Like us, Claudia Moscovici had her run-in with a psychopath, one that almost destroyed her marriage. Since then, like many of us, she has thoroughly researched this destructive personality disorder. She started a blog called “Psychopathy Awareness,” and wrote two books: a novel called The Seducer, and an upcoming nonfiction book called Dangerous Liaisons.
In her review of my book, Love Fraud—How marriage to a sociopath fulfilled my spiritual plan, Claudia writes, “I didn’t think I could learn much more about the subject, but Donna’s book proved me wrong.”
Read the entire review on Psychopathy Awareness.
Love Fraud is available in the Lovefraud Store.
LL, I think it’s far more important to get a therapist you click with who focuses on dealing with ptsd and personality disorders than someone with a Ph.D. in psychology who does not. I don’t even think that these professional hierarchies are necessarily an accurate reflection of expertise or competence.
Claudia,
Thanks for the clarification. That helps me feel a bit better about choices I need to make.
LL
itsjustme:
It’s not that we are lost, but only on a road unfamiliar to us. It’s not that we are lost, but perhaps we are so altered that we do not recognize ourselves on this unfamiliar road.
And we have to travel back over roads that we walked with hands over our ears and our eyes closed. Some of those paths are called, it happened when I was younger. Build up your trust with yourself by doing what you are, standing with your self. I think that in time you will like yourself better once you can count on your healed wisdom and your courage ”“ keep on doing as you are, and you will get there.This is my prescription for myself also.
By sharing you help ”“ you don’t need to offer advice to anyone. Your post helped me, made me recognize your progress, and articulated my belief in process ”“ by example you have encouraged me.
What was I doing? One answer: I was trying to go home to myself. The spath is an inventive creature and she tapped deeply into mine. This to me, felt like a home coming and writng poured out of me”.something I never thought I would write. A part of my own mythology came to the surface ”“ one that asks for, yearns for expression. A part of me without air and light for too long now. And in this revelation I see other parts that were so long ago abandoned so that I could fit in the world. These aspects of myself, now feared as they brought me to the spath, (ahhh. But they did not ”“ their relegation to unfulfilled and underground was brought me to the spath ), need to be brought out and given voice and room in my life. I chose the spath when she showed up ”“ I could have said no. I did not. So it really is not these aspects of me or their lack of connection with the world that needs healing, but my ability to discern – which now needs to be grown by an adult woman ”“ who brokers no ideas from anyone else in its formation ”“ I have listened to my religion for tooo long, I have been immature, I need to be more responsible to my ’self’. I need to protect myself, and go stone when I need to push back in whatever situation I am in. I am a pretty dominant person, but I have caved many times in my life ”“ but I am learning that I DON’T HAVE TO.
Oh One steppers _ I am going to print that above post of your’s.. you just verbalized my three year journey to self – I was unable to fit all these bit’s and piece’ of recovery together – you have planted a root into my soul – you now own a piece of my heart…you have explained me…
OneJoy,
you said,
ahhh. But they did not ”“ their relegation to unfulfilled and underground was brought me to the spath.
I had to read that a couple of times to get it. And as I did, I saw the complex truth beyond the words. The spaths look for these hidden elements because they represent shame to the spath. The spaths are looking for shame to reveal it and cause us to feel the shame that Adam & Eve felt when they realized that they had been duped by the snake and were standing naked before Authority. Our parents gave us those shames to control us.
I’m not sure what my shame is, because I don’t feel that my parents made me feel ashamed. They were too stealthy for that. They made me WANT to sacrifice myself in order to feel worthy. Perhaps that’s it. Ashamed if I DIDN’T self-sacrifice. They were constantly going on about how self-sacrificing they were/are. I could only hope to attain their level of authority by being even more self-sacrificing. But only me, no one else. And I’m not ashamed, One, because I have never failed, to this day, to be self-sacrificing…I SHOULD be ashamed of that.
sky – it would have helped, no doubt, if i had not left a word out in that sentence. 🙂
shame – yes. it snuck up on me. i never was ashamed of those parts of me -in fact i was happy with/ about or proud of them….but i have learned to be, either in truth or in essence. and by that i mean, i was ashamed of some things, and other things just didn’t get any room – and therefore looked like shame.
i am sure i flummoxed the spath – because when she tried to smear me, my sense of protection immediately rose up, and the shaming did not affect me. i went into FU gear quickly and resoundingly. i think that she tried to smear me is one of the ‘hot’ areas fo me. one of those things that makes me want to fucking punch her, when i think of it.
hens – whatever/ however it connected for you i am humbled to be of help.
i hope to do a lot more writing here when my conference is over. but this time away has been very important. i am more internal and more grounded in doing my exploration. i am so thankful for the solitary nature of my life right now – it will give me the opportunity to do this work. It feels very freeing.
sky – the self-sacrificing thing is HUGE for me too!
One,
True, I think my spath was always confounded that he couldn’t make me ashamed even though he led me to do things I wouldn’t normally do. How could I be ashamed if I was doing them out of compassion for him. Faulty logic on his part…
I did have secrets and I still do. Perhaps he was sensing those and thought they were about shame? They aren’t, they are about self-protection from spaths: never let them see your hooks. Not because you’re ashamed but because they will sabotage whatever you hold valuable about yourself. God knows mine tried his damnedest.
ClaudiaMoscovici –
“I understand what you are saying but believe that psychopaths are even more harassing to those who allow them to do it and don’t take any action. I’m just doing what I think is the best course of action for helping myself and others. If you read Donna’s book, Love Fraud, she pursued relentlessly”
IMHO, there are different “best approaches” for different types of spaths. Donna’s spath disappeared on her to avoid any accountability. In her case, his accountability was necessary – it was imperative for her sanity to pursue him relentlessly. Had Montgomery not been hunted down, the healing that took place for Donna as well as many of the other women he had defrauded would not have taken place. Her spath was a “runner”.
Now in the case of SOME spaths who are “runners”, NOT to pursue is what would be best for the victim. If you were only tangled up with a spath for a short period of time, if your heart was broken but everything else of yours was left relatively intact, then it would be good riddance to bad rubbish. To pursue such a spath could only hurt you more. Please note that I do not make light here of heartbreak. My own heartbreaks have almost killed me. Heartbreak is serious stuff; but if heartbreak is the only thing that needs fixing, it is better (where the spath has run) to do this without the influence or presence of the spath.
Where the spath is a runner and they have also stolen from you, then you need to weigh up the cost of a pursuit. Did spath take $1000 of yours? $1000 is a lot of money – but PURSUIT of the spath over $1000 is likely to cause several deleterious injuries to you. For a start, it is likely to cost you MORE than $1000 to track down spath and attempt to retrieve the money spath stole from you; more importantly though, you are hooking back into contact with spath where the result you hope to achieve from your pursuit (assuming your success, which cannot be assumed…) is OUTWEIGHED by the repercussions of the pursuit itself.
Then we have situations like Donna’s, like EB’s and like mine – where pursuit is NECESSARY on irrefutable fronts.
Donna lost a quarter of a million dollars, her reputation as a decent business-woman and suffered serious damage to her future ability to make her way in this world. Those things needed to be reclaimed. The financial judgement against her spath was necessary for many reasons – despite the fact that she could probably never hope to collect what he truly owed her.
EB had no choice but to fight – she faced the possibilities of losing her kids, being held responsible for her spaths drug dealing, being held accountable for his massive debts and his shonky business deals, etc, etc. Even now, she is facing the loss of her family home as a direct result of fall-out from being tangled up with the spath. To do nothing – in her case – was to lose everything AND to look as if it was her fault that she did.
With me, I had already cut all contact with my spath. I had already instituted strict NC well before I knew what spaths OR “no contact” were, and three whole years before I stumbled across this site. I would NEVER have dreamed of poking the snake with a stick, although I did agonise over whether or not I should attempt contact with the ex-wife previous to me and/or warn the next woman. (Actually, to clarify, I DID have to see him in several court appearances because he would periodically stalk me in breach of the violence restraining order I already held against him that was supposed to keep him away from me – but such contact was indirect and in a safe place, where the security officers escorted me in and out of the court room). I am only NOW (this past year) re-involved with the spath through court proceedings that HE has brought against ME. NOT MY CHOICE and I have NO OPTION BUT TO COMPLY. I could otherwise lose my home.
I am only “back-spathing” now because I have been pushed. He did not leave me alone; he wasn’t a “runner”. Had he been a “runner”, I would NEVER have chosen to re-engage with him.
Now that I have no choice but to see this court process through, I am “back-spathing” with everything I have got; with everything I already had but had chosen to “sit on”, IN CASE I NEEDED IT. I am hopeful that because I had not previously unleashed the things I am now unleashing, they might have the effect of shutting him down and scaring him off.
This week, I have written letters of advice to his mother, his sister (who is the executor of their late father’s – considerable – estate which is due to settle and which he thinks I know nothing about), his ex-wife (the one before me) and his currect de facto wife (the one after me). I have informed them all that should he push our property settlement to a trial this year, I require ALL of them to give evidence about “various matters”. I have given no clues, but I know that each of them has verbal and documentary evidence that should blow his case (such as it is) apart at trial. He knows this too.
For that reason, I am bracing myself for possible back-lash and threats from him this week. As some of you will recall, I no longer have the restraining order against him that I had for more than 3 years; it was lost in a recent court battle where the silly magistrate thought that I “did not seem scared of (spath) and therefore, no longer needed that protection”.
In many ways I am NOT frightened of him anymore – he can’t psyche me out anymore, although he might still harm me physically or damage my property. Those things are risks I now have to take – TO PROTECT WHAT IS MINE AND IS CURRENTLY UNDER THREAT.
So – I guess that my advice to you, Claudia, would be this –
if there are no children between your ex-spath and yourself, if your reputation and/or your finances have not suffered a significant and otherwise irrecoverable blow and/or if there is nothing more that he can take from you (like me and my house) – why would you continue to either engage or open yourself up to unwanted contact from this person? There are other ways of exposing these creeps without putting yourself in the mire of continual contact with him (however indirect) that can only be feeding HIM and hurting YOU.
JMO.
“Like her, I will not disappear. I understand there are different legitimate and constructive ways of handling this problem of being stalked by a psychopath and that anonymity/disappearing is one viable option. But I think being active and informing others about this personality disorder is the best route for me. If he continues to harass me, I will inform the police and take legal action against him, as some of you have suggested. ”
By all means take whatever legal action you are able to. By all means remain outspoken about spaths and assist all of us to educate the general population about spathdom. By all means identify him by any legal means in order to warn others if you feel compelled to do so. The bit that I dont get is that you think the best way to do this is to keep yourself in his direct line of fire. I am not so sure that it is.
ErinBrock –
“Claudia;
I am perplexed as to why your not asking your husband the simple legal questions you present here?
He’s the attorney, he has the resources.”
Amen sister!
“I also want to suggest you think about ’taking’ a break and recouping from exposing the spath in your life.
We owe the responsibility to ourselves first to keep ourselves safe. Emotionally AND physically.”
Hard to see the woods for the trees from where you are currently positioning yourself. OUTSIDE of the siituation, you can breathe more deeply, think more clearly and ACT more efficiently in any campaign you then choose to mount.
“There are always consequences to exposing a spath”
I am bracing for mine as I type. But I went into this after 3 years of NC (other than what was forced upon me by court process, during which I did not so much as glance in his direction until the last hearing where I decided to stare him down – and it back-fired on me and I lost my restraining order), much careful deliberation from a long-removed involvement with him and sure in the knowledge that NOW is the time to use everything I had been sitting on quietly for the past 3 years.
Like EB, I “get” your desire to speak out – I’m just not convinced, that in YOUR case, and with YOUR spath, this is the best, safest or most healthy approach for YOU. xx