Editor’s note: The following story was submitted by the Lovefraud reader who posts as “Greenfern.” It is a classic story of sociopathic seduction.
When I first met the S, I was very young, 22, and in a pretty bad spot. I come from a broken, abusive family and I have been pretty much on my own since 16. I was managing by putting myself through college, working full time, step by step. A year before I met the S, I was hit by a car and the recovery from that sent me into a depression and hardship. I had no family support or insurance, so I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and tried not falling behind. I felt alone and struggling, but managed. I feel like I was a strong young person considering the circumstances.
Then the S appeared in my life. He was my TA at school. As it turns out he later told me that he had been observing me for over a year, but I was acting “stand offish” and “unapproachable” so he had difficulties getting to know me. So I guess when I hit the bottom after my accident I have become more approachable in his eyes and he pursued me.
Constant care and attention
He courted me very intensely, I felt off guard, like a deer in the headlight. He came across as this very dignified, old fashioned (he was only 28) gentleman with strong interest in my background. He kept asking if I needed help in my school work and brought me sandwiches and kept coming and coming at me. I felt strange, but I was flattered by the constant care and attention. Inside myself I felt weird, it did not feel right. But then I dismissed my own discomfort. I told myself “maybe I just need to relax and accept the attention and kindness”. I think at the time I have isolated myself from people and had little trust in myself being liked for who I was.
Read more: Dating a sociopath? Spot the red flags of love fraud
I told myself that maybe it was time to open up to people and receive. The problem with this was that I made the wrong choice of person to open up to.
He kept pursuing me harder, showering me with gifts and sweet little notes. He even branded my name into his arm. That should have been a big red flag. In fact when he showed me my name burned into his skin, I felt physically ill to my stomach and had a rising panic within me.
He wanted to hang out at all times. I felt like I had no time to myself at all. I kept telling him that I needed to do stuff on my own, but he replied to that by asking if he could come over after I do that thing. He wore me down with persistence and I did not say no. I did not know how to say no.
Phony clowns and bozos
Before I knew it, we were hanging out all the time. He told me about his problems with his parents, he made preachy speeches about the phoniness and hypocrisy of the world. He told me that now it’s us against the world and to “f___ the phony clowns and bozos of the world.” He convinced me to let him shave my head for a home movie. He told me that I was a mess and he will take care of me. He had me help him with his projects, including these films where he dressed me up as a boy wearing leg braces. He would pretty much decide when to eat and sleep. Many times I wanted to sleep at night, but he was asking for more.
In the same time he put me on this special pedestal, told me that I was the one for him and that I made him a better man. He said I was very special, he loved me, I was his best friend. He said we were meant for each other. He always asked if I was “the one” for him. I just could not say yes. I think this made him angry, but he would not say.
Completely suffocated
We moved in together, I have cut off my friends and social life. The S and I were doing EVERYTHING together. I felt completely suffocated, yet I could not even be clear to myself as to what was wrong exactly. I would have crying spells and could not put in words what was wrong. He delivered these little pep-talks about being strong and not caring about what the world says.
He took over many things in the household. Even though I was perfectly capable of doing those things, I have always managed previous to meeting the S. When I would do these things, he always made me feel like he could do them better; he would take them out of my hand. Slowly but surely he would be doing all these “favors” then make me feel like I owed him. He got mad at me because I did not say “I love you” enough in response to his million “I love yous” during the week. I did not love him. I dreamed of some miracle happening, so I could get away out of the relationship. I had fantasies of him just going away. The idea of me ending the relationship filled me with dread, dread to his response. I felt like I owed to him to stay with him. He always said “I saved you, you were a mess when I met you” then following it up with “I love you”.
He would go through the garbage to see what I was doing on my day off and I am pretty sure he was monitoring me, even though I have no proof. He grew marijuana and collected toy guns in his special room. He also hoarded his own urine in soda bottles. According to him, he was too busy with his projects to go to the bathroom. Gradually he has become too busy with his art projects to have time for me. He stopped initiating sex. When I wanted to talk to him about the sex issue, he shot it down with “sex is WAAAAY over-rated” or “what do you want me to do about it?”
I wanted to feel the way he made me feel in the beginning, but I did not understand why he took me off the pedestal. In the beginning he would want to have sex multiple times a day, but now he did not even want to hear about it at all. I did not understand what happened.
More and more criticism
At this time he started criticize me on small things. For instance on my grammar. English is not my first language, so I felt sensitive to the issue. He said I was sloppy in my language.
Then more and more criticism has arrived, and he has become more and more withdrawn, physically and emotionally. He refused to have any discussions about the relationship. He said I was the one who had a problem with the relationship. He also told me that his friends were surprised that he did not have a younger and prettier girlfriend.
I think what was the beginning of the end is that I got a good job that I liked, made me feel good. I think it really gave me confidence to stand up for myself more. I started pointing out some of his BS, yet I was not feeling strong enough to break up with him, even though I wanted to.
Bringing home a drunken girl
On our 7th year anniversary night he told me he would be home by 8 pm, so we could spend some time together. He came home at 4 am with a drunk girl, laughing. The girl was one of his students. He was offended that I thought that there was anything weird about the situation. I was livid. I felt like my world collapsed. He showed up with flowers the next day.
Then not much after that, we had a Thanksgiving party where he acted like a total ass. Then he broke up with me the next day.
He was was unfazed and calm. He combed through all of our stuff to make sure he took everything he felt a right to. He went about with complete calmness, purchasing new bedsheets for his new place. Completely cold. He told me that he was now seeing a therapist and he thinks he is pretty depressed. For the last 3 years I was BEGGING him to see a therapist. He would not even talk about it. But I think this was just an act. Later I found out that he was cheating on me for the last year and a half with the woman he married not much after we split up.
I have been in therapy for a while now. I realize that those years I lived in a complete lie and I chose to be blind to it. My task is to recognize that blind spot and protect myself from Sociopaths like him. I’m a work in progress.
Please if you are out there involved with a sociopath, trust your intuition!
Lovefraud originally posted this letter on Jan. 26, 2009.
Child abuse is America’s biggest public health crisis, and if you had a sociopathic parent, it could explain what happened to you
Midnite You didnt know his diagnosis or even know about Sociopaths 10 years ago but you knew something was terribly wrong with him, and the effect he had on you..was toxic at the least. I admire you for gaining control over your life and being able to put things in such perspective. When you did think of him occasionally over the past years, before you found this site, what were your feeling’s for/about him? Did you have the feeling of loss, did you yearn for anything about him and wonder if maybe he was the one? and you are so right about respect and being selfish and taking care of yourself….
By the time I had actually left the S almost all of the romantic feelings were gone, but I still felt great pity and love for him like he was a lost puppy that needed my help. Any thoughts of him being “the one” died long before the relationship did. In that first six months after the relationship ended it was a terrible mix of fear, guilt and compassion when I thought of him. I still felt responsible for making sure he took care of himself, trying to fix the broken boy within him. It wasn’t until that final incident when he dragged me under with him that I realized it was him or me and I chose me. After that any thoughts about him were filled with fear and anger. That in itself was crippling, even though I wasn’t with him and never wanted to be with him again I was obsessed with thinking about how much I hated him. I’ll be honest, that lasted a solid year, thinking about him all the time, wishing terrible things would happen to him, fearing that he would show up again. At one point I was even afraid he might try to kill me. To make matters worse, everyone else who knew him kept telling me he was harmless, just a pitiful drunk. My family and friends knew the truth, but even they didn’t really understand it all. His moving out of state helped a little, once I confirmed it, since I no longer had to fear running into him in my daily life. Time was the only thing that dissipated the anger and fear, each year I thought about him less and less. About once or twice a year I really think about him and I’ll google his name. The last time I did I found a bunch of arrest records in the state he moved to for trespassing, drunk in public, another couple DUIs, and one domestic violence charge. I think he moved back to my town, but I’m not afraid of him any more and I don’t care enough to be angry at him. If I ran into him today I would ignore him, I don’t want to know him.
Midnite – Thanks for sharing your experience. You seem to be doing well with your new boyfriend, all relationships are sometimes difficult but when you have loyalty, respect and trust you have a good foundation to work on. Nothing like the quicksand and chaos of our X’s. I was invloved with a S for 5 years, he lived with me 3 years and has been gone now for one year. You seem to understand that feeling of responsibility that they give us mixed with fear, guilt and compassion..and make us feel like we were the ones that failed them and we are the reason the relationship didnt work. I have healed so much but still find it difficult to accept how I turned my head to all the red flags. I am embarrassed and humiliated still. But holding my head high and making lot’s of positive change in my life and hoping someday soon I will realize I have not thought about him in days..
to Midnight_Reflection,
Weird how it could sometimes take years to realize who the s really was, call him by name and see the whole picture. Also to make peace with the fact that there might be very few who see the ex-s as we do, without their mask. It is such a long journey for me to see why I stayed in that relationship for so long and work through the blame I had for myself for being so manipulated by the s.
I still stuggle with the idea that there is no way of de-bunking the s to others really, without getting hurt. I still have fantasies of telling the world, but I realize that it’s pointless. At one point it almost felt like thinking about these things was still occupying too much of me. I have read a lot about no contactis the best way to go. That includes googling the s. I know it’s hard to resist. But it is probably for the best not to.
PS I think I understand what you mean by fearing him killing you. I felt the same.
I am curious to hear what kind of dreams (nightmares) people have about the ex-s.
Henry, the shame can be so very hard to get over, I think it’s part of why I had trouble telling the entire story to my family and friends. There I was, a straight A student, never in any trouble, didn’t drink, smoke, do drugs, my father was a cop and warned me of all the bad things he saw, and yet I still ignored the red flags even when they slapped me in the face because I believed everyone was a good person deep down inside. But you know what, who hasn’t made bad choices at some point, or ignored their intuition? I could live my life like my father, trusting no one, but I still choose to believe MOST people are good inside. Being an open, empathetic, LOVING person isn’t something to be ashamed of.
You sound like you’ve recovered a lot in the past year, the thoughts of the S will wash out little by little until you don’t even notice they’re gone. It’s like having a bad smell in your clothes, each time you wash them it gets fainter until they smell fresh again.
It’s funny you mention quicksand, it’s what I always pictured when my life was chaotic. I used to say, how can I live in a house built on quicksand, it keeps falling apart?
I think the most important part of recovery comes after the pain, the shame, the guilt, and the anger have passed. You have to let them run their course until that house built on quicksand is burned to the ground, then you find a nice firm spot of earth and rethink your architecture. The house built on quicksand had boards on the windows to keep out the hurricane winds, patches on the holes in the walls, time to build a stronger house, with a fence around it.
The absolute, most important lesson I’ve learned in life is to stop taking responsibility for other people. It’s hard because it goes against my basic wiring, I LIKE helping people, but there’s a difference between helping and enabling. Boundaries are so important. I still slip sometimes. Just the other day I found an old roommate online, she just had a baby and I contemplated offering her all of the clothes my baby has outgrown. The thing is, this roommate stole several hundred dollars worth of DVDs from me when she moved out. I had to mentally slap myself and remind myself to stop rewarding the people who do me wrong.
Dear Midnight,
No contact with someone like your x-roomie is usually the best thing just like NC is important with our Ps. Who knows, maybe she was also a P, at least she was a THIEF. Putting ANY toxic person NC is a good idea, and a thief ranks right up there with the other TOXIC ones.
Just “remember the lesson” (she is a thief) chalk up the lost DVD’s to “tuition in the school of hard knocks” and count your blessings that’s ALL she stole.
I also think, Midnight that a “happy medium” between being like you dad and trusting no one and being like (we were) in thinking that “there is good in everyone” and trusting too easily is the place we want to be.
Caution is a GOOD THING. Totally not trusting is very lonely.
Greenfern, I started my post to henry before I left for lunch so I hadn’t seen your responses yet, but the first paragraph I wrote above can go to you too, and anyone who blames and shames themselves for being manipulated. Our only crime was caring too much.
I obsessed a lot about revealing the S to the world, especially during the anger phase. Part of me wanted to punish him and part of me wanted to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else. I really, really wanted to contact the police about the credit card fraud, but I had no proof other than what the S told me. I finally just accepted that it was best to leave it be, chalk it up as a lesson learned. And you know what, he’ll slip up one day, get caught or worse and it will all be on him. I googled him yesterday and in the middle of it I realized I didn’t really care what I found and stopped. He just doesn’t matter anymore.
As for dreams about the S, I can’t really answer that, I can’t remember any even though I’m pretty sure I did have some early on. I haven’t dreamt about him in many years.
Greenfern – While the S is out there laying the groundwork for yet another dramatic chaotic fall-out in someone elses life, and then again in someone elses life, and so on, and so on, and obviously in his own life , take solace in knowing you didnt have to bring yourself down, waste any more energy or do a thing to expose him – he will do it ALL himself along the way – while you are underway with a new and improved healthier version of YOU. While it would be nice to expose him and warn others – its a risky path and frankly unsafe and unsettling as people want to believe what they want to believe. Stay focused! You are doing a great job. Re: Googling, I was tempted, but then I said why do I want to follow the life of Sociopath? IF he were a decent empathetic caring being, i would be interested in knowing how is life is going. But a Sociopath – nah, dont want to go there.
Ox, yeah, you’re right, NC with the ex-roommate is for the best. I felt sorry for her because she reminded me of how I was when I was 20, and she was a good roommate until she started hanging out with the wrong crowd, but I can’t fix her any more than I could fix anyone. My husband and I have both cut out the people we associate with that are all drama all the time.
The happy medium is what I’m working on now. I still think most people are good, but I also think most people are self-interested and those sometimes conflict, it’s part of why my husband and I have decided not to have roommates anymore. We welcome people to visit us, but they’re not living in our home unless we’re sure about them.