Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following letter from a 24-year-old woman, a graduate student.
He told me he was all I needed; he told me that he was the only person who cared. He told me my friends hated me because they were so mad at me because I got sick. He told me they were just all bitches like all of the other girls in the world. Like his ex-girlfriends, like his mother, like (me).
I had no idea that sociopaths existed. I thought that “sociopath” was only a word thrown about on TV, late night news, America’s Most Wanted.
My therapist told me that my ex-boyfriend is one of the worst sociopaths that she has heard about in her 12 years of practice.
Abuse starts slow
The abuse started out subtle; the control started out slow. He told me that I’d look cute if I just started dressing a little more suggestively. He told me that a slight heel (high heels) would do wonders for any girl’s appearance. “Didn’t I want to be the girl all of the other girls were jealous of?” He would tell me how to dress in order to make guys stare.
He would walk me down the street, hand around my neck, but whispering, “Babe, you look great. God, baby you’re my good thing; look at all of them watching; they think you’re so HOT.”
I now think they were wondering what was up because I was dressed like a whore and my ex boyfriend would ask random guys if they would pay me to provide sexual favors for them.
Controlled everything
I dated this man for two and a half years. He would control what I did, what I wore, what I ate, when I slept, how I slept, what I was required to wear to bed, what I could do in bed, IF I could move in bed ”¦ He wouldn’t let me move; he would get angry if I woke him up. He needed his sleep so he could “go out and make money the next day. You know you’re just a needy woman. You need me, the big strong man…”
And he’d laugh at me. He would ridicule me. He would make fun of me. He would laugh if I thought I was smart. He would laugh if I thought I could do something. He would introduce me to people as “the retard.” He would tell me not to talk—why would I bother? It wasn’t like I knew what I was saying anyway.
He would tie me up tell me it was sexy and that everyone else was doing it. He would punch me in the stomach, but he would tell me that he was seeing how tight my abs were. He would show me horrible, horrible movies about what women do when they’re hurt.
He showed me the movie Secretary, where the woman gets sad and then cuts herself, gets found out by her boss and her boss says something like no, don’t do that. And they proceed to have sex while her boss beats her butt with a wooden paddle. My ex would force me to have sex while slapping my butt and digging his hands into me, saying it was love.
Getting out
The list of scary things goes on longer than I want to remember right now. It got to the point that my parents were afraid. My ex-boyfriend was losing control, and I was stuck in the middle.
I would do anything for him, but then I did the one thing he forbade me to do. I got out. I realized that my parents didn’t hate me. I realized that my friends didn’t hate me, and I realized that I am stronger than he is and that I didn’t have to be his “good thing” anymore.
Then he told me that he made a huge mistake. He told me that he was “so sorry,” that it was normal to fly into insane rages when one loses something that he loved. He tried to get me back. I broke up with him. He stayed around for a few months trying all of this.
He convinced me that we could still be together if we were just “F” buddies, because I was the best girl for sex or at sex that he’d ever had. I know that is complete b.s. now, but at the time, when he told me I was the “only one” and “oh so special,” it worked to keep me around.
But, yeah, I mean there’s no doubt in my mind that if I had stayed with him, he would have convinced me to kill myself, or killed me himself. He would tell me to take pills. He said it was a way for me to show the world how “hurt” I was (all said in a condescending and convincing tone).
Anyways, there’s more, but yeah he tried to get me back. He tried telling me how heartbroken and lonely he was without me, which didn’t make sense to me, because when he and I were dating he told me he didn’t get lonely, he just didn’t “feel” it. It’s weird because when I was with him and he was being manipulative and abusive, he almost always told me what he was doing, but he always said, “But baby, it’s okay because we’re different. No one else is like us; we’re better than everyone; just trust me.”
Apart for six months
I can say simply that when I was with him he was emotionally abusive, physically abusive, sexually abusive. He would always say, “You can’t rape the willing, and you know you’re always willing, don’t bother saying no, because I know that no means yes.” Mind games and everything. He would get me so confused and afraid that if I said no, he’d be angry, and if he was angry he would hit me. Or at least I was terrified that is what would happen, because he would always tell me that he was bigger and stronger…
I have a restraining order against him now. I am in therapy now. We have been apart for six months, but I am still so shocked from it all. It still hurts really bad. I was with a man who told me he loved me, but that was just so that I would keep playing his bitch, keep being his doll and keep being his slave.
Secret Monster:
The young lady who submitted this story was subject to classic psychopathic manipulation techniques. At first the guy was wonderful. Then he slowly became more and more controlling. He isolated her from her friends and family. He kept telling her that in order to be his “good girl,” she had to comply with his increasingly twisted demands. And he added threats. Threats cause fear, and make the psychopathic bond stronger. The woman was terrified.
The victim felt it was important to tell more of her story. Here it is.
He was very into bondage, he was very into handcuffs. He was into gagging, choking, beating, restraint.
He would show me porn. (I never wanted to watch it but in order to be his “good girl” it was a requirement.) He would show me porn where the girls were handcuffed, the girls would have their arms tied behind them, to the bed, to the ceiling. There would be two girls, three girls, one always incapacitated and the other one or two laughing and taunting and teasing.
He would take the things which he saw in these porn movies and tell me that that was proof that that was the way that things should be.
He handcuffed me, breathing sweet and telling me that that was the way it should be. He said that was what everybody was doing; he told me everyone else would be jealous. He would always tell me what a “good girl” I was for letting him do the things that he wanted to me.
He got off on threatening, on playing games that had the risk of going wrong. He would handcuff himself, handcuff me, and hide the key. It was a game to see if he could find the key before he got off. Being constrained turned him on he told me that it turned me on; he told me that i had to play along if I wanted to be his girl. He told me that everyone else would do it. He told me that I was stupid if I said no; he told me that I didn’t mean it if i said no.
After we broke up, when we were f**k buddies, he knew that we weren’t allowed to see each other. He told me that that didn’t matter that it was true love and anyone who knew me would know that. He told me that no one else had to know that we were “sneaking around.” He told me that if we went into the woods to have sex it would be safe. He would require me to dress like a whore, put on six inch heels and walk through the woods in the dark late at night so we could “find our special place” where he could fuck me.
It was in the woods that I saw the demon that he really is. I wasn’t “doing it right,” “playing the part right,” “acting right.” He let out a cry of rage and screamed in my face, taking my face in his hands and telling me to get with the f***ing program and do it RIGHT.
I can still see the way that he looked in my mind; I can still hear his rage-filled cry. It was terrifying. I couldn’t see that well and I couldn’t walk that well in the heels, and he was my ride home and I couldn’t tell anyone what had just gone on. He told me that it was our secret, our secret life, no one else could know, they wouldn’t understand how wonderful it was.
One time in the woods he handcuffed me to a tree and laughed and said he could leave me there if he wanted to.
Wow. I’m so sorry for anyone to go through something like this, and as bad as my relationships were, I escaped this kind of treatment. Although, had I been free and would have gotten with this male friend, I truly think it would have led to this. He came to my office one time, shortly into the friendship and wanted to show me something on my computer. It was mild porn and I feigned ignorance. I knew what he was doing, but I thought if I didn’t get involved, then nothing would happen.
I realize now that I was seeing glimpses into his world. He kept getting bolder with certain statements and one time asked me if I would like to watch lesbians. I said, most definitely not, as I don’t want to go into anyone’s bedroom with them. He also suggested getting some sex toy to use on him. Subtle hints that kept opening the door to what must be going on in his head.
After reading so many of the posts here, I am so thankful that I wasn’t free to be available for him. Had I been, I would have been a goner, because he would have convinced me, in my naive state and weakness, that if I wanted his love, I’d have to cooperate. So many women have died during a sex act that went bad. That isn’t what God intended for us as His creation. How many more are going through this very thing behind those closed doors and are suffering because they are at the mercy of this man who has them convinced they can’t make it without him?
I endured the emotional, mental, and mild forms of sex abuse, but never anything of this magnitude. How does one ever heal from that treatment? My heart goes out to those who’ve survived and makes me even more thankful to have escaped the torture chamber.
Apt Mgr,
I wish I knew how one heals from that kind of treatment.
I wonder if it is even possible or what “healing” in that context even means? For even after extricating oneself from the situation-the mind and soul are left decimated from the experience and the world view and self view are altered forever-nothing, often the humiliation and degradation of having been so de-humanized replaying over and over as the mind struggles in vain to make sense out of not only knowing that kind of senseless annihilating brutality exists, but that one has been subjected to it. There is a terrifying realization that comes when one finds that they had been living/ experiencing reality within the context of a power crazed sadistic torturer and that the prison which trapped the victim was not even tangible but a mere construct created through the process of having one’s mind, emotions, sense of self, perception of reality manipulated and controlled by something/someone other than one’s self.
Secret Monster:
I’ve never felt that the concept of masochism could even be thought to apply in these situations. Self-loathing is what is being induced by the abuse/torture in a sick transference-the perpetrator is off-loading this into the victim who is bound to him, his definition of who she is, what her worth is and what reality is via the brainwashing.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the victim didn’t even experience self-loathing until she is out from under the control of the torturer and able to conceptualize the experience she had been subjected to as an unwitting participant.
Since the torturer convinces the victim that “he’s the only one who cares” creating the illusion of the victim’s complete and total aloneness in the world, having already regressed the victim enough thru the covert abuses to the point where she maybe experiencing reality as though she were a child (a child would die if alone in the world) her autonomy has been lost and she remains mired in the reality the torturer created, holding onto him in order to ensure her survival. Her behavior in this context, appears to exhibit a desire to live not a manifestation of the need to hurt or punish herself intentionally.
– Stunned
I’m new to this so please bare with me, I’m in a relation ship with someone who is a sociopath, as he told me he is a hustler aka pimp. I knew I should of ran like hell, but I wasn’t like the others or any of his baby’s mamas he told me, as I don’t have children, educated, have a steady income. I don’t know what happened. After two years I find myself paying things I own on paper but don’t have in my procession. I’ve tried many times to break up. but I always get sucked back. I’m in therapy now and have a plan of action in place to get out of the situation however, it’s taking longer than I expect due to I need to look into the legal aspect of the things I “own” so I can get them and leave. What I have to my advantage is that my sociopath doesn’t live with me, which give me allot of time to make my plan of action. What scares me most is that during my planning I find myself thinking like him and during arguments even sound like him”. Have any of you who left found yourself in this situation? And what about the pretending to act if nothing has changed in yourself until you left. I’m sorry if I posted this in the wrong spot but I’ve never done this.
2thru,
Hmmmm… well, you have come to the right place. Have you read all the stuff about leaving a sociopath? On the side bar, the blogs are sorted under categories.
I don’t know what you mean by thinking like him and sounding like him… I mean I get it but I don’t think that happened to me. But I will say that a lot of people that have posted have wondered if they are a sociopath or if there is something wrong with them. As I read about the personality disorders, I wondered if I had them but I know for sure now I don’t. When you take individual elements of the disorders and read them one by one, many people can say, “Sometimes I do that. Does that mean I am one of those?!” Most likely, you aren’t.
Once you leave, it takes awhile to get grounded and centered and back to youself. Speaking from experience, I think that is normal.
Anyway, make sure you read all the blogs about leaving a sociopath. They are helpful.
Aloha….. E.R.
I want to say to the author of this letter that your experience sounds horrific but that we can always heal. It’s important to have that hope that we can heal our wounds and our hearts.
Thankfully, I did not go through something as bad as this but I know that there are people who have gone through worse or less and they are healing.
We can all heal… I am saying this to myselt as well.
I am new to this web-site and I want to tell you all how amazing it is for me to realise how there ARE other women and men out there who can and do understand what it is like to live with a P.
It is horrific and disgusting to think that these predators con their way into your life, use you, abuse you and then have their freedom to go and abuse again and because of not having the same feelings or a conscience they then never question or feel remorse or guilt for what they have done. We the victims however continue to remember, question and suffer. Even today my P would tell you our marriage failed due to a difference of opinion and that it had been best for everyone that we had gone our separate ways. YES the difference was that he thought abusing and using people was amusing and clever and I did not!
I was in a relationship with a P for 22 years. I met him when I was 16, he was my first sexual partner, I married him and had two children with him. It took me until I was 37 to finally realise I had to get out and it then took me another 3 years to finally get him to leave me alone.
It was only this year, and I am now 45, after I had finally done everything in my power to ensure my children were set on the right paths in life and that the damage inflicted on them by my P, their father, was as undone as it could be that I finally began seriously searching and found the answer to what happened to us and why?
I remember always saying the same thing to myself after he had gone which was ‘Never, ever forget. Never think for one second that this man will ever be ‘ok’. Always remember to stay away from him and DO NOT communicate……EVER!’ I know this is very hard when you have children, joint friends and family but try.
I was physically, mentally and emotionally abused for a very long time and I often wonder whether there is some longevity of abuse from which a person simply cannot be healed?
There have been a few comments posted on this site which have quite shocked me as they are so incredibly similar to my own experience.
I have told people, when trying to explain a part of the abuse that happened to me, the way my P used to say to me’ No means maybe and maybe means yes’ and here I see this repeated from other people and their experience. Amazing!
I have read about the incredible sexual abuse which I myself suffered for a long time. The gaslighting, the lying- the incredible lying!
There is too much to write and so much to say.
An encounter or a relationship with a P is a very isolating and lonely experience as nobody believes you and you are, by association, jointly blamed for all the hurt that is caused after you have found the courage to say no. Saying that final no and meaning it was, in my experience, like dropping an atom bomb! Things had been bad, very bad but I had no idea what further abuse I would face by rejecting him. For years I had put up with his behaviour, I had developed all kinds of coping strategies but one morning I looked into the mirror and saw the bruises and I remember saying aloud ‘Never again, never ever again!’. This was after being kept up all night having been thrown and pushed around, being verbally and emotionally abused and finally when I was so totally exhausted he raped me. When I woke after a few hours sleep he kissed me on the cheek told me he was off to work and that he hoped I would have a nice day and that I knew that the only reason this had happened to me was because I liked it!
Stalking
Suffocation
Harassment
Intimidation of myself, family, friends.
‘Gaslighting’ on a whole new level
The abuse of our children
Head banging and inertia – which were in his repertoire of trying to control me by displaying his ‘upset’ because of my decision.
These were but a few of the new tricks he had up his sleeve.
Now, if anyone ever asks me ‘What are you thinking?’ I react strongly, ask why, and consider whether I should? For years and years over and over again he asked me and for years I was honest and he was not.
I don’t believe that I will ever again tell anyone I love them, apart from my children, as my P used to ask me over and over again. ‘I love you, do you love me?’ When I answered yes of course I do he would often say ‘You don’t sound like you do, try again and this time say it correctly and convince me you mean it’ He told me very early on that if you tell a woman you love her over and over again she will eventually believe it.
The same thing happened repeatedly, sexually, when he told me he needed to have sex to sleep, no sex = no sleep for him or me. So I would have to have sex with him and make sure he ‘came’ before I was allowed to sleep. If, and often this happened, he did not ‘cum’ after I had felt forced to have sex with him he would lie there for a while with me praying for him to be asleep when suddenly he would say ‘ Are you awake? I feel very hurt that you do not obviously love me and that’s why I couldn’t cum, why can you not tell me that you didn’t want sex? You CAN say no but you have to tell me in the RIGHT way.’ He would then tell me word for word what to say and how to say it before asking if I loved him then telling me if I did that I would now make love to him ‘the right way’ to make him cum as it was now cruel to leave him with all his ready to release sperm and that he would not be able to sleep. I learnt that if I did not pretend better this time and do and say all the right things that I would end up being physically and verbally abused by him, kicking me off the bed onto the floor, thrown against the walls and being physically prevented from leaving the room. I remember one time when he pushed me hard against a wall in the bedroom and I had my skin ripped by a nail which was there and my P showed absolutely no remorse but just said that it was my fault as I had not pulled the nail out when I removed the picture! Always no sleep until the job was done, but remember the job, sexual intercourse, had ALWAYS to be done with conviction and ‘love’ even though you have just been physically abused and you hated his guts.
Inevitably I would listen and try to learn how to say ‘not tonight’ but you will also know, if you have ever had this experience, that you will also will never ever get it right.
I didn’t really mean to type up all these disturbing memories but they are unfortunately mine.
One absolute fact that I learnt about physical abuse is that if you are dealing with a person stronger than you who is prepared to use it against you, you will never win. It doesn’t matter how much you plead, reason or argue and fight back you might as well just give in from the start and save your energy. If you ever are in a relationship where your partner uses physical aggression against you YOU MUST LEAVE THIS RELATIONSHIP as things will only become worse over time.
I have witnessed and been subjected to so many awful things in the last 28 years and it makes me feel very sad to now know that it was all because I was unlucky enough to meet someone, a narcissistic psychopath, who represented between 1-4% of the whole population. I think it is so important that the message about this species gets through to everyone and that it is taken very seriously. I was absolutely amazed but very relieved that on the soap opera ‘Neighbours’ recently that the subject was addressed in a way that indicated that we should all know about them! ‘My father is a Sociopath’. The young man in this scene had stood in front of a class of young chidren and said this statement so easily! As if it was common knowledge!
GOOD!!!! GOOD! GOOD!
My encounter with a P has ruined my life, my health and has turned my totally innocent and naive attitude to life, believing that everyone was basically good, totally upside down. I promised myself when he was eventually forced to leave that I would never let this disgusting excuse for a father and a man ruin my children’s lives, which I have hopefully now achieved, and now I am determined to do my very best to finally heal and be happy within myself.
I am so pleased to find a site devoted to the exposure of these people and for all the people reading this who may not be totally convinced by our stories all I would ask is for you to think and know that this phenomenon is very real, spread the message to everyone you know and be on the look out for them, believe what you are told by their victims – ask yourself why would all the people be here trying to expose the truth and what do you think we have to gain from misleading you? We have nothing to gain from this apart from support and the solace to now know we were not mad. We HAVE, however, lost an awful amount both personally and financially. If by educating people and making everyone aware of the danger to the human population that P’s represent I hope that this may help to stop another innocent person from being abused.
victim uk,
What a heart wrenching story. You are truly a survivor!
There is a perception that the victims of DV are weak but I think the reality is that they are strong. Very Strong. You used your strenght to survive. I have to believe that people can recover from these types of experiences. I hope you can find a DV support group if you haven’t already. There are usually support groups for that and you can bet that most if not all physical abusers are Sociopaths or Psychopaths.
And your children may benefit from counseling as well for they are survivors too.
I am glad you found LoveFraud. This is a wonderful place to begin healing.
Aloha……. E.R.
UK:
I was very touched by your story, by your sharing, courage, strength, and your positive outlook. I hope that someday you can say the “L” word to someone besides your children. It is helpful and healing to express your experiences in an informative and caring environment like Lovefraud.
UK,
I’m not an expert, but it seems to me that what you at times went through could verifiably be described as torture. If you read about a woman in Darfur going through something like that at the hands of a soldier, nobody would think twice about describing it that way. I know I’m an invisible person half way around the world, but I’m deeply sorry you had the bad luck of that extended misfortune.
I agree with the others; You are extremely strong to have gotten yourself out of that. Human beings are resillient and I really believe you can end up okay. The psyche and body know how to heal themselves; yours will, too. Right now, you just have to take repeated leaps of faith.
Diane, et al: I wonder if you might want to start a thread on sadism: are sociopaths by nature sadists? I’d love to hear people’s comments. The one I knew seemed to get the same buzz off women’s suffering as he did off their moony manipulated attention, so I’m not sure what he was.