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?
erin1972, I am glad you found this site also! Believe me, I have in the past been curled up in a little ball on the floor crying. It does get better, once you begin to understand you are not the crazy one. I thought everyone was like me, honest, compassionate, and I thought the man I was with was feeling the same things about me that I was feeling about him, it was such an intense relationshit for me, how could someone LIE about that? Wow, it really took a lot for that to sink into my head. Yes, we learn a lot about “them” on this site… but even better is how much more we learn about ourselves. I will admit that I still think about him (probably too much). I saw red flags in the beginning, but I chose to ignore them (a lifelong pattern for me, NOT ANYMORE!)
Of course when you confront a lying piece of sh*t they will turn it around on you… S or no S, some people are just toxic pieces of cr*p. Oh, don’t get me started! I’m in a cursing mood tonight!
There is NO way that I would ever go back to him. It was easy for me to go NO CONTACT with him because my ranking police officer boss at my dream job knows the whole story. She had me put it in writing. She and another ranking officer signed it with me. She said that if there continued to be contact on my part, it would jeopardize me getting my career back and NOTHING is going to keep that from happening-especially him or his crazy wife. Her blackmailing me is also in the report that we put in internal affairs. At least it’s all documented in case he would try to come back. One of my friends who worked with us said that he was acting like Satan himself at work after our breakup. He was back to terrorizing people and screaming, etc at people. She also felt that he would eventually try to get back with me later and my stepmom feels the same. His life at home with her is probably much more miserable than it’s ever been. I’m sure that she is all over him and keeping him on a real short leash-being a total pain in the ass. He may be stupid enough to think that I would be weak enough to go along with it. My best friend says that the relationship made me weak. She thinks that I am strong like wonderwoman and she knows when I am in a bad relationship because it weakens me. She asked what happened to the strong woman I know. Part of the reason I am having such a hard time is that I have to work with some of his buddies at my current job and these surgeons ALL stick together. Another reason is that the Tiger Woods crap is all over the place. I have heard the things that he said to some of his women and it is identical carbon copy of the things that Alan said to me and they fell for it too. I will be SO much better when I can get the police job back because I tend to throw myself into work when my personal life sucks. I despise my current job due to all of the drama there and that is NOT what I need right now. I am looking to transfer to another area in the hospital. We used to go shoot our guns togther and it’s scary knowing that he has that .45. He has no business with a gun. I’m not afraid of him because I have two, and WAY too many friends in the police who would be there in minutes if I needed them. I would not be one bit surprised to find hidden violence in his background. I also read about that sociopathy is common among surgeons-most are highly narcissistic. I believe that some sociopaths become surgeons because it is a legal way that that can cut on people. Why go out and commit acts against animals or others when you can get off doing it all day long at work with no consequences. It probably provides pleasure for them and they ARE big huge cowards. They can dish it out but they can’t take it!
Erin-and everybody!
Katleen Hawk’s articles on this site are fabulous.
If you haven’t yet, you might want to read through them.
I want to second what Matt has said – life does come back – I was with the P for ten yrs and most of those were a rollercoaster that we all know so well. I split with him four yrs ago then got back with him – we all take them back! Two yrs ago I ended it for good and he wheedled his way back in again as a ‘friend’. I am now at almost four months no contact.
When he left, I had no friends, a good job, but no life and was seriously depressed. I wondered how I would make it through. I came and posted at this site almost constantly and everyone said things would get better but I couldn’t see how. I was just too hurt. Like many posters here, my ex moved onto a new woman within weeks of moving out and she is totally smitten with him. i too asked the same questions:
*Will he be different with her?
* Will she make him happy?
* Why me?
I now realise he will never change and she is just in the honeymoon period before seeing the real him – his mask will slip eventually because that is his nature – pathology. He is incapable of love, change, emotions and sustaining a relationship. So she will probably suffer the same fate I did and there is nothing I can do about it. If I say anything to warn her then I will be cast as ‘the bitter and jealous ex’.
I now have friends, am coping with taking care of my life, am dating and am moving on. I will never forget what happened but am determined not to be bitter. Life is coming back slowly and it will for you new posters too – no contact is what does it even though it hurts at first. I wanted to call him so badly in the beginning but now I am so glad that I didn’t – he isn’t worthy of my time or energy.
Hugs to everyone healing from this awful experience!
This month is my actual two year no contact date. I remember that last time he left by the season, the maple trees were just budding. I went through that spring and following summer in a dull trance like state. It was like recovering from coma, had to relearn so many things. So much of me he took with him. The next spring and summer were better, thanks to this site and many months of reading self help books, lot of introspection. But like Midlifecrisis I guess I will never forget, he is the face of that pain. His face still holds that ‘place’ I wanted to find with ‘ that’ someone special..But this spring I have more of me and an excitment about the season. I can smell the earth heaving and preparing to come alive again..so I am better..
hi shabby and henry and all …
so many positive comments here today, i hate to rain on everyone’s parade! having a really bad day. sunny and warm outside… and I’ve been in all day, feeling incredibly fatigued and depressed. it’s been 18 months (wow) no contact, and overall I’m healing emotionally and having mostly good days.
yet, today, I can’t stop thinking about him and what he did; have been asking myself, “how COULD he do that to ME!” “how could he be SO destructive to EVERYONE in his life!” “how could he not care at ALL about our 25 years as best friends and lovers. you know, all the unanswerable spath questions. unbelievably, I believe that he was the coolest, most amazing, sexiest, most desirable person in the world, and he still is. I’m 100 lbs heavier, sickly, exhausted and old-lookin’.
I realize that I’m nowhere near healed; I’m still victimized within myself. whether, day to day, I believe all the lies isn’t the issue. INSIDE of me I believe them. he told me, laughing, “no one wants you,” and he was right. “you’re just not feminine anymore, and I don’t like cave women!” he’s right. I used to clomp around sometimes so angry and frustrated and must have looked nuts. he left me such a shell of who I was when we got back together 6 years ago. a shell, like him. he’s empty, so he had to make sure I was too.
okay, I’m sorry. just needed to vent a little. just having a little pity party, I guess. all of the emotional discord and sickness is just sitting within me. I literally can’t move. I’m going back to sleep. I despise him and hope he burns in hell ” after his dick curls up and falls off.
Dear Henry,
Congratulations on 2 year anniversery, gosh and I was the first one to welcome you here, and I think I had been here six or eight months by then. I think it was the previous fall to when you came to LF that I came here., I was on a Sam Vakin site for some months before that and it was turning into an abuse site as the Blog managers were abusers themselves. Sheesh, when I found LF I came here, but I was so fragile and so expecting Donna to be like the other site I was so nervous and walking on egg shells here.
Of course I did realize eventually that Donna is not like that at all. This place and the wonderfull people here from Donna, Liane, and all the authors, and all the bloggers is a supportive place.
Glad it has been two years for you, Henry, I have enjoyed your company on our mutual journey of discovery and healing. I have seen tremendous growth in you and want to say a big TOWAND-O to you! High 5, and a big cyber (((((hug)))))
Hens,
I applaud the anniversary and look forward to my own milestone.
Today, we have been apart because he is in jail for as long as we were married.
I wrestle with believing that the gentle person who slept beside me is a stranger to me now. It is impossible to fathom that he was a fantasy- a ghost called up from my imagination and presented to me as the reflection of all that I dreamed up for many,many years.
It is the stuff novels could be made of.
But that is the difference between what is in plain sight and what is in the eyes of the heart. What he gave to me was a gift far more precious than the illusion he played.
If I were to write a letter to this Dark Angel I would thank him for the opportunity to learn what I have about what love really is, or is not. I would thank him for giving me that sense of being secure because when he came into my life, I wanted nothing more. I would thank him for teaching me that it has been mine all along because perhaps the only way I could find it is to have been pushed past the point of breaking emotionally and only by breaking could I find the place of strength past the old emotions that invited him in.
I will always wonder about those parts of the story that I will never have the time nor the resource to prove for him and in truth I suspect that there are parts of it I really do not want to know. Over time, it will subside. In time, I will let go completely and if his memory is sustained, the incidents will be few.
Today, it is all still raw and huge. In two years it won’t be and it ten it will be less.
My burdens have been taken to the cross already. I am forgiven. I am loved and this year, the season of Easter has such profound meaning for me because I have reached a new understanding about what it means to suffer- not only for myself, but for these Dark Angels who can not feel and whose lives are empty because of it.
They make their way through the world preying on the love and feelings of others and paying for it with sexual prowess and manipulation.
In the ten years hence, his ability to continue will be diminished by his age and the natural process of it and I will have become a stronger, wholer being out of the same experience.
I see the face of what is truly Divine and loving in the community here and it personifies to me what is special. I hear what is genuine in the words and kindnesses of the ones who support me among family and friends of my lifetime and learn that what is real endures even if it is not always an adrenalin rush.
I love the metaphor you wrote about with the changing of seasons because my sense of nature is that it is relentless in its forward progress regardless of any carnage made by our kind and left to lie.
It is good to be hand in hand with remarkable spirits here who go forward into the new season of renewal and fitting somehow to me, that the timing of it be now.
Thank you silvermoon and ox – Oxy I found love fraud april of 2008 just days after his last departure, yes you were the first to respond to me and then others after you. You seemed to have your chit together then, guess you had to hold us up and that helped with your healing. I feel sad for lostingrief she seems too be in so much pain. It doesnt help when the x spath is much younger and beautiful on the outside, my x was 12 years younger, even in a healthy relationship that would be a big tug on the older one’s ego , I would think.
Erin,
I read your story and it sounds so much like me. He said all the right things, he craved being with me all the time, the sex was fantastic, his so called ex wife didn’t mean a thing to him, didn’t have any feelings for her, etc, etc. This is their game. He left me four times, twice for his ex, and twice for other women–the last time just one month ago. I felt and still feel at times like I am going to die. I have let him come back in the past, he cried and told me I was the one he loved , the others never meant anything. This last woman is new so he is on his honeymoon phase with her. I have had enough of feeling like shit and being hurt. I know who he is now like I never knew before. I wanted to deny that he was who he is. I didn’t want to believe it because what would that mean –that I loved a scumbag? Yes it hurts and yes you want them to hurt too but guess what? They don’t. It is horrible to feel that they can just walk away from you but they will. Every day does get a little bit better. There will be days were the longing for what you thought you had feels like it will kill you but it doesn’t. NObody understands how you feel better than everyone here because unless you have lived with one of these liars, you just can’t fathom that there are people like this in life. We are good people who believed in love and there is nothing wrong with that. But we meet the greatest enemy of love, a sociopath. Everyday I try to practice some serenity in some form because it gets me through the day. I am struggling each and every day. I come here and read, I go to 12 step meetings and try to surrender to a higher power becuase I realize that he was my drug. I became addicted to the drama of trying to be the one he loved the most, the one he would return to, the one for him. It is slowly hitting me that there is no ONE for him, there are many and he doesn’t love any of them, least of all me. Only I can love me.
Do I struggle with this every day? Sure but it IS getting better every day, one tiny fraction at a time. We are all here to help each other. Don’t beat yourself up. You are a loving person, like all of us, you loved someone well. He is the one who is lacking, he may have gone back but not because of anything you didn’t do. He is where he can operate the way he always has. And what does she have-someone who will do it again to her, and again. I have been on both sides and it sucks. One day you get so sick of the game and you stop. He cannot really love and as much as we don’t want to believe that, it is the truth. Your love was real, your feelings are real and what he said to you was real for the moment when he said them because words are easy for them. Real feelings are not. You become the liability because you expect them to live up to their feelings as truth and when that catches up to them they run. The truth of a real life is what they cannot deal with. My ex always blames me and said he doesn’t want any more of my bulls**t, he doesn’t want to deal with the problems. The funny thing is he is the one with the bulshhit, he is the one with the problems. My problem was him not working, his temper tantrums or him cheating on me! Wow I wonder why I had a problem with any of that.