Last Sunday, the Asbury Park Press, a New Jersey newspaper, published a front-page article about the career of Edward J. Devine. On August 1, 2008, Devine was sentenced to five years in prison for bouncing checks and deceiving nonprofit and educational institutions.
The bulk of the story was not about those crimes, but what Devine did to the women in his life. Claiming to be the heir to a Sonoma wine company and a trucking mogul, he left one wife, Donna Devine, and her mother $400,000 in debt. He wiped out the inheritance of another wife, Deborah Weiss. He forced his first wife, Carol Ceralli, into bankruptcy.
It’s a story that many of us know, and some of us have experienced.
But what is significant to me about this story is that it was brought to my attention by my brother. He saw the story in the Asbury Park Press and sent me the link.
That same day, my husband suggested that I look into Mike Wooten, the trooper at the root of Sarah Palin’s Troopergate. My husband was the one who read the newspaper articles about Wooten. “The cop looks like one of your guys,” he said.
I investigated further, and my husband was right. In my opinion, Wooten is a sociopath.
So last Sunday, two members of my family alerted me to stories about sociopaths. They’ve learned what these predators look like.
I consider this a sign of success. I’ve been talking about sociopaths, and they’ve been listening.
Criticized by my family
It wasn’t always this way. When I was in the midst of the trauma, trying to pick up the pieces of my shattered life after learning that James Montgomery, my ex-husband, was a con artist, I could not talk to my family about it.
They criticized me for not listening to them when they expressed doubts. (This was after I was married to Montgomery—no one said anything before I married him.) Then they criticized my recovery methods. I quickly learned that it was best not to tell them what I was doing.
Eventually, however, I worked my way out of the hole. I also began to develop Lovefraud. But it took time. Lovefraud launched more than five years after my divorce.
Now, when I tell my family that more than 1,000 people who have written to Lovefraud with stories of being targeted by sociopaths, they seem to realize that I wasn’t as stupid as they thought I was. Anyone can be a victim.
Talking about the sociopath
So how do you talk to people about your experience with sociopaths? I think two preliminary steps are necessary:
First, you need to educate yourself about sociopaths. (The fact that there is so much confusion about what to call them—sociopaths, psychopaths, antisocials—doesn’t help.) Learn that millions of people have the disorder. Although there are symptoms and warning signs, these people are experts at hiding them. Treatment options are few to none. Everyone will run across a sociopath at some point, and if they don’t recognize the predator, they will become a target.
Second, you need to be able to discuss sociopaths as an educator, not as a victim. This means you probably are not going to be able to do it while the experience is raw. If you’re still coping with the pain, horror, self-doubt and grief, your friends and family will interpret your words as self-pity, and will come back with the refrain, “Get over it, already.” During the early phases of your recovery, it’s probably best to express yourself with the understanding community here at Lovefraud, rather than with your personal acquaintances who, however well-meaning, simply don’t understand.
But eventually, if you give yourself time and permission to heal, you will. And then, with your understanding of this destructive personality disorder, and your personal experience, you’ll be able to talk knowledgably about sociopaths to your friends and family. They’ll begin to understand, and start to recognize sociopaths on their own.
When you’re ready, you’ll be able to shine a light on these predators, and perhaps deny them a few victims. And that will lend some meaning of your awful experience.
OxDrover,
Why is validation so important? When you wrote about validation I said to myself, “That is exactly what I am searching for!” I know he lies, cheats, and steals. He has resigned his job due to theft (why isn’t that validation enough?). I contacted his gf that he had when we first separated, actually he started seeing her when we were still married, and she said he stole from her, but repaid it, and also terrorized her and her friends. He did some awful things that I didn’t know he would do. I contacted his gf before me and found that they were together when I met him (he never told me that, but his family knew). It seems that I have turned over every rock I can find to see the truth and to validate what I know, but it seems that it is not enough. I want him to go to jail for his theft, but I don’t want him to because of my kids and child support. I want to shout from the roof top that he is a fraud and a con. Actually, I don’t think that would make me feel better, only for the second that I did it. Now he is getting married in a few weeks to someone that has a healthy bank account now and a good job and will end up with nothing. Does this make any sense at all?
With that said, why is validation so important? What else do I need? What is is that I am looking for?
Heartoheart–I am not sure if it is the right thing to do, but I did contact my ex S exs and do not regret doing so…However, I knew they did not have anything to do with him anymore…
-Ginger
Dear Ginger,
For me, and that is all I can speak for here, I think that validation was so important because when EVERYONE IN THE WORLD IS SAYING it’s “HOT’ but you “FEEL COLD” of it they say “it’s dark” and you “see light”—I began to doubt my own sanity. My own validity of MY REALITY. MY REALITY was something that apparently ONLY I could SEE…everyone else said it was hot, when I felt cold, dark when I could see light.
Did you ever play that “game” in school where several people would make up to say to someone, “Gee you look bad today, are you sick?” and after enough people said this the person actually began to feel sick and would be home in bed before noon. It was a twisted little game that the kids would play until folks started catching on and the jig was up and it didn’t work any more, but it did work for a while because we get a great deal of our “reality” by other’s opinions, I think, anyway.
Yes, your MIND knows that he is a creep, thief, etc etc. but EMOTIONALLY it is difficult for you to accept. I felt exactly the same way, like I was IMAGINING IT, even though Iknew it was true. Other’s validations helped me to accept it. When the Sheriff ran the Trojan HOrse P’s rap sheet and came up with 3 separate child molestation charges, only one of which was over 12, and a record a mile long on other charges, I KNEW, I was VALIDATED. I was believed, I was’t “crazy” and I wasn’t a “liar”—-and I could PROVE IT!!!! Well, they STILL DIDN’T BELIEVE ME!!!! LOL I can laugh about it now,but at the time I was sooo frustrated. Here I was HYSTERICAL trying to convince my mother that the TH-P was out to kill me AND her and she wouldn’t believe me. She later said that she just had trouble beliveing it because he was always “so respectful to me”—sheesh! Like he is going to scream and threaten her so she will call the police on him? Of course he was “respectful” to her so he could steal from her. Manipulate her, and not get her guard up. He was “respectfully” protecting her from the truth that he wanted to kill us and was just getting in a position to do so.
Anyway, I do think that validation for me was important, and maybe that is what you are seeking too, I’m not for sure, but hang on, the see-saw effects you are going through right now will slow down and get less up and less dow, level out, and things will calm down. It just takes some time, self examination, and TIME, most of all I thinkTIME and “distance.” ((((hugs)))))
Ginger,
I know all too well what you are going through. I believe now that he and the girlfriend he had before me were still together when we met. She used to call me and tell me that he was a liar and a cheater and that they were supposed to get married and move to Russia. She used to call me looking for him and that he promised to be home at midnight. I remember telling him that it sounded like he had a lot of unresolved issues with his ex-girlfriend, which I believe now was STILL his girlfriend at the time. Again, I didn’t know who to believe because she would say all these horrible things about him but at the same time wanted him back. I just didn’t get why someone would want somebody like that, so I assumed she was lying. He was also very persistent with me, begging me to give him a chance, telling me that if it didn’t work out then at least he made a friend. Little did I know that I was just the next victim, along with other people who he’s conned throughout the two years and 9 months we were together.
Everything you’ve said makes PERFECT SENSE. Everyone here has been through the wringer with their own individual “P” situation. We have to remember that we were just their SUPPLY. Someone who would welcome them with “open arms”, give them unconditional love, give them money if they needed it, provide them with a place to live, give them all the comforts that they DID NOT deserve but just didn’t know it at the time. We had our “LOVE BLINDERS” on. And we didn’t want to believe that someone we loved would be capable of doing all the horrible things they did.
I feel bad for the other people my ex-P victimized. I have gotten to know them fairly well and I know exactly why they were targets because they were people just like me. Some of his victims (men/women) lost their life savings, promised that the money invested in businesses would later be doubled, tripled or even quadrupled. I had no idea he was conning these innocent people, who worked for years and years to save their money…yet he didn’t care! He couldn’t care because Ps don’t have any feelings whatsoever. It only took me knowing about the first victim for me to know that I had to end it with him. That’s when I started to be hypervigilant and went to the authorities. It was surreal! Then little by little, I learned the TRUTH about him.
Read all of the posts here on LF, read the books on S/P/AsPD, research on the net, join the MSN-P support group. You will see that after educating yourself, everything will fall into place. You will see that you were just a target (just like all of us were) and you will find that it wasn’t personal. We were all dealing with mentally ill people. Just be glad knowing that you are free to live a life without him and that they will NEVER be FREE….EVER! God sees everything!
I really feel for everyone going through this horrific ordeal and pray that we all reach a point in our lives that we are at PEACE with ourselves. I have yet to be at that place of peace but I am learning to be patient with myself as I walk this road to recovery.
HUGS TO ALL!!
Heartoheart,
I too was warned about Ps, one was a woman I went to work for and others were people I worked with, or had business dealings with—and all the warnings were CORRECT. I just didn’t believe them, I was already in the FOG of their “build up” and so on—In the future you may be sure I will LISTEN to any warnings, and be on the alert for RED FLAGS of dishonesty and anger/rage issues.
Touche OxDrover!
You better believe that I will no longer be in the FOG again and in time I will be in a place where the SUN ALWAYS SHINES!! This is my wish for all of us here at LF. We better remember to wear sunblock when the time comes! =)
BTW, I am a nurse, too, which probably made me an enticing target because we nurses are caring, nurturing and empathetic beings….and I wouldn’t want to be any other way!
Donna, thank you for this post. I think this wisdom may come AFTER the raw feelings have healed.
For me, even four years after ending the thing, and after intense work on myself to heal and understand the vulnerabilities that caused me to become involved, and after educating myself with popular and professional literature, it’s still work to have a dispassionate conversation about sociopaths.
I’ve gotten around it with a technique that works for me. But it doesn’t appeal to people I know who are still deep in the healing process. It’s important to go through the angry “naming and blaming” phase as part of the grief process. At some point, we get better at forgiving ourselves, and it’s easier to look at it as an expensive learning experience and move on. (Or at least this is how my mind works.)
But to get back to my technique, instead of talking about sociopaths, I talk about sociopathic interactions.
That would be an interaction where Person A is consciously manipulating Person B for some objective Person A wants, without concern for the ramifications on Person B. And on the other side of that interaction, Person B is going along with it, because Person B wants Person’s A’s love, approval or acceptance.
Sociopathic interactions are a two-way street, just as most toxic interactions are. (There are exceptions, like when you have a gun to your head, or some stranger suddenly punches you without warning.)
The benefit of discussing an experience with a sociopath in these terms is that it gets right down to the bare-bones mechanics of it. It may seem like it’s blaming the victim, but the truth of the matter is that the victim has the power to say yes or no (though it may not seem like it to someone whose head has been thoroughly messed with).
Interactions with a sociopath always challenge us to decide what we’re willing to lose to hold onto our identities. And since sociopaths don’t have much in the way of identities, except what they can cobble together from their observations of how other people react to them, they can use this drama they create but they really don’t understand it. They don’t feel the pain of compromising their own values, because their values are pragmatic and powerbased, win-lose. They don’t feel broken inside when someone who claims to love them proceeds to hurt them. They might feel frustrated because they’re not getting what they want. But they don’t feel and don’t trust the idea of love in the first place, so they have much less to lose. For them it’s all, did I get what I was after or didn’t I?
But for Person B, the stakes are much higher. No one gets involved with a sociopath who doesn’t have a sense of community, a tolerance for people with problems (because we all have them), and a belief that a certain amount of self-sacrifice is necessary for everyone in a relationship to do as well as possible. This belief includes the idea that this willingness to compromise and adapt for mutual benefit is a shared value.
In a sociopathic interaction, that is an erroneous assumption. Person A may pragmatically adjust the goals of the interaction. For example, if it becomes clear that Person B can’t afford to buy a Lear Jet, but can maybe afford a Piper, Person A must decide whether to pursue this particular option or go find a richer one. And yes, Person A may hang around to have sex and enjoy the creature comforts, and perhaps grab a little cash if it’s lying around, while s/he is searching for the next prospect.
How Person B feels about this, how it affects Person B to be jacked around in this way, what it costs Person B in terms of money or lost opportunities for less toxic relationships, is not relevant. There may be some lip service about “caring for you,” and some genuine appreciation of whatever is given at the moment it’s given, but it doesn’t change the fundamental nature of what’s going on. Person A is using Person B, and the “caring” extends only to what is necessary to keep using Person B or keep Person B from wising up.
To leave Persons A and B for a moment, I remember when I was in my own raw-feelings period when I couldn’t help talking about it to anyone I met. At the time, I felt like I’d been run over by a truck, a big truck that was running me over for five years. I would try not to tell the story (because I might be trying to have a date or make a new friend), and then I’d be in tears and feeling so stupid and so angry, and so desperate for understanding.
What I’d get back was pretty universal. People would say, he sounds like a user. They had a lot of different ways of saying it, but that was the gist of it.
It was the strangest experience to hear that. On the one hand, I was flabbergasted that they could boil it all down to that simple observation. The first time I heard it, I remember asking, “So you know about this happening to other people?” And the man looked at me as though I was crazy, as though I must have been born yesterday.
And that was the other part of the strangeness, because they didn’t say anything about me. And the part that I was really confused about was me. What did this mean about me? What did I do wrong? Was what I suspected about myself true — that I was just too stupid to live? Or did I become involved with some strange and mysterious thing that no one else, even the smartest person in the world, could have figured out and protected herself from?
Much later, after a lot of reading and a lot of very intense work on myself, I realized that I probably wouldn’t have gotten involved with this person if I hadn’t been as broken as he is. Not in the same way. But one of the results of being brought up in a very dysfunctional family and being emotionally, physically and sexually abused in my family, is that my tolerance for other people’s problems was too high and so was my willingness to compromise for the sake of relationship.
Early in my healing process, I began to look back over the history and see pivotal moments when all I had to do was say no. Or say, this doesn’t work for me and we need to figure out another way. Or say, if you do that again, I don’t want to see you again. Or say, I just don’t feel right about this and nothing you can say will change my mind about it.
I saw these moments, and in the beginning, I was confused and angry with myself for not handling it like the grown-up woman I was. (And doubly so, because he was 20 years younger than me and living off me. I had more knowledge and the financial power. All I had to do was say no.)
But I didn’t, and that’s what allowed the whole thing to go on. Once, after he criticized me for my neediness and told me that weakness was unattractive, I asked him why he didn’t just go find another strong, cold-blooded person like himself. And he said, “People like me don’t do well with people like me.” What he didn’t say was that no one but people like me would put up with him. And I knew, even then, that his entire history of relationships was with people who had either incest backgrounds or serious family abuse of other sorts.
My definition of a sociopathic transaction clearly reflects my own experience. From my perspective, this was a codenpedent relationship taken out to some sort of extreme, where I gave up even wanting to be loved and just tried to avoid public and private humiliations as much as possible. Although I’ve never been a battered wife, it gave me an understanding of what that might be like.
And that’s the risk inherent in sociopathic interactions. Because, to get back to our friends A and B, if Person B agrees to start giving up things in exchange for love, approval and acceptance, it’s like old Janis Joplin song, “Take another little piece of my heart.” Except it’s our identity we’re giving away to someone who values our gifts only as resources for his or her own objectves. In other words, we are agreeing to identify ourselves as Person A views us — impersonal resources of no intrinsic value except as it meets Person A’s objectives.
The more we give away, the less there is left of us, because there’s nothing coming back. Certainly not the love, approval and acceptance that we thought would replenish us. Certainly not any material repayment. Nor gratitude. Nor remembrance. The most we can expect is bad treatment if we decide to resign from the role, and a continuing, even more twisted future if they decide that it’s fun to keep messing with our minds, even if they can’t get anything else out of us. Or if not that, the long, painful process of growing back what we gave to the wrong person.
I remember reading — I think it was in “The Sociopath Nextdoor” — the advice that we recognize and get away from these people as quickly as we can, “before real damage is done.” Most of the people who write on this blog didn’t get away before real damage was done, and we are jointly writing the story of what it takes to heal and grow into the new selves we become after growing back the parts we gave away. (Fortunately, those parts, much as we might miss them, are usually not as healthy and strong as the new ones we grow.)
But we don’t wish that experience on anyone. Any if you’re like me, you find yourself talking with a surprising number of people who are challenged by socipathic interactions, if not full-blown socipathic relationships. This way of talking about it — sociopathic interactions — has turned out to be helpful to me and the people I talk with.
It can lead to a lot of good questions, like “Who profits from this?” “Who is watching out for you?” “Who will take care of you if you get hurt?” “What makes you think that you’re strong enough to be taking care of both of you?” “Which of you is smarter and what makes you think that?” “Which of you has more to show for your life?” “Which of you has a history of personal disasters and broken relationships?” “How much effort is it taking for you to feel good about what’s gong on?” “What makes you think you don’t deserve more?”
There’s a saying among con men that you can’t sell someone something they don’t want. And I know from my own experience that I had a deeper agenda in this relationship that went beyond love, though I would have claimed that it was all about love. He dangled something in front of me that I wanted more than anything in the world, and I bit. Once I bit, and started paying for it with those little compromises of values and identity, that long period of self-destruction took off.
I mention this, because some people just have to go through this. I did. I know other people who couldn’t be dissuaded. Some didn’t survive it, and some were permanently broken. Others, like me and the people on this blog, go through the long process of healing, learning and discovering that we are more than we ever understood before.
The description of a sociopathic interaction is also the description of a lot of other things. If we look at Person B as being, somewhere inside if not at the conscious level, engaged in a learning process — even like opening your mind in Philosophy class in college, or becoming an apprentice to a blacksmith and learning to face fear of fire — it also works.
The question is always what are you willing to sacrifice to get what you want. And the question after that — which is the one that an interaction with a real sociopath engenders — is, are you ready to want something more? Something a little more courageous and interesting and advanced than needing the love, acceptance and approval of someone who doesn’t care about you?
heartoheart et all:
“If I do reach out to her and she doesn’t heed my warning and continues to allow him to be a part of their lives, I would not think she was a SILLY GIRL. I would really feel bad for her and her child. We all know how hard it was for us to believe that the men/women who claimed that we were the “only ones”, the”love of their lives”, their “soulmate and best friend”, were all FRAUDS! My ex-P is European and I remember he used to say, “NEVER I FIND ONE WOMAN LIKE YOU”. The truth of the matter is”.HE WILL AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!”
Do they ALL have the very same lines? Yes, I was told by him that he didn’t know how in the world he was lucky enough to get a woman like me because I was SO far out his league! He also proclaimed all the “love of his life”, “soulmate” and “best friend” stuff.
No, I shouldn’t call her a silly girl. However, I DID provide her with a lot of information and she acknowledged that she felt there was a little something wrong with him and that she felt that he needed therapy. She said that she was horrified when he confessed all the things that he had done during our marraige and then told her what a “good woman” I was. She said he even went on to tell her much more than she wanted to hear–how he had had sex with his cousin, his brother’s wife, etc. He told her that if he didn’t get a woman’s attention 24/7 that he tended to get it elsewhere and pretty much told her to expect this of him if she didn’t give him this attention. And, his attention needs ARE so consuming!!! She and I both discussed how it was almost debilating! As with me, it’s impossible for her to cook or clean house without him pulling and tugging at her all the time. And, it’s not just an affectionate hug that he wants–it’s constant sex! At first, his unbelieveable craving for sex represented itselt as “love”. Later, it became very apparent that there was absolutely NO love in his touch–caresses soon turned into painful groping. The girlfriend has an excuse for him for everything! He even told her that he would need sex at least once a day and asked her if that would be a problem. She said that she told him “no” as she, herself, was a very sexual person. If a man told me that, I’d run like hell! What she doesn’t seem to understand is that he meant that in the MOST literal sense–if she’s running a temp of 103, she’d better be up for sex or he’ll feel that he deserves to seek it from the first woman he can find. It doesn’t matter what they look like, how old or young they might be or whether they’ve got a husband. EVERYTHING had to be ALL about him. She also believes that since he professes this great love for her, that he could NEVER cheat! I told her over and over again that his treating us like princesses and the love of his life is his greatest cover. I also referred her to lovefraud. She claimed that she read a lot of the information but just didn’t see how it fit him.
Like you, I’ve tried to warn her and she thinks I’m crazy although I spent 8 years with the man and at the time I was trying to talk to her, she had known him less than 6 months. She’s also very young.
Dear Tami,
Yes, it sounds like they do use all the same lines. All the lines any woman would want to hear. And who could blame us? We were women who wanted so much to be loved and cherished. We were just thinking more with our hearts than with our heads but now we know better. My ex-P would tell me that my ex-husband was an idiot for cheating on me but that lucky for him, he has me now! What he really meant to say was, “Woo hoo, I hit the jackpot!” Sad…but TRUE!
Bravo for being hypervigilant and referring her to LF, even though she doesn’t see how it pertains to him now…hopefully in time, she will soon. All you can do is pray for her. Unfortunately, she may be already under “his spell” and might have to find out the hard way. At least you can say that you tried. So “kudos” to you, Tami.
I’ve had something weird happen lately, but it’s kind of affirming in a way. My ex-bf has been hinting around that he still “loves” me, always “loved” me in fact, and can’t stop thinking about me. I know that last part is somewhat true, somehow we became really bonded in the 10 months we were together, and it’s been a terrible time trying to get clear of each other.
BUT..now that the possibility might exist of actually HAVING a relationship with him again.. most of me just recoils. I still mourn for him just as much as ever, but actually GOING there again.. that’s a whole other story.
Come on folks … don’t you think they watch movies, read books/magazines, view or listen to other media? They take a little from here … a little from there … try this approach on this woman, that approach on another. They intellectually know what worked over the years and what didn’t. They refine what works … always building on perfection. That’s all they know. They can’t FEEL the reasons why they do what they do … they INTELLECTUALLY know that what they do, works.
That’s it. Nothing more. They aren’t going out of their way to hurt you or anyone else … even if they laugh about it. The laughter is a reaction that they learn as children … they learned to laugh if someone was offended because if they didn’t laugh … their only alternative was to cry. Laughing showed they were the victors (remember all the children in the school playground laughing at a classmate) … while crying proved someone was the looser. That’s all it is. There’s no ulterior motives behind what they do … they just do. Then they move on. Never analyzing anything because they can’t. I think they want a relationship but don’t know what a relationship is. I think they want to be in a committed relationship, but don’t know what it takes to be in a committed relationship. They only know the initial meeting of someone, first sexual contacts, there’s no feeling after the initial rush … and they move on to find that initial rush from some where else (anywhere else – so stop being jealous). Then the cycle continues over and over and over again. Do they get tired? I don’t know. Are they frustrated? I think they are, but not on a level that we can comprehend. Are they frightened? Not if they keep moving. I did see fear in the Mr. Take a year to answer because my questions haunted him … and he would think about an answer when he was away from the newest woman in his life. I think that’s why they keep moving, so they don’t have to be alone with themselves to have the time to think. I think when they are alone is when they are afraid. Like children afraid of the dark.
I remember asking a question to my first roller coaster ride. He’d pop in for years after our relationship broke apart. I never tried to get him back. I never tried to get him jealous. I never showed up with another on my arm so he could see me. I just provided friendship. Platonic friendship and would try and talk with him. He told me I was the only person that ever tried to talk with him and not play games with him to get our relationship back after it was over. Whether this was a true statement or not. I could never give you a concrete answer to it. i do know that I would ask him something … he’d take off, not answering the question … show up at my home a year later and give me an answer. He did this for several years … showing up, sleeping on my couch … spending the evening (platonic) talking. Leaving. I wouldn’t see him for another year … coming over … giving me the answer to my question I asked a year earlier. After a couple of years of this … I asked him why he did this. He said what? I said, I ask you a question … you take off for over a year … then end up on my door steps telling me your answer. He said, “you make me think about these questions that I never thought about before … I try to shove them out of my mind … but I find they haunt me … so I finally come to a conclusion and find myself coming over to tell you the answer.
True story. I’m laughing as I’m writing this next sentence … maybe their reaction time is off and we need to give them years to answer a question the rest of us could come up with in seconds.
That wasn’t called for … it just popped into my mind. Sorry.
But, maybe they can think about something serious if given years to analyze it. I don’t know. I’m just telling you what this guy did. And yes, we never had a romantic relationship again after I found out what he was. I only gave him my friendship for years after we broke off. It took me many years to wean this man away from me. I moved and he never knew where I moved to. That was NC since 1990.
I hope you can get some insight out of this blog.
They all break my heart. Each and every one of them. NOT at the time they are in my space and being destructive … but after I have time to gather my thoughts about them and what happened. My feelings guide me to the conclusion that they are broken children living an illusion of an adult life because they chronological age, not age maturity wise. I think if you blind folded them while asking them a question of how old they … even in a court of law … their first instincts without thinking would be to hold up 5 fingers. Then their intellect would kick in and they’d answer with there chronological age.
Peace.