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.
Thanks for your kind words Ox Drover. I am intrigued by your ‘hole in the woods’. My ex (diagnosed a year after civil partnership as Borderline, but definately the full range of cluster B, carefully hidden from the psychiatrist) had a very ‘pitiful’ side. It was this side that really pulled me in initially. After the initial ‘wooing’ and ‘fun’, energetic days, which lasted about a month (and served to completely hook me), she drew me into the horror of her life.
I tend to think quite visually, and life for a long time has been a journey along a path. There have been times when I have walked through dense woodland, like us all, but there has always been the knowledge that the path awaits on the other side, with light on the horizon. I feel quite blessed to view life in this way, although for most of the time I was with her that light was not visible in my mind. Thankfully, it has returned. I think it is hope and faith in an ultimate goodness.
However, during, and after meeting her and our ‘interaction’ (I can’t call it a relationship anymore), I have become aware of this ‘hole in the woods’. This is where I came across her. It is covered in leaves, like a trap. It is her hole. But, she pulled me into it, climbed on my shoulders to get out, and tried to take my path and leave me there in her place. I don’t think she made the hole herself, and I do feel sorrow that she must live in it, perhaps always, eternity.
In her ‘pitiful’ state, when she begged for help, I remember repeating a story I had once heard on Green Wing. A man is in a hole. A priest walks by and he asks for help, and the priest waves his bible and says he is busy. He asks a policeman and he waves his truncheon and says he is busy. He asks his friend, and his friend jumps into the hole. He says to his friend ‘well, now we are both in the hole’, and his friend says ‘yes, but I’ve been here before, and I know the way out’.
I thought I was helping her through her bad times, and really she was trying to lose them by GIVING them to me, by leaving me in her hole.
I have posted before about what happened, and know that much progress has been made in the past six months. There is an underlying faith that whatever the adversity:
1. I always come out stronger
2. The Universe always rewards
I hope this hasn’t been jinxed by vocalising it. I seemed to have lost much afterwards. Financially, my business, car, driving licence. I was left very in debt (she took my savings and would have had my house if I had died in the car crash, as we were still ‘married). I am quite sure this is why she wanted ‘a ring on her finger’. She took my sanity to the point of being put into a psychiatric hospital. Then came back and took it again in an unbelievable sadistic, cruel, callous, calculating way. In the past she had broken into my house, vandalised my car, overdosed on pills, carved my name into her chest with a razor to get me to go back to her. I always did, to be devalued and discarded once more. The more she climbed on my shoulders (took my interests and hobbies, wore my style and colour of clothes even), the further into the hole I became and the easier it was for her to manipulate and control me.
She turned up at my door, I was not well, and I hit her. It was a slap, and she immediately pinned me down. I was a little over 7 stone at the time (a stone and a half highter than when I met her two years earlier), and weak. I had lost my mind. I have NEVER hit anyone before, and do not agree with violence. All I can say is it was my subconscious mind protecting me, forcing her out of my life. She is 13 stone and overpowered me immediately.
She then let me go and started to be a ‘victim’. She called the police and lied throughout her statement. She told them so many lies, and painted herself as a perfect partner who unfortunately had this mad woman attacking her for no reason. I was too ill to understand what a solicitor was and was interviewed without representation, I was unable to talk. I was charged and released, and because I was ill crashed my car. My last thought was ‘what will happen if I do this’. In the hospital I was then assaulted in a cubicle by two policemen as I was ill and tried to take a torch. By this point my sanity had disappeared completely, I was lost. One straddled me and pressed down until he broke a rib, and the other held my chest down on the other side so I had to breathe through it.
I was then sectioned and put back into psychiatric hospital for four weeks. When I came out i was taken through court six times, once a month for six months, while they waited for reports, before giving me a criminal record and probation for a year. It wasn’t until I got to probation that I was able to say what had happened and finally got help. The police put alarms and changed my locks on the house, as she was still sending letters, had turned up at court to watch from the gallery, and was basically stalking me with phone calls and emails and drive bys with her new target (a shop girl she had ‘picked up’ right under my nose six months earlier when we bought mobile phones together, but denied at the time). She lived 40 miles away and had no reason to be in the area. In a hand delivered letter, she wrote ‘You will always be my soulmate, all I wanted was an apology’.
So, you said I could vent! Some days it is hard still, I seem to get stuck in a rut, going over it, trying to make sense of it. I loved her so much, I really did, yet I have come to terms and understanding that what I loved never existed. It was all based on what I wanted, and what she presented herself to be in that first four weeks. The cruelty was more than I could ever have imagined.
In terms of moving on, there has been the obstacle that it all got twisted round. I feel it was projection. She was physically violent twice, but psychologically, she battered me black and blue and broke every bone. Never mind my heart and mind. My heart breaking, that initial realisation, the slowness of it, was like it being chipped away one piece at a time, until a million bits.
I fear that you will judge me for hitting her. I can only put it in these terms: If a man has a puppy, and for two years kicks that puppy, and one day it bites him on the ankle (not hard, it wouldn’t dare and doesn’t have the strength), is the man a victim, and should the puppy be punished?
I am waiting still for her next move. I know she won’t be able to keep away. My guess is she will move to my area, she was already looking as houses. I know her life will fall apart again, and probably has already. She works in sales, gets to the very top (awards etc), then has a narcissistic crash and gets turfed out. The last time she was ‘sent to coventry’, her bosses just started to ignore her completely, stopped acknowldeging her until she left. She uses her spath charm to succeed in this line of work, mesmerises and charms the customers. In the end, the bosses see through her.
This is a massively long post, and its all venting. Sorry. I feel you may judge me negatively, but I am not a violent, shouty or aggressive person. Completely the opposite. Part of the problem I have had with all this is feeling that even people who have experienced these people will not understand and judge me for what happened.
So that’s it. All those that have got to the end get a gold star. I’m a bit miserable, and apologise for the negativity today! Best wishes to you all. x
Oxy, I remember the Lil Abner character. My grandparents had a newspaper with that strip and it fascinated me because I couldn’t make any sense out of it. I didn’t know that what’s-his-name did that with the black cloud.
I wanted to share that when I was little, it seemed like my mother was some kind of 50-foot monster who hovered over me waiting to strike again.
As I progressed with my recovery, and I understood more and more what was being done and what had happened to me, my mother started shrinking a la Alice in Wonderland.
Eventually, I saw her for what she is – a small, petty woman with a very nasty personality. Pathetic, really. Shrinking her into what she truly was made her very manageable.
What scares me is that I am not convinced that my son knows what he is dealing with. She can be like those deflated sponge toys that look like nothing until you sprinkle water on them. Then they grow and become huge compared with their shrunken state.
I get scared that my son doesn’t know it is all a trick and if they come back, he might be fooled by the shape that they have taken. He tells me that he knows, but I get still get scared.
Back to shame. Shame is somebody else’s agenda. I shake that off now. I don’t need it and I certainly don’t want it.
I only let the angels into my house these days.
I can’t stop the attacks from the demons, though, so I do all I can to make sure that we both stay safe.
Ox, best of luck on finding Bud. I’m so sorry. I’ll be following to see how things are going. Our dog is 15! And she is so arthiritic and so not herself…it hurts me to remember how lively she was…so so sad. I hope for the best for you and the “family”…how old is Bud?
This forum never ceases to amaze. Shouts out to everyone who posted today…so much good stuff for what ails path “survivors.”
Aesop”completely relate to that *gouging* (great descriptive) sinking feeling that just washes over you and lands in the pit of your stomach. I, too, think of all the horrible things going on in the world and how shameful it is that I allow myself to feel so much for someone who basically doesn’t exist. You’re not alone.
Ox, love your Frankl reference”.so right on. Also agree with Athena. Though we understand these things intellectually, it’s tough to get the gut to listen!
Gis, you said you “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.” Completely agree. I just figure it’s more proof that I’m an insecure loser with zippo self-respect or esteem. Sorry, not in a great mood today. I knew very well this guy was a piece of shit and to stay away from him but I was attracted to his looks, power and charm and he “liked” me”BFD. I knew better. Very disappointed in myself. Very, very disappointed.
Kim, yeah”big time understand that feeling of criticism and yes, tough to take. I’ve had that experience many x before and now when I’m with a toxic person like that, I do one of two things, try to make a joke out of their pushy, critical crap by saying “Easy,” or “Hey, you in a hurry, bud ?” If they are standup, they will apologize and it won’t happen again. If they say they’re joking and you’re “just too sensitive”, for me it’s the end of the friendship. I hate that feeling and won’t deal with it anymore. I used to just take that lousy treatment for awhile, then end the friendship by being MIA but that’s really a chicken way out. Now that I’m a freaking old bag, I do give people a chance to behave, much as I would like to know if I were being hurtful or annoying! It’s all about trying to see the best in people, but if they don’t want to play ball and you feel that black cloud starts moving over your sun, buh-bye! To persist in a non-friendship like that is masochistic”.very much like the paths in our lives. They exploit you, then revel in it.
Sorry to be so cynical, I just got laid off—gov’t contract was cut and I am really really worried.
Aesop,
No I do not judge you for hitting her…and vent away. Actually you sound pretty much as crazy as I was when i first came to LoveFraud. I was crazy as a “sheet house rat” as we say here!
Encounters *(I like that term instead of relationship) with psychopaths and cruel people do make us crazy so it is okay. I have wanted to do worse than hit someone. Fortunately I did not do it but I sure WANTED to.
Read and read here and vent as much as you need to…start with the articles in “what is a sociopath” then read the articles about “healing from ” and so on, read them all, there are 800 or so articles here and all are great and will help you heal. Just keep on reading and absorbing, and you will recover and you will follow that path.
I too am a visual thinker, my “hole in the woods” is my SAFE SPACE though, and when you come down the path to my house (this is for real and where I really live) the trees which are a complete green curtain, open up and there is a space inside the curtains of trees that is where my home sits.
My home is low and long with brown cedar sides with curtain-less paned windows looking out, and the path becomes large stones up to the door which is painted yellow. The porch is made out of large stones as well with an over hang with an ox yoke above the door, and a long-horned steer skull in the yoke. Two chairs made of twisted branches are on each side of the door, and the “table” beside one is a small old cast iron stove. A few large trees shade the garden and wild flowers bloom around a stump that once was a large tree. Spiderworts and other wild flowers and shamrocks and ferns. The ferns are starting to wither now as the spring heat bears down fully on them since their sheltering tree is now gone.
I had to leave my home and my hole in the woods because I feared for my life. I had to flee my home and hide from my son and his Trojan Horse psychopath. I was able to come home after a few months, but I now know that where ever I go I can take my “hole in the woods” with me. It isn’t a place so much as it is a STATE OF MIND.
Walk your path, and keep yourself safe on that path! It will shelter you and lead you to recovery. Keep on Aesop! God bless.
Still reeling, thanks for the good thoughts (we posted over each other) Bud’s birthday and the anniversary of when we got him are coming up soon He was turning 3 when we got him in 2007 but I had known him since he was a pup…his mother was married to a P and couldn’t afford to feed him. The P was getting out of prison and she had to take off to keep him from finding her, so I took Bud. Bless his little heart, her sons had abused him but he was a sweetie. We haven’t found his body or any sign of him so maybe he got picked up by someone wanting a squirrel dog. If they did, they are really going to be disappointed, he will chase them but not stay on tree. LOL
G1S, I want to comment. I know you are a Believer, so I am going to use a Biblical reference… (paraphrased) The bible tells us that “there is enough evil in today, don’t borrow evil from tomorrow”
You are worried about what your son will believe about your evil DNA donor and your Satanic sister….
The things we CANNOT CONTROL we are supposed to let go of (that’s an Al anon precept I think) and we are supposed to have the wisdom to know the things we cannot control.
You can’t control what he will believe…you can teach him, but it is UP TO HIM what he believes.
Your worrying about it will NOT CHANGE WHAT HE BELIEVES OR DOESN’T but it does ruin your day.
So I am going to BOINK you with the cyber SKILLET!!!! because you are doing something that you KNOW IS WRONG. So QUIT IT!!! Right now@....... (((hugs))) now go get an ice pack for your bump on your noggin! (((hugs)))
still reeling:
Oh, nooooo, so you did get laid off as you feared you would…I am SO sorry!!!!! 🙁
Does your husband have a good income to sustain you?
Ouch.
OK. I just love my baby so much.
I couldn’t bear to have him stolen from me again. That almost killed me.
Aesop – this statement is perfect: ‘…that initial realisation, the slowness of it, was like it being chipped away one piece at a time, until a million bits.’
i read it as a slow motion video, a suspension of the normal experience of time. i feel this. it’s like being in a car accident. all those pieces that i put together to understand what happened and who caused it, took 5-6 months from the end of the debacle forward, with one piece coming every month. but your analogy captures it for me – i understood in a flash after i had all of the information, and in a slow motion flash my sense of self shattered, and the axis of the earth tipped.
Aesop,
I recognize the feeling of shame and guilt for the way I responded to my spath’s tricks. He was able to draw blood from under my nails (allegorically), and knew how to push me and push me until I simply lost it and called him names, or pound my hand on the table. I instantly would feel foolish and guilty over it…. wondering why I was turning into this aggressive person. You know what he did? He would start to giggle and laugh, then ape me and tell me I looked incredibly sexy when I was angry. I lost control over my own temper twice or thrice in those 2 years I was involved with him. It frightened me and I did think, “This cannot be good!” and I especially had alarm bells ringing in my head when he referred to it as sexy. When he said that, I started to wonder, “Maybe he’s doing this on purpose and gets some weird kick out of it.” Now I’m sure he did.
I’m not an aggressive person, but I have a FIGHT response over a FLIGHT response. I don’t avoid confrontations, and confrontation he sought. Eventually I started to respond differently: I’d stop talking and ended up ignoring him for several hours, and smoke a lot of cigs to calm my anger and upsetness (which of course he started to recognize as a sign of having gotten to me too)…I guess I started to “stonewall” him. But there was no other option for me. I didn’t do it to punish him, or control him, but to control myself. It was the only way I knew how to get a grip ad control over myself without saying things or acting in a way I’d regret. Otherwise I might have at some point hurled a china plate at him for real, something I would have had a very hard time forgiving myself for.