It’s never a fair fight with a sociopath, and that’s how they want it

Every week, a chapter of  my book,”Husband, Liar, Sociopath: How He Lied, Why I Fell For It & The Painful Lessons Learned” (available via Amazon.com, just click on the title or book cover) will be published here on Lovefraud. To read prior chapters, use the links at the bottom of the post.

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Chapter 56B:  It’s Not Over Until Paul Says It’s Over

A month before Daniel’s half-sister was born, and after a sleepless night at his dad’s, Paul woke Daniel early and demanded he help Paul paint the baby’s room. Daniel refused. Ruth, who was visiting at the time, called Daniel “lazy” for refusing to do so and splashed water in his face to get him out of bed. Daniel’s conflicted feelings about his half-sister were irrelevant. That night, Linda made shrimp for dinner; despite knowing that Daniel is so allergic to shellfish that he could die if he ate even one piece of rice that it touched. Hysterical, Daniel called me to pick him up.

I raced to Paul’s house and found Daniel crying on a bench outside his dad’s front door. On top of everything else, because Daniel called me to come get him and swore at his father in a heated discussion about leaving, Paul confiscated all of Daniel’s electronic games and hardware—Daniel’s only escape, other than karate, from the toxic vortex that had become his world. When I drove down Paul’s long driveway to get Daniel, Paul threatened me with trespassing charges. It was worth it. I had to rescue Daniel.

State laws required Daniel to see his father every other weekend and once during the week. Daniel refused to go back to his father’s house or to see him. Paul called me, furious, demanding that Daniel come back the next weekend. My answer to Paul was simple. “It’s up to Daniel. He says he doesn’t want to see you.” Paul cursed at me, threatening litigation for “parental alienation and custodial interference.” Daniel’s realization about who and what his father really was, as well as the verbally abusive treatment he had received from Paul, had Daniel flirting with serious depression. My child was teetering on a precarious emotional precipice. I needed to get him to safety, not set off a rockslide that might carry him over the edge. I did not care what it cost me; I was not going to be part of putting Daniel back in that poisonous household with Paul. Lawyers called lawyers. Paul took me to court. Legal bills mounted. Psychologists were called in, and when the first psychologist determined that Daniel’s alienation from Paul was due exclusively to Paul’s actions, Paul insisted the first psychologist was a quack and hired his own psychologist to offer a second opinion.

Every member of our family was interviewed multiple times, and the second psychologist reached the same conclusion—Daniel’s anger with Paul and refusal to see him were due to Paul’s decisions and actions. I had not alienated Daniel from Paul. Quite the contrary, I had exhibited considerable restraint under the circumstances. Like the previous psychologist, she recommended that Daniel be able to rebuild his relationship with Paul only if Daniel chose to do so and only on Daniel’s timetable. Unable to get professionals to back up his view, Paul did the next best thing—he went after me. If Daniel would not see Paul, Jessica would not see me.

Paul and Linda gave Jessica an expensive car under the condition that she never use it to see me or to do anything to benefit me or Daniel. Paul sent me a bill for one-half the cost of the car, because, he argued, prior to moving to Utah we had promised Jessica a car when she got her driver’s license. He even involved our lawyers in the absurd request. True to her word, Jessica ceased all communication with me, even on birthdays and holidays. This was particularly poignant, because in the preceding months our relationship had started to thaw. We had met several times for shopping or dinner. I was devastated to lose her all over again.

Night after night, I did not sleep, struggling to let go of wanting a relationship with my daughter and frightened that Paul was keeping me engaged in malicious and punitive legal actions designed to drain me financially and erode me further emotionally. This is what I had made a massive financial tradeoff to avoid, but I had not succeeded. The demands of defending myself legally approached that of a full-time job at times. Paul could not let go of wanting to hurt, of needing to get an almost daily fix of playing Whack-A-Mole with me. He is a sociopath—that is what they do. They are nonpeople, vampires, evil, void, dark. That is their true nature; anything else is just disguise and pretense. Paul was a millionaire now. I was unemployed. Hardly a fair fight, but that was the point. That had always been the point.

Start from the beginning:

Chapter 1

Go to previous chapter:

Chapter 56A

Notes

Identifying names, places, events, characteristics, etc. that I discuss here and in my book have been altered to protect the identity of everyone involved.