More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
December 26, 2018 - January 3, 2019
you will begin to feel that they actually want you to dump them. They will go out of their way to upset and harm you, and you will know in your heart that they have no interest in continuing the relationship.
they will unload all of the blame on you, making you feel that your self-destructive behavior is what’s really ruining the relationship—not their blatant abuse tactics.
While you’re frantically running around trying to fix things, they will be courting their next target. They may already be sleeping together. And they’ll make sure you suspect it—dropping hints and innuendos until you can’t take it anymore and just explode. Then they’ll use your increasingly volatile behavior as a pity ploy for their next victim. What better way to convince them of your insanity than to present them with your seemingly unprovoked and hysterical text messages?
You will be disgusted when you realize how long you were strung along.
You will realize that they were blatantly ignoring you—not because they were busy with work—but because they were busy in bed.
You will find yourself replaced in a matter of days, watching as their “perfect” life unfolds with someone else. While you were running around desperately trying to repair things, they were already starting up another relationship.
They deemed you “crazy” and “jealous,” gleefully eroding your entire identity as they pranced off with someone else. Psychopaths don’t just break up with their targets—they use breaking up as an opportunity to watch you self-destruct: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
When the psychopath breaks up with you, it will feel nonchalant and disingenuous.
They will talk mostly about themselves and their “feelings”—explaining that they just can’t go on like this anymore. You will remain paralyzed and numb throughout the conversation.
They will appear both pitiful (of you) and oddly cheerful.
You will leave the breakup feeling nothing but emptiness. I cannot describe this feeling as depression, because it is worse than that. In this moment, you will feel that your spirit has died.
Everything that comes out of a psychopath’s mouth is manufactured garbage.
Once you start to understand how this cycle works, you will realize that you have not lost your soul mate at all. While they continue this cycle forever, you begin a new adventure, free from the never-ending lies and mind games of the soulless.
A few days after the breakup, they’re posting pictures of themselves with someone else. Someone you’ve never seen before. They make no effort to hide their latest conquest. In fact, it feels like they’re showing the new target off. They feel no embarrassment and no guilt.
While you were written off as the crazy ex, the next target was already preparing to take your place. The psychopath’s fan club cheers for them, clapping louder than ever before—their hero has found the (latest) love of his or her life.
And remember how they gave you the silent treatment for entire days at the end of your relationship? Well, they still expect prompt responses from you—otherwise you’re labeled bitter and jealous.
Psychopaths, narcissists, and sociopaths are experts at flattery and charm.
you continue your desperate attempts to save the relationship. You find yourself crying, pleading, and denying reality. This person has become your entire life.
You are not crazy. You’re not bipolar, insane, hypersensitive, jealous, or needy. You’re a survivor of emotional abuse—and you can escape this trap.
The psychopath presents an image of their new relationship that seems flawless, like a fairy tale. Before you know it, they’ve adopted someone else’s dreams, likes, and dislikes. They’re both flaunting the new relationship before the entire world, not even a hint of shame or guilt for the fact that you were essentially swapped out in a matter of days.
there is never a happy ending with a psychopath.
All this idealization they’re doing to someone else serves two simple purposes: (1) to groom the new target into a reliable source of attention and affection, and (2) to make you feel jealous and worthless by showering someone else with more love than they gave to you.
You were starting to question their lies, stand up for yourself, and dig into the truth. And because of that, you were punished.
the point of this book is to help you understand that you are good enough—that there was nothing you could have done differently. When it comes to psychopathic relationships, the abusive partner’s behavior and choices have nothing to do with your best qualities. If anything, they train you to repress these qualities.
Most survivors find that they feel physically sick when they check in on their ex’s new relationship—their heart goes into their throat and they can’t even breathe right.
There is no need to wonder if they’ve somehow found true happiness without you. Anyone who treated you with such venom and contempt is not capable of suddenly loving another human being.
In most cases, psychopaths are obsessed with making sure that they break up with their victims. This is a sign of power and control.
You’ve never felt so worthless in your life.
They see you as less submissive, less controllable, and less vulnerable than their new target. When they dump you and rub the other partner in your face, they’re not proving how happy they are; they’re trying to erode your self-esteem so that they can convince themselves that you’re worse than their new conquest.
When psychopaths triangulate you and post new pictures for the world to see, they’re not happy. They’re miserably and pathetically trying to convince themselves of a lie by manufacturing your downfall. They’re complimenting you in their obsession with your failure.
“God, you overanalyze everything”? Strange how your supposed overanalyzing was always a result of their cheating, lying, and triangulating.
When they punish you for pointing out their lies, they are once again complimenting you. By trying to destroy your sanity and intuition, they are telling you that these qualities of yours are currently too strong. They recognize these traits and try to convince you that they are weaknesses—ensuring that you won’t rely on them anymore. If a psychopath accuses you of overanalyzing everything, it just means you’re a good detective.
Psychopaths love to build people up in the idealization phase, but then they resent the happiness and love generated by their partners.
They make you feel unhinged and anxious, shattering all of the confidence that they built up.
after they’ve tricked someone into falling in love with them, they suddenly find themselves in a strange predicament. Their victim loves them and wants to foster a greater emotional connection. The psychopath gets bored and uncomfortable with this very quickly.
the grand finale will often be about the victim being crazy, bipolar, or hysterical. Again, these are all a flattering way of saying: “Hey, you have a heart.” But the psychopath hates things they do not understand, so they seek to destroy you.
when they punish you, they’re actually giving quite a tribute to the things you probably care about most.
It’s twisted and manipulative, because they convince you to doubt your greatest qualities—but
the recovery process will be the same when it comes to a psychopathic encounter. It takes twelve to twenty-four months to get your heart back in a good place, and even then, you might have tough days.
With time, you will begin to find moments of happiness, contentment, and hope.
You will be unable to believe that you were ever caught up in such a frenzied panic, hooked by someone who mirrored your personality and then triangulated you against others. Your heart and mind have better things to focus on—namely, your own self-respect and happiness.
The empathetic spirit never dies. It is always with you, and it will return in a new and beautiful form when it is ready.
Yes, your personality was mirrored and your dreams manipulated. But you were in love. Love is the strongest human emotion and bond in the world, and you felt it with all your heart. It is always painful to lose someone you loved—someone you planned to be with for the rest of your life. The human spirit must heal from these love losses. Regardless of your abuser’s intentions, your love was still very real.
Psychopaths manufacture desperation and desire. You probably worked harder for this relationship than any other, right? You put more time, energy, and thought into it than ever before. And in turn, you were rewarded with the nastiest, most painful experience of your life.
Everything you did was perfect to them. This made you elated, unaware that they were preparing you for the identity erosion.
By keeping them on your mind at all times, you fell into a state of desperate love. This is unhealthy, and not a sign that the person you feel so strongly about is actually worthy of your love. Your mind convinces you that if you feel so powerfully, then they must be the only person who will ever make you feel that way. And when you lose that person, your world completely falls apart. You enter a state of panic and devastation.
After they first adored you in every way, you let down your guard and began to place your self-worth in them. Your happiness started to depend on their opinion of you.
Like a drug, the psychopath offers you this feeling in full force at the beginning. But once you become reliant on it, they begin to pull back. Slowly, you need more and more to feel that same high. You do everything you can to hang on to it, while they’re doing everything in their power to keep you starving for their love and approval.
Infidelity leaves long-lasting insecurities and feelings of never being good enough. It leaves you constantly comparing yourself to others.
During the relationship, you tried to be compassionate, easygoing, and forgiving. You never could have known that the person you loved was actively using these things against you.
