Insight: Anger and Resentment

Lately no matter where we start in our discussion (tonight we started with impermanence and integration) we end on anger and resentment. We had a great discussion tonight. Left remembering one thing – it’s all based on fear. While I am very angry for loving someone who was so deceptive, I am also afraid it could happen again. As I shared tonight, while I am no saint I do feel like I did all the “right” things. I did my best to address red flags, express my feelings, ask questions, work on myself, compromise, create boundaries, etc. If I could invest all that I did in a relationship and still end up where I am today, I do not know what else I can do.
Truthfully, I don’t even know what I can learn from the experience except never to trust anything that comes out of anyone mouth. I don’t want to live like that. Yet, I don’t want to be stupid and gullible again either. So, I find the middle way, balance, somewhere in between both extremes, which is where I thought I was in my last relationship. This is why I’m so confused.
I have to constantly remind myself that it is not a bad thing to trust another. You should be able to trust what your partner is saying to you. However, I also need to pay better attention to what the person is doing. Actions speak louder than words. Here is where my opportunities lie.
So this week we are focusing on Metta Practice. I pray this helps. I have been doing better in my waking state. Now, the anger is manifesting in my dreams.

J says I need to stop blaming myself, stop being so hard on myself. I really didn’t think I was blaming myself. I thought I was simply accepting my part in the situation in order to clean up my side of the street. I understand why he said what he did. B thinks I should read this book called The Socialpath Next Door. I just read the description and it gave me chills because most of this describes my ex:

In the pages of The Sociopath Next Door, you will realize that your ex was not just misunderstood. He’s a sociopath. And your boss, teacher, and colleague? They may be sociopaths too.

We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five—has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.

How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They’re more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others’ suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win.

The fact is, we all almost certainly know at least one or more sociopaths already. Part of the urgency in reading The Sociopath Next Door is the moment when we suddenly recognize that someone we know—someone we worked for, or were involved with, or voted for—is a sociopath. But what do we do with that knowledge? To arm us against the sociopath, Dr. Stout teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she writes, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game.

It is the ruthless versus the rest of us, and The Sociopath Next Door will show you how to recognize and defeat the devil you know.