Lovefraud recently received the following email from a reader:
I always knew there was something wrong with my ex-husband, and friends and family did as well. There were lies, gambling, cheating, drug use, rehab 3 times, head games. He would drive erratically with our son and I in the car (even when our son was very little). He would speed up if there was a cat or other animal in the road. I would always completely freak out so he never ran one over when I was in the car, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did when I wasn’t. (I could tell his counselor in rehab #3 knew there was more to his problems than just drug addiction.) He was clean for a long time and that’s when I realized it wasn’t the drugs. He has always been able to get his way and talk people into things. I always made excuses and actually made myself believe he would grow out of it as he got older. But I did not pinpoint what “it” was until discovering Lovefraud.
I’ve been divorced for over 2 years now and my ex-husband is remarried to someone with 2 young teenage children. I sometimes get obsessed thinking about whether or not they are happy. I often wonder if he’s better to her than he was to me. I know our 22-year-old son feels somewhat replaced and like his father just moved right on with no problem (which I know is typical of a sociopath). I guess I need some reassurance about sociopaths in second marriages from experts to put my mind at rest. My ex has a history of lying, cheating drug use (actually got more sociopathic after he got clean and sober for over 8 years). About 6 months before I filed for divorce, he told me he gets a rush out of getting away with things and it’s gone on since he was a kid and he doesn’t know why. I just want to know that his new marriage is not all candy and roses. Can you address sociopaths in new marriages on your site? While I know I sound a little pathetic, I think it may help many.
Put your mind at ease: Your ex-husband does not love his new wife. He will never love his new wife. The reason is quite simple: Sociopaths are incapable of love.
Acting the part
Now, they are quite capable of acting like they are in love. They can give a command performance of heartfelt sentiments and promises of endless fidelity. But it is an act, and when the partner no longer serves a purpose for the sociopath, the act will end.
The new wife, of course, does not know this. So while your ex-husband is acting like he is in love, the new wife may legitimately be in love. She may be happy. She may be thrilled. She may believe that she’s found the person she’s been waiting for all her life, and all her dreams have come true.
Your ex-husband will nurture her dreams, at least while she still has something that he wants, which could be money, a place to live, or a facade of normalcy should he start using drugs again. After all, he gets a rush out of getting away with things like deceiving the new wife.
Truth revealed
Eventually he will revert to his true, miserable self. But even as the wife starts to see the same lies, gambling, cheating and drug use that you saw, for a time she will overlook the behavior, or support her man as he goes for a fourth round of rehab. For a time she will continue to believe the act.
Sooner or later, however, your ex-husband’s mask will slip again, or he will completely remove it. When she sees the truth, she will experience the same pain, devastation and betrayal that you experienced.
He is what he is
You need to get to the point where you thoroughly understand that he is what he is, and he will always be what he is. A snake is always a snake. He will not be a snake with you and a teddy bear with her.
Your ex-husband is a sociopath. Sociopaths are fundamentally different from the loving and empathetic people who make up the rest of the human race, and there is nothing you or anyone else can do about it. If you think of them as aliens, you aren’t far off.
Once you viscerally understand this, your obsession should come to an end.
Dupey,
I was wondering where you were! Glad to see you posting and uplifted. You are your own woman now. No more bullsh8t! Good for you.
Hi Ana: Nice to read you. Hope you are well and doing alright. Thanks for being happy to see me. “Uplifted” is really not the word to define what I am these days. I AM my own woman and always have been, that was part of PPATH’s problem. No more bullshit.
Although I have been cyber stalked, no less than a couple times a week. That’s alright. I have it ‘contained’ in the spot where it originally started. I never respond but log it. I will never respond again as long as I live. I have gone complete NC since APR20. I do not respond to anything. I am finished with all of this ugliness and I do seriously mean that and it’s been tough climbing out of this dark tunnel, but I am doing it. I have become, little by little, empowered in who I am and what I stand for and believe in. I am finding myself all over again and it’s difficult, but just think: when I get to the other side of this trial, I am going to be just me.
I find something very poetic about that. The stalking started in cyber world and has ended in cyber world. Imagine that.
The sex addict has finally achieved catching HIV/AIDS.
Too chicken to pull the trigger for himself, you see, so he used someone else to do it for him. In the meanwhile, he is out there, taking as many as he can with him. It is feeding his dark soul somehow. I am fine. It’s over.
I am finally out of that equation. I am grateful to have escaped with my life in more ways than one.
I am doing well these days. Concentrating on my recovery. It has been very difficult turning around five years of captivity…lots of habits and tics to break. Thank God for my Lexapro! hahahaha Sign me up – I will be the poster child for it.
(((Ana))) So nice to read you – take care of yourself.
Dupey
op
yeah, Truth, can I move into your cave with you?
Parallelogram,
the story is too well told. He says he put on his shoes. duh.
the moral of the story… that’s also contrived. If he were writing a novel, it might be different, but relating a story is different.
one thing, I know is that when he was still living nearby, he would write me emails but show them to his friend H, first. H told me. He would ask H’s advice on whether it sounded right.
So it’s very possible that he had someone else involved in the story telling.
Now, it’s very important that you realize that he didn’t necessarily ask H for advice for the “obvious” reasons. He didn’t necessarily just want to know what H thought. Spath never has JUST one thing to gain from what he does.
He involved H in his emails to me in order to create a “story” for H to believe. H is his “true believer”. He’s the one who will testify for spath if he ever needs someone to do so. He’s the one who believes the lies and will repeat them.
Spaths are story driven characters. The more people that believe the lies, the more “true” they are. H, is his disciple and evangelist.
Dupey, glad to “see” you and read your strong words. You sound very resolved and focused, and I’m so happy to see it.
Parallelogram, yes: clinical. No emotional expression, and it’s interesting that you picked that up. The exspath believes himself to be a grand writer, and he couldn’t describe the Crucifixion in emotional terms. His report would read (and, this is NO exaggeration):
“Yesterday afternoon, a carpenter was put to death on some wood with nails. It got dark. He stopped breathing and was buried.”
More “pfffft” noises, here. Golly, I believe that I’m slowly “getting there” with some healing.
Brightest blessings
Skylar, cave…yarp…..pets allowed
Truthspeak: Hello. “Strong words”; hm? I am VERY resolved and focused now. Very. I only wish my stalker were so resolved. It’s not bad…couple times a week, like I said, mostly ‘cyber stalking’ now. I can deal with that child’s play…::block:: ::stalking log:: ::delete::, same old thing, over and over. It used to upset me but it doesn’t anymore. We don’t live in the same area so, what? PFFFFFFT!
I have managed to SEE all of the ugliness that lived behind that mask, NOW. NOW Dupey has a handle on all the truths of the matter. I am NEVER going back to all that.
What you said, skylar about the ‘characters’ in the story, turning into ‘disciples’ and ‘followers’. It’s absolutely true. They make others believe their tales of woe and awfulness because that is how they recruit their followers…the more they tell the lies, the more real they become to themselves. I know all about those lies. That is alright, let them lie and let them follow….I have more important things to do with my life and my time.
Like I told “IT” when I walked away: “The only liar and unworthy person in all of this is YOU.”
I am so happy to hear you say, Truthspeak:
“Golly, I believe that I’m slowly ‘getting there’ with some healing! WAHOOOO!!!! It’s just a horrid experience to come through, I know. It takes time to sort it all out and figure it all out, but believe me, once we do, we will never be the same in a GOOD WAY because these demon’s won’t ever have the chance to infiltrate our lives ever again. We must remain ‘watchful’ and ‘aware’…we know they are out there NOW, hm?
Hang in there Truthspeak: you are doing wonderfully.
Um, would there be any room in that cave for me, as well? I don’t have any pets. hehehehe (Long as you don’t count stalking PPATHS as a pet).
Dupey
Dupey, there is ALWAYS room for you! Pets, or not! 😀 Spaths need not apply……
Thanks so much for your encouraging support – this has been (and, continues to be) a life-altering experience and I intend that I emerge from it in a “good way.” Yeah, I still have my moments and hours…..absolutely. But, I had a choice: call a spade what it was, or; roll over and give up. I’m not the “quitting” type, though it sure has been tempting, at times.
I had a very strange idea – that, if I one day have the opportunity, to open my home to assist people running from domestic violence. Of course, that would ONLY be done in conjunction with a DV agency, but I can’t describe the desperation of exiting one’s home, even if that home represented the worst moments of a person’s life. The house that I had to leave was a place that I had always associated with “good times,” and my forward momentum. And, now….well, it’s gone, and that’s it.
At any rate…..we’re all getting there, one second at a time.
Brightest blessings!
I’m so glad to drop in and hear how well everyone is doing these days. Skylar, it doesn’t surprise me that your spath was obsessed with bats, being as he’s a human vampire bat himself. yech
Truthspeak, I believe your ex was projecting his own evil on you that day you had the halloween make-up on. I don’t think there’s much a spath fears from ordinary people, but they probably fear people like themselves because they know how unscrupulous they are. For a moment, he maybe thought he was looking in a mirror.
LPMarie, I really really admire what you did for your daughter. In the end you may have lost your home, but you have given her the greatest gift you can give her – the gift of knowing that you love her and she is valuable and worthwhile. I’m telling this as a grown daughter whose mother made the opposite decision. Knowing how evil my stepfather was (he was a malignant narcissist who abused me for 9 years), she opted to stay with him long after I moved out. She stayed with him till the day he died at 70. THEN, she tried to “make amends” with me, but I could see that her “amends” were just her being lonely and now suddenly wanting her children to validate her as a mother and fill some of her loneliness. I saw through the facade and so did my sister. Very sadly, neither of us has any kind of relationship with her. She will die alone except for her latest boyfriend with whom she has never been very happy. So IMO you did the right thing and the only thing you could do as a loving mother. You put your daughter first. I hope you have a long and close loving relationship with her for the rest of your lives – the real prize that will hopefully be worth the sacrifices you made.
Take care and be well, everyone
Hugs,
Star
This is all so very real for all of us in the beginning stages of leaving our Spath and we tend to bounce back. All the while we are thinking that they are NORMAL.
Recently my Spath who is on her 3 BF in 11 months and we are not even divorced. Tried to Check my Temp. ( see if I was still a fool) She sent some pics of the children at the pool. I reacted in a manner and stated that I do not wish to get back with her and the only reason she is sending these pics was out to be phony. That folks was on a friday, the weekend of father’s day. I was scheduled to drop of our children to her father’s day @....... 5:30. Needless to say…… The new bf was at the drop off. I find this funny for several reasons. 1. is that she lives 2 minutes from the drop of 2. becuase I said friday that I did not want her. So I did something totally opposite of what I would have done. I went to the car while she was getting the children from te neutral location and explained to the guy that she was using him to provoke some type of drama, but we cool I don’t have any issues. If you could have see the look on her face. If looks could kill I would have been dead. When you do something that a Spath doesn’t see come they get upset and very angry.
The reason I suspect that he didnt like you with the mask on you was that they are good at reading facial cues. Have you all noticed in order to suck you back in they do a temp check by wanting to see you face to face. WHY! To see if they can sense you still have feelings for them or to bring up old things to see if you are buying into what they are saying. They need willing victims and its better to get an old victim bc the old ones will put up with much more than the new victims might.
Do I think she will treat them any better @....... first……. aww a little glimmer, but now I think I find it more funny than anything. I am just trying to remove our two children from her care and that is my only focus.
If you think about it, Spath do not want us to compare notes, bc it seems like they all MEN/WOMEN read from the same damn play book.
Love bomb,
Up/downs
get you to support them 100%
offering us so very little 10%
then of course the break up/ get back together.
Oh lets not forget the GOOD sex in the beginning.
They do anything to get you hooked.
Then of course the phase of disgard.
Oh and nother quick story about over reaction.
She was prego last year : she got really happy and started clapping yeah my cirvex is closed yeah. At that very momment I realized that she aborted the child she was carrying. Overreaction tipped me off.
Sorry for the long post havent lots been going on.
Still in the phase of Divorcing/ Annulment the 11 month.
I am doing 75% better and holding story because of my faith.
Thank you God for website like these, because other people just don’t seem to understand it.