UPDATED FOR 2024. Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following from a reader who we’ll refer to as “Tanya” about her experience of trying to expose the sociopath.
I was 35 when I met my sociopath — we’ll call him Dave. I was in a top twenty graduate business program — a magnet for narcissists and sociopaths, by the way! A culture that so prizes appearances, financial accumulation, and power must seem irresistible to people with those disorders.
Dave seemed so great at first — attentive, interesting, intelligent, open, honest, fun. My friends warned that he was too flirty — but I only took that as a sign that he was desirable and, hey, I won him over when others had failed.
We were off and on for a few months — the usual drama of dating a pure sociopath took its toll right away. He did very scary things early on, like drink and drive, show up at my door in the middle of the night, call a dozen times a night, etc. etc. In the alcoholic daze that is your typical business school culture, his behavior didn’t stand out as much as it might in real life — but it really should have at the time.
He’s engaged
Finally we broke it off completely. Then one night I got a call from him — he was in Brazil on holiday (he lived there for a few years before coming to Business School) and he was calling to tell me that he was engaged to a girl he’d met there. He put her on the phone so that she could be reassured that he was no longer involved with me. I thought it was crazy, but in my own attempts to CONTROL the crazy (always the first mistake), I took it upon myself to tell his friends at school about the call. I framed it like “Congratulate Dave! He tells me he’s engaged!” He was furious with me when he came back and his friends no doubt thought I was insane.
Later, his “fiance” called me a few times trying to find him. I “googled” her name on my computer — again in an attempt to control the crazy— and found that he had been emailing her from my computer during the time we were dating. Then I found emails he had sent to a sex tourism site called Club Hombre. Over the previous two or three years, he had posted HUNDREDS of emails to this site, explaining his sexual exploits with prostitutes all over the world. His “fiance” was a prostitute. On the boards, he talked a lot about having unprotected sex with prostitutes in Rio and Turkey (both high HIV areas).
I reported what happened
I was so petrified. I went to the school clinic and explained my situation. The nurse told me that I had a one in thirty two chance of having HIV and I had to wait a week for test results to come back (thankfully, negative). During that week I went to my school counselor (a 27 year old kid new on the job) and tried to explain my situation. I brought in print-outs of the postings Dave had made to the sex site, and a note from the clinic explaining the risks he had exposed me to. I wanted to somehow get this guy on record before he put other women in our school at risk, even if it meant humiliating myself. The counselor was skeptical. He asked me if I wanted to file a restraining order and I said “no.” I thought that would only make things worse.
As per procedure, he had to bring Dave in as well. When he asked Dave if HE wanted to file a restraining order, Dave said “yes!” So, as a reward for my efforts to work within the system, I got a restraining order filed against ME for harassing DAVE. One of the worst days of my life.
Can’t control the crazy
That was three years ago, and I still definitely bear the scars of the experience. I try to put the details out of my mind and, even as I read this, I can’t believe it happened.
I do my best to not fault myself for getting involved in the first place. As so many others on your site have said, I was behaving normally in an abnormal situation. What I DO fault myself for is trying to CONTROL the crazy. Every time I tried to control it and expose the sociopath, I only made things worse for myself. The true trauma wasn’t the stuff that happened between me and him, but the stuff that happened when I tried to expose him to others. It was so awful to see how easily sociopaths can bend the system to their will. Before then, I believed I lived in a just, fair world and that I could trust the system to protect me when I needed it. After Dave, I know now that I have to protect MYSELF.
When I’m philosophical about it, I just think that it’s only human to want to believe that we live in an ordered, just world. We want to believe it so much that we ignore the disorder and unfairness RIGHT IN FRONT OF US, and this blind spot is where the sociopath functions. I’m so thankful that I emerged with much less damage than some others. I only wish that there was a way to constructively deal with this — to raise awareness about sociopathy in the same way that people raise awareness about cancer or drug abuse.
Thank you again for your site — it was cathartic to share my story.
Learn more: How to report your abuser’s crimes so the police take you seriously
Lovefraud originally posted this story on Dec. 16, 2009.
How the messages we hear all our lives keep us vulnerable to sociopaths
I think I am sensitive tonight….. I tried to only share how exposing him has only hurt the situation. I really do not want to play the victim, and if sharing my story makes me sound like that then I learned something today. I completely understand what happened to me and I do validate myself…I KNOW what happened.
My world revolved around my family-and to say to just move on, and walk away is not even in my understanding YET. That does not mean I am looking to stay a victim,or be defined in my environment as one. There has been so many things to grasp, learn. let go of, deal with and grieve… I will get there,and with the help of the LF community I DO want to see a different perspective on things, and ideas of how to walk out of this place.
I have been able to be NC for over a year. I have a smile on my face everyday at work…and no one knows what I am walking through. It is only here and in counseling that I am trying to process all the deep feelings of betrayal ,shock, sadness and unbelief and find a new, better and stronger me…..than who I was before the spath.
i liked myself and who i was, and was very happy and fulfilled before….. so to find a new me, without those I love is unchartered territory.
Just wanted to share how in my attempt to expose the spath caused a church to call me and tell me I could not attend there…. It was a trigger, and it sent me in a tail spin and worked against me. I should have left it alone as I was doing so much better. Lesson learned: leave it alone and don;t even try to bring t light what the Pastor/Spath have done. I only suffer when I do. I am getting centered, and could care less what any Pastor or Church like this thinks about me.
Thank you for caring and responding to my entries…..I do appreciate it. Dont give up on me, I plan to be a strong and whole woman in the future after the Spath…I was defined as Mom and Grandma, now….I need to find a new identity. Been a big day as I went to trauma support group …so nite.
Bella, I think we all were “defined” as X, Y or Z and now that we have had the S/P ENCOUNTER the definitions have changed. I also lost my family, my position in the community…and it is “re-defining” ourselves without those things. GOOD POINT!
Give up on you? Never! I hope you won’t give up on me either. That’s what LF is all about…we hold on to each other kind of like two one-legged men, and as long as we hold on, we can stand upright! The support we get here helps us to stand, but in order to stand we must support someone else.
I’ve finally about reached the place (most of the time) that I could care less…then there are other times I WANT so badly that someone believe my story, but every time I have tried to relate it and be believed, I have been disbelieved and devalued again….so, no more. People here believe. So this is where I will talk about it, but not other places. I’m glad you are here Bella! God bless.
I’m feeling deflated tonight. It was very slow at woek, the last two nights, so the tips were sparse. Then, to t has cut twop it off, my drawer was short by 15 dollars. Management is fighting against giving overtime, and because the shift I work gets busy in the last hour, and I am the only server, I do all the side work. It usually keeps me an extra half hour. So, boss lady has cut the first wo hours from my shift today, and those two hours are realitively steady hours when I couls have made at least twenty dollars. It was a split shift, in which I shared a til with someone else….not happy tonight.
I went to work triggered. I don’t know why I
m so caught up in the past….reliving the hurt of my ancient marriage. I never thought I would end up this way.
I am ok though. I know rhings will get better, and I am on the right track. Just having a job, is a beginning. I’m just tired, and I’ve had a couple of bad days. I let a stranger in my till. Shame on me. I learned a lesson. When will it become second nature to maintain my boundries?
Kimmie,
Boundaries take constant practice.
I use my gut as a reminder…….
I just told a friend today…..that Another friend really let ‘me have it’ yesterday about my reaction and paralyzation yesterday. She was kind, and caring……but frank and right on the money….it was still hard to hear.
She was right!
I told this other friend that when I feel myself getting defenisive…..I step back….and see WHY am I feeling like defensive….and it’s usually because it’s something I need to hear and take heed!
I think you did learn a valuable lesson tonight.
And for that……thank god it only cost you $15.00.
Take it and speak up about it next time.
You tend to your own money….and how dare mgmt expect anyone to share a till.
Use your voice.
I have been learning that I don’t believe there is an ‘end point’ in healing. Things come out of nowhere……feelings, triggers, processing…….
Learn to take it as it comes.
The jr’s and I were VERY taken back on Sunday night with our trigger and response to it. It was physical, great fear, knee buckling terror.
At 1:30am someone pounded on our door. (Sunday eve. Jr ran into spath daddy-0 at the grocery in town….he’s here) When the door pounded we were convinced it was him! Who the hell else would it be???
It was the police.
They had a call of a domestic disturbance.
They searched our house…..at my approval…..and left. It had to be a very strange situation for them……
Jr’s and I immediatley thought it was the spath messing with us and went into anger mode.
We were up until 4:30 agonizeing over it……
it wrecked our Monday…..we were comatose and anxiety ridden….
How can he have that much power over us……so many years later?
Well……it means we have more to learn, process and guide ourselves on.
This is what your doing………don’t beat yourself up.
Your in a new situation…..and your processing ‘how’ you got ‘here’.
Time is the healer……but there is something in your day which is bringing you back to what you need to process……go with it.
You’ll move past this one also.
It’s okay Kimmie…….
I’s OKAY!!!!!
XXOO
tomorrow will be a new day…..
Hi Kim,
sorry to hear about your problems at work.
EB’s right, boundaries are a must. We have to practice them.
I’m having a hard time myself tonight. Been thinking about all the spaths in my life. It brings in so much pain to think about it.
🙁
skylar:
So sorry you are feeling pain. Me, too. The feelings seem to be back again…they come and go…we all know this is true.
Seems to be the time of reappearance of our very personal judasses, as in EB’s reappearing 3D-nightmare. And the time of seeing who is a friend and who is not, sigh.
The “Atheist”-view (very deeply felt spiritually, me thinks) of you Darwin’s mom is very calming and reassuring. If HE was in despair and doubt, we all are also allowed to have those feelings, too. And we are also allowed to feel the elation when we are finally to rise above the turmoil. Specially in this very week before Easter, thank you for this very timely entry.
Bella,
You are not “playing” the victim. You WERE the victim, and you hurt a lot over it. Of course, you must share your story. Sharing your hurt is a necessary part of your healing. I know you try to be strong, trying to make a new life. I just could read how much you are hurting still over it, how much this is still part of the present for you exactly because of that extreme hurt you feel over the loss of everyone you loved. Emotions don’t know past, present and future. When you hurt now, then the causes of it belong to your present emotionally. I just hope I could give you something to look forward too, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. How you get there cannot be timed or predicted. For me I found my light by starting Flylady’s routine program, by doing small creative projects, by having the idea of a new apartment to move into and furnish as I would wish, and by straining my brain to comprehend abstract subjects in physics. Nothing of it had to do with work, love or partners or contacting a community… but they all were the things I needed to do to mentally and physically heal. It gave me insights from sideways that enabled me to forgive myself and slowly but surely made me stronger to deal with life in the present and carve out a future for myself again and a gratefulness of this new world-view. In the process I noticed that I somehow developed a better way to protect my boundaries, and every time it happens I feel more empowered. For me the spath belongs to my past and the past cannot hurt me anymore. What his sister/cousin used as words to manipulate me last week (that I was the ideal, mature partner for him in her eyes and the eyes of his late father; to delete his exposing profile out of friendship for her) were words that not even came close to touch me. It were things I needed and wanted to hear a year ago, but it means nothing to me anymore. I didn’t get here because I told myself ‘move on’, but because I did what felt good and right to me to heal myself… I listened to my needs and gut.
What sky said is true about how your children may one day appraise you in a different light… I wasn’t busy with making a different impression on people in my environment (work related). I actually kept most private, just did what was required and no more, no less, and I made no complaints… and people just started to respond differently to me… before, they had seemed to lose faith in me, and it’s the other way around now. Doors I believed closed are opening up slowly out of their own accord.
thank you libelle. The passover story, especially the resurrection part, now has a symbolical relevant meaning for me that it lacked before.
Bellaangel, I’ve been thinking about you, your situation, and this weekend upcoming. This time of year is supposed to be about renewal – the hope that Spring brings good planting, healthy livestock, and bountiful fruit. It’s no surprise that “Easter” was set for this time of year: Hope in Renewal and Rebirth.
For me, I desperately need rebirth from the horrors of Truth. I need to take all of these experiences, all of the shame, all of the despair, all of the anxiety, and the rest of the collateral carnage and put it all into perspective. While I may not have a physical building or group of people to explore this rebirth and renewal process with, I CAN set myself in the sunshine (or, rain) and contemplate how to begin this renewal as a stronger, wiser person.
Whomever Is In Charge Of The Universe doesn’t strike people down, nor do they punish. Everything that I have experienced has been as a result of human choices and actions. What I take away with me from all of this is what matters. My blessings are many – I found LoveFraud when I was meant to back in 2009. I began to “get it” and the experiences that I was emerging from during that time were in preparation for the Big Reveal. No, the knowledge that I had absorbed did NOT make it any easier with one exception: I had the ability to call it what it was.
Bellaangel, this weekend, pack up a lunch and a blanket and go find an open field or an orchard, somewhere. No cell phone, no iPad, no nothing but you, yourself, and outside. Take that time to yourself – to either cry or rant/rave to the open air, or to count yourself lucky to have survived. Whatever comes to your mind, let it go and go with it. Then, think about how precious and valuable you are to the Universe. What you are experiencing with the Church and its membership are labor pains that signal the beginnings of your rebirthing process. You will emerge from this and your experiences will help others emerge.
I think I’ll do the same thing. I surely need it.
Brightest blessings to you.