How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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A guidebook for recovering from the devastation of a sociopath

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I clearly remember the shock of realizing that everything my ex-husband, James Montgomery, had ever told me was a lie. I remember the devastation of discovering the truth: His entire purpose in marrying me was to get a free place to live, take advantage of my good reputation and defraud me of my assets. All the promises, all the assurances, were literally sweet nothings. They sounded good, and meant absolutely nothing. I remember being paralyzed by my new truth. How could I possibly plan a recovery for my life, when every day I was falling apart? Worse, no one seemed to have an explanation for what happened, or advice on how to handle it. It's been 10 years since I left my ex-husband. …

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Why I say “Bad Man”

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By AlohaTraveler It took me a long time to clearly define that what the Bad Man was doing to me was... bad. Plain and simple, it was bad for me. Never mind if he was working through pain, never mind if he had suffered many losses or had an unfortunate childhood. Never mind. He's a grown man. He was treating me in a way that I can only define as very bad for me no matter what his issues were. Really, it was unacceptable but at the time, I did not have clear boundaries as to what kind of treatment I would accept for myself before I would draw a line in the sand and say, “No more!” There were lots of excuses he made up and to be honest, there were lots of excuses I made up to try to exp …

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Drew Peterson: Suspect, fiance, puppeteer

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Lovefraud could have written about Drew Peterson at any time since he was declared a suspect in disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, who vanished on Oct. 28, 2007. Drew Peterson, who at the time was a sergeant in the Bolingbrook, Illinois police department, didn't seem to be at all concerned about his wife's whereabouts, claiming that she probably left him for another man. He cheerfully talked to the media, despite sordid allegations about his past. After Stacy disappeared, Peterson became a suspect in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, who was found dead in a bathtub. While they were married, police were called to the home they shared 18 times for domestic …

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The flaw in viewing sociopaths through normal eyes

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Lovefraud recently received an e-mail from a young man, we'll call him Kyle, who has just broken up with a woman whom he now believes is a sociopath. Based on the behavior he described, I'd say the guy is right. The woman cheated on him, and when confronted, either downplayed her behavior, said it was none of his business, or verbally attacked him. She had no interest in resolving problems. "Her solution to everything was to run, wait awhile, and then pile on affection as if nothing ever happened," Kyle wrote. Kyle has been researching sociopathy to try to grasp what is really going on with this woman. Here's more of his e-mail, which I have reproduced with his permission: First of all, I …

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BOOK REVIEW: Hi Gorgeous! The first words of sociopathic seduction

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Melissa K. Dean was a new lawyer in a new job. All she needed was a new romantic interest. So she posted her profile in Match.com, and received more than 30 responses in the first two days. One of the men started began his message boldly, writing, "Hi Gorgeous!" For a woman who had long doubted her feminine appeal, the words were irresistible. More words followed—words that seemed to indicate mutual interests and goals, words that appealed to the woman's sympathies. Melissa K. Dean tells the story of being seduced by, married to, and then abused by, Jack Cass, a man who claimed to be a former Navy SEAL. It's a classic story of sociopathic victimization. Exotic dancer Dean tells h …

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Washed Out and Wrung Out: The Effects of Stress

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By Ox Drover Since I have been in the medical profession for many years as a Registered Nurse Practitioner (now retired) I have been interested in the reactions our bodies and our minds have from stress. Stress is a contributing factor to poor health and decreased immune response. Increases in the frequency of infection for individuals with a high level of stressful events in their lives have been well researched by many researchers. It is also well proven that our thinking and ideal mental responses are also diminished by high levels of stress. Stress is not just the negative things that happen to us, but according to researchers Holmes and Rahe, stress is the result of “life events.” I …

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When it comes to sociopaths, education is the key

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Lovefraud spent the weekend at the Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany, New York. Quite frankly, it was depressing. This was a conference of worst-case scenarios. I spoke to a woman whose story sounded like the Clark Rockefeller case, only worse. Her ex-husband was an illegal alien from Germany. He was also a doctor who had a hard time getting licensed because of "missing documents," but eventually did get licensed. Once he got his American residency and license, he dumped the woman and got their 5-year-old daughter in an emergency custody hearing—the woman believes he paid off the judge. The woman knows her daughter is being sexually abused—she screams when anyone touches her. B …

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“Emotional blindness” and the sociopath

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Editor's note: The following article was submitted by the Lovefraud reader who comments as "Pearl." By Pearl Someone on this blog once mentioned a book by Alice Miller and Andrew Jenkins, and it caught my attention. So now I'm reading The Truth Will Set You Free—Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self. Even though I'm only about halfway through the book, I wanted to share parts of it because it is so important to what a lot of us are working on—forgiving ourselves and trying to understand why this (fraud) happened to us. I know this won't apply or appeal to everyone, but it might help some of you as it has me. Miller's ideas help me understand why I was sus …

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Entanglements with sociopaths always have consequences

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At a Christmas party on Saturday night, the conversation turned to hot water radiators. My husband, who is mechanically inclined, explained to a woman, who was trying to save money by conserving heat, how to bleed the air out of an old-style hot water heating system. Eventually, the conversation revealed why the woman was trying to save money. She'd purchased an old farmhouse for her business. She secured a $150,000 construction loan to renovate the house and retained a contractor. The contractor insisted on installing the thermostat for the hot water heating system on a wall directly across from a wood burning stove. (For those of you who are not mechanically inclined, this is a really …

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Finally, feeling the joy of Christmas

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On this Christmas Day, I am filled with joy, happiness and love. It has nothing to do with Santa Claus being good to me, or the gifts I offered to my husband and family—after all, there is a recession going on, and it has affected us. Rather, I am filled with joy, happiness and love because now, after the sociopath, life is good. In fact, life has never been better. This is a significant, even miraculous, change for me. In the years before I met my sociopathic ex—from age 20 to 40—I didn't feel joy, happiness or love. Instead, I was mostly numb. If anything broke through the wall of numbness, it was longing. Then the sociopath arrived, and promised me what I so desperately wanted—an end to …

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