Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following email from a reader whom we’ll call “Maryjane.”
If your husband, whom you found out had affairs all during your marriage, had a child with his secretary, paid her hush money, came onto your mother, grandmother, and another sister, told you that he had an affair with your sister ”¦ during the time frame that you were readying for divorce, would you believe him? Also, this man gambled away most all the money in the marriage on football and golf betting (at a country club that you were the member of, not him, as he ran up bills) and was an alcoholic ”¦
And at the time, that piece of info about your sister, was just a part of the entire hurtful mess and too much to process ”¦ while he was also telling you that he loves you and will never cheat again ”¦ and of course, you don’t believe him. You were just trying to process the insanity of it all. Then you were both at your parents’ house and you walked into the laundry room to find this husband and that sister, whispering and snuggling ”¦
And you got furious. even screamed. and went in a made a big to do about what you had seen to your parents ”¦ and this sister, the manipulator, liar of the century, said that you were crazy and that she didn’t know what you were talking about and pointed out that you were overly emotional as usual.
During the divorce, you were cleaning out your husband’s dresser drawers and found a nude photo of this sister in the bottom of his ‘junk’ drawer ”¦ taken during the time, (junk alright, huh?), this sister had lived with you in another state, for three months, eight years previously. And the nude photo was taken on her bed at her apartment that was a short distance from where you lived.
The divorce was awarded to you on extreme mentally cruelty in a no fault divorce state ”¦ and you kept the part about ‘your sister’ out of the court proceedings to ‘protect your family’ ”¦ as you were embarrassed to have such immoral, incestuous, crassness in your own family, on top of the obvious embarrassment and hurt of the rest of it.
After the divorce and during a time, you were ready to address it ”¦ you told your parents about it ”¦ and they couldn’t/wouldn’t believe it ”¦
You see, this sister was the mother of their ‘grandchildren,’ and you were a divorced woman going through pain and not much fun to be around ”¦ And your parents were all about drinking and partying and you were dealing with issues and things that they didn’t want to ever think about, much less acknowledge happened in their family ”¦
These parents were both alcoholics and lived in denial about most everything that occurred with their children and in their lives ”¦ as in one sister being on drugs and having manic episodes. When you told them that she was doing drugs, they didn’t believe you then either. Until ”¦ Gee! It was proven to be true ”¦ and after many episodes, she is diagnosed as being bipolar.
So, you were the truth teller, the one in pain ”¦ the one who saw and the one who was crushed under affairs, lying, alcoholism ”¦ and instead of comfort and caring ”¦ you got disbelief and alienation ”¦
And you suffered it all while being sober, because you don’t drink or do drugs.
The sister who you were told had an affair with your husband began to excluded you from family ‘get togethers’ ”¦ as in her children’s birthday parties ”¦ and pretty soon, you weren’t invited to anything ”¦ because you represented something that no one wanted to look at. She needed to keep you away, because she knew that you knew the truth ”¦ so you were dangerous to the facade that she tried so hard to create and to keep intact.
You moved to another state and during this time, this sister had another affair with a married man ”¦ actually, she has had many with married men that you knew about. But this one almost caused her to lose her license, because it went against professional ethics ”¦ even as she took this husband of another woman to ‘church’ with her.
Your father finally told you that he knew you were telling the truth ”¦ but what could he do? That it was between you girls ”¦
And you responded, “So you let her exclude me when she was the one who did this to me and all the while you knew the truth?” And he shrugged as he took another drink of wine ”¦
You see he had affairs on your mother all throughout their marriage, and you even overheard one talking on the phone to your father while you were in high school, telling him that she missed and loved him and calling him by name ”¦
He knew that you overheard and said that it was a wrong number ”¦
But of course, it wasn’t. And he eventually told you that he was thinking about leaving your mother because he loved this woman and he had been unhappy in the marriage for years. And as hurt as you felt, you could kind of understand this, because your mother was given a prefrontal lobotomy when you were two years old and she was not much of a companion on many levels. And because of her lack of affect and diminished capacity, you and she did not get along well at all. Because you are artistic, emotional, strong and outgoing and she was weak, dependant and most times, not even present. You can’t even recall having a real conversation with her. But being true to your mother, you tell your dad, that if he leaves her you will never speak to him again ”¦
After all, was she really insane, or was it post partum depression ”¦ or did your Dad drive her crazy by his criticizing and neglect?
You were angry at both your dad and your mother ”¦ and while needing their love, lost respect for them both as your heart broke into a million pieces. Nothing was as it seemed in your family. It was mostly all façade ”¦
Your dad didn’t leave, but continued his womanizing, while giving the ‘image’ of the ‘good family man’ ”¦ Even your friends at high school knew about it and would make snide remarks ”¦ You withdrew into yourself, your room, your friends and ballet to survive. But your family made fun of you for dancing. They made fun of you for everything you liked and did, especially ‘that’ sister.
For about 30 years, you are excluded from most all ‘family things’ led by this sister ”¦ who now wore a mantel of a ‘church woman,’ letting her hair go gray and becoming fatter and uglier by the year, and claimed her ‘best friend’ was a shriveled-up old Bishop ”¦ who hung around your family like some kind of a leech ”¦ Your father befriends this old Bishop and took him on extravagant trips.
And during this time, your father on several occasions told you that there is a part of him that wished he had left your mother when she had her breakdown and taken you with him, and that he wished you were his only child.
That he knew that sister had always treated you with hate and animosity, and had done everything she could to harm your life. He called her a big dumbass broad ”¦ which both made you chuckle and cringe at how cruel, duplicitous and sordid your father was.
After your mother died, your father had affair, after affair, after affair, with women young enough to be his daughters, while he claimed this Bishop was his ‘spiritual advisor.’ All of these women were golddiggers, whorish types, and you told him so. And he got angry at you for telling him the truth ”¦ said that you were always causing problems. You only saw your father on occasion, because you couldn’t stand being around these women, the drinking, and the squandering of money, but your sisters participated in it all. At ‘that’ sister’s son’s wedding you weren’t included, but the current golddigger in your Father’s life was. But then after he realized what the women were, he admonished, “Why didn’t you tell me?” and he dumped them.
Your Dad is dead now ”¦ and in his later years, because of ill health, he stopped so much with the drinking, but after a lifetime of it, was a dry drunk. He would tell you on occasion how much you meant to him, and that you were always right and always told the truth, and you heard back from others that he thought you his most beautiful, brightest, deserving and moral child”¦
Your sisters ignored you, were hateful to you, or many times, actually cruel, especially the one who had an affair with your first husband ”¦ They claimed that they don’t know what’s wrong with you when you got angry, and said you were emotional and always played the victim.
What would you do and what would you think?
survivor3: Love what you say about if someone doesn’t make your life better, they’re gone. My family of origin is extremely toxic and, although I did no contact for five years, my mother is a bipolar narcissist and hunted me down wherever I went, stopping at nothing to reach me, including talking bad about me to my employers. I would prefer to have no contact with everyone in my biological family. I keep in minimal touch with her just to avert any attempts to invade my life like that. Manic depressives are known for their swings up and down. This want wants to live vicariously through me. Not great. Aside from her, I don’t talk to anyone in the family. If you get involved with any of them, then you are involved with all of them. That’s the nature of the toxicity in the family. No one even knows what a boundary is much less how to respect one.
I say, if your family is toxic, adios. Who needs it?
However, until this past year and a half, after a terrible experience with a complete sociopath boyfriend, I had been letting users and manipulators into my life and my realm. Since breaking with the sociopathic ex, I have done a serious purging of toxic people from my life and realized, belatedly, how many users/socios/psychos/narcissists I had surrounding me.
Now, I can recognize one of them when they are coming. That doesn’t stop them from trying to get to you. That just means you recognize them earlier and steer clear of them, unless you are somehow forced to have some contact with them, like a neighbor or someone at work. Still, you can minimize the contact and keep them from getting to you. Too bad there are so many of them about — neighbors, acquaintances, co-workers, people at the gym.
But it does feel like, once you clean house and start setting the boundaries you should have had much earlier, the Universe tests you by sending a bunch of boundary breakers your way until you really get boundary setting down and apply those boundaries to everyone everywhere no matter who they are. Boundaries are boundaries. Honor yourself. Set the boundary. Keep it firm. Then take a nap. It’s hard work sometimes.
Yeah, and I’m with you on the age thing. I’m in my late 30s. Would have been great to have successfully purged the sociopaths from my life about 20 years ago, but, hey, there’s no time like right now to clean out, clear up and move on. So here’s to better futures, healthy relationships and honoring ourselves first because if you don’t take care of yourself, no one else will.
Luz Blanca
great post Luz,
It does help to hear that I’m not the only one who finds the toxins everywhere. Or they find me. Welcome to LF.
It does seem like they are everywhere these days. I can spot them and as I said was away from my family for the most part but dealing with this has brought it all back to haunt me. The reality of what I lived through amazes me that I did and I wonder how I did. THe hurt that sister inflicts on me everytime that I am in a room with her. She will do something even if it’s only glare. I mean why does she hate me so much? How can hate be so ingrained in a person?
Oh, and I think forgiving isn’t really necessary at all. Letting go of the anger and taking care of yourself, yes. Forgiving them, no. Eliminate them from your life, learn from the experience and move on as best you can. But I’ve found that actively trying to forgive someone only makes me angrier that they did that to me, that I had to suffer it, and that I let them do that to me. Self-blame isn’t healthy either. Awareness and moving on are. That can happen with or without forgiving someone.
Hi luzblanca,
Your mother sounds a lot like mine. My mother also would hunt me down, and slander me everywhere she could find. Mine also lived vicariously through me: for the entire time I was in high school (all my boyfriends and friends loved her and called her ‘Mom’).
But from your description it sounds like there must be more than just bipolar going on. I’ve never heard of bipolar people ‘hunting’ anyone, that sure sounds more like psychopathy or sadism to me.
Regardless, they’re all bad news. Sorry you had to go through that, but glad that you were able to do it relatively early (I didn’t figure this stuff out until my late 40s/early 50s). Since you mentioned hunting, I thought you might be interested in this article: http://www.conflictcommunications.com/Socialviolence.htm
MaryJane,
it’s envy and your father seeded it in a way that only psychopaths know how to do.
My exspath is an expert. People who had never even met me hated me enough to want me dead. WTF? How? I’m not sure but I do know that he tried to seed enmity between his mother and myself before I ever met her. I found myself disliking her for having been so neglectful of my exspath and I blamed her for all his sad shortcomings. right.
After a few years I figured it out, but at first, I had the overwhelming desire to bitch her out. I’m glad I never did.
She had at least 2 more spath sons. One died after fathering various children out of wedlock. Another one, I suspect to be a spath because his wife hated her MIL and because that same wife, one day wrote a crazy email to every single person in the family telling them that her husband had lost it, she had researched exhaustively online and could only conclude that he had Oppositional Defiance Disorder — in his late 30’s? right. I ignored the letter, of course. she seemed crazy. she’s still with him. I think my exspath is living with them now. 🙁
She dated my exspath in grade school BTW.
skylar: thanks. Good to know I’m not the only one who sees the toxics everywhere. I’m not sure if they find us or if there’s just more of them than we think.
maryjane: I understand your pain. I have some incredibly vicious people in my biological family. Your sister is probably extremely jealous and envious of you. Envy makes people act in incredibly aggressive ways. The more they envy you, your success, your personality, your life, etc, the worse they are. Everything your sister does to you is a reflection of her lack of self-esteem, her unhealthiness and her inability to deal with herself and who she really is. It has nothing to do with you at all.
And that’s where the socios/psychos/narcissists get to us: they know that we will take it personally and will want to do something to make things better because we are good, caring, and considerate people. Trust me — it’s still a lesson I’m learning.
Plus, you could wrap around the world at least two times with the number of envious people who are out there. The less contact we have with them, the better off we all are. Ignoring them, when you have to have contact with them, is a challenge, but well worth the effort. The less attention, negative or positive, that we give them, the less power they have over us.
Luz Blanca
Annie: Thanks for the link. My mother’s been a treat, that’s for sure. There’s a whole, long and terribly graphic story that I could go into, but let’s just say that the abuse included sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse and more by her, my father and other family members, as well as a few “trusted” friends. The psychologists have been surprised that my sisters and I didn’t end up with post-traumatic stress disorder from it all.
Luckily, in the past couple of years, I have really been hitting the healing hard. And it’s been a blessing I could only have dreamed of. Somehow that last boyfriend just gave me a big wake-up call and I thought, “No more of this noise. I’m moving on.” It’s a work in process.
Sorry you had to go through some really bad experiences too. I’m glad this site exists and that we can talk about it all here.
Luz Blanca
Skylar,
You know, your post just turned on a lightbulb for me! I’m wondering if there isn’t a pattern here.
Perhaps I’ve read your post wrong, but you say your path seeded hatred and enmity for you – everywhere. My mother also seeded things against me everywhere, but in her case it wasn’t hatred – the picture she painted was that I was somewhere between crazy and can’t-help-herself-deserves-pity-and-contempt-bad. I think she couldn’t use the ‘hatred’ schtick because she couldn’t garner sympathy and strokes for herself with that. But she used the exact same message to everyone. For some reason that’s not what I would expect from a path – don’t know if I’m being naive here. I’d expect some variation in the message; I’d expect that they would need some ‘getting started’ attempts where the message wouldn’t be on point, and also that they’d tailor the message to their audience. But, as far as I could tell, she’d seeded the exact same thing in all kinds of places – including people that were so remotely connected the odds were incredibly long that I’d ever run into them. Boy, she really worked hard at it! Anyway, don’t know if it’s relevant, just that what you said made me wonder, is all.
Annie,
it is relevant. My spath was so good at it. I’ll explain.
I know he told people that I was a drunken drug addict.
lol! (I can laugh now, kind of)
The pharmacist who dispensed my lunesta (1/2 pill per day), practically attacked me. She viciously accused me of pharmacy shopping, trying to get more than my doctor Rx’d.
WTF? She had problems with my insurance company. She never got the limits correct, but that was not the response a normal person would have.
Later I did find out that he was telling everyone that I was suicidal, so it doesn’t take much to put 2 and 2 together.
But the WAY he would do it, was to make himself the victim. He was someone who CARED TOO MUCH. He loved a selfish abusive woman who would probably commit suicide JUST TO SPITE HIM. How do I know? Because he told me that suicide was a selfish spiteful thing to do. Out of the blue. WTF?
That’s how spaths are. They tell and they project.
So yeah, they can come up with emotional scenarios and nuances that you and I would just NEVER in a lifetime imagine.
Some days, I just can’t even handle knowing what I know.