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 2good2Btrue,
See, he is trying to control you…doesn’t want you but doesn’t want you to have anyone else either….trying to “manage” them is a losing process…it is just decrease exposure (NC) and don’t try to get even or antagonize them or “show” them…..they are control freaks and so if you can make them think you are just destroyed and aren’t interesting that is good, so don’t bother telling him what a creepy arsehole he is, just keep out of his line of vision as much as possible. ESPECIALLY don’t talk to anyone he knows about anything….”mutual friends” are MUTUAL ENEMIES and will cause problems…if they are his friends or will even talk to him, DO NOT TALK TO THEM…if you say anything to them, just “I am tooo torn up now to discuss John, I’m just so heart broken.” Give him the same line, “John, I’m just too heart broken to talk to you right now, we’ll have to discuss our just being friends later…no no, I’m gonna hang up now, and cry.”
Don’t say anything or do anything that will get back to him and make him want to SHOW YOU WHO’s BOSS….they love the control.
Whatever you do….don’t believe a single word he says….nothing he says is the truth. The ONLY truth they know is how to LIE AND HOOK YOU BACK UNDER THEIR CONTROL.
Take care of yourself. God bless.
Dear Mending,
Congratulations! I think that once you’ve REALLY made the decision, you will stick with it. Remember to stay NC, no matter how tempted you are to “make him understand.” He never will, and he’ll try to make you feel sorry for him and second-guess yourself. It’s happening to me right now, but I am trying hard to resist, and have been mostly successful. (I did wave to him when he drove past me the other day because his kids were in the car with him).
It’s “funny” that the FB thing happened to you too. The exact same thing happened to me, and the Spath told me that he did nothing and it must be FB. Then he said he deactivated his account, but I could log on from a friend’s account and see his profile. He now activates and deactivates his account to try to completely hide his account. To this day he swears that “I’ll stand by the
fact that I never unfriended you!” Anyway, he did, or maybe he had her do it, so he could lie “truthfully.” Since I could never really prove his cheating (with someone 20 years younger), he wants to maintain that charade. I don’t check his account anymore. Who cares?
My Ex Spath is extremely concerned with his image. He wants me, and everyone else, to think of him as an upstanding guy who is honest and helpful. This image is the thing that he desires most. Unlike other Spaths I’ve read about here, his main thrill seems to be getting away with being a jerk and not having others find out. He’s really good at this game, and he’s very clever, but he can’t fool me three times! I hope his young friend doesn’t waste too much time on him. I’ve thought about contacting her, but I really don’t need the trouble that it was cause for me.
Good luck with your NC. Maybe we can cheer each other on!
(((((((( Mending ))))))))
I was so concerned for you. I’m glad that you have such great resolve and a therapist who gets what it is to have been involved with a spath. I wish you all the BEST that you deserve in your healing process!
LL
Toogood
I agree with everything Oxy said except for the wording of what you should say. If you tell him that you are upset or going to go cry, it will make him salivate for more emotion and drama. Boring has no drama. Perhaps you can say that you are taking some prozac and you feel numb emotionally. Only volunteer that info if he asks why you sound so different .
I like the fact that you are detaching yourself slowly from him so that he doesn’t suspect that this is intended to be permanent. As long as you can maintain your focus and composure you will lose the loser .
Don’t doubt for a second that he will try to get drama out of you. I guarantee it. DON’T give him even one single facial expression. Go botox your whole face if you have to.
Skylar – Yes I do tend to agree with you. I can’t tell him I have to hang up to cry. He would LOVE that! He has been texting me all night saying he gets the feeling that I never want to talk to him again, no matter what he does. says I keep putting conditions on him, now even to just be friends. I ignored him of course, and then he does this turn around and apologizes for bothering me and that he will leave me alone (with little sad faces in the message). How long will I have to endure this and ignore him until the game gets old??
Mending,
I’m so glad you kept going back until you finally got sick of the game. His lie about FB reminded me of one of the lies my exspath told me. He told me he was invited to sign up at a reptile site run by people who had hurt me and betrayed me. I told him what had happened to me, and he promised me he would NEVER sign up over there. A week later, I happened to glance on that site and there he was! There had been one particular guy on that site who had treated me very badly. The spath said, “Don’t worry, I will NEVER be friends with him, out of respect to you.” Next thing I know, he had the guy on his “friends” list. I asked him why, and he said, “I don’t know how that happened.” I told him he would have had to send a friend request or accept a friend request from this guy. He said he did neither. I actually thought to myself, “I suppose there could be a glitch in the computer system over there….” It was so funny, I never told him not to sign up there. I never told him who to befriend. He told me! And then he lied about it. This is one of the things I pondered when I went camping for a few days to think things over. For them, lying is like breathing and sleeping. It’s automatic. It would have been much easier to just tell me he enjoys the site, and he feels bad but he likes that person he befriended. I would have forgiven him. It’s not my place to tell people what internet sites to hang out on. Why lie when it’s easier to tell the truth?
LL
I asked Donna to send you my email. I’m wondering if you got it?
I’m a bit out of touch because I’m not home. Typing on the Droid. I imagine Donna is very busy. Maybe we could ask Claudia since she has both of our emails?
Sky,
No, I got it Chica. I’ll mail ya.
LL
Dearest Mending,
I am sorry for what what you’ve endured and what you have left to work through. One of the hard things is that unlike NORMAL heartbreaks, there is NO closure, although I think a few of us get to have it, but that’s the exception.
But what I can say… is that I have something better. I have a life of possibilities and that is far more wonderful than was possible with him.
Hang on dear. IT will be hard. But, as I said, someday is the realization that life again has possibilities. That day YOU will feel JOY.
Oh my goodness Oxy! I just read your post of 2/23/2011 @....... 4:10 PM
I would swear you were describing MY mother… wow, how enlightening… I guess I never thought about the possibility that she had some sort of mental disorder. She always made me feel as if it was me that was somehow “not quite right.” I have never done anything that was up to par in her eyes. There was also only one time in my life that she tried to get physically abusive with me. Thank God my dad was able to step between us before she got her hands around my throat!!
I feel so blessed to have found this site!! I appreciate all of you here that are sharing your stories. (Yikes, I thought it was my dear husband’s ExW that I was learning about here, I had no idea that I would be reading about my own mother here too)
I am reading, and learning so much here… the road to feeling good about myself has been a long an arduous journey… I feel as if I still have a long way to go.