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.
OxDrover, I agree with you 100 percent. There is still a great deal of bitterness but I am slowly getting over that. I have been introduced to hypno-therapy (no, not the “past life regression” stuff) and have learned self_hypnosis also. I have found this to be a tremendous help in dealing with a lot of the anger issues. Yes, I am still angry but not as much as I was. I am posting things on my Myspace blog that I either think of or find on the web. I only hope that anything put up on there can help somebody. It is sites like this one that have actually made me understand that I am not alone in this, and that there are a great many other people that I can learn from. I only hope that I give as much as i get. It is hard to accept that I was duped, I thought I was smarter than that, but I guess not. I am lucky in that my GP refered me to a VERY good therapist. He has helped me gain new insight into this, and into why I do certain things. At first I didnt even trust him, I thought his concern was false, and that he probably wanted to use me to write a paper. I was so wrong. Just dealing with him has shown me so many things, not just about my ex but about myself. I am on a very strange journey now, one that I never imagined I would take. But I tihnk the man that I want to become is waiting on the other side of the mountain, and I will be glad when I meet him. He will be more secure in himself. More generous, more loving, more of everything good that I have left in me. I am looking forward to the day I look in the mirror and see him. I know it will take a long time, but the goal is the right one. And on the journey I am going to leave the trail strewn with my excess baggage, the ugly un-needed type. Thank you for your kind words OxDriver.
Oxy & BigDude: I guess we are lucky that we can self analyze ourselves … look inside ourselves to see what we need to keep and leave to the way side so we can move forward and heal.
That my dear friends is what our EXs can NOT do … which is why they cause problems in the first place. Never being able to look inside themselves to fix their own problems… always pointing their fingers at others … and, just goes to prove that the saga will continue.
That’s why I say, they should be locked up in a rubber romper room for a few years …. can’t escape … can’t run, can’t hide … then the mental health professionals can spoon feed logic to them.
To Dream, the impossible dream …
Peace.
Bigdude,
Ok…I’m a derp….haha. So sorry I misread your post. For some odd reason I thought you had written…”I am a good therapist” instead of the actual..”I have a very good therapist”.
I claim it to be a temporary brain cloud that has now dissipated. 😉
Anyway, thank you again for sharing on LF. We all (the human race) have issues that need to be resolved however that is to happen. Some have had traumatic childhood experiences that have caused further emotional damage into adulthood, as you have, and my heart truly goes out to them. And you.
Be brave and strong and share with us any time you need to purge the emotional pain you have endured.
Bless you…:)
Dear Bigdude,
Since you don’t know my story I’ll give you a bit of a run down on my PTSD. My husband and I have a little airport, and a student pilot of his screwed up on take off 4 yrs ago and the plane crashed and burned. My husband burned to death. I was the first medical personnel there (I am now retired) and I had PTSD from the crash. Then I had my step father die, and an attack from my P son (he tried to have me murdered) so there was a lot of stuff on top of the crash.
I was referred to a special therapist for RAPID EYE MOVEMENT THERAPY which is specific for PTSD and belive me IT WORKED! It is in addition to “talk therapy” not instead of but believe me it is GREAT! You might see if you could find someone to be referred to for that. I am a retired mental health professional and I didn’t have much confidence in it at first, bt I am sold on it now. It made the big difference in my life so that I could start to heal and to think logically.
Good luck and God bless.
Oh the smear campaign. I am not sure I will ever be able to rid myself of the damage done by my soon-to be-ex. This woman went so far as to call my higher command in the military and tell them all types of horrible things about me, and suprisingly continues to have a relationship with my Lt. She was in essence trying to have me dishonorably discharged, which she and her lawyer have tried to use in court, but I was given an honorable discharge in the end. i have been put in jail in twice because of her, once being arrested at my apartment while watching a movie and having a pizza dinner with my three-year-old son. The charges were later dropped by the DA. However, the stain on my son seeing his Dada arrested is always there. She in fact, was given permission to come and get my son, although I was determined to have my parents come and take him, she stayed outside and laughed it up with the police officers and as my Dad pointed out, seemed awfully pleased with herself. After that episode, he would wake up crying in the middle of the night that I was leaving him and going to jail. She was effective at embedding herself with every aspect of my life and turning people against me, claiming she was a victim. However, I do have to point out that there are a number of people from our church, which she no longer belongs to, that have stood by me and my son, as I have addressed my own issues and have held myself to the highest standard of integrity, accountability, and honesty.
She was also, later to find out, had been having sex with my step-brother since before we were even married, and has used that relationship to cause a wedge in my family that has been incredibly destructive.
Now when I look back through our history, everything was a set-up for the impending smear campaign. When she would go out to bars and clubs, for example, and come home drunk and talk about all the guys hitting on her, I would become upset, even anrgy at times and tell her how ridiculous she sounded, this later turned into me trying to contol her, not allowing her to have a social life nad friends. All the while, I am at home with three boys, doing laundry, cleaning, and waiting for her to come home, worried that she was getting pulled over for a DUI.
I have also noticed that certain aspects of my life has absorbed as her own identity. Soon after I left the relationship she began buying a large amount of camping, climbing, and cycling gear; and now tells everyone that she is into climbing, and is a die hard cyclist. These are all things that I brought into the relationship and exposed her to. this may seem menial to the person looking in from the outside, but I see it as another way that she has, in a way, stolen my identity. I laugh, because most of this detail of her life has faded, and I know it is just part of the show.
Dear fatherof1: Welcome to the blog … and know, we’ve all been to the same depth of pain as you … and are here for you as well as each other … in the common bond of pain inflicted upon us by our significant others who shared our lives.
Peace to your heart and soul and remember, anyone on line at the time you blog, will gladly write back. You are not alone.
Mornin Angels of Light and Truth !
Mirrior Mirrior on the wall who’s the Fairest of them all ! Wow !
when your empty , and you can’t even keep what you steal and suck from life ! that image in that mirrior is your only identity !
LOVE jere
Morning Charlie aka Indigoblue …
fatherof1, my heart breaks for you and your son. I am lucky in that my ex-wife and I, while not friends, are cetainly not enemies.
A few people have asked me how the end actually went down but in order to do that I need to give you a little history. Many years back I was involved a woman I will call “K”. We were together for about 4 years. I was in love with her. I was in the next state, just over the state line, it was a short two hour drive to her house. We had melded our families, my children and hers mixing as siblings. I was even helping her to pay some of her bills. We had decided to get married the year before. One Friday I had finished work and went up to see her. I walked in and she had a bag packed. I asked her if we were going somewhere and she told me that she was going away for the weekend with some guy from work (he had just started working there about 6 weeks before). I was totally floored by this. When I say floored I mean it. She told me that I could stay in her house if I wanted to but she wasn’t going to explain herself. I sat on the couch almost catatonic for 2 solid days, just staring at the gun cabinet. It would have been so easy for me to just end it right then but I didn’t. I never even unlocked the guns. K finally got back late Sunday night, and I still got no explanation. But, she did ask me if I had brought the money I had promised to give her to help with her bills. Like an idiot I gave it to her. The next day we talked, and she said that we would try again. Except that every time I called she was either out or her new guy was staying over, or it was a bad time, etc etc etc. She kept dangling me by the strings for 6 months. Finally I had a complete nervous breakdown. I spent years trying to heal from this.
S knew what had happened to me in the past. She used to call K a slut. I wonder how S views herself now? Anyway, she kept prodding and poking, getting all the details out of me about it, and telling me she was going to help me heal from what K had done and promising to never treat me like that. Well, I fell for it. I ended up trusting her totally. I stopped looking for any sign that she was cheating on me the way that she had in the past, and I accepted her words and promises without question.
About 4 weeks before she discarded me I noticed an odd pattern in some things, so I asked her if she had become involved with someone else. She answered me by asking “Who’s ring am I wearing Jamie”?. Well, I understand now that this wasn’t an answer. Then, she asked me, sounding very offhand, what I would do if she was. I bluntly told her that I would probably like to hunt him down and kill him. Typical macho bullshit. About a week later she and I were on the phone and she started asking me about K again. She had me go into great detail exactly what she had done, how she had done it and how it really made me feel. It was a very painful experience to go over it again and again with her, but she finally wrung all the details out of me. I didn’t sleep well that night after that.
The day before S discarded me I had had a very bad angina attack, it is mentioned in the chat log I posted earlier. She has always been aware that I needed one more small procedure to correct something in my heart, but she was also aware that until it was done I was very susceptible to having another heart attack.
The next day she dropped the hammer on me. She sat on the phone, told me we were through, and then proceeded to tell me a pack of lies. And these were whoppers. I was absolutely stunned by this. She then got off the phone. I spent the rest of the day and evening drinking. I went through a fifth of scotch and was halfway through a bottle of brandy when I managed to get her on the phone. I kept trying to get the truth out of her, but the lies just kept coming. And I knew she was lying. I could tell. She contradicted herself too many times.
She then hung up on me. that was when my world collapsed inwards. Everything that I had believed in had turned out to be a lie. Everything. I cant remember if it was that night or the next that I tried to take my own life. This wasn’t a stunt, and I would never joke about something as serious as suicide, my brother hung himself and I had to tell my parents. I was in a very very cold dark and lonely place, and all I wanted was to escape the pain and agony I was feeling. For those of you that have had to deal with the “Devalue and Discard” treatment you will understand. It is bewildering. It is as if you had been standing on the corner, waiting to cross the street and a bus hits you from behind.
I took what I thought to be the only exit from the pain. I actually WANTED to die. I wanted to at least go with the truth. I tried calling her, trying to get her to just tell me the damn truth so I could leave this world with that. I know she was checking her messages, she told me in an e-mail. I had taken 75 50mg tablets of Atenolol. That’s a Beta Blocker prescribed to heart patients. It lowers the heart rate. In this case, with the problem I already had with my heart it should have killed me. I washed them down with the rest of the brandy that was in the bottle. I did it at least an hour before I begged her for the truth. I got no answer. I resigned myself to dying never knowing what had really happened. I slowly slipped under. I remember when waking the next day that I thought “Christ Jamie, you cant even do that right”. I wanted to die. The horror was more than I could bear. I kept trying to contact her, but heard nothing for a week until I got an e-mail saying “I don’t have to explain myself to you”. I just sat there and read it over and over again. Then, finally I got one from her that read “sorry I hurt you, but that’s the woman in me”. We had been talking about honeymoon spots the night before she knocked me down.
Looking back, with the help of my journal I understand now just how badly I had been set up. I had actually given her the “Game Plan” on how to cause me the utmost in emotional and probably physical harm. You can read in my blog about this, but even while I lay in bed essentially dying she was on her computer talking and chatting away with her new “target”. With the assistance of my therapist I have had to come to terms with the fact that she is a sociopath. She would have made the appropriate noises if I had died, telling herself “Well, he had a bad heart, it was bound to happen sooner or later”. If my suicide attempt had succeeded she could have said “I didn’t make him swallow the pills”. This is true, she didn’t pry my mouth open and pour them in, I did that to myself, and I accept full responsibility for that.
What she did do was give up all claim to her humanity.
She had, over the last few weeks, formed a plan. My GP and my Therapist both agree on this and it was hard for them to get me to see it. She had taken one of the most traumatic experiences I had lived through and copied it. Only this time it was worse. I am going to be in therapy for years now. I will never be able to have an intimate relationship with a woman ever again. Even as I try to rebuild myself I already know this, and my therapist reluctantly agreed that I was probably right. Too much damage has been done. None of it was by “accident”, I was simply in her way.
So how could I forgive her? In a way it is easy. I need to try to fix what I can from what she did. There isn’t actually a lot left to fix, hence the rebuilding. I could not fix myself properly if I was carrying around that hatred. So I did it for both her and I. I realize now that my forgiving her means nothing to her. She is totally bereft of empathy, or conscience, any of the real emotions that humans feel. She cries, but she even told me that she can cry at will. I have seen this.
Perhaps one day she may actually have a need for forgiveness from somebody, so she has mine. She can take that with her, and for the sake of the woman that I loved I hope it helps her. But, S will never ever change. She sees no need to. After all, there is nothing wrong with her, right? I look back at the lies she told me, the impulsive decisions, the mood swings, all of it. I saw but did not allow myself to recognize it. After all, I was in love. Only problem is that I wasn’t in love with a real person. She has the ability to become whatever the other person needs the most. I have actually seen this in her on a few occasions. But I ignored it, to my peril. I will never ever allow any person to so totally consume me like that again.
I have no idea what she thinks, no idea at all. I am keeping her e-mails blocked and she cannot afford to call me, so I think I will be safe for a while. The real problem? I am still in love with the person I thought was her. But that is fading with the help of hypnosis.
if I had been more aware I might not have been hurt so badly. I will admit though, on the night we broke up I said something to her that I shouldn’t have, it was insulting and unfair. A cheap shot, even though it wasn’t intended as such. I was in pain. And I did something to her. Something very very embarrassing to her. That was out of character for me, but she told me to do it. So I did. I have no excuse for it, I was quite simply drunk, angry, lost, hurt, and totally totally heartbroken. I have apologized to her, but once again, apologies mean nothing to a sociopath.
Learn form my mistakes. One of my friends is convinced that I lived for a reason, and when I questioned him about the reason he simply said “To serve as bad example for others”. You know, I think he may be right.
But I am damn well not going to be a “nut magnet” anymore.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=13338410
bigdude: First and foremost … you were never alone, God was always with you … and every one else, for that matter.
Next, you’ve come to the right blog … for all of us too, have stood in your shoes and we hear and know too well, your pain … for we all share the same pain … each and every one of us.
Besides reading the articles and blogs on this site to help you heal, another good site to review what the elders in the churches know about “them”… what they call are the “TROUBLE MAKERS IN THE WORLD” … double click on this link
http://www.abusefacts.com/articles/Givers-Takers.php
Know that getting through the hurdle of this horrific situation in your life is not easy, but you will get through this … and as you heal your heart and soul, you will become stronger and better than you were before the likes of her in your life.
I know what I am saying isn’t any consulation for healing your pain at this moment … but with time and all of our help, along with your therapist … you too will get over that painful hurdle to the peace and harmony restored back into your life.
God Bless you during this time of healing.