Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following story from a reader who we’ll call “Jenna.” At the end, she posts a document written by her sociopathic ex about the price of his soul, which provides a unnerving glimpse into how he truly thinks. Names have been changed.
I have spent the last 18 years dealing with a classic sociopath, a man who lies beyond my wildest imagination. I have come to believe that he isn’t just evil that is too easy an explanation. Evil people can’t help themselves; they can be “born bad.” No, this man chooses to be sadistic and mentally cruel. He can be “nice” when he wants to. He has a now four-year-old granddaughter who adores him and thinks her “Papa” hung the moon. If she ever sees on her own what he is, he will be her first broken heart.
He calculates his moves and sets up his victims over a long period of time — feeding off one woman after another, using the exact same pattern, until they no longer are sating his appetite for whatever it is he hungers for money, respect, ego gratification. I have never met anyone like this before. He enjoys what seems to have been his life’s work. He often said he “didn’t like women or children.” I should have listened.
I met him through work in April 1992. I was 44 years old, attractive and I thought relatively intelligent. My boss knew him from a previous job, considered him an associate, and brought him in to do some computer consulting. Looking back, my first impression was that he was focusing on me, trying to impress me. I should have heeded my bells and listened to my first impressions. He was knowledgeable about everything, charming, and I realize now he talked only about himself, his business plans, his big ideas. Going for lunches developed into a relationship. He was never pushy or all over me just the opposite.
Moves in
He moved in with me on January 2, 1993 after I had broken off with him because I thought he was playing me. I went away that Christmas alone, and when I came home, he was ensconced in my home, with the fireplace burning, two dozen long-stemmed red roses, a bottle of wine and a six-page handwritten letter about what a fool he had been and how much he “loved” me. The fool was me; I let him stay.
I had been on my own for a long time so I tried to establish some beginning boundaries. The first year we were together, he had to pay half the rent and half the living expenses, but slowly that morphed into us having joint accounts, and making decisions as a couple.
Within two months, he would fall asleep on the couch watching TV. I worked, he didn’t. He was trying to build a consulting business, but I think he did nothing most days. I’d come home and he’d be busy doing dishes that he had obviously just started, so it would look like he was busy.
No sex
Within six months, he withdrew sex. “I don’t know why” was his stock answer to every attempt to work through this. I thought maybe he had problems so I backed off and learned to live without a normal and healthy love life. It was step one in completely undermining my own self confidence, self image and willingness to walk away. I was mature, had not been committed enough to really work at previous relationships, so my mindset was, “I love this man and I am going to work at this.”
In 1994 he got a job that lasted four months. He talked me into starting my own business and I did freelance accounting. When he was fired from his job I was never able to find out why, but they let him go on a Tuesday and paid him only to the end of that day, which had to mean just cause. Knowing what I know now, no doubt he was inappropriate with female staff or maybe even male staff, because now I wonder about everything. Nothing was as it seemed.
August 1996 and he has just started his second job lasted six months, during which, I find out, he has been having an affair with the receptionist. He moved out March 1997 and came back begging me to give him another chance in May, saying he was nothing without me; he might as well go live on “skid row” because he would never be able to get off the couch again if I wouldn’t take him back. We had a business to consider he reminded me. He made love to me four times during the “take me back” stage. Soon as he was safely back, sex stopped, but he did come to bed at night. In later years, he would sleep in the living room, on the couch every night, in his clothes and only came downstairs to get a change of underwear, knowing that hurt me and was the exact opposite of what I wanted.
In business together
Over the years this scenario was repeated. In 17 years he held down four jobs, all of which lasted max six months. He talked me into going into business with him and we are 50% shareholders in a small home-based business that supported us from 1999 onward. I am seriously living to regret this, as I divorce and try to extricate myself from him. He talked on the phone a lot, and I did all the heavy lifting.
I had my life savings, which wasn’t much, but it bought us the home I live in now. We moved here in 1999. Yet another “job” he had, this time contracted through our company. He lasted five months in what was supposed to be a five-year contract.
I have to say that the privacy act and employer’s unwillingness to share information is a tremendous handicap to women in my position. Even as 50% owner of the company, no one is willing to tell the truth. If any one of the people who saw through him, anywhere along the line, had had the courage to tell me what my husband was up to, it would have opened my eyes. I was getting his side of the story only, and his best skill is, he is a honed and practiced liar. No matter how suspicious or concerned or questioning I might be, he could talk himself out of it, so I’d wind up giving him the “benefit of the doubt.”
Job in Florida
On April 21, 2009 my husband (he wanted to get married in 2003) left “on business” to take a consulting job in Florida. When he left, I prayed that this would be make it or break it. My health and spirit were so broken that his decision to take this job was almost a relief.
A month after he was gone I began to feel better physically, but such was my commitment to my marriage that I actually said out loud, what worried me was he would want to come back, and I wouldn’t want him to. I would feel obligated to take him back, even though I knew I was living in a toxic relationship. A counselor said to me afterwards that if you have a kind heart, cut people some slack and believe in God, and in doing unto others, you are custom made for this type of predator. They count on it! Your decency and your ability to love and forgive are the very tools they use against you.
First month, he web-cammed daily while I helped him get set up, furnish his apartment and paid his bills. He phoned me 10 times a day on his way down to Florida, saying how much he missed me already.
Cheating
The lies kept up until June 27, 2009 when he avoided an opportunity to web-cam home to see our 3-year old Granddaughter who was visiting. Everything began to add up. I spent all day July 1, 2009 trying to figure out how to hire a private detective in Florida. Turns out he had put himself on a dating site within three weeks of arriving there, and he had “grown an inch” from the time he left here. By August he was on Craig’s list as well and had grown yet another inch!
I had to take control of our business servers and over the course of the next few months I received emails from two women, who came after the one the private investigator filmed him with. His story to them he had been a widower for 40 years, had raised his two girls alone, his wife had been tragically killed in a car accident, t-boned when his youngest was just 2 months old. He had sacrificed himself to raise his daughters. Turned out I wasn’t the dead wife he was speaking of he was actually referring to his first wife, who is alive and well and who is still married to the man who really helped her raise the children.
Second woman who contacted me, did so because she had been told I was his “cousin” and I “worked for him” and she wanted to know if I was going to be helping her learn how to work for him. Both the women who contacted me were kind enough to send me the “ads” they answered, and photos of themselves and one even send me photos of them together, which I could have lived without.
My honesty saved the two women who connected with me, but every woman who crosses his path is at risk. I have come to see that he is like a reverse serial rapist. It is all about power and control, and once he assesses what you want and need most from him, in my case, warmth, love and affection, he withholds that from you. He apparently was quite lustful with the women he met on line and I wonder now, who was he cheating on me with during the 10 years we’ve been in this town? A man doesn’t go from being celibate for 17 years to suddenly being active. I now consider it a gift that he didn’t touch me at least I know my health isn’t at risk.
The document
Interestingly enough, in the “document” you read below, the woman referred to as “Marsha” is in fact his first wife (you know, the one who wasn’t killed in a car accident). The second woman he mentions, is the woman he cheated on “Marsha” with and left Marsha for. It would seem that none of us who came after mattered at all.
I found this document while searching his computer using the word “university” because he claimed to have a Bachelor of Commerce degree and I wanted to share that with my lawyer. This document, written by him on Oct. 1, 2005 at 7:30 pm, popped up. His oldest daughter’s birthday. The night after my 58th birthday. Two years and one month to the day after our marriage, and two months before he would “set me up” by putting me as sole director of our company, which as it turns out, has backfired on him, but it was part of a long-term plan he had and was slowly working on, a trap that would be used when he was ready to spring it.
I can tell you that when I opened this document, it embarrassed me to read it. I never knew this man at all. I have no doubt that I was in my office working, or making dinner, or cleaning up after dinner, while he sat in his office writing this. I can tell you that knowing what I know now, he doesn’t have “a soul to sell.”
I’m weeks away from my divorce being final. He has fought me every step of the way, threatening me, filing lawsuits against the company, using the business and my fear of losing my home and what little security I have left. He has harassed both me and my lawyers, gone out of his way to increase my legal fees, hoping to break me. He represents himself, and at every turn is foxier and more cunning than one could ever believe. Normal does not apply. I wonder what the women before me went through and know in my heart, they went through exactly what I am going through. I can’t wait to get rid of his last name legally.
He threw away his life and I need to be punished for that. I wasn’t supposed to find out. I was supposed to continue in the role I had played, the easily conned wife who kept knocking herself out trying to make her marriage work, while he kept his options open and explored for greener fields.
PS: Job in Florida lasted four months, then they let him go. I have no doubt he is trolling for his next food source as I write.
The Price of My Soul
- To return to Easter, 1956 when my parents moved.
- To have all of the knowledge that I have now and have had in the past.
- To be popular with both boys and girls. At school, in clubs and all other parts of my life.
- To excel in sports without injury, particular in hockey, track, football and baseball. To be good enough in football, baseball and track to attract quality athletic scholarships.
- To excel in school without undue effort. To receive the highest marks in every subject, to effortlessly complete all homework and assignments. To receive the highest possible marks on all tests and examinations. To be the valedictorian in both High School, University. To be first in my class in Graduate School.
- To have the inherent ability to make the right and correct choices regarding education, finance, investments and career.
- To be attractive, fit and athletic for my entire life. To live well in to my 90s and to be happy, contented and satisfied with my life. To die with no regrets.
- To never smoke or partake of non-prescription drugs. To always drink alcohol responsibly and never get drunk or impaired.
- To never have an illness and to be immune from all disease.
- To be hardworking, focused and disciplined. To be courteous to everyone. To be calm, soft-spoken and fair. To have, and experience, no prejudice.
- To be unusually attractive to all women, of legal age, regardless of age, race, color, marital status or religious beliefs. To have the inherent ability to communicate my interest to a particular woman and to have her feel a tingle in her loins and know that, by overtly contacting me, she will experience the most satisfying sexual encounter that is it possible to have.
- To have the inherent ability to bring women to the deepest orgasm possible at my whim and thought. To do so, if I wish, just by touch, by stroking, or by any other means that I wish. To have women become addicted to sexual relations with me. To be completely uninhibited in sex and to have each of my partners wish to be willing to try anything. To be able to bring my partners to orgasm orally, anally, vaginally and any other way I choose. To have them long for each way. To be able to bring women to multiple orgasms, including ejaculation, and to be able to experience multiple ejaculations, myself, within minutes of each other. To never lose this ability until my death.
- To never, either myself or a chosen sexual partner, experience a jealous husband, fiancé, lover or friend. To never end a sexual relationship in any way other than as enduring friends.
- To have women become so addicted to my sexual prowess and their satisfaction that they will do anything that I wish to continue the relationship. To have them recommend me to their women friends and to have those friends join us in the relationship.
- To have this attraction begin from the moment of puberty and, until I am of legal age, to have these relationships with women older than myself.
- To have these women pay me for my company until I have graduated from school and have become a wealthy person. It would be my expectation that, beginning at 13 years of age, I would earn $100 per week from each of my lovers and that I would have five lovers. I would expect my income to increase with each year until legal age.
- To have the inherent ability to save my money and to invest in the most profitable manner. To always know the correct time to buy stocks, bonds or other investments and to always know when to sell at the maximum profit. To never make a losing investment.
- To always know the correct time to create a new company or service and to always know the correct time to sell the investment. To never lose money in this manner. To always have prior knowledge of startup companies and to know which ones will succeed and which ones will fail. To always know the optimum time to cash in the investment.
- To be financially well of by the age of 18. To be a millionaire by the age of 20. To be a multi-millionaire by the age of 25. To be a billionaire by the age of 30 and to be the richest man in the world by the age of 40. To remain so until my death.
- To be asked to mingle in the highest levels of society all over the world. To be politically astute and to have political influence worldwide.
- To never marry and to never have children. To die, peacefully and happy, having left a legacy of both deeds and money that will be invested for good. To have planned those investments so that they will never stop working for good.
- To have several loving relationships during my lifetime. To love deeply and be loved deeply. One of those relationships is to be with Marsha Jackson and the other with Susan Morris. Both are to be deeply satisfying for everyone involved but are not to be monogamous on my part. As in other relationships, they will be so satisfied that they will want to share me with their female family members and friends.
- To be an outstandingly accomplished dancer. To be able to bring a women to climax just by whispering in her ear while dancing. To be able to engage in a conversation, with a woman, about absolutely anything. To have her feel no offense at the most intimate of conversations and comments. To be able to bring her to climax during those conversations.
- To be appreciative and knowledgeable of the arts. To be an engaging and interesting speaker. To have an inherent ability to lead people in the direction I choose for them to go. To always do so for good, never evil.
- To be truly satisfied and happy in everything that I do. Especially in each and every sexual relationship that I have. To be able to give the deepest possible pleasure to my partner and, in turn, to receive the same.
Oxy, and the small price for admittance is to be screwed, tattooed and shoved into the gutters. Pick yourself up … and you can get there.
Great idea.
Gotta run … having a card game to go to … and the other players already arrived and are calling me up … bugging me to get my butt over to their house.
Wini, I hope you are not playing strip poker, but in this heat, I think it would be okay! LOL Gosh, I sure feel with Shana31 if she lives in Louisiana we used to call it LOUSYanna this time of year! Maybe she and Erin72 can go on on Bike rides together.
Actually, in this heat and humidity, I will stay inside in the cool. I almost DROPPED dead when I got my electric bill for the HOTTEST EXCEPT 2 MONTHS since they have been keeping records and it was only $89 bucks….either they estimated it and next months will be $3,000 or the conservation things I have been doing are working. I shut off all the bedrooms and my office. Turned the thermostat to 80 during the day, did minimal cooking, ate more salads, and turned off lights, etc. and at night turned the thermostat up to 82 as body temp goes down when you sleep so you can stand a higher temp and not get hot.
Each degree up or down changes your bill by 3%, plus Arkansas got a 21% DECREASE in electricity because the price of natural gas has gone down.
You guys need to get my cheap—er–ah, THRIFTY—tips, better than Heloise!
Hey I would love to make room for all of you. Oxy, we could put the animals in the apartments because they would probably be cleaner than some of the tenants I’ve had. And we’ll house the pets as well. Just one big happy family that struts their stuff. I’m surrounded by so many of what is being talked of here. I deal with the lies, thieving, conniving, conning, cunning, etc., and that’s just from tenants. Then some of the male tenants have the audacity to come into my office and ask if I would have sex with them. Definitely not a service we provide. They are truly lucky I can’t make wishes come true because they would find themselves quite a few inches shorter the next morning, and not in their height. I’m constantly amazed at the stories that are being told to me. I just shake my head and say, “sure, I believe you”. I’d love to talk with the girlfriend and in many instances the boyfriend.
I can’t tell anyone how blessed I’ve been to find out that I’m really not alone in my quest for peace. Misery really does love company. I use to wonder at all those cliches only to find out they are true, probably written by someone who was dealing with a psychopath and didn’t know what to call them.
I could never understand why this person I was with wanted constant attention. Shouldn’t there come a time when they finally had enough attention and they are fulfilled? I couldn’t understand either why no one told me this man/woman thing was a competition. We were two separate entities, with a different set of emotions and we’re supposed to be sharing life. I understand when someone said they were damaged goods. I’ve felt that way. Probably still do, but I choose to call it being aloof. And because I don’t sleep around doesn’t mean I’m a prude. I choose to be prudent.
But all in all, we could tell each others stories. Some worse than others, but the end result is always the same. Disbelief that this person we gave our all to, took our love, folded, stapled, and mutilated it and threw it back in our face. Then after we process all the hurt and disillusionment, they would want to come back or start over.
Does anyone here know of someone who finally got it and came back and apologized for their behavior or do they just go to their grave with it all unresolved?
I’m just glad there is this place to come to,to find release and to help process the hurt, anger, disbelief. Talking and writing are very cathartic. It sure helped me, and didn’t cost me anything. I’ve been coming back here from time to time. I like self help and that’s what this is, along with support from others who can relate. But mostly it’s wanting to improve our lives and get order out of the chaos that was created by someone else who abused our love and life. I’m glad I didn’t die when I wanted to, just to escape the intense hurting. Now I want to stick around and see how it all ends. And I’m ready for whatever life throws my way. Some I’ll dodge, some I’ll catch. But I won’t be blinded by despair like I was before.
you’re pretty quick to the mark appointment manager and good for you!) I’m way off that destination and still journeying! It has it’s ups and downs:)But i think it will get me somewhere better in the end.
Dear Apt/mgr,
When I was preg with oldest son, I managed an apt complex, and later I had some rental houses, and yeppers, I know what you mean about some of the tenants. I sold the rent houses just before the RE crash, and boy it is wonderful not to have to deal with them! Makes me need to keep a bar of lye soap on hand to wash my mouth out with. Hey, Mel Gibson could use some of that! LOL
Getting it and getting ON with it is what we all aim for and most days I feel like I am doing both but sometimes I feel like “what’s the point?” But each time someone comes along or In your case comes back, and tells that they are doing well, it makes me get renewed courage, renewed strength.
You are right that “misery loves company” but so does success and hearing of someone’s success is uplifting as well.
So many times people come and people go on the blogs and I never know what “happens to them” or “the REST of the story” and it really is a wonderful gift when someone does come back and says “I’m doing great!”
The things that you have articulated so well are things I totally agree with…our choices are OURS.
I am so glad to be out of the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) and to be able to not have the anxiety that it produces, that life just seems to “UNdramatic” that in order to have some “drama” in life, son D and I are going to a play soon! “Tuesdays with Morrie” at our local community theater.
Well, don’t let the renters derail you, but if you do, LYE soap works best. I think I’ll wrap up a bar and send it to Mel G. LOL
Apt/mgr, Oxy, you guys are funny! I liked the comment about making guys “a few inches shorter”!
I had been doing very well in only a couple of months, but today it’s a good thing you can’t record thoughts. Mel would have had nothing on me. You would have had to wash my brain out with soap. I guess it’s normal to go through angry tirades to oneself.
This was set off by a strange call on my caller ID: A payphone from the town in which both my X S/P and his EX EX (my stalker) live. How common is it to get a call from a payphone?
I imagined that the creep was in jail and looking for help. I tried to think of what my reaction would be… A few weeks ago, I would have jumped through hoops of fire to help him. Now I think I would have laughed at him and hung up on him. Then I just started fuming… Time to erase the bad thoughts and refresh with good thoughts.
I am mostly past the hurt (as you said, apt/mgr, wanting to die), but some mornings are really tough. I am fine during the day and night, but morning just seems so LONELY. I have a dog, but I hate that panicky feeling I get when I wake up.
Time will help with the healing…
Romantic,
Just saw your post. Very amusing about Walmart men falling off ladders, you vixen, you. LOL
Welll thank you about cheering me in court telepathically. I’ll take anything. I slept with this man. Had a child with him. He made up nicknames for me. I can’t grasp how I can be sitting in a court hallway barely able to breathe from stress, feeling like I am engaged in mortal COMBAT?!
I pendulum-swing from mad and determined, to terrified and insecure, still (my weakness).
After a nasty-gram from H, I get so mad, play my Lily Allen’s “F*CK YOU” song, my battle-cheer mantra from a LF blogger, and I feel glad, and tough. But it doesn’t last. I wimp out and wake up scared the next morning and drag aimlessly through the day.
Today driving home I felt forlorn it’s not “home” anymore. Remembered when we were about to move in full or hope and excitement, starting a family, how happy I was full of promise. Stupidly, I blame myself for the failure, like I should have let the “sleeping dogs lie” and none of this would have happened, I’d still have a “home.” Argh, I can’t quit that guilty thinking.
But, I’m making progress. Using expert help to stand up to him. Let him try to control, intimidate, and manipulate them all. It’s a different story than when he had me trembling in my bedroom, knocking down the door jamb, or driving maniacally with me captive in the car. Arrgh.
Meeting my lawyer tomorrow for strategy planning.
Taxes question, anyone?
I am looking at W-2 forms for past years to detect his retirement deductions.
What does 12 a or 12 b mean, except his are “c” and “d”.
One one it says “deferred pay arran.”
Is deferred pay arrangement the same as pre-tax deductions into a retirement or IRA account?
I’ll bring this and ask lawyer tomorrow, but I understand lawyers don’t know much about accounting/tax details.
Matt, you around???
How do I ask a question about that?
What I’m getting at is can the tax return deductions show whether or not there is more money elsewhere than what he is disclosing, such as has a retirement acct. where an employer matched his contributions been rolled over somewhere else where he does not have to continue to report it on tax returns because a bank was bought by another bank, so he could move it out someplace else??
Looking at a w-2 is gibberish to me, except I see the income as “soc. security wages” that seems to be the total salary.
Thank you.
Sageegirl(you could change that to sagegirl, with all the wisdom you will gain along the way) Oxy and all,
I think part of this healing is to be able to tell our story, find the comfort we really need, to be able to pass that comfort on, and find out that the sun really does shine, and the fog has lifted. I wish that for one and all.
I think too, that we all want them to feel the pain they caused us, but according to so many, these disordered people don’t feel pain, they cause it. It would have to be mighty lonesome in that vacuum they call a heart. To have to fake emotions and never feel the real. For me, the only real emotion I believe my husband felt was anger. That was real. The rest was imitation.
I think because so much healing has to take place, indicates the areas in our lives that need to be strengthened. At least it was that way for me. Now that I’m on the other side, I can actually say a hearty thank you to those who rejected me. It forced me to stand taller and rise above what I knew was just their opinion. I don’t have to be around the ones who don’t want me. And that a choice I too can make.
For some odd reason, I went through so many years of my life thinking I didn’t have the right to choose. It’s not in my nature to reject. I just no longer encourage and in that way, I reject without anyone knowing I don’t want them!! Trust is a big issue with me. But I needed to go through what I did in order to deal with all the people I am in contact with through my job. I needed the strength and wisdom to confront the disordered. So all wasn’t lost. I couldn’t have said that 10 years ago or even 5. I kept saying “woe is me” and when will this pain stop? Every now and then it rears it’s ugly head and I’ll look at the calendar and it says to feel sorry for me today and I wallow a bit, suck it up, and move on.
I think in order to really know what’s deep within we have to suffer a loss. Then we start the process of digging and wondering where we went wrong and how we can right that wrong. We question ourselves instead of anyone else. I blamed me for everything. If the sun didn’t shine it was probably my fault. Very self defeating. Very little self esteem. Zero self confidence. It was all taken from me in little subtle ways or rather I gave it away. Mess my head with sex, then hate me otherwise. Fear, anxiety, fear of abandonment, etc. I had lots to purge from my heart and mind. I’m still on the journey, but I don’t need to rely on the GPS like I use to. I use my gut instinct. It was always there, but I wasn’t listening. What’s so good is that even if today wasn’t all it should be, I look forward to tomorrow.
And on that note I say good night for now. Prayers for a healing and sunshine.
Dear Apt/mgr,
Good night and I am SO GLAD you are back here to share with us. Yea, we DO have the right to choose and that’s comforting.
I never had as much problem setting boundaries for those I didn’t feel close to (or obligated to) but did have terrible problems setting boundaries for those close to me–family and close friends. Now I’m getting to where it is so good to have the confidence to really set boundaries and say “this is not working for me.” and MEAN it!!!!
Their problem, not mine. It hurts if you really care for that person, but you know, if they don’t care BACK, you really are not losing anything except your PERCEPTION of the relationship which was WRONG anyway! So it makes it easier to set those boundaries at least for me it does.
Well, hope no pipes break in your apt house and you have a good night!