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 Hope2heal,
The thing is it is NOT just the ex wives or husbands that cause the “love fraud” but in EVERY relation-shit of every kind.
Every person who is a love fraud husband/wife also has parents and children and siblings and business partners and so on…each psychopath has a range of relationshits that they ruin. People whose lives they touch like a poison plant. Leaving devastation in their wake as they move through life.
Growing up in a “dysfunctional” family sets up a child for thinking that kind of stuff is “normal” and so it is continued on through the generations by training—in my family for MANY GENERATIONS, some more caustic and awful than others, but none loving or what they should have been.
I learned as one poster here (can’t remember who) said “I learned to function in my dys-function” and that is so true.
I’ll be 65 this coming winter but I am just now learning how to live and be at peace with myself…and yes, it is a long arduous journey and I still have a LONG WAY to go, but I am determined to get there step by step, day by day, and mile by mile!
There is so MUCH to learn and that is why I am still here at LF—I learn more every day. Learning is a journey not a destination and I know that may should trite but it is so true. We never ever reach the point that there is not more to learn than we have already learned from the get go. Each new answer brings on 10 new questions! Glad you are here. Keep on learning and growing, and there is peace out there and we don’t have to let the psychopaths destroy it,, we just have to reach out and GRASP IT!
mendingthebrokenpieces –
Good girl. xxx.
You already have the upper hand. Keep going in the right direction (everyone here will point it out for you if you ever feel lost) and you will eventually have a more satisfying “closure” than you could ever hope to achieve by any contact with him.
For my own part, knowing that I had turned off the tap and broken the handle, was enough for me. Once I stopped his supply, it drove him mad trying to find out things about me, creeping around and stalking and watching me, trying anything to provoke me or get me to respond. I never did again – unless it was by police action to call him to account when he got out of hand.
The minute I shut down the supply, his true colours – in all of their awful un-glory – came blazing through and have been dazzling ever since in their insane levels of vitriol, venom and evil. There is no compassion left in me for him anymore; no skerrick of hope that he might “get help and change”; not even any fond memories of what I thought we had had or what I wished might have been….nothing. This state of being makes NO CONTACT easy on me.
When you shut down his supply, his true colours – in all of their awful un-glory – will blaze like this. Undeniable. Incontravertable. Indisputable. Your compassion will ebb – and then disappear. Your past hopes will be replaced with fresh new hopes for your own self. Your fond memories will be the ones you are about to start making from this day forward. Your wishes will be for your own peace of mind, your own calm, your own stillness and your ability to breathe freely again. You will find NO CONTACT becoming easier…until one day, there is no choice about it, no question that it is the only right way.
You will look in the mirror and find yourself there again. And you will smile.
Stay strong – there’s so much more out there waiting for you.
http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2009/09/10/it-wasn%e2%80%99t-you/
Thanks Candy 🙂 I know the road is not going to be smooth..bc I am already feeling rocky…I don’t know if he will try to get through to me again but I am very anxious about it.
Foolme2wice,
So sorry that he is so close by to you and you have to see him drive by and stuff like that :/ Be strong! sheww..I am in another state and it is still so hard even though the reason I am in another state is because i moved away from him! Makes no sense! Yeah..one time when myspace was still “cooler” than fb all of the pics on his myspace with me in them somehow disappeared…just the ones that I was in but he “didn’t know how it happened…had no clue..he didn’t do it and he would take care of it” That was one of his favorite sayings..I’ll take care of it…I would say..well why not right now? He would say..just let me take care of it. I promise. He has killed me over and over again swearing on my life and lying. He has even killed himself over and over swearing on his own life…I have told him that but he told me that his fingers were crossed and if his fingers weren’t crossed his shoelaces are always crossed. Wow. Really?!?! Are we 5? Yeah…let’s not EVER look at their facebooks again. It would just be bad for us. Oh..and yeah…I have never seen fb accidentally “unfriend” somebody…Just a bunch of bs lies. I did have the urge today to unblock him on fb so I could look but I didn’t…but it makes me feel really weird to not know what he is doing…gives me a lot of time now since I had spent so much time before “investigating” and checking up on him. Guess those urges will eventually go away. idk. I have the desire to look at the “girls” fb to see if maybe she has put up a picture of him and her for her default..but if she has..that will only hurt me and make me cry. 🙁 I hope that when she got my message though that she told him to hit the road but I doubt it. Oh well.
There is a sub place around where I live and when you go in…it has a big permanent sign on the wall that says “free subs tomorrow”…then you go in the next day and the sign still says “free subs tomorrow.” That sign reminds me of him. It is just unbelieveable..I don’t know how they can sit there and lie about things that we know are obvious lies but still manage to convince us to believe them.
My spath is the same way about his image..wants everyone to think he is this nice guy who was always the one meeting all the “wack jobs.” Sooo…he gets really really livid when I expose him for what he really is to his family or other people. I have had to show text messages and emails and everything else just to prove to people that I was not the crazy one.
Lesson Learned,
Thank you for everything…I was a real mess when I started posting on here again and you really helped me. I am nowhere near cured of my “addiction” but I can only hope it gets easier as more and more days pass by with NC. I almost feel like I am holding my breath until I will hear from him next. But then I get this sick sad feeling when I tell myself that I will never be able to speak with him again or tell him about my day or laugh with him. Like he has died. He was bad for me but drugs are bad for people and people get addicted to drugs so…My psychologist is basically talking to me like I was a drug addict.
Stargazer, I guess they all lie about that kind of stuff…ridiculous! My spath had even lied to me about dog food once. EVERYTHING. Once time he tried to yell at me and tell me that I had used all the hot water in the shower…so I opened the door and the bathroom was steamed up…then I turned on the sink and the water was hot in there…I didn’t even bother arguing bc it was so dumb..he tried to tell me that the water from the sink and shower came from 2 diff. hot water tanks. I guess he was trying to make me feel bad? idk..but he even lied just to tell stupid lies just for the hell of it..even when he wasn’t trying to talk himself out of something.
KatyDid, Thank you for your kind words 🙂
Aussie Girl, I sure hope that same thing happens for me and that NC will someday be easy on me bc I know it has to be like this but it is so hard. I feel like something just isn’t right and I can’t explain it but I am hoping it will get easier. I keep getting this weird feeling like he is just away on vacation or something and that we will talk again…and I feel like I am waiting for that…like I keep telling myself ok..I only have to do this a little longer. I know I have to stay NC and I am going to…but I think that this “addiction” has got to be the absolute hardest challenge I have ever faced and I am not kidding. My own mind plays tricks on me now.
Dear Mending,
Congratulations on staying NC! I know it is HARD, but it is WORTH IT as well! Hang in there, you will get there eventually. It is sort of like child birth, we have to push through the pain! ((hugs)))
Mending…Lies? Phew! I could write a book about his lies. Big ones, little ones. An example of a big one was to tell me he was a lorry driver (mirrored my late husband) when I rang the firm they had not heard of him! When i confronted him he shouted how dare I ring the company! WTF Example of a small lie….said he’d brushed his teeth and when I questioned him (cos his brush was dry and still in the same place) He huffed and puffed and went on about me checking up on him! Big lie…told me he was single when he had been living with someone for 10 years. Small lie….said he did not smoke in his new car then one day I passed him on the road and there he was driving and puffing his head off. The lies were never ending.
What you are feeling now is ‘normal’ trust me it will pass eventually but it takes time. Be patient, keep reading. I read for 2 weeks solid day and night after I kicked him out, it helps.
Candy…geez..yep. When you catch them..it is always, “how dare you do that! What right do you have to call “insert name or company here” I am sick of you contacting everybody. Enough. ”
It would all get turned on me for contacting whoever and he would just flip everything on me and instead of him understanding that I was angry at him for lying and admit he lied or understanding that I had a good reason to check up on him b/c he was in fact lying…it was all about…How dare I do what I did. Sometimes…it would get so bad that I caught him lying but I would be the one that ended up apologizing and begging him not to leave after he was done with his manipulation routine. I have never seen him get more angry than when I would catch him and expose him in his lies to other people. Like a madman..screaming so loud, spit flying, could barely understand him. Never thought I would see the “calm, sensitive, funny, charming” guy that had met act like that. It was scary…it was even scary when I would hear him do it on the phone. He would sound absolutely insane.
hmpf. yours lied about brushing his teeth even. They are really idiots when it comes to that sort of stuff. Yours lied about teeth brushing…mine lied about hot water…and washing his hands..dog food…about not being able to come see me for fear that he would hydroplane, when it was barely raining, always told me he ordered gifts for me but never showed up with anything…oh just the dumbest stuff.
Wonder why I can’t see any of the comments I posted up here before?
toogood,
how long you endure this depends on so many things: whether he finds new supply; how addicted he is to your supply etc…
You can speed it up by being extra boring and NC as much as you possibly can without pissing him off. Never give him anything he requests. I actually talked to mine when I left him, but only to give him the opportunity to manipulate me and FAIL repeatedly. This was like reverse training because for 25 years he had gotten used to me jumping at his every wish and command. So when he talked to me and told me I HAD to answer the phone at a certain time, I would NOT do it. I made him put money in my father’s public parking lot box, (several hundred at a time), then I would refrain from going to get it for days at a time. I knew he’d be watching the box and would feel satisfied that he could manipulated me with money, so I did the opposite of what he expected. When he had the cops call me and demand I turn myself in to prove that he hadn’t killed me, (as he SUPPOSEDLY confessed to the crazy husband stealing slut next door), I wouldn’t talk to them, much less go driving 80 miles to see them. He thought that if I didn’t react to him, I would at least react to the cops (whom were all on his side and colluding with him for years to harrass me) Fuck that shit. Every time he thought he had set up a new ploy and that he was reeling me in, I cut him off at the last minute. It must’ve hurt like HELL. 😛 🙂
With phone calls, he would pity ploy or rage and I would not react – in fact I would sing and laugh when I answered the phone. I had this You Tube video ready to go when the phone rang:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5TNK-TvIcI
it’s a song about a poor narcissist who lost his supply!! Not kidding, I love that song!
As soon as he called, I would launch the song and sing along. LOL.
It took several months but the calls got fewer and farther apart as well as the emails. He just had to be retrained to accept that attempting to contact me would be futile and unsatisfactory supply. 🙂
To everyone,
It is unbelievable how many people share this experience! I had no idea. I thought maybe I was making more out of the lies than I needed to, but my gosh, I could also write a book about all of the dumb lies as well as major lies, and I was only with this guy for 6 months!! When I confronted him about lying about where he lived, he yelled “we’re not married!!” WTF does THAT have to do with lying!!! It is so helpful to read of all of your experiences. I am taking Dr. Ox’s and skylars advice. I’m laying low. AFter multiple text messages last night, which I ignored, he texted this morning asking if he could call me to ask me a “very important question”. I simply said “I’m sorry, but I am not ready to talk to you yet”. And I haven’t heard from him since. So I am hoping the little bit of communication quickly turns to NO communication, because I am so ready to move on. Thank you to all of you for helping me to see this reality much more quickly than I may have otherwise. I am convinced I could have gotten stuck in the cycle of him BS’ing his way back into my weak heart. But I am so done!!!