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.
Thanks Goingttmotion,
nice to hear your advice.
you said – And you know, it will probably seem like he is giving it all to the next woman, but you know that isn’t true, just as well as I do. And he may make a show of it, and she may, for her own reasons, play her part as well.
you mean giving the dream or the gaslighting crap to the next woman.
I think for me it was all of the points you said – your kindness, or your gentlenss, or your nurturing nature, or your penchant for taking on responsibilities.
he wanted to rob me of it all.
petite
GTTM – good advice to Petite. After 3 months no contact with my spath I’m soooo relieved he’s out of my life. Yes I think about him but not in the way I used to. Now I just see him for what he is A WASTE OF SPACE and not even worth the time of day. He’s onto his new conquest and good luck to her because she will need it. He has been doing this to women for the past 30 plus years and he will NEVER change.
Thought for today – ” The best gift one can be given to one’s self, in a long time, is the gift to turn away. The road ahead is brighter and comes with healing with each step, as well as the gift to forgive at each stop sign. If what’s behind us is not the same as for what’s in front of us, then the road ahead was truly worth it.”
Good Mornin on this side of the world Petitie!
Quick story share here: I got two calls, one in the middle of the night, one this morning early, about six. THe second call, was a restricted ID number and a voicemail was left, but it was nothing more than hanging up on the voice mail. Could it have been spath? Could have been, but highly unlikely.
Anyway, I was sitting there literally shaking IN FEAR….OH GOD…IF it’s HIM what does he WANT??……a bazillion things ran through my head, BUT, the feeling is no longer “Oh wow he’s probably thinking about me!” I used my take it, flip it idea….OH GOD HE WANTS TO HURT ME”…
And therein lies the fear. Take it, flip it. The more they have to hurt, the merrier petitie. Mine hates me with a murderous passion. ANYTHING that could get me riled up, he would do. Including cheating on his new gf, which he will UNDOUBTEDLY do.
I remember a time when I said to myself, early on in the relationshit, I’ll HELP HIM CHANGE….I’ll be so kind and good to him because of his abusive bitch of a wife, he will LOVE ME LIKE NO OTHER. pfffft!!! Believe me when I tell you, the new gf believes that too. But do you see how ridiculous it is to think that way? Take it, flip it. Here’s reality: Why was I SO SPECIAL that he wouldn’t CHEAT ON ME” Take it, flip it, “NO, SHE GETS A NIGHTMARE AND I GET THE DREAM WITHOUT HIM”
He’s going to love her!! Take it, flip it, NO, he’s going to HATE her.
HE’s going to give her what I didn’t get! Take it, flip it, He’s going to give her a life of hell and pain! then remember WHY that is so petitie. Refer to what you KNOW is the truth, not the lies he wants you to believe. I think you get the picture! Oh, also Petitie, Sky is right, they do it BECAUSE THEY CAN….but ONLY if we allow it. And you’re not gonna, right? 🙂
Sky, thank you for saying such a kind thing. I really have ALOT of work to do though. My hooks are not all removed yet. Learning a lot more about myself that i DON”T like that needs changing!!!
I saw a great quote from someone on my fb, Petitie.
Put it on a post it note and REMEMBER IT: Sometimes God removes someone from your life for your protection! DO NOT RUN AFTER IT!
LL
LL
I was thinking about your last post and about my girlfriends who are all in happy marriages or relationships. They have all been played, used, hurt, and dumped by guys before finding their mates. I have one young girlfriend who has been through the ringer with lying, cheating men. And they all seem to have something I never had: the ability to move on. It is always SO hard for me, even after a casual fling (which is rarely ever casual). Why? I have asked myself what is so wrong with me that I hold on for so long?
Then the other night I was longing for the sexy neighbor boy. This is the one I have hung out with on and off since last summer, who will just stop calling out of the blue one day. Why do I still even think about a scum like this who only wants the chase and not the prize? I imagined myself having a conversation with him and telling him how much it hurt me for him to abandon me. I cried a lot. Then the pain morphed into the pain of my parents not loving me. I processed some of that as well. Afterward, I felt much more emotionally detached from both the neighbor AND the guy in Costa Rica.
I have concluded from this that it is the lack of early parental love that keeps me hanging on to these losers. My unconscious actually engineered all of these abandonments, so I can work out this old pain. (Still working on it). And if I can work on that, I can have healthier relationships with men.
I don’t know how this applies to your post – maybe not at all – but this is what it makes me think about. I could not get unhooked from bad people because I was still trying to get the love I never got from my parents. That gets projected on the guy, and I feel as though I need him. The need clouds my judgment of his character. My healthier girlfriends don’t have this problem. They can detach more easily because they don’t need these guys’ love.
Star,
I don’t see how it relates to my post either, BUT you bring up SUCH a valid point for me!
This is WHY I do not and WILL NOT date anyone. I have no desire to be in a relationshit right now for that VERY reason. I know this is one of my vulnerabilities. How to work through that? I haven’t gotten there yet. And until I do, I think a relationshit would be absolutely pointless. I want to be focused on me and righting my wrongs, if you will, then to project them into another relationshit.
I DEFINITELY have had trouble letting go of these spaths. It was easier with exP because his abuse was so blatant and i don’t feel I was “in love” with him the way I was with last exPOS. COme to think of it, last ex Pos was very much like my father, in mannerisms, even where he WORKED was similar to the business my father was in. And my father was one MEAN son of a bitch and ruined every single life he ever touched or crossed. He has spathy bro and sis because they want his MONEY of which I was not willing to partake. These are positive steps for me, however, it’s also deeply painful for a lot of reasons. Even when I was young and living at home, success and money was what my father CONSTANTLY pounded into our heads. We were to use our INTELLECT at all times (which, as an observer was really rather superficial), and GO FOR success. My father targeted me, as did my N mother because I was SENSITIVE and could see through their bullshit. So instead of using that as a course of action to better my life, even though I could not LABEL or CONNECT it to my future choices, if I had been aware and had the appropriate guidance, things might look a lot different today than they do. I was my father’s little princess until he realized I was NOT interested in all the BS, nor was I interested in going into the family business. But he got spathy sis her first job in mortgage banking and she was such a charmer and sales bitch that she was enormously successful financially and made spath daddy look WONDERFUL to everyone around him. His little prodigy. He about gave up on my spathy bro, until a few years ago when my brother graduated from college with honors in a master’s program and is now extremely successful in his chosen field and making the big bucks too. Yep, they SHINE for my father. When he got sick and they found out about it (they had little to do with him before this) they swooped in. And the abuse my father inflicted on me got worse, even though I was the only one that bothered with him after his surgery. That was when I cut bait.
I’ve been NC with them for quite awhile now. I don’t feel emotionally attached to them. Holidays are hard, and this last one especially, I think, because of the break up with exPOS looming, but ….I didn’t want to go through anymore pain with the role allocated to me in the bio fam. It’s just better this way.
Those things linger though and it took a long, long time to let go. This may be in part why it is now so difficult to maintain attachments/commitments to friends and/or foster family that do love me and care. Fear of becoming TOO attached, fear of being hurt. I think my healing needs to progress a bit before I step my toe into the pool.
Thanks for bringing that up, Star.
LL
To neveragain,
Per “they can’t come up with their own ideas, and repeating, even things from movies, is what I saw too”
My ex went from renting X-rated movies at Blockbuster, like “High Art” and “Book Oranges” ( the former has a lesbo theme in it, the latter is about a guy with sick porn/sex fetishes, like autoaxphixiation..that should have been another big RED FLAG for me), “9 ½ Weeks” .. to gradually “incorporating” hard-core porn (I feel certain he probably watched these while I was at work or when I wasn’t home, & pulled the venetian blinds down, so the neighbors couldn’t see him) .. I suspected that when he chose “Blood Oranges” to watch, that he was trying to “tell” me about himself.
About the “repeating” things from others, to get ideas..in retrospect, I even sense that many of his choices for the songs for his repertoire were “sick-based” .. he got me to harmonize on “Pittsburgh Stealers” (country song, father/daughter duo) .. One lyric of it, “well they call us, the Pittsburgh Stealers, stealing time, anytime we can..we both know the score, but we come back for more”..about a husband cheating on his wife, and a wife cheating on her mate..
Even those Robert Cray songs that he knew/liked, from the album “Strong Persuaders” ..were about cheaters who “got away with it” ..then there was his “fake spiritual” side..when he sang those folk songs about changing himself for the better (“Daddies Need To Grow Up Too ..to learn what they should and they should not do” .. & Ry Cooder’s “The Tattler” (“whenever you find a man who loves every woman he sees, there’s always some kind of woman that’s a putting-him-up a tree..well that kind of man he ain’t got as much sense as a mule, you know every woman don’t love you, they just a-playin’ you for a fool”) .. IT SEEMED LIKE ALL THOSE SONGS WERE PARTS OF HIS SPLIT PERSONALITIES. I suspect he has Dissociative Identity Disorder & is BPD.
To Alina,
Re, “Why can’t we just ship them all to the moon”
My idea was to round them all up, place them on Bikini Island .. that place in the Pacific that got bombed during the nuclear testings, then let them all die of cancers (hopefully prostate cancers..ha ha)
To GoingThroughTheMotions,
Per “all the pained expressions he had painted on during sex were all about”
Mine would get these “pinched” expressions while “making love” .. a kind of “wincing” thing. I don’t even recall his laughing or smiling honestly, while we were “in the act” .. sometimes he had this blank expression on his face. Pre-act, of course, he’d be silly, laugh, etc.
To geminigirl,
Re: “Basically what friends I still had had NO idea what was going on, and prob wouldnt have believed me anyway!”
Oooooh, how I KNOW that feeling. What disgusted me was that the hubby of the woman my ex cuckholded, who was SUPPOSED to be my friend (for 2 years before my ex left, my ex & I would go to their home, & jam..jazz music..her hubby was an excellent jazz pianist) left me to be the “last to know”..then, years later, after I found out, I confronted that ex hubby too. The anus would not even meet me for an hour’s conversation. He was so haughty. It was “beneath him” to meet with me. All he did was suggest I get therapy, because he’d done so, and it helped him. Not even ONE apology from him about how he & his circles of friends KNEW what had gone down with my ex and his wife, but no one told me, as if there was a GROUP THINK, one-upmanship happening, that left me totally in the dark. That hurt almost as much as what my ex did. What a SUPERCILIOUS, SHORT-SIGHED SLAVE TO SOCIETY jerk he was, too!
Another thing..about the hubby (my former so-called friend..the jazz pianist..) My ex (alleged SPATH) told me that the woman (married at the time) told him that her husband was in a “men’s cult” .. ha ha..what is a guy who advertises himself as “bi” on a swingers’ site, if not in a SICK MEN’S CULT?
That same hubby, before things all went down, once sent me an e-mail, after I’d been invited to their home for another jazz jam (we called their home “The Knotty Pine Club”) I joked back, with one e-mail to him, about the coming jazz jam at their home, “You mean the Naughty Pine Club?” Little did I realize how close to hitting the nail on the head I had come! He replied with, “I like naughty, too” .. well, he would have been the LAST person I’d be attracted to physically [he was pretty pasty looking, pale..looked like he had the hands of a priest, and not the kind of priest in the movie, Thornbirds, if you get my drift.] Now I sometimes wonder if he and his wife didn’t have an open marriage, or if they were swingers behind the scenes.
In my opinion, that hubby had a kind of “horse face” .. sorry boys, but most of my former lovers, across a 40-year history, resemble more, in many features, artists David Crosby and Eric Clapton, with that healthy “reddish glow” to their complexions..not pasty & pale-looking.
..and I’ve had very few lovers, mainly three long-term, almost ten years each (alchies or commitment phobes, mostly, or spoiled trust fund babies who never grew up for the longest time, to develop decent careers, when I was on that path AND ACHIEVED!), then a brief, short-term marriage, where I was VERBALLY abused by my ex-husband, who had learned the verbal abuse technique of “intimidating one’s subordinates” while in military officer’s training school. Man oh man oh man. I must’ve been a jerk magnet. No more, though. My sweetie of more than 10 years is GOOD to me. Take heart ladies, there’re still a few out there. Don’t give up!