Getting over a relationship with a sociopath can be extremely challenging. Sociopaths, who are also known as psychopaths or those with anti-social personality disorder, can cause immense emotional trauma through their manipulation, lies, and complete lack of empathy. Recovering from the aftermath of a relationship with a sociopath is difficult for many reasons.
They are master manipulators
One of the main reasons it is so hard to get over a sociopath is that they are masters at manipulation. Sociopaths are often incredibly charming when you first meet them. They know how to make a great first impression and say all the right things to draw you in. Once in a relationship, they use manipulation tactics to keep you under their spell. Some of their common manipulation tactics include:
- Love bombing – Showering you with flattery, gifts, and nonstop communication at the beginning of the relationship to get you addicted to them.
- Gaslighting – Making you question your own sanity and perception of reality by denying their behavior.
- Triangulation – Introducing another person into the dynamic to make you jealous.
- Isolation – Trying to cut you off from friends and family so only they can influence you.
- Blame shifting – Whenever something goes wrong, it’s somehow your fault.
You don’t realize you are being manipulated because it is often subtle. The mind games sociopaths play can leave you confused and depleted. Once they have sink their hooks in with their manipulation tactics, it becomes extremely difficult to break free psychologically. The effects can linger even after the relationship ends.
They are pathological liars
Another reason it’s so hard to recover from a sociopath is that they lie pathologically. Sociopaths have no regard for the truth. They will look you in the eye and lie about things big and small without thinking twice. When you first notice them lying, you may think it was a one off thing they did because they were scared of your reaction to the truth. But eventually, you realize the lying is nonstop.
Some of the ways sociopaths lie include:
- Lying by omission – leaving out key details
- Exaggeration – stretching the truth
- Fabrication – making up entire stories
- Blame shifting – saying others did things they are responsible for
When you are lied to constantly, it creates chaos and confusion. You can’t trust your own judgement anymore and don’t know what is real. The cognitive dissonance this creates can make it extremely difficult to move on, even after seeing the true false nature of the sociopath. The inclination is to still give them the benefit of the doubt.
Their charm hooks you
Sociopaths can be incredibly charming, especially when you first meet them. They shower you with flattery and give you excessive attention. This is done intentionally to make you addicted to their validation.
Some of the charming tactics sociopaths employ include:
- Love bombing – Over-the-top displays of affection and constant communication.
- Mirroring – Mimicking your interests, opinions, and body language.
- Idealization – Putting you on a pedestal and telling you you’re perfect.
- Triangulation – Making you compete for their attention.
You fall deeply under their spell with their charm. Even after seeing other sides to them, it’s hard not to crave that initial idealization they made you feel. It makes it very challenging to cut ties for good. You hold on to hopes that they will go back to treating you the way they did in the beginning.
They prey on your vulnerabilities
Sociopaths have a knack for identifying people’s vulnerabilities and exploiting them. If you have a history of abuse, insecure attachment style, low self-esteem or other vulnerabilities, they will find your weak spots. Once they know how to push your buttons, they use it to their advantage.
Some ways they exploit vulnerabilities include:
- Withholding affection at strategic times then giving you crumbs of attention.
- Saying you’re too sensitive when you react to their abuse.
- Telling you no one else would put up with you.
- Humiliating you privately or in front of others.
This kind of targeted emotional abuse is very hard to process and recover from. You are left feeling bad about yourself and wondering if they are right – that you are unlovable. It’s extremely difficult not to internalize their cruel words. Those vulnerabilities they exploited do not quickly fade once the relationship ends.
Their lack of empathy keeps you bonded
A key trait of sociopaths is a complete lack of empathy and remorse. Even when they see you hurting because of something they’ve done, they feel no compassion. They trivialize your pain, make jokes, and tell you to get over it.
This lack of empathy leads to bonding you tighter to them in these ways:
- When they occasionally show you any kindness, you cling to it.
- You overcompensate and excessively take care of their needs.
- You keep trying to get a genuine empathetic response from them.
- You blame yourself for their lack of empathy and try to win their empathy.
Their coldness and neglect creates an addiction inside you to get their validation. The less empathy they show, the more obsessed you become with getting closeness. It’s very hard to break this trauma bond.
You experience a rollercoaster of emotions
One of the hallmark signs of being with a sociopath is the constant rollercoaster of emotions they put you through. There is often a pattern to how it goes:
- Love bombing in the beginning
- Pulling away and mixed messages
- Full devaluation
- Partial hoovering and short-lived kindness
This emotional chaos keeps you hooked in and trying to hold on to the good parts:
- Just when you’re ready to leave, they bomber you with affection again.
- The highs of love bombing are intoxicating.
- You’re driven to get them back when they pull away.
- Eachdiscard leaves you wanting closure.
Recovering from this kind rollercoaster that was intentionally created is extremely challenging. You have to go through a major detox period for your emotions and nervous system. The unpleasant withdrawal keeps many stuck in the cycle for far too long.
You experience cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance plays a big role in why it’s hard to get over a sociopath. Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that arises from holding two conflicting beliefs or perceptions about someone. For example:
- “They were so sweet in the beginning.”
- “But they are being so cruel now.”
Sociopaths intentionally create this push-pull dynamic. You have trouble integrating the good and bad you experienced from them into one cohesive picture. Other examples of the cognitive dissonance they fuel include:
- “They said they love me, but their actions show otherwise.”
- “They apologized for hurting me, but then did it again.”
This internal clash leaves you doubting yourself and trying to reduce discomfort by rationalizing their behavior. The cognitive dissonance keeps you bonded as you try to reconcile their Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde qualities.
You self-sabotage the healing process
Although everyone is responsible for their own healing, it’s common to self-sabotage and delay the recovery process after dating a sociopath. Some of the ways this self-sabotage shows up include:
- Wanting to stay friends with the sociopath.
- Romanticizing the good parts of the relationship.
- Trying to get closure by reaching out to them.
- Ruminating on what you could have done differently.
- Isolating yourself and not talking to others about what happened.
- Letting shame prevent you from getting help.
Until you cut ties completely and stop trying to get the sociopath to take accountability, create change, or give you closure, the self-sabotage will continue. Their endless manipulation ends up manipulating you into manipulating yourself without even realizing it.
You feel addicted to them
The psychological manipulation, love bombing, emotional rollercoaster, and cognitive dissonance sociopaths create in a relationship literally alters your brain chemistry. You become addicted to them through trauma bonding. Your body releases hormones like oxytocin, dopamine, cortisol and adrenaline that make you crave being with the sociopath.
Recovering from this addiction and breaking the trauma bond can be extremely difficult. You have to go through withdrawal to remove their emotional hooks from you. Some of the withdrawal symptoms you may experience include:
- Mood swings
- Insomnia
- Changes in appetite
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Obsessive thoughts about them
The discomfort of the withdrawal keeps many people stuck in the cycle far too long. But cutting off all contact is the only way to start reducing those addictive bonding hormones and rebalancing your system.
You feel obligated to help them
A common pattern with sociopaths is they often play the victim. Despite their own cruel behavior, somehow they have endless stories of ways they have been wronged by others or extenuating circumstances you are expected to sympathize with. Their victim mentality traps you in a rescuer role.
You may feel obligated to help them in these ways:
- Financially supporting them if they lose their job.
- Defending them if others point out their toxic behavior.
- Helping them seek counseling or therapy.
- Sticking around because you know they will be alone without you.
This sense of obligation and caretaking is hard to shake. You feel guilty abandoning them when they claim you’re their only support system But this just enables them to keep using their victimhood to manipulate you.
You still crave their approval
Despite the torment sociopaths put you through, they still managed to hook you into craving their validation and approval. You may still long for any little breadcrumb of affection from them. Some reasons for this include:
- It makes you feel you have value if someone toxic still wants you.
- You want a genuine apology from them to heal.
- You hope proving your worth will change their behavior.
- You wish to regain the affection they first showed you.
But continuing to seek their approval will only lead to more mind games. Their validation becomes like a drug you can’t quit cold turkey because the withdrawal is too difficult to endure.
You suffer from trauma bonding
Trauma bonding occurs when the abuse in a relationship leads to powerful biochemical and emotional bonds that are difficult to sever. You become addicted to the sociopath despite the pain they cause you. Some ways this trauma bonding happens include:
- The excitement of the honeymoon phase creates addiction.
- Their periodic kindness gives you hope.
- You become obsessed with changing them.
- Their abuse leads to depression and dependency.
Stockholm syndrome is an extreme form of trauma bonding with hostage-like dynamics. The trauma bonding that any sociopathic relationship creates can be extremely challenging to undo, even after total separation.
You blame yourself
Sociopaths are masters at blame shifting and evading accountability. A byproduct of their manipulation is you end up blaming yourself for most things that went wrong. Even though they mistreated you, you rack your brain for ways you could have prevented it by changing your own behavior.
You may blame yourself in these ways:
- Believing you must have triggered their anger or cruelty.
- Thinking you should have recognized their sociopathy sooner.
- Feeling you deserved the abuse due to your flaws.
- Assuming you could have gotten them to change if you did more.
Blaming yourself leads to enormous guilt, shame, and feelings of failure that hinder healing. It often takes professional counseling to finally put the blame fully on them where it belongs.
You have PTSD-like symptoms
Being in a relationship with a sociopath is a form of chronic psychological abuse. Many people coming out of these relationships have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms such as:
- Insomnia and nightmares
- Flashbacks
- Hypervigilance
- Panic attacks
- Intrusive thoughts
- Avoidance
- Emotional numbness
These PTSD symptoms are often severe when escaping a sociopath because you were essentially living in a war zone. The psychological fallout doesn’t quickly subside just because the relationship ended. Without counseling, the PTSD can impair daily functioning for years.
You fear guilt by association
When you have started telling trusted friends and family about the sociopath’s disturbing behavior, you may have gotten less than supportive reactions. Rather than recognize the abuse, some may accuse you of exaggerating or question why you stayed so long if it was that bad.
These invalidating responses stem from people’s fear of guilt by association. They would rather distance themselves from the unpleasant notion that they were once tricked by the sociopath’s façade too. It’s easier to blame you than to face their own discomfort.
This lack of support often deters people from opening up further about what happened. You may start to isolate yourself out of fear of being blamed or abandoned in your time of need. But this secrecy only makes healing harder.
You struggle to trust your judgement
When you have been lied to, manipulated, and deceived for so long, it creates profound self-doubt in your ability to judge others’ character and motives accurately. You start second-guessing your initial good impressions of people. You feel like your “sociopath detector” is broken.
This loss of confidence in your own judgement makes it very difficult to enter healthy relationships. Some ways this trust deficit shows up include:
- You look for red flags that don’t exist in nice people.
- You distrust acts of kindness from others.
- You isolate yourself to avoid being tricked again.
- You struggle to speak up when boundaries are crossed.
It takes a long time in therapy to rebuild your ability to trust yourself and see others clearly again. That damaged self-trust is an enormous barrier to healing.
You feel intense shame
The tactics sociopaths use often lead to profound feelings of shame in their victims once the manipulation is exposed. This shame can stem from:
- Feeling like a fool for being so deceived.
- Blaming yourself for not seeing the red flags sooner.
- Being embarrassed by compromising your values.
- Disgust with yourself for putting up with the abuse.
- Humiliation for being exploited financially or sexually.
This shame leads victims to stay silent about what happened. They feel too humiliated to tell even close friends and family. Speaking about it makes you feel exposed. The inhibition caused by shame slows down progress greatly.
Conclusion
As this article illuminates, recovering from a relationship with a sociopath is a challenging process due to their damaging and multifaceted manipulation tactics. From an emotional addiction to self-blame to loss of self-trust, the wounds penetrate deep into the psyche. With professional support, EMDR therapy, No Contact, and time, you can fully heal and regain capacity for healthy love. But be patient and compassionate with yourself. The road is long, but the joy you’ll feel making it to the other side will be immense.