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.
Buttons, Yep, right on! But Erin72, I call it “stooooopid” not “stupid” and make a big difference in the two.
Genius and stupidity are a lot alike, except there IS A LIMIT TO GENIUS.
But seriously, don’t beat yourself up for wanting to trust folks, we’ve been brought up to think we SHOULD, and that FALSE precept is just one of the things we’ve been taught. Now that we know better and are wiser, though, we won’t fall for that carp again.
Now, I KNOW I am NOT a good judge of character, but I am a GREAT OBSERVER OF BEHAVIOR…and at the first sign of bad behavior or dishonesty I RUN LIKE A DEER!
Hi Verity:)x A cup of tea with you would be lovely:)maybe a bag of chips on the beach too:)x I have often wondered what it would be like to meet someone in real life who really gets it and has been through this process…or on LF. I will actually be going down again in a couple of weeks…and making it a more regular thing.:)
My teenage daughter’s experience with spath is one of the things that I used to beat myself up about not acting upon. He sleezed her. She told me how uncomfortable he made her, I confronted him then watched him ambush her and try to convince her that she ‘remembered things wrong’. For a moment there she doubted her own recollections of reality. It was really sick to watch.I saw it unfold and I had sirens and red flags going off all over.He tried to convince me that she was confused, my self doubt lasted longer than hers… I guess I was a lot easier for him to manipulate because my sense of self belief was so wobbly. It was still part of his mask falling away for me though…but I needed more ‘puzzle pieces’. all so sick and Horrible. I should have kicked him out of the window there and then.
x
A bag of chips on the beach? Now you’re talking! Ah, my potential for happiness hasn’t gone forever when a bag of chips on the beach sounds so good to me. Yes, we can meet on the beach one day or you can come and have tea and cake with me. You’d be very welcome. 🙂
I apologise to my daughter regularly. I try not to beat myself up but I know she was damaged. How could she not be when she knew I was suicidal? Yes, I agree that their stronger sense of self and knowledge of their worth was a barrier against spathdom. I brought her up to know how good she is, whereas I was only told I was bad. She told me he had a piece missing, how astute was that? She was 11 then.
I’m off to my bed now. ‘Night blue skies and all. xx
Oxy and Buttons-Ya’ll are right. I shouldn’t have used the word stupid. It was a poor choice of words. I am actually quite intelligent with an above average IQ. Prior to this spath/malignant narcissist, I was a good judge of character. These people can who fool the therapists and just about anyone and I learned a big lesson. Naive and too trusting was what I should have used to describe how I feel.
My mom was narcissistic and of course she wanted to keep me naive and innocent because then I wouldn’t see what SHE really was. She was able to exert control over me still until just a few years ago when I got intolerant of all bullshit from her and my father. Something happened a few years back and I can’t pinpoint what it was, that made me stand up and say—I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!
Then, I got conned by the malignant narcissist. It’s hard that we can’t give full names on this website because I want as many people to know where to look in case I would disappear one day. My ex spath is dangerous. I feel it deep down inside. I am not afraid but I am very observant of my surroundings!
one_step_at_a_time
hello…feeling a bit eh…embarrassed ha ha….erm…yes of course it crossed my mind you and blue eyes were the same person…once that whole sock puppet thing sank in…(and it takes a bit of time for it to really hit home) I was suspicious and probably will always have the antennae out which is no bad thing…only embarrassing when (and if) I’m wrong…sorry..of course you are not a puppeteer, you are unravelling a puppeteer..you are arming us with information about them and it’s SO important….yet disturbing.
Thanks for your answer, It’s a jolt to suddenly realise how we can be suckered in..it really is. It really disturbed me as I ‘walked in your shoes’ for 5 minutes…all those characters pitching against you at the end was the worst and of course the staged death of your beloved illusion boy, fooling you…it’s a freakshow.
I appreciate the red flags you outline especially the feeling that something has ‘changed’ in the feeling of a post..I’m sensitive and imaginative and the 2 can get mixed up…! I’m learning and I am making mistakes
The whole sock puppet concept is another jolt…it’s like whaaat? that means one person can be playing with your head relying on your ASSUMPTION that each poster is different…and the reality is one poster could have up to 20 characters per dupe…you call them dupes rather than victims…yes… they are just innocent ordinary trusting people.. I feel like a shark sniffing out the scam…it’s funny too, you have to laugh because you really would go crazy otherwise.
Verity and Kim F were with me when I had my paranoia/Eureka moment ! both very supportive…THANKS VERITY!!! and to gether we managed it as best we could….as for the talking about potted plants, gardening…..NO…because someone did that on me and I was really disgusted…I was angry and suddenly cut off for being angry and I didn’t In my humble opinion deserve a response talking about a tree in the garden LOL…it’s incredibly insulting!!! I’m over it already… but I guess I’ve been gaslighted before and I’m getting to know the psychological territory….knowledge building up… thanks to you guys…experiencing stuff right here in a way that teaches me things….Love fraud is an experiential blog as well as just chatting…which is fantastic.
I love the way you are opening up and chatting more…I think it’s the key to getting out of that incredible damned up toxic ‘stuff’ the maze of sock puppets and mind games…to bring your mind back to it’s original position which is yes the mind is important but it’s not everything….the body is there too…really affected by the mind. I experienced the ‘other programme’ running, wondering about everyones motivations TOO..the fractured trust or maybe a brilliant talent and skill you have aquired that may prevent the same thing happening again…but trauma release may need to come first.
Paranoid shizophrenics even in their wildest delusions when sat with and listened to pertain to a context that is not so hard to understand…I’m thinking of RD Laing and how he literally went in and sat with very delusional people. He did a whole study of the families of these people…and found out that the crazy making was the mixed messages and mind games the family were involved in that drove his patients to the brink…it’s a fascinating book (cant remember what it’s called) where he talks about 9 families outlining all the characters…the interviews he conducted with them etc. and you come away with an understanding of what causes the split in people…It’s the covert mixed messages, the look, the lies…the binds and the double binds…every family, group, community has em…the more covert they are the more crazy making
You describe well the way the relationship to your work colleague has changed…and how it has unsettled you…I had that happen..my boss started confiding very personal things to me..and I had to stay well back. He eventually asked me on a date and suggested a ‘no strings’ relationship!!! (married with 4 children) I had to be so composed and calmly explained that I wasnt interested but thanks for the flattery…yikes!!! I felt like telling everyone but I didn’t..I respected his mistake and kept it to myself. We have a great relationship today…yes it’s professional, I get on really well with him…but I know the line..and I’M IN CHARGE of it….peacex
BP, ’twas fun being in the white light with you. 🙂
bp – wrote you a honking big post on another thread.
i don’t mind. it’s okay re the whole sock puppet thing and me/bbe. we ARE learning.
re potted plants – i only use this when it is REALLY obvious; when people come barreling in and they are way off, or post porn links or when someone becomes really obnoxious. i don’t do it lightly. delaing with the hit and run types is a training ground for me – to post over and around, and NOT give in to any desire that may arise to tell them i would like to tie their entrails in a knot. you see that nc really works when you don’t engage with them. they get bored and leave. i prize the night i was called an obnoxious c*** on lf by a troll 🙂 guess he wasn’t interested in us all rotating our tires or the colour of my socks. 🙂
the book sounds fascinating. i would really like to read it. it took me years to realize that feeling were just feelings. and when i am more deeply challenged by new experiences – like this one – it is hard to get back to that knowledge. i did a lot of drugs from the age of 13 to 18 – i couldn’t cope with not being allowed to express the feelings i had in my dysfunctional home. and without other resources i swallowed my feelings…one pill at a time. i wasn’t into recreational drugs…i was taking barbiturates. they gave me a layer of skin…but it was on the inside unfortunately – not on the outside, where it was needed. my family life – best thing is that we were on a farm and i loved it. i spent a few hours out there on saturday – with the people who own the house and barn now (the rest of the farm belongs to a pig corp). the women who lives there now is a scream. she is a biologist and has a menagerie of animals out there – she is so much more like me than my family. it did something for me…not sure what yet…it’s been a very unsettling few days.
i started taking my moms old stash of drugs when i was 13. (didn’t question what she had stelazine or thorazine in her med cabinet until 30 years later. LOL. now i realize she was probably being treated for depression. As a kid i thought ALL nurses had lots of medications at home….well, there were other background reasons i would have believe that: we were geographically isolated; my mom did emergency nursing (we often we at car accidents (aka trauma for young one step) trying to save lives); and my dad, being a farmer also had a wicked medicine chest. We’d call all of this ‘self sufficient’ these days. i took the painkillers she took for her crushed leg pain (she had a horrific car accident when I was 8); then i took every barbiturate i could get my hands on after that, from whatever source i could find. and it wasn’t hard. i had been stoned for 2 years before i ever smoked weed. it took getting away from them to change this. aka i ran away from home at 16. when they found me a month later i felt like i had a bit more personal power. the next year i went away to school and then i ‘fell in love’ at 17 and had a way out. thankfully i came to my senses and didn’t marry – but it got me out of there in my mind. i moved out at 18 – a few days before my 5th year of high school (academic year – it was prep for university), and then within a year was 3,000 miles away from them. a much needed 3,000 miles.
my mom was/is a traumatized person. her dad had been an abusive alcoholic. depressive i am sure. never hit her, so she says, but beat her bother and damn near killed her mom. ran around on her, etc. my mom had a nervous breakdown at 16 – although she denies and hides that one. i don’t think she would EVER compare our childhoods – there was no active alcoholism in our lives – but she is a child of an alcoholic, my dad is an n, and that damn car accident and what happened to her and her rage served quite well as the elephant in the middle of the room.
she went away to nursing school at 17 – and her brother, in attempting to save his mothers life (she was being strangled by their father), shot and killed his father. trauma trauma trauma. (btw my grandma remarried and had a VERY happy marriage to the man i knew as my grandfather).
i see this lineage bp….
My mom has Alzheimer’s now. no doubt having her head bashed in the car accident contributed, as have the numerous anesthetics that have left her psychotic after each surgery (the last time, in the mid 90’s they had to take off her leg- they didn’t get all of the infection and did three surgeries in one week. that’s when the dementia started). so, with the cognitive impairment of the chemical exposures i just wonder how i will end up. one of mom’s other diagnosis for dementia is hereditary. i have brain scans. i am okay….although they have found some ‘abnormal brain activity’. snort!
i think i could go on for hours. but i do have some commitments today. i will continue to post and delete. 😉
Verity- you also were a lovely companion in the white light…where we basked for a while! potted plants for some…white light for others hee hee
one step
abnormal brain activity eh? maybe there is more of it lit up than most..after putting up with the family inheritance…don’t delete this too soon as I need more time to read it propery…gotta go and pretend I have a life!! a little one that will grow in time…x
Hi guys,
Identity crisis on high volume. W/o obsessing over him, there is a huge void.
Today, Sat, my D went to a friend’s and suddenly I feel confused–no goal, no activity, no purpose. She’ll be away fora week, I don’t have work to keep me busy right now, T will be away too. I’m a little scared.
Attended 2nd bb game w/him there. Uneventful. No calls after. W/out the drama, the angst, the worry–crickets chirping silince is alarming.
How do I fill the void? The loneliness is excrutiating. Read a book–silence. Write online–silence. Tend to plants–silence. Pet the dog–silence. It’s a gorgeous day and I have NO energy or will to go out.
Dancing..My answer is volunteer. Find those in need in your community and pitch in. Children with down’s syndrome, cats at the shelter that need some loving, a domestic shelter program that needs envelopes stuffed….someone needs you. Go to an assisted living center and introduce yourself to management, and ask if anyone would like to play checkers, have a book read to them, dictate oral history. Reaching out is a great cure for a lot of things.