In February 1999, my sociopathic ex-husband, James Montgomery, was finished with me. I had no more money, no more credit and no more earning capacity, because my business was ruined. So Montgomery arranged for me to find out that he’d had a child with another woman during our marriage. With this, I left, as I’m sure he expected.
Oh, he made a few attempts to reel me back in. “It’s not what you think,” he said. “Let me explain.” I didn’t. I kept driving.
I never saw him again. And now, after hearing so many of your stories about the sociopaths who won’t go away, I realize how lucky I was. I didn’t have a child with him. I didn’t have to attempt to co-parent with a sociopath, while the sociopath tried to turn the children against me.
My heart breaks for all of you in this unwinnable situation, stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Not long ago, I heard from a woman who is in this position. We’ll call her “Marsha.” Marsha was married for 16 years to a guy who she now knows is a sociopath. They’ve been divorced for two years. They have five kids—two teenagers, three younger. Her ex has regular visitation times when he’s supposed to pick up the kids, although he hasn’t shown up for his Saturday afternoon time in months.
Marsha sometimes sees her ex at events for the kids, which is uncomfortable for her. She writes:
The last one was particularly upsetting for me, as he came over to my mom and gave her a hug, asked her how she was, and appeared to be very moved to see her. I know it is all bs, but the cognitive dissonance it creates…
How should I “be” around my ex? Do I speak in a friendly tone, similar to the way he is speaking to me, do I keep everything monotone, do I try to avoid speaking to him altogether, or is there some other option?
I don’t know how to advise Marsha. So, Lovefraud readers, especially those of you who are coping with similar situations, what do you suggest?
I have one older child from my first marriage to a S and two younger children from my second marriage to, yes, another S (I was a slow learner). Both these S’s formed an alliance shortly after my second marriage breakdown in an attempt to “break” me so I know all about how difficult it is to conduct oneself in the face of manipulation, button-pushing and outright lies.
The S’s I had to deal with used every single nuance, frown, sharp word, etc.that I gave them to their advantage in their attempt to remove our children from my care (they hate paying their court-ordered child support but prior to that they gave a rat’s ass about the children, their visitation with them or their well-being). When I finally learned to be as neutral and unemotional as possible, they outright lied about me doing/saying things I hadn’t and use each others testimony as “proof” that I’d done as they said.
I learned this the hard way that every defense I gave my ex-S’s was a tool they would use to sharpen their lies and fill in the “gaps” of their story for the judge. Ultimately, it didn’t work for them to take the children away but they do have generous access (even the second one, who sexually assaulted our toddler daughter). But that was simply because their history had been to neglect the children up until they were court-ordered to pay child support. It was fairly obvious what the underlying motivation for their court action against me was so in that way, I was extremely lucky.
In a nutshell: If you are not a poker player, I strongly suggest you learn how to be one now.
Give away NOTHING about your emotional state. Be neutral, no matter what.
Give away NOTHING about your finances, your personal life, your work, etc. No small talk.
Accept and come to peace with the fact that virtually nobody else understands the ex-S like you do and you will probably never be able to fully convince everybody (including family members) to shun him the way you have.
Remind yourself when you do have to make contact with your ex-S that ANY information you share with him about you is a tool he will use AGAINST you, if he can.
No Contact is not an option when you co-parent with a S, so the next best thing is REDUCED Contact. Have a third party at exchanges to protect yourself from the inevitable slander and/or manipulations, communicate ONLY what you need to through e-mail (not phone or personal meetings) and do not respond to anything at all of a personal nature.
The ex-S considers your children “tools.” He will encourage your children to talk about you and use the information to his advantage to 1) get a reaction from you and 2) use his knowledge to “poison” your children against you.
Do NOT react emotionally in front of your children. This is exactly the response your ex-S is hoping for when your children report back to him. And he will use that emotional reaction to further “justify” his poisoning of you to them (and anyone else).
If you don’t react emotionally, he’ll probably lie anyway (like my ex-S’s did) BUT the lies will become incongruent with reality and your children will eventually clue in that what their father says about you just doesn’t make sense. It will take time and patience on your part to get there, though, and faith in your children that they will eventually understand.
My last piece of advice? TEACH your children to recognize Sociopathy/NPD. You don’t have to use your ex-S as a direct example (and it’s probably better not to otherwise it will look like you’re the one doing the poisoning) but when the opportunity presents itself (ie – a lie they’ve been told by their father about you), calmly and rationally explain it isn’t true and ask them why they think their father would lie about you. Get them to think critically. The only way our world is ever going to get better is when more people recognize and understand (if that’s even possible with these creatures) Sociopathy/NPD. Give your children the TOOLS they need to protect themselves from these predators in the future because I can GUARANTEE he’s training them to accept that kind of behaviour (otherwise he’d be “outed”).
I hope this helps you!
AKA Bob: I didn’t see your last post.
You’re BANG ON! That is a major difficulty in dealing with these critters as a co-parent – they don’t respond to the normal social rules of give-and-take.
As a parent, it’s horribly difficult to work around this because being ultra-rigid and not giving an inch (because they’ll take a mile and then some) comes across like you’re the one with the problem, not the S.
As a parent dealing with a S, though, it’s mandatory and well worth the risk of looking like a hard-ass rather than giving up that all-important source of Supply they’re looking for.
Hi everyone:
Ive been thinking…AGAIN :P…about the day our NC began. This was precipitated by a demand that I apologize to my ex for ‘offending’ him after he ‘just realized’ I had accused him of stealing from me. These demands went on for about 3 days and with each phone call where I refused to apologize he got increasingly angry and upped his ante from ‘you’ve hurt my feelings and I want an apology’ to “are you ready to apologize to me yet’ to ‘im gonna assume youre not ready to apologize to me and that we are not talking’.
On the 3rd day of his badgering over what I KNOW happened, and after I didnt call him all that day because I couldnt take it any longer, he left me a message. I had deleted his mother from a facebook account as a friend because I knew he was ‘creeping’ on my page through his moms account. His message was pitiful sounding…as if he were really ‘hurt’ over my insensativity and insinuations that HE would STEAL from ME! He left the message saying ‘Im gonna assume we are not talking because you’re not ready to apologize and you’ve deleted my mom as a friend from facebook. When you’re ready to apologize, Ill be here but until then I guess we wont talk’. We havent.
Heres my question…he has made NO attempts at contacting me for ANYTHING. It will be 3 months tomorrow of NC with him. I have a ‘feeling’ he will be contacting me…I dont know why, I just do. After reading more and more and more, I dont really know what to think though. Again, his belongings are here still as I certainly havent contacted him, however, it just seems strange to me.
I feel a little paranoid over this. When we broke up in June, on HIS terms, he wrote poems daily and sent them to me telling me how miserable his was. I DONT WANT HIM BACK…let me make this clear…I just feel anxiety over why he hasn’t made contact…like this is ANOTHER game…but cant really be a game cause we arent talking? Does this make any sense!!!
Jofary – you hit on something I didn’t mention – that I come across as the one with the problem. This happened recently when I unfortunately agreed to meet with the ex’s most staunch supporter. He kept pushing and pushing to know why I am so rigid with pick up/drop off routines. I couldn’t say “because she is a sociopath” because that would feed into their idiology that I am angry and hostile, plus they just don’t get it. We just continue to keep our heads down and remain rigid about boundaries.
I made the mistake of telling him “she needs to be kept within fences”. He responded, “Aha, you just don’t want to be controlled”. Righto, I don’t!
How I dealt with my first PX-I let him out of the child support if he would just go away. Which he did…for the $$.
Second PX: We have an adult daughter together…when I was no longer in the pic…his true personality took over and eventually he made our daughter so angry that she ditched him too. At some point he will surface again but they cannot maintain a relationship when you are no longer in the pic to pick up pieces.
Robxsykobabe:
GIRL…..get rid of his things….every last sock, every last item….PERIOD!
Then….you won’t worry anymore. Packem up and take them to moms house.
OR….you could send him a notice of abandoned possesions 14 day disposal…..
But, If you take them to his mothers, neatly packed up….then YOUR done.
He’s left them there for future contact….you know this.
And he’s keeping himself in your mind by ‘shaking it up’ and not doing what is characteristic by claiming them earlier.
SO…….it’s working isn’t it!
If your done, your done….do the ceremonial cleansing of his shit out of your ‘area’ and get rid of him completely.
Don’t rip up his stuff, don’t stain it with spilled ink ‘accidentally’, don’t ‘forget’ an item…….just give it back to him……
I remember packing up the S’s shit….the kids were riffeling through it like it was a damn garage sale…..I want this, I want that……I said NO firmly….This is NOT ours to take……I wouldn’t let them keep anything….not a shoelace…NOTHING….
But he was shocked…..I set it out on the porch prior to my hospitalization becasue I knew he would come over knowing I was gone and rifle through….so I did it for him…..
Take your shit and get the fuck away!
Since the divorce…..he was awarded a jet ski and cookbooks and a set of G. clubs…..divorce was mid may…..he’s NEVER attempted to make contact to get what he so diligently fought for in court…..you’d think he would of come by right away to claim them…..he didn’t……it was his LAST tie to me…..
So I severed that by sending a ‘shit or get off the pot’ letter…..of abandoned property…..never heard back and transfered title after that. Poof……ya waited too long fucker….take me back to court! There isn’t a judge on the planet that would think storing his shit for 8 months wasn’t reasonable…..
I wanted the jet ski……the rest i could care less…..but I needed to ‘sever’ the ability for him to ‘come back’ and think he had a reason.
So …….get rid of his shit…..and do it soon.
You’ll eliminate any connection to him and you will feel much better for it!
ErinBrock:
AHHHHHH HA HA! Thanks for the pep talk! My post I think sounded a bit like I was ‘waiting’ for ‘the call’…Im not. I just need to know if this IS, in fact, another tactic to keep me off balance. And, according to your post (which had me rolling by the way)…IT IS! So, again, Im not crazy! There was never an option to bring them to him…for gods sake…hell no!
Im thinking this cause he will be getting his license back in March…or POSSIBLY in March. It dawned on me the other day that he just may be keeping quiet because he has NO ONE to drive him to my house…except for mommy and daddy and even HE doesnt have the balls to ask them AGAIN to drive him to my house to get his shit. Maybe he is waiting until he gets the license so he can do this on his own…BUT…it will be too late cause his shit will be making ME money when I take it to Platos Closet!
Yes, another ‘tie’ to me…an ‘excuse’…god is he sick…reallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyy sick…
Thanks so much!
I’m nearly getting my divorce now and I can’t wait for that day! I still see S , in and out of the house, some days with a sour face, other days trying to please, I keep myself to myself, he sends texts to tell me he will be out having lunch with his friends, I take no notice of anything he does. His strange behavior still continues and I try not to think of it and of anything else related to him. Soon I’ll be moving to South America and my son is already there.
I realized that I cannot change him, hope for anything, cling to the past, have a normal present with him, so he is complete OFF grounds for me. It is a bit like if he had died. I have a vague feeling that I was married to him in a distant past, but it does not affect me. I never discuss anything with him, I’m on my own.I never ask any favour,I never expect anything from him, I behave politely and cold. My day to day does not includes him or anything to do with him. It took me two years of pain and tears to get to this point, but I did. A sociopath does not change.
The question: how should I ‘be’ around the ex s.
My answer…..exactly how is described above…..good going guys!
Never let him ‘in’ on your feelings……verbally or through emotions…..facial expressions or otherwise.
We need to appear strong…..wherever you pull it from….DO IT!
We need to appear in control and on top of ourselves.
NEVER engage in them….NEVER.
Because WE are in control.
WE MAKE THE DECISIONS.
Appear Happy and settled…..this takes work.
Never let them see you sweat….
If you can’t control yourself, remove yourself.
Walk with confidence and keep your head held high.
Fake it till you make it!
WE need to do whatever it is to give them the signal that WE are in control of US and THEY can’t trigger us, provoke us or engage us in their game of power over us.
WE all must have varied degrees of ‘contact’ with the S at times…..some none, some court contact only, some have children to parent, some have to wrap up posession exchanges, financial dealings etc….
We must set the tone, the pace and the direction of the ‘contact’ that allows us to be comfortable….
If we feel ourselves slipping, then pull away and reconsider the direction your going and how your proceeding.
We do not EVER have to engage in their games again…..we did it for too long already…..so WE CAN SET THE RULES NOW!!!
It’s called boundaries!
RobsX:
Are you KIDDING me? NO one will bring him to get his shit….yeah….I don’t believe that for a second…..
He’s thinking door #2….access to YOU!
If you wanted something bad enough…..you get it!
He’d of asked someone……
He’s waiting to do it himself, so he can have alone time with you….
NIX that idea!
It would be worth it to drag it all over to mom and pops so he has to face them!
But….make sure you take photos of all his shit….just to document that if he sues you…..the emarald city jewels were NOT part of his things…..
My tenent stated in court, when he sued me, that he had all designer shit….european shit and it was valued at like 50K…..
Unfortunately, he forgot he had left all the receipts with the shit…..all from Ross, ebay etc…..
Yeah, right…..the sheriffs and I joked he would come back at me and say he had the malteese diamonds that I must have stolen.
Just cut him off from any potential avenue he may travel on.
Glad you had a laugh…..we gotta see the humor in anything these days!!!!
Start packen girl!!!!!
🙂