Editor’s note: A Lovefraud reader, we’ll call him Allen, tells his story of being the child of an undiagnosed sociopath.
I know the story starts way before my time with my dad, so I can only tell you what I saw growing up and what I now see in hindsight.
I think the biggest thing that I see in him is that he takes no personal responsibility for anything. Somewhere in his late 20’s he “found God” — whatever that really means to him — and it was right around the time that my mom finally left him because of physical abuse that he denies to this day. He says that he never laid a hand on her and then when I remind him that I was there that day and saw everything he still denies it. He claims that pushing her over a couch and through a screen door isn’t laying a hand on her.
That day, the day they split up, I spent the rest of the weekend with my dad, where he kept saying how little my mom must have loved me, since she left you with “such a monster.” At nine, I believed him and spent the next year of my life making my mom’s life a living hell. I would torment her, asking her why she was leaving dad and how she must be evil to not love him. A thin mixture of religion over a solid base of fear led me to believe that my dad was the only one I could trust.
My mom was a teacher at the Christian school that I attended and my mom was condemned for leaving my dad by the church, mostly because my dad was playing the victim and smearing my mom as unforgiving and bitter. He claimed she just left him for no reason. Especially when he was friends with most of the pastors at the church. He would go for “counseling” with them. He would read every religious book he could find. He even ended up in the psych ward over Christmas that year. He really made my mom look evil. I was 30 when I finally saw what he did to her. And I and everyone else bought it up to that point. I eye-witnessed it and I still bought it.
In an effort to “re-unite” our family, my mom was told by the church to either reunite with my dad or find a new job. She found a new job. Ironically, her good friend from her childhood taught with her at that same school. Her husband beat the crap out of her the next year, and she had him arrested and he wasn’t as manipulative as my dad. She still works at that same school. It protected her.
Living with dad
This all happened my third grade year. The following year I continued to live with my mom meanwhile going to my father’s every single weekend, and getting my head filled with everything bad my mom had ever done. Every skeleton. I “tormented” her regularly, but I thought I was doing what God wanted me to do, which was remind my mom what God says she should do — at least according to what my dad told me. I knew that God hated sin, and divorce was a sin, and my mom was divorcing my dad on purpose, therefore I thought I was doing what was right. Finally my mom had enough and she let me go live with my dad my fifth grade year. The divorce was done somewhere between June to August, and by September I was his best man in his next marriage.
I moved in with him in July, and that’s when he started beating the crap out of me when I would do stuff he didn’t like and that continues to this very day. I had to call the police on him this past weekend because he spit on me as I walked to my car, ran up and threw me up against the wall and cocked his fist to punch me when I told him he never took responsibility for anything, especially getting real help for his abuse, which he denied when the police arrived and said I came over to pick a fight with him. My brother even told me I should expect to mauled when I throw stones at a bear.
The marriage with his second wife was a disaster of biblical proportions. I had a stepsister my age and a stepbrother my brother’s age — five years younger than me. I was the only one that kept saying they shouldn’t be married and that he was being a bad father, which brought me more and more abuse. I even protested at his wedding, so he told everyone that I had psychological problems. Turns out I was just exhausted trying to have a conscience for two.
He was a doctor. He would buy cars, tv’s, all kinds of stuff and then lie to his wife about it and make me promise not to tell her about it either. When I would say it was a bad idea, I would be told either I was too young to understand or beat up, so I played along. They split up, of course because of us kids not getting along. He forgets that I spent two years locked in my room avoiding everyone that I could from our family. Not sure the fights I started, but I believed him. We, my stepsiblings and I, had to lie about how my stepmom got a black eye one time. A family football injury. Unbelieveable.
Difficult to love
My dad and I moved into a cottage at a Christian community that was a few miles outside of town. We lived there until I graduated from high school. At the time I really defended my dad, believing that he WAS the victim in all this and that if my mom hadn’t left him, none of this would have happened. This made me hate her more. And he kept beating me up too. Said I was “difficult to love”. Same thing he said this weekend — funny. I would go to school with bruises and a swollen nose, fat lips all the time. That’s when I had to lie to the police and tell them nothing was wrong. My mom even got emergency custody of me and tried to have me put in a school for troubled kids. I saw it as evil since I saw her as evil and not able to be trusted. I lied my way out of that school interview. I made it look like she was crazy and that she just had a problem with my dad and was trying to get back at him. She gave me a choice: the Detention Home or a Runaway Shelter.
I chose the runaway shelter. But when they notified the custodial parent, as my mom only had temporary emergency custody, he came and picked me up at 5 a.m. This really made her look evil and him like the rescuer! “Look! Your mom dumped you off again!” I went into school the next day and had a total and complete breakdown. I told them what happened the night before and coupled with what they knew was going on at home, they excused me from school for the last two weeks. They knew I would never turn on my dad because my only other option was the DH and everyone knew that wasn’t going to help. I even spent a couple of weeks in the psych ward as I was suicidal a few months previous. They even passed me as I was failing about everything in class. It was all because I wasn’t adjusting well to my dad’s new marriage. That may be, but I think that I never should have been there. I should have been protected by my parent, not stepped on to get what he wanted. But maybe that’s just me.
High school
High school went by because I found really good friends. My dad was trying to get back with my stepmom from eighth grade to twelfth grade so I was home a lot on the weekends by myself. Yeah. We partied. They still talk about how many parties I threw in high school. I would make remarks about my dad’s choices and how little I thought of him and his marriage, his wife, whatever. They were “disrespectful” and were always met with a fist fight. I got in a couple of good licks and they got further apart.
After every single fight, he would tell me that God still loved him and that I should forgive him. Truth is, I didn’t have any other place to live, so I tolerated him and his abuse. And sometimes his irresponsibility made him really fun. New cars and things like that made my place fun to live at. He even bough me a car at 15 and let me drive it around without a license just so he didn’t have to be bothered with having to take me places. That made me about the coolest person there was to my friends! I was pretty responsible and didn’t get into any trouble worth mentioning. I was actually one of only two people in my “circle of friends” to make it through school without any police incursions.
I went into the Navy when I graduated as I had a less than 2.0 GPA. It was very good for me. I was in two years and hurt my leg and was discharged. I got married to a woman EXACTLY like my dad. More on that in a bit. During that time my dad and his second wife got back together for about a year. And I was split up with my wife and moved back in for a short time with them. I got back with my wife and they split up a year later because my dad was cheating on her with someone that was going to become his next wife. But don’t say goodbye to wife #2 quite yet. She makes an encore later. I blamed my stepmom for taking all my dad’s stuff because she was “just a gold-digger!” I completely missed the point that he was getting this as consequences to his actions! But hearing him, it was all her fault again. She drove him to cheat. At this point I’m 23 or 24.
My wife was the same
My eyes were finally opened with my wife. Nothing was ever her fault. Perpetual victim. That’s when I discovered patterns! I started seeing things she did to my daughter that my dad did to me. Manipulation of the truth, telling parts of the story, lying, cheating and stealing. But it was never her fault either. She and I would get into a fight and she would wake up our daughter in the middle of the night and take her to her mom’s and say things like “Your dad is throwing us out.” Little stuff like that, when nothing was further from the truth. And her mom hated me! Rightfully so: throwing her and her grand daughter out like that. The only problem is, she never even asked my side. That’s when it hit me that I was her mom when it came to my dad.
Read more: For children of sociopaths
She was always defending her daughter, like I did to my dad. She was always the victim, just like my dad. It was never her fault I was mad (even though she was charging $10k on credit cards in three months). I was the one that was being unreasonable! It finally hit me after 12 years of marriage and a tumor that these two people were identical: Sociopaths!
Beat us with the Bible
At 27 or 28 I finally saw what was going on. My dad was on wife #3, a total and complete psycho. And he was making it worse because he intimidated her too. And bought $120k RV’s, $5k banjos — you name it. Never EVER telling her first. “Screw her, it’s my money!” I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that saying. My mom, my step-mom(s), even me when I confronted him. He would snap and start attacking us as though we had the problem. First he would puff up and yell. If that didn’t scare us away, he would beat us with the Bible: saying that we shouldn’t judge and how we just didn’t understand “Grace” the way he did and that if God forgives him so should we. If we still didn’t run away he would start dismantling our character with every kind of attack known to man: our character, our lives, my kids, my wife, my relationships, my religion, my work, my work ethic, my friends, my salvation — everything. All peppered with vulgarities and personal attacks. I always blew it off because some of what he said WAS true and I bought into the speck in his eye and the plank in mine, like he was always reminding us of.
Sexual harassment
He really talked the talk, but never walked the walk. And that is what ALWAYS, ALWAYS bothered me. Even in childhood. Always do what the Bible says, unless you are me. It wasn’t until he was sued for sexual harassment that I knew he had a real problem. Having been in the Navy, I was trained almost monthly on sexual harassment. You say “Red Light” to anyone that was in the service in my time and they will laugh. They know exactly what that means. So I told my dad that what he was doing with one of the girls in his staff was beyond a shadow of a doubt sexual harassment. Five times I warned him and said, “Look! You have got to stop! You are going to get sued!” To which he replied “Mind your own business. I’m 58 years old and I’m not going to let you know-it-all tell me how to run my life. Beside, what the hell do you know? I’m a doctor! What the hell are you?”
Let’s just say I didn’t know everything else he was doing to her until the lawsuit was filed. I was shocked this married “Christian” man was telling me he was doing nothing wrong and yet he was still getting sued, even after I warned him about it! He told me “I wasn’t going to tell you but ____ is suing me. That bitch! What the heck is and everyone else gonna think? Their gonna think I did it!” I said, “You did!” He told me not to come around him anymore if I was going to be talking like that. So I shut up for a while.
Wife #3 went crazier. Now I realize that being with a person that thinks and acts like he does will drive a normal person crazy! I thought it was her until a I saw what living with my ex-wife did to me! Months of cover-ups and bashing the character of the sue-er, he narrowly convinced her not to divorce him then, claiming he, again, was the victim
Anger management
Then he punched wife #3 about a year ago and she had his butt arrested. He pleaded “no contest” and had to go to anger management counseling. The next week, after he had to move out, he bought a BMW 740IL and told me, “Now everyone is going to know that no lying b*tch is going to keep me down. I’m still on top.” He swears to this day “he never laid a hand on her.” I asked him if it was the same hand he didn’t lay on mom to which he points out how bitter and unforgiving I am and that he is praying for me to “get better.” She filed for divorce a few weeks later but he didn’t care. Wife #2, who is inarguably more attractive than wife #3, wanted him back. She couldn’t believe all that he had endured and come through. Truth is she just wants security and to not be alone I think.
When I tried to have him arrested this weekend it was me that had the problem again. He lied to police and said he didn’t lay a hand on me and that I, in fact was the one that picked a fight with him. He lied to family, the few that believe him, that I did come over “looking for trouble.” I have for the last year tried to stay away from him but keep getting my conscience turned against me by him because a child should forgive his parent. I shouldn’t be bitter. But he lures you in with a believable “I really am sorry” and a plausible story that it really IS your problem. And he is quick to point that out to everyone I or any of his victims know that he runs into.
And trying to get him help is impossible: He would argue theology with Jesus, and could intimidate Ah-nold. He has walked out of more counselors because they were trying put him “under the law.” Religion is a wall he uses to trap his victims within reach. Anytime they start to get away he reminds them of their obligation to forgive and they come back. It’s like a religious tether. It’s the same tactic my ex-wife (also claimed to be “Christian/religious”) used: bragging she knew she could do anything she wanted because she knew that I would never divorce her because my religious beliefs were too strong. I’m pretty sure that’s not what God teachs.
How should I deal?
There is my story — I’m the child of an undiagnosed sociopath. Use it for whatever you want. Even to convict me if I really do have a problem like he and my ex says. They say I make everyone miserable. My girlfriend tells me it’s them (but she’s a LITTLE partial!) and that if they walked what they talked, it would not be an issue. I just make them feel accountable because I question their actions to their faces, while everyone else talks behind their back. This is uncomfortable for them, thus bringing on their own misery because someone see through their facade, so their slander and character assassination starts on me and their true colors come out.
I would love to know, however, how I should deal with him? Should I stay away? Or should I forgive and always keep him at arms length? What about my daughter and him? He tells her all kinds of things too about me that aren’t anywhere near true. And she is starting to behave just like her mom and grandpa.
Learn more: How abusive parents affect you and how you can recover
Lovefraud originally posted this article on February 6, 2009.
Understanding trauma, the brain on PTSD, and real options for recovery
Puzzle,
My Mother’s decision to purchase a gun to protect her children and herself was pretty much a last resort in dealing with my P “father”.
The F**ker wouldn’t go away and leave us alone. He first tried seduction, sentimental tricks to woo her back to supporting his loser butt. When those didn’t work (merely infuriated, frustrated her) he began stalking, bullying and threatening.
He broke out her car windshield while she was at work and other retarded, yet fearful actions which culminated in her buying her gun. And directly telling him on the phone…”I bought a gun. Been practicing at the gun range. Keep harassing me and see what happens.” (paraphrased)
Was my Mother serious? You betcha! She had spent 16 years with an evil, sick, repulsive male and instead of crumbling, falling apart (she had 3 children to take care of, which kept her busy and sane) she made an implacable decision to end his life if he continued trying to suck her precious life force from her soul.
I respect and admire my Mother greatly for all the crap she dealt with from him. I knew she would shoot him if he didn’t leave us alone. He KNEW it, too, that’s why he eventually quit doing what he was doing, cussing at her calling her names even as he speedily retreated from our front door.
I woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do to protect her babies and herself from predators. In this situation, my Mom won an awesome victory and I still applaud her for saving us from his vile, evil self.
Allen:
Thank you for posting. I can well relate to your feeling torn about cutting your father off or trying to maintain some kind of relationship with him.
I grew up with two abusive, alcoholic, but highly successful narcissists — although my father probably qualifies as a sociopath since he tried to drown me when I was 8.
The problem is, you see and know the behavior you have witnessed and continue to witness is wrong. But, we keep getting sucked in out of a misguided sense of love and loyalty. And never forget, keeping up appearances at all costs.
That you ended up with a S wife doesn’t surprise me. On another thread we were discussing how many of us came from abusive homes. I think the mind-fuck we grew up with courtesy of our warped parents coupled with the abuse, makes us sitting ducks for Ss. Or, put another way, you go with what you know.
If I were in you shoes, I’d give some thought to going NC with your father for awhile. You really need to let the “brain-fog” lift so you can gain some perspective.
With respect to my parents, I have a purely superficial relationship — keeping up appearances, but at this late stage of their lives it works for all of us.
As for my ex, I threw him out 3 months ago, because I was at the point if I didn’t I was probably going to kill myself. I am just at the early stages of recovery and just discovering the patterns in my life that led me to this sorry state at age 50.
Intellectually I can understand that my parents and my ex were extremely damaged people. That says, it hurts like hell when you realize that all the love and trust you gave them was received by them and returned with lies, abuse and betrayal.
Dear Wini,
I want to be certain people understand that my husband is a very good person and effective parent. He is definately not a cluster B.
Thanks for your kind words and thoughts.
Indigoblue,
“the addiction to Chaos and How we unknowingly become accustomed to this Stress Level!”
Good point. I was raised in a very calm household, and my husband and I are very low key people. The N/P/Ss induce a lot of stress. In my case it would ramp up over time. Like a frog who was in a pot of water that was being brought from room temperature to a boil, I never felt the change. Unlike the frog, I’d wake up at some point and ask “Why is everyone in this organization acting bat-stuff-crazy? How did I get this drained and irritable?”
I came to realize that some people who thrived around the N/P/S were attracted to the excitement. They didn’t object because they thought drama was desirable, or at least normal.
It is important to know if you are addicted to stress, or simply easily lulled into tolerating it as it ramps up. Knowing these things about yourself can help you avoid bad relationships.
I am ridiculously proud of myself for ducking a connection with a drama prone individual recently. Because I’ve learned to pay attention to what I feel and think, rather than worrying about pleasing 24/7, I saw that this person was bad news for me.
This pride is ridiculous on the surface. It’s more than a little silly. (My 12 year old daughter naturally does things like this all the time, yet I give myself a Brownie Button for this “achievement”?) On the other hand, it’s a huge change for me. I hope I can keep this up. It’s very liberating.
Dear Wini,
Sometimes two people who study the Word diligently come to different conclusions. I believe setting and enforcing boundaries are necessary for living in the Spirit. I further believe the Bible not only permits but demands that Christians set and enforce boundaries:
http://christianwomentoday.com/womenmen/boundaries.html
My daughter studies the Word diligently, both with the family, alone and in small groups. She’s not being steered to seek the roll of martyr. The adult Christians in her life don’t believe it’s God’s plan for His people to act out unhealthy dramas.
Indigoblue and Elizabeth Conley:
Thanks. The addiction to chaos. I grew up in a house which was like a pressure cooker rattling on the stove. It was never a question of if the lid would blow, it was a question of when. So, that became the norm I would work off of.
S was so exciting during the first 3 months or so. I thrived on the constant “positive” attention. And in the porcess I was lulled into tolerating the stress as it ramped up. By the time I realized something was wrong with this picture, he had me hooked.
After 3 months out from S, I am starting to learn to pay attention to what I think and feel. I recently called it a day with a new acquaintance because I realized that the ramping up was starting. I was proud of myself for doing that.
Now I’ve got to stop worrying about pleasing 24/7.
Elizabeth Conley: I never implied at any time that anyone become a martyr.
The Bible is a guideline in how to live your life.
Big egos want to ignore said instructions and make their own rules. The “egos” of this world will always twist and contort anything for their own gratification, including what is written in the Bible, if indeed they do read the Bible.
Peace.
Matt,
I’m glad to read you “called it a day – because the ramping up was starting.”
You’re right to be proud of yourself. Changing ourselves is hard. Besides, paying attention to what WE think and feel can seem selfish. I know I was trained up to think about anything and everything but myself. I don’t blame my parents, ’cause they were gentle people who operated the same way. The thing is, that only works around people who play by the same rules..
My 12 year old is great at boundaries. I watched her resist a 55 year old high pressure saleswoman who had once rolled me. Later my daughter patted my arm and said, “You just have to say no Mom.” I think it’s great that it’s as simple as that for her. Maybe I’ll get that good one day. Right now I don’t shop at that particular store, but I’ll drop my daughter off and sit in the car reading. I know the lady’s high pressure sales technique will make me uneasy. I’m glad my kid is made of sterner stuff.
Right now I’m just learning to figure out which people stress me out, and giving myself permission to avoid them. Maybe I’ll be as sturdy as my kid someday. That’s my goal.
Elizabeth Conley:
I’m envious of your daughter for two reasons. First, that a 12 year old kid can set boundaries like that. Second, that her mother supports her in that boundary setting.
You’re doing a great job parenting. Kudos.
Matt, I’m an old hen with two chicks. Today I took a little road trip to spend time with a girlfriend. We two old hens sat about cackling and clucking. My daughter played with her granddaughters.
Being older gives me some distinct advantages. I may never hold my grandchildren, but I’ve got high hopes that the generations to come will be wiser and stronger than I’ve been.
My husband and I are both working very hard to make it so.
My husband is more confident than I am, and a better judge of character. More importantly perhaps, he rarely feels guilty about protecting himself. I see his strengths in my daughter, and I’m glad for them both.
When I err as a parent, it’s usually in being too soft on the kids. When I do that, I feel considerable regret. It forces my husband to be tougher, which isn’t fair.
Maybe the real gift here is that love is the driving force that pushes people to be better than we naturally are.
While there are no guarantees in this world, I would be deeply gratified to see my children leave me to live very happy adult lives.