Many women have written to Lovefraud about husbands who they’ve come to believe are sociopaths. They were astounded to discover that, not only was the husband cheating, but he was having sex with men.
Lovefraud reader eyeswideshut writes about this in a recent comment to the post, After he’s gone: looking at the sociopath through open eyes. She asks:
Now that I know he is also gay, is sociopathic tendency in married gay men not common as well? When I read the stories of the women in the book (“Straight Wives”), many of the men sound like sociopaths as well. Have you studied this phenomenon? Is it possible that gay men who choose to live the lie of married life are likely also socios?
To this, another Lovefraud reader, Leslie, commented:
On the third extended date I had with the SP, I turned to him one night, after we’d been together, and said, “Have you been with men?” Something in the way he’d made love made me think he had. He stared at the window and said in a monotone, “I have never made love to a man.” It was the same monotone he used to deny that he was living with a woman when I asked him that a year later. He was. I don’t have hard proof, but I know the guy had had sex with men.
Then alohatraveler commented:
I have heard from another victim of my sociopath that he was starting to get more “experimental” when she knew him. She knew him after me. He was expressing an interest in having sex with a man, but of course, with a woman present, because he was “not gay.” We both also saw an ad that he posted looking for sex with a transsexual. Then he placed an ad where he wanted a traditional type of woman.
“Not a gay bone in my body”
Shortly after I met my sociopathic ex-husband, James Montgomery, he proclaimed to me, “There’s not a gay bone in my body.” I had no reason to doubt him. But when I left him after two-and-a-half years, I learned a lot about his sexual activities:
- He had sex with at least six other women during our relationship.
- He was heavily into Internet porn.
- He solicited gay male prostitutes.
- He tried to arrange threesomes and looked for swinging couples.
In short, he wanted sexual thrills. The more different kinds of thrills, the better. I’m lucky I didn’t get a serious disease.
Screw anyone
Sociopaths are hard-wired for sex. They have an excessive need for stimulation, excitement and sensation. They also have no fear and no inhibitions. From a sexual perspective, that means a voracious appetite and anything goes.
Dr. Liane Leedom writes that sociopaths only want two things. One of them is power. The other is sex.
So when it comes to sexual orientation, I believe sociopaths are neither straight nor gay. In short, they’ll screw anyone.
Lovefraud has heard from gay individuals—men and women—who were involved in gay relationships with sociopaths. I asked several of them if they thought the sociopath was actually gay. They all agreed with my theory and said the sociopath was not gay.
Sex with an agenda
This does not mean, however, that sociopaths are out of control. On the contrary, to them, sex, and sexual orientation, is just something to be used in order to achieve their objective, whatever that is.
Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the case of James McGreevey, the former governor of New Jersey. McGreevey, you may recall, resigned from office after proclaiming in a news conference that he was a “gay American.”
The truth was that his political career was imploding under a series of scandals. As I wrote in a review of the book written by McGreevey’s wife, I believe the former governor played the gay card because it was the best way to spin his political collapse.
Sociopaths use people for sex, and use sex to get what they want. Anybody who suits their agenda will do.
If it suits their agenda to be married with children, then that’s what they’ll do. But if sociopaths indulge in same-sex relationships, in my opinion, it’s because they’re sociopaths, not gay.
Thanks you Donna for your reasoned response.
Seems the bottom line is the socio’s appetites are insatiable, and taken together with their sense on it entitlement these qualities make any kind of healthy monogamous relationship impossible over the longer term.
Perhaps another way of putting it, when it comes to fullfilling their sexual desires, they do not discrimminate.
In any event, my question to myself now, after 27 years in a relationship with this person, is WHERE WAS I?
After ranting through the litany of his impossible behavior my job now is to learn what it is in ME that seeks that kind of lopsided, unhealthy relationship.
This sight has been invaluable to me in the last several weeks, and I thank you all for your work, and your readers for sharing.
so does any s path ever have a long term relationship that works, does anyone know of any. or is it there boredom and sexual hunger that makes this impossible. my ex s path always seemed to want to have anormal relationship that would last even tho his behaviour made this impossible. do they think about sex the same as us. my ex seems to think woman will be ok with casual sex but no relationship as long as they are censenting a dults to use his words. but i think no nice normal girl with any respect is going to be ok with that on a ongoing basis. maybe for a while if they have feelings for him but after that honey moon period surely not. do the s p aths realise we dont think the same way about these kinds of things as they do?
donna: how did you findout all about your ex s paths lies and his sexual activities ect. i find it very hard to find out things my ex is doing or did behind my back which makes it more confusing for me. i cant afford a private detective. i have found out somethings by fluke or my own guess work but he makes it very hard for me to know whats going on. es pecially with who is sleeping or if he is at all in fact and this is osmething you need t know sometimes if not for anyother reason but just peaceof mind and to know your suspicions are confirmed.
I look back at what happened to me, and I sometimes still can’t belive it actually happened. But it did. What’s more dangerous than a HIV positive sociopath? I wonder, will he ever be honest with people about his status?
Donna,
I think your insight is accurate. As my “James'” womanizing had become evident after almost two years, I had an uderlying feeling that absolutely “anything would go” with him, even though he professed to detesting gay men, even though everything had remained “puritanical” between he and I.
At the end of our relationship, on a group web site where we were both members he posted a very vile and false post outlining many personal details and falsely included details of an anal sexual experience between us that had never occurred, but had been discussed and he had suggested I use an appliance on him that he had in a drawer, but it was never accomplished.
I’d had some equipment stolen during the time we were together, that I felt little doubt he had stolen. My attorney suggested I gather together all my background information and submit it to a specialist in law enforcement, which I did, including a copy of this post. The officer developed a profile and one part of his profile stated in his professional opinion he felt certain gay experience was part of “James'” makeup.
“James” IM’d me after we had not seen each other in seven months under another guise of having a legitimate reason to contact me. A few minutes into our “conversation” on web cams I realized he was masturbating. Though we had always used web cams, they were never used sexually between us to my knowledge, though I’d always wondered about that aspect of him with web cams also and by that time I was aware he too had submitted profiles on almost every kind of porn site found on the net.
It was obvious to me, my “James” uses sex in exactly the way you describe, screw anyone and sex with an agenda. I experienced the same medical fears as you.
Interesting. My psychopath claimed to be straight, stared at every woman….had multible sex partners ( we were “friends”, not intimate) , cheated on wives…online sex, porn… acted very into women, objectifyingthem.
But then he admitted- really just mentioned in an off-hand way (probably gave the sick SOB a thrill) that he like hemaphrodites …just skirting the attraction to men. And then went onto mention Googling porn of the disabled. Yeah.
So I agree- it’s just about getting off on objectification…I think mine enjoyed the degradation particularly…he also mentioned being particularly interested in terminally ill women.
Oh, boy.
my xS actually mentioned to me fairly early that he liked men. and told me he was bi. he said that he didn’t have sex with men but he had been in a threesome with another guy. and sometimes he would see guys and say they were ‘cute.’ i immediately thought that he was gay but he adamantly denied that. soon after that he stopped pointing out other men and even women. (he refused to leave.)
i know he was having sex with other people during the relationship. to think otherwise would be foolish. but like jules said it is practically impossible to catch them in the act. you would have to be even more sneaky then him.
and my sociopath neighbor was supposedly gay but would constantly try to touch me and other women especially when he was high.
Mine was so adamantly insistent that he was straight that I had to wonder if he wasn’t protesting far too much. He was certainly an extremely sexual individual. He doesn’t see himself as a predator, by the way. He sees himself as a charmer who can get women to do anything for him because he’s so good in bed. He claims to enhance their self-esteem by treating them better than anyone ever has before. Most of them might not even consider themselves hurt by him, or so he has claimed. Every one of them has come back to him, time and time again, begging for more. I did it, too. How does that enhance anyone’s self-esteem? It certainly doesn’t. He also used the phrase “consenting adults” all the time because he’d romance a girl, get her to worship him, get her completely addicted to him, and then tell her that she just wasn’t enough, not quite right, and he still needed to look further for The One. But MAYBE, if they stayed friends (read f*ckbuddies), he’d come back once he realized she was the right one after all. He just couldn’t end things once and for all, oh noooo. He had terrible abandonment issues that made you feel sorry for him even though you KNEW inside that you were being manipulated somehow, you just couldn’t quite put your finger on it. He told me that being with him SOME of the time was still better than being ALL ALONE, which is what I’d have to go back to if I didn’t allow him his freedom. I swallowed all that crap whole.
He refused to use a condom, ever. He said they were icky and he loved me too much to put ANY barrier between us. I believed him, of course. And so did at least 15 others that I know of. He was always trying to get me involved in a threesome, which has never appealed to me, and I heard of another girl who participated in one with him. She was later dumped for “cheating” on him because she found the threesome arousing and interesting. He was only interested in persuading a girl to participate in something that was past her usual boundaries. Once past them, she was disposable, regardless of her own fear of abandonment. She’d keep coming back for more abuse!
This is a revelation to me. One of the hardest things I had to come to terms with about this man I loved was the sexual angle that seemed, at first, so electrifying, but slowly over time became the ultimate destruction of my self esteem. But I have never known how or where to talk about it as I didn’t understand any of it, or my part in it. It was all so insiduous, and at first thrilling, but eventually after I got hooked in, it became dark and sordid and ugly. But the damage to me was done.
How?
I was lured in by the angle they all seem to use, his charm, his seemingly genuine desire for me, that it was all consuming, and he did, as not quite broken says, seem to be able to bring your sexuality out like a flower in bloom. At first. The combination of sexual seduction and romance was irresistable. Here is a man making you feel the most desirable, attractive woman he has known, and how he only feels this way with you. The slowly introducing sexual fantasy play into your relationship. Gentle and just a little stimulating. At first. Slowly you find yourself trusting him enough to maybe reveal a few fantasies to him. That is enough for a while.
I don’t know how others worked, but my ex was never honest about his behaviour. He never talked about what he did. He focused on you like a radar and gave you (it seemed) his full desire and attention. Then slowly, occasionally, withdraw it. You wonder what happened, why? He slowly returns with a slightly new angle on the fantasy play. You are a little shocked, but you are hooked by then, you are in love, you don’t want him to know you are shocked, because you trust in him, so you perhaps say you don’t feel comfortable with that, he withdraws, cools, the lovely feelings you were getting are stopped. You don’t want to lose that, so you try to go along with his fantasies.
And for a while, that works, then he ups the anti, throws in another angle, a bit brutal, a bit sadistic. You are again, shocked. You at once are thinking, well I have gone along with him so far and he has never expected any of these things from me, its just fantasy, if I just go along with it, all those lovely feelings he can bring out in me will stay, if I don’t, he will be unhappy with me. It’s horrible for me now to realise how easily manipulated by this I was. But I loved him so much, and in between him wanting to enhance our fantasies to another level, he was the sweet, caring, affectionate man I believed him to be. Unless, of course, I didn’t play. If I didn’t play, he would withdraw. You are hooked into this game even when you start to feel uncomfortable.
But although the good wonderful feelings he makes you feel are still there, there is an underlying unease as you begin to realise that maybe these are not just fantasies, maybe he actually expects you to fulfill them. You feel uncomfortable because, generally, he is so attentive and sweet, and loving, and he told you you were the best thing in his world didn’t he? So why does he have these horrible sordid thoughts about you? Why would a man who genuinely love and care about your feelings, want you to do things that go against everything you stand for. You might find a way to gently express your concern…and he will fill your head with “we are just consenting adults giving each other pleasure” and “I just want to explore with you because I love you” and “I want to explore everything with you safe in the knowledge of our love and commitment” and “It will just make me love you more”. It all sounds so softly seducting while he is making you feel amazing…but in the cold light of day, the unease, the discomfort, the something is not quite right here, comes back.
Me? I started to unravel. I lost confidence. I felt insecure. He had told me how much he wanted to “experience another couple” or more importantly “watch me with other men”. I could never figure out why what we had wasn’t enough. I began to notice that he watched every woman everywhere we went, but in a subtle way. He never explained anything. He never discussed anything. He never talked “to” me, it was all done by laying out, by texts, or emails, or on msn, his fantasies. They got darker and darker. I got more and more insecure. I started imagining things were going on. I started to wonder what he was up to. I discovered texts, very graphic, sexual texts from other women on his mobile. I never saw texts that he sent as he deleted them. They were explained away as women who just had a crush on him, and wouldn’t leave him alone. He had always had this problem and effect on women. Righto.
I was hooked into his world so deeply by then I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. He told me I was too insecure, that I should be confident with him, because I was the one he “chose” to live with.
Eventually, without going on for ever, I discovered by accidentally getting into his email, that for several years he had been actively involved with “couples”. Generally men who want to watch their wife/partner with another man why they took pictures. I just couldn’t figure this out. I thought men were supposed to feel threatened by another man????? I realised very quickly after seeing the sites these people use and spending hours reading stuff on them, it’s a power thing. I also realised, very quickly, that my loving, attentive man, wanted to be one of those men. He wanted to have someone in his life he could go on the internet and say “This is my property. YOu can have her if you want.” He seemed to aspire and admire these men. They all seem pretty powerful characters and this way of behaving seemed so prevalent, and so many women seemed ok with it, and did it, that I began, for some peculiar reason beyond me now I have some sanity back, to think there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t be ok about it. That I felt hurt, anger and disgust that he wanted those things, and more, that he wanted them with me as his star performer.
He never told me any of this to my face. I found out because he was emailing couples on these sites telling them, not me, them, that I was ready for my first experience in group sex. It was the first I knew of it. But you know, as well as anger, I was afraid. I didn’t understand what or why he was doing this, and it all seemed so far removed from the man I loved. I thought it was just fantasy. To him it was very real.
By this time I was a shadow of my former self. I began to think everyone around us were probably attracted to him and wanted him. I became paranoid. I couldn’t stand and talk to anyone with him because I was aware now of the thoughts that would be going through this mans deeply depraved mind. I began to realise he wanted other women in front of me. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know which way to turn. Why? Because I adored him. I loved him. I wanted to be his only one. I wanted us to live the dream he had given to me when we met. We had a fantastic physical relationship, why did he want this?
I went to a party once, during this time when I started to slowly fall apart, trying to be normal, trying not to see every woman and couple in there as a dangerous threat to me, I believe my sanity was very close to the edge. He was cool as a cucumber when my fears and tears were there for him to see. Somehow I felt that there was, again, something wrong with me that I couldn’t see all this as perfectly normal. Then, during the evening, a man next to me who i had been chatting to, trying to be normal, started telling me how attractive he found my partner, what a good looking guy he was, and how lucky I must feel to be in his life. I snapped inside. I thought is everyone in the world in love with this man as soon as they lay eyes on him, even men??? Do I walk around with the words “sexually available just ask him” stamped on my head? Does he walk around with the words “sexually available, all forms of pleasure available here” stamped on his?
I knew I was close to doing some very silly thing. Like drive my car in to a brick wall just to stop all this sick horrible stuff going round in my head, and yet still desiring him like a drug. I knew I was in trouble.
The crunch came, then, when I discovered he was now approaching men. Direct. He wanted to “explore” any form of pleasure. He approached guys, and they didn’t seem gay, more bi -sexual – “for fun and pleasure” – he approached transexuals, transvestites, couples, lesbians, using his same quaint approach, that he was a very sensual man just looking for pleasure.
However, I also discovered this tendency he seemed to have to take it just so far and then just disappear. I never actually found out if he experienced sex with a man or not. I ran like a frightened deer. But I found texts, emails from men, couples, women, asking him why he had disappeared, was he interested or not? Some actually asking him not to contact them again. They had no time for game players.
One couple actually asked him never to contact them again as he had disappointed them greatly and betrayed their trust. What he did, I never found out, but I suspect, knowing what I know now, he crossed a few boundaries.
It’s not the sex, I realised, It’s about gratification. It’s about power. It’s curiosity on how they can achieve yet another level of pleasure or power. It’s like a drug, they start experimenting, but how far do you go? At what point do they reach saturation having tried everything new they can? What do they do then? When I look back now, I realise I was living in his fantasy world too and believed all his “manipulations” about what a fantastic couple we made. He was good. He was very good. But I always felt he wasn’t really there, in the moment, more observing it, like a scientist watching the outcome of an experiment, and very very detached from any emotional involvement.
I am so relieved to discover that others have found this too. It’s horrible to be relieved about something like that, and I apologise for saying so, but i have had no one I can talk to about this as it’s such a difficult subject to discuss with someone who has no idea how you could allow yourself to fall under his spell and believe him.
It has caused me no end of emotional damage, and I feel sometimes that now I can never relate again to a man other than as a sex object. I have to feel sexually attractive now in a way I never did or I don’t feel wanted. It hurts me deeply because I feel something in my head has been tinkered with and I don’t know how to change it back.
I described it once to someone as imagining it must be what poor young girls who find themselves being taken care of bysomeone, trusting them, loving them, while they in turn put them on the streets to earn their keep. Pimping them. It must scar them for life. It’s how I feel.
Thank you for listening.
LJ
ellejay,
You said, “I have to feel sexually attractive now in a way I never did or I don’t feel wanted.”
I am glad you shared your thoughts and pain around a very destructive and manipulative relationship. What you said above in the quote is something that has been rolling around in my head for awhile but I had not written it down. In a way, I did feel more attractive with the man I now refer to as The Bad Man. He made me feel more desirable and attractive than anyone I ever dated. And honestly, when this first happened, I really thought this was the way it was supposed to be when you finally find The ONE.
Now I am not sure how to proceed with dating. I feel that most men at this point in my life treat me like I am just barely passable. I think this has so much to do with media brainwashing and all the visual expectations men put on us when, laughably, they are rarely “ALL THAT” if you know what I mean.
I think the Sociopath’s way of getting under our skin is to play into that thing of making us feel sexy and desirable in a way we have never felt before. I think we become sexier even when we feel so desired because we stop worrying about our thighs or whatever.
As far as all the twisted stuff your man was working up to, I believe my ex was on his way there and I did get that confirmation from another victim… we found eachother via Craigslist! My ex did have some strange ways of relating about sex and one thing he said often, “If one person denies the other one sex, that is the same as cheating.” He was into all this Tantric Sex bonding stuff which by itself can be very sweet between REAL lovers but he was using this stuff in a bizarrely twisted fashion.
I found all the sex with the Bad Man to be exciting and satisfying until I realized that it was required of me…. and I realized that if I said I had an appetite for sex but then we skipped a night for some reason, there would be hell to pay in the form of one of his flip-out breakdowns. He played the card all the time that he was a former Minister and that he was deprived in his marriage and that he needed to catch up.
And about the Gay thing, he claimed to have “cured” gay people in the past through prayer and to have made a man levitate with fervent prayer… and then, the man walked out completely cured of being Gay… and then now, he is placing ads for sex with a transexual. I never would have seen that coming back when we were together.
The thing is, Sociopaths or Borderline’s or whatever variety, are often part of some kind of extremism. I believe mine was a religious extremist at one time but then he let that go as part of a life transition and now sex is his extremism.
I wonder if anyone can relate to that?
Anyway, your experience shows us how addictive and destructive it can be when people get involved with porn and stuff like that. Please know that I am not saying that you did anything wrong. Who doesn’t want a little spice in the bedroom? Don’t worry about whatever you did…. it’s okay. But there’s that thing that they say when men get addicted to porn, they start needing things to be more and more perverse or they can’t get excited. Maybe in a different way, that is what happened to us… we were on the recieving end of such hypnotic attention that it is hard to feel desireable or turned on by an ordinary gesture of love from an ordinary man.
Honestly, at this point, I do not know what to look for in a man or what would make me feel desirable. Deep down, I wish I could have a man put me on a pedastal and desire me like the Bad Man did but have him be a good man! I don’t know if that’s real or possible or healthy.
Lately, I have been feeling like all men are predators or that they have some kind of agenda to use us for their pleasure… (sometimes I wonder if reading LoveFraud too much might be making me feel that). So, I have been doing an informal survey of men I have known for a very long time. Healthy men. I ask them what they think about during sex. Do they think about themselves? Do they think that they are getting something from the woman? Do they think about their body parts? Do they think about US????!!! I have gotten a variety of answers but thankfully, none of them have been sick and twisted. :o)
Anyway, don’t beat yourself up for being taken in by a Sociopath. You are not alone. Someone is reading your story today and they are saying, “Wow… that sounds just like my story!” And more than likely, they are a fabulous, loving, beautiful being just like you.
My heart goes out to all the wonderful people whom have been hurt by these BAD MEN! (and women… sorry guys, I don’t want to toss you all in the same bucket).
Maybe I am a dork but sometimes I just wish I could give every one of you a big hug because I know I could use one and because I totally and completely understand how all this happens because it happened to me. Perhaps visualizing that I can comfort another shows me that it’s okay that it happened to me too… I don’t have to beat myself up about it because I know you (yes, YOU) are not stupid.. therefore, neither am I.