I_will_be_okCasual Contributor
Feeling so isolated
I've just come out of a 5 year relationship that isolated me from family and friends. He was a romance scammer. Please don't tell me I was stupid. I'm extremely intelligent and he was the most amazing fake I've ever known. If you haven't been through it you wouldn't understand. These "people" are hunters. They are cunning and have no conscience.
I have no support. I can't talk to family and friends about it. I can't talk to anyone about it.
I feel so alone. I've lost everything I ever had.
I spoke to a couple of people about it and one actually laughed at me and others told me I'm stupid. So I'm not talking to anyone about it again. I saw a financial counsellor who kept harping on about wanting to know why I did it. In the end I had to say does it make any difference? It happened, that's all you need to know.
Just writing about it makes me have heart palpitations.
He took my past, my present and my future.
I refuse to allow it to destroy me.
But I'm so alone. I thought I'd engage a psychologist but it's no help. He's self obsessed. He takes over when I say something and gives an example from his life even though I only made a brief comment with no full explanation. So I feel very frustrated.
Part of what I need to do is to not be so empathic. People pick up on it when you are and if they are users they'll use you. So some of my work is to learn when to create and enforce boundaries. He has totally missed the point. I gave an example that I am working through that and didn't accept someone's bad behaviour (not the psychologist's) and he said quite strongly that I was refusing to look at it from that person's viewpoint. I couldn't believe it so I was being told that I was wrong. I said I didn't accept their behaviour because they were rude and shouted at me. It was good that I didn't accept being treated badly. He again said that I need to learn to see others' viewpoints. This is what I always do and I get trodden on. I'm looking for another psychologist but it's so hard to reach out to a professional and get a response that's so off base. They were completely overlooking what I've been going through and keep missing the point.
I need some support.
The scammer is a narcissistic sociopath so I have that part to recover from as well. There are so many layers to this and so much to work through and with no-one that I can open up to its really tough. I had a horrible 15 year marriage to an abuser so I've never had a good relationship.