UPDATED FOR 2024. Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following essay from a reader whom we’ll call “SnowWhite” describing the heart thief she encountered.
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.
Learn more: Beyond Betrayal — how to recover from the trauma
A sociopath explains how she loves
Aesop
I love this analogy: 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’.
Isn’t that the story of all of us? We jumped in the hole. I think that’s the nature of most of us.
And yet, I too believe in karma and the power of the universe. I will survive, and so will you.
Athena
darwin’s mom
My spath did the same thing. Pushed me to anger and said I’m sexy when I am mad. All manipulative bull shit.
I think about my spath and it feels to me like he’s just a ghost. He has no core. Floats around with the wind. Not even a human.
Athena
Athena–great story!!!!
Still reeling, sorry about the lay off! Hope things improve.
G1S–I know darling! But torturing yourself with ‘what ifs” is NOT the way to help yourself heal, or him either. Now get yer stuff together and QUIT THAT! before I have to get SERIOUS and do some heavy damage! (((hugs)))
Louise and Ox, yes the layoff really happened and my mgr is trying to get me to come back in and turn in my badge, sign a paper, said that he’d even pay me if I did. hahaha. I told him just the thought turns my stomach, the place was a nightmare and finally when things came together, I get bumped. (Godzilla was only a part of my issues with that incomprensibly disorganized junkhole).
He can enjoy sucking an egg.
No, Louise, we are going to suffer if I don’t find a job, esp health insurance, I carried it and my husband (also a gov’t contractor) has horrible insurance. They are more sane than my contractor was.
This is the first time in so long that I couldn’t care less about Godzilla. It’s good for all of us to realize that when the going gets tough, they are impotent. He can also suck an egg.
I could spend the rest of my time just posting here…geez, you’d all kill me..love ya and hugs to you all the rest of the sisters. I wish I could read all these crux-y, uber-relevant, rich comments.
Hugs-tty all soon – Bud sounds adorable Ox, nice of you to take him.
Louise, hope today was a decent day…..and some positive things occurred. Keep a journal of them to keep your spirits up.
You guys have helped me so much. I guess they call it ‘validation’. Several times the word ‘slimed’ has come up, and this describes it perfectly. Hitting someone is so opposite to what I am, it has left me feeling sullied, and as though she has purposefully brought out something in me that would do this. Callmeathena, I relate to that. She would always put her face, sneering, right up to mine when raging, and I can now see how provoking this was. I never raised my voice, and was pretty much left cowering every time, and in total mental turmoil. I guess it all built up, at the time it was almost like a knee jerk reaction, there was no thought or judgement to it. To be honest, I never thought I had it in me.
At the time of hitting her (and I feel the need to add here that there was no bruise, mark, scratch, nothing, it was a feeble, childlike slap), she laughed and immediately put me in a headlock, squeezing me as tight as possible and holding me almost horizontal. She is very strong. She kept me like that for a long while, I was limp, before suddenly letting me go and acting as if I was still attacking her, phoning the police and playing a victim like you wouldn’t believe. The sight of her doing that to me, well, it is the ‘cut of her jib’ you might say.
I am so lucky that I have good neighbours, the best, as it all happened in the street outside my house. My immediate neighbour had heard her shouting and throwing things through the walls, and apparently she had been very rude to her on several occasions. She also said that one time, she saw us in the garden, and I was looking at her with a look of love that shocked her. She said you rarely see that these days. But, she said she knew something was wrong because my ex was turned away and had a cold, hard look. They all felt my act was triggered, so they kind of understand, and I feel as if the whole street now has my back. Phew :). It’s not the same as the validation and understanding of those who have been in contact with these ‘people’ though.
My sister supported her (and I can see that her narcissism was probably the template for poor boundaries etc), and I don’t talk about it with friends as you can exhaust them trying to explain, to the point they don’t want to be around you. I don’t think you can understand it truly unless you have experienced it, does that make us in some way lucky?Can we turn it round like that?
The ‘hole’ analogy seems to have alot of meaning. I love the fact that you live safely in yours OxDriver. If your house is an extension of your self, then yours sounds absolutely delightful :). I love your posts. You sound very wisened! I wonder what your views are on ‘We need to talk about Kevin’? My Victor Frankl book is due on the 8th May, amazon inform me, and I have picked up ‘The Secret’ today, which is also called ‘The Magic’, from the library. The posts and articles here are brilliant. A sanctuary!
Thanks again to you all, you made a rough couple of days less stormy, I hope I can help in the same way when things brighten up (as they DEFINATELY will). xx
By the way, I am a woman. It all kinda sounds worse if it was a man, even if pushed to the edge and over. I guess that must happen too though.
Karma. Is this because of a past life, or are there karma ‘lessons’ and karma ‘laws’? Do we have lessons that are hard-falls in order to learn (cruel to be kind), and then also karmic laws when ‘what goes around comes around’? How do we explain these things happening to us when there is nothing to warrant it in this life time? When we have done nothing to ‘deserve’ it? Is it for our own good, personal development, humanity?
Another conundrum conjured up by the spath. One to while away an hour in a hot bath. Hope you have all had a good, brilliant, ok, positive, reachable day. With all good karmic lessons and laws! x
Aesop: your brightness is alluring.
Thank you for your post.
Beautiful, Sweet, Karma…
Sometimes it’s US who needs the lesson, sometimes it’s others.
The old karmic rule of life.
There is no explanation for some things, only acceptance.
Once you put it in another perspective, it becomes perfectly clear.
It’s not a ‘deserve it’ situation. It was done to us as if we were prey and no more or less. We were abused and used and left to rot on the side of the road and that is all there was to it. No more, no less. It’s more about THEM than it is us, although it put US on the path back to OURSELVES.
OURSELVES are the only ones who really matter in this confusion and haze. It’s survival in the purest sense or we choose to give in and continue the torment. There are no other options. It is up to US to choose what is acceptable to US and what is NOT.
We can’t change THEM but we CAN change OURSELVES>
Another conundrum is right.
Another “Twilight Zone” moment…
Ho Hum…another mystery of life.
Sweet Karma to you Aesop…
Dupey
Athena, I don’t get the story of the hole..if “we,” meaning we posters who involved ourselves w/paths, are the ones who jumped into the hole, how is it that we said we know how to get out? Or is that a “you can do it” story? One that tells us we *can* get out w/belief in ourselves, support from others, purposeful work, karma, G-d, universe, immersion in interesting diversion….etc.
Re: karma, I really, really, really love the idea. But I’m not so sure I buy it. I think it’s coincidence. But that’s just me and not something I can change. I am a huge romantic and love the whole idea but for me, it just raises too many questions. If something bad happens to a wonderful person, it’s bad karma, but is it? What about that time 10 yrs ago that person did something that totally emotionally maimed someone else? If they get equally burned 10 yrs later, is that karma? Possibly it is. Or is karma tit for tat. Does it have to occur within a certain time frame? I’m just getting to the pt where I don’t believe any of that anymore. I want to but I have no control over what my gut tells me.
Hell, I shudder to think of all the people I’ve hurt over time, not because I’m mean or nasty but because I’m human and so are they. Maybe I got cancer last summer because my abundant hate for the managers that “slimed” me good and threw me out in the street after 20 yrs of hard labor, enraged the karma gods. I should be happy for those that they kept warm and safe in their homes, many of them getting paid to post on FB and do needlepoint. Then I wouldn’t have gotten cancer.
It’s just too mind-blowing for me.
still reeling: i completely understand you.
Karma is a ‘rough conception’ when you have had so much ugliness in your lifetime. But I have seen it come back around. Hopefully, with spaths, our firm encounters will create a different thought process in them but that’s not likely to happen and the sooner we accept that, the quicker we are on the road to completely healing.
I am not worried about Karma as long as I know MY SHOES are on the right feet. That is ALL that matters.
The HOPE of KARMA (or that which went down will come back around, full circle) is justification enough to ignite that peace within. Sometimes KARMA DOES come back around and sometimes it doesn’t. Just another one of life’s mysteries, I suppose, but without that belief in OURSELVES, we have nothing.
You will come to believe in Karma when you see it for yourself. And those who believe in virtue, goodness, kindness, etc., will see it in their own time.
A wise Muslim, in a far away land, a Holy Man, as it were, once said to me: “Sometimes God shall extract vengeance in this lifetime on our behalf because it strengthens our resolve in Him.” While I know that doesn’t sound very Muslim: A Christian Muslim, I found the words extremely powerful. It wasn’t a religious position but one of wisdom and ‘acceptance’ and proof of a ‘great settling’ with one’s world. The expression was overwhelming to me.
I am not big on ‘getting even’. I am HUGE on peace inside.
Peace in my environment and the ‘roadshow’ just wasn’t cutting it….that’s justification enough for me. The psychopath didn’t win. “I” won. I won by still being all those things I believe are right. That is all that matters.
Find some peace today still reeling…
This is YOUR LIFE TOO.
It sounds to me like you have earned it and deserve it.
Go to the spa!!!
Dupey
still reeling:
I think the whole analogy of the hole was just showing that the other person who jumped in could help, that’s all. He is just saying, hey, I’ve been through this (whatever it may be) before and I know how to help you out. That’s the way I took it anyway.
I hope you are having a good day!