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.
Neveragain, thanks and great ideas.
It’s not that I can’t find productive things to do. I am afraid to go through the inevitable pain of grief and loss.
In those moments I collapse and have no will or power to DO something.
This is why I can vividly imagine some people may turn to alcohol to cope, or other addictive escapes.
The pain, which I avoid, seems overwhelming.
DW! i missed your post the other day. was wondering where you had gotten to.
you can do the containment piece – lay down and let it overwhelm you for 5 minutes – then contain it. plan to do something immediately afterward. then the next time another 5 minutes – or 10 if you can stand it. only do what you can stand. but it you do a bit of it you will build confidence and you will begin to trust yourself and that the feelings won’t kill you.
brave of you to see it, name it, now you have to ‘stand it’ a bit. just little chunks. come here and write those 5 minutes….i promise you, you will not die….but you may heal.
OneStep, Hi!
Like you’d pull off a band aid quickly–this ending has been so forever.
I felt so stupid today. Bear with me–D was going to camp and he’d pick her up to take her at 12. I just had to all of a sudden to buy Perrlite for the soil for plants–part of my distraction thing to fixate on a mindless job. But lost track of time at Home Depot and was going to be back at the same time he’d be picking her up. So stupid! Wanted to say goodbye to her, but knew he’d park in front of garage so I couldn’t even just pull in and close door and not deal withhim.
Sure nough he was there, and I passed our driveway and waited for them to leave. Except when I thougth they’d left, and drove back, their car was stopped IN my driveway at edge of street, and I came face to face with him sitting in passenger seat. ARRRGH Like Oedipus avoiding his fate and meeting father at crossroads as he runs from his fate.
Sorry, got carried away…incidents like these, and being in his proimity at games for example, are so hard and exhausting for me. I can’t turn him off and frolick happily along.
Dear DW,
You can’t control him, you can only control how you react or respond to him. And yes, you CAN control that!
One way you can do so is to talk to yourself about your feelings.
“He cannot MAKE me feel anything, I can control my feelings.”
“If I see him I will feel _____________ instead of _____________”
Hang in there DW! You are making progress!!!!! ((((hugs))))
Hi Oxy,
Yeah, it’s years of brainwashing I gotta erase. In the back of my mind there is a belief that “I owe him,” “I must watch out for his feelings,” “this will make him mad,” “I am guilty for XYZ”
It’s subconscious and automatic that I see him, and like hypnosis, I go on defense.
This proces, I HOPE, may help me become a real BIY*TCH!!
🙂 Not there yet. Still a lost puppy most of the time.
Thank you Oxy for your big heart and encouragement.
Dear DW,
Yea, we are “programmed” or “brainwashed” (the technical terms are Stockholm syndrome or Trauma bond) to be responsible for their happiness, etc.
If you have not gotten the book yet “The Betrayal Bond” (check it out in LF book store) it is great for showing us how we get so close to those abusers and why….it is I guess a “defense mechanism” or something along that line so that when we are in a one-down position we won’t keep fighting until we get killed….so we learn to adjust to captivity, so to speak.
Cattle and other prey animals “freeze” and stop fighting if they are held closely—in fact, we use this tendency in them to make it safer to handle them for shots and other reasons by “squeezing them” in a squeeze chute that holds them firmly and they quit struggling, thus making it safer for them and their handlers.
You don’t have to become a biatch in order to stand up for yourself, or to set boundaries. It will FEEL like you are, but in reality you are only being reasonable.
Saying “I will not allow you to treat me that way” is NOT being biatchy. I remember a couple of years ago when I caught a “friend” stealing from me, and I cried and cried about “hurting her feelings” by setting a boundary for her. DUH?! Not now, now I realize that “I will not allow her to treat me like that” and that doesn’t mean I am “hurting her feelings” because she has NO RIGHT to steal from me. I AM THE ONE WHO IS BEING WRONGED, NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND.
Your X is not the one being “wronged” as you are not pushing his boundaries and you are not the one VIOLATING HIS SPACE. He is VIOLATING YOURS. You have every right morally and legally to expect to be treated with respect.
So you get the back bone transplant and don’t make me get the cyber skillet out to boink you on the head! YOU HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO STAND UP TO HIM. He is the one in the wrong. (((Hugs))))) and my prayers sweetie, for you and your daughter as well.
Oxy,Re your above post,—-On my Emirates flight back to Sydney from Dubai, in May, I saw a very interesting movie about Temple Grandin.
She was played very well, I thought, by Claire Danes. Apparently Temple was Autistic and her Mother was advised to “put her in a home and forget about her!”her Mother did everything she could to support and educate Temple.
She invented a holding device for herself first,{it calmed her down, and then went on as Im sure you know, to invent these rubber chute s for cattle heading for “Death row”, they went in a winding spiral, as shed observed that cattle when “spooked and scared, tended to spiral together for comfort.It took YEARS and years for her advanced ideas to be accepted, and now, I believe they are used,{the rubber chutes} for cattle on thir way to the Abbatoir about 65 % maybe more now.She must have saved a lot of cattle from a terrifying death.And the meat is more tender, as it isnt tainted with “stress hormones” .I know Oxy knows all this already, but I found ita facinating, well acted movie.Love, Mama gem.X
Oxy,
Just got deBecker’s book Gift of Fear and reading the ch. Intimate Enemies. Very informative.
Dear Gem,
Temple is my HERO!!! And yes, I have a chute and alley-way made to her designs to calm cattle for shots, loading, or whatever needs to be done and it works! TEMPLE is a 9-day wonder. I knew about the movie which was released early this year (2010) and I wanted to see it but haven’t as I don’t have cable. I will see it one of these days. Temple is, to my way of thinking the same kind of HERO that Helen Keller was, and Steven Hawking and so on. Proof that not all “defective” people are worthless—they are just DIFFERENT!
Yea, and the difference in the health and fitness of low stress cattle is remarkable.
DW, I am glad you got his book on this, it is a great one. And you are right, you are NOT responsible for his happiness.
The next book on your “assigned list” is “The Betrayal Bond” which will add to this one nicely. Showing how the abuse had BONDED to you him….but you can and ARE BREAKING FREE!!!!! TOWANDA!!!!! DW I am so proud of you, and proud FOR you as well. That breaking free from the choke hold they have on our souls is difficult but once we are free it is like we have been liberated from slavery.
The thing is we are just like slaves, we are CONDITIONED to stay around and serve. Only a few of us will rebel or run away. That is the Stockholm syndrome or “trauma bond.” It helps the slave physically survive long term by giving the slave/victim a reasonable amount of peace in captivity but does nothing for the emotional or mental health except keep him/her docile.
Those of us who are able to finally rebel, to risk our emotional selves to be FREE will be FREE! We will break those emotional chains!~ Keep on—“follow the drinking gourd!”
Dear geminigirl and OxDrover,
My twin sister has a son who is autistic – a bright, easy-going boy who is fun to be around, a lovable kid. My sister gets concerned about his future, especially when he’s reaches adulthood. I will tell her about this woman Temple, having never heard of her before now. Take care.