Editor’s note: A Lovefraud reader, we’ll call him Jeff, sent the following e-mail to tell his story.
In 1981, I met the woman who later became my wife when we worked together in a furniture factory. She was 44 and married and I was a 30-year-old single “Christian.” What started out as a frequently adversarial interaction became a friendship within a year, and by 1982, she was telling me how horrid her marriage was because her husband was so loveless and mistreated her. White knight that I thought I was, I let my sympathy turn into action and eventually was convinced I loved her, which led to her inviting me to her home on an evening when her youngest daughter and husband were gone. It now seems apropos that I became an adulterer on Halloween.
From 1983 on to mid-1985, we had a relationship where she would send me loads of love letters and cards, and I would frequently come by her home during the day, since we were now both laid off from work. Once, she shared with me that she had six other lovers before me. Although that made me a little skeptical, I decided she really loved me and stayed with her.
In 1985, she called me from a pay phone in town and asked me to come and get her. When I picked her up, she told me her husband had kicked her out of the house and then tried to make up but she told him it was too late. She was grinning about it. I took her to live with me in a small trailer. That didn’t last long, because I came home one day and my elderly landlady was standing at the front door of the trailer, which was open with my woman, I’ll call her Sally, standing in it. My landlady was fuming. She told me that she had never been treated so terribly in her life, that “that woman” called her an old bag and a host of four-letter words, telling her to drop dead. I looked at Sally, who looked like she had no idea what was going on. Then I turned to my landlady and served her notice that we were moving.
“Dear John”
Within a month, we got an apartment. She got her divorce finalized in December. We both worked evenings; she at a family restaurant and I at a plastics factory in a town 12 miles away. Our only difference in schedules was that she had Wednesday nights off, while I had just the weekends. But Sally would leave during the day quite frequently, most of the time claiming she was going to help her youngest daughter with her new twins. She would be gone for anywhere from two to three hours each time she left and I never questioned it. In 1988, I got another evening job at a factory 45 miles away for slightly better money. That ended up being about $12 per hour. But the following year, I was hit by rheumatoid arthritis. It wracked my entire body with pain to the point that I couldn’t do normal functions, sometimes even unable to sleep. I began to work sporadically because of the flares. But one night in late 1989, I came home to find a “Dear John” letter. She was gone and had already moved all of her belongings out. I went to pieces and started drinking profusely, throwing my stuff around the house in my swings from anger to despair.
Proposed marriage
That led to me getting a room in the town 12 miles away and I worked when I could at the factory up north. But I couldn’t keep up because of the arthritis, so I took an extended disability leave. A month later, I had been notified by my former landlady that there were still some things to be taken out of the old apartment, so I went over — and found my father inside, with Sally standing behind him. She smiled and took me in her arms, and it looked like our relationship was renewing. In April of 1990, I proposed to her and she accepted. Our first home was the very efficiency she had moved to when she left me in 1989. The landlord also ran a high-tech hardware business out of the top floor of the building, and he was generally there during the day to work with a small team of employees. Even though I was out of my job on long-term disability, I was seeking therapy and vocational rehab to get me into another job more conducive to my condition. That took me out of the house on most weekdays, and she still worked evenings at the restaurant.
Living off insurance and her earnings wasn’t keeping our heads above water. She had told me she had been working for the landlord after she first moved in. She was continuing that, and when I got a job with the federal government as a GS-4, I also started working for the landlord to make up part of our rent. I had all the credit cards because none of the companies would approve any for her, and since we didn’t earn much, she encouraged me to buy a lot on credit. Furnishings, cookware, eating out on Saturdays, all went on credit.
After working at two different factories, I had developed a lot of friends, male and female. They invited me to parties and weddings. At first, Sally went to them. But then she started refusing to go on the grounds that they were my friends. That turned into several talks with me when she insisted that we were supposed to be best friends, and when I had her for a friend, why did I need all the others? So, I began to let my friendships fall by the wayside, one by one.
Sally’s complaints
About two years after marrying, we started having some bumpy spots. They were mainly Sally complaining about me belittling her (I had no idea how and she never told me), not being supportive, and looking at other women. She was the one doing the shouting. These moments didn’t last long, so I thought nothing of them. But I did notice that, through time, she had acquired a very profound knowledge of our landlord. She knew all about his business, about his likes and dislikes, his family, and his employees. But I let that go over my head. In 1994, there was a time that the landlord offered us a better, bigger apartment while she was at work. He ended up lying about the price the former tenants paid, so I said no and I told Sally about it when she got home. And she defended him. No matter what I said, she had something to counter it. I finally looked at her silently, then said, “when a woman takes a stranger’s word over her own husband, there’s something wrong.” But I let that go after a while, too.
We moved across town in 1995. After being there for nearly a year, the fighting started. It was all vocal, and it was still the same accusations, with something new”¦we weren’t having sex as often as we used to. Those arguments didn’t blow over so easily. We moved again in 1996, to an apartment about a block away from where we had first lived when we married. From that point on, I began to feel irritable once in a while, and found myself facing occasional bronchitis and other ailments, in addition to my arthritis. A few times, she would start complaining about something again and I tried to discuss it with her — such as my refusal to talk much about my job — but she refused to believe me. How could I deal with that? I learned not to say anything and just take it all.
She quit her job at the restaurant in 2000, claiming it was time to retire, even though she was two years away from the age for collecting full social security benefits. She took up babysitting for friends and family to make a few extra bucks on the side. I was still working days. I ran into a problem at work in 2002, which involved my supervisor attempting to railroad me as retaliation for getting her in trouble with her supervisor back in 1996. When I told Sally about it, she turned it into a story about me cheating on her and started yelling and crying. I began to believe that I had, and kissed her feet when she told me to. The ensuing two years after seemed fine, but then she started in on the accusations again. She would also call me at work, and if I didn’t answer the phone, she would demand to know where I was when I got home. And if I got home 10 minutes or more later than normal, she would demand to know where I’d been and would yell that I was with another woman.
As of 2005, she started complaining about the high debt load we had and insisted I do something about it. I contacted debt management firms who told me they couldn’t help because we had closed half of our accounts. We went to a series of debt management courses at our church. It helped us a little. We got counseling directly by a couple in church who specialized in debt reduction and budgeting, in 2006. We were starting to get at least a controlled budget.
Fighting a war
In 2005, I had started getting a hunch that Sally was fighting a war with me. I didn’t know why, so I dismissed it as my fertile imagination. But by 2006, I was convinced she was fighting a war, she would constantly do things she knew could irritate me, as well as noticeably confusing me about things going on. When I told her the car needed to be repaired, she denied it, I took it in and it needed work, and when I got back home, she insisted that she had always told me it needed work but I never believed her. But I refused to fight back, and when she complained vigorously, I would turn and walk away, knowing she’d never believe what I had to say.
She was adding more and more complaints against me: cheating, belittling her, disrespecting her, manipulating and controlling her, not planning things with her; there were a host of them. Once when I was talking with some of the women in church with her next to me, as soon as we got outside, she yelled at me for “making eyes” at them. Those kinds of accusations, and others, increased in frequency, especially in 2007, when she was also insisting that I should declare bankruptcy. She was also twisting things I said when she said them back to me and making me think I didn’t tell her something that I knew I had, or that some event or other that happened really hadn’t happened. And there was something new happening. Her daughters and sons-in-law were changing the way they treated me; the oldest now acted reserved when she came back into town with her pilot husband. I wondered what was going on.
I had being seeing a doctor for various symptoms during 2007 and early into 2008, and wasn’t getting much sleep, was overweight, and felt miserable all the time. I’d actually started feeling that way in 2002. But I now thought it was time for me to stop taking this treatment from her and start handing back to her what she gave out. Sometimes when we went into stores, she would walk three paces behind me, claiming that was her “slave position.” So, I would speed up and turn a corner into an aisle, forcing her to find me. If she’d give me something in my lunch that she knew I hated, I would bring it back home.
Depression
Things were building and I was feeling more and more ill and depressed every day. It all reached a head starting on June 10 of this year, after I had gone over to her daughter’s house to fix a computer. Her daughter lectured me there and talked down to me as if I was 10, so I finished the work and left without saying anything. I told Sally about it, and she said, “Well, you know how she is.” The next morning, her daughter called before I left for work and told her mother that I had slammed the door when I left and had been generally miserable to everyone, including her 14-year-old son, whom I loved dearly. And while she kept on talking to her mother, Sally started accusing me of doing everything that she’d said I had done, plus more.
I got to work. While there, I thought I’d try making amends by setting up a savings/checking account of her very own, so she wouldn’t have to share her money but could have it for herself. I neglected to call her first. At 1:00, there was a voicemail from Sally on my phone full of screaming and four-letter words. I couldn’t bear it, so I deleted it. I hoped that she would cool down by the time I got home. She didn’t. She was still screaming and yelling and sobbing in between. I was at my wit’s end, so I shouted, “That’s it! I want you out of this house!”
That’s how the divorce began.
Change of demeanor
But after I told her to get out, there were some changes that I didn’t understand. Her demeanor immediately underwent a sudden alteration. She stopped crying and yelling and said, “Well, finally! It only took me two years pressuring you to get you to do something about it!” She was all business from that point on. Hardly any emotion, except when she would talk on the phone, sometimes she’d laugh. And she would occasionally pass by me and say something snide. One of the things she said, as she stuck her face into mine, had to do with a running joke I had developed back in the 1990s, when I could set a VCR without the manual. “Remember how you used to say that you were the smartest person you know? Well, you’re not.” And the day before she went out the door for good, I had made a comment on how this is how an 18-year marriage goes down the hole, to which she replied, ”We never had a marriage.” And I witnessed her lying openly to people around us — including a policeman to try to get me thrown out of the apartment — without blinking an eye. From that point on, she kept her whereabouts a secret and asked people not to tell me.
Almost run off the road
I couldn’t figure out what had happened, but she no longer resembled the woman I married. After she left, I began to run all of the experiences, events, and words that had passed between us. And I remembered something that had happened a year ago. I was on my way to work around 7 a.m. and, five miles north of town, and a sea green Prius started to pass me, then cut back in at the last moment and tried to force me off the road. I honked, swerved, and hit the brakes. The next day, it happened again, so I wrote down the plate number and vowed to bring a camcorder with me so I could get video and present it to the State Police. It never happened again. Not long after that, we were on our way home from a city 60 miles north of us on a Saturday, and she brought up the name of our former landlord, right out of the blue, with nothing else said to prompt it. And then it wasn’t mentioned again. I later found a sea-green Prius parked in front of the old apartment building, and checked the plates against my note — they were the same. His being on the road when I was at that time was odd, because he normally came from his home in the north around 7 to go to his business/apartment building, stayed there until 6:30-7:00 p.m., then drove home. And he typically used a route different from the one I used to get to work. Why was he driving then and there, and why did he try to force me off the road?
I began to wonder if she had been having an affair with him, but doubted my thinking because I knew I was distraught over it all. But then I thought, “Well, the confirmation would be if she returned to an apartment in the same building he owned.” Although she had tried to make her location a secret, in early July I had seen her son-in-law’s face in a window as I was on my way home — and it was the old apartment building! I started considering other things, like her thorough knowledge of Doug and his family and business, her defense of him, and her getting the apartment the first time in 1989. She had gotten it secretly and moved right into it in one night. So she had to have known this landlord guy well in advance.
It’s my belief that she has been involved in an affair with this landlord, one that actually started before we were married, but that she carried into our marriage, suspended when we moved away, then resumed again some time after our move closer to the place. When she decided I was useless, unattractive, boring, and had found something better, she determined that having an affair would be suitable enough for her and justified it with her anger for me, which she still nurtures. She certainly has shown a pattern in her previous marriage, and it’s also interesting that she stayed in our marriage for 18 years, just over the 15-year state threshold to establish a permanent marriage, entitling her to 50 percent of everything I have, including my pay and retirement funds.
Numerous affairs
As I’ve reviewed things more and more, I realize that there are a number of times she could’ve had affairs with a number of men. And given her past admission, she probably has. I also know that she has lied consistently throughout our marriage, to everyone, not just me. I’ve discovered since June that, over the past three years, she has told everyone who knows me, from her family to the church members, that I’ve mistreated, abused, controlled, belittled, disrespected and cheated on her. She also told some of them that she tried to get me to go to counseling, but I refused. Amazing, since I’d been in psychotherapy from 2003 to 2005, and that entirely on my own. In fact, the only reason I stopped was because she said, ”Aren’t you cured yet? You’re spending too much money on this!”
In fact, she probably lied about her “admission” of having six other affairs before me. She most likely was testing me to see what my reaction would be, knowing full well that if she had actually told me the real number, I would have left at a dead run. There may have been only two times that she told the truth. The first: “Remember how you used to say that you were the smartest person you know? Well, you’re not.” The second: ”We never had a marriage.”
Planned the divorce
It is patently obvious to me that she had planned to divorce me for a long time, but wanted it to work out that I either walked out on her or kicked her out. And she more than likely had been provoking me over the past three years, just as soon as she hit the permanency threshold, trying to get me to explode, hoping that I’d turn violent. She didn’t get the latter. But she had started by setting the stage in 2000, when she quit her job so as to establish low income to get spousal maintenance in a divorce. When she reached 2003, someone advised her to stick it out another two years to hit the threshold. Then, for the first time in our entire “relationship,” she exhibited concern about our debt”¦ which was predominantly in my name.
Only when I told my story to my mother and my close friends did I learn that I had been a victim of psychological, emotional, and verbal abuse during my time with her. She never loved me. She held me in contempt from the start because I had a college education, while she had never finished high school (she wasn’t interested in it), and I was a professed Christian. She had to cut me down to size. And she spent 26 years doing it.
She has a tremendous appetite for three things: sex, money and power. She fed her power urges over the past eight years by manipulating me, her family, and the children she babysat. I should’ve believed my former landlady. Sally had deliberately caused an incident because she knew how I’d react; that I would insist on moving out of the trailer in the country and back into town, where she would be free to roam. As far as she was concerned, I was a loser, only good for sex. But she wasn’t even satisfied with having that only from me.
And when I contracted rheumatoid arthritis, I wasn’t even good for that, which explains why she walked out four months later. But she already had a replacement. She only got back together with me again for two reasons: her youngest daughter liked me, as did most of her family, and she met my father and wanted to tryst with him; a man closer to her age. She also figured that putting on another ring didn’t mean anything, since it didn’t with her first marriage. And she used me for cover. With me as her “husband,” no one amongst family or friends would ever question what she was up to. A single woman in her 40s, 50s, 60s would be more likely to have people wonder what she did with her free time. And I certainly wasn’t questioning her. I believed everything she told me, and trusted that she loved me.
She had the best of all possible worlds. And, somehow, she got money. Her lawyer requires a retainer of $5,000, and she’s been throwing around money left and right since she left. And all she ever showed me was $830 of Social Security and $139/week for babysitting. Meanwhile, I am barely able to make ends meet. Without her added income, I’ve minimized on everything so that I can keep costs down. I just have enough to pay all the bills, and put away a $75 reserve biweekly for emergencies. I don’t have enough money to pay for a lawyer, and legal aid won’t take me because I make $400 too much annually.
Program in motion
She knew that she would be dumping me some day. She waited for the appropriate moment and then started putting the program into motion. That started with quitting her job at the restaurant in 2000, two years before she’d qualify for full SSI benefits, then took those small jobs that paid “under the table.” By 2003, she was prepared for divorce and kept telling me, “Maybe you should stay with your friends in Charlotte for a little while,” because I was depressed. She repeated that proposal several times over the next four years. Had I gone, she would have filed for divorce immediately. But she was half-hearted about it. Someone had told her to stick it out until the 15-year permanency threshold. Once June 2005 came, she started talking about liquidation of the debt and commenced her campaign of emotional/mental attack and provocation. She intensified over the years until I told her to leave on June 11 of this year. She wouldn’t walk out because it would be harder for her to claim her share of my pay. And, when we had our fight, she made sure she got everything recorded as evidence.
I currently have no lawyer. I’ve had a few consultations, but no one will pick me up on a payment schedule. I’ve done what I could to study the statutes and court rules, contending with her lawyer solely by mail, because he double-dealt me the last time we talked on the phone. But she wants “spousal maintenance,” our state’s latest legal term for alimony. With my current expenses and debt, if she were to take more than $100 per month from my pay, I would be sunk.
This would be the result, by progression. First, I would be late on my debt payments, leading to defaulting. That would get me a bad credit rating. My federal credit cards would be withdrawn, and I need those to perform my assignments and to travel to other offices. I would be re-investigated by our Security division, found to be a high risk because I owe lot of money and can’t keep up, would no longer qualify for promotion or to move to another job with another agency, nearly all of my current assignments would be withdrawn because of my security status. I would be given small, make-work jobs. Unfortunately, these jobs are not commensurate with the position I hold. It would be just a few weeks before the position was reviewed by someone at HQ, who would see that it is not justified because of the assignments, and someone in some HQ office would send me a letter that says: “We’re sorry, but the Agency just doesn’t have any work for you any more.” And I would be dismissed.
Her lawyer would then tell the court that I arranged to get myself dismissed and the court would impute my former earnings to me. I would be unable to pay her spousal maintenance, and the court would order me incarcerated for failure to pay. And she knows all of this.
And this is exactly what she wants; the destruction of my career and life, completely. She doesn’t need the money. She just wants me out of town and absolutely destroyed. And I have no way to survive.
Never loved me
Daily, I live with the realization that she never loved me, that she held me in complete contempt because I had a college education and was a goody-two-shoes. And she intended to cut me down to size. And I believed all of her lies, not even trying to see the stuff that was right in front of me. I sinned against God and worshipped an idol that was created in my own image. I have to live with this for the rest of my life, however much of that is left. Because she will not stop until she has destroyed me thoroughly and utterly.
And now I realized I have looked into the eyes of Satan and been in his grip for 26 years. God help me.
As I write this, my health is getting progressively worse. I’m on two different anti-depressants, lorazepam for night (which hardly does anything for me), and getting counseling once weekly. I’ve lost 50 pounds since June, have little or no appetite, am nervous all the time, went back to smoking, and feel despair every day. When I’m not at church or visiting friends, I lock myself in my apartment and won’t go anywhere. I’m ashamed to let anyone see me like this. I get about three to five hours of sleep per evening, and have to leave the TV on if I expect to even get to sleep.
I don’t see any hope in my future. I wish I could.
I don’t mean to be holier than thou and I am sorry if I came across that way. I am here for my son and just trying to get at the bare nuts and bolts of this in a effort to help him although it might be futile. So I am questioning everything as maybe in the answer there may be some kernel that would shed some light on help for my son.
And I have never breathed the word spath or even incinuated it to him. That would surely put a screeching halt on any communication. I focus on the crazy making itself without applying a label.
And believe me I know. My son is one of the smartest people to come down the block so I know it’s not a function of intelligence as he is saying some of the nuttiest defy logic things in terms of her. For example “she is perfect, she has never done anything wrong…so I forgave her and took her back” Huh? If somebody has not done anything worng, what then is there to forgive???
Lisa,
If your son is as intelligent as you say, you could “insinuate” what you see is going on. Sounds like the communication is extremely strained.
I also wonder if this much involvement is healthy FOR YOU.
I wish I could have saved my children pain when they were involved in relationshits. My daughter just exited a relationshit with a spath several months ago. there was NOTHING more I could tell her other than what I did and my suspicions. She was back and forth for the longest time. Eventually, I had to let her go, believing that someday, she’d come around because all the OBSESSING on her situation was TOXIC TO ME and all around me.
You can’t “save” your son. He’s a big boy making his own choices, even they are painful for you and eventually for him, but ultimately he’ll walk out of this a stronger man. At least I hope so. That’s when you will be able to provide the support he will need.
LL
I had my doubts about this one from the start and this has been going on for a few years now. I didn’t say anything and didn’t look into anything. It was his life. Next thing I know, a few of his friends voiced concerns to me exasperated with him. That fact that these were teenage boys who don’t typically talk to moms about relationships I took it to heart and looked into a few things. I was literally blown away! And his dad who worries about nothing is now very worried as well as to some of the things he is noticing.
My husband plans on talking to him….again. Talking doesn’t work. I have aready seen that but he is intent on having a conversation. We will see how that goes.
I am not “involved” but rather in the shadows here worrying and grasping for straws that may provide a lightbulb moment for him to put in his path. I don’t want to be wrestling with the “what if’s” if he doesn’t walk out of it or more currently, blows a great education.
I will say that I am the go to parent when he needs advice on anything even if his dad would be more qualified in the subject. Of course he would never ask about her but everying else is up for grabs. This tells me that he trusts me and what I tell him and I can’t help but think that this is why he has blown his fuse on the occasions I have voiced anything about the spath…somewhere in the recesses of his mind wondering if I’m right.
As long as that exists, I can’t help but think there may be a chance. But for now, I remain in the shadows, mute but not blind or deaf. Know what I mean?
Dear Lisaptrn,
I am only guessing what your situation is here (unless it is on another thread that I have not read) but seems, correct me if I am wrong, that your fairly young son is involved with a girl/woman that you think might be high in psychopathic traits, and apparently if anything negative is said about this female, he goes off on whoever said it, and his friends are also worried about the relationship.
What can you do about it?
SORRY TO SAY NOT A FREAKING THING except be there to pick him up if and when he gets lucky and she dumps him….then, when he is hurting and “bleeding” he might be willing to listen to some lovefraud advice.
One of my sons married one of these women well past when he was “old enough to know better” and he met her off the internet of all places, and she was looking for a meal ticket for her and her kids, one of which was a psychopathic teenager and the other in a wheel chair—she had chosen to have kids knowing she had a genetic marker for muscular dystrophy and had seen all her uncles die with it. BAAAAD way to live or die.
In any case, he married her. I tried to stay in the “shadows” and my only caution was “wait until you get to know each other better before you get married”—so what did she do, got him to elope “before your mom breaks us up”—he fell for it of course too.
No matter what kiind of EVIDENCE you have that she is “Hanniblette Lechter” it doesn’t matter, he will NOT BELIEVE IT. He will convince himself that you are evil for not loving her and that she is right, he needs to stay away from all those negative influences of his family and friends that are trying to break up the LOVE MATCH OF THE CENTURY!
My son’s wife, ended up, after 7 years and her son’s death and her daughter being kicked out of the house, having an affair with the child molester (convicted 3 times and spent over 20 yrs in prison) that my own Psychopathic convict son sent to kill us, when I ran so they couldn’t find me to kill me, they changed plans and stole $24,000 from my egg donor, and then tried to kill my son (her husband) and make it look like “self defense” because he “caught them” having the affair. Fortunately he got through to 911 in time and they both went to jail.
So my opinion is NOTHING you say or prove even is going to make your son wise up until HE WISES UP. So I suggest strongly that you STAY in the shadows and keep as good a relationship with him as possible for as long as possible, and when he gets burned, just BE THERE.
So wait, your son is spath and married to spath or were you referring to another son who was not married to the spath?
So what is your son’s (the one the female spath tried to kill) take on all this now? Does he wish somebody had shaken him? Does he get it about spaths? Does he say anything would have changed his mind?
So some “pictorial evidence” of the spath “in close contact” with another guy wouldn’t matter? Would they believe the spath rather than their own eyes?
LISA,
I have two biological sons, one is a psychopath, in prison for 20 years for murder, the other one married a psychopath who tried to kill him, AFTER having an affair with the man my P-son in prison sent to kill me. The married son’s wife and her lover, an ex convict former cell mate of my P son’s, both went to jail. Both are out now, and she is still on probation still but he is off parole. He is a registered sex offender (spent nearly 20 yrs in prison for molesting 3 young children)
My biological father (sperm donor) was a psychopath, but because he was very wealthy and very gutsy never went to prison for murder though I know of 2 people he killed (he actually claims to have killed more)…he did not raise me though as my egg donor dumped him when I was 3 months old because he was in the hospital with VD.
My son C’s “take on psychopaths” is that he knows what they are now, he knows that his brother is a psychopath and he cooperates with his adoptive brother D and me in fighting my P son’s parole, but while he knows all this, none the less, he is still not someone I can trust, and I realize that he LET HIMSELF BE “DUPED” and really never totally took responsibility or accountability for the things he KNEW THE P WIFE and others including his P brother were doing to me. They all ganged up to try to run me out of my house and home (literally) though I don’t think son C knew that the “trojan horse psychopath” intended to kill me he DID KNOW they were doing identity theft, vandalism and other stuff to me and trying to “drive me crazy”—and he did nothing about it. Didn’t warn me, didn’t stop them, and so you know, I realize I cannot trust him every again. He also lied to me last year about this time and I have essentially been NC with him since then except for necessary e mails about his brother’s parole.
After everything I have seen and learned, I have come to the conclusion that I will not associate with anyone who does not treat me with respect—NO one who is a liar or lies to me, no one who is dishonest, or tolerates dishonesty in any form. Doesn’t matter who they are, if I gave birth to them, or if they gave birth to me….if they are a liar, I don’t need them in my life.
My son C went NC with my egg donor because she lied to him, and lied to me and continues to support my P son financially, and she was part and parcel of the abuse against me because I set boundaries for her. He refuses to have anything to do with her because she lied to him, but HE THEN TURNED AROUND AND LIED TO ME. The thing is while I will NOT tolerate dishonesty and lies, I must also adhere to those standards myself and not be dishonest or be a liar. So I am expecting the same thing of myself that I expect of those others who are in my life. Honesty and consideration and respectful treatment. I won’t settle for anything less and I won’t give anything less.
I also realize I cannot “fix” anyone else or alter their opinions unless they are interested in hearing what I have to say.
Your son is not interested in what you have to say, because he does not want to believe what he knows you believe.
He wants to believe she is good and wonderful and he will continue to believe that until the pain and/or fear gives him enough of a push or she dumps him. Whichever comes first.
My son C wasn’t about to leave his wife no matter what she did and all she had to do was to threaten divorce for him to come into line with her demands….until they tried to kill him…. and he realized the TRUTH I had known all along, that she was a psychopath and pretty toxic (the attempted murder even surprised me though!) It was premeditated, not just spur of the moment either.
Your son’s friends are more likely to convince him to leave her but even then I don’t think if you had pictures of her doing anything it would make any difference, she would manipulate and lie her way out of it. Wish I could be more positive and give you something to “do”—waiting is not my best quality either. LOL I wanted to open up my kid’s skull and pour love and wisdom in it and show him “you are ruining your life” and I just “knew” if there was SOME magic words I could find it would WORK.
There ain’t no genie in a bottle and there ain’t no santa claus or easter bunny or tooth fairy, and as moms sometimes we just have to sit back and wait! (((hugs))))
Oh wow OX! What an ordeal and mess you have been through! My heart goes out to you!
So here is the dilema. When your C son was just watching the attrocities comitted against you, was that him or was that the mind-whacked-spath-created him? I am coming to realize that the victims selves tend to get lost as part of the process.
I think his friends have given up which was what spurred their discussion with me.
Lisa,
so sorry to hear about your son’s situation.
Most people in difficult relationshits don’t want to leave them. They want a manual of “tips and tricks” for keeping your spouse happy. They want pop-psychology that reveals what kind of neurosis or childhood trauma is being re-enacted by their spouse so they can help them through it. When you offer your son help or advice, let it be in this spirit. Then he’ll be open to it. Then offer him books and web sites about narcissism. Hopefully, it will sink in slowly. The only drawback is the possiblity that the girlfriend will catch him reading them or that he will tell her about his findings before he has full understanding. Sociopaths attack when they think their mask is about to be ripped off.
Proceed with caution. There will be drama.
Perhaps the best advice you might give him is to tell him that you read somewhere that certain people behave in ways to create drama, by being abusive or creating emergencies all the time. Don’t tell him that these people are called sociopaths, tell him that they are called DRAMA ADDICTS. He will see the truth in this.
Advise him that you read that the best way to deal with people in these relationships is to NOT REACT EMOTIONALLY. Be boring as a rock. yawn. Show no emotion, either positive or negative. Tell him that soon the drama and abuse will abate. Truth is, it will escalate, but if he maintains his stance, she will just leave him because they can’t stand to be bored. After he sees that you were right, you can tell him he just dodged a sociopathic bullet.
That is how I finally understood what my spath was. A total stranger listened to my story in a sushi bar. He said, “Oh, that’s a malignant narcissist. He will stalk you and won’t let you go unless you bore him, they can’t stand boring, show no emotion about anything and he’ll go away”. After that I just read all I could about narcissism. Now I know that my spath was evil.
Lisa,
I want to apologize that my posts sounded insensitive to your situation. I’m not. I understand the pain of having a child that has a potential personality disorder, as well as a child who was WITH a spath. Both are painful. Having the child as the disordered is far worse.
I believe, if your son is very intelligent, that he WILL catch onto what is going on. Ox is right about the age thing. My daughter and I had a disagreement as to how “long” she was involved with her spath, but overall, it was five years…..on and off……from the time she was seventeen….
She’s 22 now. There isn’t a timeline on these things, unfortunately Lisa, just riding it out.
But i can tell you that I DO believe because I gave her info about spaths, as well as she experienced her father and my being with my last bf spathy POS, she was WELL educated, if nothing else but by experience.
I’ll keep you and your son in my prayers and will believe that he’ll come around.
LL
lisaptrn and all others who question the “warning” the ex/spath gave, as well as the situation that faced me: there is no denying it. Any normal person would run. But I was too overwhelmed with myself, thinking i was saving her from a “cruel and loveless husband,” and that she really regarded me as better than all the other men who were in her life. And, yes, those 6 were during her first marriage, as was I. One had been a teenager, and not too long before I arrived on the scene. I used my ego to trash common sense…..as if I’d ever possessed anything of the sort.
And one other point. I knew better. The Bible was there for me to read and I had, numerous times, completely. I have no excuses; I declared myself better than God. And that is what makes this all so much worse.
So everything that has happened was not only deserved, it was all consequences of my own actions.