Sociopaths explain their own words

I wanted to log in and say a very heartfelt “Happy Thanksgiving” to everyone. LoveFraud is at the top of my list of “Things I’m Thankful For” this year. This site and the generous people on it have literally saved my life. I am grateful to the point of tears. Your “intervention” and encouragement and support came just when I needed it this summer. You gave me the final push to get the spath out of my life for good. It has been a year of discovery (most of the discoveries were painful, shocking, and nauseating), and of learning about a depth of evil that I thought only movie-scripters imagined.

Besides the people here and their selfless willingness to help and share, LF helped me in a way no other resource did. When I was trying to figure out what “my problem” was (psst, it was HIM, a budding spath), I found many descriptions of Ps and their characteristics, but I needed actual real-life examples of how these people act, to compare them to my experiences. “Grandiose” for example doesn’t mean a lot on a checklist until I understand “just how grandiose” they are by reading the stories of others who have been in similar situations.

To sum up: my husband and I, along with our kids, took in a young man who seemed to be the most thoughtful, respectful, obedient guy you could hope for. During the first year he integrated into our family as one of our own. We considered him our “adopted son” and were on the verge of changing his last name when his P traits began to surface. During the second year he targeted me by isolating me, setting up dynamics in the family to work to his advantage, to make my husband and I mistrust each other and to maliciously drive a wedge between us. He lied and played us against each other to the point we were considering divorce after 20+ good years!

The fact that these tactics worked is a matter of our own fault for not having rock-solid relationships in place and carefully maintained, as we should have. But the fact that this guy even had the nerve to pull these tricks in the first place, on a family who had done nothing but show him love and encouragement, along with full financial support… we should have known early on he was no good. But he always had reasons for his behavior, blaming most things on his birth father’s abusiveness to him (and I now question how much of that was even true). He also blamed his prior drug use for “messing up his memory” (actually, a convenient excuse for when he got his lies crossed).

He began showing signs of leading a double life, having a sweet and innocent personality when I was watching, but being a royal scorpion around others. Each new revelation felt like a stab in my gut, as I caught him stealing from us and others, becoming promiscuous, smoking, drinking, doing drugs, vandalizing. It was so difficult to believe my own eyes and ears, when I knew him as a happy, cheerful, helpful, funny guy. He had a rationalization for every action, nothing was really his fault, which only added to my confusion.

I played the part of the long-suffering mother, who had truly loved this guy to the point of accepting him into my heart as one of my own. He had problems, but he was my “diamond in the rough.” He angrily refused to go to counseling, but I thought a mother’s love could heal up whatever past hurts were causing him to act this way. Quickly he used this love and loyalty to monopolize my time and attention away from the other kids, another move to isolate me. On and on it went, the hole getting deeper, and me continuing to love and believe in him “no matter what.” I thought, “Isn’t that what a good mother does? Love and hang on at all costs?”

Well the costs became intolerably high. As you might imagine, my telling him that I would love him and help him and be there for him “no matter what” was like writing a crook a blank check. He was going to make me PAY.

Everyone else was ready to give up on him, but this only made me hope more and try harder. As if BELIEVING that he could change would MAKE him change. And after all, we had made a promise to him; he could consider himself unofficially adopted; we were a “forever family” as they say. Family means the world to me, and I didn’t want a “black sheep” in it! And he of course seized on my loyalties to keep me hooked into his schemes, “Don’t give up on me! I’m trying to be good. My birth parents never loved me (really?) and you’re all I have in this world…” Manipulation, control, and drama games over and over, then things began in earnest!

Sexual advances, threats of suicide if I told, horrible shame and guilt that I had been the recipient of a sexual advance by MY OWN SON. Then more mind games, lies to cover up lies, crazy-making. Plus, increasing irresponsibility, blowing all his money, threatening me, intimidating me, raging when I was alone with him. Everyone seemed to be turning against me for taking “his side”, and I was nursing an addiction to him, feeling helpless and hopeless to change anything, keeping me hooked where he wanted me.

After two years of working intensely with him, doing everything I could to help him, I hated to lose the fight! He truly had made a lot of progress, I had taught him to read and write, helped him get a job, got him in church, bought him decent clothes, taught him to cook, took him to the eye doctor, dentist, etc. etc. He drank in all the attention and constantly told me how much he loved me. I loved him too, and wanted him to be a good guy so desperately.

But because of his abusiveness, I suffered physically with PTSD, weight loss, night sweats, extreme nervousness, hypervigilence, everything. Emotionally as the sexual advances continued I finally went numb to it all I think. No one else really knew what was going on, and he promised I would PAY if anyone found out. And I didn’t WANT to tell anyone. Not only to protect him, but also because of the shame of it all. I couldn’t imagine telling our family that the “brother” I had encouraged them to be close to was actually a pervert. And how do I tell the community that has supported us, has contributed financially, has prayed for us, that everything has fallen apart and he has turned out to be nothing but a con artist?? And that he feels ENTITLED to everything he has been given, and wants even more, even to the point of sexual favors from his own mommy! It was just wretched. He knew he had me trapped, and abused me repeatedly. Since he loves to challenge rules of any kind, he DELIGHTED in something as taboo as incest. And, I think now, he enjoyed horrifying me with it too.

He began raging routinely, punching walls then bawling, hating me then loving me, and I lived in fear, avoiding him when I could. When he began to scare my young daughter, I knew I had to find a way out. He kept telling me he was reforming, getting better, starting to see the light… I didn’t want to give up too quickly, when his redemption might be just around the corner, but how much could I take? It was starting to seem plausible to kill myself to escape it all.

He had set up so many looming dreadful possibilities of what would happen if we were to ever kick him out… so I had to face those fears. I had to drop the axe and cut all ties with my “son”, tell my husband what had been going on, admit the ugly horribleness of it all. I had to let him go emotionally and give up all hope that my sizeable investments in his life meant anything. All my dreams for his good future boiled down to a restraining order against him. I am thankful to have learned on this site that a true “family” includes those who love and respect you. I have a greater appreciation for my remaining family members now. On the bad side, I have been overwhelmed with shame and guilt and a sense of failure. I am afraid that I am the one who caused things to go wrong. I blame myself for the bad outcome; if only because I’m the parent and it happened “on my watch.”

I am getting to the point of acceptance with a lot of it. For those of you struggling with the concept of “acceptance” – I hated the very idea of “accepting” what had happened. As if that meant endorsing it, or liking what happened. It doesn’t mean that. It’s probably not the best term for it. It is more like coming to a point of peacefulness where it still exists but doesn’t hurt when you think about it. If you “can’t accept it” then you’re just not at that point yet, and that’s ok. You can’t force-feed yourself this horrible situation and MAKE yourself accept it. But someday, without even trying to, you will notice that some of your feelings are peaceful toward the situation. I don’t have this all the time, and many times I’m back in the looney-toons stage, but I don’t dread “accepting” it anymore. It’s a good thing.

The next thing on the horizon is that, as some of you have mentioned lately, my husband and I are thinking of moving away to start over and get rid of bad memories in this house and in this area. It’s a lot to think about, but might be a way to heal more quickly. I hate to leave town as a “loser”, and let the spath win because we would be losing our house and hometown on top of all the other damage. I don’t know.

But I will say, I’m not a loser, I’m a survivor, and I’m pretty darned proud of myself for the progress I’ve made in climbing out from underneath the pile of rocks, as another poster compared it to recently (sorry, can’t find who it was). It’s a great analogy for the struggle… I can feel the fresh air on my face already!

Peace and love to all of you.