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
I agree with Dani S. “Enlightening” M won’t do any good; deep-down, she knows anyway and just looks the other way, like so many others do. I also agree such an action implies jealousy or revenge more than concern for M’s well-being.
HI Buttons, hope you have been well! it sounds like an interested read you have come cross. It is definitely an interesting subject you have bought up about it appearing to be more rampant these days and children seem to be more mean spirited! I believe there are many contributing factors in this including break downs of family units and largely the media. I believe Empathy is born but manly taught. My middle daughter loves watching the Disney Channel but I must say she was watching Hannah Montana the other day and I couldn’t believe the talk to the hand, disrespect the kids in the show had over the adult. Gee Disney is a little different from when I was a kid and that was just a small, silly example.
behind blue eyes you are right, even if it is the best intentions it will always look like it isn’t that way and can so easily be twisted. I think most of us feel vengeful when we have been hurt and humiliated by a spath and I know it is hard to walk away from those feelings but time makes it easier! 🙂
Hi, Dani S! I’m doing well and moving right along. 😉
I agree that the breakdown of family has contributed, but also this need for greed. When both parents are working to pay for WANTS rather than NEEDS, the majority of these children are policing themselves. Rather than healthy interactions with human beings on a face-to-face basis, they are communicating via technology.
For instance, I’ve “met” people online (even on this blog) who would never, in a million years, behave in Real Life in the manner that they do under the cloak of anonymity provided by the internet. Such behaviors would normally be outed in a community setting, and the jerk would be either ignored, duly chastised, or driven out of town for some of the things that people perpetrate in Online Life.
Personally, I am so grateful that I’m not a kid in these turbulent times.
Brightest blessings!
True right Buttons! I have been shocked at some of my nieces facebook status’s and my 12 year old son shaved his eye brows off accidentally in the shower last week because a kid said he had a mono brow. I couldn’t look at him for 2 days it looked so weird but I couldn’t believe how one remark had such an effect!
I am a single mum of a nearly 3, 10 & 12 year old and I have to work 3 days a week to put food on the table. The eldest 2 go to their fathers every second weekend and the littlest the child of the spath I have full time. I get very little help and I worry so much about raising my kids in this environment. When I was a kid I grew up in a country town and when my mother and father had to work I had a plethora of grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins and close family friends to look after us. We never watched TV as we were to busy playing with the extended family and being out doors having fun. My kids dont have that extended family to care for them when I cant, even my mother works full time 6 days a week. What really worries me is how bad is the world going to get? I said to my grandmother once the world has gone mad and she said to me the world has always been mad it’s just that with TV we get exposed to it now. I think the world has got madder but I think we are getting desensitised with the over exposure of the negativity that is ramped on TV and the internet, except for here of course lol 🙂
Hi Dani S and Buttons,
I don’t think my desire to tell M what happened is motivated by revenge. I know, from my roommate’s experience, how vindictive psychopaths can be when you threaten them. My roommate’s boyfriend tried to kill him, cheated on him, and told everyone he was crazy, depressed, and suicidal. My roommate kept a journal, but when he took the psychopath to court, the defense used his journal to argue that he was hysterical. I know not to play with fire, I least I hope I do.
I tried to do my research with L. I asked former coworkers, my friends, etc, etc. It really bothered me that I couldn’t meet his family, even if he would have to introduce me as just a friend. But like I said, they (L and M) seem to live a fairly insulated life. So instead, I listened, I observed, and I recorded. He would complain to me about M, but I never said much, I just wrote it in my journal (I documented our entire ‘relationship’). I’m wondering if he wanted me to agree with him, and I was starting to, but I never told him that. He also thinks we don’t have any common acquaintances, but we do. I never told him that I knew about the sexual harassment accusation, or that I was friends with the girl that got him fired. I think my friend saved me, in a way. It felt important somehow that I knew something about him that he didn’t know I knew. Even though both my friend and L say it was a misunderstanding, it kept me on my guard with him. He was pretty smart, though, picking a girl he thought he had no mutual friends with, it’s easier to lie that way.
I just wish I knew for sure that M wasn’t in danger. But, judging from the stories I read here, he’ll keep doing emotional damage, but hopefully he won’t escalate to physical violence, and he’ll keep lying to her, of course. He has no doubt told her I was after him for years, that I’m a slut (saying I did something with a guy that I actually did with him!), and that I hate her, I was starting to, before I wised up. But every time I think, ‘No, she’ll be fine’ I think of Laci and Scott Peterson. It keeps nagging at me. I would like to do a background check on him, but since he seems to limit his destruction to his personal life (he was always professional at work), I doubt anything will come out. Has anyone here ever hired a private investigator, or run a background check on the psychopath in their lives? Did it work out?
Thanks!
Dear Violet,
That story was shocking yet I can feel the emotion in it. Man, that must have one adventure.
My mother wants to hear all about what my dad is doing but everytime I talk to her she gives me the same old. He will complain to her that I’m being disrespectful and she will say to him that she will talk to me. She does and says Hurt, just be respectful. I’m sitting there like you know I didn’t do anything, right? She says she knows I didn’t do anything that he creates drama. But she keeps saying ” Be nice and respectful” Most times I just say okay or I sit there like I didn’t do anything. I just stay in my room. Most times I think she just says it but really she knows that he looks for dysfunction
Dear Violet. Your right , decieving is a thrill for them, it’s all about power, no matter how small or big the lie they live for that rush of power.
silver, wow, that is sooooo interesting
that you and the “legal” wife are so alike!!
How did you feel while you were talking to her?
Was it surreal?
It is so wonderful when we realize
it’s them (the spath), not us.
But it is so painful to be deceived and lied to.
You sound like you have a teeny bit of
compassion for him… is that the right word
to use???? or maybe “understanding” ???
Your post helped me to look at the spaths
that have been in my life
and to think about how miserable they are.
HeatherA, I personally believe that M is in danger – of course she is! She either has no clue about what L is doing, or she does know and feels that she must accept his behavior for one reason or another. There will be a day of reckoning, but I don’t know if you should be the catalyst – it must be a very personal decision after weighing the pros and cons. I know that it’s not revenge that’s motivating this desire – it’s the need to WARN and speak TRUTH about a monster that will harm someone else.
Warning M is another can of worms, altogether. It would be risky, at best, to attempt contact with her with the assumption that she would be willing to hear from you. No doubt, L has already woven a fantastic web of deceit to “explain” your absence and he has likely painted YOU as a sexual aggressor, in the event that the affair ever became public. Only L and God know the lies that he has fabricated and what she may (or, may not) truly believe.
I have mixed feelings about “warning” possible targets. The ex spath ALWAYS chose Southern, professional women who were well-established and educated and he trolled the internet dating sites (often using Christian forums) to bait, lure, and snare his targets – without fail. He never dated any women that he met in Real Life – he always found them online. His targets were always “nice” women who had an abundance of empathy for others, especially for his “plight” of being a single parent with a psycho-bitch for an ex. He once told me that Southern women knew how to “treat a man” and I later understood that to translate into his viewing steel magnolias as simpering pushovers who were easily manipulated and ruined. The ex spath’s basic motivation was the pursuit and sexual ownership, and the breakdown of their personalities was secondary. Money was third on the list of motivators, but very nearly as important as the destruction of personality was. Needless to say, none of the 9 relationships lasted. I tried only once to warn one of his targets, and it backfired horribly. Thank goodness, she got out before she had entered into a contract of marriage, but I can only imagine how it must have gone for her.
Hurtnomore, mom says “be nice and respectful,” because that’s the only answer she knows. She’s remained with a monster all of these long years and probably doesn’t see any hope of saving herself. When I told my mother about divorcing the ex spath, she was furious and said, “The devil you know is ALWAYS better than the unknown!” It’s what she believed – it’s better to just keep from rocking the boat and put up with the abuse until “Something Happens” to remedy the situation.
Brightest blessings.