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.
Dear Greenbean,
QUOTE” “but maybe she was just as confused as I am”
YOU BET YER BOTTOM DOLLAR SHE WAS!!!!
Look around you here at LF–there are plenty of SUCCESSFUL EDUCATED women and men here who were FOOLED and kept on a string for a long time….that was the one thing that first struck me between the eyes was “Hey, there are a bunch of SMART EDUCATED FOLKS HERE THAT HAVE BEEN JUST AS “DUPED”AS I WAS.”
I realized I was not so “dumb” after all and Also realized that I was NOT ALONE EITHER…..and that the fact I had been in one dysfunctional relation-shit after another (not just boy friends or lovers but in different relationships) and that I had as someone here said (can’t remember who!) LEARNED TO FUNCTION IN MY DYSFUNCTION…I had learned to blame myself, to try to fix everything that was wrong with others, try to keep them happy no matter what they did to me.
Start out, Greenbean, by realizing that HE IS THE LIE. Not that he told lies, HE IS THE LIE. Everything about him is a falsehood, a lie, untrue. It is all smoke and mirrors, a fake, a hologram a FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) but NOT REAL.
YOU ARE REAL. Your caring and compassion and love was real, but HE WAS NOT. You did however, LOSE what you THOUGHT WAS REAL so the LOSS itself is real, the pains are real, your feelings are REAL. BUT YOU WILL HEAL, but he will always be a HEEL, and can’t be fixed. Knowledge is power, so read here and learn and use it to help yourself. Take back the power he has to hurt you. God bless.
Right on, Ox.
Psychopaths like intelligence mixed with vulnerability.
Stupidity is not a challenge. It does not excite them.
Plus, they need to be able to get something valuable from their victim, either items or efforts. And dumb people don’t always have a lot of those things. Smart people do.
As I look at all the people in my ex’s life, I am struck by the commonalities we all share…smart, accomplished, kind, generous, hard-working.
We all fit a profile.
No happenstance with that.
And I also look at the people he would avoid. What was it about them that he did not gravitate towards? They seemed to fit a profile, too. They were more blunt, less kind, still hard working but very cautious about who they let in their life. They are almost suspicious by nature.
It may not sound like it, but it is a compliment in many ways to be sought out by a psychopath as the qualities that define you are nice attributes to have. They just need to be tempered with a fair amount of skepticism in the future!
God bless, Greenbean!
Ox, you rock! Very well stated! You know how to put a girl in her place 😉
Trimama, it’s so true. My ex-spath targeted someone very similar to me after I dumped him. As long as we don’t let this permanently change us, we will be fine (and I know I won’t – there are so very few people on that level of the spectrum that I won’t fear meeting someone like that).
i can see a reason he has sought intelligent women. they are likely to have the means to be gainfully employed, and therefore support him. he himself, is very intelligent, but cannot hold down a job, his attitude gets him in trouble. i have known for a long time that most “things” he has are owed to his successful ex, whom he took for everything and ran out of town on a rail.
i guess i didn’t see it in the same light before, because he told me he hated me for being smart!
i was also unemployed for most of our relationship, so i didn’t think he was looking at me as someone who would support him. but i had always had stable jobs in the past, and had a good one lined up…
i do not believe i am like his ex though aside from being an intelligent person. having met her, i dont think our demeanors are similar at all. mutual friends say she is the female version of him. i don’t think i’m like her or him much at ALL. and thats a good thing.
i dont know why he picked me, i don’t have some of the “qualities” he wants a women to reflect back about himself. but after pitting me against other women and declaring me the winner, i guess i felt special. if all he was looking for was a lady smart enough to have a good job and vulnerable enough to fall for his pathetic backstory, then i suppose i was perfect.
I have a question. My ex did keep up the charade for a short time. We were only together less than a year. After reading many of the posts here on LF, I have decided that I am better off not even staying “friends” with this man that I just broke it off with him about 2 weeks ago. So, how do I tell him that I want nothing to do with him? I am a bit afraid that he could really go off the deep end if I suddenly change my phone number and ignore all communication, as much as I want to do that. He exhibits all 10 signs of the sociopath. I thought what we had was good until I uncovered some of his lies, and saw the dark side of him. At this point, he believes I want to stay friends with him, and when I have tried to ignore him, I can see the anger build quickly. How do I handle this??? I really think I am better off with no communication with this guy. I just don’t want him showing up at my door unexpectedly though!! Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
toogood,
you are right, you have reason to fear his reaction when you try to get away.
That’s what gray rock is about. It is a strategy for making THEM to decide that you are too boring to waste time on.
With this strategy, they will not pursue you but instead they will slither away. You must become boring. They can’t stand boring people. It is actually painful to them to be bored or around boring people. The way to be boring is to show no emotion. They are drama addicts. They want to suck up the expressions on your face. Don’t give them any.
The man who told me about this explained it this way:
“When my spath girlfriend asked what I wanted for dinner, I would say, “whatever”. When she asked if I wanted to go out, the reply, “I guess”, when she wanted to know where, “I don’t know”.
Dear 2good2Btrue,
If he is becoming angry at your attempts to cut him out, this shows that he does NOT want to be “friends” as he may say, but he is still wanting to CONTROL YOU….since It is early on in the break up phase, I suggest that rather than just change your number that you tell him “John, I really need some time to just sort out myself…I think we need to take a break before we try to be “just friends” so let’s just have a break for a while. I’ll call you when I’m ready.” Then if he calls you again, just say “John, I’m not ready yet” OVER AND OVER AND OVER….
To all of my supportive friends on here who have been giving me advice and helping me through this,
Here is my update: I was still stuck in the game..it was clear..it was my choice to continue. You all told me. I continued to argue with him..the night before last..he continued to tell me that he loved me…I told him to get help so that maybe he could love me everyday like I loved him. He said..I do love you everyday. Yesterday,..he sent me a text that just said “good morning :)” I wrote exactly the same back. At lunchtime…he went on his facebook and hid his friends list, disabled me from being able to post anything on his page, and removed every comment that I had ever posted. He erased me. I called him on it..and he told me that he didn’t do that and that all of that stuff was still on there. Meanwhile, I am not blind. It was all clearly gone but he continued to lie and try to tell me it was all still on there?!?! He didn’t block his friends fast enough…bc I found the new girl that he had just added that he cheated on me with and I KNOW I KNOW…I sent her a message and told her what he did. She won’t care bc he will talk his way out of it but it was very detailed so she will know that I was not lying..and it was clear that he was not being faithful to her either. I also asked her not to respond to me because I did not want to be involved with it anymore but that I just thought she would want to know. I told him that I did it and he threatened to smear me and other people through the mud…I told him that I did not care…and he told me that I will give a f#$@....... for sure about what he does. Then he screamed at me that he could just not be with with me bc he tried and tried and tried but was just not in love with me. He has told me that before many times and a week later was back crying so it is just bs and I know that. He was screaming so loud that I could barely understand what he was saying. I don’t even remember how the call ended…he either hung up on me or vice versa…but I tried to call back to argue more and try to make him understand what he is doing and why I did what I did and that there is something wrong with him and he needs help blah blah blah but he did not answer…and then it hit me. I DONT WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE. I blocked his number. I blocked his parents number. I blocked him on facebook. I AM DONE. You guys are all right…it is my choice to continue living like this and it is my choice not to. I can’t do this anymore and I don’t want to. Oddly enough, I had an appt. right after that had all happened with a new psychologist…he had my records from my old counselor and since this new dr. had never seen my spath..he said that he could not diagnose him but that it sounds like I am dealing with a man with antisocial personality disorder/sociopath. He told me that he will never change..he is too far into living his life this way and that he likes it. He has fun doing this to me and it is all a game. He does not love me. Even if he claims that he wants to get help..he does not. Everything he says is bs and that I need to completely cut him out. You guys should all be psychologists… He described it to me like this…bc he also said that my problem is that I am addicted to him. He said that at first he gave me something I never had before, made me feel like no one else ever did. When that started to go away…all I did was keep trying to get that back what we had in the beginning…it became my addiction to try to fix him. I believed him because I deluded myself into thinking that he could really change bc I wanted him to so badly. He compared me to a heroin addict. The first time a heroin addict shoots up..it is the best high that they have ever had..after that..they keep doing more and more trying to get that same high back…but it never happens. They end up od’ing trying to find that same feeling again. So..that being said…today is my first day in a long time that I have had no contact. I am going to do it this time. I have no other choice. I did not get the “closure” that I would have liked to have gotten but I know that I never will. I learned that from all of you. I have to make my own closure and that is what I am going to do. Yeah, do I feel like shit…sure. I feel like I just came out of war…but it will get better. It has to. I am looking forward to spring and flowers and summer and fun and doing things with my friends. I hope I will actually be able to enjoy things without my “addiction” preventing me from concentrating on anything but him. You all have helped me even though it has taken me a long time…I hope my posts help others that are NC to remember why they are NC and know that it will never be any different. Good song to listen to…Sara Evans..A little bit stronger.
Thank you Dr. Ox and skylar! I will definitely play the “boring” role. He called this morning, and I did talk to him. He was angry that I was not texting or calling him at all the last few days. I know you are right that he is simply trying to control me. I emailed him and told him that nobody is going to tell me what I am thinking and that I need some time to be my own person. He also asked me if I was dating someone else. I was tempted to lie and say “yes”, hoping that would make him go away. But I am going to try your strategy now for sure!!
Mending – yahoooo you are on the road to recovery. Be prepared – the road is not always smooth but you have faced your addiction and now you know what you must do to ‘cure’ yourself. Well done.