The weird stuff they say haunts us.
We do our best to tuck it away, but it pokes out.
That stuff is the truth that can set us free.
Weird stuff they say haunts us. What’s up with “the boyfriend”, “husband”, “wife”, “girlfriend” (the pathological parasitic predator), and the weird things they say? Why do they talk a lot, but say one thing and then a different version another time? And then there’s the glittery hints of promises. Mutterings about marriage, kids, a house, something they’ll never do- like cheat or lie.
Typically, they tell lots of stories about other people; things those people did and said, along with lots of bad things about others. When we begin to question some of the things they do, their talk is peppered with denials about what was said or done. And eventually, there’s telling us we’re crazy. – But it’s the really weird stuff they say that haunts us most.
The Weird Stuff They Say
I like to say that the majority- about 99.9% of their words are lies, misdirects, and what people think of as gaslighting. And then there’s the really weird stuff they say. The stuff they let slide from their gobs that hits us as bizarre, and the moment is surreal. This stuff, this weird stuff, isn’t fully seen in the moment for what it is. It is, in actuality, a key to who they really are; it’s their incomprehensible-in-the-moment truth. Truth too weird to make sense.
The thing is, there’s always a reason for what they say. That reason isn’t always understood or discovered by us. But, to truly recover, we need to know how to decode their words. To stop the confusion and our mind spinning, and to keep from falling into the vortex of another one of these creatures, we must understand what they say and why.
Weird Stuff They Say: We Make It Make Sense
As an example, in my case, within a few days of knowing the lunatic I ended up marrying, I asked him if he had any kids. We were standing together in the kitchen.
His head was down, bent over the stove, stirring the dinner he was making for us. He didn’t say anything for a few beats. I waited.
Then, still looking towards the stove top, a slow smile peeked from his profile. He lifted his face up, not towards me, but up, somewhere between the stove-top vent and the top of the kitchen wall, but beyond the walls of the room. What he said next made zero sense…
Knowing the truth breaks the trauma bond.
100s of Kids All Over the World
His gaze dreamy, searching somewhere in the ether beyond the kitchen, into a distance I couldn’t see, in a throaty, floaty voice, he murmured, I have hundreds of kids all over the world. His head lowered, his eyes to follow, back to the stew.
I didn’t understand. I stood, waiting, on pause, looking at him, still facing front to his side-body. Waiting for him to say more… He stirred the simmering tomatoes and chilis, the rich African stew he brewed in my stainless steel pans in my kitchen, didn’t speak, didn’t look at me. It was like we were in two separate worlds, or I wasn’t there…or wasn’t standing on a solid floor.
I stayed still but unhinged, trying to imagine what he meant… Then, still dreamy, but with gravity and a touch of what read from my normal human heart as regret, he lifted his gaze, tilting his head up half-way this time, he said, I had a four-year-old boy once, but I gave him back. His head bowing down again, his eyes landing on the simmering tomatoes, he went on cooking. – This did not clear things up.
The Surreal Lift-Up Out of Our Own Body
Having hundreds of kids all over the world and one four-year-old boy he “had once”, but “gave back” made no sense. I needed it to make sense. We need what people say to make sense. Ideas about his meaning ran rapidly through my brain, I wasn’t thinking these things… It was more like my mind, my body -some part of my life spontaneously offered up and sorted through options to make this make sense.
These thoughts were: maybe he had a foster kid and then returned him to where ever he came from…or… something…or…a relative’s child… or… I factored in that his English wasn’t great. And maybe this happened in his home country in Africa, where maybe this happens… or… And as for having 100s of kids… gears in my mind clicked, and whirled until I landed on, oh, he must mean that he loves kids- like I do!
With that, the meandering four-year-old boy was tucked under a rug or behind a trunk in a corner in the attic in my mind. And voila, my brain decided he and I had something else in common: We both love kids.
This brought me as close to cognitive harmony as I was going to get over this weird thing my then-boyfriend said, and, as we do, I added it as a fact to my beliefs about “who he was”. Fact: He loves kids! Great! The thing is, this wasn’t true. This was as far from “fact” as believing that you won’t get burned if you stick your hand in a fire.
The Weird Stuff Blows Up Their World
It’s normal and necessary for us as normal humans to make sense of the things someone says. We need “cognitive harmony”. A through-line of sense that aligns with our expectations, with what we consider “okay” socially and culturally; our values, words, actions, and events around us must make sense.
There were more comments along the way, jutting up out of the harmony throughout my ride with this nut bag I married, that made me tilt my head in wonderment, like a dog does at a high-pitched noise. I made a patchwork sense of them all or tucked them away. The thing to keep in mind is the most odd things of all that they let drop are in fact the rare times they tell the truth.
For instance, months later, I discovered that while he did exaggerate, he was telling the truth about having kids all over the world. After I’d kicked him out, I spent hours and hours and hours and endless days and nights uncovering who he was.
Bizarre Weird Stuff They Say Is “True Stuff”
One unbelievable truth was/is that three women in Europe, all living in the same country and the same town, who each thought they were the “only one” in his life each gave birth to one of his children within a span of two months… While he was married to me in the U.S.A., while another woman in the U.S. was getting an annulment from him, while two other wives in two other countries waited at home for him, and three more in three separate countries thought he was going to marry them.
When I, along with one of those women in Europe, stopped unearthing things about him, we’d confirmed 13 children he’d “fathered” and abandoned in three countries and five more suspected as his children, adding a fourth country, for a total of 18 children in 2014. I can only imagine how many he’s abandoned by now. – Which, honestly, is the best thing that could happen for those children with him as their bio-dad.
And think about how I functioned in this “marriage” under my falsely gleaned “fact” that he “loved kids”, letting him meet and spend time with my family and quite young nieces and nephews, this freak who “loved kids”. I believed it, just as each of those other women had… One of whom had four of those children that he certainly did not love.
Breaking Up With Evil
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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.
When the Weird Stuff They Say Is the Truth
Out of the slew of talk and words and versions of stories they tell, it’s the things that won’t tuck away, the things our brain has a hard time putting in place. These are the things they say that are indeed “truth’. These are the words that can lead us to break away from them.
Here are examples of truths we can’t make sense of yet could help us escape and restore our lives uttered by real-life lying, using, and defrauding people without a conscience.
- If I knew I wouldn’t go to jail for it, I’d kill you.
- Step away, I’m about to get physical, and you don’t want to see that.
- Driving back here every day, all I do is imagine bashing your head against the wall.
- I don’t care like you do.
- There are things you don’t know.
- If you love me, you’ll take me as I am.
- If you knew who I really was, you wouldn’t love me.
- You’re afraid you’ll never see me again, aren’t you?
- I can’t do it. I just can’t pretend anymore.
- You have no idea all the things I’m fooling you about.
- You know this feeling is just a phase, right?
- …This is going to end. I intend to prolong it as long as I can, but it’s going to end.
- Don’t tell people about us.
- It’s good now, but when it’s bad, it’s really bad.
- I can’t make you do what I want you to but I can make you wish you had.
- I’m not who you think I am.
- I’m not like other people. I’m a gray skin.
Dust Off The Weird Stuff
It’s normal that we rationalize the weird things they say: never forget that. As you restore your life and recover, and memories of the weirdest things they said float into your mind, look at them again.
The weirdest stuff they say, the stuff that was just too weird to find a place to tuck away, let alone make sense of, can be what we can use to shatter the mirage we built them to be, the hologram they became, because as normal people we believe what people tell us, we trust, we bond.
It’s the pokey things that never quit settled or suddenly stick up again as we recover that lead us to put our life truly back into place.
These Are Deceptions and Fraud Rather Than Relationships
Thankfully, while we rationalize and believe the odd, contradictory, and nonsensical comments and absences, the inexplicable things we come across, it’s also these weird things that help the whole thing fall apart.
How many phrases can you recall that rang strange? Can you see them for the truth they were? It takes courage, but if we can take a look at these odd moments we’re going to make a shift toward healing. If we can look at that weird stuff they said from a new angle…the things that never quite fit where we tried our best to tuck it, in the attic, the cellar, and the back of the closet of our mind, then we can begin to see what really went on.
Do your best not to get stuck in the lies. Walkthrough to the truth. The truth is you experienced a deliberate deception by a person who is, in truth, not at all who we thought they were. That person, the one we met, doesn’t exist. If we can look at these hijackings for the deception they are, rather than as a genuine relationship, we have a chance at deep recovery and can become user-proof forever.
Be Open To the Truth
Be open to the hideous truth. It’s how we step away from this being a personal relationship and realize we were targeted in fraud. A crime we can heal from. Someone we thought loved us and lied is something we might never get over.
Listen for it. They’ll tell you the truth. We can hear it much, much later in the aftermath, in the echo of their words. Those words: that truth is the key to healing, recovering.
The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
The Truth Clears the Mirage of “Who They Are”
Do your best to see through the lies, the promises, the moments they were “nice”. Know they are not good, they are not nice (they don’t love children), and that the worst moment you saw in them…That is who they are. You’ll cry and feel so, so bad that there are no words to describe the feeling. Go ahead and cry those tears that contort your face as they roil up from your gut and soul.
That person, the one we met, doesn’t exist. Grieve what there is to grieve; with self-compassion, and awareness, gradually move into grieving not the person, but the crime.
There’s no need to change who you are or how much you love. They take advantage of our great goodness. Our innate way of accepting others. This doesn’t make our marvelous goodness bad. It does reveal just how bad they are. We are awesome!
Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!
Time to Thrive!
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2019_01_20 REWRITE & REPUB 2026_04_09