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.
Warrior:
Keeping the name legally also facilitated in wrapping up some unfinished business….using my power of attorney for his parents to transfer my other property solely into my name…..get death certificates for HIS family member that I needed to do another wrap up for the kids……and a bank account in the old business.
It was a good thing I did keep the married name for now……
otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to facilitate these things….and we all know HE or his family won’t cooperate……so it would be another uphill battle and expensive to complete.
Plus……it pisses him off that I still go by ‘his’ name!!! 🙂
That’s the ‘big’ bonus!!!
We have ‘chosen’ a new name…..kids and I…..we’ve all been making lists….and we’ve chosen one we all like. I didn’t want to take my parents name….for obvious reasons…..and with spath getting busted with drugs…..it will be easy for kids and I to get the court order….
But for now…..we are renaming ourselves….it’s just not legal. But people call us by our new last name.
I don’t care what you call me just NOT late for supper!@.......
BulletProof, I had to deal with all the twists and turns, nooks and crannies, ups/downs, sideways, backward/forward … of what my bosses and the other managers made me go through (well oiled, they are well oiled and well set up years in advance of doing someone/anyone under). They purposely make you focus on one thing (the smoke screen), when behind the fireworks is the actual set up they are planning. When you figure out that one set up, there are more down the road to booby trap you … Sometimes singularly, other times multiple. It was so crazy making and so exhausting every day to have to focus on keeping my cool with any of them so they couldn’t get me on insubordination, while figuring out what I could grieve, what I couldn’t, how one grievance lead into the next … what was I missing, what I wasn’t … what I had to look out for, what was innocent. What was serious, what wasn’t … Exhausting, is the least I can say about all the layers you need to peel away when psycho personalities are out to destroy you. This multi layered baloney is SPORT to them and you have to deal with it in TOTAL SHOCK AND DISBELIEF AS YOU KEEP YOUR WITS ABOUT YOU. That’s why they do it. You want to play? we’ll play … and we’ll drive you to be committed, or suicide, quit, walk away or which ever comes first. Ruthless and diabolical is the nicest compliments I can give them. To top it all off … my 60 something grievances never made it into the grievance system. The personnel officers kept all my grievances with them. Never to forward them on … which means, not only were my bosses and the other managers playing me, the union was playing me, the higher offices than ours was playing me, my attorney played me, my fiance played me, cronies that knew what was going on and co-workers who knew nothing at all but being played themselves to play me … etc.
The question was asked by their attorneys in one of my depositions … if I knew about all the games, all the smoke and mirrors etc. Dummy me, I said yes. Never knowing that the final smoke and mirror I was suppose to know about was my fiance on the home front that trashed my perfect credit rating, had my retirement home foreclosed, borrowed money for phony pleas never to pay me back … took all my retirement money that was sent automatic deposit when I settled (by using my ATM card to withdraw thousands of dollars from my account) … and took me for everything I ever worked for in the last 35+ years. Plus, stole thousands of dollars worth of items from my home. All due to PTSD and my licking my wounds to heal myself from having endured the likes of “them” and their diabolical ways.
As far as I’m concerned with all these evils folks I had to endure … I might as well have sat on my butt at my parents house, on their couch and stuffed potato chips in my mouth for the last 35+ years for all they cared.
I know people that worked for the same folks I worked (not my actual bosses, but same organization, different location) … that endured the beginning of what I endured … went over the edge, institutionalized or currently living in assistance facilities.. are nervous wrecks, doubt themselves, do not believe folks can be that evil even though they witnessed it them self … that they might as well play with their lips for the rest of their days. BLUUB, BLUUB, BLUUB. I try to convince them log onto this site and read the articles, talk with the other survivors of Spaths … so they can comprehend the truth of what is going on when dealing with Spaths. But, sadly, it’s still a NO GO with any of them as of this writing. Of course my heart is broken knowing they can help themselves if they just knew about everybody here. They are constantly locked in the denial and confusion mode day in and day out for years … because their dealings with Spaths was a few years before mine started.
At last, all this is real .. the surrealness of it all. Only crazy, ruthless spaths would do this total … over the edge evil to another.
Big PEACE on this post.
wini – you had a group; i had a spath that pretended to be a group (the crazy woman in bp’s above post). this whole piece that you wrote, i really related to it:’I had to deal with all the twists and turns, nooks and crannies, ups/downs, sideways, backward/forward ” of what my bosses and the other managers made me go through (well oiled, they are well oiled and well set up years in advance of doing someone/anyone under). They purposely make you focus on one thing (the smoke screen), when behind the fireworks is the actual set up they are planning. When you figure out that one set up, there are more down the road to booby trap you ” Sometimes singularly, other times multiple. It was so crazy making and so exhausting every day to have to focus on keeping my cool with any of them so they couldn’t get me on insubordination, while figuring out what I could grieve, what I couldn’t, how one grievance lead into the next ” what was I missing, what I wasn’t ” what I had to look out for, what was innocent. What was serious, what was innocent ” Exhausting, is the least I can say about all the layers you need to peel away when psycho personalities are out to destroy you. This multi layered baloney is SPORT to them. That’s why they do it. You want to play, we’ll play ” and we’ll drive you to be committed, or suicide, which ever comes first.’
smoke screens, sport. yup. i was working it hard to keep up with th story in my life…and when i found out what then who i was really delaing with it took a long time to get that all these folks were really one (my first huge accomplishment); and that everything said and done was ALL malignant.
what you posted REALLY spoke to the complexity of my experience.
and she was happy when i said i had lost ‘hope.’ sooo happy. but i have found it again. i might have only a provisional ownership of it, but the battlement i am building around it has spikes in it….just for her and all the other n/p in the world.
bp – yes, please do delete it.
OneStepAtATime, it doesn’t matter if it’s a group of Spaths doing a person under or just 1 Spath doing you under. “They” are all the same. Sick, sick, sick with no remorse as they manipulate, lie, con, cheat, steal, or do what they have to … to get their own way in life. “They” have to win at any cost while … any ONE or every ONE else has to loose.
Same ole story (win/loose), different days, different victims who hopefully can and will survive their devastation and diabolical ways.
This blog entry made me sick. It’s how the spath’s mind works, exactly. I don’t care if nobody replies to my post but I just want to get this out there: if I didn’t have a child, I think I would go and kill him today. I’m not joking. And then I think, if he read this he would be thrilled because hurting women is what he likes … and so I don’t even want to allow myself the human right to hurt. It takes a long time to win this game. I can only win by being happy despite him, but it’s such a slow process. He told me stories about how one person thought this about me (a negative thing, of course), another person thought that, his uncle thought this about ‘us’ … none of it true. All his manipulation. Nothing like what you suffered one_step, but the same twisted thinking behind it. These people cannot be understood. Not by me.
one_step_at_a_time
If the dupe who is suing her says that there are details in the con of YOU, that are from her life could that mean the boy…that you are so connected to could have been taken from someone elses life, that there could be a boy out there with all the real issues that she ‘used’ to bait you with?
The good things you got from that relationship… are they illusions either way, because it’s not real…I hear you clinging to him, heartbroken but he was never there, I was in love with the projection the P put on, really….friends said they had never seen me so happy, I was lit up because that projection that I believed in so deeply transformed my being in ways I can’t forget…but I suppose it’s a placebo effect because the projection was AN ACT it was my own beleif in it that transformed me…..we have found out it was placebo..there was nothing there yet we were touched…that must mean we have the ability to transform ourselves through the simple FAITH in something….whether its true or not does not matter…that’s kinda cool isn’t it? rather than seeing it as a dupe…see it as useful anyway because it touched your soul…..
it’s astonishing she is STILL everywhere on line..she must be really addicted to the power she gets from destroying peoples hold on reality…it would be important for her to be banned from going on line until she gets the message it is unacceptable…internet laws will have to grow in relation to this stuff because it’s insidious and soul destroying…keep talking
There must be enough of you now to pay her a visit and confront her on what she is doing…or is that not possible because of the court thing…probably better off biding your time collecting data and evidence to support a proper conviction down the line…but you know I do not think any law will be able to permeate the damage she is doing…it’s so hidden….Karma and divine homeostasis will be the only force refined enough to reach every area, I would not be waiting on the law….it’s possible she will meet her match some day in some way shape or form…how can YOU get retribution/resolution? I feel so angry for you…for all of us
Wini- its a maze of crazy paving…yet somehow, against all the odds…. you are out the other end of it!!!….you had it in work, you had it at home….survivor of so much that would have driven a strong person insane…you must be looked after by some force to have survived the level of gaslighting on all fronts. The damage a few psychos can do is terrifying. The on line terrorism is only beginning. Listen to what one step has been through…how many more are out there battling the same stuff…living in fear..being driven mad through the internet…surreal is one word for it.
You have a complex story, layers of deceit…a psychopathic workplace is of course possible and you are living proof of it…it’s a terrible truth to face, that others less able for it have been crushed enough to go insane, or into a depression, or feel suicidal
makes me want to shout it from rooftops….but I would be calmly removed by the police!!!
BulletProof, it could have been worse. Meaning, if I didn’t know the deceitful games “these” people play before hand, it could have been more devastating than what it was. I had a little leverage on the average, unsuspecting person. I was a union steward for years and saw all the evil games these upper management (then lower level managers), their cronies and unscrupulous co-workers did for years, not only to me, but to the people I represented in a union role. I also dealt with a N after my divorce and was given the book “Narcissism, denial of the True Self” by Alexander Lowen. After that book, I read as much as I could get my hands on pertaining to mental health disorders, managerial techniques of evil managers etc.
I kept telling my best friend that once worked there … that there was a reason we were learning all this. My personality is to constantly turn over that rock. Over and over again, I look at a rock from this side, to that side, put it down, pick it up again, turn it over and around, put it down again … walk away, then start the entire process over again until I’m ready and I accept what it is that is presented me.
Even though it is knowledge and power given you (another tool added to your tool belt of life) … being there and witnessing what others have/had to endure with what these Spaths have in store for someone they want to get rid of on the work front … it is an absolutely horrific experience of actually going through the ordeal yourself. With that said, I had to deal with these spaths in my 40s … big difference than a child enduring these horrors with a parent or guardian that they depend on for survival.
I believe the childhood survivors of these Spaths (that we have on our blog) have the worst horror stories than any of us.
Peace … and thank you for your kind thoughts and words.
Dear Verity,
The anger and rage you feel at the betrayal and torture is a normal part of the P-experience. I think most of us have felt that anger, that desire for revenge for pay back, to make them suffer even 1/100th of how much they made us suffer….unfortunately, though, I think if we continue forever to harbor this wrath, this rancor, this desire for revenge, it ends up being like us swallowing poison and expecting them to die. It eats at our own soul. Turning loose of this feeling does NOT mean you are OK with what they did, but it means only that you can accept what they did, and what they are, EVIL in a word.
It is one of those parts of the healing process that was very difficult for me, and if I don’t continue to work at it, the anger and bitterness will come back. I don’t deny it was/is there, because to do so would be “denial” but at the same time, I do not want to feel like this anger makes me feel forever. It disturbs my own peace and God knows they could care less what I think about them.
Working though all the different stages and steps of healing is an up and down affair, back and forth, but just keep on trucking! In the end, we are the winners, mostly because we are NOT like them.