UPDATED FOR 2020
A Lovefraud reader who posts as “LadyA” sent Lovefraud the following email. At the end, I suggest how she can recover from the sociopath.
I’ve spent a lot time thinking about my experience with my spath, and how it affected me and the people around me. I have read article after article, story after story. I now fully understand what spaths do and how they do it but I didn’t understand why I don’t feel any better about it. What was I missing?
When I left my spath it was a fairly dramatic experience. He had just been sentenced to serve jail time on the weekends for an obstruction of justice charge. My mom flew into town and in one swoop we packed up everything we could get in the car and left the province to go back to my hometown. I had to quit my job over email and send a goodbye text to all my friends.
I am thankful every day for what my mom did for me. I sure wasn’t happy about it at the time but I knew I needed out and this was my chance. What I didn’t know is how much moving back to my hometown would affect me emotionally. I had originally planned on only being back for six months. Just long enough for him to move on and get me out of mind, but it has now been just over three years and I still haven’t moved back. I got settled in a new job, new friends, and a new relationship. Even after all of this I haven’t been able to figure out why I’m not happy. Until three days ago.
Pride. I was proud of myself for the life that I had built. I moved 1200 km’s away from home right after high school to a big city. I was on the fast track to a strong career in a competitive field. I had a brand new car, paid all my bills on time, and was saving to buy a house. I was independent, reliable, strong, caring, and had a really great outlook on the world. Not many people can say that at 22.
All of that was ruined by a six-month “whirlwind romance.” I’m no longer proud of myself. I feel like I have failed because I came back home with my “tail between my legs” to my mommy. I no longer have a new car because it was repossessed as soon as I got back here. I am jaded, I don’t trust people easily, and I am no longer as strong as the face I put on the outside. I’ve gained weight because deep down I just don’t care anymore. My career is now on a plateau due to the location where I live. I don’t have one reason to be proud of myself right now.
How do I get my pride back when I know what happened? I want to feel proud of myself for my life but I just have zero idea where to start. I’ve thought about moving away again, but I don’t really know if that’s the answer. How can I be proud of what has happened in my life? I’m really honestly just so ashamed.
Donna Andersen responds
Dear LadyA,
I am so sorry about your encounter with a sociopath. Although this is not a normal breakup, the good news is that you can recover from the sociopath.
Right now, however, it does not seem that way. Why? I can see two reasons.
The first is that betrayal by a sociopath is a huge emotional injury. In the beginning of your email you said that, after all your reading, you now “fully understand what spaths do and how they do it,” but you don’t feel any better.
Understanding is a critical first step to you to recover from the sociopath. But understanding is an intellectual process, something that you do with your mind. The wound you experienced is also emotional. It needs to be dealt with emotionally.
How do you do that? You allow yourself to feel the pain of the injury.
This means letting yourself cry. Letting yourself scream and wail. Letting yourself experience anger — I’m sure there is anger — perhaps by working it out on a punching bag.
This isn’t pretty, and you probably want to do it privately, because other people often have difficulty being around this. Or, you may have a good therapist who can help you.
One way or another, any bottled up emotion you have within you needs to come out.
Underestimated the injury
Next you wrote that you identified the reason that you’re not happy as “pride.” But it seems like you are regarding pride as something bad, like one of the seven deadly sins.
You had every reason to be proud, because your pride was based on your achievement. And the sociopath took this away from you.
Here is what I think has happened: You have underestimated the scale of the injury, and the severity of the betrayal.
LadyA, you were building a life for yourself. You went out on your own; you started building a career; you were moving forward.
And some manipulative, deceitful parasite, who did something bad enough to end up in jail, ruined it for you.
Not only did he cost you money and hurt your career, he corrupted your outlook on life. You’re jaded; you don’t trust; you don’t care. You are not the young person you once were all because of the sociopath.
Recognize that this was not a normal breakup after all, you had to flee your home, job and friends.
Your life was shattered. Your psyche was deflated. This is a massive shock to your system. It’s no wonder that you are still struggling.
Drain the emotion
So what do you do? In my opinion, you do exactly what I suggested earlier — allow yourself to feel the pain now, knowing that the pain is bigger than you originally thought.
So you cry. You stomp. You imagine him standing in front of you and yell at him. (Do not, however, attempt to confront him in person. This would be counterproductive.)
The idea is to drain off the negative emotion.
As you drain the emotion, a void will be created within you. It’s very important to fill that void with joy.
This may sound preposterous to you, like you have no reason to be joyful. But don’t look at the totality of your life right how.
Do any small thing that makes you happy: Go for a walk. Play with your pets. Have lunch with a friend. Listen to music.
To recover from the sociopath, it may require many rounds of draining off the negative and replacing it with positive. But with time, you’ll find that your entire outlook will change, and you’ll be able to get back on track.
Importantly, with the wisdom you gained through this experience, you’ll never fall for a sociopath again.
Lovefraud originally published this article on May 12, 2014.
High school boyfriend pursues her, then abuses her
jenna, I am a world class ruminator. The final discard threw me into a cycle or rumination that went on for many weeks until I truly felt like I was losing my mind. He left me for dead financially with a ruined career, but controlling the rumination turned out to be my biggest challenge.
I resorted to tricks: my tried and true patented dig a hole in the back yard, fill it in and start over again (can’t think when you’re shoveling), a walking meditation I found in a book (count each step to some arbitrary number then start over, can’t think when you’re counting), I even cut a big tree limb off and hand sawed it into thin slices (can’t think when you’re sawing). You get the idea.
Later, when I started therapy, my therapist taught me about the amygdala, a part of your brain that kind of controls the fight or flight. She taught me that when you stimulate it (the rumination), you keep your brain in this state of arousal and, well, you can’t think straight like that. Your brain needs a break from all the rumination in order to be of any use to you.
My best advice is to keep yourself busy with things/people that you can’t get away with ruminating at the same time. Even if it’s a few minutes here and there at first. The brief relief will do you good.
Be gentle with yourself. It takes time, and effort to get back in control of yourself. I guarantee it gets better.
Great ideas for occupational therapy!
I wish I could have a dog but the place that I will be living will not allow pets. I have a pet frog. ha ha. It is hard bcs NC will only last until 4/6. I still have to make it through next week bcs he was supposed to see me on tues 3/31. I got dumped, duped and discarded and now he has not contacted me at all. so i do think this time its all over. I dont suspect he will even bother the whole time he is out. I am sure that Amanda is meeting with him when he comes back. I know i shouldnt care but it feels like crap. Knowing that he wanted to see me and maybe work it out to nothing total quiet. that message on sunday was bull bcs i do have a great heart and he smashed it. and he wants to be friends bes it will benefit him. I cant believe another human being would do this.
Middle,
Consider that when he said he ‘wanted to see you and maybe work it out’ he was lying. He doesn’t want to work anything out with anyone. He only wants to use people; and everything he says is a lie. If he says something true, it’s random – it just happens to be that he thinks whatever he’s saying will work to get what he wants; not BECAUSE it’s true.
Consider allowing yourself to feel what you feel, and keep in mind that it’s your normal response to care and to feel like crap. That’s why what he does is wrong – because it harms others. Consider for now just focusing your energy on controlling what you do. Try to maintain NC in every way – don’t allow any new information about him or any contact from him to reach you. Block everything. That will create a safe situation for you to heal.
Taralev
Glad to hear you are free of him. That’s such wonderful news. I remember your posts from then. Believe mr, karma does happen . I don’t think none of them will get away with this pain they put us through. My ex seems very unhappy from the notes he writes to my son. (He gets no response from the son). In his last note he wrote that he cries when he thinks of the time they played video games together. The next sentence he blames me for having to abondon his family. I don’t know what he tries to accomplish. He is not a part of this family anymore, nor is he a friend of us. I don’t feel sorry for him or have any pity. Those times are over.
Taralev good luck and I am so glad you are better. 🙂
Jenna
You are in a vet painful stage rightnow. All of us have been through this. I remember that I was thinking the same like you do. It’s like an obsession. Every units of the day and night revolves around him. I learned that this is normal. Because it’s like a withdrawal. It took me a good 3 months to get a little better . Looking back now I wish I would have done things different. I would have cut if all contact the day he left. I would have not begged him to come back. I would have filed for divorce the same day he left. Remember a person who is capable of just walking out in you is not worth any second of your time. Believe me, things will get better. But it takes a long time. For me it took over a year to finally accept that it’s over. My past 20 years was a nightmare. I didn’t see it then but now I know that nothing was “normal “about this marriage.
I also had a big mansion , I didn’t have to work and so on. But I was living in hell. No material things will erase the pain the comes living with a cheater.
jenna, here is something that popped up from Psychopath Free on FB this morning:
Psychopaths cannot change. Psychopathy is incurable and untreatable. They do not want help, because they believe themselves to be superior to “regular” human beings. You do not have to worry that they’re a changed man or woman, because they’re not. They may give off the illusion of “goodness” in order to maintain an image of normalcy, but like anything else with a psychopath, it’s all manufactured. They are incapable of seeing other human beings as unique individuals deserving of love & kindness. All they see is pawns on a chess board. Someone who is capable of abusing you (with silence, gas-lighting, cheating, and pathological lying) is not also capable of suddenly being a decent human being because they found a better partner. These qualities & behaviors are indicative of a serious personality disorder, not temporary symptoms a bad relationship.
This is another good site to follow if you’re not already.
Do they ever get tired of it? I think they thrive on it and live on it. I think that even in times of relative quiet, they are working behind the scenes, it might not always be with women. It might be their kids, coworkers, other family members, neighbors. I worked in the same department as my ex for a couple of years before we became involved (in fact, I was on the interview panel that selected him you can bet I’ve regretted that choice), and the truth is, I thought he was weird and creepy. I gave him a chance out of sympathy, really, not thinking it would go anywhere, and little did I know that he had been grooming me and had enough intel on me to know what my hopes and dreams were and he presented himself to me as my dream man. The weird and creepy never went away, I just chose not to see it.
Repeat: psychopaths do not change.
HMoon, I have enjoyed some good info from that site too. Thanks for sharing that. On that subject of using others as pawns on a chess board, I have come to see this as a early predictor or a yellow flag for lack of a better term. What I mean is sometimes its hard to see the full picture early on, but we can sometimes see a glimpse. When I get the impression that this person seems to be the voice others defer to, I do not take that lightly. No matter how over the top sweet, loving, generous, kind, spiritual, ect. – I have seen all those descriptors as facades to facilitate whatever agenda they are covertly promoting. Control. Dominance. It’s harder for them to hide this than some of their other traits.
Jenna,
They are evil because they do what evil does because they want to and they choose to. In some way, I suppose it is ‘fun’ to them, but I don’t understand the workings of their twisted minds, and I really don’t want to. I don’t think a normal person can understand.
What we can understand is that they are a reality. The Biblical descriptions of Satan, his motives, thoughts and actions, describe my ex P exactly; so I know the God I serve and worship understands. As I understand it, the Bible is about good and evil, and God’s plan to restrain Satan and rid the world of evil according to His time. My personal theology helped me survive and recover.
You are searching and you will discover a way of understanding what happened to you that helps you. Right now the reality of what happened to you as you are waking up to it, is probably too much of a shock to your mind to incorporate and accept all at once. It’s a process you will get through; and you will feel better.
Jenna-
If the person of your dreams got hit by a truck and died, you’d mourn their loss. And that is pretty much what happened, except YOU were hit by the truck, and the make and model was HIM.
You are not only experiencing the loss, but you are also processing changes that affected your character. You have been defiled by this man, and the trauma you faced is still troubling you. Sexual trauma is like experiencing a death, but one that involves our personal permission which was exploited, not agreed upon. You can only provide “knowing” agreement by being
“knowing.” You weren’t. And you need to forgive yourself for having fallen into his trap. He’s very good at what he does. He’s done it to a great many women.
When we’re duped, we lose that sense of being able to protect ourselves, and we devalue ourselves because of it. There are folks around you who will feed into your sense of having been duped, and you need to simply shut out their noise. They don’t get it. They will want you to “get over it” and get on with your life, as if what you faced wasn’t a life-changing trauma. It was.
When you’re sad, a friend will want your pain to stop. A loved one will give you a shoulder to cry on. This experience will show you who the “friends” and who the “loved ones” are in your life.
It is important for you to come to grips with the fact that what happened to you does not define you. You are still you, just wiser. And for the moment, you are much sadder. But your sadness will fade as you put more distance between you and that CAD, and you will find new joy with your family and friends.
The relationship you felt was all smoke and mirrors. It wasn’t what you thought it was. Being conned is not your failure. He knows how to manipulate people’s natural inclination to “couple” toward a sinister end. He is the lowest form of scum, a rapist.
Joyce
Jenna-
If the person of your dreams got hit by a truck and died, you’d mourn their loss. And that is pretty much what happened, except YOU were hit by the truck, and the make and model was HIM.
You are not only experiencing the loss, but you are also processing changes that affected your character. You have been defiled by this man, and the trauma you faced is still troubling you. Sexual trauma is like experiencing a death, but one that involves our personal permission which was exploited, not agreed upon. You can only provide “knowing” agreement by being “knowing.” You weren’t. And you need to forgive yourself for having fallen into his trap. He’s very good at what he does. He’s done it to a great many women.
When we’re duped, we lose that sense of being able to protect ourselves, and we devalue ourselves because of it. There are folks around you who will feed into your sense of having been duped, and you need to simply shut out their noise. They don’t get it. They will want you to “get over it” and get on with your life, as if what you faced wasn’t a life-changing trauma. It was.
When you’re sad, a friend will want your pain to stop. A loved one will give you a shoulder to cry on. This experience will show you who the “friends” and who the “loved ones” are in your life.
It is important for you to come to grips with the fact that what happened to you does not define you. You are still you, just wiser. And for the moment, you are much sadder. But your sadness will fade as you put more distance between you and that CAD, and you will find new joy with your family and friends.
The relationship you felt was all smoke and mirrors. It wasn’t what you thought it was. Being conned is not your failure. He knows how to manipulate people’s natural inclination to “couple” toward a sinister end. He is the lowest form of scum, a rapist.
Joyce
Right Jenna.
He is So satisfied by those things, that he treats people like crap.
LOL what would you say to Nancy? 🙂
That dude is MISERABLE, right? HAPPY people do not leave others shredded, or not to my understanding anyway. After all, aren’t your former friends all still intact?! and look at what HE leaves behind instead….
wreckage. And fear.
Pain, suffering and injustice.
He does that because he has no Life, dear. With great fortune, YOU DO.
Yeah, as you feel a little better your common sense will kick in — and your sense of humor will come back bit by bit, too. 🙂
NoContact, your sense of humor is intact in spades!
My therapist told me my sense of humor is partly what carried me through. Yay!!!!
Hanalei, I’m not sure it’s intact just yet but it sure does help.
For instance, it HELPS to think it would be funny for us all to meet at a restaurant together, order up some eggs, drink some coffee — and wait for my ex to arrive.
The person that I call Peter is the exact guy you call Bob and that Jenna calls Roger, and so on. In truth from all of your respective descriptions, I have figured out we all were Had by the same person…
WhatsHisName. 🙂
So please remember this:
When y’all invite him in and make up some spaghetti and that garlic toast he wants while you’re all dressed up with lipstick and everything as though you give a damn — then GUESS WHAT he expects at my place on the very next night?!! Right, it’s the pot roast just like his mother made (she never did, she was a vegetarian as Jenna already knows). And then I’m stuck with him, for weeks on end, until they become months AND YEARS WITHOUT CONCLUSION! so let’s all just stop FEEDING him and maybe he’ll starve out there.
It is snowing here — so I will start First. 🙂
NoContact, when he left me in our (make that MY) dream home, with a $4,200 a month house payment and no job, less than six months after escrow closed and the monsoons came and the roof leaked”he participated in the first roof repair.
He declined to participate in any further repairs saying (through his attorney to my attorney)”he did not wish to put any more money into “that” house. To me, he emailed me (I didn’t reply)”we need to dump that piece of s**t, I can’t support two homes. (Note, it was the only home I had, dangit.)
It leaked FIVE more times during that year. I paid to repair them all, including one on New Year’s Eve, and one on the afternoon of my birthday, when I had booked a night at a moderate inn about 30 minutes away, just to give myself a break from the whole thing for one”single”night.
I learned to laugh, say, well, at least it’s one room instead of THREE leaking. And call the roofer. The roofer was nice to me. The last time, he didn’t even charge me.
Sorry, I’ve had a glass and a half of wine tonight. :))
Jenna,
If you think of revenge, though he deserves it of course, you are doing exactly what his evil mind wants you to do: think about him all the time. It brings you down, makes you feel worse. Evil like this should not exist, but it does.
Consider making a gratitude list, even if you don’t feel like it, one time every day. It is proven to help you feel better. You didn’t have control over what happened to you; but you can control where you take your thoughts.
Ugh”when I got involved with mine (we worked in the same department for a few years prior) it was because I felt bad for him because his wife died. I went to the memorial service on behalf of our department and offered to meet him for lunch sometime.
Before I knew it, I was in over my head.
In a word: Yes.
It reminds me of a sign I saw on a church:
Love people, use things.
Sociopaths turn that the other way around. They have the formula for happiness backward and can’t figure out why they aren’t happy.
I don’t think that spaths define or understand happiness, love, joy, peace, like normal folks do. Something that helped me move on is my understanding that my ex P isn’t really real as a human being. He deceived me with a false persona he created to lure me and exploit me. The fake person I loved never existed and never will. He is an evil force, dangerous to me, but he does not experience human existence like the rest of us. Like a complicated virus, not really alive
Annette, I agree with you – they are basically shape shifters. My ex had an opportunity to observe me for a couple of years at work and learn a lot about me before we ever got involved. He knew enough about me to create a persona that would appeal to me, and fake it that we had a lot in common. It was all lies, and yes, created for the sole purpose of exploiting us.
Hanalei and Annette are right: the word is Chameleon and they were born this way, many of them have very emphasized “airy” celestial placements that demonstrate that they were Constructed in that manner from the neurological and psychological perspectives — they did not “go bad” instead, although there is NO DOUBT that appropriate therapy at the right stage would have HELPED THEM AND THEIR VICTIMS so there is lots of work ahead on this Public Health and Safety Topic (which is what it really is).
One thing about studying Astrology: you “get the point” that people are born the way they are and for the most part predictably act later, so someday it’s hoped that we will probably be able to ID these sorts of oddities via an MRI when they start acting “emotionally detached and dangerous to siblings and parents and society.”
Then we can specifically apply the things that we know WORK to ADJUST THIS, beginning with a self-understanding that the reason they FEEL differently (as mine at least perceives is the case) is because they ARE different (I am sure an MRI would disclose this, in fact he mentioned that on autopsy he would have an irregular brain). This is something they are NOT in control over, so the extent to which we KNOW THIS has held us back.
As Humans, we know that part of this is beyond Them, in other words. However, another fact about astrology is that you CANNOT give somebody ELSE your nice, warm chart.
Sadly, you can only share, and never GIVE someone, your own Elements. Rather these people mimic them back at you….you have the juicy sweet stuff they only wish were true of them….
so in the end NO they are not “happy” as we typically describe that term. Panic-stricken would be a more suitable term, and that is the HOOK for us, as actually we SEE them drowning and our anger comes from pulling ourselves AWAY, having learned or been shoved away from doing what we want to do…
that word is called Rescue.
Love yourselves! as the reasons they went for you were all Valid. But sadly…ONLY in you, as for some TOTALLY UNKNOWN REASON they seem to be here to illustrate something for the rest of us. What that is Remains to be Seen, meanwhile please STAY and not drown.
Jenna and All, I would like to comment also from my specific perspective as a Child of the Fifties.
Many of these sorts of people were ID’d by themselves and others as Homosexuals in my time, and that was considered a “fixable disorder.”
It is not that the problem is a new one in other words, but rather that it has been viewed and “treated” from the sexual perspective (they are weird) from the emotional perspective (they are weird) from the behavioral perspective (they are weird) and most recently from the physical perspective (you guessed it, totally weird).
For those of us with children it is CRITICAL we distinguish these factors. Our elder daughter seems poised at the very precipice and JUST about (like, weeks! if not days) to marry my ex…in love for her father… so PLEASE PRAY today, for her and her sister as well.
As for me, my prayers are also for them — and for you, that you escape the worst of what I experienced and also know…
We only THINK we’re reading this book for the first time. In truth, the more I look at it, the more fingerprints I see on the page. It’s just that Society has CALLED it so many things.
Jane doe
What you write us exactly what my ex is trying to do. Confuse me. That’s the most fitting word for it. Confuse me, that’s what he did for 20 plus years. At the end I thought I was the crazy one. Now, I can actually look at what he writes and one word cones to me “LOSER”. That’s what my attorney labeled him. Very fitting. My ex lives in a different county about 20 miles away. I don’t see him and we never shared mutual friends. I don’t check him on any social websites What he does is none of my concern.
Jane, they are all the same. Your ex is not happy so he is trying to put agony on you. If you react at least he can get a little satisfaction. That’s why I never respond to my ex anymore. I will not allow him access to my life. And that is for ever.
jenna23
i was you not too long ago”
i was in a state of mourning, it almost felt like”although you seem to have a lot of physical abuse happen to you, which is unacceptable in itself, mine was not physical”but more emotional.
all i can say is i too, went months crying and thinking of lies and all the cheating..i was in a three year relationship that was built only on lies with a man who was supposed to be wiser than me and more experienced in life”so i thought”because he was ten years older, and so smart and intellectual, i couldn’t believe how i fell for him..how could a man, writing a thesis, going to school to finish his masters and give so much of his time to education, be so upsetting to me, i thought..
i had red flags from the beginning of how he was a smooth talker and was on that computer day and night “committing to his perfect 4.0 GPA”
i ignored all the red flags for years, one would be worse than the other, but i still ignoredh them until one day, only six months ago, he admitted he had also been seeing a much younger girl from across the world, from a very poor family. they were in love and getting married in july 2014..he packed up, no job, no family but his two children now 22 and 20, and left”went to live there with her family, in their small apartment to continue life”.yuck i still can’t believe what an kind of idiot does this..i begged him to look at this situation, how could he throw what we had away to do this”well, he didn’t listen and went ahead with it”
now you are where is was just a few short months ago”.after a long time with my head in disbelief and i was losing weight and nobody understood anything i told them, except he was a loser and to get over it, i came here and i read and read everything i could find”
my biggest thing was doing NO CONTACT..i got rid of anything and everything that reminded me of him. pictures, fb account, no snooping on anything. it was miserable and hard to do this but with all these tools i had learned from here, i managed and slowly started to see the light again..im only four months out of this but i am that much further ahead..
my advice is to keep reading as many things as possible, everyones stories, join forums, search the internet, do everything possible to get all the knowledge you can on this disorder”i believe with all that and the beautiful people on here, time may heal all wounds 🙂
kaya
its awful what they put us through”their minds are so deranged, yet they makes us crazier at times..
you’ve come a long long way and are an inspiration to many on here.
none of these men are happy kaya, they are confused men with a childs brain, the capability of a three year old. why don’t they see this about themselves when its pointed out to them? they don’t see their actions are not normal???
i am so done with explaining to mine how he hurt me and its not normal how he behaves or lives”sometimes the more i say things to him, the less he processes”hence the brain imbalance i mentioned to annettePK.
i really think there is something wrong other than being a spat
aintgonnatakeitnomore
i agree! they have to have some sort of mixture of illnesses.
mine just does some very strange things, that if i hadnt heard of a spath, i would think he has another serious condition”
he also lives like a hermit, very intelligent and reads an immeasurable amount of books”
in fact i believe because he reads so much, he has learned how to do and say things from other people..because at times its impossible its him saying half of what he says..it sounds as though it comes from a younger generation that he tries to relate to”when he talks like that to me, i just tell him to f**k off, thats not even coming from you”he mimcks what he sees and hears others speaks like
Jane doe
Wow. Same lies. When I caught my husbsnds nude pictures on our home computer and confronted him, his answer was “now you ruined your birthday present “. It was one day before my birthday. Yuck. Like that was something I wanted. Thinking about it is just sickening.
I cannot believe your ex told you he was working for the CIA. How crazy ist that ?
kaya
yeh he worked for the CIA”lol
many many years ago he worked somehow somewhere for a police force doing god knows what, i never found out”so i believe he used this to his advantage to make me believe he had some ties to the CIA”now that is just my theory but i was under the impression you don’t normally tell people about that kind of work”it was something he told me from probably one week into meeting me”he wouldn’t let me write those three letters on the computer, telling me he doesn’t know if computer is bugged, i couldn’t even say it when with him in the same room he would tell me”there is something wrong seriously with him”
but then again i always have that nagging feeling, what if he isn’t lying?
Ugh, this reminds me of the man I was briefly married to (not the ex I write about here). He was in the army reserves (at least that’s what he told me) and it was always top secret – he was always getting “called to active duty” for some sort of mysterious mission (I now assume it was another woman). He would call me and act very weird, suddenly go silent, etc.
We had a trip planned to Maui and about a week before we were scheduled to leave, he told me he had been “called to duty” and would be unable to go on the trip. I told him I would cancel it and he insisted I go, saying he might be able to pop over to spend a day with me. Long story short, I went to Maui alone, never saw or heard from him when I was there and didn’t see or hear from him for 9 months!!! I spent this time in a living hell. None of his family had heard from him. His employer would give me no information (I assume he told them I was nuts). He basically dropped off the earth for this time.
Then, he called me saying he was on the way to the house. We talked for hours, he told me he had “not felt like talking” for 9 months and everything would be different now. I was furious but wanted to believe him. Then he said he had to leave to catch a plane because he was onto another mission!
I never saw him or talked to him again. He just disappeared. I filed for divorce and he was never served the papers because he couldn’t be located. Finally, he emailed me the following year asking me to send him my tax information so he could file our taxes (yeah right). My attorney seized this opportunity, sent the papers to him at the P.O. box he gave and required a signature. He thought they were the tax information so he signed for them. Served!! It took another year and a half to get divorced because the judge kept setting court dates for him to appear to give him a chance to ask for spousal support and he never showed, nor did he ever return the papers signed.
I’m sure he never signed them so he could tell sob stories about how I divorced him and he never wanted it.
Ugh. They’re ALWAYS lying.
hanaleimoon
are you kidding me??!! i haven’t gotten to that point but it wouldn’t put it past me that if i had married him, this would happen.
at this point he is secretive and goes without being heard from”but for 9 months??? omg!!! that must have driven you completely nuts!
were you man and wife when he said he may be able to “pop” over to see you in Maui?
and he just called you “out of the blue” one day and came over?
what was his diagnosis? could he be two personalities, like schizophrenia?
that is one story you would hear on Dateline or 20/20”.
im so sorry you went through that xx
janedoe, not kidding. We had been married for maybe 2 years when he just disappeared. Oh, I was beside myself.
When the holidays came and I hadn’t heard from him, I called the red cross, they can get in touch with military personnel when there is an emergency. They promised to get in touch with him and get back to me. After about a week when I hadn’t heard back from them, I called and they told me that they had heard back from his commanding officer and been told that my husband had contacted me and all was well so they felt there was no need to get back with me. He lied!
I met the ex that I write about here about 2 or 2 1/2 years after this happened.
Suffice it to say I’m not in any hurry to meet a new man.
so i had an epiphany today
i was looking at clothes i have stored as there were a few things I wanted to get rid of. suddenly i saw the shirt i got married in (to the spath) in our very informal wedding. this shirt; one of the reasons I’d kept the stupid thing was BECUZ i’d married in it! like OK, W.T.H. was I keeping it for??? just the fact I DID get married in it, i should have shredded it, burnt the threads and then scattered them to the wind, LONG AGO!
I then said, i dont want ANY clothes i had when i knew him. NOTHING. just looking at those clothes made think of things from when i wore them. if i could, i would burn ANYTHING i’ve owned from the time i met him till he left. i would have a celebration too! a party!
ive already trashed anything of his he’d left here. and i dont think of him, even being with his kids 24/7. but wow, what a duh moment!
i think its due to being so broke i never trash anything of possible value (without being a hoarder lol). but ya know what? these things are of NO value to me and never CAN BE.
YAY me 🙂
YAY you is RIGHT, I’m celebrating FOR ya, ain’t!!!!\
just “don’t” — right?!!
then you don’t even NEED the “ain’t” part. 🙂
YAY!!!!!!!!
Love you, n/c
dear aint’t.
there is a very real value in being able to burn that particular fn shirt, the symbol of his fraud perpetrated on you. If you can do it on New Years Eve, again symbolism of the end of that nightmare and a NEW Year, I’d get into that event totally.
ps My divorce was final on New Years Eve, and done on the day for this EXACT reason. I shed the skin of my abuser that night, broke my chain, and have reveled in my life since then.
I burned pictures. Everything else I disposed of in dumpsters off my property”I didn’t even want it in my trash can.
I deleted all the pictures from my computer. I do still have a voice mail from him from after the discard telling me he waited until after the holidays and my birthday to contact me to tell me to get the house on the market and “dump” it.
I’m going to go delete that right now.
my surprise is that i’d never done it. now at this pt, its anticlimatic. i think i rly was so dun by the time i cud get rid of him, i just didnt care.
but like a normal person i held value in my vows.
yesterday it struck me how silly. and then i kept thinking n didnt want a damn thing. well duh lol
will i get anticlimatic with the narc? lord, i hope so.
i love not caring if spathboy does well or rots somewhere. hes just someone that i used to know.
this yr coming…is for me. good resolution i think.
Jenna
No, they can never do no wrong. In their sick mind they are always right and entitled. I stopped trying to make sense of all this a long time ago. And you know what my lawyer said “he was able to do that to you because you let him”. Thinking back, yes I let him do all these terrible things to me. Because I was “gaslighted” or in a “crazy making “stage. Only when you remove yourself away from this situation will you see how insanely this life was. He left me, told me he did not love me, tried to have me committed to a mental institution, changed all bank accounts , quit paying the mortgage , did not care about his child and I was still in denial. I was still hoping hd would come back. Like I said the “tip of the iceberg” for me was when he filed an injunction for domestic violence against me. That is when I hired the lawyer. And from that day on tables have changed. I was in control and I still in control. I showed him “don’t mess with me, enough is enough. ”
Jenna, I don’t think they are happy. Even with all the sex they can get, all the money they might have. In the end they are the same evil monster. There is no hope for them. Ever.
kaya, again and again you share some of the best wisdom and insight but you really hit home with me with this sentence: Only when you remove yourself away from this situation will you see how insane this life was.
Truer words were never spoken. The turning point for me was when he discarded and abandoned me in our new home, 700 miles away from anyone I knew and with no job. I spent months asking myself why he would have spent so much time planning for the move, searching for the perfect house, if he never intended to move. It made no sense, but I was thinking like a normal person. Now it makes perfect sense. I risked everything, he risked nothing. I sold my beloved little home that was almost paid off, he listed his house for sale and rejected the offers he got (this didn’t make sense either at the time). He simply took his house off the market, stopped paying his share of the bills at the new house and moved on as if I had never existed and left me to deal with the day to day of the house and pick up the wreckage of my life.
It is a testimony to my resilience, strength, resourcefulness, courage, and all the years I had lived according to my golden rules before I met him that I was able to get through those years in that house before it was sold without filing for bankruptcy.
That’s why getting past the rumination and questions and staying no contact is so crucial to getting past this horror. It gives your mind a chance to clear and see how insane your life was. Once you see it clearly, no contact is a breeze. If he ever hears anything about me from any source whatsoever, it will only be words of happiness, prosperity and abundance.
kaya, I was feeling a little down in thinking I haven’t accomplished as much as I would have liked in my rebuilding phase this year, but you got me thinking about how far I have come. Thank you so much for that!!
Sadly, he isn’t going to change. As best you can even though it’s incredibly difficult, try to focus your thoughts on you, your life, your family, your hobbies, not him. He’s history, and what he is and does is out of your control, and for the most part beyond our ability to understand. Consider that a couple of generations ago people understood and taught their children that bad and evil people exist. That concept has not been in vogue for the past couple of generations.