Comments on “Psychologist’s Description of “The Loser” in Relationships Rings True”
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89 Responses to “Psychologist’s Description of “The Loser” in Relationships Rings True”
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Barbara30
When I found your article yesterday it seemed for the first time I realised all my suspicions were right and I felt sad and empowered at the same time. I sat with a friend all afternoon and discussed the situations Ive been through which up til now, I was racking my brains to solve…I thought I was going crazy, I was avoiding any issues, places, people that might ignite discontent, I brought him to the doctors office so he might realise how nuts I was going (chronic depression) and yet I still ask myself right this minute, if I am being mean to him and can I be ok without him. I am 34, what if I dont meet anyone else to have kids with….should I try one last time….should i try to get him to visit a councellor with me…but when I talk to him about his agression or crazy way of thinking the conversation gets so confusing I cant get him to see my side…..
Can you please give me some advise as I am literally in the transitional phase and freiking out….I feel I have a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other and I as lost….One minute I am happy I am pushing him away and I have done most of the things you suggested regarding the whole depression , I need time to myself thing…which is good…but still I am trying to figure out of his erruptions and extreme anti social behaviour can be muted in time…we have been together 1.5 years and the last 8 months have been like a roller coaster that he is driving…. -
29
Dear Star, “Without selling out”? Your fights have turned into a competition. What began as probably poor marital discussion strategies like yelling and screaming has now evolved into a tremendous amount of anger, resentment, and bitterness. Those feelings kill sexual intimacy, building more resentment - and the cycle continues. The longer it goes, the worse it becomes. No one will sell out, back down, or make a deal. Both of you are engaging in one-up-manship in these discussions to the point that everyone is acting pretty violent and mean. This behavior will burn out both of you and the children as well.
Some tips: 1) Marital counseling would be helpful although the resentment may be too high as this time. 2) Learn to recognize the early behavioral signs of an fight in the making - loud voice, cursing, tension, etc. Act to calm things down at that point. Once the chemistry of anger kicks in, stopping things are difficult. 3) If you are discussing things for over ten minutes - you’ve lost the original discussion! You can decide to buy a car in less than ten minutes. Over ten means you’re rehashing old wounds/hurts, moved to being mean, and lost the focus. 4) Talk to make a decision - not prove a point. 5) When one person talks too long, they build up anger and cursing or hits to wall begin. Discuss things using an egg timer - each person gets to talk for one minute, then it’s the other person’s turn. That keeps anger down and keeps people from getting “on a roll”. 6) Allow each other to walk away. Too often in martial discussions nobody breaks off the angry discussion until there’s a hole in the wall or somebody is called a very bad name. Violence and name calling are often a “fight ender”. Kids use the “I wish I was never born” when parents correct them for the same purpose - to end the discussion. Allow each other to walk off and get back together later.
Keep in mind that both of you are miserable about this situation. Focus on the need to make the home more peaceful, then focus on making your discussions nasty-free. Hope this reply helps. Dr. Carver -
28
Dear Tasha, After such a long period of emotional abuse, you are dealing with the loss of the relationship and the hopes/plans that went it. You are also emotionally exhausted and depressed. In abusive relationships, the victim is often so beaten-down that they lack the energy to escape or leave.
I would recommend counseling as well as treatment for your depression. You will need to rebuild your self-esteem as well as create a new identity. When our partner is narcissistic, we are not allowed to have our own identity - our own dreams or our own personality. Rather, we are the “partner of” the narcissistic individual. You need to explore who you are and rebuild your life.
I would also recommend reading my article on Love and Stockholm Syndrome on this website. It describes how we become stuck in abusive relationships. Dr. Carver -
star27
I’ve been married for twenty years to a man who I feel I am like oil and vinegar with. We’ve had no issues of infidelity, lack of trust, drugs/alcohol, and still laugh a lot during the good times. 90% of it has been wonderful, but the 10% bad has been horrific. I’ve had two long term relationships prior to my marriage, and in those, never had an “unfair” fight with verbal slinging and never physical intimidation or violence. Never experienced it either growing up. I’ve changed after living 20 years with a person who has said very mean things during verbal arguments, punched a few walls, broke a couple of windows, drove erratically now and then, scared me, and said horrible things to me in private and in front of our children as they were growing up, and blamed me for all of it. I know you say that somebody cannot bring out anger in you, buy I had no track record of speaking mean or fighting in relationships prior to this man. And, as far as I know, neither did he. Both of us have big families, lots of friends, and are still closely connected with all our relatives and friends. I was never willing to leave, so I fought back and gave him back everything he dished out and became somebody I didn’t recognize. Not productive I know, and can’t say I’d do it all again. There is too much water under the bridge to discuss what our fights were about, becauase I have finally learned it isn’t about the source, but about the tactics he used. I adopted those tactics to fight back, so, over the last 10 years, I’m as equally guilty as he is. We have no intimacy because whenever I have tried to re-connect that way, we will ultimately, down the road, have a fight and he will use the same tactics to hurt me again. I feel completely violated when he touches me, although he has never been anything but kind and gentle in this area. He is craving intimacy and I find it impossible to reciprocate. I miss my old self, and I especially am angry at him putting me down for being such a sexual dud, when I feel he is the one who killed the fire. I am far from perfect in this mess, but I’m feeling very guilty about the situations we’ve exposed our older children to, and still have one left to raise. I have tried counselling; he will generally make fun of that or get mad because he senses somebody agrees with me. I told him to pick a counsellor and I’ll go. He hasn’t done that. In the last two years, our fights typically involve me shutting down after he violates our contract of not using profanity or kicking/punching anything, and I will go weeks without talking to him. He knows he is wrong so he leaves me alone until I talk again. So, how do I change back to the person I want to be, and how do I prevent these arguments without selling out..by that I mean avoiding things I want to discuss or any confrontation.
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Tasha26
I parted from my loser 2 weeks after an on-off 17 year relationship. I am struggling to cope and quite tearful. My loser is 10 years old than I and in an authoritative work position and high earner.
My ex-partner is reknown for his fearful intimidating temper at work and openly says that no one will ever mess with him. He colleagues are afraid of him.
We first went out together and lived together for a year which was the worst year of my life. He treated my like a lodger and totally acted as if I did exist and he was completely single. In fact, at a function, at my first meeting of two of his colleagues they told me the best thing I could do was to leave him. As soon as I said I was going to leave, he found someone else, he became totally verbally abusive and occasionally violent towards me. I have no support from my family and then had lost all my friends. He had promised from the start before I lived with him that if it did not work out he would help me financially to start again. Guess what, he refused point blank to give me a penny. I had moved to a different city to be with him and I had start again with no help or money and totally on my own.
We were apart for 6 years. I don’t know why but he was always in my thoughts and because we had not parted properly, I was never able to close the door on my relationship with him even though he was with someone else. We met up again after 6 years when he had been dumped by the lady he left me for the first time round. I had forgotten how self-focused and self-obsessed he was, nothing I did was of any importance and he told me I should be grateful to be with him. He is a high earner and told me that I would never leave him and I would like the lifestyle too much.
He became obsessed with his ex-partner who had dumped him for someone else and after a while I thought he was trying to her back and he became totally abusive and one evening frightened me so much I had to get away there and then. We didn’t speak for several months until he got in touch again. At first it was okay then he started being self-obsessed and it was just he who mattered. He started putting me down to his work colleagues who he delighted in informing me called me names such as ‘fruitcake’ and started putting me down in front of his friends and relatives.
It wasn’t until we went away for the weekend with another couple and he started acting up, they told him straight away that he was always bullying me, treated me like a child and always going on about his ex-girlfriends in front of me and that he was unreasonable. Even after this, when he was supposed to be making it up to, behind their backs he was cursing and being emotionally abusive to me.
The last 6 months have been very difficult. He has no interest in me or my life - in fact, at one stage he said he no longer wanted to see me because I ‘depressed’ him with my problems when I was having a very difficult time at work. Yet I had always supported him.
The last straw was when we went on holiday recently - the place was beautiful but without warning one evening he started emotionally abusing me in a restaurant and when I tried to reason with him, he totally blanked me and said ‘you know what yuo have done’. The same thing happened a few days later when he made another show in the restaurant and humiliated me. He later terrified me when I tried to leave the room and pinned against the wall whilst emotionally abusive to me. He has totally refused to believe he has done anything wrong.
I told him I wanted some time apart and the following week I contacted him to say I didn’t think I could carry on. He said that we had both tried and goodbye - no I love you and you are the love of my life or apology - just disregarded. A week later I rang him and he was with another woman.
I feel like I have meant nothing, I have given this man 17 years of my life, and for what. I obviously instantly forgettable and worthless to him. I feel so so hurt. Please tell me what I can do to make myself feel better and get over this.
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Mack25
Dr. Carver — that “moneychangers” analogy was awesome: I’m gonna have to quote you on it! :-)
And, like others have said, thanks for continuing to answer questions from all of us about this, about how to interpret and apply. I’m learning about as much from your responses to others as I did from the initial articles (I even just had another “bingo” moment from your response to Cindy). Thanks a lot.
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JJ24
Thank you Dr. Carver for your insights. They are very helpful.
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23
Dear Cindy, It’s a long post because you’ve been through a lot. Your post is a real-life example of what I describe in my articles.
As you describe, Losers and controllers always try to keep ex-partners on “back burner” - in a hazy, vague relationship - for their future benefit. He’s comfortable having you on back burner for many years - always professing his love yet always doing what he always does - manipulate, lie, cheat, etc.
In life, we receive information about people from two major sources - what they say and what they do. When both match, we have an honest individual. When there is a large gap between what a person says and how they behave, then we have a social con-artist and/or irresponsible individual. A partner who professes love when they are in your presence - then has other lovers - is telling you he/she only loves you when you’re around. They are telling the other folks the same thing.
You can detach from this situation. As I recommend, you can develop an exit plan that involves a gradual detachment now that you realize the situation will never change.
Dr. Carver -
Cindy22
I read the article about Stockholm syndrome. I originally searched on the Internet for “escaping an controlling relationship” and thankfully I clicked on the right link. I read that and things about the “Loser”. What is disgusting is that I don’t even want to refer to my ex as the “Loser” and it hurts to even say that is what he is. I want to defend his good “attributes” just as I have always tried to do. I am so paranoid about him seeing that I am referring to him as a loser that I am afraid to post this but oh well. He actually had put a keystroke logger on my computer which he might have put back on here cause I am the idiot that gave him a key to my apartment and car and I have never taken it back. Basically I left my ex husband for him, he was supposedly leavings his first wife for me but she died from cancer. We had been living together for a couple months when she passed away and his boys came to live with us. I got pregnant on accident but she is a blessing. So, I knew he had cheated on his first wife many times before but I thought “I” was different since he made me think so. I had cheated on my husband many times before which I am not proud of and believe it or not as many times as I cheated on my first husband…I have not once cheated on my current ex the entire time we were married or even the year since he divorced. I felt kind of stupid when I went in for my yearly and said to the doctor that I wanted him to check me for STD’s and I had to kind of explain that just because I am monogamous with my ex, he is not monogamous with me. So, he cheated on me with 6 or 7 or 8 women, something like that or probably more that I don’t know about. Every time I caught him he would apologize, after all he always came home to me and he never wanted to hurt me. We have been together 8 years, we were married for 7. It might be 9 years this fall we have been together. I almost don’t know anything different it seems. My first marriage seems distant and so far away that I can’t remember how my first husband treated me, but it was nothing like this yet I left him. What seems strange is that my current ex left ME. I begged and I pleaded with him not to leave me. But he felt like he had hurt me enough and that he couldn’t stop cheating and didn’t want to hurt me anymore. For a while I was the one who refused to give up on “us” and I just knew I could change him. That he would overcome his childhood suddenly, after all he did come from an alcoholic father. Tonight before I read about the Stockholm syndrome I said to him on the phone “I know you are hurting and I see a hurt person” and his response was “but you don’t love me enough to see past it”. He has been seeing another woman this entire past year we have been divorced but the entire time he was telling me that while he had done so many things wrong the first time around he wanted to start over with me. Well, I knew about this woman but he had me convinced he wasn’t seeing her (and she lives around the corner from me). I was so hurt and who knows why since it’s happened so many times before. But once again it was “I love you and want to work things out with you and she means nothing”. However, I haven’t really seen much improvement cause basically he has not ended it with her even though he keeps telling me he is going to. I just found out yesterday that a trip that he went on he told me was for a college course but it was really with this other woman. When I read the loser tries to control maybe by buying a new car or something. We were actually at the car dealership when he said we might need to use my income, then I found the old itenerary in the car from the trip he went on a month ago with this woman. Wow, and I am shocked? Why? I read all about the “loser” and I know why. I read about the Stockholm syndrome and things make more sense. Today was the first day in our entire relationship that I have denied him by not talking to him as much and he was so upset with me that I think he made up and emergency call to get me to talk to him. I have fallen so many times for what he told me and now this other woman is falling for it but instead of trying to “win” him back for myself I feel like she can have him. But of course the more I push away from him the more he hangs on. He even tells me I am only “his” and nobody else will love me like he does. That he won’t accept that this relationship is over because he loves me so much. I still have big worries, like he is going to hurt me in a “fit” of passion or that he is going to use things to make our 6 year old daughter feel horrible. As it is she is constantly telling me that she wants me and Daddy to get back together. Or that he will hurt himself as I sit here worried because I haven’t heard from him in the last hour and a half. I am afraid of a lot of things. I read about how to handle it better. Like not making him feel like it’s all his fault cause I am realizing that makes it worse. One moment he turns his cheating into my fault to the next minute telling me he loves me and he is so sorry for the horrible person he is. He is the best gift giver, the best at saying sorry, the best at making me feel like a million bucks in the bedroom and all the while he has been with other women. It has finally reached a point that I just don’t understand this complicated relationship. Why in the world would I want to stay with someone who does this to me? You would think it was easy, after all, he left me…I had to get a job, get a place of my own, etc. I am independent in a way and so totally emotionally dependant on him. Divorced and still trapped. All I know is this relationship is not healthy and I am trying to find a way to escape it with my sanity in tact. I am drained. I am tired of being sick and tired of a sick relationship. I know he is the controller and I am the one who lets him control but it’s hard to give up yet I know I have to.
I read the previous post where she said he would eat take out because what she made was not good enough. I totally can relate to that. He still tells me I never good cooked good enough. I have never been thin enough. I never wore enough make up. I didn’t clean the house good enough. I didn’t fold his shirts good enough, etc. Down to the most minute things and I know I have felt so worthless with him yet the next moment I mean the world to him. Very confusing. I always tried to better to win him over. If I was just a little thinner, cooked his favorite meal, bought him what he wanted, or cleaned the house to perfection that just maybe it was going to be enough to win him over. Being out on my own, as much as I didn’t want to do it, has been the best thing in the world for me. I can be myself at my apartment without the put downs. But yet he still controls me. I will hurry and clean the apartment before he comes over. I will try to look better before I see him but he still reminds me that I never try to look good enough for him. You want to know something pathetic that I don’t tell anyone? He pays me to clean his house every other week. And sometimes I feel too guilty to take the money but in this sick sort of way I feel like I am still taking care of him. Every time I refuse to come clean he tells me I went back on my word to clean his house and I feel guilty. Stupid me, goes and stays the night to feel close to him yet all these things have happened. Well, it still doesn’t really make sense to me why I let the things happen that have happened. It’s so much more difficult than what I have posted. It goes way beyond the cheating, lies, put downs, and then him winning trying to win me back. This is a really sick relationship I have with my ex and today is seriously the first day I felt like I needed to seriously end this. I feel like I keep going down the wrong road, hitting a dead end and then taking the same road over and over again. A rat is smarter than that. A rat is smart enough to find it’s way out of a maze to get to the prize/food at the end but here I am a human being trapped in a maze of a chaotic controlling relationship. A human being who is capable of fully understanding what is happening and how to get out and I have kept myself trapped. The mind is weird thing ya know. I am young and I don’t want to live my life with this type of misery and I don’t have to.
I feel guilty for such a long post. I guess I am just venting. And really Dr. Carver…you don’t even have to respond to this. I know it’s all wrong and I know I have to stop it sooner or later. Just the fact that you made all this wealth of information available to those of us who need is more than enough. I have found some answers to what I originally typed in the search bar “how to escape a controlling relationship”.
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21
Dear JJ: He’s doing those things I mention in the Loser article - constantly chipping away at your self-esteem. Insults are not jokes, they are an attempt to hurt someone and lower their self-esteem. It’s like hitting someone in the face, then saying “I’m just kidding” - then hitting them again. He’s trying to make insulting you more socially acceptable.
You probably are too sensitive, but for good reason. Living with an emotional abuser/controller makes us feel we are “walking on eggshells” - on guard for every comment, look, or behavior. You live in an threatening environment. That makes anyone sensitive.
Dr. Carver
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