Lovefraud received the following letter from a reader who posts as, “lucky2Bfree.”
Donna,
We spoke a while ago and it really did help me, it was good to speak to somebody who genuinely understood how I felt and also get some perspective on the situation.
To recap, my fiance borrowed a lot of money for me and told me stories which I now know to be false. We were living together in the United States, but when I returned to my native country to nurse my terminally ill mother he told me he needed to leave America and wanted to join me. He borrowed more money, told me he was falsely arrested and needed me to pay the bail bond but suddenly went quiet, leading me to believe something awful had happened.
Before that he had been professing his undying love and telling me I was the best girlfriend in the world. To others, though, he was telling them I was stalking him, he had ended it with me and that I was following him and his new girlfriend around. When I tried to contact his family none of them would speak to me. He had set everything up perfectly. He had been seeing someone else the whole time, she had his baby while we were trying for a baby ourselves.
When I spoke to you last I was pursuing a civil case against him for the money he had borrowed. I had emails, cards, even video messages of him discussing this money as a loan, yet in his declarations he said it was a gift. He lied about everything, telling them I had been such an awful girlfriend that I was paying him money to basically stay with him. He told them that he had given me loads of money before and totally slandered my character. He agreed to pay me back in an out-of-court settlement at the last minute and has been making regular payments.
He told me he had been in trouble with the law before, but this is when he was young, and he had changed, found God, grown-up, met his “soul mate” (me) etc. In fact he was a violent criminal with a long history of firearm possession and drug dealing. He had served 11 years in a maximum security prison and now I look back I feel lucky to be alive. I shudder when I think I could’ve married him and I could’ve had his child. I’ve read about people taking out life insurance policies out on their partners and killing them, anything is possible with a true psychopath.
At the time I was desperate for closure, desperate for revenge, desperate for the truth to get out, basically just plain desperate. While I am pleased I got my money back, it actually cost me over half in legal fees. At the time it meant a lot to me and it helped me to regain some of my self-esteem and get closure.
What I realise now is that the real reward is to be free. As much as I despise what he did, I had been so manipulated by him that I still had a lot of emotions flying around. I read somewhere once that the opposite of love it’s not hate, it is indifference. Before I hated him, now I am indifferent.
To anyone out there that is going through a similar situation to me, my advice would be run for the hills and don’t look back. Don’t get caught up in trying to win, trying to make them feel bad, trying to battle it out, because the most important thing is to be as far away as possible. Having the time away and the distance has given me a lot of clarity and perspective on the situation. I now see it for what it is, and feel although I got some battle wounds, I did dodge a seriously big bullet.
My attorney has told me my ex is involved in several cases now. He has a few DUI’s, a personal injury law suit, a landlord and tenant breech of contract. His life isn’t going well, he treats everyone the same as he treated me after all, and that can only go on for so long. I was so caught up on making him pay at first but really who he is as a person will ensure that he goes from crisis to crisis and drama to drama with no stability his whole life. I, on the other hand, have feelings, have my morals and my conscience, am capable of loving and still have my life.
If it wasn’t for Love Fraud I would never have known this man was psychopathic. I thank you for being there when I was at rock bottom and no one else understood.
He’s Not Depressed, Anxious, or Sleep Deprived–He’s a Sociopath!
Your title really says it all.
After realizing that you have been dealing with a person so disordered (P/SP), it almost feels imperative that we NEED to be believed by others.
We also do feel the NEED for revenge, if only to hurt them even one iota as much as they have hurt us. Then, there is that NEED for closure.
Little do we know at the time, we rarely are able to achieve ANY of these three things…and must we? It appears, not. It is often not possible. Unless the disordered person DIES. Then, at least two of the three things can happen. The revenge and the closure.
Foe me, the being believed (the truth) is so important and I am trying to make that less so. It only serves to harm my psyche to need the validation.
Thank you for your post.
Great article. Thank you so much for sharing.
I read ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ by Louise Hay and one exercise in it was how to forgive and let go of seeking revenge. It has worked well for me. I was instructed to visualize the person I need to forgive and who I was seeking revenge on. In my case this was my ex, and father of my child. The author instructed me to visualize him standing on a stage, receiving everything that makes him happy in life. When I read this I scowled and said, “Hell no!” But I came around, and I did it. While I was doing it I realized that the things that make him “happy” aren’t the things that truly make anyone happy in life. I saw him receiving drugs, random women throwing themselves at him, “impressing” people with his made-up stories, money, and all the material possessions he wishes for. While money might bring some people happiness, he always does bad or irresponsible things with the money he gets; therefore, he is never happy with any amount of money he gets his hands on.
I realized after this exercise that revenge is not necessary. He ruins his own life all by himself. He takes no pleasure and finds no happiness in anything meaningful — love; long-lasting friendships; family; goals, that if met, would provide him with a successful and satisfying future. He only likes the here and now — drugs, money (that he NEVER does anything meaningful with), meaningless hook-ups with random women. I found a lot of solace in that. After doing this exercise it became so clear to me that what makes him “happy” will never make him TRULY happy. He is incapable of being happy. His happiness lasts for a matter of hours. Once the novelty of the new dirt bike, or new outfit, or new cell phone, or new girl wears off, he’s off looking for the next thing to make him “happy.” For me, knowing this has become enough and I no longer seek revenge.
The only thing I struggle with now is his love of control. I cannot visualize him receiving that because if he had his way he would go back to controlling me. And I can’t bear the thought of him getting into another relationship and controlling another woman through his manipulation and exploitation.
What a great comment…this will help me and I will read ‘ you can heal your life’ â¤ï¸
Dear anonymous1
You make an excellent point, one I want to validate b/c it was also my observation:
I say I don’t have to get revenge on my ex, that he will do it for me… simply by being himself. I recognized that he was self destructive, he can’t help it because destruction is the natural outcome of how he choses what matters to him.
After reading your last paragraph, the above is ALSO why I want to give you a word of encouragement. You are one who can understand what I am saying. He does not experience love of control. Rather, control is how he expresses his unending anger. He has moments of domination, of winning, of prevailing that he has made another miserable (that’s how he defines “winning”, but how miserable he has made another).
Just keep telling yourself the truth, that he is incapable of any love, including love of self. Rather he has unending hatred of all others because he can not feel compassion even for himself, that emptiness drives his rage. And thus, he is his own hell, he can not escape himself.
This is also why no contact is the answer. There is NO benefit, EVER, of contact with them. All contact does is provide them more fodder, more opportunity to harm.
You CAN heal you life. (by making Your well being your priority!!)
My therapist and I talked about my ability to pursue a civil suit to recover the nearly $40,000 I gave to my ex N/SP over the 4 years we were together. I decided not to, primarily because my ex could have very likely come after me for ‘maintenance,’ as we could be considered common-law married in the state we lived in. Additionally, I did NOT want to have to be attached to him long term because he lacks the employment to be able to pay me back in a timely fashion. I did not want to drag out any association with him when I needed to go ‘no contact.’
I have really been struggling with wanting closure, and my strong desire to see him crash and burn. I know he’s living in our old space with multiple violations to the lease (I could easily anonymously contact the leasing office and narc on him), I struggled with not posting a Craig’s List ad on social media that proved his proclivity for trolling for anonymous gang sex in our home. It’s been hard to not simply drive by our old house…for whatever reason.
But I refuse to allow him to continue to have power over me. Picking the scabs that I have from our toxic relationship will never heal completely if I continually pick at them by feeding what was once my addiction to our relationship.
I understand my own history well enough to know that -I- have to heal me on my own. Looking behind me and continuing to feed my own dysfunction (co-dependency) does me no favors. I have to create my future for myself in order to truly heal.
Hi! Thank you for sharing. I also just had to face and end of 4.5 years with the Sociopath pretending to be my husband, over $40,000 taken. The lies are making me cringe. Marriage: something that was supposed to be beautiful wasn’t 🙁 It’s been 3 months since I [fled from him]/saw him and it’s been pleasant not getting bullied.
After talking it out with trusted people, it became clear the unfortunate need for divorce to escape ever getting a mortgage and having a kid with him. I made the decision finally to myself to leave, and THEN calculated the total theft. Some of the transactions and the times they were made indicated serious problems with the heart, and having made the decision to leave first made it easier to accept. I had the ability to get some of it back through division of property, but I bet it was painful for you to have to value no-contact over justice. Hang in there.
Revenge is not necessary but reporting dangerous people to local authorities is very important. I kept quiet for years protecting my children from knowing about him and mostly it just protected him to do more of the same to other women and children. I did finally report him to the local police where he lived to protect my grandchildren from being hurt by him. My daughter has not forgiven me but she has protected her children from him. I think I did the right thing just wish I had done it sooner.
Revenge is not an option – that feeds them. They crave attention and drama, the bigger the drama the more important they must be.
Legal solutions, if they’re open to you, can make you feel empowered. Simply bringing a case against someone who harmed you can help give you closure.
But sometimes, the aggravation and triggering of a case can have a disturbing affect. So be very careful about whether you feel mentally capable of enduring their lies before you invest the time and heartache to go after them.