Editor’s note: The following story was received from a reader whom we’ll call “Violet” about her experience with a long grift, not of money, but of intimacy.
I knew L when we worked together at a call centre as customer service representatives. He seemed nice, and he had lovely, expressive brown eyes and a gentle nature. I was losing weight at the time, and he asked for my help, so of course I gave him advice and tips. He began to lose weight, and he invited me over to his and his girlfriend, M’s, apartment for dinner and to show him some ‘exercise moves’ (now I think it was mostly an excuse to ogle me). He looked at me very intently, it wasn’t menacing, but I definitely felt like he wanted to do more than just watch me.
At work he would call me over sometimes and tell me that he thought of me as a ‘really good friend.’ I would thank him, but I thought it was a strange thing to say because we didn’t know each other very well. The call centre was a gossip mill, and someone had told me that L and his girlfriend were into threesomes. That’s not my thing, but I don’t judge, and I didn’t think much of it at the time. I also got in touch with an old friend that had known L and M at another call centre. She told me that L had asked her to be in a threesome. She politely declined, but the incident got him fired (he eventually told me this). Again, I didn’t think much about it, but I did think that it was a bit careless to ask a co-worker to have sex with you and your girlfriend, to say the least.
I left work to go back to school, and I would get e-mails from him every so often. I would send a polite reply. Last year, he and his girlfriend moved to my city so she could go to school, and L and I went out for dinner. It was at this time that I realized that he liked me as more than a friend, so I decided to find out what kind of relationship he had with M. He told me it was open, and that M said that he could do whatever he wanted as long as he never left her. That didn’t seem very open to me, but I figured it was an arrangement that worked for them.
Friends with benefits
He said he wanted a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with me. But he would lay on the sweet talk really thick. He would say I was a beautiful white dove with eyes of light, that when he thought about me he didn’t want a cigarette, I was a copy of Eve, I was Aphrodite, I was even an angel. But we still didn’t know each other that well, and his compliments were too dime store romance novel for my taste, although they made me feel good about myself.
Read more: Why sociopaths cheat
I tried to get to know him better. I knew that his father had died, but he didn’t talk about him much, which I found odd, but I chalked it up to masculine reserve (we always find an excuse, don’t we?). He had wanted to be a minister, and had been in a Master’s program, but he gave me a vague answer about why he dropped out. I thought it was strange that someone who desired a religious vocation would be content drifting to various call centre jobs for the past ten years. He also never had any ideas for activities, I always had to make suggestions, and it seemed like he relied on other people for entertainment because he didn’t know how to entertain himself. It was as if he had no inner life.
He would also look at me with such (I thought at the time) longing it was unnerving, but now I think it was also a predatory gaze. At one point the sweet talk was too intense and I told him to tone it down. He seemed so sad after that, he said he was patient, but he said he was patient a lot, and that bothered me. He was always online and he messaged me constantly to see how I was doing. There were red flags waving at me, but I thought he was very sweet and attentive, and he seemed like he desperately needed a friend and some affection. Once I decided I could ignore his lack of ambition and it was only a friends with benefits relationship that wasn’t going to go anywhere anyway, I let him know that I wanted to be intimate with him. That part was very nice (I’ve noticed that other writers on the site mention that the sex is often good). Our sexual relationship lasted for three months.
Open relationship?
L seemed to really like me, but he could only see me when M was away, he told me she was seeing her girlfriend on the side (she was bisexual, he said). If it was really open, I wondered, then why can he only see me when she’s somewhere else? The only time L spent the night with me was a weekend M was away. He spent one night at my house, and he didn’t call her, she thought he had died, he told me. The next night, I went to their apartment and L called her while I was there, but he didn’t mention that I was in the apartment with him. He wanted me to sleep with him in their bed.
By this time he had started complaining to me about M, and I was beginning to hate her (I never thought that way about her before, she seemed nice, but very depressed). But I couldn’t sleep in their bed, it seemed like too great a violation of their relationship, so I made an excuse and left. I think that he didn’t want to be alone when M was gone, and any warm body would do. Once we started having sex, L talked to me online less and less, sometimes just sending a ‘check-in’ e-mail. I felt like I was being used, that I was giving him something M couldn’t, because he told me they hadn’t had sex in a long time. That didn’t bother me much until I realized I wanted an actual boyfriend, and it couldn’t be him because he would never leave M, and we weren’t compatible anyway.
At this time I made plans to meet him but he couldn’t because he was in a tight financial spot, so I said we shouldn’t make plans until his money situation improved. (Also, he told me that his sisters gave him some money but had turned him down when he asked for more, he then asked me for $20-$30, which I thought was in bad taste so I said no, my refusal and his lack of money didn’t seem to bother him very much.) He e-mailed me back saying that he agreed we should wait until he had more money, but then he said I was the most important thing in his life and he didn’t want to lose me. At first, I was flattered, but then I really thought about what he said. How could I be the most important thing in his life when he barely talks to me and he’s living with another woman? It defied all logic. If I saw red flags before, I was hearing sirens now, too.
Break-up e-mail
After a lot of deliberation, I sent him an e-mail (we rarely spoke on the phone, which also bothered me, if he liked me so much, wouldn’t he want to talk to me more often?) telling him I wanted an actual boyfriend, I felt like I was being used, and that being with me would not fix the problems he has with M. I was harsh, but I told the truth. I had hoped he would apologize and we could go back to being friends, or at least end on good terms. A few hours later I get an e-mail from M, telling me that they had been together for over ten years (he never told me that), that she loves him (he told me that they were together mostly to split cost of living, and that he thought no one cared about him) and that our friends with benefits relationship never happened, because if it did ‘he would have told me.’
I was devastated. He had lied to me and to the woman he presumably loves and has been with for over a decade. I have tried to piece together what may have happened. From what M wrote, he probably read my e-mail, and he was afraid I would tell M what we did (I never would have told her, he made me think she was a bad person), he most likely told her I had a ‘crazy idea’ that we had had sex, and that I wanted them to break up. He probably made me sound delusional. Maybe he even suggested that she write me an e-mail to ‘set me straight.’ She ended her e-mail with ‘If you want a boyfriend, I suggest you find someone single.’ I never replied to her, but I did send him another e-mail that said I was removing him from my facebook profile and blocking his e-mail. I haven’t contacted him since, and he hasn’t tried to talk to me.
The girlfriend didn’t know
It was at this point that I realized that M had no idea that L had visited me many times at my house. She thinks we only went to dinner once or twice and went for a few walks. I also realized that I thought M was a horrible person based on what L told me. I once went to their apartment and while he was in another room taking a phone call, she showed me family pictures; it seemed like she really loves and cares about L and his family. L once told me he thought M and I were a lot alike. He cited our love for animals, but I think it was really because we’re both nice, decent girls with shaky self-esteem, and he thought he could use me for sex, and he uses M because she gives him some semblance of a normal family life, and does things like cook for him.
I don’t know how much he even liked me, I think he got off on the thrill of deceiving M, and he thought I would be a willing partner because I like to believe I’m a free thinker and being in an open relationship intrigued me. Although I was raw for about a week, and I wondered if he had lied to me about everything (did he really think I was beautiful?), talking to my friends about what happened has helped me a lot. My roommate has since told that me he never liked L, because when they spoke he thought L was subtly trying to bend him to his will, and he reminded him of his ex, who was abusive and had tried to kill him. It was then that I started thinking that L was a psychopath, and I found the Love Fraud website. I’m not sure if L is a total psychopath, but his ability to lie to his long-time girlfriend and using her to hurt me makes me think he has enough of those awful traits to be dangerous.
I realize that I loved L, but actually, I loved a fantasy; a sweet man caught in an open but troubled relationship he felt he couldn’t leave, and he made me feel like I was wonderful for showing him so much affection and understanding. I am getting over the illusion, but I worry about M, who is still trapped in his dreamland. Maybe she really is rotten, and maybe they deserve each other, but I can’t imagine what he’s done to her over the years. I believe he played the ‘wounded bird’ routine with me when it is really M who is abused in the relationship.
I worry he might try to hurt her, or someone else he gets involved with. I want to contact her to tell her my side of the story, but I know she will only think that I’m crazy, and if she questions him, he’ll twist my words around to his benefit. I’m trying hard to let that urge to contact her go. Unfortunately, she will have to figure it out for herself, because psychopaths are good liars, but they’re not that good. His mask will slip eventually. I don’t worry that he will contact me again, as other psychopathic exes on this site have done, because he knows that I can no longer be manipulated. I’m sure he has moved on and doesn’t even think about me.
Psychopathy
The funny/sad thing is that I have a degree in psychology, and I specialized in abnormal psychology. I’ve read a great deal of the literature on psychopathy, and one of my professors even worked with Dr. Robert Hare. I was fooled, and I feel foolish. Despite friends who know both L and I telling me it was a bad idea to go out with him, despite knowing he had hit on other girls, I went out with him anyway. L seemed so sincere, but the more I thought about the odd intensity of his words and actions, and how they didn’t match up, something told me it wasn’t right. I could never get those little red flags to stop waving in my head. But I think I had to figure that out for myself.
I consider myself lucky that I was the ‘Other Woman’ and not in M’s position; I couldn’t imagine ten years with him. I hope M finds peace and happiness, and as for L, I don’t think he will ever know what love feels like, because psychopaths are a different species. I don’t think they are completely human. Some people on this website describe them as ‘broken,’ but psychopaths were never functioning to begin with. They can’t change, but we can teach ourselves and others their tricks and avoid them as much as possible, and that’s empowering.
I’m sure that there are other psychopaths who are using the open relationship model to lure partners who could never be with a cheater. An open relationship is a perfect cover for a psychopath; because often, the secondary partner isn’t integrated into their lives like the primary partner is, and their family and friends often don’t know it’s open. L’s family didn’t know, and although I wanted to meet his family and friends and vice versa, I knew I couldn’t as the secondary partner. If I had, maybe I would have figured out something was wrong, sooner.
In hindsight, I should have never have taken L’s word that M was okay with an open relationship, I should have asked her directly (as awkward as that would have been), but I’m sure he would have made an excuse as to why she didn’t want to talk about it. I came out of the ‘relationship’ with L relatively unscathed, and what I have taken away from my experience is: don’t feel bad for trusting people every once in a while. We’ve all trusted people before and it turned out well, and it will again. I’m not jaded, but I’m definitely wiser. I think these lyrics sum up my experience best:
I’m just another john you gypped
another sucker stiffed
A walk on role in the script
to your long, long grift
The love that had me in your grip
was just a long, long grift
“Long Grift,” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Learn more: Survivor’s guide to healthy people and healthy relationships
Lovefraud originally posted this story on July 10, 2010.
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Lost and really need help
{{{Silvermoon}}} It takes a lot of work to get where you are! AWESOME!!!!!
Brightest blessings!!!
Hi everyone,
Thank you again for your comments! It’s such a frustrating feeling, to know the truth, but you’re not able to tell anyone because you know no one will believe you. It’s like we are all Cassandra from the Greek myth.
However, I sometimes wonder if I’m indulging myself in a paranoid fantasy. I’ve never been involved in an affair before, is the way he acted really any different from a ‘normal’ man? Don’t some men lie to get sex? Wouldn’t he lie and that deny that anything happened to his partner if he thought his mistress was going to tell her everything? Still, that doesn’t explain the overall vibe that I and other people got from him. I called my story ‘The Long Grift’ because although we were only ‘together’ for three months, I now believe he was grooming me for sex for about 3 years, since I met him.
I wanted to tell my story because I had a rather ‘light’ relationship with a psychopath, but even then, I got burned rather badly. I had to excuse a lot of things he said and did to go out with him, because it was just going to be a fling, so what did it matter if he put his partner down, or he looked at me too intensely? I hope I can dissuade others from having a fling with someone who doesn’t seem ‘quite right.’
Blessings to you all!
Heather
HeatherA, my personal feeling is that I will not excuse anyone lying to get sex, or anything else.
The 3-year pursuit was probably the most envigorating for the spath…throwing out that bait, and reeling in the line, ever so gently. Playing that bait until…….SNAP! The bait’s finally taken!
To a spath, everything is just a fling – committment is meaningless, unless the question of the target’s committment comes into play. It’s all a game, down to the intense, predatory stare.
I think it is important to NOT minimize your experience with the spath, HeatherA. It could have gone on longer with many more ramifications, certainly, but your core values were shaken and the trauma is no less of an experience than those who have been involved for years. It’s all relative when it comes down to the healing process – we’re ALL healing from our experiences, whether they were long, or short-term exposures.
Brightest blessings!
HeatherA, I am so glad you brought this topic up. Too many people fall under the old myth, that in order to become a man, you must test the waters … so to speak. It’s “suppose” to be normal (the double standard) for boys to get sexual experience, another notch for their bed post prior to settling down, raising a family with one partner in marriage (thanks to the biggest anti-social boob, Hugh, stay eternally young and selfish, self centered, self absorbed Hefner who made billions exploiting others. Girls are suppose to be virgins as they walk down the isle. Save themselves for their future husbands. Then the sexual explosion burst on the scene back in the 1960s. Free love aka free sex. Women, don’t save yourself for a future husband, save yourself now and let us break your very fiber that makes you who you are. Break any and all taboos that society has. Anti-establishment. Go against everything your parents and their parents before them and so on and so forth … were/are all about. Don’t cheat yourself. Don’t stifle yourself, it’s your life, go for the gusto. Don’t hold back and certainly do not reach for that brass ring. It was the freeing the hang-ups of society which opened the doors wide open for all anti-social personalities to rear their ugly heads and walk among us so no one would be the wiser. Society had to look beyond the passion of this generation to dig deep and gather more information on that anti-social personality before they could make a move … because they now lived so freely amongst the masses of innocent, non violent, non manipulative individuals expressing themselves. Most of this generation had no concept of what these cold, heartless creatures were and still are all about.
It has taken 40 years to figure out who will never grow up and who was brainwashed by this free environment mentality. Many anti-social personalities (e.g. Charles Manson for one) used their sociopathic manipulation techniques for their own agenda as they smiled to everyone’s faces preaching FREE LOVE, PEACE, and HARMONY, but, sadly, were anything but what they preached. Prior to the 60s explosion it was easier to detect the anti-social personalities that walked among society. They stuck out like sore thumbs. Everyone got them. They couldn’t hide. The 60s generations of going against society norms is the reason why we have the “political correct nonsense of today” …hence, making it mandatory to ignore RED FLAGS because you are judging. It’s your problem, not theirs. Never theirs. They’ve had a free pass for over 40 years as they continue to blatantly roar their ugly faces right in front of us. Still, don’t be judgmental … don’t be uptight … go with the flow … be open, let your guard down … loosen up to allow a sociopath do as they please, whenever they please … with you and everyone. What they want is to take advantage of you and everyone that comes in their path to get their own way, whatever that way of wanting is.
To this day, we will always get the “what is wrong with you … lighten up, go with the flow or you’re the bad guy/gal that is rocking the boat” … The spot light is blaring on you that there is something majorlly wrong with you, not the person you are pointing out. Blame their bad behavior on you, not put the blame on them. Where it belongs. Don’t ever oust that anti-social personality or you will be destroyed. Don’t ever scream “this person is a MONSTER”.
Peace to you HeatherA. Stay with us and read as much as you can to help you help yourself of being duped by the greatest con society has ever witnessed.
first thing first violet – i love hedwig.
your post made me well up. a couple of things: ‘a sweet man trapped’…
and the cover of open relationships – i call it ‘weird hides odd.’
the spath of my acquaintance had so many extremely weird things the made up story she told me, that i was kept hopping dealing with them, and it was MUCH harder to see the ‘oddness’.
she also pitted people against each other. i suspect that she is telling people she had to fake die because i was trying to steal her money. she told me all kinds of things negative about others trying to control her – trying to rile me up and rush to her defense. I now believe that she was doing the same thing with them. she also tried, continually to get me to fight with her bf – (who was actually her – but that is another story) it was this lying about what other people were to her that made my heart start to ache. I had access to a online community where those folks were. i could not longer go there because of how my heart felt. – this was my real sign that something was very not right.
10 weeks later she fake died. 5 weeks after that she fake resurrected, which means i am 8 months nc. I wish i felt freer than i do; there is still so much work to do. but i have made progress. the first months were hellish. truly hellish. i felt like i was in a fun house full of maimed and dangerous demons. now, i am angry and am starting to access some of the pain i am left with. it’s extensive.
Heather,
You know it is almost laughable if it weren’t so “sad” that we are looked at as the KOOKS and the nut jobs when in fact, we are the ONLY ones in the situation telling the TRUTH!
I have said all along that more people would believe us if we were trying to convince people that we had been abducted by alien space ships than that we had met EVIL IN HUMAN FORM! It is sad really, and I think many people don’t want to believe evil really exists because it would be way TOO SCARY and they wouldn’t feel nearly as safe in their own little fantasy land as they do believing “there’s good in everyone deep down” and “everyone can change if you love them enough” and all the rest of the carp that we are taught as children.
Oh, and “it’s not really his fault he was abused as a boy!” “He just needs love and understanding” oh, yea! Right!!!!! And pigs can fly and unicorns are sweet and fairies bring money for kids teeth!
It is sad that we had to learn the hard way but that is the lesson you honor the most, because you PAID TUITION ON THAT CLASS and you learned the lesson. I paid the tuition and attended the classes SEVERAL TIMES before I GOT IT but you got it much earlier. No one hurts “more” or “less” we all hurt TOTALLY but getting the lesson and keeping it is the best gift the universe can give us.
Hi OxDrover,
You’re right about getting an education. It’s bitter knowledge, to be sure, but I am glad I got it. However, I still wonder if the way he reacted is the way any (cowardly) man would act if he thought his mistress was going to blow his cover. Then I think, even if I remove the affair, he was still ‘off.’ Anyway, I’m waiting to see what my old professor says about the situation. I have a few relatives in law enforcement, I think I will ask their opinion, too.
Thanks so much!
OxD, you’ve hit the nail on the proverbial head. People cannot bring themselves to accept that human beings are soul-less or deliberately cruel. And, excusing someone’s behavior on their childhood makes my skin crawl – I did the same stinking thing with the ex spath, and it only served to give him license to perpetrate whatever he wanted to get whatever he wanted for himself. He could not reciprocate concern, love, or empathy, and it took many years and two children before I “got it.” And, like OxD, I had a number of lessons to learn with other spaths AFTER the ex spath. Each experience was painful, and one did not diminish the validity of the others.
Sort of off-topic………I’m reading this book, and the author has quoted a number of “alienists” who attended the Chicago World’s Fair serial killer, H.H. Holmes in the late 1800’s. He was a prolific killer and incredible charmer. Men and women were made to feel “special” if he paid them attention. And, his demeanor was always one of calm, cool, self-assuredness and he never seemed to deviate from that demeanor, ever. He was able to mirror an empathetic response, down to getting misty-eyed and used exaggerated body language to amplify the expected/required reactions or responses.
“Psychopathy” was a term that was used as early as 1885 to describe someone in this manner: “…Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath…”
Hervey Cleckly described the psychopath as: “…a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly …. So perfect is his reproduction of a whole and normal man that no one who examines him in a clinical setting can point out in scientific or objective terms why, or how, he is not real.”
Holmes was described as an extremely attractive man with piercing blue eyes that always locked with whomever he was engaged with. Some found the intensity of his gaze to be overwhelming, but most people (particularly women) were mezmerized by this intense gaze – the predatory stare, we now know it to be. He was “charming” and appeared affluent and successful – most of his business dealings were conducted on credit, which he never meant to pay back, and didn’t. His victims were drawn in by his attentiveness and he would use human touch to put his victims “at ease.”
Obviously, sociopathy has been around since mankind walked upright (Caine & Abel) and I wonder how and why it seems to be more rampant, today, than it ever was in the past. Even children and teenagers are displaying an alarming absence of empathy on the average – they are FAR more mean-spirited than I can ever remember my peers being as a child.
HeatherA, with regard to the spath’s reactions, reading over some of the personal experiences on these blogs confirms one thing to me: each, and every spath follows a predictable path, though they may each employ unique scams.
As a Survivor, your wisdom will kick in the next time someone attempts to use the same tactics that the spath did over that 3-year period. The big quiz will come if you’re unfortunate enough to run up onto a female spath! THAT was an incredible lesson for me! LOL
Brightest blessings!
Dear Heather,
In regards to feeling confused on weather to enlighten M on the L just keep in mind are you doing it for concern or revenge for being duped or both? because for any reason if you are dealing with a spath it will most probably come back and bite you on the behind harder than the initial affair with L has.
A spath will likely turn around and tell L that you have been hitting on him for years and you wont get the message and take no for an answer and you are mentally unsound and you are just trying to break them up because you want him or he rejected your advances!
The way they twist things are truly amazing especially if someone is trying to sabotage his relationship with M his number one tool! Be really careful because if you start stoking a spath fire with gasoline you will be the only one getting further burnt! You need to move on from both of them. As hard as it is you cant save M, she at this point of time might not want to be saved or know the truth and if she finds out the truth, it may not change anything anyway.
If she has little confidence it is just the thing that may make her stay as she may feel undeserving of L’s love as he may say well you never give it to me or you don’t look after yourself anymore, don’t underestimate there ability to make everything they do seem like someone else’s fault 🙂 and as Buttons says about sex and lying, honestly if any man has a story or lies about sex are they really men that you would want in your life for any length of time? I found out No! Just worry about yourself healing from your experience. I am glad you don’t sound impulsive because time will give you much more clarity. All the very best 🙂