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.
Hopeforjoy,
I know what you mean, having thoughts about the demise of the h-spath. Sometimes I say aloud, I wish someone would assinate him, being absolutely angry (and still shocked) over all the stuff that he has put me through. I feel like I was fine until the last several years when the nightmare started to evolve, me waking up and realizing that I am married to a stranger – I don’t know him, someone who doesn’t have my best interests (or well-being) at heart. I know how it feels – it’s awful, unreal. I’ll say to myself, out of all the men in the world, why did I end up with a sociopath? Why me? I don’t deserve all the heartache that has come my way.
I was checking the obituaries everyday for the jerk, then he popped up with his liver transplant all complete. Why did such a scumbag get a new liver when there are such wonderful compassionate people who need one? He didn’t change, by the way. You’d think that maybe by staring at death someone might change a little bit, but no, he came over many times looking for sex, didn’t happen. Even said we were going to have a great relationship! LOL.
Star:
I read your post…..WHAT A GREAT TRIP!!! 37…..YOU GO GIRL!
It’s all about enjoying life!
Good for you!!!
It’s all downhill from here…..
XXOO
EB
Thanks, hens and EB and Oxy! Oxy, you sound great, too. I’m so glad you will be safe for another 5 years and most likely much longer. What a relief.
I will try to check in from time to time. My snakes are getting huge. Veronica barely recognized me when I got back from CR and tried to remove my face. lol (No worries, I am not afraid of my babies, and I know when to leave them alone).
I grew so much from my Costa Rica trip that I am finally assimilating the lessons into my life and will hopefully be giving a presentation at work. I read “The Four Agreements” while in Costa Rica and have taken them to heart. The last one is “Always do your best.” I decided to follow that at work, and I have completely changed my work experience around to actually love my job. I would not have believed it. Anyway, as depressed as I’ve been much of my life, I am finally feeling very good these days. I didn’t think it would ever happen. I still have some PTSD from my pastm which I’m working on. The fear is that I won’t be able to stand up for myself if I have to (though I seem to do okay with it). But other than that, I no longer feel identified as a victim of abuse. I hope some day to do some writing and speaking about my life and overcoming of extreme adversity. It seems pretty unrealistic, but I see myself as a writer and a public speaker. I will keep you posted if it ever comes to pass. But I haven’t dared dream this dream for many many years. In fact, I haven’t even had a vision for my life in the past 25 years.
Love to you all. Keep looking forward and you will get there. Please also give my regards to Witsend and GeminiGirl. I don’t know if they are still around.
Love,
Star
Dear Star,
THAT IS WONDERFUL!!!! All of us need VISION! Turning your life around to where you don’t hate your job, in fact like it? WOW!!! That is awesome!
Yours is the success story that we all wish for everyone here! Glad to hear it! Makes my day in fact!!!! When I hear that someone from LF is doing so well! A BIG TOWANDA!!!! for you! (((Hugs))))
Star,
Very inpiring post about your success and bright future.
This was golden, and hopeful to read:
“I no longer feel identified as a victim of abuse”
WOW. I love that.
That is my goal–to turn off the old impulse to feel fear and insecurity and replace them with courage and confidence.
Regards, DW
Hi Skylar,
I’m so glad you split with all your computers and your 5 kitties. Good for you! How long ago was that?
As far as “my guy”–I was very maleable and cooperative that he didn’t need to work too hard to sabotage or manipulate. The fact that I left family and friends behind took care of that, so he WAS my world.
Daughter tells me that at recent game, her friends told her they saw her dad patch out like crazy at 90mph out of the parking lot. She reports this to him, then he says some driver drove fast past him, so he went after him to do the same. He then asked what kids told her that, she wouldn’t tell him, and he flipped out on her. Now he is not texting her as usual–she thinks he wants HER to apologize to HIM.
I am removed from him and don’t see him in action, but hearing the story brings it all back. The one upmanship is still alive and very strong, sad to say. Too bad the kid is the only one to receive it, since I’m no longer there.
I am glad you are happy and thriving, and INDEPENDENT!
Punishment much?
D will see it all for herself….very, very, very soon!
Of COURSE he wants her to apologize to him!!!! DUH! It would never even occur to him to apologize to her or admit that he did anything wrong.
Good for her! I hope she stands her ground, and I think EB is right, she will get it for herself soon enough. It will be painful to realize your sperm donor is a jerk and can’t love you, but she will get the message herself and that is better than being deceived forever.
My friend, who has a P-son, has been a great influence in that son’s daughter’s life and the daughter who is now about 14 said to her P-sperm donor, “Dad you tell me I can always talk to you, but when I try to you just yell at me.”
That little girl is finally getting it and her grandmother been there for her (thank you Jesus!) since the girl was born. She raised the child from birth to age 8, then the father remarried and wouldn’t let the girl see her GM for several years. The excuse was he “wanted her to bond with her step mother” (a witch!) but the GM would volunteer at the girl’s school so she could have lunch with the child, she even made friends with the girl’s BPD mother so she could visit the child on the mom’s visit time. It paid off. So keep the faith that your daughter will see what is going on with him.
Kids are remarkable about figuring out what is FAIR and what is NOT!
ErinB, Oxy,
It breaks my heart that she doesn’t have a true dad who loves her for her. She sees who he is, but kids are impressionable and literally dependent. She’s told me “Thank god I have you. You’re the only sane one in our family”
See this email he sent me last night. There was another one today which I didn’t want to open bec. I get upset.
There goes the paragon of kindness POOF!
***
“My Attorney advised me to hire a litigation Attorney. The reason she suggested this is because there have not been any settlement discussions and following the October 27, 2010 Court date the next step in the divorce proceeding is litigation. I am writing to see if you will open a settlement discussion through your attorney. The purpose of which would be to see if we can avoid spending our estate on attorney fees.
***
Do you guys see what I see? Threats and more threats?
“You are making it hard for me, so I’ll fight you as hard as I can. Unless you play nice ans settle how I want you to settle, you’ll spend the last penny on legal costs”
The bum didn’t submit discovery info till just now. I need time to review it. Pre-trial is non binding recommendation by a judge anyway.
I think I have more to lose than gain if I meet four way. If my lawyer shows the professionally prepared settlement proposal at pre-trial, with facts to support it, I think the judge would look favorably and recommend similar. Then why waste my time and money on a meeting when I expect the worst from him?
Why not try to settle AFTER the pre-trial recommendaton?