Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following story from a reader whom we’ll call “Carmen22” about her experience with a senior sociopath and his double life of cheating, drugs and porn. Names are changed.
I don’t know where to start. I lost my husband to a freak accident 18 years ago. We had very young children at the time. I suffered because of blaming myself for his death, which is a whole other story.
I got into bad relationships with men and turned to alcohol. I, from time to time turned to alcohol to ease my pain but it became a problem. I had to work so hard on myself to get sober. Between my faith in God, my church and the support of AA, I managed to overcome it.
I made the decision to not date anyone and just concentrate on me and my children. I was living the best life I’d ever lived.
Met a guy who was different
After years of not dating, I met this guy that was different than anyone I’d ever dated. He was quiet, shy, timid, considerate, soft spoken, portraying to be a Christian man and he swept me off my feet.
We first were only talking on the phone from our initial meet. I wanted to get to know him. We really didn’t talk about him, he only wanted to talk about me and what I had been through.
I told him I was a recovering alcoholic and he said he was too. That made me relate to him. I told him I had been cheated on and he said he had been too. Another thing we related to. He gave me a sob story that his wife had cheated on him.
I let him know that I could never date someone that drinks, does drugs or cheats for the sake of my sobriety. Alcohol almost took my life once. I shared all of that with him.
Man of my dreams
He became the man of my dreams. I had been wanting someone like him for so many years. He went to AA with me, to church every weekend and my family functions. He quickly won the admiration of my kids, family, friends and even my deceased husband’s family. My kids and I even spent time with his family, who lives 8 hours from us.
His entire family are Christians and that made me feel so at peace. There were absolutely no red flags!
He proposed to me 7 months into our relationship and I accepted. He bought a house in the neighboring state that I fixed up while he was waiting on retiring. One thing I have to mention is I live in one state and he lives in the next state so our relationship was long distance. We live 250 miles apart. I made that trip almost every week as the same as him.
Never doubted him
Not one time in our first 2 years did I ever question what he was doing when I wasn’t with him. This is a guy that would fast forward through a sex scene in a movie, because he didn’t want to see it, never say a cuss word.
We took turns reading chapters in the Bible at night. He even open my car doors, catered to my every need, and was always there to listen to me. It was the most peace and serenity I’d ever experienced. I knew I was hopefully going to grow old with this man.
Evil eyes
There was an incident while him and I were visiting Amish Country right before he proposed. We were shopping and an elderly woman that owned the store approached me saying that I was a very kind, loving, compassionate person. I offered my thanks for saying that.
She mentioned that she could read people by their eyes. I asked her to read Tom’s, her reply to me was, I see Evil. It left me speechless. I knew she had to have been mistaken.
Mask comes off
For 2 years everything was perfect until a day I couldn’t reach him for almost 24 hours. Worried, I drove to Kentucky to make sure he was ok.
I walked into a complete nightmare. I found fishnet stockings and body suits on the floor, a tripod for a camera where he video taped his own pornography, and bags of white powder substance on his coffee table.
When I woke him, he was someone I’d never seen before. The mask came off.
This man had been deceiving me for 2 years. He was a cocaine addicted, he was having sex and relationships with multiple women our entire relationship. I went into complete shock to the point, I couldn’t breathe. It was like reliving the shock, of the night they told me my husband was killed.
From denial to trying to fix it
I couldn’t wrap my head around any of it. I kept going back and forth from denial to how can I fix this. I couldn’t lose this man of my dreams that has been so wonderful to me and my family. I thought I was in a dream, and wanted so badly to wake up. This can’t be real. Who can do such an act of this ultimate betrayal?
Somehow he tried to blame me for what he had done. Begged me to help him . We involved his family, and a Christian counselor. Unfortunately trying to save him, I lost myself.
I fell off the wagon which caused total devastation to my friends and family. Why I held on, I’ll never understand.
Intoxicated and violent
Months after discovering his double life and helping him, I got a text from someone he was still seeing and using with. She thought he had overdosed.
I made that 250-mile trip to find him high and intoxicated to a level I’d never seen before. He instantly started attacking me. Ripping my clothes off trying to force himself on me. He was punching the walls above my head causing blood to go everywhere from his knuckles.
I can say, that was the most fear I’d ever had for my life. His light blue eyes, were black.
Running from gunfire
I knew I had to escape out the back door. I made an excuse that I needed to go to the bathroom and to please let me up. In a daze he stood walking towards his nightstand. I knew there was only one thing in that nightstand and I ran like heck out the back door.
Topless. I ran with everything I had in me while hearing the gunfire, praying it wasn’t going to hit me. I safely got to a house that took me in and clothed me. This is a memory that has haunted me every single day.
The empath that I am, and the desire to save what I thought we had, I did not press charges against him. His family begged me to just walk away. I did exactly that for about 6 months.
He begs for help
The next June, his son was graduating in Michigan. He sent me a picture of his car at a hotel with the wheels missing. Someone apparently stole them. He begged for me to come help him. He bawled with tears running down his face how drugs had made him do terrible things to me.
How much I wanted to believe him.
Three weeks later, I found drugs on him again and he was still seeing multiple women. I left to never return.
He joins a church
I went No Contact for 2 years and just a week after my father passed away, I got a text from him. I ignored it for a while.
He started sending me pamphlets of a church he had joined. Scriptures from the King James Bible, pictures of him at men’s gatherings at his church and so on.
Learn more: Self-care for survivors
Over the next several months he had convinced me that he had found God. How sorry he was for all he had done. As crazy as this may sound, I believed him.
My family was devastated because I was sober again.
Ultimate deceiver
There is no real reason to go into detail what happened over the last past year because I experienced all the same things. He is the ultimate deceiver, abuser, manipulator he’s always been, with a double life of cheating, drugs and porn.
Now I’m back to trying to pick up the pieces of my life again. The mind games he has played with all his victims is overwhelming. I am now friends with 2 of them he had been doing the same thing to the whole time he knew me.
Senior sociopaths and dating: Mature partners aren’t always safe partners
Oh my gosh! Poor you! Your story reads like a sad novel. You are no doubt a very loving, caring, forgiving and empathetic person! I think we all want to believe that a person is capable of changing and wanting to improve their lives and keep the people who love them close. Sadly, he cost you your own sobriety – with that level of head games, deceit and phoniness. My ex fooled a whole community of people, too. It is amazing what outstanding actors they are.
I am proud of how you finally have gotten away, and are making a better life for yourself. You are stronger and more insightful than ever. You have learned extremely difficult lessons. You are passing them onto others, in the hopes that you can save others from these types of nightmares. Enjoy your peace and tranquility – and look forward to a fantastic future!
Thank you for your response to my story. It is still a struggle everyday. Wrapping my head around all of his deception. Reading these forums have helped me greatly. Going no contact was the hardest part but I know now, its the only way to heal. He was continuously trying to contact me and his other exs. They have also blocked him. He’s to the point of desperation, making new profiles. I wonder if he will finally give up and leave us alone. I can’t imagine being an empty shell and always looking for someone to mimic.
Met him in 2005 and became just friends, and a year later started to date and broke up because of cheating. He returned again he and his father needed help running his brother’s and broke up because of cheating. Returned again over and over and over. He needed help to start his own business and left again, his mother and I were very confused. He appeared to have fallen in love with another’s man’s wife and would make it apparent that she was the main focus of his life, he would answer calls in front of me and on one occasion asked me to leave because she was on her to his home. He moved to FL to take care of his mom she was diag with dementia. 18 months prior to moving, he was not the man I met in 2005, attentive, warm, caring, and present in the conversation, 3 months after leaving – still present and available. In the 4th month, I felt a strong separation that was in October. 2 months later he moved a woman who had just got a divorce, was homeless no job, and had no money – he moved her into his home. He still has a relationship with a married woman whose husband is a millionaire. He seems very protective of the married woman this has been an 18-year roller coaster.
wawibgti2023 – what a nightmare! The guy is probably disordered. Have you ended your involvement? It is never going to get any better.