Updated for 2019
Lovefraud recently received this letter from a woman whom we’ll call “Nina.” I’m posting Nina’s story because many Lovefraud readers have told me of similar patterns in their lives.
I love this man like I’ve never loved before. He seemed to be my soul mate. I have had two failed marriages (no sex in them).
I was touched by a neighbour starting when I was 10 and it continued for eight years. My father was totally controlling and I was not allowed friends or to go anywhere except to this neighbour. Both were depressed parents and did not show affection, only criticism.
I have always felt alone but now am — parents dead, sister dead within last four years. I am 57.
I met him seven years ago and he was totally charming and enchanting.
He pursued me for 11 months before I let him kiss me, and a year before I let him “make love.”
I have got myself totally embroiled in a situation with him and my life revolves around him. He has a partner now, his wife and seven other women that I know of.
He speaks to me in a terrible manner a lot and is demeaning and rude and cruel and thoughtless. Tells me he loves me all the time.
I can’t understand why I find it ok to let him treat me this way — I desperately want him to love me and can’t imagine not having him in my life. Feels not worth living.
We have good times together playing music and he is a good lover (I think, although I nothing to compare).
He doesn’t know I know about most of his other women but he often has us crossing paths.
I don’t want to lose what may be a relationship worth keeping, yet it causes me so much pain and torment I don’t think it can be worth it.
He owns a huge property and I live in same building paying rent. I help with any work that needs to be done, as my biggest dread is being on my own, so I work with him and his nephew.
I have myself totally tangled up with him. He sometimes seems such a caring man yet at other times a completely selfish one. Over these last six plus years I have let him become part of almost every bit of my life. I am trying to open other avenues, but have no family and no “true” friends.
I am trying to work out why it is so important to me to find out if he is a “sociopath,” as really, how he treats me should be enough for me to say that I deserve better. I have worked really hard on improving myself for over 25 years now, and although I have come a huge way, I still feel very stuck in myself a lot.
My problem is I would become homeless, know nobody and my greatest fear is being alone and rejected —can’t see a way out.
What is he — just a selfish, inconsiderate, narcissistic, thoughtless man, or am I too fussy? Sometimes he can be very nice and seems thoughtful.
Don’t feel other option/s are worth considering — all feels hopeless and useless and impossible.
I feel when I tell what I’ve allowed that I am extremely stupid and weak.
Roots of the pain
Why is Nina in this situation? I believe the roots reach back to the beginning of her life, which she explained at the start of her letter. Nina says she endured:
- Depressed parents, who showed no affection, only criticism
- A controlling father, who wouldn’t let her have friends
- Sexual assault by a neighbor from ages 10 to 18
After that, Nina had two failed marriages with no sex. So, as Nina says, she has “always felt alone.” And even though her parents contributed mightily to her pain, they are now dead, so she truly is alone.
Seven years ago the man Nina writes about showed up. In the beginning he pursued her with charm and enchantment. After she finally agreed to a physical relationship with him, his treatment of her changed. Now Nina experiences:
- Cheating — the man has a wife and seven other women
- He is demeaning, rude, cruel and thoughtless, yet still says he loves her
- He arranges for Nina to cross paths with his other women
- They have sexual relations
- Nina pays the man rent and does work for him
- The man is entangled in all aspects of Nina’s life
Cause and effect
I see a direct cause-and-effect relationship between Nina’s past and the mistreatment she is now experiencing at the hands of the sociopath — and yes, he is a sociopath.
This man’s level of disorder may be low- to mid-range — unless he’s also doing other things that Nina hasn’t mentioned. But he is definitely toying with her, cheating, and taking advantage of her. The guy is an exploiter, so in my book, he’s a sociopath.
Nina’s prior disappointments, betrayals and traumas primed Nina to be his target.
Hungry for love
Nina’s parents did not provide her with love, so I believe she did not develop a solid understanding that she, like everyone, is worthy of love. Now she is hungry for any scraps of love she may find.
“I desperately want him to love me,” she writes.
Inappropriate sexual contact
Nina was abused from age 10-18, and apparently her parents did nothing. (Her father may have even been complicit.) Nina then had two sexless marriages — which may have been her own reaction to the childhood abuse.
Then she meets the sociopath, who takes a year to get her into bed. Because of his diligent pursuit, Nina probably believed his intentions were sincere — after all, who chases someone for a year just to get laid? Well, sociopaths do — they enjoy the game.
To Nina, this sociopath seems like an accomplished lover. This may be true — many Lovefraud readers have said that the best sex they ever had was with the sociopath.
But that only covers the physical aspects of sex. Sociopaths are not capable of emotional connection, so that dimension is missing from the experience, although they can be good at faking it. But because Nina herself has not experienced healthy sex, she may not realize what it can be.
Fear of being alone
Nina says that she always felt alone. This likely resulted from the lack of warmth in her home when she was growing up, and the fact that her father would not let her develop outside relationships.
Now Nina’s family is gone, and she’s living in a building owned by the sociopath. If she wanted to end the involvement, she would probably have to move. Nina didn’t explain much about that situation, except that she fears being homeless.
Psychological love bonds
All of these issues created psychological vulnerabilities for Nina. And how do sociopaths hook their targets? They find psychological vulnerabilities and exploit them.
One way they do this is by hijacking the normal bonding process. When two people become a couple, a psychological love bond forms between them. Intimacy, both emotional and physical, causes oxytocin to be released in the brain, which creates feelings of attachment. This is all normal.
But sociopaths then create fear and anxiety in their partners, perhaps by cheating or threatening to leave the relationship. Surprisingly, this has the effect of making the psychological love bond stronger. The target wants the relationship to go back to the happy days of the beginning, and may beg, plead and appease to make it happen. Sociopaths may be willing to go along with this, if it suits their purpose at the time. So if the two kiss and make up, the bond is strengthened again.
Intermittent reinforcement
Another technique that keeps the target attached to the sociopath is intermittent reinforcement. This is classic psychology— if laboratory rats don’t know when pressing a bar will result in a food pellet, they keep pressing and pressing and pressing. The compulsion to engage in the behavior gets stronger and stronger.
Likewise, if Nina never knows when the sociopath is going to respond to her with affection, she keeps trying and trying. Any time he responds with affection, it reinforces her efforts and strengthens the compulsion she feels.
Tolerating bad treatment
Nina writes that she can’t understand why she allows the man to treat her badly. It’s because she has psychological vulnerabilities created by her family of origin and her prior experiences. The sociopath found and targeted those vulnerabilities.
Nina has experienced a lifetime of pain. The sociopath presented himself as the antidote to her pain. The love he expressed was fake, but Nina didn’t know that, so she became emotionally and psychologically entangled.
Now she feels like she has no choice but to tolerate his bad treatment. In fact, she questions whether she is being “too fussy.” This may be a psychological defense mechanism. Since she can’t change him, she may subconsciously hope that changing her own expectations will make her feel better so she can stay in the relationship.
Except that the relationship is not healthy. Nina, like all of us, is deserving of love. Real, honest love. She’s never going to get it from this man.
Full recovery
Nina’s story demonstrates a big reason why sociopaths come into our lives: to help us recover from a lifetime of pain.
Involvements with sociopaths are bad. Really bad. They are so bad that, unlike other painful experiences we may have had earlier in our lives, the devastation of the sociopath cannot be ignored. We have to face it, or we’ll fall apart.
If we examine the experience with the sociopath, we can often see that it is linked to previous life experiences. So to truly recover, we need to overcome not only the injury and pain caused by the sociopath, but the previous injuries and pain that made us vulnerable to the sociopath in the first place.
Then we can achieve real healing, and a life more brilliant than we ever imagined.
Nina’s story clearly and concisely demonstrates how her past created an opening for the sociopath to exploit. I thank her for allowing me to share her story.
The next step for her, and for everyone with similar stories, is to address all the pain the recent experiences and the trauma from experiences long ago.
Lovefraud originally posted this story on March 3, 2014
Despite my education, I knew nothing about sociopaths, says ob/gyn doctor
First of all Nina, I have been through almost exactly what you are experiencing with at least 3 men, 2 of them I was married to for 10 years each. Actually, I believe the first one had a major psychiatric disorder other than sociopathy but I won’t get into that. I too, had severe childhood trauma. I then went on to “grab hold of any love that came my way”. I had relationship after relationship with men that just wanted to use me. I didn’t know. I was so desperate for someone to love me, I didn’t recognize what was real and normal and what was toxic. I think many of us here can relate to your story. Just let me say that you are not in any way being “fussy”. That is one of the huge lies that our inner broken voice tells us and the major reason I stuck with mine for so long. Donna, your followup was exactly right on the money too. Nina, I assume if you are paying rent you have a job. If nothing else, save up money and start looking for a place. Is there a local church where you could meet some people and make friends? You could possibly do this while he is a work or the rare times he does something without you? Don’t continue to lead this horrible miserable life with only random expressions of what you think is love. Love is NOT occasional nor is it conditional. Sociopaths aren’t capable of love. They simply use people and throw them away. Don’t continue, I beg you. I was alone for a while when I got away from him and yes it is very scary. But if I can do it along with may others here, you can too. I promise better days lie ahead. One more thing, a BIG HUG for all the pain you’re carrying around. But there is one reason why you are still here. You have a PURPOSE, not to be trampled on but to be the woman God intended you to be, healed and complete and filled with joy. I never really experienced that until I met my husband now. It took me a while to trust him but I recognize red flags now thanks to Donna. I got counseling and I made friends who stuck by me and helped me get through, helped me see what was “normal” and totally wrong behavior. If you aren’t raised in a healthy environment, you can’t know what is a healthy relationship and what is not! You aren’t expected to! So read and learn here and don’t doubt yourself. This man is a loser. You deserve so much more.
Thank you for your supportive words. I was in a church but when I divorced they were not supportive- exactly the opposite and I had to stop work due to ill health so I am on a very low pension.i will look at your suggestions to see if any are possible. Thanks again
Such an interesting topic and one that I’ve been exploring with my therapist recently. My sister is highly narcisistic (if not a textbook narcisist) and it has become clear to me that my childhood with the narcisistic sister in many ways set me for the 13 relationship with the sociopath in my adult life. A sad thing to come to understand but perhaps will lead to a road of complete recovery after lots of self-introspection. If nothing else, I’ve certainly had a lot of personality disorder in my life!
So sorry for your pain, Nina. I agree with Donna’s analysis that, of course, the lack of love and support you felt as a child as well as the abuse, of course, plays right into unhealthy adult relationships.
No sex with other husbands but “great” sex with the sociopath. It just makes me crazy because I completely understand it. I found myself in a similar situation (with my husband of 25 yrs!) where my sex drive just dropped out of sight right after we made the decision to live together. I don’t think I was sexually abused as a child but there were some comments made by a significant male adult that I know affected me sprinkled throughout my life.
When we made the decision to live together, basically cementing the relationship, I think I freaked due to my childhood, which involved many esteem-killing experiences and little support for my personhood, along with the weird experience described above. I used to say I was pushed through life by an unknown force as I had no goals or motivation to do anything. I felt fearful and useless.
A toxic, relationship-killing situation. Then there was my obsessive and critical mom to whom I was symbiotically entwined. Surely living with a man was a direct form of “cheating” on her. All subconscious, all ferreted out through therapy, all felt on an intellectual rather than a gut level. You are not alone, Nina!
Great sex with the sociopath..it just makes sense. A guy who treats you well is scary because it might involve a healthy relationship, something that you think you don’t deserve and won’t last. You believe you’ll be let down of course, just as you were as a child. “Home cooking,” as one of my therapists called it.
You enjoy sex with this sick maniac because he will always treat you badly, allowing a little fake kindness to bleed through, just enough to keep you around but not too much as that would surely scare you away. As well, he doesn’t have empathy, feelings, emotions, compassion, conscience so he’s unable to treat you well, much like a lab creation. Don’t forget, as well, that these creatures have not emotionally developed past a 3-4 year old. They are clueless but demonic, no impulse control and all ego. Me me me! It can be immensely helpful to realize that while understandable in a kid, these traits are repulsive and appalling in an adult!
Linette, your story is so positive and reassuring. There can be a rainbow at the end of the storm! Many warm wishes for a long and happy life, each day better than the next.
Nina, I wish you love and to learn to love yourself with weaknesses, warts, insecurities, all things which are part of the human condition. Once you are able to feel OK about yourself, which will probably include, as Donna said, therapy to get to the root of things and free yourself from that bondage/prison they create, you will not want any part of this pathetic individual that now invades your life at his discretion.
I look forward to that day for you!!! Best wishes and much love.
Hopefully you will stay tuned in to LF to help you get over rough patches on your way to inner peace and strength. You are not alone!
PS I didn’t talk about my experience w/a path, but it did leave me reeling, hence my screen name. Just to let you know, I was sucked into a similar horror and the resulting devastation.
Thank you for your supportive words. I find it hard to believe I allowed all this but I am slowly disconnecting. I like him less and less which also means I am changing. I am in therapy so hopefully this will allow me to move on. Warm wishes to you
” Don’t forget, as well, that these creatures have not emotionally developed past a 3-4 year old. They are clueless but demonic, no impulse control and all ego. Me me me! It can be immensely helpful to realize that while understandable in a kid, these traits are repulsive and appalling in an adult!”
Toddlers with fully loaded machine guns. As “””adults””” they have all the equipment to get their way and none of the impulse control, maturity or character strength to be able to get what they want in life without destroying others.
Recovering from childhood emotional neglect is a long, hard road (from experience) and it is hard to know where to put your trust. Because you have to trust SOMEONE, right? I know therapy is the key to recovery for many. For me, I seem to have some resistance to putting my trust in any of the therapists I’ve known, though I have given it a shot several times. I do believe in the healing power of a good relationship with a person you can connect with on a spiritual and emotional level, as well as perhaps on the physical. A book that really impacted me is “Getting the Love You Want” by Harville Hendrix. This is not particularly written for people who were abused or neglected in childhood, but he talks about how we all have unmet needs from childhood that can sabotage a relationship if we don’t know how to work with it. It is possible for two people to be involved in a good relationship, even if they both have unmet childhood needs. It involves learning how to ask for what we want from our partner, and how to listen between the lines when our partner has a hard time asking. In other words, we can learn to love someone else even if we are impaired, and learn to ask for the love we need. We can teach our partners how to give us what we need so that we can heal. And we can learn to give them what they need. Great book.
The catch to this is that we are usually only drawn to people who mirror our unmet needs, i.e. people who remind us of our parent/s. So it’s really easy for an outside person to point out that we are picking the wrong mates and we need to change our choices. But we don’t always have control over whom we are attracted to. We attract people in order to heal our past and resolve the unmet needs. In the case of a sociopath, the sociopath mirrors in so many ways a critical or neglectful parent. We may think their behaviors are normal. Or we may think it’s all we deserve. People on the outside judge us for staying with someone who treats us so poorly. But what they don’t understand is that we are trying the best we know how to fix ourselves through the other person. It doesn’t quite work with a sociopath. We never really get the love we want. We may get the initial promise of it. And then we may hold on through all eternity waiting for the promised love that never arrives, just like we did with our neglectful parents.
There ARE people out there who can deliver real love. In my experience, it takes a lot of courage to reach out for it and teach them how to give it to us. It is actually pretty terrifying to me. It is actually more scary to reach out to someone who can potentially really love me rather than someone who is disordered. The disordered person is safe in a certain way. They are so wrapped up in themselves that they cannot see you. For me, this is a comfort zone. I haven’t wanted to be seen because if someone really saw me, I was afraid they would see how truly unlovable I was. With someone who is really capable of seeing me and loving me, the stakes are much higher. Because they could actually see the real me and reject me. A sociopath or narcissist can never see the real you. But it is a huge risk to show a real person your insecurities, fears, areas of emotional blindness, flaws, and sometimes even your unique gifts and strengths.
If you can trust a therapist to the point of revealing all of these things, you can break through this. I have not found a therapist yet with whom I have opened up completely, though I got close a few times, and I’ve taken big emotional risks from time to time. It actually did help me. I would like to work through this more with someone. I don’t know if it will be a therapist. It will probably have to be a very patient boyfriend. And I will have to be meticulous in my communication skills and courageous with risk-taking.
I’ve heard that childhood neglect is the worst form of abuse to get over. Having been through all other forms too, I would have to say this is exactly right. But it has been so freeing to let people see who I really am, even though it can be quite terrifying at times.
I am just embarking on what may be a serious relationship with a man. Just at the very beginning stages. Taking it one day – one conversation – at a time. It’s scary, but the desire for love is finally bigger than the fear.
Stargazer, You said that you believe that child neglect is the hardest abuse to get over? That is interesting because I hear others talk about sexual abuse, physical abuse and other things and I feel that I am not worthy to compare what I went through (neglect) to their pain. So maybe I am justified?
Linette,
Yes, I do. One of the reasons the neglect has been so difficult is that whenever I’d get a therapist, they would always ask me if I had any secrets. I couldn’t think of any to tell them, and it confused me and them. They were looking for me to tell them about a traumatic event like a rape or a beating. I told them all about the physical abuse, but it never helped me feel better. I’d already released the physical traumas energetically. Neglect is a form of abuse no one can really see. It is not obvious and the person often suffers in silence. Depression, isolation, inability to bond with others in a healthy way – these affect all areas of life. And yes, it is devastating. In my case I developed symptoms of BPD and was diagnosed as such in my 20’s. I had severe abandonment issues throughout my life. Knowing I was screwed up but not knowing how to fix it, I isolated myself and avoided people for many years. I still have abandonment issues. The difference is that now I am consciously aware of my issues and I do not have to act them out. As I survived to 53 years, I have processed a lot of the pain, and I’m in a better place (I would dare to say I’m even happy much of the time), but it’s still hard sometimes. I feel like I’m a little more fragile and labile than my emotionally healthier friends, and I lean on them probably more than is normal for advice and feedback.
Most of the emotional work I’ve done has taken place in various relationships I’ve had with men who did care about me over the years. (For the ones who were disordered, it just traumatized me, and I had to overcome this as well). There were key turning points over the years where I took big emotional risks and was able to clear out some of the pain. I have developed over time the capacity to care about myself and about other people. I also have learned to fend for myself in the world as an adult, to take risks career and travel-wise, and to build confidence and self-esteem as a result. I still challenge myself often by doing things that are out of my comfort zone. Recently, I started learning West Coast Swing and taking salsa classes with a new teacher who sees all my weaknesses in dancing. It’s really hard for me to let others see me like that. I usually stick to the groups where I feel I’ve mastered the subject and can be a teacher. But it’s helping me to grow as a person and as a dancer to let others see my weaknesses and flaws. It’s all the little and big risks that are helping me to get past my isolation and depression.
Linette, I would be interested in hearing how the neglect in your life has affected you and how you work with it.
(((Hugs)))
Star
Stargazer – thank you so much for your sharing and wisdom. I wish you the best in your journey.
And thank you to all Lovefraud readers who have posted supportive comments. It means a lot.
Nina,
Nobody deserves to go through this, don’t feel like you are being fussy, these people are very good at placing the blame on us and making us feel we did wrong so we will fight to stay and make compromises.
Something im noticing is that people that had childhood trauma or were mistreated seem to go 1 of 2 ways, they either wind up targets of sociopaths, or they wind up with a personality disorder such as borderline or narcissistic.
Dave….OR they transform their pain and become healers. That is the third way. 🙂
Personally I don’t care how wounded a person is…………..the responsibility for all of these encounters is on the Spath. What about someone who was molested as a child but has no memory of it? What about someone who has some kind of condition and doesn’t function at a normal level and CANT protect themselves. It sounds like Nina tried to take precautions……I mean she was not intimate with the guy for a year! They prey on whatever they can and in whatever way they can and if you don’t have a vulnerability, they create one out of one of your strengths! all they need is enough time and exposure to get the bait on the hook and if one bait doesn’t work they use another.
No one is n top of their game 100%! Someone might ordinarily be a fairly strong person, self assured and confident, etc, etc, etc, etc but they loose their parent or parents or become ill or tired or injured or SOMETHING and BAM……they have a vulnerability.
IMO, once their mind/ emotional control is in place the victim is “trapped” and not untill SOMEthing happens to jar them loose from this dynamic or they are discarded, etc…..they are swimming in quicksand. They might ordinarily be a good swimmer and fought off many sharks in their past but now because of the love drug that they were covertly slipped……they are swimming in quicksand with ankle weights.
“Nina’s story demonstrates a big reason why sociopaths come into our lives: to help us recover from a lifetime of pain.”
Donna, I do not like this wording (no offense). They do NOT come into our lives to help us recover from a lifetime of pain or joy or ANYTHING. They come into our lives to get what they want……period.period.period. We may have some issues from our past but there are PLENTY of women who get targeted by one of these pricks who don’t have some traumatic past life events. No one’s childhood is perfect and there are a ZILLION women in this world who didn’t have an attentive, nurturing father. They have managed to create a good life for themselves in spite of that. Then along comes a Spathtard who wants something they have and gets it by any means they can.
I know people who have had as bad or worse childhoods than I have who have never been victims of one of these monsters and people who didn’t have the childhood damage I have who were! IMO…..ANYone is a potential victim. I don’t care how good of a swimmer you are, if a shark is hungry…….you are going down.
dorothy2”I think what Donna meant was that when these things happen to us, it makes us examine ourselves and find out why we were vulnerable and why we didn’t see the red flags. Speaking for myself, I absolutely believe this happened to me to make me heal and to make me STOP doing the things I was doing in life to bring these ordeals into my life. Yes, I was targeted and yes, he was the one who hurt me, but I also had a choice to say no and why didn’t I?? I learned big time from what happened to me and turned away from those things. I think that is all Donna was saying”that if we learn a lesson from what happened, it wasn’t all in vain. I learned a beautiful lesson”a lifetime lesson and I can thank him for that.
The strongest card they hold in their hand is peoples ignorance and naiveté they they are living in a shark tank. Most people are swimming around it what they believe to be a swimming pool, happily going about their lives, TOTALLY unaware that monsters like this exist in the real world. Looking back to my past life prior to this nightmare with Spathtardx, I now see that there were several men who were more than likely spaths. I just ran into one yesterday and on my way home, reflecting about the encounter I had with him, realized……holy crap! THAT guy is a TOTAL spath! But I cut and ran from that encounter because he was SO “in your face” disordered, clearly early on, he did not hook me. At the time however…..I didn’t even know what a ppath was really. It was some obscure term I was aware of but did I REALLY know?? Nope! I sure as Hell do now!