Lovefraud recently received the following e-mail from a reader who we’ll call Carla:
Can you help me with co-parenting with a sociopath? Divorced three months ago, after a two-year fight for my rights. He is not complying as you know.
I am going crazy with the way he only shows his wonderful, smooth qualities to the children. I have three boys. I can’t stand sending them on weekends to a man who never calls them for two weeks and then lavishes them with charm and gifts. It makes me sick that I am struggling because he has not released even one of 26 accounts to me as decreed in the divorce settlement. He pays my bills and deducts them from the alimony. He follows the agreement under his own conditions and it confuses the attorneys. He won’t discuss the children with me or offer any assistance to them as a father. He is 100 percent focused on his new victim, his girlfriend, a new young, widow. Spending all the money he hid on her. But the kids have “buddy” to whisk them from one expensive activity to another while I am struggling to pay the bills.
I have greater anxiety now than when we were married. He openly emotionally abuses me. Before it was more covert and I got immune to the invalidation and blame. NOW I am discarded since I chose not to play by his rules of cheating, drugs, gambling, lying, withholding sex. He isn’t nice to me at all. Cruel. It was easier being married. He did all these things and he kept me blinded by being secretive and giving me a high-income surgeon’s wife lifestyle. I know the secrets now along with my attorney but he looks perfect in the community.
I miss the financial security and vacations. Now someone else shares those things with him and all I did was give him three beautiful children to brag about and add to his narcissism.
I say terrible things about him to the two older children, ages 6 and 13. I tell them how he is not following the agreement, lying and spending money on drugs and women.
Is so frustrating. I see what is real but no one else does. I am afraid my children are going to prefer him (and his girlfriend) because he is so charming and generous and I know he is pathological and I can’t give them the expensive gifts and ultra stimulating activities.
How do you deal with the frustration that you are the only person who knows someone is a sociopath? I had to live 15 years with him to figure it out and go through four therapists until the last one nailed him as anti-social/schizoid personality disordered. Then I validated her “diagnosis” with Lovefraud. He has all the signs with a very high IQ and status of a medical professional to hide behind. Will anyone else ever figure it out? I don’t believe that what comes around goes around when it comes to a sociopath as intellectually clever as my ex-husband. I do have a few very perspective people who picked up on it. I don’t think my kids will ever see it and I think he will destroy me even post-divorce. Why is he so relentless? He has his freedom and his money. Why not leave me alone? Is it because I get one-third of his income in alimony?
After the divorce
Probably the most shocking thing about divorcing a sociopath is that even when it’s over, it’s not over. The attorneys have argued, the court has ruled, this is how it’s going to be—and it’s not. The sociopath doesn’t comply, twists things the way he or she wants them, uses children against the other parent, and no one seems to care.
This leaves the non-sociopathic partner—like Carla—angry with the sociopath, frustrated that he’s getting away with his lies and manipulation, and upset that he won’t do what he’s supposed to do, baffled that no one else sees the truth—all while still mourning the life she thought she had. Carla wants her ex to pay her what he’s supposed to and be a dad to their children. He’s not doing either, so she wants other people to know that behind his charming, successful veneer, he’s vile.
It’s a toxic brew of emotions. But the emotions will never affect the sociopath. They will only affect Carla, and possibly her children.
It seems to me that Carla needs to be able to separate what’s going on into four categories: financial considerations, the children, dealing with the ex and her emotional recovery.
Financial considerations
First of all, Carla needs to get her financial situation straightened out. If her ex is supposed to give her 26 accounts, she needs to get that enforced—soon, before the accounts are empty. I hope her attorneys put a time limit on when these accounts are supposed to be turned over, and specified exactly how much money she is supposed to receive. If not, she is in trouble.
Carla cannot allow her ex-husband to pay her bills. By letting him do this, she is allowing him to control her. He is deducting the money from her alimony? He is probably exaggerating the amount of the bills just to pay her less. Plus, he may decide to stop paying the bills, and she would never know it—until the cable service or electric is turned off. Carla must demand that she receive the full alimony, then get her bills in her own name.
Carla did not mention a house and mortgage. If the sociopath’s name is on the house or mortgage, that is a disaster waiting to happen. He may stop paying the mortgage and allow the house to slip into foreclosure. He wouldn’t care, but Carla would have no place to live.
The children
Carla complained that her ex won’t discuss the children with her and won’t offer any assistance as a father. He doesn’t call them during the week and only wants to play with them on his weekends. I’d recommend that Carla use this to her advantage.
Here is the bottom line: Sociopaths are terrible parents. At best, they view children as prized possession. At worst, they actively try to corrupt the children. Therefore, the less interaction a sociopath has with his or her children, the better.
Carla should actually be grateful that her ex is staying out of their children’s lives as much as he is. She should use her time with the children to shower them with love, nurture them and provide them with healthy guidance. None of that will happen when the boys are with their father. The kids will eventually sense that there is no real bond with the father. As time goes on, they may also witness him moving from girlfriend to girlfriend, and eventually start rolling their eyes at yet another one.
Carla needs to be their rock of stability. She also needs to stop badmouthing the father—even if he deserves it. This is important for two reasons. First is the emotional health of the children—they should not feel in the middle of her issues with the ex. Second, she does not want to give her ex the ammunition to come after her with a parental alienation lawsuit, in which she could lose custody of the boys.
Her best plan of action is the stay neutral about the father. One mother’s standard response whenever her children brought home news of the ex was a noncommittal, “That’s nice.”
Kids are smart. Sooner or later, they will realize that the sociopath cares only about himself.
Dealing with the ex
Carla asks, “Why is he so relentless? Why not leave me alone?”
Divorcing a sociopath is not like divorcing a relatively healthy person that you’ve just grown away from. In a normal divorce, mommy and daddy don’t want to be together anymore, but they can cooperate for the sake of the kids. This is not going to happen with a sociopath.
Sociopaths only want three things: Power, control and sex. Carla and the surgeon have divorced, but that doesn’t mean he has given up his desire for power and control.
Carla says her ex-husband is openly abusing her. She must eliminate his opportunities to do this and go No Contact with this man as much as possible. I don’t know if she is allowing him into her home, but she shouldn’t. The child exchange should be arranged to minimize interaction. Any communications regarding the children should be conducted via e-mail. Phone conversations give him opportunities to abuse her.
The key is for Carla to be strictly business. She must recognize that the sociopath will not play nice. He will do everything possible to avoid paying her. He will continue to manipulate her through the children. She must learn not to react when he baits her. She must learn to be calm and collected, yet make him toe the line on his court-ordered obligations.
Emotional recovery
All of this is pretty raw for Carla right now—the divorce was only three months ago. She is outraged. She is frustrated. Carla misses the status, money, vacations and cozy lifestyle of a surgeon’s wife. She is justifiably angry that he cheated and hid money, and probably still reeling from being devalued and discarded.
Realizing that she’s been in a relationship with a sociopath has probably rocked Carla to the core. Nothing was real. Everything was a lie. And plenty of people in the community still believe the lie. This is a massive shock, and it takes time to come to terms with the magnitude of the deception.
Recovery is a process, and there is a lot of information here on the Lovefraud blog that may help Carla:
- She must realize that the ex is a sociopath, and this is the way he lives his life. Nothing she did or didn’t do would make any difference.
- She must realize that she was targeted, probably because of her good qualities.
- She must allow herself to feel her anger, disappointment, grief and even hatred—and then let it all go.
This will take time, and will probably come in waves—a wave of emotion, followed by a wave of calm. Eventually the emotional periods will be shorter, the calm periods will be longer.
Carla is in for many years of aggravation with this man. She needs to get to a point of equanimity, where his antics no longer affect her. When she gets there, no matter what the guy does, Carla wins.
Dear ANewLily,
I am so glad that you finally got onto LoveFraud. I know your stroy, and all the things you have been through in the past couple of years with your health and the attacks from the P and his dupes!
I also know the inner strength and the faith that you have, which will hold you up no matter what happens. I know there will be down days, we all have them, don’t we!?
I am finding that a broken leg (on in your case, a hip) is actually less “painful” in the long run than dealing with these people who are so toxic and so dangerous. You are a “tough old bird” just like me and they can kick us down but they can’t keep us there!!!!
It is wonderful that you are here posting on LF and I know that your wisdom and strength will offer a great deal to others. (((hugs)))) and as always, ALL my prayers for you, sweet Lily!
Thanks, Ox! I really appreciate your post!
And blessings to you, too!
ANewlily,
“I CARE! Like Carla’s Ex, he took to paying my “unpaid debts” and deducting from the monthly alimony that I needed for medications! Last December, I did hire a lawyer to file a contempt of court to retrieve $$ owed me. But like Carla’s lawyer, the lawyer first shot him a snail mail letter to sign which of course he refused to sign (AS I KNEW HE WOULDN’T) I won’t use that lawyer (who doesn’t know beans about sociopaths again.)
I made an error by calling it a credit “score” rather than my credit “record.” Sorry about that.
I don’t have the energy to explain the ongoing problem except to tell you that my “unpaid debts” were only several LATE payments because I had been in the HOSPITAL. I had already contacted each one to explain and they understood and took off the late fee in each case. In each case, I had already paid the so-called “missing” payment. I suppose that didn’t show up on the credit record!!
I think what made me so ANGRY was that one of the debts he paid (out of the goodness of his heart SURE, ha ha!) was a self-loan for my Ph.D. tuition. I had been in contact with them for over 3 months to negotiate the total remainder after PROVING to them that I am now officially totally disabled. One month later, my application was approved. He spent that money totally foolishly!
No, that one is only part of it. The self-loan itself had been against my explicit wishes …”
This stuff boggles my mind. If a man wants to make a gift of money to his ex wife’s creditors, what does that have to do with his alimony debt to his wife? The two are unrelated, or should be!
Only a narcissist would play these dominance games with his ex. This cr@p needs to be shut down. It’s inexplicable, and why courts and judges buy into it is stranger still.
This sounds almost like the twilight zone. Yes, it’s that bizarre.
Elizabeth, I certainly understand your confusion. Our Exs paying our debts (that are ours!) and then deducting the amount from the court ordered alimony owed is AGAINST the law! Thus, the contempt of court avenue fits — which didn’t work for me. He got around that, too.
Just think about it. Since when does a narcissist/sociopath follow the law? They truly think they are above the law, remember.
I agree full-heartedly with you that “this creep needs to be shut down,” but I have already spent over $27,000 in lawyer fees and every known tactic for seven long years. Please tell me how I can SHUT HIM DOWN. But, your advice has to be without expending more money because I don’t have any!!
You obviously have never encountered this particular ploy so you couldn’t know. Knowledge is power. But, in my case, the paying the “unpaid debts” as he found from my credit record was NOT a gift in any sense of the word. Not even entirely a control issue — but his attempt to ruin me financially as he said he would do. I don’t know about Carla’s Ex’s motive.
Carla, I just want to tell you that I think we were “married” to the same doctor. Is there something about doctors that make them really go off the charts? I wonder.
Maybe it’s the high IQ’s? Well, I have one, too, and I’ll bet you do also. I was no match for mine on any level. He just plain didn’t think as a “normal” person.
I am not a failure, though. I am a survivor. So are you and with a few more months of being “out” you will have more information about the disorder and be even stronger.
Trust you gut instincts for every decision. And BE SURE to take care of your health.
ANewLily,
I didn’t have exactly the same experience as you in telling my family the truth, but something like it. When I first went into therapy for PSTD related to incest, I let my family know. And I also told my parents that I wasn’t going to take the blame for it anymore. (My father had told my mother than I seduced him.)
The reaction in my family was not supportive, to put it mildly. My brother called me to yell about me about upsetting my parents. My mother made snide comments about how it must be nice to have money to spend on therapy. My father called up with a whiny little apology that was obviously motivated by an effort to get himself off the hook.
Relations with my family were very strained for a while.
Fortunately, I had a good therapist and she advised me to just let them process at their own pace. My agenda was just to get some reality in our relationships. I was tired of being forced to collaborate with their denial just to have any contact with them at all. So I waited it out. Eventually our relationships changed for the better, and the whole family dynamic got healthier. But it took a while.
I’m not sure this is helpful to you. But this was one of the first times I had to face the fact that people live out their own stories. They see the world through the lenses of where they are now.
Your children’s willingness to think badly of you is a reflection of their internal issues. Categorizing you in any way without considering your reality suggests that they are afraid, for whatever reason, to have your reality rock their boats.
I know this may be hard for you, but if I were your therapist, I would say, don’t sweat it. Let them chew on it for a while. Tell them that their father and you see the world in very different ways, and come to very different conclusions about things. And that you trust them to find their own truth. Whatever it is, you’ll love them.
Feeling abandoned is an awful state of mind. I lived with it most of my life. And I think my recovery process has been largely about becoming more emotionally self-sufficient. We need human contact, for sure, in our lives. But we, ultimately, have to be our own home. No one else can be exactly what we want them to be.
All that said, I’m so sorry you’re feeling like you’ve lost connection with your children. My son refused to talk to me for a couple of years, and it was awful. I thought he hated me. It turned out that he was depressed and ashamed of things in his life. Nothing like what I was imagining. And I kicked myself for “giving him space” for so long.
I hope it doesn’t take your kids very long to figure out that their lives would be better with you as a part of it.
Kathy
Dear Kathy, Thank you for your kind message just before I shut down for the night. I’m so sorry that your family did not believe you!! I can’t really relate to you except with sincere caring because your experience with your father was not like mine. My childhood — until I met the Evil Monster at age 19 — was full, secure, and happy. I do know now how fortunate I was to have that stable background.
I accept your advice to not “sweat it” and attest that that is what I have been doing, most of the time. I believe in my children. However, the non-communication is tricky, though, and I have no choice but to wait until they “get it.”
The problem I assess with my posting all this today is that I kept the “marital” abuse secret for 46.5 years. This is the first time that I’ve told strangers (except for a few) about my children and the affect on me. TThe “confession” really made me uncomfortable and then to have Elizabeth “minimize” my pain and question my integrity unnerved me more than a little. MY problem as I see it, is not her unbelief, but that that I still need to do more work on myself. I think I had fooled myself into believeing these past several years that what people think of me is not important. Not! More work to do on me!
There is also another problem in that I have been in constant pain and virtually housebound for 3 1/2 long MONTHS and I’m SO tired of it. Yesterday, the orthopedist said it may not let up until two years! Yet, as Ozy said, the physical pain is “nothing” compared to the horrid — and yes, Elizabeth, the “bizarre” story of my life – during and post divorce, let alone the “marriage” itself.
Elizabeth, I KNOW that if someone told me this story I wouldn’t believe it! It IS a Twilight Zone story! All the more reason to pat myself on the back for surviving this far, though!
Hopefully, after reading your kind message, Kathy, I’ll feel better tomorrow. I usually am not “down” for long!!
Hmmm. This posted as if it is 1:18 a.m. It’s only 10:18 p.m here! What’s up?
ANewLily,
You sound wonderful. Better than I understood when I wrote that message.
As an aside, I recently discovered a new supplement called astraxanthin. It’s extracted from kelp. It’s very popular among athletes, because it promotes healing, but it has a lot of other benefits, especially for older people. You can look it up on the Internet to find out more. It’s not terribly expensive, about ten dollars for a month’s supply. You might find it interesting.
The pain has to be making everything worse, and I hope that it takes a lot less time than two years. In the meantime, I’m glad your here. This is a great place to heal your heart while your hip is healing.
Kathy
P.S. Are you on the west coast? This site in hosted in the eastern time zone.
ANewLily, The n/p in my life was a teacher, and not on the intimate level of a spouse, so I can’t offer the same level of wisdom as the other posters who’ve already responded to you. The reason I’m writing is that you sound so much like my mother that it’s uncanny. My dad wasn’t an n/p, but when he drank, he behaved like one and made our lives a living hell.
Even though your kids are adults, it takes some time and maturity of spirit to really think of your parents as fellow adults, rather than respond with feelings that have their roots in childhood. It’s so ingrained in you, the way you see your parents as children, powerful and in control, that you’re still tempted to hold them to a much higher standard, and then condemn them rather harshly when they don’t maintain it.
I’ll never forget the first time I head my mother speak the truth about my father. I was 8 years old, and she said, “We can’t depend on your Dad to act like a grown up when he drinks. He forgets how.” She said this without condemnation, but simply stating a fact. I had no words for expressing the reality that I’d always had to be the adult when my Dad drank, plus protect her from his anger by running interference. When she put the situation into words, it was the first freedom I had ever experienced! It was the beginning of finding my voice, because she showed me how.
I so admire what you’ve done, in claiming your own freedom. I hope the rest of your kids find their way to clarity and re-establish contact with you. You’ve set a great example for them of standing up for yourself, and not remaining in a situation where your life was literally draining away. My mom didn’t make it out — she died still with him — she’d wrecked her health staying in the marriage, and I so wish she’d had her chance for a peaceful, happy life.
I’m so happy for you that you’ve found yours! I wish you the very best, and hope you will find healing in this community of incredible and caring people.
Betty