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
It truly feels like addiction to a drug, or what I imagine that it would be like, never really having been addicted to anything. I still desire his little expressions of approval, and they are barely that. When I get them I feel a high. I have read that sociopaths are often stalked themselves, or harrassed. I wouldn’t stalk him but I can understand why people do. You feel as though part of you has been stolen and you want to get it back. I don’t want to live with part of myself missing, while a psycho who doesn’t appreciate anything good walks around with it inside of him.
Healing Heart: I am NOT addicted to my EX. I never was. I thought I was involved with a real person in touch with his emotions … honest, decent, honorable… to find out he was nothing but a lie. My pain wasn’t that I was duped into believing this was a decent person, my pain was intellectually knowing he (or any of them) can’t love because they’ve walled themselves off for so long, it has become natural (they conditioned themselves) for them not to feel … anything. It’s all about perception. Their perception is they believe they need to be above being human and experiencing and feeling life. How pathetic is this? They believe they need to control others? How pathetic is this? They believe they need to con others to get what they want? How pathetic is this? They believe they need to lie about their lives? How pathetic is this? They believe they need to get and consume as much of materialistic things that life has to offer? How pathetic is this?
I could go on and on … but I believe you get my point.
Peace.
Peace.
E – I think that one of the most reckless life moves we ever make is that we put our hearts in their hands. And we have never felt more loved and cared for……and then they walk away with our hearts – not even like they steal them, it’s like they just walk away, “forgetting” that they agreed to take our heart and made so many pledges and promises, and then just discard our hearts like spitting out a used, flavorless, piece of gum. They don’t care. But we’ve lost our hearts.
Of course we really haven’t but is sure feels that way. We have, energetically, lost a piece of ourselves. They took it – they are thieves who don’t know the value of what they took, but they stole it like stealing penny candy, and then forget about it just as easily.
But for us, the stakes were so high. It was not penny candy, it was everything! And we are left with a gaping wound. A full body, open wound.
And the pain is that great. But the only way to get it back is to NOT try to get it back from them. I kept hoping he would give me back the parts of myself that he took (I gave). He never will because he doesn’t have them. He just took them and threw them away.
We do get it back – but we have to grow it back. We gave the old stuff away. Now we have to heal our wounds from the inside. That takes a while – to grow new parts. But from what I understand, we do, and they come back stronger and more beautiful.
I tend to go off on analogies and metaphors. It may read like nonsense, but it tends to help me process things.
You and I are both going to be okay, Eliza, but we need to take care of ourselves the right way. A thief will not take care of us and we can’t look to him to return what he took, but no longer has. But we can take care of ourselves and each other.
It is just sad, that he couldn’t have been the whole person that I thought he could be. I would have loved him so well. I mourn for that. But I am starting over again, I am going to try to force the acceptance into my brain, and fake the indifference. Meanwhile, I am just so heartbroken…
I wish that I could say that I was strong enough to not become addicted to him. But I can feel the withdraw right now, it is painful, I have even had the thoughts of saying “whatever, ok I will look the other way with the other woman, just don’t completely leave me.” I miss something. This is the pathetic mess that I have become, I am just being honest, it is embarrassing to me, but this is truly how I feel at times.
No, Eliza, not pathetic at all. After I threw him out, I saw him 6 or 7 times more – once or twice a month. I couldn’t stay away. I needed a “hit.” I was terribly addicted and the withdrawal was unbearable. I let myself “look the other way” for a little while. But it can’t last, and you can’t look away for too long. I wish I had gone NC sooner – it definitely would have sped up the recovery process and I’d be in a much better place now. But I don’t know if I could have gone cold turkey at the time. I’ll tell you this, I am VERY lucky to have come out of this without an STD. He exposed himself to new ones weekly – perhaps daily. If I had contracted one I’d be furious at myself for ever going back, knowing what he was. I am lucky.
It’s not pathetic at all – where you are. It’s normal. Just try to do the best thing possible for you. And yes, you are broken hearted, and its excrutiating. It will get better. I’m not healed, but I am in so much better of a place. I thought my heart might be broken forever, that I was irreparably damaged. Not the case. You will get better.
Eliza: I don’t think it’s addiction to him that is causing you pain … I think it’s finding out the truth of what he really is causes the pain. Truth and knowing they can’t feel love is the most painful part of this experience.
Peace to your heart and soul as you heal.
Wini,
The truth is certainly part of it. And the loss of the idea of him. But I am addicted to the highs and lows provided by the relationship. Perhaps only certain personalities are suseptable to this part of the relationship with sociopaths, and I am one of them. There are other places on the internet where this addiction between victim and sociopath is recognized. I am so glad that you did not experience the addiction part and were able to sever ties, although I am sure your pain was still very great.
Eliza: That’s debatable … the addiction concept. Were you truly addicted to the highs and lows of your relationship or were you systematically conditioned to accepting the relationship “AS IS”?
The only way to really find out the truth is to deduct the relationship back to the point of prior to meeting him.
Peace.
First I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts; it makes me feel like I am not locked into my head, going round and round with these thoughts to the brink of questioning if I am the only one that sees the deception.
Stargazer, I think you are absolutely right what you said earlier:
“Greenfern said that there was this man trying to be helpful and take care of her and that maybe she should just receive. That is EXACTLY my thought process… I know if I ever start dating again, I need to stop projecting “caretaker” on that person. That’s where I get in trouble.”
It is a very fine line there, hard to define where the taking over begins and caring ends, but all of us can rely on inner voices when it becomes uncomfortable. I think for me, it is hard to define because of my family background. I had been taking care of my needs with all my strength, from a very early age that it was nice that someone cared enough to give me little crumbs of niceness. I was always used to take care of things on my own, 100%, so I figured that a bit of caring is what happens when someone loves you. I fell for it.
But soon into the relationship, this caring has mutated into something monstrous. It mutated because these gestures by the S were not without price. They were done to break me and strip me of my dignity and self esteem, not because he loved me. He wanted me to morph into his twisted self and distorted world view.
I never loved him, more like I feared him. I felt trapped.
I am very lucky to be not have a family with him and have him physically out of my life. The only thing I wish that I could somehow tell the world. I find it frustrating that aside from a few good friends and this forum, people think that the story of the S is an exagguration, due to my bitterness. Yes, there are a lots of disgruntled ex-es, but this is different. It’s like a giant decayed, monster elephant sitting in the living room and nobody wants to see it, they see a cute little fluffy puppy.
I regret the 7 years I have wasted on this person who will never examine himself, admit any responsibility or have remorse of his own pathological behavior. They keep going and taking from other people until the day they die. I wish I could tell the truth to the world.