Tag Archives: how to break up with a sociopath

Break Up: The Trouble with Getting Rid of Crazy

Break up? More like an escape.
And then how to get them off our tail?!
Why don’t they go away?

Break up. Yikes. When we’re in a relationship and the words – I think I need to break up – the first flash in our mind, we cringe. Breaking up is tough. It takes ages to think about, let alone to actually do. Even under the best of circumstances, breaking up is hard. Really hard.

In the kind of situation, you’re likely experiencing since you found this article in your quest for answers… Know you’re in the right place. Landing here after much confusion, sadness, and maybe some huge unresolved or inexplicable fights is the usual way.

And if you’re here because you’re thinking: Wtf is going on…?! Well then, I imagine you’ve been feeling blamed, ignored, frustrated, dissatisfied, mystified, and have even felt used. With all this stuff going on, getting to the place where we really and finally-for-good break up is extra hard to do.

What is recovery for you?
There’s nothing about you that made this happen.

Break Up or Bust

When we arrive here looking for answers and feel an urgent need to break up we’re pretty far down a twisted corridor of hell. You’ve known things were crazy. You know something’s wrong, and that you’re a long way from happy. And likely have been, and are in a maze of pain. A confusing place where nothing really changes for the better or resolves.

We finally muster the courage to bring up the break up and here they are sticking to us like chewed gum on the bottom of our flipflop. Where was all this togetherness months ago?

My hugest hope for you is that you’ll find yourself a deeper and maybe new way to think about your circumstances; that answers might begin to fill the gaps of wondering what’s wrong. That the thoughts and emotions can begin to make a different kind of sense and shift to benefit you.

In this tiny moment, I hope you can discover more about what it is you’re breaking up from, and how to go about it. – Let’s get to it and talk about the two difficulties in getting rid of crazy.

Break up From Crazy: A Break Up That Goes On For Ages

At the very mention of breaking up from crazy, they suddenly come back around and turn into Mr. Nice. or yes – Ms. Nice. She’s out there too!

Because of this, many of us try to end things many times before the final time and that’s perfectly okay. It really is. It takes as long as it takes.

Hopefully, we truly discover what this all was so that our cognitive dissonance and confusion can resolve. We all want to resolve each loss and heal the very specific trauma from this relationship that isn’t.

Let’s say you manage to tell them it’s over. The first issue is that they seem to not want to let go. They fight the break-up with an energy that’s light-years more intense than anything they applied to make things work.

We finally muster the courage to bring up the break-up and here they are sticking to us like chewed gum on the bottom of our flipflop. Where was all this togetherness months ago?

Breaking Up: Reaction Number One: Nice

Suddenly we find this self-focused person we’re trying to break up with is not ignoring us and is no longer ambivalent, nor emotionless. They’ve brought up the heat intensely, ramping up to keep us from our break-up goal.

They’re gonna whip out: Nice. Nice will be promises and slogans about how good we are together. This will be familiar. If they’re desperate enough they’ll throw in some begging. They might toss in something extra, tears.

When a pathological user is crying, take that as a guarantee that they’re in a tight position. In this scenario take this to mean that you’re very valuable to them as a resource.

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You’re not alone.

Why Can’t They Just Go?

From their point of view hanging on and the histrionics make sense. Why would the person who’s using us – making use of us – for their own entertainment or other things easily let us go? Their interest in hanging on to us is primal and fundamental.

Now that you’ve mustered up the courage to leave or tell them to hit the road dig deep to understand the truth of their intense reaction.

The way they react to us breaking up with them is in direct relation to what they gain from us. As always the spot we fulfill in their “needs” determines how they behave towards us. It stands to reason that if they could they’d keep us all in a cupboard forever to pull out whenever they need something.

Breaking Up With Evil

Breaking Up with Evil, by Jennifer Smith on Amazon and Good Reads

Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon

Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.

Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.

Break Up: Reaction Number Two: Mean

On the other side of nice is mean. Once it seems we’re sticking to our guns about breaking up, the user brings on the second tool in their arsenal: Mean.

This is where they insult us and criticize us, and for some, this is when the violence comes in. They like to tell us we’re imagining things and that all the malarkey is our fault. This is what many people refer to as gaslighting.

Everything They Do Serves One Basic Purpose

Whatever we call it, this opposition, this word salad, nonsensical, crazy-making, gaslighting soup is extremely simplistic in purpose. Hold on to your hats for this one: insulting and telling us we’re imagining things has the same purpose as being nice. So, what’s it about? It’s to get us to shut up. This is all hot air and their own fear packaged into mean so that we don’t break up – in this case.

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Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

It Takes as Long as It Takes

Here’s what’s going on: They respond with nice or mean depending on our importance to them in that particular moment. Just imagine for a split-second that love’s got nothing to do with it, even if they say it does.

Break Up Pain Galore

Hold your own hand now, and just for a sliver of time imagine that even though we think they love us… Breathe into the idea that maybe their love isn’t what we think it is. Let that marinate for a flash of a sliver of time.

Questions open up the door to another world of answers: For example, what if we feel and see what’s between ourselves and them as love – because we’re made of love – rather than because they can genuinely express love or feel love?

Questions Bring Answers: But Which Question?

Ask yourselves, rather than, Why doesn’t he do this-instead-of-that? Or, Why does he say these things? For one millisecond ask, What if he doesn’t actually love me? Yep. Try that on. Think about it, What if he doesn’t…? Not even if he brings on the waterworks and cries like a baby. What do things look like then? Is there more room for an answer to their actions?

If you’re the gateway to a group of people they want to use, they’ll hold on hard.

There are answers; there are logical reasons it’s hard to break up with them: We may come to a place where we realize that within their minds we each fill a spot that answers their varying needs and nothing more.

Users Use Others For Everything They Need

What they respond to in a break up is in accordance with their needs. If you’re key to them for a cozy place to sleep, or as a resource for money, access to a car, the internet, or a place to shower: They’re gonna balk at parting ways. When you’re the one thing that makes them seem respectable to others, they’re going to hang on.

We can learn to do what needs to be done, and say what needs to be said so that they can hear and understand, and so that they respond in the way that we need things to be for a change. Flip the tables.

For example, if it’s their parents who give them money or give them a stamp of approval that keeps them looking normal to the world, the pathological user (aka sociopath, aka narcissist) will hold on hard. If you’re the gateway to a group of people they want to use, they’ll hold on hard.

When we’re the place they eat, shower, hang out, get high, surf the internet, watch porn, jack off, sleep, brood, get their laundry done, are the address on their driver’s license, and serve as their home front to the world. Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you hang on too?

Holding on for Goods and Services, Access to Others, or Respectability

They hold on hard if you’re the roof over their heads. When they have no one else ready on the side that they can quickly move in with, it’s us or the streets. Additionally, they hold on to us hard if this break up will make them look bad to someone else who provides something important.

A break up awakens the natural (for them) instinct to hold on to and continue to monitor their prey. Monitoring us is what hoovering is all about. In their minds it’s for their own safety.

Their point will be to get us to stop trying to break up. They want to get us to back off the break-up. to achieve this they’re going to use one or both of the only two tools a user has: Nice and mean. That’s all they got. – News flash: They aren’t geniuses or master manipulators.

The goal behind using these two tools is very simple. Because they need a place to stay, and along with that, likely a shower and that food in your fridge. To keep from being tossed out, they’ll be either nice or mean or more likely, a combination of both or a flip-flop between both.

Break-Up Avoidance on Their Part

So, it’ll be more promises; they hope the promises hit the spot in us emotionally leading us to soften and let them stay. Or they whip out accusations. They hurl insults. If this sparks guilt or shame or confusion or fear that it might lead us to cave. Either “nice” or “mean” can lead us to acquiesce and let them stay.

In Days of Plenty, We May Be of Little Value

On the other end of things, if they have plenty already, a breakup could potentially go more easily. If they have another place to hang out and play video games, they might easily walk away. If they have a “fiancé” eager to move them in… Well hells-bells, as my grandmother used to say, they’ll be gone before we can blink. – They can walk away so easily that we’re stunned.

Even so, their reaction to us ending the roller coaster with a breakup awakens the natural (for them) instinct to hold on to and continues to monitor their prey. Monitoring us is what hoovering is all about. In their minds, it’s for their own safety.

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Lightbulb moments.

Breaking Up is Gut-Wrenching

The truth is, breaking up with a pathological predator, a sociopath (quite likely that one you’re thinking of as a narcissist) is gut-wrenching and horrifying.

Here’s the thing: Just as “normal” behavior and thinking didn’t make anything better while we were “together”. Nothing normal is going to work in the breakup. Learn how to be, and do, and say what maneuvers them from our lives. Behaving and thinking from our point of view of “normal” will not work out well for us.

We can learn to do what needs to be done, and say what needs to be said so that they can hear and understand, and so that they respond in the way that we need things to be for a change. Flip the tables.

Break Up 101: Leaving and Lying: Break Up With Crazy

Here’s a bit of a start to what we can do… Leave ’em: Act as if everything is peachy. Have that (last) pizza together and then without them knowing it’s over, makes this pizza night your last contact.

Kiss ’em goodbye and then block them. Silence… Not a word to them. The effect of no contact is the hugest message we can send. This is not a message they haven’t “heard” before. Zillions of people have gone no contact with them before you.

Lie: Another option is one where we outright lie. Have that “break-up” talk and scenario. And tell them: You’re so great. I know it’s all my fault. – We’re lying.

They Lie and They Believe Lies

When we say this line, we don’t really feel this way about all the malarkey that’s gone down. But say this or your version of this so that we aren’t seen as a threat to them. Their perception is that when we break up, then we’re a threat. When we end it they think we just might tell everyone how horrible they are.

“Normal” takes responsibility, and many times even when there is no responsibility to be taken. This is the true place for boundaries. We are not responsible for their inhumanity.

Users don’t want us to tell others how horrible they are. Not wanting us to blow up their house of cards existence… They know their life is glued together with our “normal”; with our great goodness and true-blue realness. They do get it that they and their life is BS. – This is exactly what they ensnared us for: To hold their life together.

If we go around talkin’ – this would keep them possibly from grabbing onto other souls to make use of. And they really think that all the things they’ve done – even all that stuff we don’t know about – is going to come tumbling out of the closet. This fear of what we’ll do and say is part of why they hang on. And this fear is what the hoovering and all the smearing is all about.

We’re letting them think they’re amazing. This is deliberate. – this makes us a non-threat and leaves it easier for us to walk away without them hanging on or hoovering.

Find your way back to you.

Trust Your Gut

We know in our gut that we did nothing to make this person do the things they’re doing. We just didn’t. If sometimes you wonder if it was your fault. That simply proves that you’re normal and that you’re doing what “normal” does. We give second chances, and third chances.

“Normal” takes responsibility, and many times even when there is no responsibility to be taken. This is the true place for boundaries. We are not responsible for their inhumanity.

Break Up Bravery Takes Us Through It

Now that you’ve mustered up the courage to leave or tell them to hit the road dig deep to understand the truth of their intense reaction.

Hopefully, we truly discover what this all was so that our cognitive dissonance and confusion can resolve. We all want to resolve each loss and heal the very specific trauma from this relationship that isn’t. ‘Cause you are real. You are normal, and you get to be exactly what you are, which is beautiful inside and out.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com

Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

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Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.

2019_11_19 2022_11_02

Jennifer Smith

October 5, 2016

Hidden traits, under the mask,
behind the charm lurks the real-deal Monster.
The sociopath-demon comes into view.
Then he slips to hide
behind a curtain of pretty
only to flash a thigh of evil.

Hidden traits cover what at first blush in a true love scamming sociopath appears charming. They seem kind. Gentle. Genuine. Unique. Incredible. And so sincere our hearts hurt.

The predator can come across so devastatingly moving we’re humbled in openings into views and moments in life we’ve never seen before; under their uncanny power of influence, we reach what seem to be realizations about ourselves, about them – about how to be human – that endear us more deeply to them.

Honeymoon Hoovering

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In the “honeymoon” phase with these creatures in tiny, brief, weirdly intimate moments with the sociopath, there’s a shimmer, a quiver that lasts no more than mere seconds.

This bone-deep shiver is subtle and unfamiliar so that if we notice it at all, we feel the ground move under our feet.

Our brains freeze, while we watch a small moment of confusion that feels like hours waggle and wave in front of us, like the way you can see heat waves radiating in the air. And then, it vanishes and we think maybe that oddness didn’t happen at all.

Knowing the truth sets you on the path to a restored life.

Mesmerizing, Hypnotizing, Pied Pipers

In stunned awe, an elevated in-and-out-of-focus sensation overtakes us – an infusion of imaginings washes through us, and we wonder: what is this…? And because we’re just people, regular normal people…we only have our normal real-life experiences to measure this new-whatever-it-is by.

Later as the odd things build up our friends might start to make comments. Or we might even begin Googling. Maybe a few things we’ve heard or read, or something a friend said slides into place and makes sense…and right back out again.

While we’re good and tied up under their spell, nothing offers a real answer that seems possible: and so we do what humans do: we come up with one. We create an explanation for the odd stuff. This is normal. Humans need cognitive harmony. We need the world around us to match up with what we believe in, feel is right, and what is accepted and expected. – Our bodies do this for us.

Breaking Up With Evil

Breakign Up with Evil, by Jennifer Smith on Amazon and Good Reads

Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon

Five women’s true stories of being ensnared, hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.

True crime. Told in their own words with nothing unsaid. Find validation, and see new glimpses of truth as these five women share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.

Goodness Through Our Eyes

The millisecond flare of doubt is so quick – and we’re interpreting from our own goodness – with no clue that something as vile as a sociopath walks the earth. It’s no wonder we can’t see it for what it is… until we do.

If we could revisit those times – we might more easily see that gaping slit in the fabric of reality, that: opening to hell. A black cavernous infinite hole into the pits of despair. The place they truly live; the thing they truly are.

We Can’t Recognize Something We Don’t Know Exists

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It’s said we can see only what we know. And so it goes that the inhabitants couldn’t see the ships of invaders into North America on the shore because no one had known such a thing existed – until a Shaman divined them shimmering from mirage into a shape.

An unrecognizable something. An unknown – assumed good and even God-like from their own benevolent perspective giving the strange-strangers the generosity of benefit of the doubt.

They had to learn the hard way that these shiny beings, rather like them, but entirely unlike them in these gigantic fantastical floating vessels, emerging up and toward them from the watery horizon as if delivered by the unseen beneficent powers of life were not benevolent, but were bearers of rage, disease, and destruction.

We do finally see them, the hidden traits and all. The thing is like the shamans, and like any human… We can see only what we know. Then, we pull one thing up from the inner realms of recall and place it next to the other, grab this other shard from that corner of our mind and then connect the dots.

Hidden Traits Lurk Not Far From their Sickening Surface

Sociopaths live in a paradoxical reality – a contradictory flip-flopping and internal push-me-pull-you in reaction to who’s present or what’s going on around them in a constant attempt to stay hidden, stay unrecognizable to keep people trusting them and keep getting the things they need to survive.

Sociopaths are unstable. Their world is house-of-cards fragile. Their posing is easy to topple. Here are five hidden traits of a sociopath that are their Achilles heel. – Traits we know well, though we might not have named them if we’ve lived through the nightmare of knowing one. And in the case of a sociopath – knowing one – truly is knowing all.

Five Hidden Paradoxical Traits of a Sociopath

  • The constant fear of being caught. Alternating with flamboyant confidence in fooling people with their bragaddociousness.
  • Mentally inflexible. Are greatly startled by unfamiliar situations causing them to flail and change course or alter previously stated beliefs or convictions. And can hold onto a point of contention like a wild dog with a bone.
  • Easily distracted. Fixated on one target then distracted by another and another from moment to moment juxtaposed with an underlying unwavering fantastical “goal” derived from their grandiose perception of themselves and follow an improvisational rather than planned approach to the “goal”.
  • No nuance of emotion. Swings between highs and dark lows with their home-based state of mind is a vapid, bored nothing.
  • Believe other people’s lies. Their world is lies. If presented with a lie from someone else rather than act on it or call it out as a lie they go along with it as a reality. – The more fantastical the lie the more they buy into it.

Use the Sociopaths Weakness to Break Free Forever

Use their myopic minds against them for our safety. Let’s transform the experience. Let’s make use of it. We cannot be defeated by it. Because for all our compassion and empathy — isn’t it useless or even harmful without wisdom…?

Let’s embrace ourselves with compassion. Understand there’s much to stand up for: our very lives, our goodness. Humanity. We must win always, just as the sun outshines the night sky stars to bring us a bright and lovely day.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com

Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
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Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.

2016_10_05 2022_10_12

We’re Not In Denial

We’re not in denial.
As my dad would say, that’s a river in Egypt.
But seriously.
No one deliberately stays here.
We don’t remain in the clutches
of a slimy sociopath on purpose.
Our goodness caught their attention,
our goodness sets us free.

Denial is a word that’s tossed around to represent a state of mind we’re supposedly in. And that explains how this nightmare went on for so long, or started in the first place. There are those who would say we were in denial and so the surreal, horror show continued to run through our lives as if we allowed it. These people who say this could not be more wrong.

We’re not in denial. No. In short, what happened is: we were deceived and bamboozled. This means we did not have full information.

There isn’t an even playing field. Firstly, none of us had full information that these creatures even existed. Secondly, we were lied too. Thirdly, normal people aren’t looking for a lie. We automatically trust; that’s one of the beautiful things about us all. And fourth, and most significant of all, we’re under the spell of the pathological predator.

Truth Scarier Than Fiction: We Heal From Truth, Not Lies

therapy narcissistic abuse

We were scammed pure and simple by a serial liar, user, taker, abuser life thief. The chasm between our intention and the pathological narcissistic user’s true intention only becomes clear over time.

It’s revealed by bits-and-pieces. We didn’t deny anything… except them and what they wanted, once we did see through it and take in the full horror of their true black heart.

Knowing the real deal truth is how we recover.

Denial is Not in the House: a Monster Is

When we’re ensnared by a sociopath, there‘s a clashing of two worlds a great collide of two different brains, the mind of a sociopath (you might be calling them a narcissist) and the mind of a regular, normal, iambic brained person: you or me.

The pathological predator and users do their best to let us believe rather than a clash, that together we’re the best match on the planet. The best fit that any two people could ever be.

This is how they survive. The ability to bring this influence upon others is wired into their DNA. I call it the sociopath effect.

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

It Takes as Long as it Takes

Mostly the whole mess is analyzed and judged and pronounced upon by those who have not been through it and interpret the phenomenon as if the sociopath – the perpetrator – has the determining view. This is nothing more than a type of mansplaining, victim blaming and just plain wrong.

We see this match made in heaven situation isn’t quite the case, as soon as is humanly possible. In no way do we leap to the conclusion that this person is a psychopath the first time they don’t call us back or are unreachable.

Not only can people not see something they don’t know is in existence such as users who are pure evil, these exist in the movies, not real life.

Our human body and physiology are amazing. It’s designed to keep us safe. In trauma, our bodies and minds protect us, and so let the truth be seen in bite-sized pieces so that we don’t lose our sanity.

After true love scam our eyes are wider open than most. And we know more than most; certainly more than people who tell us we allowed it and we’re in denial. Let your body do its thing.

The very, very courageous take on recovering, healing, seeing what the real-deal is in pieces. Take it in in bits that you can take… It takes as long as it takes. Tell those blamers and shame-ers to step off.

PTSD is Normal After a Narcissistic Sociopath

We’re not permanent victims scarred for life. We’re not to blame for being snagged and conned by a lying sociopath who gives us every excuse in the book for why they do this. These are not the only two options. — Though – sometimes — it seems to be as we try to find our way out of the maze.

There are piles of mainstream answers to this hideous crime. Including that we, as targets invited it through our past abuse issues or our relationship issues and that we stayed because we were in denial.

How about we look at it from another direction? From our eyes. Let’s stop letting people outside the experience define what happened. Let’s look at it from the eyes of the prey of a sociopath.

This perspective takes a whole different set of words to define it. – Not for the sake of frivolous semantics, but because of a very real variance in meaning.

We Are Not in Denial: We’re Amazing

You see, definitely more fanciful descriptors – these come from the influence of watching many Johnathan Strange and Dr. Norell episodes on late-night Netflix binges that stopped my anxious brain from thinking in the early days of recovery and rocked me to sleep, and still reflect the real-deal of being in one of these hellish circuses of a true love scam… the day-time-wide-awake, hall-of-mirrors-nightmare of living hijacked by a sociopath.

Unless someone’s been dragged by their heart and soul through this, they have no idea. None. None of us “in it” are in denial, or willfully resisting seeing what they are.

To think that anyone could imagine or imply that we’re willfully and knowingly, in the mess we’re in and choosing to ignore it means they have no clue. We’re each in something we can’t possibly recognize: who knew what a sociopath was before all this?

No One Can See Something We Don’t Know Exists

For anyone who’s not been hijacked by a sociopath, these descriptors might sound absurd. It may be what inspires, ohhhh… hmmm, yes. She’s in denial. – And other wholly off the mark, and utterly compassionless, and just plain rude remarks from onlookers and others, who we might think would know better. 

To those under the spell, these are quite accurate descriptions that bring about our freedom. With this look at things, we feel less crazy. We might let out a sob of relief, Oh, my god! That’s it! That’s exactly what it is!! – And a little slip of hope eeks through the fog of the sociopath-madness we’re trapped in.

There’s a Mesmerizing that Leads People to Drink the Kool-Aid

I realize what I’m about to say here isn’t popular to say… It’s a contemporary popular belief that humans make choices about well, everything. Here’s a hard fact: none of us are with a sociopath by direct or informed or conscious choice.

We do get away from them by choice. And this’s an important part of this circumstance. Somehow most of the world focuses on wondering how we stumbled into it, why we stayed, ie: How could we have been so stupid?

therapy ptsd narcissistic abuse recovery Jennifer Smith

Decide Your Understanding of This Event

Let’s be real here, let’s not base our understanding of what we’re experiencing – the how’s and why’s of it, in the ideas and perceptions from something else: namely the ideas and perceptions of those who’ve not experienced it.

Mostly the whole mess is analyzed and judged and pronounced upon by those who have not been through it and interpret the phenomenon as if the sociopath – the perpetrator – has the determining view.

This is nothing more than a type of mansplaining, victim-blaming and just plain wrong. – And, come one now… Most of our judge-ie acquaintances, coworkers, neighbors, friends or family didn’t know this existed until we walked into it. So, come on now… They aren’t suddenly experts.

The Traits That Attract a Sociopath To Us: Save Us

The very same goodness of heart that makes us attractive to a sociopath is what we then flip – and bring to life exponentially – to get safely and completely away. There, there is the real thing.

It takes a colossal effort. Courage, wisdom, persistence, patience, bravery to break from a kind of bondage; from an entrapment so immense it can’t be understood unless it’s been experienced.

Know This: If someone says it’s your fault, let them know they’re out of step; that evolution of humankind has progressed. Victim blaming is over. No, we’re not in denial. We’re believers in love. We believed that this involved love – until we didn’t. And now that we don’t – watch out. When we see it for the crime it is, there’s no place for the scamming-scum to run.

You Have to Live Through It to Understand It

The break-away from a sociopath is intense and so life-shattering it can never be understood unless you too are an escapee. – And that my friends, does not signify a weak victim, a codependent-door-mat, a denial or any such nonsense.

It signifies some of the hugest power, determination, and strength on the planet. We are awesome. We’re superheroes. We’re our own angels.

You Can’t Deny Something You Don’t Know Exists

Nope. We’re not in denial. If you don’t know this phenomenon exists, you can’t see it. And fortunatley when in it and after, our glorious bodies innately know a human can’t handle the monumental stress that comprehending this entails all one go. So – yes – clarity is meted out in doses only a beatific human of great empathy and love could handle.

Even tiny doses of what we went through would break anyone else. No, denial is nothing more than a river in Africa. A raging, pernicious river that every life stealing, narcissistic con man needs to be thrown into without a life jacket.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com

Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
.

Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.

2016_09_16 2022_10_12

What is No Contact?

Why go no contact?
After a narcissistic user, no contact
is the way to take our life back.
Why does it matter so much?

To make things super-de-duper clear in this horrendously unclear time here’s a handy-dandy list describing what constitutes “contact” and what we want to achieve: “no contact.”

coaching with Jennifer Smith for PTSD and trauma after a sociopath or narcissist and to restore your life and build a future.

Keeping contact – exchanging raging emails and text messages – even “lovey-dovey” ones – not only keeps us in the mess and the lies – it creates new trauma.

Not talking to each other is advised in normal relationship breakups. Not talking gives us a chance to see how we truly feel. How much more critical is it in a true love scam…?!

Each bit of any contact prolongs harm. The sociopath…that creature you might be calling a “narcissist” won’t offer up closure, an apology, or a sincere exchange of any kind.

What Is No Contact?

What is no contact…? It’s more than watching their messages come in and not answering. It’s the one thing that changes everything and that’s going no contact. We end what they started because they won’t.

Though that’s a good start, this isn’t what we call “no contact”… Each message is a zap of new trauma of interaction with them. Every voicemail, email, DM, text, SMS, PM, is a tug at our gut that makes us foggy and keeps us “in it”.

Contact Means We’re Offering Ourselves Up as Lunch

Further contact after a “break up”, or after there’s an “end”, more often inspires the sociopath to be violent or terrorizing. Without a doubt, the second time you come back together, things are worse whether there is violence or not. This escalates each time you “break up” and goes back.

Did you know that contact could lead to our losing legal battles for custody, divorce, annulment, or restraining orders? Staying in contact can make us look as crazy as they say we are.

To the sociopath, or that person you might have decided is a covert, overt or malignant narcissist: any contact is good contact. Any contact, of any kind at all such as responding to a message they drop into your DM, means to the pathological user that they still pull the strings and so can still access you to take what they want, or to use you as they like.

Dive deep for complete freedom.

We Do Need To End It: We Stop It They Don’t

Time went on quicker, tighter, everything tightened and escalated after I’d lost just about everything and he became overtly disgusted with everything around him. Finally, a combination of numbness and knowledge that my children and I were in very real danger took hold of me and eclipsed the fear of what he’d do if I left or any other fear or worry. As much as I still hated to accept it, I knew that it had to end, and it had to end by me before one of those horrible fears did happen. I had to accept that leaving or staying was life or death.” ~ Chapter 4, Shannon O. Entry No. 08 This Has to End

< Click the book cover to get yours…

Our Emotions Trip Us Up

This is a situation that demands our heads winning over what might linger in our hearts. The sociopath who hijacked us intended no good for us no matter how charming they were – or are. They will never, ever be anything good they promised.

Strictly establishing no contact and keeping no contact will influence our chance of beginning to recover; our safety, and our well-being, and can decide whether or not we win in court.

Staying no contact is to protect our kids. The sooner we go no contact the sooner we can expect a return to happiness in the days to come and long-term.

The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

Staying In Contact Makes Us Appear Untrustworthy and Questionable in Court

Attorneys and Judges frown on those standing before them seeking divorce and child custody from a predator spouse and at the same time has kept contact with the user-abuser.

If we maintain contact our credibility shrinks. If there are children the only contact is best as emails and only related to logistics of pick-ups and drop-offs.

Our silence is the loudest, most meaningful thing we can say to them.

Unless specific communication with them is requested by an attorney, staying in contact makes us look unreliable, untrustworthy, unstable, and indecisive to Judges, child services, counselors, police, and attorneys.

Staying in contact makes our claims of abuse, defrauding, theft, and all the rest straight questionable. We lose big-time if we stay in contact. Go no contact. Only stay in contact via email or a court app if told to by the court to do so for the logistics of child visits.

This is Staying In Contact:

These are the things you want to not do in order to get your life back and to be heard in the most meaningful way by the pathological user, and then have the space to begin your recovery odyssey:

  • Let their calls ring through to our phones, even if we don’t answer – their number is best blocked so we don’t see any calls or texts
  • Call their number and hang up
  • Dial their number to their voicemail
  • Take their phone calls
  • Call them
  • Leave them messages
  • Listen to their voicemail messages
  • Let emails from them land in our inbox
  • Read the emails they send to us
  • Respond to their emails
  • Sort through their emails because we have their password
  • Read the text, SMS, private Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or any messages from them
  • Respond to any messages from them
  • Initiate any messages to them

Close Every Portal from Us to Them

Deeper no contact: close every portal open from our life to theirs. More things we don’t do in no contact.

  • Look at their Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or any of their online images, or media
  • Look at their “friends” social media pages
  • Sort through their posts looking at their new target or for other prey
  • Look at old photos of them on our phone or on our FB page or anywhere else
  • Sort through our wedding photos or other pictures of him or us
  • Keep things that remind us of him or her
  • Make an alias FB account so we can look at their page that we blocked

Narcissistic Abuse Unwound: The Podcast

For Court: Save What They’ve Already Sent: Every Message Counts

There’s one exception to keeping contact: we can keep contact when or if an attorney tells us to send a particular message to the sociopath from our email for a legal step in any legal process. These emails are then forwarded as-is to the attorney for the legal process.

Strictly establishing no contact and keeping no contact will influence our chance of beginning to recover; our safety, our well-being, and can be a deciding factor in whether or not we win in court.

Keep old messages: archive old emails and texts that may be needed to show violence, intended violence, marriage fraud, name-calling or harassment, or refusal to follow the procedure in divorce, annulment, or other legal matters. Text messages are best also saved in a chronological series of screenshots showing time/date stamping.

If you print out text messages they lose formatting and are simply line after line of the conversation with no way to tell who said what or when.

We do want to make sure all saved messaging has time date stamps and clearly indicates whose device it’s from (theirs) and to whom (you or other targets.) Keep these as screenshots, printouts, and files on a thumb drive. Save copies for yourself. Forward them to your attorney.

Resist Keeping Tabs Unless It’s to Gather Court Evidence

This is for your safety: Maybe you’ve landed here and are uncertain if the person you’re leaving is a sociopath or a narcissist. I get it that this is unbelievably hard. Please, as soon as you can realize that even though You’re not sure what’s going on, the most important thing to do is to protect yourself and your own well-being. It’s best not to talk about them anywhere to anyone other than privately to a few select people. Leave off any social media posts about our misery in breaking up. And here’s there real-deal and the really tough part: we aren’t breaking up as much as we’re making an escape. – Please don’t tap and type away in Reddit threads about this user we’re breaking away from, please stop yourself from listing them on www.badboyfriend.com. It’s best if you don’t make a FB page dedicated to talking trash about them no matter how true the trash is – and I’m here to tell you, whatever trash you have on them it isn’t even a thimble full of their over-flowing-garbage-can-of-a-life. – This is not to let them get away with it! This is to make you, us, you, and I a “non-threat” to the sociopath. Then go report through the proper channels if there’s something to  stand up for your life about. And even I use the word “game” sometimes to talk about this, but in real life: this is not a game.

This is No Contact: This is What We Want to Do

On Facebook

  • Using the block function in the Privacy settings in Facebook to block them: here’s how
  • Doing the same with all mutual “Friends” or connections on Facebook
  • Not looking at their Facebook page
  • Staying away from their friends’ Facebook pages
  • Avoiding FB pages of our (now former) friends who are “Friends” on his or her’s Facebook page
  • Never private message him or her
  • Not messaging any of his or her “friends”; they don’t have actual genuine friends, and all people are prey to them

Regarding Email

In order to let their email scoop in case you need them for evidence and court or legal matters, we can. However, at the same time these nasty and lying and so freaking crazy emails don’t need to come into our real-life email. We can send them to a special inbox just for the lunatic.

  • Make a new email address
  • Don’t give them this new one
  • Do not email them
  • Do not read any emails they send you to any email address whatsoever

In addition, consider changing the “channel”, the IP address that your internet is routed through. Simply call your internet provider and ask them to switch the IP address you receive your internet connection through.

This will knock off any device from access to your internet that may have at one time or another signed in to your internet service on a device of their own.

Think Zero Contact and Non-Threat: We Need to Seem Invisible and Nonexistent

Cell Phones

  • There’s a block function on smartphones per each phone number; use it with his or her’s
  • Alternatively, call your service provider and have them block this number for you from being able to call into your phone
  • No calls or texts from that number can come in after that; alternately, login to our online account with our service provider and block the numbers
  • Do not ever answer any calls in the future coming in as blocked or unavailable or restricted
  • Don’t answer calls from an unknown number or unidentified caller
  • Block the unknown numbers that call you and don’t leave a voicemail that shows they’re a legitimate caller

Consider getting a new or used-new phone and a new number. A used-new phone can be just the ticket right now. Do not load old contacts.

Enter the old-school one by one… Only the good ones. – In cases where this seems appropriate, consider a prepaid burner phone for six months or so.

More About No Contact

Believe this: we might want the sociopath to hurt as we did – sure, me too, we might even we might even wish them dead, that’s normal. Some of us stay in contact thinking if we call them names and fight with them it will hurt them, or they’ll finally apologize.

We want them to “understand” that they’re hurting us. This is not going to happen in the way we’re looking for. For one, they know they hurt us; this doesn’t bother them.

News Flash: sociopaths (narcissists) do not “hurt” in the way we do; they “hurt” when things are taken from them or there’s a threat of being exposed. When we leave we become a threat to them as far as their concern about who we’ll tell all about them.

They experience trauma when highly valuable prey takes off. As strange as this is, the pathologically narcissistic (sociopaths aka psychopaths aka narcissists) have no feelings that are relatable to our emotional range of concern and experience as fully limbic-brained – normal – humans.

It’s only us who’s hurt by contact. Us going no contact is what hurts them. Please, go and stay no contact.

From their point of view: if we’re texting, calling, emailing or responding, arguing, crying, talking… no matter how we feel, no matter what the words flying out of our mouths are: to them, it means they still own us if we say anything at all. It’s only us who’s hurt by contact. Us going no contact is what hurts them. Please, go and stay in no contact.

No Contact On Other Platforms

  • Instagram, Pinterest: Nothing. Nope. Don’t look at theirs. Block theirs and all associated with them. Period. Instagram has a new feature called “Restrict”
  • Twitter: No
  • LinkedIn: Ditto as above
  • Snap Chat: Nope. We “blocked” their number on our phone; see Cell Phones above
  • FaceTime: See Cell Phones above – their number is blocked!
  • Skype: No; no Skype, zero, zip, nadda, zilch
  • Zoom: No Zoom
  • TikTok: No TikTok
  • WhatsApp: No
  • Signal or Telegraph: No
  • Land Lines: Change our voice greeting to the default anonymous greeting and screen calls
  • Cell and Landline: change your number either over the phone or online with your provider, you can select a new number.
  • FAX Number: Again if we have a landline for faxing – change the number.

Understand: No Contact is For Us: It’s How We Win

Hopefully, it’s becoming meaningful on a real-deal-critical level, that we can’t meet them for coffee, to trade back our belongings, or to have sex. We don’t go out to dinner, meet them at a club, meet them with friends. Follow the best practices for our well-being when leaving a sociopath aka narcissist.

Be sure to re-key your doors. This involves changing out the locking mechanism. This works perfectly well rather than getting the whole new doorknob which means their old key doesn’t fit your lock anymore.

And neither does the one they might have copied on the sly. If there’s a knock at your door the way to get them gone is to not answer. Additionally, make no reply, not even talking to them from behind the door.

We Bring This to an End

Let’s never see their smirky, ugly face again. I know we all know this, but I’m just sayin’. Go no contact… zero contact, hardcore. Our silence is the loudest, most meaningful thing we can say to them. And let’s be real. You might reach out or wish they would. That’s normal until we fully know what a sociopath is and what that means.

For our own well-being, our safety, and our future; for finding ourselves again, we go zero contact, radio silent. And… You drop off their radar. And goodbye to the nut-job.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com

Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
.

Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.

2016_04_05 2022_12_09

Bored Nomads: Heartless Hobos

Bored heartless nomads.
They don’t connect or care,
have no sentimental or nostalgic idea of “home”
so, one place is much like another
and where ever they are isn’t “home”, it’s a hideout.

Sociopaths are bored nomads. Empty souls, empty brains, absent hearts. And no place they truly call “home.”

The part of the brain that registers like, love, care, concern, compassion is – unplugged. It doesn’t operate normally. They’re just kind of blah. They don’t “attach” to anyone, anything, or any place.

No matter how much we might not notice at first, no matter how many promises they make about our life together: for them, “home” is no place, while for us “there’s no place like home.”

Nobodies Home Inside There Aside from Evil

Sociopathic predators pretend to feel things they don’t, such as “love” or “concern” because they know their emptiness is something we can’t accept and it freaks us out.

If we’re freaked out, they need to move on sooner and don’t get as much stuff.

So they fake it to get stuff and to keep that cozy couch to sleep on. Unfortunately, they have an uncanny power of influence and get lots unless we already – fully – know what a sociopath is.

When normal humans take in a moment in life or interact in human exchange, our bodies respond by making a chemical mix that rushes to our bloodstream and brain and animates us in emotional responses of gratitude, empathy, delight, joy, or reverent awe, or an endless combo of sensation.

There is resolution and full restoration.
What is recovery for you?

Bonding is Normal: It’s Absent in Pathological Predators

This grand cocktail of life forges deeper connections with others around us and to our very selves. In a sociopath this function is absent. They switch emotional responses on and off – sort of. But not really…

It’s that there’s just no one human home. Though a sociopath might say, we feel emotions. Ours is just different. – Well, yeah, that’s the point; they’re the feelings of a monster. Very, very different than ours.

Breaking Up With Evil

Breaking Up with Evil, by Jennifer Smith on Amazon and Good Reads

Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon

Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.

Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.

Sociopaths Have No Emotional Connection

Sociopaths mimic the emotions they see us go through. They don’t feel feelings like we do or understand ours. It’s all bars and tone – or desire and rage in the sociopath’s brain.

We get attached to our home and the simple things that take our breath away, illicit tears, smiles, giggles, or a sigh weigh in as a heavy clunk of next-to-nothingness in the sociopath’s “heart”.

The pride in our home, our lives, our child’s college graduation, first prom, first steps, or our teary-eyed satisfaction at giving the perfect gift to a loved one are experiences a sociopath will never have. Nope. Sociopaths have white noise where love should be.

When We Feel…

  • Delight: at our child’s achievements
  • Pleasure: in helping someone besides ourselves
  • Joy: at a the birth of a new baby
  • Compassion: for another’s sorrows
  • Satisfaction: in a job well done

A Sociopath Registers Personal Gain…

  • Delight: gloating at ensnaring a new victim
  • Pleasure: in a well-told lie
  • Joy: in scamming a new place to live
  • Compassion: there is none for anyone
  • Satisfaction: in a smear campaign well done… And otherwise, they’re bored

The Sociopath aka Narcissist Desires Only to Take and Use

The sociopath, as a bored nomadic parasitic predator moves on to shake trouble from their tail and stir up glittery resources. They make a get-away to fresh territory and ripe untapped prey.

A sociopath scum bag’s sole desire is to suck us in, to take, and to use us and all we have and all those around us if possible. They make up lots of “good reasons” to live together. They might say something like, “I need to move by Friday because my roommate stopped paying rent…” – It’s a hint at what they want. They toss out bait hoping we’ll bite out of our ordinary and gorgeous human empathy and compassion and social conditioning in order to – in this case – take over our space.

They’re laser-focused on this. They don’t want to pay rent or share in the bills. They make promises of work they’re getting, money coming in, and they’ll do the dishes later.

Haus-Maus or Man In Pants: It’s all Fraud

Some sociopaths have the persona of man-around-the-house and get bossy while others play Mr. Mom and do laundry, cook, clean, and pick up the kids. This is the way this type of sociopath gets the cheese. Yes, like rats in a lab as they go through life they learn which button to push to get dinner.

I call this errand running, dinner making, kid caring sociopath the haus-maus – or house-mouse. It’s all bait. This is what they hope will hook their room and board. Their shelter from the storms. Storms both outside falling from the sky, and quite likely the storm anger of the last person they messed with who’s now after them.

The Provider

Some others, averse to chores and dirty work, flash cash instead and foot the bill for a bit to secure their place in our home. From the beginning – or by the end – they don’t pay, won’t pay, and get mad if asked to pay. – Be aware there are those who pay big-bucks all throughout keeping us in mani-pedies, vacations, and designer clothes. However, it comes at a price.

A sociopath dirtbag (even if you’re calling them a narcissist) is never the person we think they are until we see the devil in their eyes. Then – and only then, are we seeing who they are. Since no one with a heart wants to live with a devil they try their best to hide it. Their best is not very good.

Con Men Predators Get So Bored and Need Places to Hide

The ironic trap of needing the person they don’t care about pisses them off. Without emotional attachment, pretending to be in love with someone would get old. And bothersome. Their hatred of us begins to show itself.

Sociopaths are bored nomads, their boredom makes it hard to keep up their facades.

They drop the act at any random moment, then shove the mask back in place, drop it, put it up again and it falls once more.

This inconsistency is how we see through them. That’s okay with them. Ultimately, these scum bag inhuman users don’t care about the longevity of a scam as much as they care about taking what they’re after and going free.

Getting What They Want and Getting Away

The getaway is important. And these predators do indeed have many people are after them. Lots of people on their tail. Always.

They’ve got people they owe money to, women with babies they’ve left to support on their own, someone’s husband who wants to beat the living-day-lights out of them, bench warrants, they’ve skipped parole, evaded taxes, jumped debts, stolen cars to ride off in. They’re so, so busy; so busy running in fear.

Changing Location is Essential to Surviving as a Sociopath

And so, sociopaths, con men change geographic locations over and over. Every three to ten months, the predator needs new prey, and often new hunting grounds.

They pack light and leave things behind, as they skip and hop from place to place without their name registered on a lease or posted on a mailbox. The scampiest of these I call the backpackers. – All they have is a dirty backpack, easy to pick up and go.

They hide behind their prey for official things like rental contracts. If we think they “own” a house, a condo, or a boat, but look closely, they mostly don’t own anything, and always there’s more to it than meets the normal human eye.

Where Ever They Are They Are The Same

Whether a sociopath skulks in a low-rent district or a high-rise, through all the lies they’re hard to trace and difficult to pin down.

The sociopath, as a bored nomadic parasitic predator moves on to shake trouble from their tail and stir up glittery resources. They make a get-away to fresh territory and ripe untapped prey. “Want” never leaves them, ever on the search for more money and more fun… otherwise they get so bored.

Boredom and Fear Are Forefront in Their Black Hearts

Boredom isn’t the only reason sociopaths, con men, narcissistic users need to move on down the road. It’s those people after them and those scams that blow up that lead them to a new location. Sociopaths are bored and boring and make terrible, monster, roommates. Who needs ’em?

There are many great books here to read more about these traveling monsters. Understand what’s really going on and set ourselves free!

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

True Love Scam Recovery on Medium

True Love Scam Recovery on Facebook

Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com

Subscribe True Love Scam Recovery Jennifer Smith

As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
.

Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.

2015_12_19 2024_01_05