Help me get through this pain!

need2heal – I am so sorry for your experience. Unfortunately, everything that you are describing are typical of sociopathic manipulation, and your reaction is normal for someone who has been targeted by a sociopath.

We have many articles on Lovefraud that may help you. You can look in this section:

https://lovefraud.com/category/hooked-by-a-sociopath/recovery-from-a-sociopath/

Please don’t consider this part of my response to be just a “sales pitch,” but my Lovefraud CE program – the “Lovefraud Recovery Bundle,” is precisely designed to help people who have experienced what you have experienced. It explains exactly why you fell for him, why you got addicted (because that’s what you’re feeling), what his objective was, and how you can move forward. It’s probably the fastest way for you to understand what happened. You might want to check it out.

https://lovefraud.inreachce.com/SearchResults?searchType=1&category=607a21e5-2731-4fb1-92f7-281fcca6d012

I know that pain. Oh boy do I know it. I met Thomas in June 2015 while working at the same company overseas. And wow. wow! What a whirlwind! He was saying all the right things, texting and sending love songs. Upset if I didn’t respond quickly enough. Wanted to see me all the time. By Sept. we were engaged and planning a life together in Alaska. Alaska! OMG! We were going to move, I was going to move first with my four kids from a previous marriage, and he was going on to a bigger project to get more money for us. He had a business that was once very successful, but due to bad business partners, who stole from him, he had to go back to being a contractor doing inspections all over the world. He had stories of an extremely abusive mother who stabbed him, abused him, left him and his siblings in poverty, ran him over with a car, OMG! This poor man. Now he was divorced once and going through a second divorce with a mentally unstable wife who only nagged him about money. So we married in an Islamic marriage in Saudi after he converted to Islam. We planned to renew our vows in the US once his divorce was finalised. That was in March 2016.
I moved to the states and he went to the Philippines to wait for his next project to begin, but for nearly two months I barely heard from him. He was broke, no money for internet access at his bad hotel. sent him money. The he was off to Mexico for his next project and communication improved. Not what it was before, but better. He joined me and my family for a week in the end of July to do a little house hunting. he opened a bank account and we met with a realtor. Signed for a credit check. Then off to UAE for his next job. Communication was bad again. I barely heard from him. He said he was busy, internet was unreliable, his phone broke. A long list of excuses. I laid down the law, fix the communication issues or I am gone. He got better. Then he was off to his next job in Iraq. He told me to find a house and he’d send the money for the first and last month rent until we could find a house we wanted to buy. I did, signed the paper and then That is when it happened.
I woke up one morning to text message from a girl in the Phillipines asking if I was Thomas’s girlfriend. I said I was his wife and she said that she was.
Here is what I didn’t know. He met this girl on line and had been texting here, love bombing her, before he even met me. He met her face to face in January, met up with her again a couple of months later. A month after he married me, he married her in the Philippines. She and I were texting while he was asleep next to her in the Philippines, and not in Iraq as he said. She said I was not the only one. She shared with me photos she got off his phone of him with so many other women. He had women at his beck and call in every country he worked in. I had no clue. He also did not actually ever file for divorce from the wife he had in Puerto Rico. So he was divorced once from the mother of his first three children, married again with three more children to his PR wife, married me and the girl in the Philippines who has recently had a miscarriage due to the stress of the entire situation.
The money he said he was going to send of course, never came and my son had to give up his college tuition money he’d been saving for two years to keep the five of us from being homeless. Thomas tried to contact me to talk to me face to face and I wouldn’t have it. I told him to get lost. I have all of his business papers, control of the website and ownership of the company’s domain, and all of his childhood photos and family photos, tools and some clothes. I said I would be willing to turn them all over to him if he reimbursed my son and sent me back my wedding ring.
The Filipino wife and I have been talking a lot. She is a lovely lady and is just as heart broken as I am. She has two kids and is 17 years younger than me. I suspect she still wants to keep him providing he can prove he was actually divorced from his second wife and legally able to marry her in a Catholic wedding. I know he is not going to be able to do that. He refuses to return my wedding ring, reimburse my son his college tuition and has berated me and called me ‘jealous’, bitter, old, spiteful, evil. All for sharing the truth and details of our relationship with the Filipino wife. AS if we had no right. I am not jealous. I am hurt, really deeply hurt to find out that while it was real love for me, it was an act for him. And I mean an act. He used the same lines, love making techniques, emotional ploys, habits, and trophies such as keeping our panties with him. She found a pair of mine, and he actually lied and said he got them for her. This man regifted a pair of my unwashed panties to this poor lady. He knows I won’t see him again, and he still has hopes of duping her into taking him back. She might do it. She was a housemaid in Saudi, and they only make about $300 a month. HE was going to be her rescuer.. she might very well tolerate anything he does in exchange for financial security. He is furious with me for possibly hurting that chance by sharing so much information with her. But it was good for me to know that those special moments he and I shared, those moments that really made me fall for him, he had copied and pasted with her. It meant nothing. Now, all i feel is disgusted. Here is my conundrum… the other wife in Puerto Rico. My Filipino ‘sister wife’ did me a favor by cluing me in on what she had found on his phone. If she hadn’t…I would still be mixed up with all of his lied and none the wiser. Eventually I would have discovered but at what cost? To me and to my children. The wife in PR, knows none of this. He is having unprotected sex with dozens of women all over the world. I plan to get tested every six months for the next two years, (so far so good), but what about her? She doesn’t know anything and she is the only one with kids. What do I do? I am really pissed off that this man risked my life, and others’. I am really pissed, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to hurt him back. I do not want to keep his things with me. He asked me to send to an address in Florida, but I know it is because he doesn’t want THAT package being sent to her. I don’t want to take part in helping him hide anything. I think she should know, for her own protection. I am hesitating because I don’t want to be the vengeful, scorned woman. I don’t want to play that role. I don’t want anyone even him- to say and show that I am. What the hell do I do??? I am disgusted that this man touched me. I am disgusted that I let him near my kids. I am repulsed by the idea of any sex right now. I don’t know how to get over that anger. And I don’t know what I should do.

Thank you for your reply! I don’t want to help him. My Philipino Sister-wife helped me by telling me the truth. I want to tell the one still in Puerto Rico. I certainly do not want to help him. Truth be told, I am so extremely angry, I want to hurt him. I know that he will NEVER feel one ounce of pain in his non-existent heart. He will never regret. I am really worried that the Philippine is still not ready to accept that she is dealing with a sociopath and has hopes of somehow clipping his wings. She has two children. She may still believe that he will rescue her from poverty and it will be worth it. And the stories she told me of him trying to talk her into threesomes, and the stories from other women she contacted about ‘sister’ duos, and many of them don’t care he has many women as long as he is paying their bills. Gives me the creeps. I know he is hiding money, I know what banks, I know he has hopes of starting his business up again and that was one of the things he was using me for, I have almost 15 years of international business experience and got it all up and running for him. I have the only pictures he owned of his mother, father, siblings, and his children. There is.. slowly becoming a was, a hope that he was just using everyone else and I was the one he would really fight for. I would be the one he would ‘change’ for. But with everything I am learning, he cannot change. He is what he is. Not simply a cheater, but a very sick man. Now I feel this weird need to protect all of the women he’s hurt. I am really sick of people NOW telling me, “I told you so. I had a bad feeling about him.” But the truth is that NO ONE told me so. No one told me that they had a bad feeling. We were the picture perfect couple in our social group. In a strange way, the Real Thomas murdered the love of my life. And now all I want is the Real Thomas to pay, and to keep him from hurting anyone else. I hate him, and I miss the illusion. It is all very new to me, just over the last two months. My kids are telling me, let it go and move on. I am finding it hard to get over the anger. I was always so guarded about my personal and intimate side. I am teetering back and forth between a serene walking away, and a very angry ‘NO! You don’t get to get away with all of this!”

For your situation, it doesn’t sound like she ‘got the man’ either. And if he is anything like Thomas, you are as blessed as I am to have them away. My problem now is not Thomas, my problem now is me. With my sense of fair play and justice, which has always been very strong, is out of whack and screaming for attention. I have to chose, heal or seek justice which may never happen. I can heal, if I just totally walk away and end all contact with even my new ‘friend’ in the Philipines. I like her, but there is a pain when I see her FaceBook photo is of their hands clasping with wedding rings on. Only one month after he accepted my ring and married me. I feel that preciousness, that moment was stolen.. and she isn’t to blame. He is. I think I need to just have a very long ‘talk with God’ and ask that He take the wheel. Deal with this bastard, and now I just need to decide to send the photos and all the text messages and pictures and marriage certificates to his ‘still legal wife’ in Puerto Rico. Is it the right thing to do, or is it me getting revenge? Can it be both? The day I woke up to text messages and pictures of the love of my life sleeping, in his usual side of the bed, with all his usual bedside stuff (ashtray, cigs, phones, remote control, chargers, antacid pills for his chrones disease, etc..) all in the same place as it was in our bedroom.. I couldn’t stop shaking or eat or sleep for days. I am not shaking and I sleep fine now. Do I walk away and find my own peace? Or do I send these things to the wife in Puerto Rico. Those photo albums should be with her, as they are her children in them. His business stuff, he will never have until I get my wedding ring back and he repays my son. Funny, he doesn’t want the marriage – he moved on. He doesn’t want the ring – he is married to the Philippines, but he won’t give me the damn thing back. I think I want someone to tell me, ‘he’s keeping the ring because he lost you. He lost the game he tried to play with you and it is all he has as a consolation prize.” If I knew that were true, maybe I could feel a little better that part of him realises, he lost. I escaped. And a little piece of metal is all he’ll ever be able to hold on to.
The pain is real. And it is in our own head that we need to cleanse. If you have anything of his around the house… get rid of it. Pictures, mementos, everything. Ceremoniously give yourself a ‘freedom’ party… I will as soon as I get rid of those albums.

I think you are right. I will pack his remaining items away, contact her and tell her as gently as possible. She can then decide if she wants the photos for her children or not. But his business things, which is what I think he want to use me most for, I will be burn them before I hand them over. Once those photos are back where they belong, I can be free.
Please remember, these men pick and target women who have loving hearts and are true in nature. They picked us and used our best qualities against us. But they didn’t take those qualities with them. We are still alive. And we hurt so deeply because we CAN love so deeply. And there are good men out there who will see and celebrate those qualities. The one thing Thomas did for me is to help me realize just how deeply I am capable of loving. And when I am ready, the right man, a worthy man… is gonna get a whole lot of woman! Lucky man. I am wiser. Still need time to let go of the anger…rage. But I will be damned if I am gonna let a pathetic hollow man like Thomas take more from me than he already has. My life is mine! My heart is alive. So is yours! We just gotta learn to love ourselves enough to move forward. The best revenge is living well. Love and strength and prayers and life to you dear sister! I want to be myself again. The kind of woman that when I wake up in the morning and my feet hit the floor, the devil and Thomas shudder and think, “Damn! She’s awake!” Be free! We can do this! We will thrive!

zsrpriest – what a nightmare. I am so sorry for you. But I understand, as my sociopathic exhusband committed bigamy twice, along with having multiple girlfriends.

I recommend that you go through all the papers and keep anything that might be useful to you if you decide to pursue any possible legal actions.

Personally, I agree with contacting the wife in PR. She should know. She may or may not choose to believe, but she should at least be told.

And perhaps you can send her the photos of her kids. That will certainly be evidence.

BTW – I am willing to bet that she is not crazy, vengeful, or whatever he said. In fact, none of you are.

Also, if you have just learned all this information, don’t do anything right away. Give yourself time to get over the shock, and then decide what is best for you.

thank you all.. I have done exactly what you suggested. Found another pair of panties that were not mine. and a hard drive….. which I will turn over to an IT expert to scan and get into. That should be interesting. AND if anyone needs a little chuckle.. it turns out my Thomas is also…. wait for it… an Ordained Minister. I found the card. I am keeping the tools.. I need a few around the house, steel flash lights, hammers.. You know.. He was good for something. Stocked my home tool box with some pretty awesome tools. Went jogging tonight with my daughter. Rain, track, and my iPod… I feel lighter tonight than I did last night. I will be including the panties, his cards and perhaps the hard drive, depending what turns out to be on it.. to his Puerto Rico wife. He emailed me today and was very polite. Asking again for his things. I did not respond. I don’t have to. I think he must be very anxious about what I am going to do. So I think it is just a good idea to leave him in silence. No contact. My life, my rules. Better today than yesterday, and tomorrow better still.(total of 16,211 steps today. That is over 16K towards healing)