Editor’s Note: This story was submitted by a Lovefraud reader who we’ll call “Marcia.” She describes her involvement with a man who she now believes is a sociopath, and how her relationship had three distinct phases.
I met him on Chemistry.com in February of 2009. He wrote to me through the site and we corresponded several times before speaking on the phone. I liked his profile very well and enjoyed his style of writing and what he wrote in our correspondence. When we spoke on the phone, we had no problem starting and maintaining a conversation on the phone. He was articulate, intelligent and had all the time in the world for me.
We met on March 6, 2009 for a drink. I got there first and very symbolic of our relationship, he blindsided me and sneaked behind me and playfully grabbed the back of my neck. The attraction and chemistry was immediate. He was extremely charming. He looked into my eyes with such a piercing look that I felt he was seeing through me. He was fun. He made me laugh. He treated me like a gentleman. He had a great energy. I just enjoyed being around him and with him all the time.
That very same night we had dinner together and made love. Since I was an hour away from him, I was staying at a hotel that night. So he stayed with me and we had a wonderful and relaxing breakfast on the porch next morning. When I was leaving he asked me if I could see him next day. I was coming to town to see a ballet with my girlfriend so we decided to have dinner with my girlfriend. He invited me to stay at his place that night and I accepted.
Lavish flattery
Lavish flattery began immediately. There was nothing I could do wrong. I was sexy, I was beautiful, I was attractive, my energy was great, it was fun to be around me, I was the best mother, I was the best doctor, I was the best lover, I was the best friend, I had great taste for clothing and jewelry, nobody has ever loved him like I did, he had never loved anyone like he loved me, he would marry me in a heartbeat, finally he had found the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, that is why he had never settled down before, he did not want to settle for less, and I was the proof he was right to wait for the right person.
Every time he would see me, he couldn’t catch his breath (he was such a great actor, there was a visible pause in the movement of his chest). I was wise, I was brave, I was evolved, I was everything he would ever wanted from a woman. I was funny. He had such a great time with me no matter what we did together. I was fit. I was strong. He would send me fifty text messages a day telling me how much he loved me and how much he missed me and how even exchanging text messages he would be aroused, and how he was so attracted to me. He would bring me roses, buy me jewelry, music, wine, etc.
The pity play
Pity play began almost at the same time. He told me how abusive his parents were. How his mom used to scream at him and beat him. How his father was always dissatisfied with him and how he was refusing to tell him that he was proud of him to this day. How his parents’ divorce when he was 20 affected him because he was put in the middle. And then it was his wife and how she cheated on him with many men including his closest friends, and how she got pregnant many times and had an abortion every time, how he knew it was because those were not his children, how she gave him a genital wart and he had to have surgery to remove it. Then it was his ex-girlfriend and how she was dependent on drugs and him and she would not let go of him and how he could not leave her because everyone in her family had abandoned her after she had disclosed that she had been sexually abused by a family member. And how his boss was treating him just like his dad did and how abusive the boss was, etc.
Read more — Seduced by a sociopath: It’s not love, it’s love fraud
From that point on, we had four months of amazing time together. Retrospectively that was the “honeymoon phase of our relationship.” Also retrospectively I see that things were moving very fast. Only a week after we met, he was telling his mother that he has found the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with and in the first month of our relationship he bought me a ring as a present. It was not an engagement ring and he did not propose but he emphasized that he had never given a woman a ring before.
Many women
Very quickly he started introducing me to his friends. He “could not wait.” We went and visited his mom in Rhode Island for Mother’s Day and she liked me and my seven-year old daughter very much. She told him “she is beautiful not only on the outside but inside.” In that trip I also met his father, his stepmother, and two of his three brothers. During my visit, his mom told me that he has brought so many women home that she had told him “no more women unless they have a ring on their hand.” I looked at him, he laughed and pointed to the ring and said, “she has a ring.”
That was the very first time I questioned him. I told him I thought taking me to his mom was something special. He became very defensive and angry. He said after his wife of five years left him 18 years earlier, he had been single and dating and “naturally” had met many women. He said he had taken about five of them home but not to introduce to his mom. He just invited them to join him in the trip to his hometown. He said he had taken only two women to introduce to his mom as people he had considered marrying. He was upset with me for a couple of days after we returned but then sent me an email and apologized for his mother’s “insensitive” remark and his own as well.
On another occasion when we were staying with one of his friends when his friend’s 8-year-old daughter asked him why he did not bring his “other girlfriends.” He asked who she was talking about and she named a few names! He did not respond but I immediately felt like a number and completely disposable. I discussed how it made me feel with him but his universal response was anger and blaming things on me, my “insecurity,” my “fears,” etc.
Borrowing money
Very soon he prepared me for borrowing money. He told me how someone had scammed him on paying his student loans and how he had all this debt to pay but it was all going to be clear in a couple of months. How he had been helping a friend in advertising for his business and how he was not paying him and how there were thousands of dollars he would be receiving soon from him. How he was so responsible with money and he would never use a credit card and only use debit card so he knows he only spends the money he has. How he would appreciate it if I put costs of all the activities we were doing together on my credit cards and once his student loan is clear, he would pay me back. Soon he would ask me to put charges related to his canoe club on my credit card promising that once he collects money from members of the club, he would pay me back. Once his boss fired him, he could not pay for his bills and rent and he would insist that he could not borrow money from me. He had gained my trust at such a deep level that I handed him a blank signed check and then he wrote close to $2000 and cashed it. Later on when I asked him to pay me back, he said he neither had the money to pay me back nor he owed me any money.
Relationship had three distinct phases
As described in any typical relationship with a sociopath/narcissist, our relationship had three distinct phases: honeymoon, tension building, and finally violent phase.
In the honeymoon phase even when we text messaged or talked he would get aroused. Whenever he saw me, whether it was an act or a true reaction, I could visibly see his chest would stop moving and he would take a deep breath and would tell me, “you take my breath away.” He could not keep his hands off me and we made love twice a day when we were together.
In the tension-building phase, our sex life suddenly went from what I would rate 10 out of 10 to 1 out of 10. This was so sudden and so drastic that I suspected he might have developed erectile dysfunction. He no longer initiated having sex with me and when I did, 9 out of 10 times he would say he was “tired.” Other excuses included being “busy” or “depressed.”
This went on until November when I found hundreds of pictures of naked women he was having “cybersex” with on his laptop. There were some emails suggesting he had invited these women to meet and have a drink and “see where it goes” but I had no proof this had actually had happened. He adamantly denied having a physical relationship with any of them. I broke up with him for a week but he asked for forgiveness, cried and said he has had sex-addiction for five years and now is going to get help and promised he would stop doing it right away. I got back with him but our sexual relationship never improved.
Self-centered
Regardless of how legitimate my question or concern was, his very first reaction was always becoming defensive and turning things around and attacking me. This was always followed by a few days of completely shutting me off, not contacting me and even ignoring me when I reached out. Early on in our relationship, after a couple of days, he would contact me and apologize for his reaction. But after the honeymoon phase, the days he would shut me out became longer and longer and no apology was offered. Instead, over time he would build up a grudge and become punitive. In response to many red flags in his behavior, he would accuse me of being insecure, having fear-based reactions, having no impulse control, blowing small things up to huge problems, being depressed, being anxious, not exercising enough, at one time sleeping too much, in another time sleeping too little, lack of self-confidence, etc. At the end he said I was crazy, I was fucked up, I had taken joy out of his life, I had brought negative energy into his life, I had made him depressed, he was not excited to see me anymore, he did not want to be around me and he wanted me out of his life.
By then I had recognized how self-centered he was. It was never about me and my needs. It was only and always about him and no matter how much I gave, he would feel his “deeper needs were not fulfilled.”
Violent phase
The relationship moved into violent phase and beginning mid January, on multiple occasions he tried to hit me and even choke me. This was particularly dangerous three weeks ago when I discovered many text messages on his cell phone indicating he has been sleeping with multiple women during our relationship. When confronted him, he described details of his sexual relationship with this women behind my back, without protection, like he was talking about weather. He had no remorse and no shame and did not offer an apology. He hurt me with such a righteous indignation and entitlement that it was beyond my comprehension. His absolute callous disregard for my feelings and legitimate needs were astonishing. He continued to blame everything, including his cheating and lying to me, on me.
Upon discovery of undeniable truth on his text messages and speaking with the women involved, I left him. I did file a police report but he lied through his teeth and police did not pursue the investigation. Following the tactic of offense is the best defense, he did file multiple police reports on me including one of harassment. He also filed for a protective order, which was denied. Currently I am suing him in Small Claims Court for the money he owes me.
Learn more: EFT Tapping to break your addiction to a sociopath
Lovefraud originally posted this story on March 12, 2010.
To recover from the sociopath, be selfish
Yup! same mold ….it’s amazing all the similarities in our experiences and stories.
Even Marci’s story of the S taking all his women to meet his mother, rings so true for me…..the S in my life did the same….with no time inbetween relationships of going by himself. Yup….a week after I dumped his lying ass to the curb, he was taking the old GF now new again GF over there (the one he was cheating on me with)…it was down right funny becuase his elederly father couldn’t keep up with the names of all the women he took over there, so he would confuse me and call me someone elses name!
I confronted him and his parents one time about this, and what amazed me, was how his family defended him and enabled him….again and again.
I used to get so mad because his mother for 12 years called me the wrong name. She is a huge part of the reason he is the way he is and she will defend and enable him in all that he does. She would tell me that she couldn’t stand the way he treated me but then every time he walked out on me, she would get nasty with me. She just had his new girlfriend over for dinner just weeks after I was crying hysterically that he had cheated on me and she told me that she didn’t know anything about him being with someone else.
Well, if it helps in any way she probably called him, and all his GF’s by the wrong name too.
Interesting how their mothers come to their rescue and are so enabling! I think your right JEL….sometimes it is because of the way thier mothers and or fathers are….they are in complete denayal or they are N/S/P’s themselves!
Hey Southernman! Glad to see you! Hope all is well with you!
Speaking of “text book” tonight I watched 48 hours about Della Sitorous “The Doctor’s Wife” who killed husband number 5, and her family and ex husbands described her like it was right off of LF–she comes up for parole in 2013 (23 years to life was sentence) The descriptions of her even as a child manipulating her sister at a very young age by threatening to kill either her mother or her baby brother, sounds like she was an “early blooming” psychopath, but in the reporting they never called her THE P-WORD even once.
Called her every nasty word in the world except the P-WORD. I’m with Autistic Souls-Mike, we need an awareness campaign.
Be interesting to see what the DSM V turns out to be, maybe that will be a good start!
Yes , be so this be so. mine Mike be so wanting to save at risk child peoples. and be so awareness be so needed for early intervention.
be so maybe awarenes be so peoples save themselves from being involved in pretender breeds. be so naught have children by themselves, less family court, yes. pretender breeds do naught come with a warning label attached, no. we be so must advertise it.
it be so everyday peoples naught wanting of saying the P-word. G-d forbid we be so might bring injury to pretender’s sensitivities. perhap’s naught p-word allowed be so maybe “Scorned by G-d”
this be PC madness. when naught call what it be what it be? it be naught treated or dealt with. be so soon an exodus into this LF haven.
be so with aggresive awareness we be make genetic testing to eliminate the genes be so involved. gene manipulation. destroy or manipulate genes that be so lead to pretenders. be so like developing weed killers.
be you know mike put you in a viking suit by some bulls are they?
Kathy soul look dainty. you not so much. be so more a valkrie look.
Des
Thanks Marcia for sharing your story – it is unbelievable for all of us when it gradually unfolds and gradual is the key word here. If they openly hit us or played mind games on the first night most of us would have been out of there like a shot. But because it is gradual we don’t notice as we go along how very bad the relationship is getting – like boiling a frog alive in a pot of water.
you start with boiling water the frog will jump straight out but if you start with cold water and gradually increase the temperature, the frog will be lulled into a sense of safety and security. That analogy really speaks to my situation with the PSYCHOPATH ex. The behaviours and attitudes and abuse escalated so gradually that by the time I noticed how terrible the whole sum was, it was too late for me to escape as I was so weakened and depressed by the abuse.
Unfortunately mine didn’t dump me – he was determined there was nothing wrong with the relationship and my legitimate unhappiness was a problem with perception. If he thought it was alright then it must be alright. I had to end it and he hoovered me back in several times before I managed to end it for good. I am so glad to be away from him and continue to learn all I can about psychopathy, sociopathy and personality disorders in general. I NEVER want to end up in another of these crazymaking relationships ever again! Once is more than enough for me.
Dear Midlife et al, Your comment
“The behaviours and attitudes and abuse escalated so gradually that by the time I noticed how terrible the whole sum was, it was too late for me to escape as I was so weakened and depressed by the abuse.”
Could not more accurately depict my experince. Mine was a very subtle P, in the sense that there was very little visible drama, nothing violent (well once), and his moods were very very even.
A little bit of fake cheer, papering over an obsession with talking about the $$, business etc. All that went from extreme highs to terrible crisis, follwed by some more highs, some more crisis. He always the victim of others jealously of his abilities and superior knowledge etc. He would talk to in a very blank, controlled emotionless fashion about things that would make my head spin. I would be frantic with worry and he would calmly turn on the TV and go into his cage. Him appearing stoic, strong, manly…me the nervous nellie, stressed, fearful.
Eventually I saw a pattern and realized something was off, but still believed he loved me, and was doing his best. At the end, I told him he was either abusing me, and lying about our circumstances, or abusing himself. His eyes kind of pooped wide open with tht. A rare occurance. No other sign. Not a word.
Only AFTER we split when I started to dig, well you all know, the avalanche of lies and deception, the whole shebang.
So they do come in all shapes and sizes.
What has been amazing me, is that during most of my marriage, from about year three, I started to feel very “off” when interacting with stranger. Unsure of how to speak, behave, shy, awkward, uncomfortable. Weird. I mean with shopkeepers, new aquaintences, cab drivers. I was just always anxious and uncomfortable.
It dawned on me about six months post split, as I started to heal ever so slightly, that that was my gut….my gut knew I was living a lie,,my gut knew I was not projecting an honest me…or that I did not know who me was…my gut knew that being the Mrs. of him put me in an untenable situation. Rather than seek the source…because I would have to unbelieve what I needed to believe, I internalized it all. I was weak and needy, drank to much and couldn’t take the heat. He was strong!
Setting aside for a moment the very real practical issues of raising my kids etc.. I realized lately that there was something else that kept me in the dark and allowed me to be victimized systemically, sadistically, for years and years.
It was my own belief and confidence in my smarts and abilities. I fought back, debated, argued, smacked him down, told him off. I was no pushover. Hell no…I was taking him on, standing my ground, insisting I was his equal.
By allowing my self to believe I was in a fair fight, that I was one side of a two sided story, I enabled everything he ever did.
Fell for the classic fairness trap, when one side is lying.
And truth be told, even tho’ the fairy tale had long since been hollowed out, hung on to the dream of a fix.. a final stage that was just around the corner of peace and hapiness…once he got that next crisis sorted, or that deal done.
There is a book, that unfortunately cost me years of misdirection, called “I don’t want to talk about it” a very good book, on male depression. I spent years convinced that that was the problem. Just had to help him fix that. That is why he was flat and unemotional and blank and vacant.
In any event, one case study in the book is about the business type, just like mine. The hyper aggressive, abitious, philandering, master of the universe type. And the author concludes ” No woman in her right mind stays with a man life this forever”. On some level I knew the author was correct.
I think there is a good cocaine analogy with these creatures.
They start out giving us the best high we have ever had…knowing that we will stick around for a long time, and do lots of their biding,,attempting to re-capture that first stage.
They in turn, are also addicted to the high of manipulating and exploiting, outwitting and “outsmarting” their prey…playing with us like the boy with the spider.
The old “never look a gift horse in the mouth” wisdom is certainly turned on it’s head with these creatures.
Never again. Towanda.
It’s amazing how all these guys sound so completely alike. The whole beginning of the relationship was IDENTICAL to mine. The flattery and you are the woman of my dreams. I want to be with you forever. What about your wife-why are you still with her. She stayed with me all through my medical training so I can’t just leave her. This man said whatever he had to say to me to get me to just ignore that. Don’t worry, you have the best part of me. I have nothing in common with her. We haven’t been intimate in over 6 years. He had open heart bypass surgery 6 years before meeting me. After surgery, he told the wife he was impotent and they stopped having sex. I ended up speaking with her after she found out about us and she said that is was true that they were no longer intimate. I think so it would be OK for him to sleep with someone else-I was the someone else. He told me when we were first together and I had doubts, that he had NEVER stepped out on her before and that I was the first one. He couldn’t help it because we were friends and he fell in love with me. He said that he had never met anyone prior to me that could make him step out. He said that he NEVER had feelings for her that he has for me-it goes on and on. I find out in the end that I was the fourth younger woman that he had done this to and all of the other three relationships were approached exactly the same. THe wife did think that he actually loved ME though, because the other ones were little flings and our relationship was a year and would have continued if she hadn’t accidently found the text message from me when he was in the shower. I’m glad now that she found it. I could have been subjected to this for years. The day before she found the message, he was all worked up because he was afraid that their 25th anniversary was going to fall on the same week as my graduation from the police academy. SHE had been talking to him about taking a trip and he didn’t want to go. He said that there was NO WAY IN HELL that he was missing my graduation because he was supposed to pin my badge on me for the first time.
The reason why I am so ANGRY still is that graduation never happened for me. He discarded right before I started. He was living with me and promised to help financially because I was taking a BIG paycut to follow my dream. I trust that he would be there and did not move to downsize my life and had NO CLUE that I would have to live like that-spur of the moment. I started my class but I couldn’t stay in it. I lost my expensive apartment cuz I couldn’t pay the rent. Being in that kind of intensive training and studying environment while being homeless was not an option.
Now I am back in the career I despise making the $$$ and downsizing everything so I can go back on my own. Cheap apartment, paying off bills, paying off car-anything and everything I have to do-building up savings. That’s why I’m so hateful right now. I would have my dream of being a police officer if it weren’t for him and that horrible relationship. He was the one who also encouraged me to follow that dream. He was dying to have a girlfriend who was a cop-maybe it was the uniform. He was planning to buy me the top of the line bullet proof vest that cost $5000 and I ask for that. He came over with all this information about it. I am NEVER letting ANYONE do this for me again. My police captain boss who is my mentor said” You DO not need him”. She said that you are plenty enough as a woman all by yourself!
OMG ANITASEE – you just nailed something for me – the anxiety in interacting with people that weren’t him. I had exactly the same experience and can see that you are right in your assessment that this was our gut talking and we felt like phonies.
I always knew I was anxious all the time after the first few crises he brought into the marriage, but I attributed it to the shame of the financial disasters he had created and my need to present a ‘normal’ and ‘happy’ facade of the relationship and my role inside it to the outside world.
This anxiety is another distancing technique for isolating victims – I lost all my friends when with him and was never able to make any new friends. I was too on edge and people didn’t want to hang out with me – the knowledge of this made me feel even more anxious and ill at ease with people, which created a vicious circle – the more anxious I was, the less people enjoyed my company.
It was a very weird phenomenon as I always had lots of friends and since going no contact have been able to make and sustain new nurturing friendships despite the belief I developed as a result of this experience that I was somehow defective and socially cursed. You’ve hit it on the head with your assessment that we were ill at ease in the role we were playing – I can see it now so clearly.
I like you didn’t take the abuse lying down and thought I was engaged in a fair fight with him – he gave the appearance of ‘having my back’ and would then subtly sabotage me so everything failed.
I also believed the problem was that he was depressed and even went as far as to research it,, take us both to the doctor and get us both on anti depressants. He claimed they were marvellous but stopped taking them after a while. I felt my depression was a direct result of the relationship, but he eventually talked me into believing I had always been depressed and that’s why there were problems in the relationship – circular argument that effectively took the heat off him as the cause of everything turning sour.
He had those flat moods you described – no excitement or enthusiasm or energy. Just always quiet with a resentment simmering below the surface. Anger was never far away.
Mine also wasn’t openly violent although he would engage in power games such as wrestling or tickling. His abuse was mostly emotional and psychological, financial and academic. It was subtle to start with – he would make out he had made a ‘mistake’ or an error of judgement and don’t we all make those???
Everything had an excuse and everything was the fault of someone else. If he didn’t keep enough money to pay a bill he had offered to pay then it was my fault for not reminding him about it. If he didn’t do something he promised he would then it was because he ‘forgot’. If there was a problem at work it was always someone else’s fault – never him. So everything was rationalised away and any time I tried to point out the pattern that was emerging over time, I was shot down for ‘dragging up the past’ … he knew the self help lingo inside out despite the fact he had never picked up a single book about relationships to read.
Any time I accused him of not being supportive of me, he would respond by asking what he was meant to do? Everything you asked him to do was such a drag to him that in the end I just stopped asking and did everything myself. He spent all the money and took away all my options to do anything different in my life for years and years. But any time I complained about never being able to go out anywhere he would retort “I stopped making arrangements for outings because you can never decide where you want to go.” And with no witness my denial was weak as water and easy for him to ignore.
He rewrote history saying things happened that didn’t – ie things to make himself look good like “I helped out with the housework all weekend the other week” – in truth he might have dried the dishes after four weeks of nagging or mopped the floor after a month of ‘reminding’.
Any time I threatened to really end it, he would iimprove ever so slightly for a few days then claim he had reinvented himself totally offering his minor changes as evidence then revert back to his normal selfish self absorbed self. So there was always a grain of truth in his grandiose claims of improvement and this made it very difficult to point out that nothing was ever changing.
TRuth be told I also held on for the perfect relationship we had in the beginning that was just around the corner if I could just find the right book, or article or approach or just do more for him or be more or … it was never enough. I remember asking him early on in the marriage
“When is it enough so I can leave you? When will I have taken enough so I can walk away?”
For some stupid reason the only measure of a bad man I had in my mind was one who hit me and he made damned sure never to do that. Instead he murdered my soul in far more creative and subtle ways. I actually begged him to hit me on several occasions so I could walk away from him and each time he would clench his jaw, smile at me and clench his hands into fists at the sides of his body.
There is so much more than this, but these are the things that reading your post brought up for me. He was subtle – subtle is the word – he wasn’t an open criminal, he wasn’t doing drugs or beating me or openly stealing from my wallet – he held down a job and contributed the bare minimum to the household … and even less to the relationship. Our dynamic changed markedly on the day we married and even guests noticed the change in his temperament. Once he had me I was a captive in the house to be tossed to and fro according to his whims. There was no need for effort – he knew I was a smart capable woman who would do whatever it took to save my marriage – still held onto the Christian ideal that marriage is for life and the wifely role is one of deference to her husband. he had me right where he wanted me.
I have now been no contact for almost four months though the relationship was over a long time before that. I feel so much better now – life has done a complete 360 turn from that place I was in with him. I was suicidal for several years – everything that I tried turned to custard with his input and neglect and it was like a puzzle or riddle I couldn’t solve. I now have friends and am starting to date – very cautiously. I KNOW myself now most importantly and will never put aside myself and my needs and wants to cater to any man. Any man worthy of my time will be one who sees relationships as mutually nourishing and requiring both parties to have both feet in. I will never settle for someone disordered again.
TOWANDA is right! Yay for us!