Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following letter from a reader who we’ll call “Nora.” The names in this letter have been changed.
One Saturday, in October 2009, I married someone I thought was the man of my dreams. When this man came into my life last year, I had suffered several losses and was very vulnerable. I thought I had finally met an honorable, loving, understanding, romantic, Christian man. We laughed together, planned our future together, and seemed like the perfect couple. I should have remembered when something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Although I didn’t expect everything would always be rosy, soon after we were married, I discovered that everything I thought I knew about this man was based on lies. He is the complete opposite of who I thought he was and has no concept of the truth or of being in a committed, loving relationship.
From my research since leaving him, I believe this man is a sociopath, and nothing, or no one, is going to change him. He initially presents himself to be a charismatic, romantic, faithful man, but soon the real man begins to emerge – a cheating, abusive, pathological liar. When I started questioning inconsistencies in his stories, he turned everything around to try and make me feel guilty for doubting him, and that worked in the beginning. Even though I was confused as to why I was no longer feeling love from this man, I tried to convince myself that everything would work itself out. When I started to realize this man had duped me, I also started to realize he was incapable of truth or love. The fact that we recited our wedding vows in the presence of God and family meant nothing to him. Everyone, including myself, asks the same question. Why did he marry me so quickly and what did he hope to gain? I don’t think there’s an answer to this question that makes sense.
Met on a dating site
I joined a dating website in July 2009 for the same reasons that most women like me do. I was having another birthday that month and decided I wanted to meet someone to enjoy life with, as I had been living as a single woman for over five years and hadn’t dated until the last year. Since I hadn’t met anyone the usual ways, I thought this would be a good way to pick someone who matched what I was looking for in a man. It didn’t take long to get winks from lots of men, but one man’s profile stood out from the others. We are both over 50 years old, but he is several years younger than me, and I often joked that my first husband was the same age as me and my second husband older, so I was looking for a younger man the next time.
We met for our first date a few weeks later at a public garden near my home. When I got out of my car, he met me with a dozen red roses, the first of many to come. At first, he was very quiet but told me later it was because I took his breath away and he hadn’t expected me to have that affect on him. We went to dinner that night at a nearby restaurant. The evening was perfect and he was everything I had hoped for. We agreed on just about everything and the next two months seemed as if we had been together forever — that we were who the other had been hoping to find.
My mom’s advice was not to rush into anything but he convinced me we should get married, and no one tried to talk me out of getting married so soon because they tell me now I seemed happier than I had been in a long time. I never once felt alarm or noticed anything that appeared to be red flags. If I had taken my mom’s advice and waited, the truth would have eventually come out before making the biggest mistake of my life.
Quick wedding
Soon after we started dating, “Gabe” booked tickets for a day trip excursion out-of-state. When we started talking marriage, it was decided we would get married in an outdoor wedding gazebo with the fall leaves as a backdrop on the same day as the planned trip. We left on Friday, the day before the excursion and wedding ceremony, to obtain our marriage license that he applied for online. He was anxious the entire trip, worrying that we wouldn’t get to the license office before they closed. Our children were meeting us the next day for the wedding ceremony and he said he didn’t want anything to upset our plans. Once we got the license, he relaxed, and the planned excursion the next day and the wedding ceremony that night are still wonderful memories and always will be as are the days leading up to that date.
The next day, we returned home and it was decided we would start moving my furniture and belongings to live in his house. My new husband, appearing to show concern, kept asking me if I was sure that’s what I wanted to do because his house is miles away from everything I am used to. I know now that his “concern” was how he was going to keep me from discovering the truth about his numerous lies. I told him I loved living away from the big city and didn’t mind the longer drive to visit with my children or get to my job. I had been renting my condo for over five years, so he said we would keep it until the first of the year, and then purchase it and rent it out.
Discovering the lies
Turns out, Gabe had not been divorced for three years as he told me. His divorce was final one month before our first date, making him ineligible to remarry sooner than 60 days. No wonder he was a wreck about getting the marriage license. He had lied on the marriage license application stating his last divorce was May 2006.
Gabe started to “disappear” and have lame excuses when he returned. He had said he would help pay my rent and car payments to help me with the expenses of two households, but he never gave me a penny. I discovered he was talking to other women online, but didn’t say anything at first. One night I asked who one of them was. He said a friend of his for over 20 years. Turns out, she was someone he had hooked up with in late 2007. He told this woman he was divorced and had an affair with her for several months before she became suspicious and called it off.
The real man
The last week I was there, the real Gabe emerged. I discovered he had changed all of the passwords on the computer and blocked me from using it, but this time, I wasn’t backing down. I knew he was hiding things from me and let him know that’s why I had checked the computer history. I found out he hadn’t paid any of the bills he claimed to have paid for the past two months.Gabe then told me our marriage was a mistake, we wanted different things in life, he realized he never loved me and to pack my things and get out of “his” house.
At first, I refused, thinking we could work it out, but after talking to my mom, something she said clicked in my head, and I suddenly realized what I had to do and started packing.
The day before moving, Gabe and his son moved my furniture to the downstairs garage. I rented a 16-foot truck, and my daughter, son and I loaded my belongings in it and moved out on what should have been our two-month anniversary, back to the condo I was lucky to still have.
More lies
Since leaving him, I have found out the truth about so many of his lies. He isn’t a military hero as he claims. He doesn’t have a Purple Heart Award or a Bronze Medal. He uses a fabricated DD214 and Bachelor of Science diploma as credentials. He never went to college to earn a computer science degree. The university he claims to have received his degree from never heard of him.
The ring – he made a big deal about giving me “his mother’s ring.” He told me he had never felt about anyone the way he did about me, and I was so special, he wanted me to wear it. Turns out, it isn’t even his mother’s ring. He tries to guilt me into returning the ring, saying it’s a family heirloom, and he will pay for a divorce if I return it. Like I’m going to believe another lie of his? There are too many lies to list, but they also include some really insignificant ones that do nothing other than to inflate his image.
Online profiles
I started profiles as his wife in hopes of warning other women about him and not to date him. I made it so anyone searching his name would find my profiles about him instead. He’s been seen dating and I’ve had him bumped from two dating websites after informing them he’s not single as he claims, but still married.
Who found my profiles were other women from his past who he lied to. They have let me know how thankful they are that I exposed him and that it has helped them to understand what they couldn’t before now. We have become informed by sharing and comparing our stories. We’re able to laugh at how he uses the same stories and calls us all “Pretty Lady” and “Bella Principesa.” Our “support group” has drawn us together and we now focus on hopefully sharing our knowledge with others.
Won’t divorce
I can’t get him to divorce me, but that’s one of his MO’s. He tells everyone his wives are the ones who cheated on him and divorced him after leaving him with their debts. He’s the only one who did the cheating. He’s the one who is financially irresponsible and has filed for bankruptcy — a fact he dropped on me after we were married. He had shown me a meticulously kept check register that turned out to be a fake. He refuses to pay for a divorce, so for now, other women are safe from him.
After leaving him and realizing he had not been truthful about his sexual encounters, I went to my doctor to be tested. Thankfully, only one STD test came back positive and it was treated with antibiotics. When I informed him he might need to get tested since he was having sex with other women, his only response was I got infected from improper feminine hygiene. He says ignorant things like that to try and upset me, but I know the truth, and I can hold my head high knowing I did nothing wrong other than to love him and trust him without really knowing anything about him.
I hope others will see there’s no shame in this happening, but I also hope they will read my story and others like it and think as many times as it takes to really get to know a person before making a bad decision while thinking something like this, or worse, can’t happen to them.
Last night I felt an overwhelming connection for the people here. You people, sitting in front of your screens, during the day, at night with the lamp on, animals by your side, kids asleep, a glass of wine by you, a cup of tea, in your pyjamas or in your comfortable jeans, we’re gathered together sending instant messages from distant places. Resembling the facebook logo we connect with each other propping up the next person. This is precisely what Lovefraud is about. Interaction, support, community, shared journeys. It gives us a powerful voice. I suspect people find LoveFraud at the perfect moment. It is there at the time we are ready to confront the pain, the delusion, the confusion; we are ready to seek answers, and LoveFraud is sitting here quietly on the grand wide web offering its presence when we are ready to take it. I was desperate to talk and speak. Not only did I find a voice, the communty often spoke on my behalf, validating me through their own experience.
Why give me instincts to love and forgive someone who would ultimately kill me, or my children, or anyone, for that matter”.?
This ‘instinctive’ reaction is one we have only ever owned with this person? During the relationship we continually bailed them out with our love and forgiveness. To maintain the relation. Their abuse is subtle, we felt it, but subtle enough to forgive, deny we were violated, abused. We brush it aside. Over time it becomes a habit weakening our resolve. Until we no longer accept this is love and there is a problem. Remnants of the psychological hook still remain if we are still finding ourselves forgiving that person. Feeling anger is healthy. It’s painful to admit how much it hurts, we want to say we are strong and we couldnt possibly be so gullible.
Lets say a complete stranger hits you, thumps you, in the street. We are likely to report the assault. We don’t question why they assaulted us. We don’t owe them anything. They abused us, an isolated moment, we can move on. The relationship with a sociopath is I believe the same relation we share with the complete stranger – we are objects, they don’t love us. They never did. They attack but we dont report it. The relationship tag disguises their apparent hate for us. They need to find a decoy to disguise the hate, so they use a marriage, a relation to make it look cosy.
if you were subtract the marriage aspect, the relation, the children from the entire experience with a sociopath, what is there? How would you describe that person? The relationship is merely an asset to hide their motive and underlying scheme. It looks attaractive. Cunningly decpetive.
After a long battle in courts, it is likely they’ll start the whole process from scratch under a new identity in a new place the entire premediated charade. A jail sentence, bankruptcy, failed marriage, doesnt affect them. They’re annoying little things, but they’ve still got one thing intact: their disorder – the ability to deceive and trick. Their best weapon they are aware brings results. They have no fear. They do it again, the whole damn process. They shrug off what cripples a normal person. Divorce is a life crippling painful experience, a breakup, losing a job, a home. Theymeanwhile are: “yeah, whatever’, now lets see what’s out there”. They adjust their hair and away they go doing it all again. Think serial killers. They kill several times. One kill is not enough. They don’t break down watching a person’s life go.
I
Erin, you are very astute and rightly pointed out your confusion. Once again my fault for not making this clear. you basically challenge me to say something that I find hard to admit. Only my counsellor knows this. You are making me confront the reality of the trap I live in. There really isn’t any gain I get, but I sacrifice my own health. Looking back at the last 5 years I have gained nothing from the situation I am in. I have 3 abusers. One of whom I sickeningly live with. I’ll reply your answer on the ‘sociopaths cons their families’ thread later. OR I may email to Donna and ask her to pass to you. I’m just a little wary of publishing the situation as it is like writing my name and address online. I’ll find a way to explain whilst protecting myself. In short I am trapped completely. The person I am protecting in all this is my mother – a woman whose life was taken away by a N husband of 50+ years. I counsel her when she needs to talk. She is a fine strong beautiful solid loving woman whose mind and health and one life on this planet was taken away by this b——d. I’m here for my mother,my father think I’m here as his wife. My mother is an object, I was always his “wife” from around 14 years. If I were to mention my sister’s sexual abuse he’d reply ‘Oh I know how it feels, my pain is bigger…” I have a twisted fucked up father and a twisted fucked up sister. My mother and I have been targatted by these disordered people.That stil doesnt answer your question, I’ll get round to answering it as clearly as possible.
Outlier:
Thank you so much for your description of the Lovefraud community. I am always astounded by, and touched by, the way in which everyone supports each other. I am so glad that so many people are finding information, encouragement and comfort on Lovefraud.
Donna
Outlier:
Don’t answer anything you don’t feel safe doing.
Since this is an online forum, it’s hard to ‘read between the lines’ and get a clear picture sometimes.
You owe me nothing and I don’t want to trigger anything in you.
Just take care of yourself, your needs and your health…..because in the end….as I very well know…..when WE get sick…..not many people come a knocken!
Donna, any time you make communication you produce tears in me. I just love your “quiet” presence. You never seem to draw attention to what your role was in creating the site. I can’t agree it was a glamorous project, the high clicks per day isn’t glamorous but disturbing and compelling. One one side it is a successful result, but on the other side reflects the alarming abundent presence of abuse that exists in the world. It is a curse to reach that wonderful blessing of insight. Life is cruel. To truly understand human nature, one must suffer the wrath that human nature is capable of doing. We seek out therapists, they too had to undergo the curse to connect with our pain and our understanding. It seems unwarranted to educate normal healthy supported people free of abuse with our dark insight, since they are not targets and won’t truly understand what is going on inside our heads. Yet, in educating and publicizing the sociopathic disorder they may recognise someone fitting the description of a sociopath (who would then recognise a victim they are in connected with), for example their own beautiful dear (god)sons and (god)daughters.You have utilized your background (reporting) with extremely good effect. Yes, there are articulate and informative blogs, articles, resources. I sometimes wonder how it felt after you registered the site, chose the colours, registered the domain. You sat there waiting for responses, not sure what would happen. There’s so much material out there, people had probably learned and moved on. Yet slowly from the dark (invisible) void people from invisible corners of the world started emerging with similar tales to tell. This encourages ‘lurkers” who read and register and contribute. One person talks about their parent(s), “Yes that happened to me too!!” so further victims come registering and disclose their own hidden abuse. One person breaks another taboo ‘My child is a sociopath”.. “mine too!!”.. a man announces “my wife, the mother of my children is a sociopath”.. “I believe mine is also…” . There are no barriers, taboos, stereotypes. We are black, white, asian, jewish, catholic, amish, hindu, atheist, muslim, heterosexual, gay, young, senior, grandparents, single parents, childless, lonely, independent, successful, hurting, strong, working, on sabbatical… . We are all in one place, different people, sharing what we have all gone through together.
I sometimes remember a chapter in a Malcolm Gladwell book “The Tipping Point”. The power of one voice literally sets off a collective noise. If nobody utters that initial sound, nobody comes forward. I can’t reproduce the extract, and I rather clumsily probably didn’t get the gist of that chapter. The point is that talking is so powerful, maintaining silence prolongs abuse and gives abusers a passport to raping another person’s mind simply because nobody came forward. (‘Oh, I knew my son was a sociopath, but I didn’t think to tell you, you looked so happy..”… ‘we all knew something wasn’t right about her, we thought you’d find out in time”…)… You have saved minds, people, healed spirits and empowered. It’s funny we’re not psychologists, yet I am reading some impressively articulate insight from ordinary men and women. We are insightful about ourselves and human nature, that the fortunate golden untouched people who are lucky to not have experienced abuse of any form, do not fully comprehend. With all due respect to professionals, including on this site, the best people who understand the mindgames are other people who have experienced the mindgames. Even I couldn’t comprehend my elder sister’s experience with our N father as I had not been enlightened. I was being abused myself, but I didn’t understand it, so couldn’t help. NOW we both speak and both know EXACTLY what we are saying. Shame.. i had to go through the abuse to understand her pain..
I don’t know, maybe one day when I’m 65, possibly with a child, a relation, my life, a room with a view, and hopefully feeling happy and healthy and independent and strong and loved.. I’ll still be here just keeping company and hearing and helping. It is instinctive to help others who have gone through what we have. I can picture 2030, we’ll be nursing new usernames bursting with raw fresh pain with their story .. I hope this site is still around. If it ever goes down due to a meteor hit or mars invasion and we have to start living again, I’ll help create another one.
ErinBrock, you did trigger me BUT and this is a good but… in a good way. It’s so ridiculous. the abuse with a N is like a cycle – 365 cycle. I am currently at day 365. I know that if I approach my father right now, I am in Day 1, and day 2 abuse starts tomorrow, day 3 the day after… and we go through the exact same dynamics, each day represents another dynamic, each week represents my mental stress, each month represents his power, each season represents insight, spiral, insight, spiral, until we reach day 364 and I have HAD ENOUGH. We are at that stage right now.
One word, even a hello or a cup of tea, or taking him for a walk, to him means ‘theres a good girl, I knew my little girl would say sorry to daddy.’ There is no normality about my relation with my father. It is like incest. (he said I made a better wife to him when I was 15. He has feigned heart attack, falls, collapses, fall stairs, nurse abuse, hospital abuse, Alzheimer’s Disease, asthma, a primal scream, toothache, deafness, depression, memory loss, suicide (he has no idea how suicidal feelings feel, they are words designed to scare their target into enabling them).
It is my mother whom I protect. this beautiful woman lost her life to my father. Married him at 19, she is 70, never felt love or a reason to be alive. Nothing keeps her alive. She’s just alive. I stopped seeing a mother and instead a woman in her own right when I turned 21. My siblings just see mum, the village idiot who makes food and never had an opinion, so they can bully her and mock her intelligence and never engage in a conversation with her (yes you’re right she didn’t: her opinions and choices and voice and identity were constantly removed, idiot siblings). She opens up to me. She can talk to me. When my father is dead, the abuse dies. I ensure my mother gets love, attention, humour, beauty, joy, a voice, expression, right, entitlement, esteem, assertion, knowledge, feminine beauty, vocalises her intelligence (my siblings (sve one) speak to her like she is the village idiot who yaps when they poke her with a stick). I know I can’t live my life for my mother, when my father dies, she will age, but she isn’t high maintenance. She isn’t maintenance at all! She gets sick? I get medicine. End of. My father feigns sickness, I get medicine, he refuses, he makes more noise, I offer help, he refuses, 3 weeks later, his symptoms worsen, I get medicine, he heals, no more attention, he makes up a new ( fake )illness…
I’m proud (violated, insulted but proud) I ignored his dramatised heart attack in the street. He had all the motions, 80 yr old frail man clutching his heart.. no triggerlike reaction from me, he heaved his shoulders up and down, inahling deeply in and out (psst, doctor dad, a cardiac arrest is shallow breaths, weak legs, confusion, not a running commentary standing straight, right?) I mentioned how old he looks, he stood up straight and walked like a soldier (N hate being told they look old). I mentioned his heart pain, “what heart pain? I didn’t say I had heart pain.. when did I say that? No I didn’t stop in the street, I’ve been walking without any problem. okay end of talk, take me home now, leave me here, you go that way, I’ll go home alone.. ” he’s been struck off medical lists – drove his last doctor insane. My father is a retired doctor.. (!) He is a true misogynist – seriously hateful of women. He responds well to childlike talk. He resembles the child in the supermarket giving his mother a hard time. My 3 abusers – are all ……….doctors.
You dont have to respond, this is a public scream announcement. (sorry).. it’s my mother I protect (from 3 different people – dad, sister, neighbour..)
Sorry, Nora x
Dear Outlier,
Thank you for your very wonderfully articulated posts above, and I totally agree with you. I’m going on 65, and been here going on 3 years now, and every day I learn something new, everyday I read something warm and supportive, or comforfting, or best of all, I read where someone else has had an “ah ha” moment and says “thank you, Oxy, tthat made me understand, or feel supported.”
If I had the power like Bill Gates to write a check for a “bazillion dollars” I would write that check and send it to Donna and send her on a world wide trip to educate people all over the world as a “televangelist for victim’s education” spreading the GOSPEL about psychopathy!!! I’d open DV shelters in every town. But I can’t do that as much as I might like to be able to, but I can come here and say “Welcome to love Fraud you’ve found a place that will help you heal” when I see new people on the blog. It may not be much, but I’ve had people later tell me, “You made me feel so welcome when I first came here so injured and scared.”
That’s what LF is all about it is the TOTALITY of what Donna started and what we have all become because of her initial effort!@....... Each of us comes from a different place but yet we are very much alike as well, we are all caring people who have suffered an injury at the hands of a psychopath, AND we are all on the ROAD TOWARD HEALING from that injury! We comfort and support each other here as we travel that road! ((((Hugs)))) and God bless!
This is so much like my ex-husband. Unfortunately, the family courts, the cops, and social services people ignore the bruises on my child, and love our abuser.
Dear mykidsneedhelp! Diarise, document, photograph,record everything and keep jumping up and down. Don’t give up! Make them listen… It breaks my heart when anyone is a victim especially children!