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
muld00n,
I would think that yes they do feel justified. For everything they do. Because they hold no accountability for their actions. It is always someone elses fault.
They can say the words afterwords and say it won’t happen again, but there is no meaning behind the words.
I do understand that you feel familiar in the enviornment that you are living. Because that is what you knew as a child.
But this is the very reason that you don’t want your children to grow up with thinking that this is the way it is supposed to be.
It is not uncommon for women to marry versions of their father. I know I did. But it is important to go back and relive the experience, when you were a child. Think about how helpless you felt as a child when your father was abusive towards your mother. Walking on eggshells, never knowing what might set him off.
This is not the way you or your children deserve to live. You deserve so much better.
You are absolutely right, My husband is uncanningly like my father in looks and temperment, but I actually do not like my father so its a bit wierd.
Horrifungly this morning as reading I realised worse still I am insipid like my mother! I am treading the sme worn path she once did and sometimes even at 80 still does.
Being ”lovebombed” is such a good description, my S didn’t ask me to be his wife – when he first met me – he told me! The pity play quickly followed, they are so textbook, and all followed suit as it has done for everyone here. Trying to get rid of him wasn’t an easy task and he became threatening, leaving tons of messages on my phone if I didn’t. I ignored them, after that he phoned my friends telling them I had ruined his life and he wanted me in court. My friend was with me once when he had a call and the S just droned on and on saying how he wanted Me prosecuted for harassment! I found, when I phoned the police, that he had been calling them every day! Thankfully the police put a stop to his calls, how, I don’t know but thankfully it worked and, although I spot him in the high street, he leaves me alone. I have found out from people who I have known for years in my locality, that he owes them all money and have told them not to give him a penny – he told me and actually showed me ‘court’ papers, that he had won against the city of New York, $40,000 dollars and yet walks around without a penny ever to his name! Oh the lies, the gas-lighting, telling me I was crazy.. and the rages, the sorry’s that he knows he can get ”a little crazy but really he’s a good guy, the best I’ll ever meet” I fell for his New York accent, his charm, he was so charismatic, If I have the misfortune to see him when I’m out shopping I catch brief glimpses of people’s faces, looking in awe at him like he’s some kind of awesome God, its soo cringeable.. I want to scream, yell at them just what he really is and tell them he’s pure poison, he sickens me. He went to the most amazing lengths to prove all he told me.. I never realised he was all a mirage, I had never encountered anyone like it and I hope I can now read the warning signs, all those red flags so I never meet another one again. Why oh why doesn’t television make us aware of such sick and evil people, show us that they are not just murderers, like I thought they were? That they masquerade and walk around us looking like normal people..
Hi All,
Just catching up here:
Midlife, you said Sunday, 14 March 2010 @....... 3:10am – that he got you both on anti-D’s – – then HE stopped taking his; that’s what mine *tried* to do with me.
I agree with this “article” and how “Marcia” described the phases and the whole experience – very well put.
I ended up taking the bottle containing my last anti-D Rx (out of the 4 different types that I had been prescribed over several year’s time) BACK to the Dr. on the follow-up visit (after sleeping 23 hours a day for 6 weeks – and gaining 20 lbs.!!) … and politely told the Dr. *to use them as suppositories* (in other words, I told Dr to shove them up his A**!!! – the Rx wasn’t/weren’t for helping ME ~ they were helping “him: “THE NSP-jerk” I was with).
Got rid of him (the jerk), and my-oh-my ~ how my stress level plummeted to almost zero ~ YAY!
I will share with LF readers my little saying that might help “depressed folks:” (but, please, don’t stop taking YOUR meds because of what I tell ya, but…consider it…borrow it if you like)
“I’ve been SUPpressed, REpressed, and OPpressed, but never really DEpressed.”
I’ve NEVER had the chemical imbalance that causes depression – just the situational experiences that led to feeling used, abused, lied to, cheated on, and feeling crappy about myself, based on the “devalue and discard” phase.
It’s been “situational” ~ and as soon as I got up the *&alls* to finally cut the NSP’s out of my life and broke free of them well, JEE-WHIZ – wow – I feel better already!
Once the C-SOI (constant source of irritation) was out of my life, things went along just FINE…lol
It’s worth thinking about, especially since anytime I was dissatisfied with a relationship, it was because of these same “three phases,” and the jerx (in the plural – and for over a decade of my life), were just that: “NarciSocioPsycho” users.
Classes are in final push for WQ – looking at *hopefully* High B’s and A’s in all of them ~ wish me luck, fellow LF members, please…
~Cheers all~
~J~
Jewels, Even though I highly recommend anti-Ds for people truley suffering from the depression that comes from altered brain chemisty, I also agree whole-heartedly with you. Absolutely. I think they can dull you out, numb you out, and inadvertantly aid the P’s in our lives…I think that sometimes, women are over-medicated, and thus quieted, rendered less problematic to the medical community, as well.
Thank-you for reminding me of this, and bringing it up.
Oh, and good luck on exams. You go girl.
Hi Marcia,
I read your story. It is very simialar to mine with the whole bttering up phase. My P said almost all the same things to me in the beginning. His favorite thing to say to me was “A friend of mine told me if I just stopped looking then the woman of my dreams would walk right into my life, and that’s exactly what happened. Now you are you here and you are the woman of my dreams.” And for the first 4 or 5 months he told me how beautiful, sexy, intelligent I was. How he admired me for leaving my first husband when I had two kids and really took a big risk financailly, etc., etc. I think the one line that really hooked me and that I fell for hook, line and sinker was when we first kissed and he said “I haven’t kissed a woman like that in a long time.”. OMG!! Then I found out about how many women he had been dating (i.e. having sex with) at the same time “before” me. When I questioned him about these woman, he said they didn’t mean anything but also accused me of being insecure, blah, blah, blah. He turned it on me.
Our relationship begain in the Fall of 2005. I am now divorcing him – filed in November 2009 and kicked him out. I would probably have taken the emotional abuse longer and tried to fix and change myself for him if he had not had an affair with a 20 year old which of course he lied about when I first confronted him and continues to lie about. In fact, in Jan he wanted to work on us. He said all the right things to “win” me back. I fell for for it, but wanetd to take it really slow. After he declared his love again, he suggested another busines deal. Talk about deja vu. I couldn’t believe it. I said no to the business deal but was still willing to work on it with him. He strung me a long for a few more weeks and then dumped me. He said I put too much pressure on him regarding how he had to behave to build my trust in him again. See how this works? It’s my fault. I put to much pressure on him. He’s the one who had the affair and he doesn’t want to do the work or just plain old do the right thing to gain my trust back – but it’s my fault. I was devasted all over again. I wanted to believe he could change. He can’t. He is the lie. Everything these guys do and say is dishonest because they are the lie.
I am left with 65K of credit card debt which we used to finance his business ventures. He devasted me emotionally, mentally and financially. I knew I’d be left with the debt, but I had to get out. I don’t understand myself though. I still miss him or think I miss him. I don’t even like him – he is not a nice person. It’s not like I am losing this great guy. He’s selfish and cruel and out for sex, power and money, that is clear. Yet, I still pine sometimes.
I liked what “midlifecrisis” said:
“From this perspective it could be said that by their very nature of selfishness and unavailability that PSYCHOPATHS always dump the healthy person even if t hey keep them in the relationship for years after the mask is dropped to drain their vital essence and life blood.”
If this is true, and I think it is, he dumped me a long time ago – right after he got the first 35K from me in 2006 to finance a vending business. He kept me around to bleed more out of me – and he did. Eventually, though, it seems that in all these relationships, the real cruelty and callousness comes out either in affairs or violence. Then we are ones that end it.
I was just so taken by how he made me feel so special and loved that I did not see the con coming. I really didn’t want to see the con because I wanted that euphoria to last and I believed a lie – that these feelings could last forever. But it’s not real. That’s not real love. I am working on becoming a person who will not be taken in by the con anymore and who embraces authentic love as opposed to that romantic euphoric dream like state.
Wow, I share so many experinces simlilar to Marcia’s. It’s almost uncanny!
“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.”
Just like her I could not do wrong in his eyes, I was perfect for him. I was the one and only for him. BIG red flag. He said these things before even knowing me. He would write my name on a piece of paper 200x. Creepy. Gifts and more gifts. I would go overseas for holiday and he would fedex me gifts, even though I was only there for 10 days. He just could not get enough of me. I never felt more flattered in my life, I felt like finally someone saw the “real” me. I guess he knew I needed that type of outside validation to feel my worth. He targeted me because he knew that I did not have a solid sense of self and I would eat up his flattery with a big spoon.
“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.”
OMG, I could have written that word to word. As soon as we moved in together he refused to have sex. When I tried gently to talk about it, he would explode and say things like “sex is overrated” or ” I am too busy or I am depressed”. In retrospect it makes me cringe, I actually begged him to have sex with me. My self esteem was non existent. He refused, and sometimes he would agree to it, only if we watched porn first and he would watch the porn while we were doing it. I later found out he was into disability and amputee fetish.
“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.”
This is almost identical too. This is how the ex-s in my life reacted too. He refused to discuss anything. He would punish me with silent treatment. He would endlessly make cutting, backhanded remarks about the way I looked, talked and handled my life. He has taken over all responsibilities in the house since I could not do anything as well as he could. He would say that I was crazy, off balance, emotional wreck, just like my mother etc. He would treat my with dismay. Meanwhile he brought a woman home drunk on our anniversary night, he would not showed up to dinner and he was more and more absent, he would keep me waiting then he would tell me I was needy. When I tried talking to him about the problems, he said that there were no problems in his opinion.
The one day he broke up with me and dumped a slew of accusations and judgments on me calling me lazy, lifeless lackluster and pathetic. He gave me a whole list of why I suck, but weeks before he said we had no problems in the relationship. Well, try to figure that out….
Later I found out that he was screwing his current wife 2 years before we split. Also I think there were other women too, but I can never be certain.
Greenfern – I can’t be certain he wasn’t cheating either but there was never anything I out about – I wouldn’t put it past him though after seeing all the lies and deceptions. Mine treated me in the final phases like you as well with the silent treatment.
It had begun a long time before that – if I wanted to discuss anything he didn’t he would just refuse to contribute and then say he had to think about it and would get back to me in a few days. When I would ask him about it later he would say he had forgotten about it and needed more time to think OR that he never said he would think about it and had nothing to contribute. Anything to keep me off balance. Towards the very end though this silent treatment became rudely overt – he would storm off if I said something he didn’t like, eventually locking himself in a room or leaving the property and driving off somewhere. He would also refuse to answer his phone and wouldn’t answer messages.
I highly recommend the book Stalking the Soul – the author effectively outlines the stages of emotional abuse – which she terms ‘soul murder’ = she also recognises that the aim of it is ‘murder by suicide’. She outlines the seduction, covert violence and overt violence phases – these are really the three we are collectively referring to.
Like you I was blamed for everything and as a normal person have a little self doubt within me – he didn’t. He refused to even listen to the things I said he was doing to me – he wouldn’t even consider them for a second. But I WAS definitely all the things he said I was – a flirt, a slut, a depressive, a perpetual victim. It is an unfair fight when one person is willing to scrutinise themselves and the other is not. He won time after time.
Tryingtoheal – my PSYCHOPATH ex is also in debt with many organisations – I don’t know how he holds his head up in fact – he should be hanging it in shame with the mess he has made of his finances. Somehow he manages to hold onto the things he financed and spin some story to the credit agencies to give him more time. He has ruined his credit rating and I have the firm belief that if I had stayed with him, mine would be ruined too and he would probably aim to bankrupt me.
Jewels – Yes I can see that anti depressants are good for some situations, but I had the sense that taking them was just making me stay there with him in a false sense of reality so I stopped too – they made me want to sleep all the time as well. I knew it was the upheaval in the relationship that was causing the pain but didn’t feel strong enough at that time to end it unfortunately.
Mjlyness – mine fleeced me for tens of thousands as well and has left me holding all the debts with nothing to show for it. He ran up thousands on credit cards for nothing – certainly not business deals. He could fritter money like nobody I have ever seen before – could easily spend hundreds a week on entertainment and fast food. Of course he expected me to take care of all the bills and keep the house ticking over. I never had any money for myself ever.
-midlifecrisis- it looks like my local library carries Stalking the Soul. I will check it out! Thanks for recommending it!