LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: She played the hot and cold game

Editor’s Note: This letter was sent in by Lovefraud reader “truelove.”

Wow where to start. I am in my 40s and started dating a girl in her late 20s back in April 2013. I had met her a couple years ago and thought she was a nice, caring person. We started dating and things got hot and heavy really fast. It was like a fun roller coaster ride, but little did I realize she had plans to purposely make it jump the tracks once I was most vulnerable and hooked.

Taking control

She played the hot and cold game with me from the beginning.  I was hurt by it but always went back to her when she wanted to see me. She was taking control of the relationship at this point through manipulating my emotions. She asked me all kinds of personal questions and complimented me a lot. I never felt so appreciated in my entire life, and it felt so good having a woman tell me so many nice things. Then she said things that made me think this is my soul mate whom I have been waiting for because she felt the same about a lot of the things we talked about.

Texts and sex

The sex was unbelievable and often experienced. We spent so much time together and texted constantly. I thought this was kind of odd at first, but this was my soul mate so it seemed all right. Later I realized it was to keep control of me and not because she cared, because she did horrible things behind by back while having this intense communication with me.

Then I noticed that she would get offended really easily over silly things. For example, she got mad at me for replying to her text messages with K instead of saying OK. Then I noticed that she would say things to hurt me. She mentioned that I had a bald spot on my head when I didn’t. It was like she was testing me to see how to upset me. I just thought she was joking. Then she would ask me strange personal questions that made me feel uncomfortable, but I figured she cared about me and simply wanted to get to know me more.

Many personal questions

She asked what caused previous relationships to end and I said it was due to cheating, wow, go figure. She asked me what my greatest sexual fantasies were. Everything with her was sexual. She even said that my filtered fresh water was sexual!

As I look back, she would often stare at me in a really intense way. We even had staring contests and she won every time. It was like she could see right through me and her eyes were like two lifeless blue doll eyes in her head that wouldn’t flinch.

Lies and manipulation

Then the lies and manipulation really kicked into overdrive. We were upstairs watching a movie one night and she took a call that she said was her cousin. She ran out of my house like it was a fire drill to take the call. When she came back up, I had this pain deep in my gut that it was another guy she was talking to. She lied and I dropped it since I started to ignore my gut instinct a couple weeks before and how could such a sweet, nice loving girl do such a thing as lie? The brainwashing had already kicked into high gear.

Oops, the wrong name

My friends couldn’t understand why I didn’t just ditch the bad nasty apple for good and stop going back and move on. They obviously didn’t understand how addictive it becomes to want to work things out and still believe all the lies, since I thought we had a deep spiritual, mental and emotional connection and I didn’t want to be wrong?!

Then when we went to bed and she called me by her ex-boyfriend’s name by accident so she said! I was so naive and “in love,” that I kicked her out of bed and later overlooked it and figured she was with him before for a year and a half so people make mistakes, right? This was in late June 2013.

Truth is like pulling teeth

A week later I caught her texting someone late at night right next to me in bed after saying she didn’t want to have sex earlier that evening. It was like she got a thrill out of getting caught possibly. Then I badgered her into the late hours to tell the OBVIOUS truth and she finally said it was her OTHER EX, yes another ex boyfriend! Just to get a shred of honesty was like pulling teeth from a tiger. I see now that she was messing with my emotions and hurting me on purpose.

I thought she was a victim and being used by these other guys when it was likely the opposite. Really sickening now that I think about it. I was in complete denial at this point and in fantasy land since I was so into her and she was into me, right?! I later found out that she was sleeping with her ex and they had a fight and that’s why she took the phone call in a fire drill rush in my apartment.

Sleeping with the ex

She told me in late August 2013 about sleeping with her ex and about almost having a threesome with him and her best friend! She told me she loved me in the same sentence and how she prayed for me! I was devastated and felt so betrayed; I cried a lot.

When she “came clean,” by telling me that she slept with her ex, I later found out she was hooking up with another guy she met through the sex pages/personal ads of craigslist! This was when she was, “coming clean?!” She is almost thirty and the guy was 19 years old!

I found out she likely had a threesome with this kid as I saw her text messages one night. I know that was wrong, but I guess I needed a bigger dose of reality and humiliation.

Three days before she had sex with the kid, she had asked me to be her boyfriend and I said yes! It was like the more screwed up stuff she did to me, the more it made her feel good. This whole experience has been so humiliating as a man to have a woman do this to me and to leave and come back to it several times thinking it would stop. I think the word I am looking for is I felt emasculated?

The sex weapon

So she told me about cheating on me not because she felt bad, but it was intended to hurt me emotionally, which it did. I broke up with her initially when she called me by her ex-boyfriend’s name. But time and time again I don’t know how she did it she was able to get me back into her game. She was able to slither her way back into my life every time by using the powerful weapon of hot sex, now that I think about it.

Intentionally hurting through lies

I later determined that she was trying to turn me into a willing victim. Every time she would do something horrible to me, she would want to get closer to me and love bomb me again. How can someone purposely go out of their way to hurt another person?? I don’t get it! Why waste so much time!

While all this was taking place she told me lies within lies and deceptions within deception! I wanted to believe her, but I didn’t believe her. Such outlandish lies! She likely lied to me about difficult things from when she was younger to get my pity. How could such a hurt person who is so vulnerable do such monstrous things to me? It made no sense to me. As a result I remained in a fog mentally and emotionally, wondering if I was losing my mind.

Girlfriend and boyfriend

Now after Thanksgiving, she wanted space from me and I was dumbfounded and upset! A week before, she started a fight with me and justified going out with another guy and told me the details about how she was a good girl even though they talked about sex! After she told me this, she held my hand like she was my girlfriend!

Oh yeah, during our relationship, we spent tons of time together and she would put her arm under my arm while walking my dog, etc. She was making me think I was all hers and she was into me, basically my girlfriend. It was all a facade. I fell in love with a person who didn’t exist.

Smirks

This part was really creepy to me. A couple days before Thanksgiving, she was over my house and as she walked out of my bathroom, she gave a big smile, but I only looked at her from the corner of my eye. What I saw was creepy! Out of the side of my vision, I saw that the smile was fake and I caught a quick glimpse of a person wearing a mask! Every other time she smiled at me I looked at her directly and it seemed sincere.

When I caught her being deceptive and lying, she didn’t seem sorry but instead had a smirk on her face and duper’s delight as they call it after I researched it. There was another time she asked me if I wanted a particular thing, and I said yes. After I answered, I saw a quick smirk on her face. Later it was her feeling good about duping me again about the question she asked. Now that I think about it, every time she upset me and hurt me through deception and lies, she probably enjoyed it and I believe got a rush from it. Crazy!

Needing space

Now after we both agreed for the umpteenth time to give space to each other after Thanksgiving, she broke the agreement and contacted me three days later wanting to see me etc. I ignored her because I had come to a definite conclusion that I was dealing with a sociopath and dangerous person emotionally for me.

I began researching online back in early October 2013 to try and make sense of what was happening to me. I thought I was going crazy and needed to deal with some personal issues since I was constantly mad at her and expressed it verbally several times. She later tried to get me to believe that what I said to her was just as bad as what she did to me.

Anyway, I read a lot of websites, articles and the book by Dr. Stout and it all began to make sense. I found Lovefraud.com  and read the testimonies of people and saw parts of my experience in almost every story. It was comforting but still painful and shocking to come to grips with what I had been experiencing. I identified with some of the traits that made me a potential bulls eye /target for her.

Wanting me back

Ok, so since I ignored her after Thanksgiving, she started to call me several times a day and sent 30 or 40 text messages to get me back into her game. I still ignored her, despite how difficult it was. It was extremely difficult since I care about her, but the more no contact with her, the more the fog lifted and I saw how many horrible lies and things she did to me and how I was duped by her.

She eventually wound up in a mental hospital early December with OCD from contacting me and depression. She tried to blame me for it, but I was simply breaking free from her control and saw through her manipulation. I thought that when she contacted me often she loved me, but it was just to control/own me, so to speak.

Knowledge is power

Wow knowledge is power and wisdom is acting on that power ”¦

I contacted her in the hospital because I love her and that’s when she asked me in a negative tone why I never returned her calls and blamed me for her hospital stay. I got upset and hung up the phone instead of yelling. Yet again she was successful at messing with my emotions.

She would send me poems and tried to contact me for the month of December 2013 and I continued to read them because I liked the attention and wanted to believe she could actually change and love me the way I need to be loved.

I still didn’t contact her until after Christmas when she wished me a happy birthday and Christmas. I contacted her and the whole games began again for a couple days and I broke free again. I find it ironic that she would up in the hospital instead of  me because of all the abuse I got from her.

Start from scratch?

In January 2014, she wanted to start from scratch with our relationship and I said no unless she tells the truth about something she obviously lied about before. Ridiculous, I know, for me to want to have a friendship with benefits kind of a thing. I had not been acting sane at this point.

So she continued to tell her ridiculous terrible lies; the truth was blatantly obvious. I told her I want nothing more to do with a liar!

This was when she told me she slept with her OTHER EX twice while being with me. She called me the following day begging to come sleep in my bed. I was shocked and speechless and she hung up on me. Even until the end she was hoping to keep me as her willing victim. She chose to keep her lies and dirty secrets over having anything to do with me in the future.

I gave her so many chances to change and do right by me. I knew that the new person was simply another mask she was putting on. All her actions before were in the past to be forgotten and forgiven, but saying sorry and making false promises gets old. Come to think of it, she had mentioned herself as a phoenix! The scary thing is, I don’t think she is done with me yet.

Emotional sobriety

It has been 10 days since last contact through Facebook and it has been like starting over with emotional sobriety. Every time I wound up in any kind of contact, it had been awful and emotionally painful as it brought up painful memories.

I believe she didn’t like the fact that I dumped her finally for good, and that she wasn’t able to hurt me again emotionally by sharing other guys she slept with while being with me. It is shocking how she would share different emotionally painful things right when it would hurt me the most. The 19-year-old guy she slept with I found out on my own and foiled her plans to hit me with that zinger. My God, the betrayal and lies/deception! She knew what she was doing to me. After I caught her in a deception, she got a parking ticket and claimed it was karma getting back at her!

Today I am slowly recovering. I feel depressed, shocked, angry and hurt all around.

I am still dumbfounded that there are people like this in the world. Also the bad luck I had of coming across a female sociopath, where there are around three million in this country I believe?  I have watched a lot of horror movies and seen things that are evil, but this takes it too a whole new level as they are monsters with sweet caring masks and a dagger behind their backs. Also they aren’t usually discovered until damage has been done.

But I also see how this negative, painful experience will make me a better person in the long run. They say the best revenge is to live a good, honest and happy life. I have every intention of doing so by Grace.