Editor’s note: The following is a review of “Love Fraud – How marriage to a sociopath fulfilled my spiritual plan,” by Donna Andersen
By Matt
It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes just one woman to bring down a sociopath. And Donna Andersen became a one-woman wrecking crew when she set out to seek justice against her sociopathic ex-husband, James Montgomery. Ms. Andersen has written a riveting story of her simultaneous journeys seeking justice against Montgomery, and inner peace from the havoc he wreaked in her life.
Ms. Andersen was forced — by both internal and external facts and circumstances — to pursue two very separate yet intertwined paths. The first path was through the US and foreign court systems as she battled her ex-husband trying to collect her $1 million plus divorce judgment from him. As Ms. Andersen realized that the justice system had failed her and would continue to fail her, she took matters into her own hands. From an emotional standpoint Ms. Andersen had to adopt the policy that “to get rid of a sociopath, become a sociopath.” And boy did she.
Ms. Andersen turned her energy into getting back everything Montgomery had stolen from her and then some. Trying to find records of where Montgomery was hiding his money, Ms. Andersen showed pure resourcefulness in breaking into and clearing out a storage bin belonging to Montgomery and his new wife. Trying to shake money out of Montgomery, Ms. Andersen showed unadulterated moxie when she teamed up with another of Montgomery’s victims to convince Montgomery the other woman was pregnant and needed money. And to expose Montgomery to all of Australia and New Zealand as a fraudulent war hero, Ms. Andersen showed pure ruthlessness. Yes, Donna Andersen out sociopathed a sociopath.
The second path Ms. Andersen took was her spiritual journey to recovery and healing. Ms. Andersen makes a very convincing case that while none of us takes the same path to healing and recovery from a sociopath, we all ultimately have to find a path.
Ms. Andersen pursued her spiritual journey with the help of energy healers, psychics and past life regression. Being a hard-headed realist, I at first thought Ms. Andersen’s path to spiritual healing was a “bit out there.” But, as I read her story, I saw that her two-pronged approach to recovery — the factual and the spiritual — are both necessary components for recovery.
Ms. Andersen’s message for me was that in order to reclaim your life from a sociopath you must be proactive. Once you become proactive, the spiritual healing follows. When I looked at my recovery through the prism of Ms. Andersen’s, I realized that after I did everything I could legally do to the sociopath I had been involved with, I had come to a place of acceptance and could move on with my life. Or, to put it another way, once you expose the sociopath and putting him in a real or de facto prison, you will be freed from the prison that the sociopath has made of your life. Ms. Andersen’s powerful story is not only a gift to all survivors of sociopaths, but an inspiration.
darwinsmom:
If you remember anything about my story, what happened to me is exactly what happened to you…I didn’t feed the spath anything. He even said to me, “I don’t know anything about you.” Wow, if that wasn’t a tipoff he is an spath! At the time of course, I had no idea he was an spath until I put all the pieces together. But he did the same thing…just disappeared; slithered away. Months later when we talked, he contradicted himself (in other words he lied) because first he told me he disappeard because he went back to his wife (which he did do), but then the next week, he told me he started pursuing (again) the OW in my office because she was “pursuing” HIM! He actually said, “Why do you think I would want her over you?” When I stated some obvious reasons, he said, “She was pursuing me.” In other words, she was giving him the drama and excitement he needed and wanted! BUT…here’s a kicker and maybe you have some insight into this…after knowing this, I thought well if I want to get a reaction out of him, I will pursue him…I know that’s what he wants. Do you know when I would do that, he wouldn’t bite?? What is up with that? I was never able to get the same response from him by pursuing him that she got. Of course, then I thought there was something wrong with me. I have always wondered why he wouldn’t bite when I was giving him what he wanted? Mind you, this was all over two years ago. Maybe because I was no longer an interesting target at that point. But OW was also old news. They had already been in a relationship for over a year at this point. Any thoughts?
Betsybugs,
I agree with what Truthy told you. Your daughter has ALL the cards and by asking, BEGGING her, she knows she is keeping you on tenderhooks by NOT answering truthfully, and YOU know and SHE knows the answer is NO but she isn’t going to say that YET….
As you get the chance, tell the kids, “I love you and will always love you” just those few words said as often as you see them
Your daughter is being MEAN TO YOU and she knows it and YOU know it, in the MOST PAINFUL WAY SHE CAN, by using your grandchildren.
Your daughter may be under the “control” of the psychopathic father, or she may be just like him….I have no way of telling, but she is DELIBERATELY hurting you by using her kids as the weapon….totally uncaring that it is hurting the kids as well.
So back to the “expectations” article I wrote, don’t EXPECT her to change, my guess is that nothing will change with her. I’ve been there with both my biological kids, even my older one who is not a P, but he isn’t the kind of man I want as a friend. I still love him but don’t want a relationshit with him.
Louise, spaths throw out bits and pieces that they believe their targets will pick up and chew. One of the nastiest truths that I accepted about the exspath was that nothing that came out of his mouth could be trusted as believable. Even sudden and unbidden disclosures were not believable because he was only regurtitating what he thought I wanted to hear. Shortly after I discovered what he was, he made some off-topic disclousure about himself that was obviously intended to elicit sympathy from me. I looked at his dead eyes and said, “I don’t believe anything that comes out of your mouth.”
The pursuit is the foreplay, Louise. That’s all. And, when the spath is in control of the rules of the pursuit, they either will “react” or not to whatever morsel that they tossed in our direction if we begin to swallow it.
It’s not that you weren’t interesting, anymore. It’s just that the spath craves that foreplay of pursuit.
Brightest blessings
OxD, the “expectation” that Betsybugs’s daughter will do what is “right” is false and self-damaging. Those children are a candy-coated carrot, and they’re dangling in front of Betsy’s face, ALWAYS just out of reach. The daughter is playing a very, very cruel game with Betsy and the innocent children. Those children will continute being dangled as possible “rewards” as long as Betsy continues reaching a tentative hand out to touch them.
Dangle, dangle, dangle….it is a very, VERY cruel game, and the more desperately we reach for whatever carrot is being swung in front of us, the more powerful the “bad person” feels. That’s all it is.
And, the daughter may be under the influence or spath, herself. Regardless of what her motivations for playing this cruel-assed game are, they are thoroughly cruel and devastating. Vicious and malicious games have NO winners.
Brightest blessings
Louise,
At the time he chose her, it was because she was probably easier to manipulate exactly because she gave info, more than you did.
At the time he told you this though, he had become aware that you had developed attraction, and feelings for him. And so he told you exactly with the reason to have you pursue him and then blow you off by ignoring you. It was an opportunity to get extra win points over you.
I have experienced something similar with those guys, including the jerk. When I did at least inform them of feelings, after they had already slithered away, they gave me zero response. However, the jerk tends to hover around me at the tour leader training weekends if we’re both there… nowadays that I completely ignore him (he’s just slimey). And, the spath who used to be my friend-with-benefits for a while started to chat once in a while over facebook with me… full of innuendo, flattery and slime. I blocked him after I found out some disturbing behaviour towards his ex-gf (the whole typical spath shabang). Curiously enough two facebook account have tried to ‘befriend’ me… they had been either made that same day or the day before that they requested fb friendship with me and i didn’t know them, though both claimed to be of my city. I blocked the first attempt, then got friend requested by the second two days later. It was a very weird profile of someone calling themselves ‘yourFriend’ with a cautioning statement for parents that if they discovered their child talking with him, that he was just being a shoulder to cry on. Really weird in a totally, hard waving red flag shouting “I’m a pedo!!!” I blocked that profile from fb too. I do suspect it may be that spath. His ex told me that he created several fake fb profiles to then befriend every friend of hers in the hope to then request her friendship and cyberstalk her and get info on her.
IMO they’re trying to play games, trying to see whether they can get me to think they’re interested in me. They’re not even putting much effort behind it to make it seem believable. They just can’t keep from trying somewhat. The half heartedness in which they do it reveals also that if I were to actually have and show interest in them, they’d ignore me.
I think that once they choose to slither away out of their own accord, they only test the water to see whether you would take the bait, but tend to not take it further. They’re satisfied with the answer: if I wanted to, I could get her/him, but I don’t want to.
Truthspeak:
You mean him doing the pursuing? Or the woman? But he bit when she was pursuing. It’s confusing. It doesn’t matter anyway. Just something I still wonder about from time to time.
darwinsmom:
Bingo! You just nailed it. The way you described it is exactly the way it played out with me. The OW in my office even told me that she spewed everything out to him…everything about her. She didn’t profess her love to him, but she did apparently tell him everything about her life and her struggles and therefore gave him ammunition to manipulate her. I had figured this out early on because I remember telling her that he must have identified a weakness in her and turns out, that was true.
Yep, once he knew I had feelings for him, he told me about the pursuing. He is slick. He wanted to see if I would then do it and I did…I played right into his hands. But then he would just ignore me. What a horrible person. Only a disordered person would do that and hear and watch the hurt they were causing. SIGH.
Louise,
There’s also something else that may be a factor in this…They slithered away because they didn’t get mirror info the first time around when they were making at least a serious effort. Spaths by nature are distrusting and project their own enjoyment of games and deception upon others as well. So, when we then later do display feelings, they also keep the option open that we might try to play a game with them… on the one hand they make us bite, as a stroke for their megalomaniac ego, but they don’t trust us enough to put further duping effort in it. The risk that we might be playing a game too is too big in their eyes.
So we take the bait, but they don’t take what they believe to be ‘our bait for them’
darwinsmom:
OMG…EXACTLY!! Again, spot on!! I can sit here and just see so clearly that is what happened to me. He was seriously pursuing me the first time around, but I didn’t tell him ANYTHING and I mean ANYTHING. That is because the OW had already warned me and I wasn’t going to put myself out there. It was just him doing the talking all the time. And with his English accent, he loved to hear himself I think. He just talks and talks.
He is very distrusting…yep, because he knows he is not trustworthy…he thinks everyone is like him. You know, this is so funny because I thought about this very scenario and wondered if this is why he wasn’t responding to me…that he KNOWS how he plays his games…that if I am lovebombing him, I may just also be playing a game like he did and he was not going to fall for it. After all, he knows very well what the game playing looks like…haha. YES!…the risk is too great for them. YES!…they don’t take the bait because they know what the game looks like! Wow!
I do have to say though, I even told him how serious I was and that he may not believe that someone could love him so much…that maybe I was just playing a game with him. How funny that I told him that because I thought exactly as you say…he probably didn’t believe me because he knows the characteristics of the game very well. But I was NOT playing a game. He didn’t answer when I said that. Made him think I am sure.
Thanks so much!! You have really opened my eyes about things.
darwinsmom:
This is exactly what I said to him (I documented all the texts I sent to him):
Maybe you think I am just playing with you…that I couldn’t possibly be serious and love you this much (or be this stupid), but loving someone is never stupid.
Soooo, I did tell him that I realized that maybe he thought I was just playing with him. I know, I know…the things I said to him were really stupid. I admit that. Totally pouring my heart out to him, but I will say one thing…at least I made myself clear. There will never be any question about my feelings for him. He can think what he wants.
Perhaps I really confused him? After all, I went from someone who was telling him NOTHING to someone who was professing my love and feelings all over the place! Maybe it did give him a reason to not trust me? Maybe it all seemed so contrived to him? But he’s the master manipulator! But I guess that’s why, right?? He KNOWS what manipulation looks like! But I was not manipulating him. I only wanted closure. Oh, well.