LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: I was still in love with the jerk

UPDATED FOR 2024. Editor’s note: This story was submitted by the Lovefraud reader who we’ll call “Margie.” She was still in love with the jerk she met — even after learning he was a criminal.

One night I went to a bar by myself (but always knew someone there). I sat at the bar next to this lady I knew and started talking to her. Well Steve (my ex-sociopath—not his real name) was sitting next to her talking to her. I thought he was kind of cute so started flirting.  He actually said to me that night, “I think I like you better,” like he had his sights on my friend first. He bought me a flower and all my drinks the rest of the night. Well that should have been my first and only red flag to run, but I didn’t! But stupid, naive me (never dealing with a sociopath before that is) fell for his good looks, as he was 6’1″, blond and blue eyes and had a football player’s body!

Well he told me he had to catch a bus in the morning to Fargo, ND to his mother’s house that he could not miss. I had NO idea he was just let out of prison!  Well we proceeded to drink and get totally drunk that night and ended up at my cozy apartment that I lived in alone.  The next morning we overslept and he missed his bus (which he should not have because he was to report to Fargo, ND to set up his parole!) and he wasn’t overly upset about it.

Read more: “Personality disorder” as an excuse for criminal behavior

So he stayed on at my house…the first couple of days I thought nothing of it but then I wondered, well, if you are not worried about getting to Fargo, why aren’t you finding a job then?!  And at first he was so attentive — he would open the door for me — carry the groceries — cook and clean for me — etc — but was on the computer playing poker and needed his beer constantly like he hadn’t had it in years (which he hadn’t and I didn’t know that — yet!). 

Well — finally — my snoopiness (detectiveness) got the best of me and I looked through his belongings in my car trunk.  I found parole papers! And I thought  — Oh my god! But I was already in Love (lust) with the jerk! So I thought, okay — he loves me — we can make this work — so what if he is on parole.

Stranded

So for awhile, I went to work at my waitress job and picked up beer daily and we drank daily. I relaxed while he sat on the computer playing poker and smoking his cigs and drinking his beer. (He was also emailing many other women I found out later after only being at my place a week!) We then took a weekend trip to North Dakota that turned into a week long trip of me being stranded with no money up there and having to pawn off my 1/3 carat diamond ring to get gas to get home with. Then there was the matter of having to straighten out the bad checks mess he had conned me into writing for beer, food, etc — while in North Dakota (Not to mention the two bar tables he conned out of a bar owner, one of which has his pic on it when he worked there in college)!

And let me add, while he was wooing me at the bar when I met him, he had told me things like he had been a professional football player in Canada. He said he was a college graduate from Jamestown, ND (which was true when I talked to his ex-wife on the phone once), and many, many other lies of great magnitude!

Anyway, we get back from ND and things resume — I am job hunting cause I lost my job at due to us not being able to make it back from being stranded up there! I get a waitress job at Denny’s restaurant then and keep working and coming home with beer (what an enabler I was for god’s sake!) and drinking.  All the while he is wooing me with comments like, “I will love you till the end of the earth,” and still cooking for me, etc.

Drums up a story

Then one weekend he drums up the story that they called him from his old professional football team in Canada and they wanted him back and that he had to leave for the weekend (which was Labor Day weekend) for tryouts again. Well as stupid as I was, I believed him (sort of) BUT was beginning to wonder at this point. Well he said some woman was coming to pick him up for this trip — and that is when I KNEW something was not right! My gut said check into this! So anyhow, I had also bought him bottles of vodka besides the beer — he asked me to go get him a little bottle before he left. He claimed he really didn’t want to leave me. Well he even got to the point of being teary-eyed (which was probably all a act now that I think about it) when he was saying goodbye.  He packed my 4 man tent with him, which I don’t know why, but he had a lie for that too! This all happened about 2 years ago so it’s getting a bit fuzzy now trying to recall everything.

But, I was alone — he was gone — I had my computer. I had been married to a computer network engineer and was not totally computer illiterate and had a college education (B.S. in Psychology with a Criminal Justice minor).  I started pulling up web pages he had been too and somehow was able to recover his password by using my credit card to pay for a website he had been too. By luck it was the same password he had used for hotmail and yahoo and everything! Jackpot!

I read everything in and out and figured out where he went! He met a woman from Narcotics Anonymous in Iowa and went to a church camp retreat with her that Labor Day weekend! Well as good as I am with my detectiveness (lol), I called Narcotics Anonymous and got her phone number (cell even!) and called her and him up! I called and harassed them ALL weekend to the point she said she was going to call her lawyer — and I said DO IT! Cause I knew I had him! He was running from the law — but she had bought in to all his lies and was treating me like crap! Well I even called the cops to go get him arrested at this camp — but do you think the cops believed me! HELL NO — DO THEY EVER! So I guess I had to drop it at this point.

But about a month later I got a call from her and she said — “Okay — I believe you now.  He just took off to get some stuff of his in North Dakota and he never came back with the rental car so I filed grand theft charges.  Well I gave her all the info she needed to find him but told her she better drop the grand theft charges cause she might be liable somehow for letting him take the car that was in her name! She must have listened cause I never heard he was charged with that, but all my work paid off and he went back to prison for 8 months for being AWOL!

Still in love with the jerk

But it doesn’t end here — I was still in love with the jerk! I wrote to him in prison (90 miles away) and we started corresponding to the point I was hooked again.  I sent him stuff, money, letters, and visited faithfully like any good woman (blindly in love) would do! I went as far as finding a house close to the prison when he got work release so he could come visit me every chance he got! Then when he got out of work release, he moved in with me for a bit but was determined to find his own place. That I thought was a dead giveaway — he did not care for me after all.

He was saying his parole officer told him he had to do this and that. But a lot of it did not make sense to me since the other people I was talking to about this said differently.  I had many more doubts in my mind at this time! So he got his own little apartment and then I moved from my house to an apartment closer to his. We hung out and drank a lot more, but there were times he wanted me to leave. Geez — I am not that stupid when someone is trying to ditch me!

Married in 3 weeks

Anyway, my suspicions grew and I would check up on him all the time. And then he started to be more distant. Then one day around the end of October around Halloween — he all of a sudden quit coming over, quit calling, an absolute no show! No word from him ever again — he would not answer my phone calls and he was never home. I then found out later he met a woman on singlesnet online and married her within 3 weeks of meeting her! Well I then followed him home after work one night and figured out where he now lived and then saw him and her together and figured out what she drove.  I then figured out where she worked and followed her home from work one day and told her this whole exact story! That is when she said, “Thanks — I think.”  But I did have many emails and phone calls from his family during this duration and even his own mother and daughter said I was better off without him! If that isn’t a sociopath — I don’t know what is!

Learn more: EFT Tapping to break your addiction to a sociopath

Lovefraud originally posted this story on Feb. 17, 2010.