I was with my sociopathic ex-husband, James Montgomery, for two and a half years. During this time, I knew he was costing me money, but he attributed his lack of business success to “being ahead of his time.” I eventually discovered that he was lying and cheating on me. But although I saw eruptions of anger, my ex was never abusive towards me—nothing like the abuse many of you have endured.
Some sociopaths can treat people reasonably well for an extended period of time, if it suits their purpose. For example, Lovefraud received the following e-mail from a reader:
I was not in a disastrous relationship with my S. Our relationship was less than three years, our marriage less than two, when he openly cheated and decided to leave me, then played games of false reconciliation, which in hindsight were so he could have two sex partners.
The short end of my question is… How do you reconcile the basically happy marriage, the illusion of a man you married with the horrible monster he has become in trying to create turmoil in your life and use your greatest love (your child) to hurt you?
Expressions of love
I’ll get to this reader’s question shortly. But first I want to review some of the information Lovefraud learned in last year’s survey (not the current one) about people involved with individuals who exhibited sociopathic traits. One of the objectives of that survey was to investigate whether and how often sociopaths expressed love.
We asked the question, “Did the individual you were involved with verbally express love or caring to you?”
A total of 85% of all survey respondents said yes. And, when the individuals being described were the spouses or romantic partners of the survey respondents, rather than parents, children or others, 92% of the males and 95% of the females expressed love verbally.
How often did this happen? A total of 44% of survey respondents said the sociopathic individual expressed love daily.
Complete change
The survey also asked the following: “Please provide a brief description of the way the person you were involved with expressed love. How did this change over the course of your relationship?”
Now I’ve been hearing all kinds of stories about the games sociopaths play in relationships for more than five years. Yet some of the answers to this question still made my jaw drop.
A small group of survey respondents reported a complete change of behavior the moment they were committed to the relationship—moved in, married or pregnant. This startling change was reported in reference to 7% of the females and 5% of the males. Here are some of the quotes:
Initially with dates, flowers, gifts and little thoughtfullness’s. After I married him, he said, on the Honeymoon, ‘I can stop acting now.’ I thought that he was joking. I later learned he did not do jokes.
From very loving to cold indifference…started right after we were married — The change was startling — cold, distant, indifferent, condescending, mean spirited, accusatory — self righteous, irresponsible
It changed the minute we got married. Then he owned me you see, I was nothing to him after he lured me in! All he wanted was MONEY!
In the beginning of the relationship (before marriage) he was loving, caring, could not do enough for me. Called me his soul mate, his true companion in life. This continued until the day I married him, within hours after the wedding ceremony his personality shifted. It was as if I had dated and fell in love with one person, but married someone I was completely unfamiliar with, he was a stranger to me in all ways.
Doesn’t exist
So, back to our reader’s question, “How do you reconcile the basically happy marriage with the horrible monster he has become?”
The man this reader saw during the happy part of the marriage did not exist. It was an act, a charade, a mirage that the sociopath kept going until it no longer served his purpose. The real man is the horrible monster.
Great Point, Donna!
The only way to reconcile the man you think he was with the horrible monster he really is requires you to realize he was never who you thought he was in the first place. There is nothing you can do to change him and nothing you can do to help him, but you can help yourself by changing your way of thinking. Until you experience a relationship with a sociopath, it is difficult to comprehend what he is capable of doing since you don’t think the same way he does. You have to accept that evil people like him exist and have already spent years deceiving and using other women, convincing even himself of his lies. He doesn’t consider himself to be doing anything wrong even after he leaves a trail of bewildered women in his wake because he has no conscience or remorse. You have to realize and accept you did nothing wrong when you believed and trusted this man thinking he was the man he wanted you to think he was. Men like him are empty souls living empty lives looking for easy targets in order to achieve their goal of appearing normal, and no one or nothing can stop them. You aren’t the first and certainly not the last. There is a reason you were in his path, and even though it will take time, you have to pick up the pieces, accept what happened, and show your beautiful spirit by forgiving him and moving on to find joy and peace once again.
Hi Nora,
very well written post.
succinct message for all of us as to how to deal with ourselves and find our own worth, joy and peace again. plenty of easy targets around – we cannot stop him or stop the targets, even no one could have stopped us when we were being lovebombed.
agree wih you – accept what happened, remove the bitterness and find peace in our lives.
thanks for this timely post for me.
petite
Good morning Petite, though guess it is your evening! LOL
I thought this article is a good one and you are so right that “no one could have stopped us when we were being lovebombed.”
We talk about the ‘mask slipping’, and I think that is an apt description of the the apparent ‘change’ we witness.
i think we have 2 jobs that we have to undertake. The first is to accept the ugliness we have experienced as ‘real’ and therefore the true character of the spath. We have to dismantle the delusional thinking that says, ‘but he was really nice, when he wasn’t being evil’.
Secondly, we have to unravel the delusional thinking that equates their bit of nice with our desire for/ and fantasy of love. We can weave whole worlds out of scraps of attention. We have to really look at what they brought to the table and what we brought to the table and disengage the two. We have to look at our unmet and possible unknown needs that we have woven into the fantasy of love, that we then wove them into.
getting over a spath is hard – first, who the hell lies that much? we have to integrate the truth of their being a lie, and then we have to unravel the lies we have told ourselves/ have been told about what is real, and what we are worthy of.
one/joy step at a time
Thank you for your comment. It’s very good advice.
Very good article,
There was mention on the blog yesterday about holding onto good memories, even with a spath. This got me to thinking…..were there truly ANY good times without abuse?
They were so few and far between. Unlike a lot of the readers here, I was not “love bombed” the same way most have been because of my status with my spath, so I can’t say for sure what would have happened had we both been single and then he loved bombed me. Truthfully, I may not have been in the relationship as long as I was if I had been. I did notice that once he was divorced and could have me around all the time, he was immediately cheating, trolling….
I think that’s what happens when they think they have you.
His first marriage lasted four years. His second seventeen and there were signs that they BOTH were love bombed and then as soon as the deal was sealed with marriages, the behavior switch was immediate. There were things he said that indicated that, although it was a projection, now that I think about it it is very clear.
Spaths can keep up their charade for awhile, but seems it’s about month three when things start going downhill, although some can keep it up longer, without outward signs of abuse, as was with Donna’s case. Mine was extremely emotionally abusive from the get go, but really started shining the light by month three.
One, you’re right. Who lies that much? The lies are absolutely amazing. Absolutely. I’m still finding out more and more lies that go way way back.
“We can weave whole worlds out of scraps of attention. Boy isn’t that the truth!!! I sure did! I think I got less scraps than his DOG and I was still BEGGING, UGH!
Amazing.
RB
That’s the hook – being thrown scraps, and begging for more. We have to learn that when we are thrown scraps, we WALK AWAY!
One,
AMEN to that!!! I wonder, was this hook used in any of your marriages too? Seems that mine enjoyed his bone tosses, then just as I was enjoying the taste of the bone, ripping it away.
He enjoyed the pain of knowing that I was NEVER going to have him, but that someone else always would.
RB
my expereince with the spath was like that – she created a whole cast of characters who would get to ‘have’ the main character. after the fake death and resurrection of the main character she played that one big time. I saw through it, and although there was a small hook there for me, i squashed it like an overripe pumpkin within myself, and went nc.