Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following email from a reader whom we’ll call “Jesse.”
I’m so saddened by the events from the past 5 months it pains me to relive them.
I’m just trying to move on.
I saw someone I know but really wasn’t close to her. We saw each other a few times in the past 20 years, just a hello she was always smiling and happy, shy.
My close friends knew her also but not close either.
So we went out one afternoon to catch up on our lives since we knew each other.
Funny looking back how our lives were exactly the same, or so I was being “mirrored” well. Quickly we were in Love. She was living at her parents, sleeping on the couch.
No real job. So I moved her in, she rushed us engaged in 2 months.
Father was so happy had tears, saying, “I’m so Happy my daughter finally found a great man, so nice to her not like the trash she’s been with.”
Told of horrors of past guy of 7 years and how awful he was to her. Mother was happy also but was a quiet type.
Well I started seeing things pretty soon but put them aside.
Ferocious jealousy and paranoid of ANY of my female friends,
She told of how she has no trust of women, cause her Ex husband was caught screwing her best friend while she was working 2 jobs to support the family.
I bought that one.
Had me block #’s.
And remove women on FB, which I tried to tell her I’ve been talking with these people for years, there’s nothing I wanted from them if I did we wouldn’t have met.
And most lived thousand miles away!
The list went on and on.
Well about 3 months in I just knew there was something not right and told her, “You have a whole alternate life behind my back.”
I figured she’s doing drugs. No honey, NO WAY. I love you, you’re my soul mate and I’m not cheating on you or doing drugs! I despise druggies and cheaters!
Well another month and I just knew.
I got her phone records………
WOW! I was in shock!
Needless to say she just denied any and all stuff.
I had enough.
I took her phone, dialed her Ex’s #.
He had no problem telling me he’s been doing her, behind my back AND”¦ behind his new GF’s back!
Well big relief to me, I thought I was going crazy!
So she sat there for 5 mins. As he told of her doing drugs, cheating not only on me, but when they were together, how she did to him also, fighting and being on websites picking up guys.
All along never said a word, just sat shaking her head back and forth.
Well as soon as I hung up, IMMEDIATELY she tried lying to me saying, “He’s just saying all that so I will go back with him he still loves me.”
Anyway the whole story you just read? It was ALL LIES!
She never was at parents’, was with other man days before meeting me & was texting, pics, phone calls and cheating since Day One!
And Dad? Well now I see where she got it from, because he is also a psychopath.
Charming me since day one also.
There’s so much more between the beginning & end of this that if I were to take the time to write it, it would make a series.
Picking up the pieces is hard and it’s only been 1 1/2 Weeks.
She’s living at the Ex’s as a mistress behind the other woman’s back. He doesn’t care about her or himself I would gather, I’m just happy I got out and figured it all out as fast as I did.
Lesson: Don’t have complete trust in NO ONE no matter how many years you know them. Until you live with someone you never know who they are when the doors are closed.
She hid her crazy for a short time. Most are smarter. Her downfall was not working and me buying her a phone on my contract.
I never had any idea what was going on until I checked.
I also got checked immediately for STD’s. Explaining to Dr. Why I wanted std check.
Dr. Told me: RUN! Don’t look back, You dodged a bullet and stay away.
(bi polar&sociopath)
Is Incurable and is a babysitting job from hell, you don’t wanna have. She was so helpful explaining her story of what she has dealt with on the subject.
“It was a whirlwind romance that felt perfect!”
It was all a Lie.
Jesse – you are so right – you never really know someone until you live with them. I am so sorry for your experience. She is despicable.
Be very grateful you dodged that bullet. I married a man who hidden his bi-polar sociopathy for 20 years from his family. It wasn’t until I conspired with my Dr to get him mentally evalued I discovered he had been diagnosed with the disorder 25 years prior. He was non compliant to all medications. He had a condition called bi polar infedlity. Now for 20 years he had affair after afair. Lied perfectly to my face. The only hint it was occurring was the mental and psychological abuse he generated. To tell women I was an ugly ogar and our marriage was abusive. It wasn’t until one of his jilted affairs contacted me the whole truth became evident. He had lied about his entire life. I was living with an illusion for 20 years. He was very good at what he did. Old age, cognitive degeneration and a jilted lover was his enemy in the end.
Jesse,
Oh My! I am so glad you got out with your skin on. You figured it out early. Lucky, very lucky, for you. It is still a total shock to the system to find these people are out there, and the level of abuse and deception they dish out.
1 1/2 weeks is not long. Even for a short altercation. Betrayal sucks and can take awhile to process. Lots of nice people here on LF if you need support. This place was a total life line for me…
Slim
Jesse, it’s interesting that this woman’s ex seems to be a shameless cheater as well. It sounds as if they DESERVE one another!
The real point I want to make is that when someone (like your ex-girlfriend) has complaints about their partner’s behavior, it can be tempting for an outsider to “take sides,” at any rate to try and determine who’s the “guilty” and who’s the “innocent” party in the relationship. Or who’s the “abuser” and who’s the “victim,” or whatever. Sometimes that’s a valid thing to do, but often it can be a mistake to assign opposite roles in that fashion.
Fair enough, sometimes the complaints are justified and the other partner really is the “bad guy.” Or the converse can be true: it’s the complainer who’s the real abuser and he or she is doing what all chronic abusers do: blaming their partner for everything.
But on the other hand, in mild cases it may be just that both partners are “rubbing each other the wrong way,” and blaming one over the other doesn’t help; it only makes things worse. And in more serious cases it can be that there are TWO chronic abusers in the relationship, and neither one is “innocent”!
That isn’t always obvious to an outsider, because they may have different “styles.” For instance, one partner may be playing passive aggression to the other partner’s “active” aggression. Yet because passive aggression is more covert, the other partner who’s openly angry all the time gets branded as the “bad guy” when the pair of them are really just as bad as one another!
Between your (thankfully ex) girlfriend and her own “ex,” she may well be the worse of the two, but it sounds as if that guy is no prize either.
Anyway, congratulations for getting out of a dangerous relationship before it got worse still!
firstly, i am coolguy because of what i do for a living, not because i am vain. 😛 . ok that breaks the ice…
second, i have found that the accuser is often actually the “doer”. taken in perspective, we all can be accused of one thing or another. if you’ve lived long enough, you have been accused of something…this is not what im talking about. because every accuser is not a “doer” in the sense i am referring to; when your accuser’s accusations seem to be “out of balance” with with the situation at hand, it should raise a flag. expressing to you her insecurity, for example, if i may, is perfectly acceptable. it should then invite dialog . after all, talking and working through relationships is what its all about, right? and trust happens when she, over time sees that her fears are irrational and you can be trusted. this comes with communication…IN A NORMAL RELATIONSHIP. but when she goes off the deep end, demands you to nix all your phone numbers, and delete your friends on your facebook account…that’s way off balance and should flag you something isn’t right (my ex forced me to delete my facebook account. she was tracking my online browser history and without even talking to me, accused me of getting on line to chat instead of looking for a job….well i was looking for a job. but being a 1000 miles away from all my friends, i kept the tab open to the chat while i was feverishly looking for work . and i didn’t stop looking, which too i was yelled at for because i was spending too much time online and not enough with her, never mind i didn’t have a job yet from our recent move!) yes…these things can blind side you…big time. i had to run away from this girl. literally…i ended up putting the pedal to the metal in my 94 pontiac, and stayed in a truck stop parking lot when it went down to 25 degrees , and felt more safe than being with her in her parents house. ….eventually, i made plans, left jersey and went to chicago at a friends…which i was able to find work within a month…i had to work for a year to recoup all that i lost so i can move back to texas where i call home….my move “home’ happened 3 years ago, and i still find myself in recovery of this debacle. my point is, often the accuser is the doer….only in my ex’s case, i didn’t care enough to find out if she was…i focused all my energy at that point strategizing my escape…my heart goes out to anyone who has been traumatised by these predators . its a rough recovery …especially for me. i still find myself “reacting” to “trigger” that send me into and emotional frenzy…. and i know what it is…it causes me to recluse into my shell. god’s speed to all
typo: i still find myself “reacting” to “triggers” that send me into an emotional frenzy. sorry 🙁
my emotional frenzy is nothing more than panicking, and just staying to myself. on facebook i find myself violently reacting to those “memes” that describe with love is, and what a marriage is…and i attack those with comments that are less than nice…accusing those who fall for marriage as blind idiots who don’t know what they are getting themselves into…i know where that anger comes from. and it tells me im not yet healed from this. when i see the word “marriage”, to me, its synonymous with the words “jail”, “bondage”, “loss of identity”. and i can feel my whole insides tensing up. that is an out of balance reaction…and i know it 🙁 . and i don’t know what to do to heal from this :'(
Hi coolguy,
You sound pretty solid to me… having a reaction to all those silly memes sounds pretty normal to me. I still have those reactions, even though I have married/happily. As for your question about your reaction- I think the anger lessens over time. It just plays itself out. We start to feel more a part of the human race, and less an isolated outsider. But it does take time.
I spent a lot of time alone for the first two to three years. Then, slowly, I put my social ‘toe’ in the water. It is a different time line for each of us. But so long as we keep focusing on our lives, our clarity, our own values, and plans; we continue to feel better and better. It just never seems to happen ‘fast enough’. I know I felt like I must be some kind of emotional dunce. Not any longer though.
Now I understand that awakening to the nightmare of these individuals is a BIG BIG process. It involves changing lots of our deepest held beliefs, ‘dreams’, hopes….
Slim
(the accuser is often actually the “doer”)
That is a huge truth. Projection. The haters use the word hate often as they project their most felt emotion upon you. The cheaters ditto. The liers. Just fill in the blank…
My mother would shut people up, who would question her evil, by accusing people of being hateful. Projection works in many ways for the twisted. Watch the number of times you are accused of something because the accusation is the accuser’s own evil.