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.
Yes, Ox, it was something really shocking. He was clearly more interested in control than in sex. And he looked at me intensely into my eyes.
He’s a big psychopath with all the traits very developed except the psysical violence, though once he told me “i would never beat you ever” which made me think he had done it to other women. And he was still an attractive man with almost 50 which means he must have left a really big long collection of shocked women since his teens.
But they’re a bit pathetic after all, they’re uncompleted.
Quote from Eva :
“Skylar, what power do they want to get from sex?
I observed in mine that after 6 or 7 months of relationship for him was more important to be in control than having an orgasm. I noticed a change and i related it to some power needs. But what do they get from doing that besides making clear to the other side that they’re more abnormal than one was starting suspecting?”
My second husband was like that. He could perform and actually seemed to enjoy sex but didn’t make love. There was very little kissing involved. If I ever initiated the sex it would have to be when he was asleep……I mean he did wake up but had his guard down. I remember him leaving once in the middle of sex because he had to get going before the bank closed.
The other thing he often did was to initiate sex when it was impossible to do, like I was going to be late for work or another appointment. Then, it was “my fault”. I can see now that it was about control. It was on his time, his way. He also watched a lot of porn on the internet and didn’t bring any arousal to bed with him where I was waiting. What a pig.
TTS
I know it Stargazer. I saw it…I saw all the traits: the lack of empathy, the lack of remorse, the gaslighting, the blaming me, the lack of responsability, the lies, the mirrowing me, and finally saw the extreme egocentrism and his priority for power and control. These two last ones made me understood he had some serious pathology.
Eva,
There are many different kinds of control that they can get with sex. For some, the control is literally gained by raping another person. But for the covert sociopath like ours, that control is mind control. They know that once they have our emotions, they control our minds, so they use sex to fake emotional bonding and control our own bonding.
My own spath actually took it a step further. Without going into too much description, I can tell you that our sex lasted for hours, even up to 10 hours as he controlled every little reaction in my body with his hands and voice. He knew exactly how to manipulate every nerve ending on me. He knew exactly what to do and say and he enjoyed watching all this play out on my body. I rarely touched him at all or did anything in our lovemaking. It was him doing everything to me. And he held off on orgasm for hours, if he did at all. At first I thought he was just really a great lover, and he wanted to please me. But now I know, he just loved playing me like a puppet and watching me squirm.
EB:
Charming is a huge red flag—for me”..spath is very charming. It’s his initial hook.
I don’t want charming! I want genuine, authentic, honest in my life now”..not the schmooze of charm.
People fall too heavily on charm.
Charming is temporary, its a shiney fake gold ring, that once you get it wet—.it rusts on your finger.
I absolutely one hundred percent, agree with that. I TOTALLY agree with that. That would be my NUMERO UNO red flag paid attention too FIRST. it is that CHARM they use in their “NEED TO WIN” that creates an “overlook” to anything they say or do! EXCELLENT point!!
If I have new friendships with ANYONE, I want to take my time. There IS NO RUSH. I think, as far as men are concerned, if they aren’t head over heels (charming your pants off, literally), and take their time, THAT is what I would pay attention to insofar as a potential good friend or future partner, other than that, NO THANK YOU!
I realize there are NO guarantees, but there are warnings and there is something SO WRONG with a man who is in love with you in two weeks, WTF?
Nuh uh.
RB
True to self, he iniciated sex and he liked kissing but after several months there was that change. A few months later i left him so i couldn’t see if he would have lost interest in sex or whatever. But it was becoming clear that being in control and to manipulate was his main interest, so i got scared and avoided him, started a searching for his pathology, found it out and i never came back, though i was about because he tried hard. But since he didn’t get it he’s dessapeared. He knew it was over.
I know Skylar, and his was mind control type, though at the beginning i was not aware. But later appeared a lot of strange things included that strange behaviour in bed.
Aaah how scaring they are.
Sky?
Yuck. I’m sorry but ten hours is just a bit much.
I also “see” by your descriptions, what was going on. I had a few similar experiences with my spath. I will NEVER forget the first time we had sex. It was the single most WEIRD experience I have ever had in my life. THAT was when I should have ran for my life!! It was a TOTAL CONTROL issue one hundred percent, meant for me to think I need to do more TO HIM to make him “come out of his shell” it was the same MO bullshit he used on his last love bomb effort too.
It is amazing what they do when it comes to sex. Mine was rather infantile.
RB
This is such an interesting conversation. My computer is a little slow today……or maybe it is me so excuse me for not quoting or quoting the wrong person.
Starting with Skylar. Honest question. Have you ever been interested in M/s (master – submissive)? I have to admit that I used to be. My H would also do that to me as far as he seemed to enjoy my reaction. However once he felt he had a sure thing maybe that is when he lost interest. Besides, he would love to make me feel inadaquate or undesirable. I am thinking now that even the affair he had he confessed to because I didn’t figure it out. He wanted to hurt me. I was asleep when he got home late. He actually confessed to me the next day but probably could have got away with it. Instead I became the sex maniac myself trying to be “the total woman”. I can’t remember how long that lasted, but one time our window was open and he was gloating and saying out loud a little to our neighbor. “Hey Bob, look what I have.” eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek
Someone said that their SO or H said that he would never hurt them physically. My BF told me once that he never wanted me to be afraid of him. My exH when he left told me that he had thoughts of beating the crap out of me. I also found him looking at gory bloody pictures on YouTube….makes my skin crawl. Glad I escaped these creatures.
Back to S&M or M/s…..after a lengthy conversation with a guy I met on line I realized what I had agreed to but woke up two hours later with an asthma attack, quickly emailed him a no thanks email. The only thing I didn’t like at first was that he left a small command, I was supposed to email him at a certain time of the day or night can’t remember and say a certain thing. This “control” bothered me. The rest I told myself was just dinner the following Tuesday. I could always say no after that.
The movie 9 1/2 weeks with Kim Basinger was a turn on to me, but then I read the book. At the end of the book the subject started crying and couldn’t stop and ended up in a Psych ward for a while. Even before reading that, I found that I have emotionally changed enough that I actually found the 9 1/2 week movie boring. I’m cured.
TTS.
TTS
I think that sex is a bit overrated at times. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Anyone can do it, at any time in any way they want with whomever……and really, is satisfactory without all other healthy elements in play?
NOt for me. And if the rest of the relationshit is SHIT, the sex ain’t worth hangin around for…..
one of the things i”ve noticed here in others saying how great the sex was…….in EVERY single story…..ya just gotta ask yourself……….”But it wasn’t enough to stay and put up with anymore shit, was it?”
Nope. It wasn’t.
Roses,
I agree with you. Even when I talk about the 9 1/2 week fantasy it was ONLY a fantasy. I would never want to live that.
The interesting thing about my 2nd H is that I had to bring him out of his shell also at first. Now that I think about it he was the manipulator from hell.
I would not ever want a relationship just for the sex. In fact I am not dating now or not even considering it. I am working on some health issues, and then when and if I do go out I want it will be friendship. I grew up watching Hollywood movies and saw the I love you’s being said quickly. The movie was only two hours long after all.
To tell you the truth I don’t think I even know what normal is but I do know what it isn’t. Even my taste in movies is starting to change.