The following letter, written by a young woman who we’ll call Chloe, is one of the most complete stories of psychological manipulation that I’ve ever seen yet. Chloe wrote this letter secretly while the sociopath she is living with was at the gym.
I met my boyfriend two years ago. I was 18; he was 33. He’s a photographer; we live on an island that is very small. He has lived here forever (10 years) and I had only been here a few months when I met him. Everybody, especially women on the island, adore him, he is THE BIGGEST charmer.
He told me that he had moved here with his fiancée, that she had said she was going home for a week, and then never came back. He said she’d gone to therapy back home and been “mindf*cked” and never returned, breaking their engagement. I felt for him. He was so normal and sweet. He was living with his parents (because they were taking over his place) and he was moving out. He/we lived with them for a year, he’s still in it to this day, though his parents left a long time ago.
Always telling me what I should and shouldn’t eat. I’m 5’7” and 115 pounds, and I’m size DD and he’s always showing me plastic surgeons that do the best boob jobs so I can make them bigger. He was normal for four months, then told me he didn’t want me hanging out with or speaking to other guys. He even would get annoyed when I’d talk to my mom or dad.
Long story short, when I started moving out, which has happened a million times, he became violent. Touching me, I’d ask him to stop, gently pushing him off me but he wouldn’t and that’s when he started strangling me. I’ve told people about him and they take his side, because he’s such an upstanding member of the community.
He says guilt is a useless emotion and therefore feels none. He’s broken six cell phones, and in turn I’ve broken things of his. He uses this as a way to twist it and say it’s all my fault. He has every symptom on the sociopath checklist; I could go on and on. He got me a dog for my birthday and has started to use her as a tool to keep me home.
I’ve lost all my friends, rarely see family, but I’m so scared of life without him. I hate him, but every time I think about not having HIM in my life my chest hurts and it’s hard to breathe. I’ve gone to the hospital because he choked me too long, and spit in my face and held me down and rubbed it in, and I can’t or won’t leave. Isn’t that sick?
Initially I stayed because of the sex. Now I stay because I’m scared to be without him but also, I don’t want him to be with someone else, although I think he might have cheated on me once. When I tell him all these things, he calls me insane and “such a victim” and that I’m “sandbagging him and that’s all in the past.”
I’ve called Women Helping Women, but your site was the most helpful so far and I don’t know what to do. Everyone loves him; even the cops are his “braddahs.” He’s an SMU graduate; I only have high school (although I’ve gone to private schools my whole life) so he says no one would believe me, and they don’t!
His ex told me he stalked her until she moved back to the mainland, and no one believed her either… I used to be really strong and confident, but now I can’t leave the house without his approval of my outfit. I don’t want him to be with someone else, I don’t want to be with him, but I don’t want to be without him. He’s becoming more and more negative and aggressive towards me, but I’m scared to leave and scared to stay.
I feel dumb, ugly, depressed, anxious, and trapped. He’s drilled into my head for almost the whole two years that no other guys will date me or love me, and that they would only cheat on me. I know that’s not true because I get asked out all the time, but now I’m terrified of being cheated on! What should I do? Oh also he has naked pics and video of me that he’s threatened to release, even make money on.
Classic sociopath
This guy is a classic sociopath, employing every trick in the sociopath toolbox. He used the pity play to snag Chloe, with the story about his previous fiancé being “mindf*cked” in therapy to leave him. Yeah, right—she probably fled because it was the only way to get rid of him.
Then the guy used sex to get his hooks into Chloe. As Dr. Liane Leedom explains, in normal people, intimate relations creates bonds between them, and it worked with Chloe. These bonds, which are both psychological and hormonal, are Nature’s way of holding the human race together for our own survival.
But it’s possible for the bonds to become pathological. That can happen when someone—such as a sociopath—deliberately tries to bring another person under his or her control. Here’s how this guy did it to Chloe:
- Telling Chloe what she should eat and wear
- Telling Chloe to get breast implants, even though it sounds like she has a fabulous figure
- Isolating Chloe from her family and friends
- Refusing to comply when she asks him not to touch her, then strangling her
- Breaking cell phones—her way of contacting other people
- Telling Chloe she is insane
- Telling Chloe that no other man will have her
- Twisting everything around so that all problems are Chloe’s fault
Cycle of fear, anxiety, intimacy
Make no mistake—this is abuse. So what happens as a result? The guy creates fear and anxiety in Chloe. Fear and anxiety strengthen those attachment bonds, which started out being normal. What usually happens in these situations is that the victim turns to the abuser for relief from the fear and anxiety. The abuser then “forgives” the victim for “making him” act abusively. Then they have sex.
This cycle of fear-anxiety-intimacy keeps strengthening the psychological and hormonal attachment bond, actually rewiring the victim’s brain. So now, even though Chloe knows the guy is bad news, it is almost impossible for her to get out of the relationship. This is apparent in the physical symptoms Chloe is showing just by thinking about leaving—her chest hurts and it’s difficult to breathe.
Off the island
Yet Chloe must leave. She must find the strength to get away from the guy, even if it means voting herself off the island.
Leaving this sociopath will be much like breaking an addiction. This, too, is normal. As Dr. Leedom explains, the bonds created in these relationships use the same pathways in the brain as drug addictions. That’s why Chloe has to go cold turkey with this guy, and why it will feel like withdrawal. The secret, as they say in recovery programs, it to take it one day at a time.
Chloe, do whatever you have to do to get out. Be prepared for the guy to pursue you, perhaps to the point of stalking, as he did with the previous woman. He may plead, beg, and even threaten. It’s not because he loves you. It’s because he doesn’t want to lose his property. Because that’s all you are to him—property.
Panther,
Here ye, here ye! LOL!
yep, they think they are so poetic. It’s because they know the words but they can’t hear the music. Remember “campfire of my love” — gag me.
You aren’t a moron, you were innocent as most of us here were. Nobody told us what a spath was. We were set up.
panther – that crap about your ‘virginity’ is so slimy. I had a bf when i was 20 who i described afterward as an alcoholic and abusive, and terribly abused as a kid. .now, looking back i still think the same. but he had some funky weird shit wrong with him also – he lovebombed the hell out of me. I lived with him. he had this ex gf who he kept around, he was very jealous of the fact that i had people in my past, and taped his own phone to try to catch me ‘doing something.’
about 2 months after i moved in he had what i would call a psychotic break now. he had been dropping pieces of my own conversations into our casual conversations. then one night he got really drunk and snorted something stupid – some chemical (and not a drug either – he was showing off to his friend. and snorted something he had access to through work. )
i managed to sneak out – i had called a cab and had to run out the back door when the cab came to the front…he told the cab driver to ‘bring me back’ when he found me. i stayed with a friend that night and came home in the morning to find all of his precious things (and mine) broken and strewn across the yard – one of his vehicles in the middle of the street, a rifle hanging in the crotch of a the tree in the front yard, the phone ripped out of the wall and his dog and my cat traumatized…. (he came home many hours later…spent the night in the drunk tank …in my fur coat….)
there were two episodes, about 3 months apart. i left for good the 2nd time – but i stayed the first. i was bonded. i was in an abusive relationship. when i did leave i was very scared. he stalked me. he called my employer and former employer and used what he knew about me (some feel of ‘truthy’) and some lies to smear me. my boss at the time told me. he was a tough old bird and basically told the bf to go eff himself. my ex boss came to me where i was working and warned me that this guy had called him – he came in concern for me. he worked with horses, and during that time someone called the stables (huge stables) and threatened a fire. so my old boss told the arson squad about my ex. and they asked me if i thought him capable of such a thing….and i saw the opportunity in this and said yes. I had a peace bond agaisnt this guy, he wasn’t allowed to contact me or come near me, but the arson guys SO got that he was dangerous and gave me instructions to not let him take me out of my place of work no matter what. they went after him. and they were my heroes. the lawyers had not been able to get the rest of my stuff back (some expensive horse stuff) but the arson detectives managed that very well thank you very much.
i was so scared of this guy he used to cruise by where i was living in the middle of the night and i knew the sound of his cars. finally, i got up one night and ran outside and yelled after his van. i was ready to kick ass. i was DONE with this shit. i can’t remember the full sequence of events, but i moved out of my freinds place and into a place he didn’t find me in and slowly he faded from my life. the arson squad had threatened him. i will be forever grateful to those guys. the right use of power! and the two bosses, who didn’t for one moment believe this guy’s smear campaign.
during this time though, two guys tried to take advantage of my vulnerable state. after the first bad night, the first time i came home and the phone was off the wall i went to the neighbours and asked to use their phone…his wife and he were just coming in. she was 8 months pregnant and went to lay down and the fucker hit on me. Then at the place i went to stay to get our of this madhouse (and the place i had lived in before moving in with him) i had to share a room with a guy, and i work up with his hands up my nightie. So there we have it – the spaths and the good guys. From the moment i met him and the lovebombing began to the day i left was about 6 months. and it changed me. probably forever.
we do things because we don’t know any better. but when we learn we do better. we make mistakes. we end up hurt. people intentionally hurt us. and some people intentionally help us.
Thats good news Lizzy..
One/Joy, it’s amazing yet again how similar people’s stories are on here, because I can relate to a lot of what you just said, and my story has the same elements but just slightly different details.
The main difference is that I was living in Turkey at the time, and this is a country where the police will take the side of a man just because he is a man. When I tried to get a restraining order on him, his lawyer friend was preparing to sue me for “fraud” and have me kicked out of the country (sounds like a free plane ticket, but since I had ZERO money thanks to this bastard, last thing I needed was to be sent out of the country where I currently had a good job).
These guys, no matter which country they are in, follow a pattern, thank goodness, because now that I know the pattern, I’ll catch it really quickly AND know what to do about it. In fact, I think if another one tried to love bomb me, I’d vomit at this point. I seriously will not buy the bs from any man at this point that is not backed with DEMONSTRATION and a SOLID track record to substantiate his words. Period. And if he throws a “hissy fit” because I’m not fawning over him and his cheap roses, then so be it. I don’t give a hoot. Hissy fits are the new fast-track to the exit of my life. If I never see another grown man throw a temper tantrum for the rest of my life, it would be too soon!!!!
This little girl is my role model 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rbMHLDY1pA
You go girl! She’s got the right attitude, so long as she realized that “having a job” is about being self-reliant, independent, and not sacrificing yourself for a man. She’s so cute, haha.
I just remembered a hilarious spath line from him:
“When women see me, they pee.”
No further comments on this one….
Hi y’all. Yes, I am newer. Do a lot of reading on the blogs when I can. (working two jobs to support myself and pay a lawyer to finish the divorce)
We had everything worked out. Then we did not hear from his lawyer for 2 weeks. You all know how I was holding my breath. We all know that he was using the two weeks to hide assets or something evil like that. Sure enough my lawyer sent me an email saying that my ex and his lawyer changed their mind and that I should release them from any further claims.
No surprise to me…
Thank God I have documents galore. It will go to trial. I am really at loss on what to do. I want it to be over with. I don’t want to be a hostage/doormat to the ex and just hand it over. I also don’t want a trial because I fear it will be the ex’s big show to humiliate me (and finish me off) even if it’s fabricated.
I do appreciate your support through this even if I only can be on line sporadically.
EB! A pet is a real great stress reducer… stroke ’em, have them crawl up to you for attention… yeah, a big deal is for the food, but it’s also just simple companionship. I love my darwin!
I am alergic to cat’s but I have a pet rock , I dont have to feed it, I just put it in my potted plant and ignore it…
Hi Hens, Oxy, Skylar hope you are all doing great.
Big hugs everyone ..
Hey Movingon Good to see ya~!