is what is happening to you:

The main problem women have after leaving pathological men is obtrusive constant thoughts of the relationship and cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously.

The main part of these pathological men is that show up as one thing, but they are something entirely different. This is a disorder of social hiding. This is an individual that is PROFOUNDLY disturbed but looks normal. In a normal relationship you dont have 2 different people to deal with. Here you are breaking up with dark side and the charmer.

What you miss is the charmer. What you broke up with is the dark side (and only true side).

Their disorder is this called the mask of sanity for a reason. They appear normal (better then normal - sweet, charming, handsome) but they are something else all together. These men have known they were different since they were children they are experts at hiding their dark side. If they showed you who they were, you would have gone running into the night screaming.

Here are some examples of what happens in these types of relationships:

You receive both:

bonding and abandonment
loving and loathing
child like vulnerability couple with adult mystique
support and sabotage
fun and then rage
the most wonderful soul mate you could have imagined as well as the sickest relationship you could experience all in one package
calculated and impulsive
idolized and devalued
aloof and super connected
kind and sadistic
capable and helpless

We are ping ponging all over the place.

The above and the below is from Sandra Brown:

Who He Is
Of course, he does not enter a womans life announcing he is a deceitful, pathologically-disordered, power mongrel incapable of
anything more than surface attachment and is so brain-challenged he can not love! They present themselves initially as intensely interested in her, passionately loving, abundantly caring, and almost suffocatingly so.

The illusion is that:

He was normal

He was in love with you

He was what he said he was

And he did what he said he did.

In pathology, thats never the case.

Their attachments are surface (which is not love)

They are mentally disordered (which is not normal)

They never present themselves as disordered/sexually promiscuous/and incapable of love (so he was not what he said he was)

And they harbor hidden lives filled with other sex partners, hook ups, criminality, or illegal/moral behavior (so they dont disclose what he is really up to).

What you had (that you cant possibly miss) is a pathological relationship. What you miss, is the ability to wrap yourself up like a blanket in the illusion to go back to the time before you knew this was all illusion.

I liked the book that Harp Lady recommends but nobody explains this kind of relationship (IMO) better then Sandra Brown, in the book: Women Who Love Psycopaths.

This in essense is dealing with a man who has an attachment disorder. We attach and bond to them, which is why we are left devastated, they have no ability to love, even though they pretend that they do. That is why they have hidden lives (it gives them a thrill) and can discard you like a used kleenex. They were never attached to you to begin wtih.

I think one of the most covertly abusive aspects of the narcissistic relationship is psychological and emotional invalidation. When the narcissist has NO reaction to us at all, it denies our humanity. Makes us feel like were worthless, invisible, unimportant, irrelevant. Its so dispiriting we cant believe its happening and so, we try one more time to see if we can get them to respond. If they dont respond, their silence reinforces the belief that were worthless. This is very similar to what a child feels when a parent neglects them and does not meet their emotional needs.

If the N responds though, we perceive it as validation that were living, breathing, human beings. That we do have impact on others even if it hurts us. Even if the N is angry, at least we feel seen and heard and validated. This is the Hook we feel when ending an abusive relationship. If the N had never acknowledged our existence, we wouldnt get hooked emotionally. The hook is called Intermittent Reinforcement. We had ALL the Ns attention, dedication and admiration at one point, so we KNOW its there. If we can just do things RIGHT, well be rewarded with a response of some kind.

The Ns acknowledgment of our existence temporarily fills an inner void that everyone experiences when an important relationship ends.
The problem with thinking we can earn validation (reward) is that were blaming ourselves for doing something WRONG when were NOT validated. We falsely believe that their invalidation is and was our fault.

Invalidation is one of the most painful cruelties human beings can experience. Going No Contact is all about healing yourself. Its not about making the narcissist miss you so much that he acknowledges your existence with a reply. Wondering why or if hell respond is still giving him too much power to validate your existence!

I know this isnt easy and we all do similar things until we get through this painful grieving period. Ending a relationship is excruciating for n-survivors because we think we found the answers to our self-doubt and self-worth when we met the N. Then suddenly, we find out they didnt even see us as human beings. They loved us like people love KitchenAids.

If we had any esteem issues or doubts about our worth and value, the D&D (devalue and discard) intensifies those feelings. It may take years to overcome a dysfunctional childhood after the N awakens fears we may not have known were there. The first step towards healthy self-reclamation is to let the N go his or her merry way and begin a long journey of self-discovery, initiated by our grief. It sounds like youre feeling the loss right now and its probably overwhelming

Even years later, its unfathomable to me how Ns can pick up and move on as if we never even existed. I will never understand it and I dont have to understand it. All I have to do is ACCEPT it.

Remember, the narcissists lack of attachment says NOTHING about you. All it says is that Ns are incapable of emotional attachment to anyone. They are NOT suffering, though. We are. So even in the darkest of times when you dont think you can tolerate another moment of pain, remind yourself how marvelous it is to Feel and Feel Deeply. Even sorrow.

Every second of their lives they are searching and searching and searching. For something to make the pain and hate they feel about themselves go away. But it aint happening. So they go through woman after woman looking for the perfect love. Find it for the first month or so and then discover this woman has feelings of her own, is not perfect, does not think everything they say and do is right, and ooops, time to move on to the next victim.

I also think narcissists are intent on creating the Image of love and desirability for themselves. As long as they can prove they are sexy or attractive or desirable, they can project fault and blame for the failed relationship on their prior partner(s).

From a review on WWLP by Sandra Brown:

Based off a case study of seventy-five women, Women Who Love Psychopaths is Sandra Browns latest tome dealing with dangerous men, and how to spot them before they can seriously cause damage. The book offers a look inside the minds of psychopaths as well as the minds and emotional traits of the women that tend to be their victims. It also gives an extremely details look at the bonding process these women go through, how their psychopaths were able to hook them and keep them once their pathological behavior starts to rear its ugly head.

What I really like about WWLP is that it gives us a good look at the women (and by extension anyone) who has a tendency to fall for psychopathic personalities and get ensnared in their pathological machinations. It gives us a plethora of red flags to look for in terms of their behavior, which can be useful in identifying pathological personalities at home, at work, or in our social life.

Some choice quotes on the matter:

Interestingly, this is the only major trait that the psychopaths woman shares with the psychopath--the issue of extraversion and excitement seeking. This is the attraction, the hook-up factor, and the issue upon which their dating relationship was based, the exciting extraverted life they both want to live! If you wondered what the first part of their attraction to each other was: here it is! But there is also more to what attracted her and kept them together.

As wonderful as competitiveness is in regular life, her competitiveness however, is a downfall in the relationship with the psychopath. This is because as the relationship begins to become pathologically-driven and his crazy-making increases instead of running for the hills she is likely to stay and battle it out.

Women who love psychopaths tested very high in relationship investment and positive sociability. These are the kinds of women psychopaths like to target. The psychopath uses positive rewards to establish his patterns of power, control, and dominance in a womans life.

If a woman is ending a previous relationship in which she didnt get much affection, hooking up with a psychopath can feel like she has hit the Affection Lotto! At least in the beginning many psychopaths know that to give affection is to increase her sense of attachment, and her corresponding loyalty. Psychopaths see affection as a way of exerting power and dominance over both the relationship and the emotions of their partners

These cooperation traits are her drawing card to a psychopath. Her over-flowing empathy, tolerance, friendliness, compassion, supportiveness and her moral principles are what balance the lopsided scales of the relationship with him, since he lacks these qualities. This delicate balance helps to camouflage the glaring gaps of the character traits between them. Her cooperativeness helps to smooth out the character he doesnt have and makes the relationship seem more normal. We think that very high cooperativeness is the most significant reason these specific women were targeted. Psychopaths instinctively know that women high in cooperativeness will stay in relationships with them longer.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Friendly, cooperative, empathic, loyal, extraverted, tolerant, well-adjusted women are like a gold-mine, literally, for the psychopath. Hell use her strengths against her in order to keep her right where he wants her, while he drains her bank account, emotional vitality and all of the time their psychological and physiological health suffers as a result.

One of the most interesting traits I discovered during the reading was: ..the women in the survey when given the choice between trusting what the psychopath says he has done/not done/or will do, or trusting what she has caught him actually doing, women who love psychopaths will likely choose the words over the actions.

Now thats pretty scary. Were also given info on how he uses sex as a primer, in order to have her bond with him, chemically:

Sex kick-starts the premature bonding process. The touching and sexual stimulation seals the love bond. The stimulation of the vagina and cervix during sex causes the release of the hormones prolactin and oxytocin. These hormones travel to the bonding centers of the brain and produce an emotional and hormonal attachment to the man. The importance of these hormones in female attachment is these are the exact hormones produced in pregnancy and nursing. They are responsible for a womans ability to bond to babies!

The more sex she has with the psychopath, the more these attachment hormones are released, and the more bonded she feels to the psychopath. This isnt merely the cuddling of love making. This is a biochemical process occurring in her body and brain increasing her sense of attachment...but tragically, to a psychopath! These are the hormones of motherhood attachment. Just like motherly love is unconditional, a sexual bond is also unconditional. She will find out just what it will cost her to have this intense unconditional attachment and love bond to a psychopath.

Psychopaths also instinctively know how to induce trance-like states in normal people:

Trance produces perceptual biases. That means if the psychopath is telling her wonderful things and she is euphoric with him, she tends to associate wonderful and euphoric things with the memory of him...even after hes turned into a monster. While in trance, a woman tends to cement what she felt or learned in that state. Thats why its so difficult for women to believe hes a liar, swindler, or cheater

because she learned all the wonderful things about him in trance states that have been cemented in her memory.

Its a chilling read. Later the book has discussions of what the women felt while they were with their psychopath, and how it has affected their lives once theyve managed to break away from them. Most interestingly we are given a step by step explanation of the relationship as it progresses from the initial meet and attraction, subsequent bonding and infatuation to the eventual downward spiral into emotional manipulation, psychological (sometimes physical and sexual) abuse, and financial loss.

Overall Women Who Love Psychopaths is a great book, solely for its look into pathological love relationships, how they get started, their downward trend, and the overall affects on the lives of the non-pathological partner. The stories are real, visceral, and sad and should serve to educate all of us on the warning signs, before we too before another victim.

This book is a lifesaver for anyone who has been through a relationship with a narcissist or sociopath. It explains the biggest questions of all -- how did this happen and why am I still so attached to this person?

As far as I know, this is the first time that the victims in these relationships have been researched, and the results are eye-opening. They largely fit a type -- which is generally a good type, except not in the company of pathological users. The process by which they are drawn into these relationships and how they are compromised and eventually damaged by abusive partners is laid out very clearly.

If youre feeling confused and disoriented by a destructive relationship, wondering whats wrong with you, this is your book. If youre trying to get over one of these relationships (and hating yourself for being too stupid to live), this is your book. And most of all, if youre ready to recover your self-esteem and step onto the path to loving and trusting again, you will be grateful for every word of this outstanding research.

Friendly, cooperative, empathic, loyal, extraverted, tolerant, well-adjusted women

Thank you Susy

I'm sat here with tears in my eyes, reading this has really affected me.

Just to know I'm not weak, mean, stupid etc. I know deep down I'm not all bad, but he has done such a number on me, this has just reminded me of what I knew, and what everyone else has always said I am, but what i have been losing sight of.

I'm not a loser!

Here are some of the passages I found particularly revealing in the book I mentioned:

A commitmentphobic is a man of 2 minds. One wants a good relationship with a woman who loves him. the other views a permanent relationship as a suffocating trap. somehow both of these contradictory points of view will be expressed. Enter a strange world of double messages and contradictory behavior. He can't give a clear yes and he can't say no. He has as much trouble committing to no as he has to yes. He cannot commit to giving the relationship his best shot, but he also cannot commit himself to walking away. Consequently, he chooses not to choose. He vacillates, He goes one way and then he goes another. The commitment phobics specialty is seduction and rejection.
Myth: This man can be changed by the love of a good woman.
Fact: Most of the women he has met have been good women and he has been unkind to all of them. He consistently deals with women in the same way and makes the same mistakes time and time again. And he needs a justification or rationalization to explain why he always need to get out of a relationship. Making a true commitment means making a well-intentioned promise to being responsible, realistic, monogamous, and hard-working in a relationshp and then FOLLOWING THRU on that promise! They often marry, but STILL do not make that kind of commitment. Pattern: when the relationship begins, chances are SHE is not a interested as the man and is won over by the INTENSITY of his interest in HER. The intensity of his interest often seduced her into thinking that she has the upper hand in the relationship. He makes her feel so secure that she tends to ignore the clues and later she is so in love that she excuses or rationalizes his newly emerging contradictory behavior. When she is won over, and things are going well, he begins to panic , either does an abrupt unexplained 180 degree turn, or just slips away, leaving her feeling baffled and betrayed. Be assured that this behavior is NOT a reflection on YOU. He will repeat this pattern with all his relationships. And beware . When he have made his escape and is no longer in a panic about feeling trapped, he will remember his feelings for you, and MISS you. Then he longs to reconnect and will attempt to start the cycle all over again, but inevitibly with the same results. RESIST. Maintain NC, Save yourself! This book helped me, I hope it helps you. Blessings

I used to think my ex was a severe narcissist but after I read, The Sociopath Next Door I “upgraded” him to sociopath status. Is the correct terminology psychopath? For some reason I think of psychopaths as serial killers and sociopaths as the less physically lethal version. Can anyone explain the difference to me? I have got to read Woman Who Love Psychopaths, thanks so much for this recommendation. It’s so validating to have concrete documentation that supports what I always suspected to be the truth. Left to my own devices I would never have been able to conceive that someone could be so empty, dark, and emotionless. I also find it very liberating and empowering to remind myself that nothing he did was ever about me... it was all about him. The responsibility I took for his behavior and feelings was a total waste of my energy. In the future I plan to only "own" my feelings and behavior and allow others to do the same.

Wow. I am headed to the store this afternoon to buy both of these books...one in re my committment phobic xbf, and one in re my xN. Wonderful Holiday reading, eh? I suppose there is one good thing to be said for N's and CP's...they are excellent examples of how NOT to be. These books should be required reading in HS.

Alegria:
The difference between a psychopath and a sociopath is somewhat blurred, at least according to the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM-IV lists both definitions together under the heading of Antisocial Personalities because they share some common traits. Many use the terms sociopathy, psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder (APD) interchangeably. Professionals not only dispute whether there is a difference between a sociopath and a psychopath, but among those that believe there is a difference, there is dispute over what those differences are.

Even those professionals that identify a difference note that the traits of the psychopath and sociopath are largely similar. Both psychopaths and sociopaths have a complete disregard for the feelings and rights of others. This often surfaces by age 15 and may be accompanied by cruelty to animals. These traits are distinct and repetitive, creating a pattern of misbehavior that goes beyond normal adolescent mischief.

Both the psychopath and sociopath fail to feel remorse or guilt. They appear to lack a conscience and are completely self-serving. They routinely disregard rules, social mores and laws, unmindful of putting themselves or others at risk.

Of the more distinguishing traits, some argue the sociopath to be less organized in his or her demeanor, nervous and easily agitated – someone likely living on the fringes of society, without solid or consistent economic support. A sociopath is more likely to spontaneously act out in inappropriate ways without thinking through the consequences.

Conversely, some argue that the psychopath tends to be extremely organized, secretive and manipulative. The outer personality is often charismatic and charming, hiding the real person beneath. Though psychopaths do not feel for others, they can mimic behaviors that make them appear normal. Upon meeting, one would have more of a tendency to trust a psychopath than a sociopath.

Because of the organized personality of the psychopath, he or she might have a tendency to be better educated than the average sociopath, who probably lacks the attentive skills to excel in school. While psychopaths can fly under the radar of society, many maintaining families and steady work, a sociopath more often lacks the skills and drive for mimicking normal behavior, making “seemingly healthy” relationships and a stable home less likely. From a criminal standpoint, a sociopath’s crimes are typically disorganized and spontaneous, while the psychopath’s crimes are well planned out. For this reason, psychopaths are harder to catch than sociopaths, as the sociopath is more apt to leave ample evidence in his or her explosions of violence.

Here is the source link:http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-psychopath-and-a-sociopath.htm

Ugh the human mind is so complex. Like to love and care for someone who is so cruel and uncaring is so unfair. To not be able to rid yourself of the EVIL they caused is even worse.

Thank you all for all your support and encouraging words again whilst im going through this.xoxo