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.
one_step_at_a_time
Hi….yesterday I really immersed myself in your particular unique spath experience…I guess it really stayed with me all day. When I read behind_blue_eyes post where he actually up loaded photographs of himself and Jamie, and I had been just thinking of what you had said about that woman stealing peoples photos, using them pretending to be them and creating stories around their images and/ or lives…. I perhaps got a little paranoid or a little intuitive..wondering if it was real!!!then his name and your name are very similar with the underlines…then I was thinking maybe SHE was here posing as blue eyes…so at best it’s a case of paranoia…at worst I am right and something is up…what??? I do not know…but something is a little off perhaps you could check out blue eyes and reassure all is well….and that it’s just me having a ptsd moment!! feeling a little gaslighted is all….
and waiting to hear about the ‘stallout’ of course….x
bp – yes, the wrangle with the spath has left me quite wary of online people. and most people who have really thought about this experience report the same thing as you. just be glad i didn’t post any online links about her …it tends to make people’s heads explode.
and there are things that are triggers for me when reading posts here or elsewhwere: any writing that courts an audience is suspicious to me (not just asks for a response); threatening to leave if ones way is not granted; any attacking of others; any using religion to manipulate; assumption of superiority; any showing up in groups (the gathering of the socks);revealing of details that change the ‘feel’ of the person’s story and/or seem to not have a point beyond adding to the ‘story’; continuing ascertains of honesty, goodness; anything that feels staged; anything so fanciful sounding as to be fantasy; anything so ‘marvelous’ as to be fantasy.
there was a small group that showed up here a few months ago – i believe it was only one person. i did some research on ‘them’ and it got weirder and weirder. they don’t post anymore. some posters thought they really added something to lf…but given my online experience with that kind of BS I felt very different, and stayed the hell away from them. their very first post sent alarms bells ringing for me. there is one person who shows up from time to time who is a hardcore misogynist, he’s all over the net. i also stay away from him….and then there is….
…see?…they ARE here. and these are the ones i actually have research/ proof as to their other activities. what i find interesting about your current concerns is that i don’t see bbe answering them…just plowing ahead with the story. perhaps i missed something that was posted, as i wasn’t here yesterday. but that is another marker for me. the question that comes up for me is – why is this level of detail being shared? to what end? what’s the point?
always follow your gut. you are presenting your concerns directly and with respect.
i feel kinda overwhelmed having written what i did about the ppath in the last 2 days. it’s odd how i can say some things and not others. it is because i have learned to contain so much of it. when i was talking to the ptsd shrink i told her i sounded cool and collected, but i am not. it’s damned up inside me. i’ll come back to it later this weekend.
best
one step
verity – hello!
sound like a wise move on your part. and i will tell you that each decision i have made in terms of things that seemed ‘off’ here has aided in my healing. part of that for me is about stepping back; part of that has been doing research; part of that has been standing up and saying, no, and questioning people directly; and part of it has been using the report abusive comment button.
oh, and going ‘potted plant’ on the REALLY obvious trolls who show up from time to time – think there have been 3 or 4 i have tangled with in the last 8 months. and that entails lots of BORING talk so that they can’t stand the non attention and they leave. i can rotate my tires for HOURS if need be. 😉 so, if you see someone start to talk about potted plants or gardening, there’s a pain in the butt posting and we generally post over and around and give them nothing to use/ respond to.
best,
one step
Hi one_step and thanks for the reply. I was worried you might think I was a spath for a minute, and on here who knows what’s going on? The place will attract them, of course. I am sitting here waiting for a friend to come and take me to the woods for a walk with the dog so I am having a browse. I have read here since 2008 and spoken to you before (you helped me with laptop security a while back) but read far more than I post. I’ve seen the trolls and sent a few abusive comment reports myself. They’re soon dealt with, I know.
Blue skies, a fellow Brit! You must have come pretty close to my town, I am near the estuaries, and I wish you could come and visit. Do you know how much I would love to sit and have a cuppa with SOMEONE WHO GETS IT! I am so tired of people here believing it’s just my over-sensitivity, my depression, my blah blah blah, because they didn’t meet the spathy git who brought me here. Fortunately (but not for her) my teenage daughter did and she understands. In fact she warned me about him before I spotted it. I was too in lurve (gag) to see. Well, I did, but I didn’t want to. At the end she climbed out of her bedroom window so she didn’t have to be near him and said after he’d gone that she was considering moving to her father’s house. I owe her, bless her heart.
One_step, there came a point in the past 2 years when my paranoia became so overwhelming that it actually harmed my business. People would walk into my studio, and I was immediately suspicious of their motives for being there. I was deliberately aloof and sometimes hostile, especially if they asked certain questions that seemed a bit too nosy. My paranoia became all-consuming and a central focus of every waking moment.
Looking back, most of my concerns were in my own head – I was actually fueling the paranoia with too much rumination. Then, to add the influence of the former spath friend, I didn’t know whether I was coming or going, at one point.
Once I excised the ex spath friend, my whole outlook changed dramatically. I was able to truly practice NO CONTACT and avoided the urges to “check” someone out that wanted instruction or had just made general inqueries. I have become a much more positive person, and I’ve been able to practice the setting of successful boundaries without hostility for the first time in my life.
I was amazed at how “painless” it was to excise the former spath friend out of my life, to be truthful. As her behaviors became more and more bizarre and obvious, the decision to go NC wasn’t as difficult as I had imagined it would be. All of the laughter and “fun” that I experienced with her would be, I thought, something to grieve over, but it just didn’t happen that way this time around. The fun and laughter was always tainted and rather strained – I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was always off-balance.
As for internet trolls – yes, the anonymity of online life assists trolls, but I view them just as I would a Real Life gossip. Typically, these types of people would NEVER have the nerve to behave in Real Life in the manner that they do in their online lives. And, it’s so interesting – almost comical – that they may have numerous member ID’s, but they cannot consistently (and, convincingly) alter their styles of “communicating” enough to avoid detection, after a few posts. In those events, I water the plant and move on….
Brightest blessings!
verity – sorry, i thought your name was familiar, and i remember you now that i have the context. i have a bit of that CRS that oxy writes about. 🙂
buttons -hmmm, that’s good info to have. excising other s/p/n form my life – or other icky folk to get rid of presenting oddities in my way of thinking. i am going to give that one a chew.
i just started a new job and i am really going through it re questioning people’s motivations. and this one will sound funny perhaps – but the folks i am working with seem rather joyless to me – like humour and laughter are things they save only for their intimate friendships. now, the ppath and i laughed all the time, and believe the chemicals that were released by that is part of what bound me to her/him/ fakorama. but i digress. so, the admin person starts luaghing at some of the goofball things i say after three weeks of sharing an office and I AM SUSPICIOUS AS TO WHY. IS SHE LAUGHING *AT* ME? I know in the end that is probably what the effing spath was doing.
i have had the opportunity to watch paranoia during meditation. i have seen it arise and fall. this was years ago before the ppath. and at the same time got to see a group paranoia happen within a small group at the retreat centre i was at. very instructive. i am glad i had that understanding/ experience. i have something to refer to now. re entering the world IS hard. i emailed my first gf this week – haven’t spoken to her in decades. and i wondered why i felt he need to now. and after i contacted her i realized that part of it was that i don’t trust ‘new’ people, and am trying to troll the past for friends.
i also am having a hard time when people seemingly change how they relate to me. i have a business colleague, who i have known for three of four years. recently he offered to do something for me to ensure i get the job i just got. and that freaked me out. at the same time he moved from talking only professionally and about ‘safe’ topics like hobbies, to mentioning something that bugged hm about his wife. i can’t tell you how upset i am about this. i am really un-trusting of his motives right now. and don’t really know how to handle it. i am just steering the conversations back to business. i have lost my trust of my most liked and most valuable professional colleague. i didn’t see this one coming. completely blindsided. he is now ‘in my head’ a lot. and i am working on excising my focus on him. it’s weird, as soon as i felt unsafe it’s like i want to fling all my power away and make him important like no one should be. at one time he said if i ever wanted to talk about….but i knew not to. i don’t want to share why i have ptsd (which was the convo and related to the situation with a business client of ours – we are involved in a project together and have been for many months). i don’t want this very real champion of mine, who constantly was on team get one step hired to know that much about what i am struggling with. sigh. boundaries.
i don’t growl at folks 🙂 wish i could just let myself go there to tell you the truth. but i do have a litany of ***hole going through my mind at times; and there is still that one step smile and talking to strangers thing going on – and underneath there is another program running wondering about the other person’s motivations. that’s not really paranoia, but fractured trust showing its broken self.
One_step….AHHHH, that ‘ole “Trust Issue” rearing it’s ugly bloated head…
These days, people must earn my trust. Prior to my recent experiences, I gave my trust freely and would actually speak these words, “A person has to ‘do something’ for me to not trust them.” Well……..DUHDUHDARRRRRR……..for someone with ulterior motives or agenda, that’s like ringing the dinner bell at a Dude Ranch: “COME AND GIT YER SOUL!!! FRESH SOUL ON THE SIDEBOARD!!!”
Yah….boundaries. 😉
Brightest blessings
Buttons-you are SO describing the way I was before the ex narcissist. I gave up my trust frely and also said that a person has to “do something” for me not to trust them. Now they earn my trust. That is why I was the easy target. He was able to spot his narcissistic supply a mile away. I feel stupid now for being such an easy target. This is going to do nothing but help me be a much better police officer when I get there. I THOUGHT I was a good judge of character- I was, except for with these crazy people.
Erin1972 – lose the description of “stupid” ASAP!!! Being naiive is not being “stupid.” I complained bitterly of being naiive to my husband, one day. He gave me his definition: still maintaining a degree of innocence, which is NOT a bad thing! LOL
I very much WANT to believe in the goodness of mankind, but the longer I live, it seems the more sociopathy exists, out there.
Brightest blessings!!!