Lovefraud received the following letter from a woman who was married to a sociopath for 16 years.
I was a stay-at-home mom until my son entered kindergarten, then I got a job. This was the end of any peace I would have for 10 years. The worst possible thing happened to my husband—the woman he could make fun of for being stupid or having no goals (whatever he would say to hurt my self-esteem) became a huge success. In fact, I made three times as much as Mr. Wonderful. The abuse escalated. He was so obsessed with destroying me that even on a business trip where I was getting an award for being the top sales rep in my company, he was pulling my boss aside and insinuating I was committing fraud and that was why I was #1.
For the last year of my marriage, he had convinced me to hand over all extra money so he could invest for “our” future. I did it thinking it was his ego that was hurt from my success. I didn’t know what he was then.
He spent a year hiding every dime, transferring every debt into my name, making up horrible stories about me to my friends and family. He would go talk to them in tears and say I was stealing all of our money and cheating on him. He would say how much he loved me and ask for advice, then have them swear not to say anything to me because he wanted our marriage to work. He even went so far to pull cousins, aunts and uncles aside during my grandmother’s funeral to say these things.
At the end of the year, while I was packing for a very large business meeting that was to announce a promotion for me, he told me he had cancer.
I believed him. Who besides a sociopath would say such a lie to their wife? That whole evening was spent crying and upset that my husband had cancer. Then I asked him a simple question, “Who is your doctor?” He couldn’t answer. Who would forget their cancer doctor? Then I realized, if he had been going to the doctor for such a serious illness, where were all the insurance bills? I have been to the doctor for a cold and gotten a bill from a lab, the doctor, then a follow-up from the insurance company to pay more, etc. I kicked him out.
I went to my business meeting and the onslaught of horrible screaming calls to the receptionist began from him. An entire week of this, while I was supposed to be there receiving a promotion. I left without the promotion and was basically fired”¦ “maybe you need to take some time to attend to personal problems.”
When I came home, I filed for divorce, cried for weeks and then looked around to find our money to pay bills. It was hidden; not a trace of paperwork was left. Every bill was in my name only. My friends, my family, my neighbors, even customers, no longer spoke to me. I deserved this, in their eyes.
Three years later, I still have nobody who fully believes me. I have one friend. My parents and I speak, but I don’t trust them not talk to my husband. If he has any information on me, he does whatever he can to destroy me. He abandoned our son, moved to another state to live with the next victim. My own sister sends him cards and letters and won’t speak to me.
The smear campaign
This woman was subjected to a smear campaign from her husband, the sociopath.
Abusers often use this tactic to cover up their own behavior and convince others that they are the ones being victimized. In fact, abusers frequently start the campaign as a pre-emptive strike, long before the relationship with the true victim collapses.
That’s what happened to the woman who wrote the letter. As the sociopath was getting ready to move on—he probably had his next victim already lined up—he laid the groundwork to destroy his wife. With his tears and skill as a liar, he convinced the woman’s friends and family of his story. They became unwitting co-conspirators.
What can you do?
Fighting the smear campaign is difficult. Most honest people can’t imagine that someone would be lying when making the outrageous charges that the sociopath claims, so they believe the lies. When the true victim finds out what has been said, everyone has already turned against her.
MSN Psychopath, a forum for victims, has a page about the smear campaign with suggestions on how to handle it. For example:
If anyone tries to talk to you about him, hold up your hand (like a stop sign) and say something like, “I don’t want to hear anything about him. He’s lying.” Say no more. If it continues, say, “My lawyer recommends I warn people they will have to testify where they heard that, should this turn into a libel or slander lawsuit.” Watch them scatter quickly when hearing this. This can cause people to stop cold and have another look at what they’ve been told.
Some more ideas: Say nothing but burst out with raucous laughter, slap your knee and laugh like crazy. “You should have heard what he said about his ex-girlfriend (ex-wife, you, his sister).” You get the idea.
Your own pre-emptive action
Once your relationship falls apart and you realize you’re dealing with a sociopath, or once you start to hear the lies, you may want to take your own pre-emptive action. Warn your family, friends, co-workers and the Human Resources Department at your job that the sociopath may start saying terrible things about you. This may work if their perceptions haven’t already been poisoned by the sociopath.
It may help to be able to explain why a person would say such terrible things. The reason, of course, is that the person is a sociopath. But as we all know, very few people understand what that means. To help others comprehend what you are dealing with, send them a link to Lovefraud.
Aloha:
Wow, do I get the feeling of loss of personal power you mention…telling the story does make a person sound like some crazed scorned woman, in the wrong situation to the wrong ears.
When I sense the “wrong ears” I usually stop. That’s how it became apparent the right ears belonged to people who interacted with the P in the past, who had an inkling – some larger than others – that the P was just not quite right. He’d either done weird things to them or around them, or they’d heard other stories.
Word does get around. I’m not on the warpath to get that word around, but when and if his name arises amongst those who knew him, I no longer fear telling the tale. Still struggle with feelings of guilt from (probably misguided) loyalty to the good him, but I refuse to sit silently on what I know. If just one person had warned me before this time around, I would have listened.
It’s the time I regret most of all, the times I let other opportunities pass because I loved him and thought we were meant to be together. The years you can’t get back, you know?
I’m glad you’re taking steps to turn the ship around and get where you need to be financially, emotionally. It really is all we can do – that, and not refuse to let the past shape our respective futures.
Much affection to you for all the many ways your official posts and comments here help everyone along our paths. Sometimes what helps most is reading and recognizing the truth in others’ stories matches what I’ve experienced. It has a way of cutting all the good fantasies right back out of the picture.
I went to a wedding yesterday of close friends who met the P the last night I saw him and whose relationship used to remind me of ours in some ways (good, not bad). While I was happy for them, I was sad for how things turned out. But then I realized that it takes two real people to really invest in having a good life together; not one real “bride” and a mirage for a groom.
Aloha ….oops… I missed that…thank you lol
Orphan,
I hear the power in your words. You are no longer a victim, but an advocate! I also hear the righteous anger in your voice!
You are so right though, WE (victims) feel the shame for the behavior of others! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT PICTURE!?!!!
The Ps feel no shame for their behavior to us, but WE do? It is difficult to break out of that shame—but apparently it is almost a UNIVERSAL thing. In the books I am reading on child molesters, it is the extremely RARE child that will “tell” and THEY all feel shame, as if it is their bad act.
Awareness of spousal abuse and child molestation (which have ALWAYS been with us) is climbing, and I am glad to see that there are people like you, who stand up and verbally and loudly take a stance. Yes, the “monster” that abuses your children LIVES NEXT DOOR TO YOU, teaches your Sunday School Class, Works at the cleaners, teaches piano, is principal of the school–he may even be the one that his his wife so that there are no visible bruises–but he doesn’t have a red forked tail or horns on his head or 666 tattooed on his forehead so you can distinguish him from the “nice” people. He looks just like your brother, maybe he IS your brother.
Dr. Meloy in his book used a phrase that I thought was very good, he said “denial is the immune system of the mind.” That struck me as pretty “profound” and I see how right it is. Denial keeps us from acknowledging TRUTHS that we perceive as overwhelming and virulent to our way of thinking. But, just like sometimes the human immune system turns on itself and attacks the very body it is trying to protect and kills it, DENIAL if it is long-term can do the same thing to our mental and emotional health.
With the feeling of shame, I don’t understand this–the why of it—children do it, adults do it–the shame for something done TO us, not by us. I have felt shame for other’s behaviors, share when I told and people (especially ones I would have hoped would have believed me and comforted me) looked at me like I had the Scarlet Letter on my chest. Having them NOT validate my pain was even more painful. I can’t even imagine how a child who “told” and was not validated, or was punished for “lying” would feel.
Yes, sometimes I too, feel some envy of committed couples and wish I had that again—but like you, I know it does take TWO, not one person and an evil hologram.
Orphan, you are a strong woman, and I have seen in your posts, some of that growth in strength! I hope that you will stay around here for the others that come here. I notice that it seems that people who come here for healing and start to “get better” just seem to disappear…maybe some are healed, or solidly on the road to healing, and I am sure that some probably go back to the misery. It is almost like reading a book of short stories, all with the last page or two torn out for each one. But you have so many good things to share and I do hope that you will stay around for the new ones that come here and need that wisdom, honesty and strength that you display. God bless (((hug))))
Oh, I’m not all that strong, Ox-D, but thank you for saying you can see I’ve made some headway since first arriving at lovefraud. Mentally, I’m clear. Which is saying something, considering how screwed-on backwards he had my head by the time I first ran….and then went back to let him attempt to destroy my soul with cruelty.
BUT…I am so depressed as of yesterday, or Saturday, my friends’ wedding. The shit-covered carrot, as Aloha would say, is all I kept thinking about. How to wipe it off and make it shine, again. How to remove the poison from all the hopes I have to love and get married again.
I am 100 percent certain he is already on to the next victim. And that his words of love and forever were just the same lies he’s gearing up to tell her. And that if I ever meant anything to him at all, he wouldn’t have let the past four months go by without trying to mend fences. So, he is in fact the lie.
Yet while time is proving all these things, I felt on Saturday like maybe it was my fault he and I would never work things out, we’d never be standing their before our respective friends and families. Like maybe he’s just a man like any other and I didn’t try hard enough to understand him.
Why am I feeling like this? It’s not as frequent as it used to be, but I despise my ability to forget the bad things and minimize them. It’s like the cruel things he said and did never happened or were my fault sometimes, in my heart, even though my brain knows better. It’s like this piece of me will keep loving him no matter what he did or does, and I can’t seem to really want to see anyone else, no matter who asks me out.
The reality is that while I pined away the years between 2001 and his return in 2006, he went on to have numerous relationships, many much more serious than ours ever was. And after he came back, even after saying he wanted to get married to me, he was still involved with other women. Then he started to get worse and worse with me, pushing boundaries and saying terrible things, being mean to me, acting like I was chasing him and a burden rather than the fact that he returned and still wasn’t acting in a manner consistent with someone who wanted to really be in my life in any meaningful, respectful way.
And he freaking TOLD ME he didn’t love me. Not once. Not twice. But three times. Regardless of how many times he said he did love me before that, he negated all of that in the final evening.
If that isn’t enough for me to see that he lied, is bad for me and was just toying with me, what is?? How long will I have these rare days when I feel like I’ll never really move on?
Orpahn,
Of course it is enough to see that he lied and he is bad for you, LOGICALLY, but EMOTIONALLY you still want the dream, and that is NORMAL.
Your strength is like BRAVERY—Bravery is not being UNAFRAID, bravery is being scared shitless and STILL ACTING RIGHT.
To me, a person who is afraid and still does what is right is so much more heroic than the person who is unafraid and does the same thing. You, my dear are DOING THE RIGHT THING even though a part of you is still hooked into the FOG.
Don’t you EVER put down your strength and bravery WOMAN! Like I used to say to my kids “Don’t make me stop this car!” LOL
So I say to you, strong woman, ‘DON’T MAKE ME HAVE TO COME THROUGH THIS COMPUTER SCREEN!”
We all survived because we were strong and brave, otherwise we would still be in the FOG…((((GREAT BIG HUGS)))))))
Thanks, OxD, you said everything I need to hear right now. And boy, do I need to hear it.
Right after the last horrible night, I had this intuitive inkling his path with me was not being directed by him as a way towards a happy, enlightened, co-joined future but rather a path towards my own destruction at his hands (and even typing that, I realize it sounds loony but there were this prescient moments where I could literally feel that he did NOT wish me well, did not have good intentions at heart).
Me being me, that thought kept me from falling apart. Was not going to give him the pleasure of seeing me detonate and self-destruct. No way.
So now, four months after that, I am safely mentally and physically away, and it appears….finally actually feeling the pain he’d hoped to inflict. Not as bad as it could’ve been, because I wouldn’t fully open-up when we were together, because of his track-record with me. But pain, nevertheless.
Thank you so much for honing in on the fact that even though it hurts, I never once thought seriously about running back and trying to get him to feel what I’m feeling. Trying to get him to care. Probably because even in my grief I know he CANNOT care about me.
Orphan,
“Feeling the pain” is what we must go through to grieve over our losses (even if the thing we grieved about doens’t really exist except as fantasy)—you cannot go around, over, under the pain, you must GO THROUGH the pain to finally reach resolution and acceptence.
The “grief process” (google that and read about it) is not a straight line, but back and forth, like a sail boat tacking in the wind in order to progress. You may have to sometimes go “east” to get “west” or you may back track for a few days or a while, but the process is reaching resolution nonetheless.
There will come a day when you will wake up and realize that you are happy. Have been happy, and you didn’t even notice it it just came on so slowly, but you will start to sing and dance and celebrate and even the thoughts of him will no longer make you sad.l
You ARE a brave and strong woman, and you will over come this, but it dose take TIME and WORK.
It is like having a baby, you can’t “speed up the process” by getting 9 women pregnant and get a baby in a month—and with grief, it takes as long as it takes. There are all kinds of factors in it, from how you have reacted to grief in the past, to other problems going on in your life at the same time….changes of any kind slow it down. Moving house, new jobs, financial difficulties, etc all add to the “stress load” and make the grief harder and longer to deal with.
My world started to fall apart July 14, 2004 when my husband and one son, and two others took off and then crashed in a small aircraft here at our farm/airport—killing my husband and burning my son and the two others. My step dad was terminally ill, and then died 6 months later, and on and on and on, my stress level was over the MOON–and then the Trojan-Horse P showed up and it went well past JUPITER. I HAVEN’T BEEN OUT OF HORRIBLE STRESS is 4 years until the last three months, but I’m now making PROGRESS—rapid progress when you consider where I was (at one point literally lying on the floor crying uncontrollably for days) and I am still a long way off from where I want to be, but I am so much better off than I have been that I feel like a NEW HUMAN BEING—I trust ME AGAIN. Not even AGAIN I think, I trust me, maybe for the first time in my life, COMPLETELY.
I can honestly say I am HAPPY. I haven’t shed a tear since January over anything. I find stuff funny again! Life is GOOD, and it is going to get BETTER. (((hugs))))
You are the strongest person of all, to me, OxD, because you’ve been through so much with so many people who you trusted and believed in, who turned out to do you harm. And you are here trying to help others get better, too.
I’m terrible with loss. Guess everyone is. Relationships ending, even if they weren’t what we thought they were, are just another form of death and I guess yesterday was part of that feeling. But frankly I prefer anything but sorrow – rage, a philosophical approach, laughter, beating a pillow, creating something…
I’m sick of sorrow. It’s been the theme in so many relationships since 2006 that it feels pervasive. Think what really is bothering me is this inability to just move forward: I want to, but then when it comes time to date someone new I can’t seem to care enough to just do it. It’s the crossroads and time to go forward, but I’m feeling on ice and don’t want to slip backwards.
Glad life is good for you again!! You are inspiring, although your story is just so shocking.
Orphan,
You have made so much progress that I have NO doubt that you are a survivor, that you are at heart a “warrior woman” AND THAT YOU WILL PROSPER. It takes TIME as well as work, and you can’t RUSH it…I’ve been at this “healing” thing for off and on for 40 years since my P-bio father hit me like a train. two steps forward, and sometimes TEN steps backwards, but it seems that it is FINALLY coming together in a way that makes sense to me.
I don’t think I really ever internalized my OWN PART in allowing the abuse before—I was SO IN DENIAL, even though I would VERBALIZE it, I didn’t really believe it. If THAT makes any sense.
This morning my son D and I were talking, about a friend who has gone back to counseling and we were so glad. I looked up to thank my son for all his support (he was the ONLY member of my family to be fully supportive of me through the chaos) and I said “I hope you know how much I appreciate you when every one else thought I was as crazy as an out-house-rat”
He laughed and said “YOU WERE CRAZY AS AN OUT-HOUSE-RAT, but YOU WERE RIGHT”
And he is right about that, I was “insane” with worry, grief, and frustration that no one but ME (and him) could see how dangerous the Ps were, or that they were actually HOMICIDAL. Of course it did turn out that the P’s behavior was VALIDATED by them trying to kill my son C, who also didn’t listen to my warnings—but I felt like Henny-Penny going around telling everyone the sky was falling, and it was, and no one would listen. At the point I realized that they WOULD NOT listen, would NOT believe, I realized that unless I took action, I WOULD DIE as well. Leaving my other family members to the mercy of the Ps was devastating to me, but I COULD NOT SAVE THEM. I could ONLY SAVE MYSELF.
It did turn out to have a more-or-less “happy ending”—I got rid of the P-DIL and the Trojan-Horse-P is in prison, my son C is safe, my mom is safe, though I am essentially NC with her (a big help in my own healing!)
I am NO MORE or LESS strong than any of the rest of the people here on the board–it is just that I HAVE COME ALONG, and everyone here–every HUMAN who is NOT a P has the same strength—I felt so weak, so useless because I was trying to do THE IMPOSSIBLE, save someone against their will.
YOU CAN ONLY SAVE YOURSELF, and EACH OF US has that strength if we will recognize and USE IT.
Read M L. Gallager’s posts, that woman discovered her strength, and she used it. DISCOVER YOUR OWN STRENGTH, Orphan, I can guarantee you that IT IS THERE, AS STRONG AS MINE, AS STRONG AS M. L.’s. I PROMISE YOU!!!
Your pain is no less intense than mine, just because I fought more than one P—I fought them serially because I didn’t get the lesson the first time with my P.-Bio father. Now I have the LESSON, and I am much less likely to ever be taken in again, or if I am, to allow it to continue or drive me “crazy as an out-house rat” (that’s a “technical term” LOL) ((((hugs)))))
Free:
So much to learn, isn’t there? I used to really think I had a handle on myself…but am learning as new life events happen that this is a nebulous and very limiting idea. I have no real handle on what I will do under certain extreme circumstances, and I’m ok with that. The core foundation of who I am remains unalterable, even in the face of a P. They can twist us like Gumby, but they can’t permanently alter us.
I am having trouble though, with moving on. Part of it is this series of articles I’ve been sent out to write about the dating scene in my city. Just left a guy who is a personal matchmaker and he said he can’t believe how young I look (I’m 41) and that I’m not already seriously involved.
It took everything to keep myself from telling him a. my story, and b. that I’m somewhat “faking it to make it.” When he asked what I was looking for in a match, I said “someone genuine, down to earth, not seeking perfection, not prone to magical thinking, someone who knows relationships take work, who knows that lies erode trust, whose heart is so solid he couldn’t imagine deliberately trying to hurt another person, someone with high self-esteem, not an alcoholic, well over his last relationship, who is open.
When really, all I was thinking was — someone who doesn’t treat me like the P did.
Think I saw his car, too, on my way to the meeting, with some chick in his car – she looked like the chick I saw leaving his apartment building last time I went to pick him up. Wasn’t sure, though.
I really got sad after profiling this matchmaker. My heart isn’t into moving on, but if I don’t, history tells me I’ll soon settle into being a hermit and not dating anyone for a long time, and then being scared to.