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.
LOL: spot them in the wild, Ox….
Thanks for that smile.
😛
Dupey
You are absolutely right Darwinsmom, Hare infact did say that. a Lady online who is a Psychologist married one, so yes we know they are that good. and theraphy i read just makes them worse b/c they learn more about normal people and they can manipulate them easier. But i love to study Astronomy too. I`ve been studying a planet called Canis Majoris. this is the biggest planet ever found. it is so big you can fit 7 quatrillion earths inside it, that just blew me away. that`s the same as covering the entire state of Texas which is our biggest state, covering it with Golf balls 22 inches deep, each of those balls represent earth, do you see the one you are on? and you can fit a million earths inside of our Sun. so Astronomy i love.
I`ll put it this way if i should ever meet a Lady that is to good to be true it will set of my boloney detector. It would take being around the person awhile to have any chance to diagnose them also. but i`m being a good little boy and not dating anyone at the time so it will be hard to meet one like that. just staying home studying………
Baloney Detector? lmaorotf. oh my
yay for you sonny!
investing in ourselves is always great.
can’t never lose investing in ourselves.
i gave up dancing in the moonlight and prefer educating myself and keeping the mind busy. i am trying to invent a spath zapper. like one of those click on things to keep the mosquitos away? yah, just like that. we could all make millions….ahahahaha
at least we know we can count on and depend on ourselves and when i look in the mirror at night and in the morning, i know it’s still the same person i went to sleep with.
baloney detector; can you get those online?
night everyone…
time for dupey to go nite nite…
Dupeylicious! LOVE IT, HENS!!!!
Dupey, I keep a can of Bullshit Repellant in my bag, now, and I use it with impugnity!
There’s a new volunteer where I work, and she is one of the MOST inappropriate people I’ve met in a very, very long time. She is a volunteer – she is not an instructor, studio technician, or adjunct professor, and she presented herself to be a former “Resident Artist” (she used that term) at a VERY prestigious studio in the area, yet she didn’t know basic concepts or terminology that applied to her craft. After listening to her blather on, and on, and giving other people erroneous information (and, downright incorrect information), I called her on it by simply saying, “As a former Resident Artist at _____, you should KNOW that what you just said isn’t correct.” A couple of days later, she said (again, exact words), “I may have misspoken about being a Resident Artist. I actually helped with…” a children’s program and she didn’t have ANY technological training, whatsoever.
So, what did I do? Pulled out the Bullshit Repellant, and I don’t interact with this person unless I must.
Online dating – bad, bad, bad news. I only know of about 3 people who actually made out okay using the internet. Hundreds of others had horrible (sometimes, violent) experiences, and I wouldn’t even consider this options if I were to ever even consider “dating,” again.
Sonny, going from the fire into the frying pan is what typically happens to victims that survive ONE spath, and then attempt to make things right with themselves by searching for Mr. or Ms. Right, immediately after their experiences. It takes a long, long, LONG time to recover and heal from spath entanglements and we will forever be targets until we address whatever issues caused us to be easily duped, in the first place.
Meeting and connecting with someone seems unwise to me, right now. But, that’s just me – I know what I’ve experienced in the past 30 years, and I’ve had associations with NUMEROUS spaths and malignant narcissists, along the way. Sure, we might think that we can spot them, but they come in groups and herds when they smell the rot of human emotional damage.
Brightest blessings on this Friday 13th!!!!
That gives me an idea: I should make a “Dupeylicious” music video. ahahaha You are BRILLIANT HENS. hahaha
“Bullshit repellant”; ahahahahaha
Do you find that in the same section as those clip on
mosquito repellant things? hahaha Too funny. You guys make me laugh.
Oh yes, online dating is like asking for trouble.
It’s just like Ox said: “FISHING IN A SEWER. WHEN YOU FISH IN THE SEWER, YOU CATCH TURDS.” hahahaha
I always laugh about that saying too when I think of it, Ox. Thanks for the smiles. hehehe
Yep, from the fire to the frying pan for sure.
TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. It doesn’t ever work again, until you get right and level with yourself in every conceivable way. When you take time to ‘reflect’ and make your choices and set your boundaries. THEN there is a better chance of it ever working out, if that is what is meant to be. In the mean time, we still must live and survive and to put our lives on the line, in any way, for affections, is just purely insanity, without weighing the pro’s and con’s.
I personally ENJOY being single and living alone.
LOVE IT. I can be MY OWN PERSON and MY OWN BOSS.
Yes, I get lonesome, from time to time, but that’s alright.
It’s better to be lonesome than stalked 24 hours a day, seven days a week for five years NON STOP.
It is a welcome change to my life; trust me.
hahaha Bullshit Repellant. hahaha
They are like sharks honing in for the kill with no regret nor conscience and if you think they have one you are lying to yourself.
Happy Friday the 13th you guys!
mwahahahahahahahahaha
I got my bullshit repellant with me today…
It’s cocked and loaded….hahahaha
Dupey
Sonny, you mentioned being wary of someone who is too good to be true. Just to give you a little taste of why others here are saying it isn’t so easy to spot them “in the wild,” my ex-spath was unemployed, freshly divorced, drank too much, smoked and so on. I knew all of these things by the end of the first date. I saw the red flags but I liked him anyway. I even asked myself several times why I liked him and I couldn’t give myself an answer. I still let the relationship proceed, let him move in with me.
I don’t understand it but I can see now that he has some talent for mesmerizing. I never thought he was handsome, he’s the heaviest guy by far that I’ve ever been intimate with. The other day I was cleaning up the chip on an old camera and looked at a photo I snapped of him when I was testing the camera before lending it to him. I took the photo in the morning while we were drinking coffee and his hair is sticking up. He didn’t look remotely attractive to me, looking now. I don’t know how to explain how he pulled me in except it was all of the things we know about here that are in the psychopath’s bag of tricks. He got me off-kilter on our first date (Darwin’s Mom wrote very eloquently about this on some earlier thread) and then I think he did use some variation of spath eye intensity. It didn’t work in the sense that I found him a little strange and perplexing but it did work in that I entered into a relationship with him and let him move in with me, etc.
Ox Drover has often written here that it starts out being about them and ends up being about us. You may understand the hows and whats of them, now you need to work on these questions about yourself. What about you makes you vulnerable to a spath? You don’t have to answer here and questions like this should send you off on a journey of deep self-discovery.
For me, I’ve found out some incredible things about my family history in the past few months and how this ties into my Jungian psychic history. Last night I said aloud in therapy that with the elements of my family, it’s like I have the perpetrator and the victim living inside me. No wonder I’m confused.
Edited to add a classic spath detail: When I was discovering who he really was, he had several profiles online on all kinds of sites, some dating, some more purely for hook-ups. He used that photo repeatedly! I would never put such a shot of myself online but I guess it was working for him.
Sparklehorse, what an interesting thing you brought up: the spath wasn’t particularly handsome, but somehow managed to throw out that baited lure, anyway.
The exspath isn’t particularly handsome, either, but he had a sort of old-fashioned, homespun appearance that endeared him to me, and to others. In retrospect, he’s awkward, unkempt, and his skin is the greasiest I’ve ever seen, in my life. Not at ALL what I would consider physically attractive!
But, he was able to use words, ideas, and my own vulnerabilities to construct an illusion that cut across the entire spectrum of a human personna – from spiritual, to moral, to financial, to ethical, to sexual, to education….he used what he knew about ME to construct the illusion.
Dating sites. Pppppffffffffffffffffffffffffft! Oh, hayell, no.
Truthspeak, above in your post you said that thinking about sex makes you sick. That you don’t want it.
Yeah.
Exactly. I can’t imagine ever putting myself out there like that again. The idea makes me physically ill.
When I see my spath now, I see him in a totally different way than how he first posed. He’s a dork. Looks like a janitor. But what an illusion it was.
Hugs to you. Thanks for being there for me today. I needed to read your post and feel like I am not the only one out there who has been emotionally raped.
Athena