[quote=AwarenessMonk]asearcher, you think you learnt anything from your experience with a psychopath?

I'm glad you feel you learnt something. As for me, once I began to heal, to come out in the world again and see the humanity, the warmth (despite all of our faults) - that was such a blessing. The little things I had taken for granted before. To be a psychopath's girlfriend was very confusing, and it was very cold, there were lots of people around us - and still I was all alone. I did not connect to people anymore the way I used to. I had pushed myself over my limits and it was beginning to show. I was so tired but I could not sleep. I did not have the strength to get out of my situation and so when he gave me yet another proof of just the psychopath he was, it too gave me - what then felt like - my one way out. I knew then he had never loved me, and that was OK but what was not OK was the ways he had used to break me down.

From that experience I can spot abuse with others, when other's don't see it, I can understand it on a completely different level having lived through it even if I have to say I was lucky too, I was not beaten, he did not show sadism around me. He did once force himself on me, but it had began willingly, and I think his plan, purpose to do that was to in pregnant me. He was not stupid, that was the thing. I think he was most definitely intelligent. He had pre decided my role, and as such I was more protected because of it. He had watched me for a long time before and knew things about me, some I don't know how. I don't think he was built to be in a mutual, serious relationship, just because he couldn't, but I think he wanted to fake it, as I think people were starting to wonder why he was still single. I think he wanted me, and the baby, to be part of his presentation of him, representing him as normal. I doubt very much so he had any normal longing for a baby or had any plans to care for the baby. Financially he would have, financially he wanted and insisted and would have I think cared for me - but it would be all about him. Him being successful enough to do so. To impress other people. To make me more vulnerable. I had explained to him all about it that it was not a good time for us to have a baby, it did not matter, to him it was - and because he wanted that he did not care what I wanted. I most definitely did not want that as I wanted and planned to stand on my own two feet. As the relationship kept getting more strange last thing I wanted was a baby.

I think I learned if I did not know it already just how superficial some people are and what they think is happiness is in material things, and safety, and power. He had bought me jewelry and I did not dare to take it off. My family would later say, after the break up, that they would by accident find that from him, as I had taken it off me, in all sorts of strange places, one in a glove department, another in the trash - and them wanting to save it as one could get money from it. I have no memory of this. I remember going from one room to the next without a clue what I was doing. I just couldn't sleep.

What I find remarkable is that even if I used my free will to escape one destiny, it was reborn in another way, and in such that I could not escape, this time it was a narcissist (not a romantic tie). Perhaps it had not yet run it's course, and simply went ahead to do so even if I was running from it.