UPDATED FOR 2024. Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following email from a reader. She learned the hard way how important it is to listen to your inner voice.
When I met my husband, 14 years ago, I owned my own home, had two children, a great job and life was great. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, however, he would not take no for an answer until I went out with him (1st red flag). He presented himself as financially secure, a family man with a daughter, and who told me family is everything . He was very charming and giving to my children and I.
After 5 months of dating, he started telling me how much he loved me and wanted to marry me. I said that I wasn’t ready to jump into marriage again after being married for 12 years. However, he never let up. He kept saying that I had no idea what a great life we could have together and that all he wanted to do was make me happy and provide a wonderful life for myself and children. We married 7 months later and my life has never been the same.
He changed the very night of our marriage. It was like he flipped a switch — not even consummating our marriage on our wedding night. He immediately got the attitude of “I have you now.” He moved into my house with nothing but a suitcase of his clothes, never even asking me if I wanted anything from his house. He started not wanting to drive to pick up his daughter to see her. Told me he didn’t want to have to go to every family function of his family. He started becoming distant to my children as well.
That was just the beginning of a mountain of lies and deception I started to uncover 9 months into our marriage. I started noticing that any time I asked him a question about anything, he became angry and verbally abusive. When it became time to do our taxes the first year of our marriage, I asked him if he had his own accountant. He said, let’s use yours. So we did. We both sat in front of my accountant and my husband NEVER flinched when asked certain questions. He again was extremely charming, funny and articulate, seeming to be capable of a lot.
Well, a few months later, I received a letter in the mail from the IRS stating they were withholding our refund of $6,000 due to my husband NOT paying his taxes the previous 4 years!! His response to the letter was, “SO!” He used MY interest on my mortgage, my children, my everything as deductions because he NEVER paid his bills, was in serious debt and his house (which he owned with two other people) was going into foreclosure!! I found out it was all a facade. But yet, he kept telling me that I was making more of the situation, that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Oh no, it was much worse.
And here I am, 13 years later, finally getting a divorce because, you see, it is not that easy to get away from a person like this. I went from an outgoing, smart, independent woman to a woman with no self esteem, trust issues and just plain scared. I am ashamed to admit this and believe me, would never, never, have thought this could have happened to me! My story is so much worse and so many other things have happened, that this is just a glimpse into this nightmare. But it has and I am trying to move on with my life to get back to the person I once was.
Please don’t think this could never happen to you. When people show you who they are, BELIEVE them the first time (Oprah) and move on. Don’t ever believe it is in your head, as told to me. It is not. Listen to your inner voice. If it just doesn’t feel right, it is NOT. TRUST YOURSELF MORE THAN YOU TRUST ANYONE.
Learn more: Sociopathic Seduction — how you got hooked and why you stayed
Lovefraud originally posted this article on May 9, 2012.
3 steps to prevent a sociopath from taking advantage of your vulnerabilities
Oxy
Lol….definitely a spathy episode! I love how you describe it! Unless you’ve experienced it….you just don’t know.
We are in counseling. My husband just wants to sweep it under the rug and move on. I’m having a hard time. I’m angry because I think his behavior and allowing him to treat me the way he has brought me to a place where I believed the path could give me everything I was missing in my life. I almost feel like I need to be alone! I guess I just have to take it one day at a time.
Thanks for all the help you are giving on this site:)
I agree, Oxy.
So sorry to hear about your finger, but you are doing an amazing job typing! You rule, girl!! feel better soon.
g1S,
Wow, what a total creep!!!!! If you think back on that now, I’m sure your head ust be reeling on how WRONG it is for a therapist to LOCK his office with you in it alone. It’s totally creepy. Right there he already crosses a safety boundary. But spaths do it in SUCH a clever way. He locks the door, sits close, but then doesn’t make a move. Your body first gets on alert (“What’s going on?! This might be dangerous!”), and then they do nothing anymore. And as a grown woman you don’t want to make a fuss when the spath suddenly acts “respectful” again, as if giving you the time and space to sit further away or go to the door and unlock it. Which of course you won’t do, because it would ascertain that for a moment there you felt threatened, uncomfortable. It’s better not to acknowledge to either him or yourself that he just crossed a boundary. And so the “danger will robinson” settles down… only a residu is left as “excitement”, and you convince yourself you’re attracted.
A Peruvian guide used a similar tactic on me while I was tourleading last year. I had no interest in him at all, though he was not unattractive. When I first saw him he seemed more shy and staying in the background kind of guy (or lurking and watching from the shadows). But halfway our first day of the 4 day trek, while my tourists were out of sight and I was aking conversation with him for social-professional reasons- I’m the tourleader, he’s the guide… I must get along with him for 4 days – he suddenly stepped up REAL close to me and suggested to hug me and huddle together to keep warm together. It totally took me by surprise.
It’s not that I had other guides try to hit on me before, but they will tend to do that almost from the very moment of the meeting, and in front of the rest of the group. It enables both the guide, the group and myself to make it into an innocent flirt game. The group gets to joke that the guide has the hots for me, I can joke by keeping a distance. But this guide’s move had come totally out of the blue. So, for a moment I didn’t know how to respond at all. But he went no further than that one move at that moment. And an hour later I started to wonder whether I was attracted to him, simply because he had been able to bring me out of my balance.
Of course some of the group did notice that something was going on between him and myself at some level. He’d also start to capitalize on me the moment I did try to build in some distance again. I know by a comment made by the pain in the arse tourist that he faulted me for the guide trying to get my attention. So, this guide had undermined my position in a way. When we were back in Cuzco the guide gave me his business card, but did not show up at the meeting place where he and my group would go out in town. The next day I did a background check on his name in fb, and found out he was married and had a child, while he had “lied” to that same annoying tourist during the trek that he didn’t have any children (I was walking within earshot). I was able to save some face, when later that day the group asked me whether I’d been able to set up a new meeting for their last nigth in town. I then smiled and jokingly said, “I’m quite sure his wife wants him for herself alone for the 3 days he’s home before starting a new trek.”
Most laughed at that, but the annoying tourist was floored and insisted that he distinctly recalled the guide telling him he had no children. I must admit I in my own way “gaslighted” that tourist then – I lied that the guide had informed me himself about being married with children during the 4 day trek. So, I made him the tourist doubt his own recollection. It wasn’t my intention to make him doubt his own memory, but I felt nobody needed to know I had done a background check on the guide … I did not want to explain my private life or why I learned to do background checks on people. It was none of their business that I had just recently broken up with a sociopath, and that a part of me distrusted this “quick bond” where the guide dominated my wandering mind (yup in 4 days my mind swam with his image… took me 4 days to get him out of my mind too).
This little 4-day moving in on me experience after my spat relationshit and new awareness about spaths gave me some insights how they fool us into beleiving that our feelings of anxiety created by their inappropriate boundary behaviour is some form of attraction. It has become a RED FLAG sign for me.
Darwinsmom,
“He locks the door, sits close, but then doesn’t make a move. Your body first gets on alert (“What’s going on?! This might be dangerous!”), and then they do nothing anymore. And as a grown woman you don’t want to make a fuss when the spath suddenly acts “respectful” again, as if giving you the time and space to sit further away or go to the door and unlock it.”
I never thought I was in any danger. I was very confused, though.
I also realized later that by not actually touching me or making a move to kiss me, he could profess innocence. By leaving it up to me to make the advances, he retained control.
He could, as he tried to do with the church, claim that I had been inappropriate, not him. Of couse, he’d have to explain why he locked the door and sat next to me on the couch, which I’m sure he’d deny. He could easily point to the stress of the crisis with my son’s kidnapping as the cause for my misunderstanding his intentions.
He not only told me that I needed to change churches, but he produced a list of six or seven other churches in the area that he thought I should try. He even insisted that one an hour away from our church would be a “really good place” for me to be.
I told him that I had no problem with us attending the same church. It was obviously his problem, not mine, so if anybody needed to go elsewhere, he did, which he did end up doing.
He invited me in to talk with him so much during son’s sessions, having my son wait in the reception area, that my son turned to me one day and exclaimed, “Gee, he wants to talk with you more than he wants to talk with me.”
Meanwhile, I’m asking my therapist if this is right, isn’t my son getting shortchanged.
I wrote the therapist a letter stating that I intended to terminate. I sweet-coated it by saying that I felt my son needed somebody skilled with alcoholic families and since he didn’t have that expertise, I felt it was time for my son to move on to somebody else.
My therapist had a royal fit. She was visibly angry with me. We went head to head. She insisted that since this therapist was such a father figure to my son that leaving would be very harmful to my son. I really fought to get away from this man.
I even went to my psychiatrist, who was prescribing me antibiotics, and knew us both. I told him what was going.
He answered that perhaps he didn’t know this therapist as well as he thought. He, too, unfortunately, said it would be very damaging to my son to leave this therapist because of their relationship. I went back to him because of what my shrink said, not because of my therapist’s position.
So what happened? Two months later the therapist abandons my son anyway, three weeks after he got out of the psychiatric hospital the second time for suicidal ideation.
He had told my son that he needed to go into a facility for emotionally disturbed children. I freaked out. Why? There was nothing wrong with my son. He was reacting to a situation. I had asked the outpatient facility to find out what was going on with this therapist. They refused to discuss anything with me even though I asked three times.
We walked in for a 11 AM session. My son’s psychiatrist said that this therapist would be terminating with my son at his regular 2 PM that day. I flipped out.
I left and called my therapist. She told me not to go to that appointment because she feared what else the therapist might say to my son.
I later found out, demanding the records under HIPAA, that when the outpatient facility went to talk to the therapist at my request, he told them that I stalking him.
Talk about a perfect storm of therapist incompetence.
There is more, but I’ve had my stomachful for now.
I was glad to read that you got some of your self-respect back regarding that guide and that tourist.
G1S, we posted over each other and I just now saw your post about the therapist. It is TOTALLY unethical for a therapist to have a relationship with a family member of a client or a client.
Yes, he was pushing the boundaries and he was a total CREEP. What a good thing that your warning bells went off and you did NOT have an affair with this man. I think he was a totally unethical person.
Grace,
that’s just awful about the therapist.
If that had happened to me, I would be convinced that my spath was behind it. He could find the evil in anyone and make it BLOOM.
I admire your ability to hold on to your sanity in the middle of all those sick people.
I hold my therapist far more responsible than my son’s.
My son’s therapist really struggled over this. That was obvious to me and my therapist.
He went back and forth. He did try to maintain a professional distance and he slipped quite a number of times. To his credit, though, he never crossed that final line.
I had repeatedly asked my therapist for help. Rather than seeing the damage that was happening to everybody involved (my son, me, and his therapist,) she pushed for the therapist and me to become a couple. It was her agenda. That’s why she didn’t hear me. She was too busy making plans for things to happen as she thought they should.
My son’s therapist handled things very poorly at times and even downright cowardly, but at least he never totally lost knowing right from wrong. He didn’t throw that out the window, like my therapist did, because something else was more attractive to him.
I think my P sister did a number on his head by taking and putting his client in danger. He saw that I was under full assault by my family and I was getting no help from that quarter. His client, with suicidal ideation, was pulled out of a psychiatric facility and handed over to the people who put him there, with no investigation or protection whatsoever. We also learned that my sister had obtained help from a therapist in her state to advise her on how to “help me,” which was code for how to take my son from me. This therapist knew what I was facing and that I was very alone.
My P sister also showed up at his office in a rage demanding my son’s therapy records. The situation was completely crazy.
The therapist was in the parking lot going to lunch when she pulled in. He said she looked like a very angry version of me. He called his receptionist, instructed her to give my sister nothing, and he told whoever was driving to get out of there.
Before my P sister launched her attack, there was nothing between me and my son’s therapist.
I honestly think that the full assault by my P sister threw a lot of things out of whack.
In the end, he had his Ph.D. and I guess he felt he was smart enough to figure everything out, but he couldn’t and he didn’t.
G1S,
Awful story! Being confused about someone and then allowing you the space to move would have the same “am I confused out of attraction?” idea imo. Be proud that you kept strong and listened to your gut.
I’m so sorry what that man did to your son: he knew you cared and wished to hurt you by hurting him.
And how strange for your own therapist pushing you to be a couple with him. What the hell!
Actually, G1S, your son’s therapist shows several red flags… for locking the door and sitting close to you is crossing a boundary in a very creepy away. And then he accuses you of doing what he’s actually doing: stalking. And he drops your son so cruelly too. And your therapists enthusiasm about him grew when he started to call her to talk about your son, but ended up talking about you… Sounds to me like he was making your therapist into some cheerleader.
Folks – Jessica Vega, faked cancer. Check out the May 8, 2012 Anderson Cooper show to see her husband’s interview (and would the diagnosis be for HIM?)
A friend of mine rightfully pointed out that his wife didn’t divorce him because he was Mr. Wonderful.
My gut eventually felt that he could have been a batterer.
My P sister also got in touch with my son’s father, who gave up all parental rights as part of the original support agreement including stating that he wanted nothing to do with my son and no knowledge of either of us. He wrote a letter for my P sister stating that I was a horrible mother and in his opinion, my P sister should have custody of my son.
The day that my sister showed up in a rage at my son’s therapist’s office, she had this letter with her. That was her proof why the therapist needed to turn over all his records about my son to her.
Because of this letter and whatever contact my sister had with my son’s father, she told my son that she could help my son have a relationship with his P father. More wounding.
My son’s P father had no intentions of doing that. He just wanted to screw me and get out of paying child support. The thing is, if my sister had gotten permanent custody of my son, she would have been all over the P father for support. As it was, he tried to tell me that he had given my sister the health insurance card, which he never did.
Between what my S mother and P sister were doing to us, my son’s P father throwing his weight behind my P sister, dealing with the stigma that “the courts don’t do this sort of thing without just cause,” the stigma of my family attacking me “they wouldn’t do this without just cause,” my son being hospitalized twice for suicidal ideation, him running away once, me trying to hold onto my job and the house (I got laid off during part of this,) my therapist and my son’s therapist doing their things, and the outpatient facility throwing in their monkey wrench, I felt like I was on the emotional equivalent of an Indiana Jones movie.
We also had to deal with things like my son being yanked out of his high school, put into another for two weeks, and then returned to his school. He had to put up with the kids getting on his case about “are you going to stay this time.”
My sister told the court that I had multiple personalities (because my demeanor changed when I came around them) and was a negligent mother. Who ever heard of anyone going into court saying that about a sibling just to be mean? She must have known what she was talking about, right?
When my sister had temporary custody, the school’s and the psych hospital’s doors slammed in my face. They couldn’t talk to me about my son because I was no longer his legal guardian-thanks to the court.
I don’t think my son’s therapist turned my therapist into a cheerleader. It was the other way around. She was trying to lead him into having a relationship with me. In fact, while I always insisted that my son was my first priority and I fought with her to terminate our relationship with my son’s therapist, she told me that she had told my son’s therapist that I wanted him to “co-parent” my son with me.
I never said that. I didn’t even know what that meant. But think of how I looked to my son’s therapist when she said that. She explained that she did that because she thought she was helping. How was that helping? It wasn’t what I wanted and it certainly wasn’t responding to our needs.
It was an absolute nightmare. She was an independent chapter in this saga.
Getting help for me from a therapist turned out to be impossible. I take that back. I found a psychiatrist only who read many of the documents and emails. She was tremendously helpful and validating.
Sometimes all we need is somebody to hear us and believe us. I was very lucky that so much was documented.