Editor’s Note: Lovefraud received the following story from a woman whom we’ll call “Abigail.” She relates how she fell for her so-called boyfriend’s lies, over and over.
I met my now ex-boyfriend June 2004. I had been divorced for 4 years; my kids were 7 and 10. He is a police officer. The night I met he seemed depressed, I asked him, “Why are you so sad?” He replied, “I got divorced this week.” By the end of the night I was really excited; I really liked him!
I had been alone for four years. We started dating. Since I thought he was recently divorced, I didn’t question him when he didn’t call and sometimes, although I would speak to him, I wouldn’t see him on the weekends. That only lasted for a couple of months. Then we were seeing each other all the time, going out every weekend. We would go everywhere, alone, with friends.
That Christmas he gave me a beautiful diamond heart. I didn’t spend the holidays with him as I had not met his family, again thinking that due to his recent divorce, it was okay. April of 05 he decided to go to Vegas with his mom, didn’t ask me to go. While he was gone, I decided to take my diamond heart to get cleaned. That’s when my life turned around. I searched for the diamond certificate. When I found it; it was carefully cut out—amount, address, phone number. I thought my children had done that. I called my friend and she immediately said something is very wrong! I called my sister and asked her to check the clerk’s records for divorce files — yep, no divorce! He had been lying to me for almost a year!!!!!!! By then I was totally, stupidly in love with him!
After that I confronted him. He cried; he got a nosebleed. Please forgive him! “If I told you, by the time I knew I was in love with you, I was afraid you would leave me. We live in the same house but we are not together.” We were separated two weeks and then he said he just couldn’t live without me. “I will get a divorce, I promise.” I fell for it a million times.
Timeline
November of 05 — his wife got pregnant, in vitro fertilization, I thought I was going to die when I found out. I forgave him.
December 05 — wife loses pregnancy. He told me nothing would make him happier than becoming a father.
January 06 — we plan a pregnancy, without him giving me any reassurances. I took the chance because I loved him and wanted to see him happy.
February 06 — I get pregnant, one week later he walks in, tells me he can’t do it! One week after that, I abort the pregnancy that was created with such love! (By me.) I went alone, of course. Night of the abortion, he calls begging for forgiveness, he didn’t realize what he was doing, please do not abort when he knew I had already done it.
Read more — Sociopathic seduction: As long as it takes
March 06 — I forgive.
April 06 — He moves out of the marital home and in with his mother.
November 06 — He tells me his father is sick and needs to travel. I get suspicious, check AA airlines — he left to go to Washington with his wife. Wrote me a letter, which his mom handed to me. “Please forgive me for this trip, I need to end my previous life so that I can start new with you.” A few weeks later, I forgive.
February 07 — Picks fight with me — I get suspicious — pretend I know that he is going away — find out he is leaving on a trip to Puerto Rico with the wife, although they no longer live together. He texted me 10 days in a row from his trip — it’s a business trip, please forgive him. When he gets back I get an email from his wife, seemed like, excuse my husband for taking a trip — the email stated that it was a business trip and that she knows he was texting me and that they grew apart. One day later — I forgive him.
In 2007 we went back and forth a million times. In December of 07, again he went away to Jacksonville. The next couple of years were the same—promises, promises, he went to see an attorney several times, but never went through the divorce.
February of 09 — We broke up.
July of 09 — He begged me back. Bought rings for both of us, wanted to bring the family together to give me the ring in front of them. I refused after I found out that he went back home, took her to New York, then came back and decided that it was never going to work with her.
Finally together
I refused him until September 09. We got back together; it was good for the first time in a long time. He moved in this past December. Still no divorce. We brought our families together; I thought this was it! This past Saturday, he was in the shower, his phone was buzzing, I checked his messages for the first time, it was her! Asking him where was his happiness, why was he doing this, she wanted an answer.
I confronted him—why he was communicating with her? He denied everything. I told him to please just tell me the truth; he was being so good that I knew that maybe it’s just her. He denied. I asked him about the divorce, he said it would get done. When? His reply — when it does. Finally I said I was going to email her to get answers.
That’s when he lost it! He asked if I wanted bloodshed. He took me to the bedroom got his gun, loaded it and placed it on his head. I told him all he was doing was diverting from the truth, all this drama in order for him not to tell me the truth. He said he was going to do this outside. My 13 year old was in the other room. We walked over to the back door, at which time he started kicking it because the key wasn’t in the lock. When I didn’t get the key, he shot the door. HE SHOT THE DOOR!!
He has never displayed this aggression before. Also, in the almost two months we were living together, he never discussed what bills we were going to pay. He bought the food and that’s it, knowing that I’m drowning and behind on the mortgage. But he was still paying half the mortgage of the marital home.
I still can’t believe how calm I was; I guess maybe shock??? I picked up the shell of the bullet, looked at him and said, “You know this is it, and all because you wouldn’t tell me the truth.” He packed up everything and left.
Don’t feel sad
Last summer I did see a therapist and he did tell me that he is a sociopath and I still went back to him. l’m relieved; for the first time I don’t even feel sad. I can’t believe it took this for me to realize that I would have been at this for years to come.
So sorry, I know this was long, but it makes me feel better. I have even lost friendships because of him. My best friend just got so tired of seeing me like this that she literally broke up with me, saying it was just too painful to watch.
I wish I could write a book or talk to people about how important it is not to get robbed of your own emotions. It happened to me in the worst way and took six years away from me. I’m petrified to start over. I don’t know if I can!!!
Thank you for taking the time to read about my difficulties. I even have a feeling of embarrassment. I am smart, good mom, have survived on my own, held the same job for 17 years. I thought I knew better than this!
Learn more — Why it’s so hard to get over loving a sociopath and how you can recover
Lovefraud originally posted this story on Feb. 25, 2010.
If a sociopath cries at movies, does it mean he has feelings?
Jell:
I’m happy you’ve found Lf……Keep your head high, focus on your journey and allow the time to heal ya…..
Keep on reading the old articles…..I still go through them and find things helpful…..and I can read them again….from a different healing point perspective….
There is so much support here at LF……we’ll hold your hand when you need it….or well slap ya upside the head for a reality check….and ALWAYS with love!
Take it easy on yourself…..and be good to yourself and remain strong….cuz HE AIN”T THE ONE THAT”S GONNA CHANGE!!!!
XXOO
EB
Erin….another thought.
When we don’t let out the TRUTH, of how unhappy and full of anxiety we feel….it HAS to come out somewhere.
In YOU CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE , Louise says that BOILS are ANGER, boiling over, seething!
This is EXACTLY how I felt at the time…
I was angry at myself for putting up with him…
And, it came out.
You spent many years with that monster.
Thank God you are alive and well and free of all of the diseases that YOU caught before they got you!
Now I know why you are so strong and wise!
thank you!
Jelltogether –
I like your list too!
Im glad youre feeling better today.
Time for new beginnings and self-actualizing…with that comes endless potential to make our future and our future relationships both healthy and happy. Its in our hands. In our awareness of who and what is healthy for us and who and what is not healthy for us. Through devastation and destruction comes rebuilding when we are ready….so many of us are ready willing and now at the point able to embrace the reality of what its going to take to heal and remain focused on healthy choices.
We are not those women… we chose to create the woman we want to be…we become a S/P/N’s nightmare! And thats the way we want it to be! Because healthy kind honest real peeps = need only apply for our friendship/love.
I was talking with an old friend of about 35 years this afternoon and we talked about how difficult it is for the love and dream to have been real to me when it was not to him and how the reflex which allows us to let them or want them to be true is one which seeks the strength and nuture of the partner we believed in the first place -which is the natural place to seek the comfort and safety from the disaster they wreak on us to go.
Its the hard part for me – to know he is the person who lied and who caused this feeling that my guts were ripped out by his bare hands because he didn’t just get into my jeans- he got into my identity and he manipulated it without remorse.
I have to believe that the great truth which I see here over and over and the thing to celebrate in every breath is that we have the ability to feel and that happiness is not possible without its opposite- unhappiness.
If you may not feel one, you may not feel the other and it is truly sad for these who lack the ability to feel.
It is our strength as well as weakness – but that is the nature of things.
I have no doubt of the promise in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that Love is the strongest of all powers and that of them all, it endures. The love of family and friends and the community of which we are part is a strength that is greater than calculation becuse unlike it, the love endures.
The power to be unhappy has within it the power of its opposite. And the choice to to be grateful for our blessings, for the love that is in us and around us is what yields happiness which can not be taken by anyone -especially anyone who lacks the ability to comprehend it.
Oh it hurts to find my love unrequited and to uncover the sordid truths. It hurts to know there is no answer which can be made because there is no comprehensible way to express it to him. There is no result possible.
So the decision becomes, where to invest myself. And I believe that we all must make that very clear decision to focus on where love is in our lives and take the steps to leave behind the pain that we’ve carried like pack mules which allows us to think of ourselves as victims and invites this lie into our lives.
I won’t be the same again. And in that regard find that there is a great love behind the opportunity to heal. This, I believe is God at work in our lives. There are women out there who will know the pain but not the truth and in this, to have found this place and this information and this community, we are greatly blessed.
My friend and I talked long about how much energy it takes to repair ourselves spiritually when we’ve been ripped open like this. Its a lot of work, but not obviously productive except that we begin to tell our story differently as we learn from what we’ve been through.
My story?
I am a strong and loving woman who is blessed by the love of friends and family.
Who is part of a loving and supportive community.
I am empowered by this love to move on with my life and to return that love to those around me whom I trust.
I choose to find the beauty of this and each succeeding moment in life by connecting to God in me and around me and when I am not happy, I can find peace in the understanding that good things and bad things come into my life and that at any time, I may choose to focus my energy on the good and that where I put that energy is where my path will unwind.
When bad things come, I will do the right thing. And I will repeat doing the right thing over and over without dwelling on what is bad. I will not put energy into it and invite more because that is what I will when I focus on negative emotions.
I will recognize them, acknowledge them and keep MY focus on love because love endures.
And, Love heals all things.
With love to the hearts that share my pain and the wise and loving women around me who have been here and done this.
I just read ‘somebody tell me why he did this’ article again. The whole part about how empathetic people don’t recognize the spath is so powerful to me. I have always described myself as empathetic! Personality tests have always come back that I am that way too. I thought that I understood the hurt of his childhood as I was hurt too as a child. I thought that my friends who did’t like him just didn’t understand him. HE would tell me that I didn’t understand him!! He was right–I didn’t because I couldn’t understand someone who could just hurt someone so much and just walk away. One of the last things he said to me when I asked him if he had fallen in love with his new woman was–and I quote–“I don’t love anybody” and it finally hit me this time–he was telling the truth. He didn’t just mean that he didn’t love this new person–he truly doesn’t “love” anyone. He can’t. Not his kids, who he professes to love so much, not his grandchildren and certainly not me. It’s funny, he has hurt his children to the point that one of them won’t even see him, another avoids him,one only tolerates him because he gives him some money and the other is disabled. He doesn’t have much to do with his grandchildren after they reach a certain age(the age where they start to question why he doesn’t follow through on seeing them or doing stuff with them) YET he says he loves all of them so much!! When I think of how he would say to me that I didn’t understand how much he loved me (usually he would say that when he was drunk of course) and I would ask him why did he hurt me so much then, there was never any answer, he tried to make me feel like I had no understanding of how much he loved! It was such a deflection.
Silvermoon,
Beautiful thoughts from a beautiful person. I love your posts!!
Jel
witsend,
You are very right on the money. He doesn’t even have the capability to begin to perceive the hurt, pain and devastation he left in his wake and now he thinks he can come back and do it again? Well, no. In the REAL world that we all live in, this won’t happen. He cannot conceive, in his mind, that I would even say NO, but that’s already happened and I know full well that he will try again. Things will heat up in his life and the pressure will start. I’ll do what I did before. I’ll let the authorities know the whole story. Here’s something that’s almost comical to me. Just this month, he was arrested AGAIN for petty theft. He didn’t know it, but it was in the paper here. When confronted by one of our mutual friends, he said he had never done that. YET. it was in the paper! I think I’ll just stick to the real world, thank you very much. His next place of residence will most likely be the somewhere in the penal system. Again. The longer I go on without this menace in my life, the better off I am. I’ve had some really rough days, but I’m starting to have some really good ones too!
As for the next woman in his life, he already has one. The ONLY thing I want to do is tell her to run as fast as she can, but I’ve refrained from doing that. I’m fully aware that he would only come back with an excuse to everything I told her. I know she’ll learn the hard way and I hope, for her sake, it’s not too harsh. On my part, I have no jealousy. One can’t be jealous of a relationship that isn’t real because he isn’t real. I am so detached, for the most part, these days from the myth he presented himself to be.
You are welcome to everyone who liked “The Awakening”. I should have shared that a long time ag. I read that piece often and there isn’t a part of it that I don’t relate to. And I love wind chimes…I have some out on my patio…. 🙂
Omg…My xmonster would always end our relationship with “GOODBYE, I LOVE YOU” . How pathetic.
He also doesn’t like children…once they assert themselves..he only likes helpless creatures..(just like my mon…loved babies! She needed control)
He avoids his grandchildren, esp the older ones.
He works with disabled people…retarded ones! He can control them!
He was a police officer….CONTROL AND POWER.
Once he saw me asserting MY needs and wants, he ran!
I call them “monsters”…like Lady Gaga does!
I cannot even say his name anymore. In fact, I deleted his name from my cell…something I couldn’t do last time the bomb fell.
Funny, I was on myspace and my sister told me to contact this woman who was sortof a spiritual ‘psychic’.
She wrote me a letter and said….”Get away from this person, because when the bomb falls, you don’t want to have to pick up the ashes” She was right.
I really understand it all now, and its from this wonderful site with the wonderful support here.
Its just so scary…like I was living in the Twilight Zone!
I feel so FREE….and so many little miracles are already happenning today!
Everything is falling into place.
Every man I got “involved” with, all of the S’s, all wanted my money, sex, status of being with an attractive woman (even though I never thought I was), and control over a subservient woman.
I have a NOTE he wrote me in work a week after we got together..It said…”I don’t know what it is about you..I am not that dominant, but you are so submissive and I love it”
Imagine that…They are CLUELESS to what they are…and if you try to explain to one, what he is….he will say…”what are you a doctor now?”
And they rarely ever agree to counselling….when I asked him to go he said…
“Therapist have opinions..and opinions are like a@.......@holes…everyone has one ”
Imagine…an educated man that doesn’t believe in psychology?
OMG…what the heck was I with?
I HOPE that he finds another victim and never tries to contact me….I will hang up the phone.
He doesn’t even deserve one ounce of my attention, no less to hear my voice…which turned him on!
He was so perverted always joking and calling me a slut or whore…
It wasn’t funny. The truth was said in jest….he meant it.
Thats all I was to him.
The rest of the “caring” about me were crumbs to keep me around…
NOw I finally GET IT>
UNDERSTANDING is key to this nightmare of a journey.
Dear silvermoon,
You know the greatest story in the Bible in my opinion is the betrayal of Christ by Judas. I know that Peter was weak and denied Christ when the “chips were down” and Peter was afraid, and I think we ALL do things that we are ashamed of later when we are afraid or whatever, but my point is here, how disappointed and pained Jesus must have been to have one of his closest friends betray him for the price of a common slave.
Judas took the money back and threw it down, then went and hanged himself…I’m not sure he didn’t repent of what he had done, didn’t realize the gravity of what he had done, but that is neither here nor there, God is his Judge, not me, I can’t know what was really in Judas’ heart, but I CAN have empathy for what Jesus as a man felt by the betrayal, even though He knew it was coming.
Every one of us here has been BETRAYED by someone we LOVED…someone close to us, or some ONE(S), plural, and that pain is deep because we DID love them with every inch of our souls. Having a STRANGER attack you is one thing, but having someone you LOVE attack you, use you, crucify you emotionally and/or physically, is the height of pain not only physical, but emotional as well.
That emotional betrayal I think is more painful by 1000 X than the betrayal by a total stranger that you don’t EXPECT to be good to you.
And when they suffer NO consequences from that betrayal it makes it feel even worse to us.
Dear Jell and Happy, I am sooooo glad you guys found LF I can hear the strength that you are both displaying and the LIGHT IS COMING ON, and doing away withh the darkness where you have lived. TOWANDA GFs! You are on your way and I am soo happy for you both! (((Hugs))))