UPDATED FOR 2024. Editor’s Note: Lovefraud received the following story from a woman about a “good guy” gone wrong. She went public with her experience in order to draw attention to the terrible problem of domestic violence. The name she uses on Lovefraud is “Tormented.”
In 2008, I divorced my husband of 18 years due to differences that unfortunately we couldn’t work out. We have three amazing children together and remain good friends in spite of our divorce, which has made things much easier for all of us.
Just five months after the divorce, I met a man who charmed me from the very beginning. I thought he was wonderful, and I quickly fell head over heels for him. A former county deputy sheriff, presently working as an Air Marshal and in the Army Reserves for nearly 20 years, he seemed like one of the “good guys” – a really good, down-to-earth person with a lot going for him. In his early 40s, he had never married and had no kids, which I thought was a good thing because I figured he lacked “baggage.” He seemed to love my kids, and when we married six months after we met, it felt natural and right. After all, I was 43, had been married for nearly two decades and knew exactly what I wanted.
What I didn’t realize was the fact that there were glaring red flags all over him. I guess I was either too naive or too trusting or both. For one thing, he had never been in a long-term relationship. And a few months into our marriage I discovered a box filled with photos of him with many, many different women over the years. Also, he had only one close friend. This friend of his attended our wedding, but only because we paid for the airfare and hotel. No other friends or family from his side bothered to attend. And the only wedding gift we received from his side was a $50 gift card to Pier 1 – from that one close friend of his.
Soon after we married, my new husband’s facade began to crack, and lies started to show through. Such as the fact that he had told me and my children that he had a college degree in Criminal Law, when in reality he had only taken a few online classes.
“Honeymoon” in Maui
When the verbal abuse started, I was not only horrified, but ashamed and embarrassed. I couldn’t believe the violent language that so easily flew from his lips, directed straight at me. When we went on our honeymoon to Maui, I ended up catching a flight home by myself two days early. I couldn’t begin to comprehend how a man could possibly yell at his new bride for hours on end, repeatedly calling her a f–king c-nt and scaring her to death while on their honeymoon. And his anger came out of nowhere, for no good reason. One night it was because I didn’t want to eat ice cream with him for dessert.
At this time, I was in between jobs and freelancing to keep some income coming in. I had the opportunity to work on a large, potentially lucrative business deal that I was very excited about. Out of the blue, my husband called up my potential client and accused him of having an affair with me. I was horrified and of course, lost the deal.
It became very apparent that I had made a terrible mistake, and yet I remained in a state of denial for several months as the wonderful man I thought I’d married simply faded away. I no longer recognized my husband through all of the degrading name calling and emotional manipulation. I cried nearly every day of the ten months we were married. My heart was bludgeoned, my self esteem utterly destroyed.
Domestic violence
After the disastrous honeymoon, I insisted on marriage counseling, however our psychologist gave up after only four sessions. She said she was unable to help us work things out unless he received individual counseling first. When she mentioned the words “domestic violence” to me, I was stunned. I had no idea that verbal abuse was considered domestic violence, and I couldn’t believe that I had entered this devastating realm that I’d never imagined would be a part of my life.
Ten months after our wedding, I finally found the courage to ask for a separation. I told him that I needed two months of peace, to think about our relationship and where we should go from there. I realized that another divorce was most likely on the horizon for me, however I still held out hope that he would miraculously change and the abuse would end. I was desperate for that man I fell in love with in the very beginning to reappear. How could that good man have been replaced by this abusive, violent monster who obviously hated me?
Just five days after I asked for the separation, he showed up on my front patio unannounced and forced his way into my home. He had just flown into town, and being an Air Marshal who always wears a gun strapped to his chest, I could tell that he was packing by the bulge under his shirt. He paced through my home, yelling and at times talking irrationally. Twice he said that we should go into the bedroom and have sex, that it would be “good for both of us.” Terrified, I cried and begged him to leave. He yelled at me and said he would leave when he was ready to leave. He continued to pace and yell. Sobbing and shaking uncontrollably, I finally called the police. I had never called 911 before in my life, but I was so frightened that he would physically hurt me or worse. Later, when the police officers removed him from my property and encouraged me to file an Order of Protection against him, I was completely beside myself.
Order of Protection
I soon discovered that filing an Order of Protection against my husband was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was devastating to think that I had to go to that extreme measure to keep myself, and my children, safe. Especially when I was trying to keep myself safe from the one person who I thought had my best interests at heart. Someone I had trusted and opened my entire life to. Someone I believed in. To have to cope with the fact that my husband never really loved me at the same time when I was also dealing with having to file an Order of Protection against him was beyond devastating. It was also an extremely lonely place to be.
Read more: Dr. Donald G. Dutton explains that personality disorder is the cause of domestic violence
My Order of Protection case itself ended up being a lengthy, stressful ordeal. Along the way his attorney was very persistent about proposing a settlement since he would have been fired from his Air Marshal position if the Order of Protection remained upheld. In the end, I chose to settle and ended up with an even greater and longer lasting protection through a Court Order attached to our divorce decree, in addition to reimbursement from him for all of my divorce and legal fees. Presently, he can’t even enter the state where I live and can never contact me or my children forever.
Affairs
During this ordeal, I started writing a blog as a way to release the painful feelings I was coping with while also speaking out to help other women going through the same kind of situation. Ironically, my blog has enabled women from his past and present life to find me online.
Horribly enough, I discovered that for most of the time we were together, he was having an affair with a married woman. This woman was shocked to find my blog and to learn of my existence. She emailed me the story of their affair, and I learned that while he was in the process of marrying me, he was simultaneously trying to convince her to leave her husband for him. I have no doubt that there were other women in his life at that time as well. The combination of his vicious abuse and his disgusting betrayal have been horrendous to deal with.
On top of all this, I contracted a sexually transmitted disease from him that has since been resolved through medication. It was discovered while we were married, and yet his response was to call me a f–king wh-re and accuse me of having an affair. He refused to believe that he was carrying an STD, which I’m sure he continues to spread around.
I am speaking out and sharing my story with the hopes that I can reach other women who may be hiding in the shadows with their own stories of abuse. I appeared on local TV news segments, as well as in our state newspaper. It’s terrifying to “come out” publicly with my story, but I’m hoping that by doing this I’ll make it a little easier for the next woman. The only way to eradicate domestic violence is to lean on each other, stand up, speak out and educate. The main thrust of my message is: You are not to blame and you are not alone.
Learn more: Beyond Betrayal: How to recover from the trauma
Lovefraud originally posted this story on Oct. 13, 2010.
10 tips to start dating again after leaving a sociopath
…or maybe someone will just whack him 🙂
that’s always my xmas wish…
yes – better ox, still can’t walk and i am tired as hell but the pain levels are way down and i have cut the pain meds in half…but the atavan is a life saver.
I’ll leave it all up to the Karma HE created!
He does tend to piss peeps off…..so one never knows!
To Oxy,
I am from a southern state, which is 90% white but affected by 50% poverty. I grew up with both my mother and father who both had low paying jobs. My father graduated from a conservative Christian university and so did all his daughters, there are 4 of us. My father or mother did not suffer from any mental illness nor did their parents and we had great family relationships, still to this day. In our neighborhood we saw many incidents of absent fathers. My first experience with domestic violence was watching a neighbor being beaten by her husband. We heard stories of molestation, so on and so forth. I equate sociopathy to the mind of a molestor. Poverty and molestation do not go hand in hand, not all molestors are impoverished, one does not effect the other But there are many poles that prove molestation happens a lot more in low income areas than any other social class. Knowledge is power! Poverty and sociopathy do not go hand in hand either, you may be thinking of mental illness in general. I am sure both nature and nurture (genetics and environment) effect the incidence of sociopathy.
Now back to John Mayer, something just doesn’t add up. He is using and abusing at an unbelievable rate, chances are he is a sociopath or narcissist. If this is true, no doubt he will be in the news again embarassing himself, unbeknownst to him. Hopefully Hollywood is wise as Taylor and responds appropriately by staying away. Just as wild animals are tagged, there ought to be a way that the public could tag wild men, hahaha!
Dear Shojo,
BAsically what I was meaning was that psychopaths CREATE poverty in many cases, rather than the poverty creating psychopaths. When my egg donor was growing up almost everyone was poor in this state in the country (Arkansas) black and white, but the poverty, in some cases after the depression not even enough to eat, but it didn’t make the people psychopaths. My egg donor’s brother wasn’t a psychopath because he was a poor farm boy, he was a psychopath because he had the genetics and decisions that pushed him in that direction and he chose to go that way. My grandfather’s brothers kids none of them became psychopaths and they were even more poor than my grandfather’s family. My grandmother’s father was a psychopath and neither she nor her brothers either were psychopaths or drunks, and they were poor a “Job’s Turkey”
But at the same time, there were others here who were psychopaths, and they wouldn’t work, wouldn’t farm, spent their money on gambling and booze and they were in worse financial shape than the working poor were, because they were psychopaths…and guess what, their kids didn’t turn out so well either. Most did but many more turned out to be “just like their daddy”–wife beating drunks who wouldn’t work. To this day those families in this community turn out a wide variety of criminals, drunks and still live in utter poverty. Most of the other families have educated their children and moved into a better level of finance because of education and work.
So being able to see 5 generations of these families and the interactions and how they have extended their poverty by psychopathy (the ones who weren’t psychopathic mostly got out of poverty) it kind of gives me the idea that at least some poverty is CAUSED by the fact that the poor are psychopaths.
NOT ALL poverty is caused or perpetuated by psychopathy though and there are plenty of middle class and rich psychopaths too. Just as not all criminals are psychopaths, but most score up in the high numbers, with the AVERAGE criminal score on the PCL-R being a 22 (the average for non criminals I think is like 5) Psychopathy cut off for research purposes is 30.
People with criminal records tend to also have a higher incidence of poverty as well.
So I think psychopathy contributes to SOME financial poverty but not all. I think psychopathy contributes a great deal to criminal behavior.
Ox Drover
I thought the same thing, he was trying to control even to his death.
His phone calls were always nonsense. He said the same thing every time. He said he will pay child support if I let him see his son. He wasn’t interested in talking to our son. He wanted to talk to me.
He used that strategy for years.
He used it cause it WORKED! I blabbered on and on that he has to contact child support. And that he has to file in court for a visitation schedule.
Finally I laughed at him. That was one month before he took his life.
I did not hang up the phone. Cause he would have got pissed off and called and called and filled up the answering machine.
Instead I left the phone off the hook after I laughed at him.
His family called me a month later to say he took his life
Yes, Oxy and it is obvious that the poverty being created in our country today by the banks is a form of sociopathy. The need to create drama is the reason. The strategy is to spread a story of “the sky is falling” unless you give us more money. We’re too big to fail. Everyone will fall with us.
As soon as we printed more money, they all went on expensive luxury trips – remember that? Their response when questioned was, “that was OTHER money” How many of us have personally experienced this with our personal P? Now they have the money and like the greedy misers they are, they are hording it and won’t loan it out. Everyone who purchased a home and tried to live beyond their means deserves to lose their homes, but the banks and wallstreet firms who were speculating beyond their means – well they get bailed out by US homeless people.
As technically advanced as the human race has become, there is no excuse for poverty. It is only sociopathy that creates it at this point.
Dear Jeannie,
I’m glad that you are not trying to take responsibility for him taking his life…that is what they want. They want us to take responsibility for everything stupid they do.
I am also glad that you “got it” on what he was doing by calling supposedly to see his son…he didn’t care about his son, only using it as an excuse to talk to you…good for you!
Your son may be curious about his father, just because the man is “not there”—I was curious about my own sperm donor and boy, when I DID find out he was EVIL it was very painful to me. No one actually warned me about him, and so I gave him the benefit of the doubt which let him get close enough to wound me deeply. I hope that your son will not be wounded by his sperm donor’s desertion or take the blame for his father not being there. At least he has a good and caring mama to help him through that when the questions come up (I’m not sure how old your son is) and that is more than I had. You get it about what was going on with his sperm donor—he wasn’t a father because fathers EARN that term by more than just donating their sperm.
Sky, I agree with you, the “rich” FAKERS like Bernie Madoff’s create one kind of poverty, and people who are criminal and steal and do “dope” etc create another kind of poverty….and it snow balls into recession/depression. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
I’m not blaming all the “poor” for being “poor” but many times they are poor because either a criminal psychopath of one sort or another uses/abuses them directly or indirectly. The people who got cheated by Madoff and lost their retirement are poor now, through no fault of their own except trusting a psychopath—the woman who marries one and is left destitute with a house full of kids is poor, through trusting a psychopath. So maybe the poverty isn’t DIRECTLY the fault of the poor, but indirectly through the psychopath. So psychopaths cause poverty, not the other way around. From the state house to the white house to the slums, directly or indirectly, poverty comes from psychopathy.
Erin Brock
I felt relief at word of his passing. But that relief was only a minute, then I remembered I had the terrible job of telling our son.
I didn’t tell him for about four days. I didn’t know how. Finally I told him and asked if he wants to go to church. I ran him to church and had a priest light a candle for us and say the Lord’s Prayer.
My son was so broken hearted at the loss of his father. Worse was my live-in boyfriend couldn’t deal with my grieving child. We had to move.
My boyfriend wouldn’t even allow a candle vigil in HIS HOUSE.
Anyway, I was surprised that the school and my son’s baby doctor did not complain about me smelling of beer, and the sticky spray all over me and my purse. I gotta wonder if they knew why.
He would have hit me if I stayed with him.
I didn’t cook supper one night. It was a Friday. My older kids went to their dad’s house and our son wouldn’t take a nap that day. I was worn out. I even turned off all the lights in the house to encourage him to sleep. He came home from work and got in my face. He said NO to the fish fry that I suggested. He said he is a man and he expects supper when he comes home from work. Well, he forgot to mention that he worked seldom if ever.
That was the first time in the years I knew him that I didn’t have supper ready, and it was the last. I was afraid to let that happen again. Yet, it was ok if he didn’t like the looks of my cooking and he would say let’s eat out. But, it was NOT ok for me to suggest eating out.
Anyway, on to 2004. I was hunting him down on internet. I was hunting him down cause he was using our son’s identity.
See, I knew he used our son’s idendity when our son was three. But, I was too busy to chase him at that time.
Yet, when the time was right and I had a computer (with my poison pen fingers) I chased him down.
I was on a mission. I notified police departments in the areas where his family lives. I notified the unemployment offices, social security fraud, you name it.
Then I laughed at him. He called to talk to our son. But, it was the usual stupid stuff of “I’ll pay you child support if you let me see my son”.
I laughed and left the phone off the hook.
A month later he was gone.
geminigirl,
I feel the same way about that piece of (*hit)
But isn’t it tough when my child loves that man.