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
G1S, your story is so similar to mine (with the incompetent therapists). This is exactly why I don’t think “therapy” is all that great. Yet, I’ve had one or two amazingly gifted therapists who have helped me tremendously. That is, one or two in a sea of about 25. (that includes the 13 or so couples therapists my ex-husband and I tried, during the marriage, during the divorce to help with the co-parenting, and in the years since).
All those years, all those dollars, no one ever told me that couples therapy in the case of domestic violence was harmful to the victim. Even though I couldn’t name what my husband (at the time) was doing to me… none of the therapists picked up on the dynamic because they were all about healing the relationship.
No one ever suggested “no contact” for me. With the exception of a couple of therapists, most of them were looking to me as being the crazy wife, or the overprotective mother, or the uncooperative, alienating co-parent. Therapy was about getting me to wise up, see the error of my ways, and just get along with my husband/ex-husband. I sincerely tried to do this, endlessly self-examining.
You, G1S, went through something so awful. You must be an incredibly strong person to still be standing, and to keep your determination strong to help your son even with no one believing you. You kept your faith in yourself and you kept your Self intact, even though you were mind-raped by all these people. Good job.
I mean that. Don’t ever discount what you have accomplished. It’s incredible. You were in a maze of mirrors, and you found your way out and lived to tell the tale.
Athena,
I read that Slate article about the mother-in-law and the poison.
Wow.
I was amazed that she advised pressing criminal charges.
Well, I hope people can understand now why I am not a big believer in my thoughts brought these experiences into my life.
If I had that much power with my thoughts, I’d be winning a major lottery, traveling, and writing. My bills would be all paid off and I’d rennovate the house.
g1s,
I wll reiterate you’re looking at it solely from a causation pov. That’s not what it’s about imo, and Mel mentioned this specifically as well several times in her article. It’s not about blaming a victim of how her thoughts caused others to abuser her or him, but that it is a large part of the healing AFTER the shit.
What can you learn from that big pile of poop thrown over you? You can learn something from the tactic used to catch you by surprise with something inapropriate and then leaving it out there as a bait for you. Next time anyone else ever does that you’ll be able to recognize it for what it is inapropriate and call it that too. From the experience with the therapists you can learn a whole lot for yourself regarding boundaries: why they are there, and why others shold adher to them. And you can also learn from it what an incredible tenacious, strong woman you are to have survived all that simultaneous rampage and boundary raping without losing your son or your mind over it.
I compare it with school and classes we had even on subjects we may not have chosen or applied for: you had them anyway, so just as well get out the most of it 🙂
Skylar,
Above, you wrote this
******I also think that certain people attract them more than others. They watch for people who react emotionally and easily. That’s how they feed.
They watch for people who care a lot, who respond, who are sensitive. That’s how they feed.
They watch for anyone who is good. Yes, they can see it on your face. When you have a trusting nature, they know that you are fundamentally a good person, that’s why you trust ”“because you assume others are like you. It gives you confidence in humanity and in yourself. They hate that. They really envy that.
There are other things they look for too, like the limp. They look for people who are unbalanced. Anyone who relies more on emotion than intellect, or vice versa, attracts their attention. If you tend to take more responsibility than is within your power, they love that too, so they can leave you holding the bag. *************
Yes!! All of this rings true in my experience. I offered all of those “white flags” to my spath.
I asked him why he didn’t trust me.
I told him I trusted everybody.
I told him my house is unlocked and the shades are open.
When he abandoned me early in the relationship, I showed up at his office. In tears.
He asked me about my (prior) relationship with my husband and I revealed EVERYTHING. So I revealed the perfect mask.
I put up no barriers.
I said nothing misleading.
I assumed he was honest, forthright, trustworthy, like me.
Ha ha ha!
I realized something this morning. On occasion I suspected my spath was out screwing around. I checked some dating sites and sure enough his profile was on there. He always had the same MO. He presented himself as a normal, balanced, industrious, hard working, kind man. HA ha ha ha ha!!!!!
Athena
Athena, I’m beginning to find some humor in my recent exspath experiences!!! He TOOK my cues and created whatever masks were necessary to perpetrate his long-con, and he took them direclty from me.
The exspath presented the same thing, Athena – normal, balanced, industrious, hard working, etc., ad nauseum. Who knew that he was posting personal ads for BDSM playmates, years ago!? LOLOLOL I can see that ad, now: “Really nice submissive male seeking dominatrix to play the Wicked Mistress – must be willing to be called Mom during moments of extreme excitement.” LMAOLMAOLMAO!!!! Oh, jeeeeeeeeeez, what freaks they are
Darwinsmom,
No, I am not looking it at solely from a causation point of view.
This idea is not a new one. It has been around for a very long time and it comes in different flavors, if you will.
One of those positions/flavors is we bring everything into our lives for a purpose, i.e., our soul growth. We NEED these experiences to learn certain karmic lessons.
Some of these positions, I believe A Course in Miracles is one, says we are co-creators with God. There are people who take that even further and say that we are God, because we are from the godhead and are co-creators. Therefore, we are equal with God.
If I am equal with God, then I have all the understanding and knowledge of the Universe. I don’t need to be here or in this lifetime. That becomes superfluous.
I read what Mel said and I understood it.
I learned a lot with what I have gone through. I learned to recognize certain unacceptable and inappropriate behavior. I even understand why I was vulnerable to it and the signals that I might throw out that draws these types of people to me.
That doesn’t mean that my soul has learned or grown.
There is a risk that things will become very mechanical, such as “don’t say this to a certain kind of person because it will be used against you.”
This thinking is too simplistic, too superficial, and too rigid in my book.
It does not take into account free will. It does not take into account many things.
Can we learn from what happens to us? Of course we can.
I learned many things from what I went through between my P sister, S mother, and the therapists etc.
My soul gained because I learned how valuable I am and that there is no reason why I shouldn’t be treated with respect and good will.
Am I grateful for my better understanding and better sense of where I am spiritually? I sure am.
HOWEVER, I did not “think” these experiences into being for the purpose of my soul growth. They were not summoned into my experience because I sought “opportunities” or decided that these would be good lessons for my soul growth.
To choose the lessons for my soul growth means I must know what growth has to occur.
If I know what growth has to occur, then I already have the knowledge because I have already identified the ends or outcomes. The experiences are moot. They are unnecessary.
How I chose to respond to situations and the lens though which I chose to view them are my choices. I empowered myself and claimed what people would have destroyed knowingly or not.
There are many ways that we can grow in understanding and gain spiritual insights.
We do not have to go through hell or intense pain and fear to get to those points.
What troubles me the most is this kind of thinking disregards the wounded people who are encountering it for the first time. How does this impact them?
I think it sends a strong albeit unintentional message that these people have failed. If they had been thinking the right way, these bad things would never have happened to them.
And if they did happen, then the person is flawed because they needed these experiences and did not recognize the opportunities for the good that they hold.
My 26th anniversary in Al-Anon is a few weeks away.
You will hear repeatedly in Al-Anon and AA people say that they are grateful for the alcoholics and alcoholism that happened in their lives because due to that pain, they found recovery.
The alcoholism and alcoholics are still present in the lives of many of these people. They have grown, but nobody is saying that they still need these things in their lives. There are certain things over which we have no control or influence.
I don’t know if I am making sense, but I’m trying.
Grace,
There is a theory about a vacuum. It attracts things that are lacking. So you may not consciously decide you need evil in your life, but evil sees you as being good and is drawn to you.
Conversely, I can see that being good can attract you to evil because you don’t recognize it as evil. It seems good to you.
I know that my spath was very attracted to innocence. He railed against girls who got tattoos. He said, “It’s disgusting. It’s like taking a flower and pulling all the petals off of it.” He is a pedophile BTW.
Anyway, I don’t like to hear that we attracted them because we needed them, either. Not because it’s not true, but because the spaths use that as a way to justify their evil. They say you create what you believe in. Spaths always blame the victim. So that is a RED FLAG FOR ME. Remember that spaths will seed a kernel of truth to make you think that everything they say is true. They mix truth with lies then you don’t know what to think.
The truth is that they are evil, they are responsible for their evil and we are responsible for seeing our vulnerabilities. Once we get to the age where we can regulate our own emotions, then that is our responsibility.
I was attacked by spaths since before I was born. My parents. I didn’t attract that. It was a sabotage.
It took a long time to see it. Now i see it. Now I have free will to the extent that I understand the situation. Belief has nothing to do with it. spaths aren’t santa claus.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that it isn’t either/or. It’s both. If we let anyone convince us otherwise, we are drawn back into the game of scapegoating, shaming and blaming or letting others scapegoat us. Instead of taking responsibility commensurate with the power/knowledge we had at the time.
g1s,
We have a Dutch saying that says “every house has its cross”: it’s the closest Christian saying I know to the karma concept. And my most powerful meditation experience of the dreamer versus the dreamed one (subconscious vs conscious id) left the interpretation door open that the subconscoius did the choosing by making up the dream (aka life) for the conscous. However, I wouldn’t go as far as saying the subconscious is omniknowledgeable… It’s not imo, because it dreamed more in order to experience life in its totality, despite the cost of pain for the conscious id. It wasn’t a higher self either – it was a sleeping id in some mythological ocean it couldn’t even see unconnected to life, except via the dream. People familiar with the Hindu pantheon can see mythological links to their creation story of the god who dreamt up the world into existence. But I do not connect magical thinking with that powerful meditation lesson I had.
I don’t believe in omniscient beings, either human or non-human, nor omnipotent (since these concepts are logically contradictory). I am more inclined to see each person’s higher id as their own ‘god’, but once again that does not include omniscient or omnipotent abilities for me… not some magical thinking.
One of the things I always found very interesting in Astrology was the Charon asteroid – a supposed karmic Charon injury we’re born with, one that will fester and never completely heal. I’m a Pisces, but Ares is my ascendant and 1st house. The Charon wound is on my ascendant and 1st house at birth. Basically it means that my truest nature (Pisces in the 12th house) is a secret, very private; and that my outward personality (Arest as ascendant in 1st house) is also hurt by the Charon wound. In other words – being myself for myself as well as outwardly, my self-expression is handicapped/wounded. And my lessons and personal pain will revolve around self-expression. The idea behind those three has made me think of life’s lesson as the following:
When we are children, little children, we have our chore identity… almost unhampered by experience, most directed by genetics and innate temperament. Several things happen to us: bad and good. There can be several minor bad things, or there can be a major bad thing. They are all just “bad stuff happens”, not something our soul nor something some magical thinking invited into our lives.
If it’s a major bad thing, such as abuse or severe illness or severe loss of a primary caretaker it will cause an injury too massive for the child’s young personality to cope with in a healthy manner. It will determine the Charon injury, overriding the child’s innate capabilities.
If it’s several small bad things, within a child’s means to learn to cope with, then most of those little bad things won’t leave a mark… except for the one bad thing that matches the innate ‘weak spot’ of the child. Because the child has little or no innate ability to cope with that one particular small bad event it will become that child’s Charon wound far into adult age.
For my child it was one small bad thing I was unable as a child to solve or deal with properly – ignored and ousted by my peers from my 7 till my 14, 15. I believed I’d never have true friends as a child; that nobody I wanted to be friends with would ever want to be friends with me. By the time I was a teen the belief was also added that no boy/man I wanted would ever be roantically interested in me. I felt like the ‘ugly duckling’. From my teenhood on (from 15) I met some swans. And to my giant surprise they sought me out, invited me for company. Gradually it dawned on me that those I had wanted to be friends with were ducks, and that I was a young swan instead. But the swan realization has come only in bits and pieces.
Any of my harshest lessons in my adult life (my id crisis, my existential crisis and the recent ex-spath relationshit and aftermath) all revolve back to that Charon wound of mine – being accepted or approved of to some extent by the ducks, versus realizing my swanness and how ducks and swans don’t mix. Every crisis, every big mistake has brought me closer to my true self and a path that is right for me. And I always met the cataclystic event when I was already feeling that something needed to change, that I was stuck in a rut somesorts, but I just didn’t know precisely what or how.
From my 15 until my 24 my response to the duck-world was “I’m not a duck! I’m not a duck!” I revolted against all what ducks stood for. I knew I was different and revelled in it… but that’s not the same as accepting who I was… I still functioned from duckworld’s pov, and then at some level I knew things were just not right anymore. That’s when the id-crisis started to slowly set in. The id-crisis was about recognizing I was a swan – something positive to identify with. So, from my 24 until a year before the spath my life was about shouting to the world “I’m a swan! I’m a swan!”
Shortly after I had positively identified myself with the correct bird species, I also started to realize that my life (career and work) was too much grafted after duckworld. But I had no idea yet what the professional swanworld was either. I felt stuck in a rut again, but didn’t know the way out… That’s when I met the love of my life who showed me a mirage of possible careers I had never ever thought of before… When I lost him I had my existential crisis (I’d seen a glimpse, but had no faith yet how to get there on my own), and the conquering of that helped me find the path that would lead to the correct career – what felt as my calling.
Four years ago I started to get in a rut again – I was tired of shouting “I’m a swan!” I felt it was time to just be the swan, without a fuss, perhaps settle down with another swan and have baby swans. Again, I was stuck though on how to do this. On the scene entered a duck quacking he was a swan – the spath. He looked like a duck, quacked like a duck, walked like a duck, and yet I believed his “I’m a swan! I’m a swan!” And exactly because of my childhood duck imprinting and my long struggle of recognizing my swanness, I wanted to help him. It didn’t help that this duck would also satisfy the teen belief that no nicely plumed duck would ever choose me for a mate. But ducks are ducks, and don’t mate for life such as swans.
And though it was a horrible experience, I also have to admit to myself that if it hadn’t been that duck I’d more than likely would still hook up with a duck-man rather than a swan guy. I am not sure I would have settled down and be a swan without a fuss all by myself without it. My innate response into believing myself 100% a swan was so strong the moment he dumped me. It was never felt so strong as that moment, and it made me turn my back to the ducks for good. I feel I do needed to be repelled from confusing ducks with swans if I ever wanted to be truly at peace. That doesn’t mean that my subconscious thought I needed to learn that lesson. It means to me that I was still confusing the two, still had a belief that ducks and swans can live cooperatively and mingle. And as long as I was still believing this I would have run into some duck promising me the moon and heaven somewhere, somehow. And any of those inevitable experiences would have had the same result, but might have destroyed more than was destroyed.
Darwinsmom,
Why don’t you email me and we can discuss astrology offline?
In the US, we say, “We all have our crosses to bear in life.”