Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following essay from a reader whom we’ll call “SnowWhite.”
He is clever and cunning. He has many talents. He sees you before you see him. It may be something you are wearing that attracts him. Maybe it’s your laugh or your spirit. You are vulnerable. He knows it. You are trustworthy and caring. He knows it. You have only been with two men your whole life. He knows it. You are lonely. He knows it. You have been married for 25 years. He doesn’t care.
He is a carpenter. He builds your trust and friendship. You see him weekly in your workout class. One day he smiles at you. The next day he says hello. Months go by. Each day he shares his story and hardships with you. You are compassionate and feel his pain. He knows it. He becomes your friend. You start to text each other. He becomes your confidant. Before you realize what is happening, he is becoming your best friend, one by one replacing all others. The bond with your husband begins to loosen. He has been saying good night to you for weeks in his texts. You are addicted.
One fateful evening he tells you that there is something special between you. It is more than friendship. You agree that there is an attraction but cannot act on it. You are married. He persists. You are confident that the friendship is more important. You are strong. You can handle it. He is stronger, more powerful. You don’t want to lose the friendship.
He is a gardener. He plants the seeds of doubt telling you your husband and marriage is broken. He cultivates them until they grow, taking root in your mind. You start to believe.
He is a poet. He tells you it’s love. His words are sweet. You start to fall.
He is an architect. He builds and lays out what your life would be like with him. He will give you everything you need as a couple. You will be happy.
He is a painter. He paints a beautiful picture of what could be, a picture of you his “future wife”.
He is relentless. For months you resist but are afraid of losing the friendship and connection. He knows it. He wants more. He threatens to end the friendship if you cannot be with him. You seek therapy. It doesn’t help. He is powerful. You feel helpless in controlling your own emotions. You agree to stop talking”¦..one too many times. You agree to end it and meet one last time. Then it happens. You have no control. The connection is too powerful. He now controls your mind and body.
The weight of him telling you he is waiting and alone bears down on you. He tells you that you must leave your husband. The pressure builds. You feel his pain and want to heal him. You are confused. Your life starts to unravel. You start to lose your soul. You are confused.
He is NOT a cardiologist”¦ he cannot fix your heart. For the heart will always find its way to love that is true, real, honest and everlasting. The heart knows. It is resilient. My heart will recover.
Oh, can I ever relate to this. The past year has been hell. My father (who was a “p”) died in November. My cousin (who is like a sister) lost a grandchild to crib death in January and I was there for her every step of the way and I was so weak and worn out and stressed out and then it happened. A guy who has been a friend for over 2 years on line (and we met twice just for lunch) started really putting pressure on me to sleep with him. The pressure was so extreme and I was so sad and lonely that I met him in a hotel in February. It was so awful, he is 5’6 and at least 300 lbs and I cried all the way home. I still tried to stay friends with him because I thought we connected well as friends. Then my ex committee suicide mid March and it was horrible (he was also a p who put me through hell) trying to get my girls through it and the guilt, maybe if I hadn’t divorced him after 33 years, etc. So my “friend” kept at me and I met him at a hotel early in April, although I tried to tell him I didn’t want this and was even in tears, he persisted. I told him never again, I just want to be friends and he agreed, I explained that I am a classy person normally and don’t like to think of myself as a woman who behaves this way. He always says that we are too good friends to go out together, but there is nothing wrong with being friends with benefits. Then the idiot got a web cam and started exposing himself to me. I wised up, I took pictures when he did that and saved them to my hard drive. I also found out that he has a woman he is interested in in California (we are in Ohio) and found her information on his facebook accound. I saved his text messages where he tried to get me to meet to “f***” last Saturday, this time wanting to come to my house and asking me to cook for him. I blasted him, sent him copies of his text messages, let him know I saved pictures and that I know how to contact his woman friend in CA. He also goes out to eat with guy friends and I’m afraid he has bragged about convincing me to meet him twice. I know I was wrong, but I was at a really sad place in my life. I’m sick of guys like this, I don’t know whether to let his woman friend know about him or just let him worry for a while. I blocked him from my cell phone, took him off and blocked him off facebook and all his e-mails go directly to my trash folder, because this guy is trash. I don’t know if revenge is sweet or not, but I just feel so used and stupid. I exercise, dress nicely, why I let this overweight couch potato touch me is a mystery to me, except I have just been lost since I left my marriage. And this guy was relentless, he pretended to be my friend for over 2 years but his comments always had a sexual nature to them. Maybe it made me feel attractive in a way, I felt so discarded by my ex. Thanks for listening.
Cathyannjones,
I am sorry that you let yourself do things that are against your moral compass, but that is what happens when we are at our weakest points and the psychopaths move in for the “kill”
This man is no “friend”—nothing of the sort. he is someone you met on line and corresponded with…filling in the blanks of how you wanted him to be…not what he REALLY was. Real friends do not treat someone the way you were treated.
Good for you for blocking his communication avenues to you. Good for you for saving proof that he is a cheat. Now QUIT whipping yourself over this lapse in judgment. It is over, it is done, it is in the past. You will not repeat it. No one is perfect, and no one has lived a life without ever doing something they knew was wrong for them.
I suggest that you do not send any information to the other woman, and just let this situation die of its own accord. he will move on from that woman to another one, then another.
You HAVE had a lot of stress in a short time and it is now time for you to be good to yourself, to quit whipping yourself, and to spend your energy on taking care of you. (((hugs))) and God bless.
Thank you Ox Drover, I did start going back to al-anon meetings (my ex was an addict) because his suicide has had such an effect on my daughters, my grandchildren and me. I found a lot of support there. I do have to give myself credit that I resisted this guy for over 2 years, so I wasn’t easy prey and I didnt’ do some of the sick stuff he was asking me to do. I don’t understand how an unattractive guy that is that overweight can think he is such a catch. I guess there are a lot of vulnerable women out there. I had blocked him after the first time but missed him as a friend. It is sad losing someone I talked to almost daily, but I think he spent the past couple of years just waiting until I was vulnerable enough to move in for the kill. I thought they lost interest much sooner than that. I do have to give myself credit for finally seeing the light. I don’t believe telling him will faze him at all, but I have to let it go and just be careful. So many of the guys on-line are players.
And one more comment, I did get involved with a guy in late January and this guy (the P) would send me text messages when he knew the guy was there, call when he knew the guy was there, did everything he could to try to drive a wedge. It’s not that he wanted a relationship with me, he just wanted me there to try to use me. I broke up with the guy I was involved with, mostly because it seemed we didn’t have a lot in common, but I can’t believe how low these “p” are. He didn
Cathyannjones, unfortunately the online “meet ups” are kind of like fishing in a sewer, all you will catch are turds.
The reason that overweight, unattractive guy kept on with trolling you is because he didn’t get “lucky” very often and so he had a fish on the line and he kept on jiggling the bait until he finally got “lucky”—
As for the other guy, same song second verse. These guys just troll enough women long enough that eventually they “get lucky” and get someone in the sack.
I’m glad you are going back to al anon, and that you are finding support there. For right now I suggest that you stop thinking about a relationship with anyone except yourself and your family. It takes time to heal and come to acceptance of the trauma you have experienced. God bless and keep on learning. It starts out about them and ends up about US. (((hugs)))
Gosh, this is so hard to shake off at times. I know there are horrendous things happening to people right now, and that I am safe in my home with no spath, but there is still this gouging, sinking feeling that descends. It was never there before. Sorry to be a misery guts. At times I can see there is a reason, some path to a more awakened state. I just can’t imagine a greater betrayel, and having no validation because no one understands is probably the hardest thing.
I’m so sorry about your dog Ox Driver. Is there any news? See, things like that put it in perspective. I ordered the Victor Frankl book today, and one by Dr. Peck (Children of the Lie). Thankyou.
Dear Aesop,
Darling, thank you for caring about my little dog. No sign of him dead or alive, so maybe he will come home. You never know. I had one come home after 18 months when I was a kid. Had another one who was stolen get loose and be found after over 2 months, so it happens. I will keep you guys posted if he shows up.
Yes, there is that horrible “black cloud” that descends over us after we have ‘been slimed” as skylar says….and people in our circle NOT getting it why we are so devastated just makes it worse.
But you can be sure that those of us here do get it, and you can vent away all you want! And none of us will tell you to ‘get over it already, it was just a break up” because we know it was MORE. (((hugs))) I’m glad taht you ordered those books, I think they will help you.
When I read Dr. Frankl’s book and all he suffered I thought “why am I whining, this man lost everything” but then he explained that pain from loss is TOTAL that each of us feels a total loss from the psychopath…doesn’t matter how much they take away…pain acts like a gas, it expands to fill the void, whether the void is big or little it TOTALLY fills it. So each of us has a total loss. I no longer felt guilty for feeling my losses, I realized we all feel it TOTALLY. so your loss is as “big” as mine and a baby’s loss when he drops his binky is as “total” as yours or mine, it fills us totally with the sense of loss and pain. And it is okay to feel that loss. ((hugs)))
Oxy, aesop
Can i join this? I dont understand, Oxy, what you said. Can you explain it any other way?
I too feel like my heart was ripped out of me and all thats left is this big, raging, painful hole.
I never had this before. I want it to go away.
I understand that my spath was full of shit and its not my fault. Intellectual understanding is not solving this problem.
Ps. I am hopeful for your dog.
Athena
Of course you can join, Athena. Explain what? The black cloud or the pain being total?
I’ll try to explain the pain being total.
Okay, if a baby drops his passie/binky, whatever you call it, he cries like he has lost everything. His pain is total pain though you and I know his “loss” is minimal, he doesn’t see it that way. So he cries and cries, his little heart is broken in two.
so when we lose a psychopath we think our world has fallen in two, we cry and cry but just like the baby and though we feel our loss is total, we will recover. Or not. We must make the decision to recover. To not let the loss be any more permanent than the baby’s loss even though it is “bigger”
Dr. Frankl explained pain as acting like a “gas” (air, helium, whatever) which expands to FILL the container it is in, or contracts, but it fills the container totally…big or small.
The “black cloud” is more difficult to explain. I actually FEEL it over my egg donor’s house sometimes and I do NOT like to go near her home on the other end of the farm unless I have to. I feel her eyes watching me, and if she is where she can peep out, she will do just that, or even stand and watch me as I drive by…or herd cattle or whatever I am doing.
WOW! I just heard the wild geese talking as they flew over my house about tree top level! HOW COOL IS THAT!!!!!
Athena, when you feel that black cloud over your heart…find something ANYTHING to be grateful for…even having clean drinking water when there are so many who don’t have. Write a list of your blessings and count them each day when you get up. It sounds silly but it helps and once in a while you’ll have something really cool like hearing the wild geese or seeing an unexpected flower growing in a crack in the side walk and it will put a smile on your face. (((hugs)))
I think the “black cloud” has something to do with personal shame, i.e., shame because we secretly fear that there must be something horrendously flawed about us that somebody could do this to us.
It’s a combination of the Ps telling us that we deserve what they did to us and society in general believing that nobody would do something like that to another human being, especially something as bad what happened, “without good cause.”
Since we cannot identify what is so bad about us, because how could all these other people be wrong, our shame is compounded by not being able to identify what this horrible part of us is.
But it is all crap and stinkin’ thinkin’.
It takes a lot to accept that we have done nothing and that we are good people.
A tool that I have used is to envision that this is Satan screwing with my head. I’ve even yelled out loud (good thing I am home alone most of the time,) “Get out of here, Devil! You will not do this to me. God hasn’t brought me this far to abandon me now. You cannot touch me. LEAVE.”
It’s worked. At least it’s let my anger out and put me in a different frame of mind.