Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following letter from the reader who posts as “SocioSibs.” She asks, “what would you do?”
What if you have reason to believe that someone you know is a serious danger to others? You’ve known this person almost all your life, grew up together in the same family.
Until recently, this person had a huge menagerie of animals housed on an acre of land, including a horse, 13 dogs, 5 cats, turkeys & peacocks and possibly a parrot or 2. Yet when she abandoned the property, all but 2 dogs she took with her disappeared in a span of just weeks.
Subsequent to this person’s latest move (one of 25 or so over a half-century), you found a couple of canine carcasses hidden behind a barn and miscellaneous skeletal remains strewn about the former property, which conjured a memory of walking in on this person during very early puberty as she was holding a live wild bird over the bathroom sink with a knife to decapitate it, exclaiming upon the surprise encounter that she couldn’t cure it so was putting the poor creature out of its misery.
Then you locate childhood friends and others from this person’s past, learning that one witnessed her strangling or drowning numerous animals, with that same explanation, since age 12. Another witness tells of repeated torture of animals, including punching & kicking her horse (one of 2 that a boyfriend bought her), savagely beating her dog daily, and crushing the skulls of kittens between her fingers and tossing them out of her car onto the ground, all during her mid-teen years.
You recall visions of her often hitting & kicking family pets, to the horror and pain of her parent and sibling, who tried but never could completely curtail it. And then you find a multitude of accounts from witnesses and public records of this person accusing multiple people of stalking her from age 13 through recent years, along with reports this person has made of others poisoning her plants & pets, some of whom died as a result, which stirs memories of childhood pets that died mysteriously, healthy pets whom this person hypothesized at the time must have been poisoned by neighbors or stalkers.
An ex-spouse reports that when divorce became imminent she cooked him a “special” meal, after which he became quite ill and came down with a severe rash all over his body, never experienced before or since. Concurrently this person was attempting to entice a former lover to relocate half-way across the country, unbeknownst to the would-be-again lover that this person was also accusing him of stalking and threatening to kill her due to his mad obsession.
This person has a now-young-adult offspring who has been plagued by mysterious illnesses since infancy, and ended up in hospital emergency rooms more often than most people who live to ripe old ages. One disease that was actually diagnosed was touted to some as the first case in the state, but she may have had access to the bacteria while a biological science student at a major university in the early 90s (for which someone else paid and from which she did not graduate), prior to the meticulous tracking these days of contagious pathogens. And you hear that her ex-spouse independently came to the same conclusion as you as to how your niece contracted it.
You recollect a tale she told of a male roommate brandishing a knife with the person’s then 10-year-old child present, and another when the child was 12 and sexually molested by someone’s 15-year-old son right in the next room.
You are aware of at least 2 occasions when Child Protective Services were called on this person, but in each case she wriggled out of charges. Then, when you contact CPS yourself to inquire, the intake worker on the other end can’t tell you what, if any, reports there may be that have not resulted in convictions. However, seeing it for himself on the computer screen, he urges you to call protective services in the state where this person’s child now resides, even asking you to hold on while he looks up the phone number for you and stresses that you speak with a supervisor there if you don’t get results during the initial call.
Indeed, other authorities whom you contact say they can’t do anything now that this person is no longer within their jurisdiction, while provoking guilt for your not having done something about her sooner. Some suggest you at least try to do something where she is now, recommending entities to contact, even if it’s too little too late.
This person has vilified anyone who could threaten to expose her, portrays herself as a persecuted, sweet, innocent victim of her targeted victims, has been abusing & killing animals since childhood but has come to be known as an “animal whisperer.” You have evidence that she’s been poisoning animals and possibly humans for years, has been lying & stealing and casting blame on others since early childhood, with a criminal record for larceny since at least turning 18 (juvenile records are sealed), and a felony arson record.
Then you find out that this person has fled to another state, welcomed with open arms by family into a home where a young relative resides, knowing that they implicitly trust and feel very sorry for her, for “all she’s been through.”
What if you, too, have defended, protected, and advocated for this person all through the years, because you, too, have been blinded by the bizarre stories she fabricates and sympathy she so ably elicits? And you staunchly held onto the lifelong belief that every person has a heart. But now you can no longer ignore that truly innocent people actually are, and always have been, in danger.
What if this person, knowing you could blow her cover, preemptively already got deep into the heads of the rest of your family and convinced them that you are crazy and evil and out to get her, even though there’s not a shred of substantiation of her claims, but she’s mastered the art of manipulation and has skillfully succeeded in obliterating your credibility & character?
What if you knew all this and so much more, and this person were still on the loose seriously harming others and getting away with it, invited and naively trusted to be alone around those most vulnerable, such as children and animals? What if, having been the most consistently present over this person’s lifetime, with nobody else recognizing the danger or mustering the courage or possessing comprehensive information, you find you’re probably the best candidate to piece together the puzzle so that others might see the whole picture, thereby alerting & enabling them to protect themselves, too? Would you speak up?
Now add that what got your investigative ball rolling was the death of the parent that resulted in the threat of losing your home. Because of a fluke when the parent helped save the sibling from losing her home several years ago as aftermath of a divorce, the deed ended up in the parent’s name, so that now both siblings own it 50-50 because there was no will. The sibling can file a legal claim by which she may possibly regain title to her house, but with the family turned against her, they will likely help this person fight the sibling in court, viewing this person as the tragic victim of a greedy sibling.
Suppose this person attempted to get a sizeable advance of her presumed inheritance, prior to creditors being paid, and prior to the estate administrator discovering that she destroyed what she had been deceiving the family as being the largest asset — the house she lived in that the parent bought her and made all the monthly mortgage payments on (in addition to paying most or all her other bills, even restitution & probation fees), so that now it’s worth less than the remaining note due on it. Third consecutive house that she irreparably demolished—the first being the one she burned down; as opposed to the sibling who originally purchased her own house, for the most part paid her own mortgage, whose house appreciated in value, and who certainly never caused destruction to anyone’s property.
Then it turned out that there will be no inheritance because this person depleted or destroyed all the parent’s financial resources already. The only asset left of any value is the sibling’s house (a small cottage with 50K equity in a low-middle income subdivision, compared to her 4-bedroom 2 bath on an acre that she ruined), while outstanding debts leave the entire estate at a deficit that can force a sale by creditors, debts that can be traced back primarily to this person. Despite these irrefutable facts, this person has convinced the family that the sibling is just trying to take everything, even though there is nothing to take. All the sibling wanted was to keep her own house that she bought herself 2 decades ago and has been inhabiting, maintaining & improving, and caring for ever since.
This all started as a pursuit of the sibling to rightfully keep her home, make it a fair fight, sibling vs. sibling, without the whole family against the one sibling. Now that so much devastating new evidence has since come to light, it has grown into a pursuit to enlighten family members so that they can protect themselves, including the sibling’s own life and that of her child, from this person.
At least one family member admonished that, under the circumstances, that makes you, the sibling, the worst candidate to speak up, condemnable for even considering it, no matter how much you’ve discovered that’s led you to acknowledge that this person is very dangerous and that people — including you and your child — are in harm’s way, because it only makes you appear to have a less than noble motive.
What, if anything, would you do?
Learn more: How to report your abuser’s crimes so the police take you seriously
Lovefraud originally posted this article on Oct. 27, 2010.
13 very early warning signs that your new partner may be a controller
LL, I would explain the love bombing as an emotional intensity without any depth. Kind of like a roller coaster ride. It makes your heart pump a lot, but only for a few minutes. My psychopath had a lot of intensity when he was in the conquest phase. It turned him on to chase, lie to and conquer new women. But once he felt sure that he had you in his clutches–whether that took a few hours or a year–the roller coaster thrill was over, and he became bored with you and interested in a new ride.
Valley Girl,
Spathetic! yes.
Spathalogical is how they think and Spathetic is how they are.
We need an entire vocabulary to explain the spaths.
LL,
they are satisfied when they love-bomb you and you are responding appropriately. But when they are raging and you are freaking out with your eyes wide, they are equally satisfied. It’s all an act. Nothing is real except their spathetic emptiness that they try to fill with drama.
LL,
Hope you are feeling better.
Remember the saying “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”? Well the S-path does the same thing, they give us the HONEY to catch us, but then we start to see the vinegar! Every once in a while they give us another drop of honey but mostly they just bathe us in vinegar!
Yes, Claudia, they get bored and demand more and more while giving less and less and they don’t realize or they don’t care that this new behaviour contradicts completely their former one. They demand constant stimulation and they know just one person can not provide but they exploit anyway. They belong to nobody and to try to negate this fact is dangerous and a masochistic illusion. Mine said once “I feel a void” meaning “you can and should fulfill it”. No, they’re empty, nobody can help them.
Ox,
Yep! Agreed!
Thanks Ox, not just yet, but not as much pain as yesterday. Only just now had to take out the “big guns” to medicate with. Have an appointment with the oral surgeon on Friday. I’m hoping to have these suckers out by next week! Maybe Monday? UGH! Got grocery shopping done, gonna work on homework shortly. Doing my appeal for school. Looking for another therapist for me, one for my son…slowly but surely gettin er done!
LL
Good girl, LL, glad that you are doing what needs to be done, but keep in mind, get some REST so you will heal faster!
Eva, I think they have one kind of pleasure before the mask falls, and a slightly different kind after the mask falls. Before it falls, they enjoy the conquest and the fact they’re fooling you. They relish the undeserved idealization. After the mask falls, and you see through their lies, they take great, sadistic pleasure in your pain. Like you said, either way, they enjoy the drama they cause in their victims’ lives, which fills their inner void.
LL, I’m so glad you’re on your way to feeling better.
Claudia, yes. Their trying to feel or fulfill their voids kills normal people. Of stress, of confussion, of insecurity, of sadness.
These bugs the more far away the better because their little pleasures kill.
Eva, since you give the analogy of parasitic bugs: three years ago, when I was reading lovefraud every day, someone, I don’t remember who, compared a psychopath to this strange wasp that leaches on to a poor caterpillar. It bores a hole in it, lays its eggs inside and then moves on to some other unsuspecting host. The wasp’s larvae eventually eat the caterpillar alive, leaving behind only a frail, empty shell. That’s what psychopaths try to do to us: they emotionally gut us alive, to leave nothing but empty shells. Those who escape the parasite on time, like all of us who discovered lovefraud, are the lucky ones.
I”m struggling today. The last two days. I’ve been trying to keep busy, but having this overwhelming nagging shit about being the OW again and now with the gf in the picture. As well as what it was when he was with his wife
(get the skillet ox!)
I just need to vent.
I was reading some of his old emails today. They go back four years. No, I’m not getting rid of them. they’re in a separate folder in one of my email addresses under his name.
I read some of the IM exchanges that I saved that were more recent, the last year we were together. Those were utterly obvious. He stopped emailing me last June. We had a huge fight and the emails just stopped altogether when that was our basic mode of discussion until he discovered IM.
Anyway, I went way back while he was still with his wife. I saw the worst gaslighting ever. Everything was vague when I called him out on how HE was feeling about me or what I was observing, I’d be blamed, but the words he said to me the most were “You’re hurting me”….”Please stop hurting me” “These are false accusation”….”Again, false accusations and you’re attacking me”…”Why do you like to fight so much? I don’t want to fight, I get enough of that here”….”I’m tired of being stressed in this relationship, I’m sick and tired of the stress you cause me”. (All of this while he would tell me he was so stressed out there, yet at the same time give mixed messages in that he was sparing his wife the same treatment he did not spare me). while reading this, I cried. It was so painful. Anytime I said, “I just love you, all I want to do is love you” ….and what I’d get is any of the above or “I”ve always loved you, that’s all I’ve been doing but you do this push/pull thing and I feel like i”m always walking on eggshells”.
Funny……when he was love bombing me, he told me how things were so great between us because he was always stressed out and fighting at home with his wife and that we NEVER fight…..I always thought I was never love bombed. Not true, I was, but just in a different way. I was the OW, not the wife. I didn’t get the all out effort that he put into his two wives and his new gf. As I read those emails, I saw something of myself. I was so desperate to have him love me.
Then I ran across this series of emails that were more recent, about a year ago. I was SO DESPERATE to hang onto the relationship (He was already divorced by then), and wanted him SO BAD, I BEGGED him to take me back. BEGGED. Like a DOG. I said I would do anything, ANYTHING for him….”Really?” Was what came back, “Yes, anything”…..”You promise to do anything, anything I say, no matter what? You’ll give me the benefit of the doubt? Because this is the very thing that’s caused so many problems in our relationship…you need to question NOTHING of what i say….because I’m telling the truth, you must ALWAYS PROMISE TO TRUST ME AND BELIEVE WHAT I SAY”.
I agreed to that!!!
That’s when the cat and mouse analogy that was discussed here, really hit me when I read that…..but I was the mouse that didn’t run. I ran BACK.
The last year, he did the meanest things to me. I was THERE for him, initially,whenever he wanted me there, I was there. At first. This was THE chance to make it work because he was now divorced. We could FINALLY take it to the next level….but the abuse got worse. The ups and downs were worse. I began to feel frightened and while with him, incredibly uncomfortable…maybe it was because we had known one another too long…but i wanted so badly for it to work….
I want and need to share this. Because it hurts. Really bad. it is a major trauma for me in what was this relationship. ANd I walked RIGHT INTO IT! December before last, he found out his wife was having an affair. He confronted her and she admitted to it. HE was trying to manipulate her to make the marriage work, trying to make her feel guilty for her affair….ALL THE WHILE HE HAD BEEN WITH ME THE WHOLE TIME!! She didn’t know this. I couldn’t believe that he was putting her through this. I was so angry with him, I wanted to slap him upside the head. “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO HER WHEN YOU”RE DOING IT YOURSELF?? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO HER?” I was enraged by it. And surprised by my reaction to it. He wrote an email to her boyfriend, pissed off that he was with HIS wife. Fucker!! While he was WITH ME!!! OMG!! So I took it upon myself to tell him to make it a FAIR AND EQUITABLE battle in that he needed to admit to HER that he was seeing ME the entire time!!! He refused. He continued to manipulate her to stay. The audacity was absolutely amazing. So I took it upon myself to tell her through a message on her FB what had happened. He was PISSED OFF AT ME for doing that. I didn’t care. I’d had it, I was so angry!! I heard from her sister, who told me that “We know how controlling spath can be. We are trying to school “wife” in how to get away from a controlling man, I hope you can find freedom from your own dependence upon spath. If custody becomes an issue, we would be happy to have your emails to and from spath in that effort, if he gives us any problems”.
What a mess it all was…in the meantime, i was very close friends with a gal who worked with spath. He helped her get the job she still maintains in the same place today. She was so upset by what he was doing to me, and his piousness at work, looking for the pity play in that “my wife is divorcing me” she coudln’t stand anymore of it. She went to the head honcho and told him everything she knew about our affair. So the director called me and I was stuck. They were going to relieve him from his position, on Administrative Leave, until further notice to investigate the allegations that he was having an affair with a client. It’s a government agency. They had too. I don’t really want to go into further detail about it, but it wasn’t pleasant. I was an absolute disastrous mess this entire time. Spath and I were not allowed to speak to one another during the investigation. Once it was over, they fired him. He had the chance to appeal the decision and he did. As soon as we were released from the gag order between us, I contacted him. I was so upset about the whole thing. I told hiim that I was so sorry and that I had not been the one to blow it up.
He said to me, “You should have been patient. I told you to wait, you should have been patient”.
It was my fault of course.
Then it was on again. I told him I still loved him. He wanted to see me. And it was on again. During this time, he was appealing the decision, which meant there was going to be a hearing. From the time we started seeing one another, was a period of six weeks. I was so stressed about the upcoming hearing because I was going to be a witness. Something I didn’t want to do. He was SO NICE to me the ENTIRE six weeks….until the last week, prior to the hearing. I told him that I loved him and was very stressed about it and didn’t want him to lose his job. That, again, I was so sorry he was in this mess….what I realized through all of those emails, was that the niceness was calculated, and so was the provocation in the end. He knew I would freak out and react. I was so predictable. Thousands of emails and texts bitching him out for what I realized he was doing to me. His playing the victim……
Right up until the night before the hearing. The hearing day came and I was not allowed to see him nor he me. HIs lawyer was an ASSHOLE. As expected. It was humiliating, embarrassing and deeply traumatizing to me. I have never felt so stupid or defeated in my entire life. Ever. What laid before him and his lawyer on that table, were thousands of text messages and emails, all on paper….”he told you to leave him alone, that he was tired and goign to bed, why did you keep on texting/emailing him”….just one of many questions….and I was dumbfounded, shocked and saddened….All I could manage was “He said he was single and wanted to date me….then he turned on me…and I reacted.”….
His boss was so kind to me. Understanding. He knows who my spath is. And I felt he knew who I was too. He spent hours with me on the phone during the gag rule between spath and I. I really liked his boss. Spath hated his gutts. From the time he set foot in the office, he hated him.
That’s enough about the hearing.
There was something else he did that was very painful to me. I purchased tickets for his daughter to see her favorite (and mine) christian band playing close by at a nearby church. I bought the tickets and gave them to spath. He kept wanting to break up with me after I bought them. He told me his daughter had planned a beach trip and would not be using the tickets. So I said, “if that’s the case, then I would like them back, please, to give them to someone else that could use them”….then he asked me to go…then he backed out on that too….saying something mean to me, “Why do you always give me excuses not to go with me somewhere?” I’d not given any. He had turned it around on me at lightning speed.
I was so pissed, I said “I’m coming RIGHT NOW, to get the damned tickets, Spath, I’d rather that someone have them that will ENJOY AND APPRECIATE going!”.
I went out there about two hours later. He was at the neighbors drinking and playing pool when I got there, his daughter came outside and I went up and gave her a big hug. Told her I loved her and was so sorry for what had happened with her parents…she was very sweet. She’s a great girl (Thanks to her mother!), so she called her dad and he came and got the tickets…he had lied to me, he said he gave them to his daughter, he had not. He went into HIS bedroom, on the opposite side of the house and got them and gave them to me.
I left.
When I got home, he emailed me and told me, “FUCK YOU, YOU HURT MY DAUGHTER!! SHE”S IN HER CLOSET CRYING OVER THIS DON”T YOU EVER CONTACT ME AGAIN< YOU STAY AWAY FROM ME AND MY FAMILY"
can you say heartbreak? I knew she knew nothing when I got there. Nothing about it. He watched me drive off with this look of complete satisfaction as well as amusement on his face….his daughter bewildered……..
Damn me.
I had done just what he wanted me to do. Just as I did with the hearing.
These are wounds that truly hurt.
Did he do these things to his wife. Will he do it to the new gf?
Was I treated this way by him just because I was the OW? Did I mean less?
I just needed to vent this, to get this out.
Were the behaviors I saw, the underlying reality of what he is? Or did I just provoke him? Was this just with me? What could I have done differently? What if I had NOT been OW?
Why did he try to contact me again, even if stealth and with subtleties? I found out gf now lives with him.
That's hurting too. Awfully damned fast.
That's all.
Thanks for letting me vent.
LL