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.
Oxy, Maybe it is just your coping mechnanism due to the pain you suffered from your Mother. We all use different coping mechanisms. My Mom has done some pretty deliberately cruel things to me, but even so, I can’t turn my back on her and I care what happens to her. I still try to think of the good things she has also done throughout life, and have regular contact with her, but try to limit personal info she knows about me so she can’t use it against me. And if she needs something I try to help her. But am I motivated by love, or guilt, or a combination of factors, I don’t know.
Good Morning, everyone!
Tami: I was going to respond to your blog yesterday. My ex-P did just that. He avoided me from seeing or communicating with his exes so that THEY couldn’t reveal who he truly was. The exes later joined forces to try to sabotage me. One of them even sent letters to my family and to my work saying I was a homewrecker. Then she started a blog trashing him, me and the other ex. Thinking back, all of the things she wrote about me were NOT true…but a lot of the things she wrote about HIM were! Everytime I read her blog and confronted him about it, he denied, denied, denied and said that she was crazy! Of course he would though. I had NO idea who I was dealing with back then! His ex-wife was a piece of work, too, though! I had found out from my lawyer that she had been in trouble with the law before and made another man’s life hell. Sometimes I wonder if she was a sociopath? Do sociopaths associate with other sociopaths?
My ex-P moved in with me, too. Everything in that apartment was mine. I used to get upset because sometimes he didn’t have any regard for my belongings. He broke one of my chairs and scratched up my table. When I told him to be careful, he called me “materialistic”. I was so upset because I’m not materialistic at all. I told him that I worked hard for what I have and that if I was the one moving in with him, I would have respected his belongings. Explaining things to him was like explaining something to a child.
I never had the pleasure of meeting his family. They are all in Europe and none of them speak any English. He spoke to his stepmom a lot more than he spoke to his bio-father. He made his father seem like he was an ogre. It makes me wonder if his father knew WHO he really was and WHAT he has done to so many people. His bio-mother supposedly abandoned him when he was a little boy. I don’t even know what to believe anymore – some truths and many lies!
Dear heartoheart: I hear you. My EX destroyed my oriental rug … a rug that I purchased with my husband, whose now deceased. Of all things, the rug is the TREE of LIFE. Go figure? The rug was also a loving reminder of my husband. I think our EXs are really jealous of us because we functioned in our lives and did for ourselves … building our lives, on our own … with positive energy … not all this negativity, greed, manipulation … aka the negative energies (sins) they engulf their lives and minds with. We don’t manipulate and control others and take, take, take. We are creative, roll up our sleeves and do … not dumping on or jumping over others to get to our goals. Not so with our EXs … all greedy, all manipulative, all users … using everyone that comes in their space … or should I say more appropriately … manipulating all those of their spaces and possessions.
Peace.
Dear gang,
Thanks so much. I felt really odd about it last night and this morning my son C called and we talked a long time about my lack of feeling etc. and funny thing, his response was just like mine, and I also realized that if I had heard the same story about my X-DIL-P my response, or lack thereof, would have been the same. Just “oh, well.” My sons and I have all made the joint decision that if my P-son is killed or dies in prison and we are still alive, we won’t even claim the body, let Texas bury him where he belongs in the Potter’s Field next to the prison with the other unclaimed bodies of inmates.
When my P-bio-father died I didn’t “feel anything” in the way of emotions except that I knew he had died–it didn’t evoke pity or anything else, or sorrow or loss of any kind. If anything it was a relief that he was no longer alive. I did get furious later when I realized he had “published” his autobiography online for FREE after his death so that he could spread his venom more widely just in case I hadn’t seen it before (I had–there were seven chapters aimed directly at me in the most horrible set of lies WITHOUT A SINGLE GRAIN OF TRUTH, to smear me) But I do also realize that the others that he smeared in his “autobiography” were also people who had STOOD UP TO HIM and for us he reserved his hottest rage. I also realized that (1) anyone who actually knew him wouldn’t believe a word of it (2) anyone who knew any of us wouldn’t believe a word of it (3) if someone who doesn’t know me or him, reads it and believes it—SO WHAT? No skin off my nose what they think. End of Anger. So, in the end his ZINGER that he left wasn’t much more than a mosquito bite and the itch didn’t even last long, so in that sense, I WON AT LAST. He SO CARED what his “image” was with others, even though he despised them as “stupid” he wanted people to idolize and look up to him, and he thought “acting tough” and “macho” was the thing that people admired in others. He wanted people to be afraid of him, and if they were, he despised them as weak, if they weren’t afraid or stood up to him, he was enraged and HATED them for defying him. For thwarting him and his control, partly because he feared what they would say to others about him.
Though his parents were dead when I went to l ive with him, he had a large group of first cousins that he considered “family” and what they thought about him was very important to him though he seldom saw or visited them. The families of these cousins were in close contact with me and all knew me, liked and admired me, and none of them liked him, not for what he had done to me, but because of what he had done to them personally when he was much younger….none of them could stand him. One of his cousins decided to do a family tree kind of thing with all of the descendants of her (and his) grandfather, who was a physician, and trace it up to the present time, so she contacted my P-bio father and told him what she was doing and that she wanted to contact his children, etc. to iinclude. She had my contact information as we were in frequent , contact, but she didn’t have addresses for his other 3 children. Immediately he told her he wanted to come visit her and talk to her, he hadn’t been to “visit” her in 40 years, but NOW he immediately wants to come see her, and being no one’s fool her response was “Well, that would be nice if you came to visit, but LET ME GET THIS CLEAR WITH YOU, that we will NOT discuss Oxy when you come to visit.” He did not make the visit. LOL
It took me a long time to pretty well reach “indifference” in my feelilngs toward him. Hate, actually,, to my way of thinking is not the opposite of love, indifference is. As long as you hate them, you STILL CARE. I think I may have reached indifference with my mom as well, and maybe it came faster than it did with my P-bio father because I have “practice” in the process now, and at the time I knew him, was his victim, I didn’t know what I was dealing with (I was only 19) or how to cope with it.
Yes Oxy … we just may be on to something … greed, being the motivators for these folks. I think about were I worked and how I always got kicked in the butt after I finished a project. All their names went on the documents … taking all the credit … them getting promotions, titles, paychecks for my work. So … reading all this stuff on greed, I guess you can chalk their motivations behind this concept. Same with my EX, greed. Took and took and took … gave me lip service all along, playing the cards I was dealt … using excuses of what they (my bosses) were doing to me to justify his own greed. Unbelievable. That’s why people who aren’t greedy can’t communicate with those types of greedy people. We’re not even on the same page … that’s why are feelings are so hurt and confused by their actions … we never saw that they were All coming from a place of greed.
I personally do not blame you in the last for having it with those greedy relatives of yours. Enough is enough. I’d send your son a good book to read while he does his time behind bars … besides the Good Book of the Bible (hopefully the newest English version … don’t want him frustrated with the yeh, and they and thees … clear and simple English version … then send him Tolle’s book. That book provides all these big egos how to quiet their dumb thoughts in their minds … go silent, be at peace, how to become humble again. I think the big egos all have to be incarcerated to read Tolle’s book. They wouldn’t do it on there own, if they were locked behind bars. This way, your son can learn Tolle’s methods how to become “humble” again … then he can read the Bible and how to live in peace and harmony with the rest of us in the world.
Peace to your heart and Soul Oxy. You are a true Survivor … just goes to prove, with enough hutzpah, people manipulated all their lives by loved ones in authority can get through the confusion and pain … seek out truth … and heal themselves to live a happy, peaceful, harmoneous life.
One of the friends and family I had to finally get out of my life was, sadly, my mother. She’s getting fairly old, though you never know it by looking at her–no telling how many tens of thousands of dollars have gone to plastic surgery over the years (really good surgery!).
I finally had to give up on getting any kind of normal maternal support from her–the instances of her cold-heartedness are too many to count. Here’s just one example: when my ex’s face was in the newspaper for his arrest, she didn’t call me or any of my daughters at all. We had transgressed against her by picking a restaurant not to her liking for a family gathering a couple of years back. And she had not spoken to any of us since…not through divorces, accidents, anything. So not even news that her former son-in-law faced a sexual abuse charge was enough to get her to pick up a telephone and inquire how we were doing.
But she DID find out where the youngest child was working, and a few weeks ago, flounced into the store to give that child a “birthday present,” some little costume jewelry ring that she plucked from her own overstuffed jewelry box. She wanted to know all the gory details of the charge against the ex. And her response, to the face of one of his victims?
“I just don’t think I can believe that.”
So, Oxy, I too don’t know how I’ll feel when I am forced to see her, or when she finally goes to her reward. I know my life is happier and easier and much, much calmer since I decided that I’m an orphan-by-choice. I’ll be sad when she goes, I guess, but sadness at what could have been and wasn’t.
Dear Tood,
Yea, THAT WAS COLD!
Well, I am feeling better now, and not so down on myself for NOT feeling anything about her possible medical problems. She is 79, almost 80, and I had supervised her medical care since she was in her mid 50s, gone to every physician appointment, fought bad diagnoses when I knew the docs were missing it (obstructed bowel that ended up requiring emergency surgery) wound infections from other surgeries, and on and on…but she rescinded my medical power of attorney so I can’t even have access to her medical records, so IT IS NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY TO LOOK AFTER HER MEDICAL WELFARE ANY LONGER, and I HAVE NO DESIRE TO DO SO…she rescinded my legal power of attorney over her financial business, so that is no longer my responsibility either. She gave those POAs to my X-DIL who then robbed her and tried to kill my son C, my mom’s grandson.
After that I made it clear that I did NOT want any POA so she ended up making my first cousin (who is honest) her POA, so if she isn’t able to take care of herself, he is te one she should call on. He doesn’t want the POA but he will look after her. She has enough money to hire caregivers and so on, so there’s no problem there, she’s not out on an iceburg waiting to freeze to death, or living on the streets by any means. The only difference now is that I am no longer at her beck and call. I guess it is sort of one of those deals like “she made her bed when she accused e of being a liar and being “after her money” when I objected to her lying to me about giving money to my DIL and her BF and the and her lying ot me. There’s no doubt that she was being drugged at that time, but though she denies that she was drugged vemently, she is still a liar and I can’t deal with liars any more. NO TRUST, and frankly, no affection for her. Just BLAH. No desire to see her and no more grief about “what could have been” our relationship. I’m just DONE WITH HER, just like the X BF-P, my P-son, like I was beore their deaths, my “Uncle Monster” mom’s brother, and my P-bio father. No affection, no concern, no wishing bad things on them, just NADA for them. Indifference is the closest word I can find to what I feel.
I found out the other day that a close friend of my late husband’s had died suddenly, he was only 55 or so. I hadn’t seen the guy in a year or so, but I still thought very highly of him, and I was devestated by the news of his sudden death, because I cared for him and his wife very much, they were great people.
I’ve never been one of these people who go into a deep depression when someone I don’t personally know dies, like Princess Di or Elvis–I have a friend who was such an elvis Fan she almost lost it when he died. I never could figure that one out, maybe I’m just different. When someone I love dies or even someone that I know pretty well I do grieve for those people, but just not for people I read about in the news or see on television.
But I didn’t grieve when Uncle Monster died, because I had no affection for him, I only felt disgust at what a piece of chit he was, and how low down and mean he was. I cried for days last summer because I lost three animals I loved, my good old stout-hearted horse who was in pain and had to be put down, an old and deaf dog that got run over, and my Great Pyrenees dog that was murdered by someone who just wanted to kill something with his new gun, and shot her were she stood iin her yard on Thanksgiviing day.
I still feel the loss of these animals, I miss them. I miss my husband and my step father, but I no longer miss my mother even though she’s still alive, any more than I miss my X DIL or my P-son. There’s no sadness for those “losses” any more, my tears have dried up and they are no longer part of my life in the present.
I have never gotten really upset about a celeb I didn’t know dying, though I have gotten a little blue about some whose work I loved, or who died way before their time.
One time I really did get very upset over someone I didn’t know well was the time not too long ago.. the pastor that married my second husband and I left his ministry, a very long standing homeless program in the city, and his family and decided to become a woman… he said it had been bothering him for many years.
For some reason, that fact that he had been living a double life and lying to his family just cut us both to the core.. I felt like somebody had pronounced our nearly dead marriage.. truly dead… it was like a final blow to our union. I didn’t expect this to bother me so much, as he was not a close personal friend of mine, but for several days I walked around feeling like somebody had punched me hard in the stomach. It affected my husband just about the same way, and he is not a guy who usually cares much about what other people do, unless they are closely connected to him.
Dear OxDrover and Tood,
I have to say that I commend you both for remaining so strong after everything you’ve been through. I only hope to be able to gain 1/2 of the strength you have to get through my own personal ordeal.
There are only some people I chose to share my story with – my Mom, younger sister, some close friends, some neighbors and my supervisors at work. I have gotten nothing but support from them. However, I am at a crossroads. Soon I will have exhausted my vacation time to recover and will eventually have to go back to work. Although I like to think that people don’t gossip…THEY DO! I know that when I go back to work, there will be a lot of people asking me what happened and how come I didn’t go to Europe with my ex-P and how come I’m not with him anymore. ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!
My ex-P and I were supposed to go to Europe 2 other times but didn’t because of “this and that”. He always made excuses as to why we never went – the first time was because of work and the other time was for somthing else. I was so embarrassed to have to go back to work and try to explain why we didn’t go. I thought for sure we were going to go THIS time. FAT CHANCE!
How do I begin to answer the inevitable questions that will be thrown at me left and right – from friends and co-workers? Please advise.
Thank you!
Tell them you didn’t go because your ex is a lying, cheating, manipulative ass.. they will get the picture real quick and a lot of them will know just what you are talking about too.