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.
toogoodtobetrue, you are so right in that it is incredible that there are so many people with shared experiences on here. The unconscionable lies – both huge and ones for no reason – were less than pleasant to experience.
It’s funny – my ex-path has now even changed his name with his new girlfriend (his name is Charlton and he’s only now started calling himself Alex since December – I left him after Thanksgiving after visiting our wedding venue for the 3rd time). You can read earlier in the thread about how insane his lies extended and the depth of his craziness.
Just happy to walk out unscathed and having left him as soon as I discovered everything about him was fake (age, country of birth, education, houses/cars, wealth (debt), has children he pretended were his niece/nephew of fake dead brother, his “sister” was really a lover and another fake sibling, fakes a British accent even though never lived there). CRAZY
Thank my lucky stars every day that I escaped that mess. Go for no contact, not worth your energy to hear him out. Mine tried getting me back in Dec – NO WAY.
Stargazer, so well stated. I had no idea these kinds of people existed – the lies – and I’m glad I got in, got out, and moved on too. You’re right about the lessons learned, especially about the love bombing and mirroring my interests. And the crazy stories that are beyond ridiculous (mine pretended to be a child prodigy that moved to the states from Brazil on his own at the age of 13 – he was really born in Oakland CA and lived there his whole life). I loved the way you articulated the experience – so similar to how I reflect on it too. 🙂
Foolme2wice,
I went on fb and blocked the most recent girl he cheated with, then I blocked all the rest of them too..and I blocked a “friend” of his who I thought might let him see my page…these were also all pages that I used to “stalk.” Not that I think that these people are all looking at me…but I think it will break my habit of just typing their names in the search bar “just to look” real quick. Soo.. if you do fb stalk her and see her in the default pic with him…it is just going to upset you and the image will be frozen in your mind forever. I know this bc I have several pictures frozen in my mind…along with the caption from one girl about how she thanked God for meeting him and thanked him for such an amazing day…it was complete with sweetie and xoxoxo. She had even created a new album just for the two of them even though it only had that one pic in it. I found that picture on a day that he and I had plans and he had blown me off. Yeah..you will have caught him in a lie..but you already know he is lying. You are NC so you aren’t going to call him out on it…so…maybe you could try to stop doing that? I had to force myself to stop and I really think the blocking will help..they can’t see me..I can’t see them. Before I would tell myself that I was not going to look but my fingers would just type the names in the search bar and it was almost like I could not help it. addicted obviously. but…now that they are blocked…I would actually have to go in and unblock them first and it makes me think..”do I really want to do this?’ nope.
I think the reason it took me so long (a year) to recover from that relationship is that I ended up turning him in to the army, as many of you know. That process took about 6 months and kept him alive in my mind (and scared and angry) for the entire time. If he had just blown out of my life and the reptile site on the same wind he blew in on, I think I could have moved on a little more quickly. But, like all sociopaths, he liked to play games. He played with me by reappearing on the site a year later and pretending he was doing great and had bought a bunch of new snakes. It was all a lie and most likely for my benefit. He shouldn’t have been “doing great” because he was under investigation for fraud and adultery. He was actually found guilty. I don’t know if he had already been charged or if he was about to be. What a waste of a year of my life having to help the army prosecute a psychopath. Are there not more constructive uses for someone’s time? They are just so draining and time-consuming to deal with. They rarely ever completely get what they deserve. But we can’t kill them. All we can do is let go and move on, knowing full well that they will proceed to their next victim and cause more destruction. This is the way the world is unfortunately.
Educated professional, I will never forget the look in my pet sitter’s eyes at the end of the 2-1/2 months. I was in hell trying to understand what was going on with this man who was only recently talking about marriage with me. I told her the story (like I’d told several people, including a therapist). I had not yet gotten to the bottom of his lies, and I was confused. I believed his strange behaviors were due to his head injury.
Her eyes got really big. Then she started blinking them. I could see her getting really agitated. She looked like she was blinking back anger. She stated that her ex-husband was just like that, and that I need to go to the computer RIGHT NOW and google “seductive sociopath”. When I did, I found LF and the rest is history.
I had triggered her really badly. I still had a friend contact him for a week or two and report back to me, just to try to understand what was going on with him. I couldn’t do it myself – I was too upset. This triggered my pet sitter even further. She said she couldn’t have anything to do with me while I was in contact with a sociopath. She told me I was sick and needed help, etc., but that she couldn’t be in my life. I ended up feeling pretty offended by her determination of my character, since we really didn’t know each other that well, barring our love of animals and this experience which I confided in her.
She showed me the 12-step bible. Apparently, she was a recovering alcoholic. She believed I needed to be in a 12-step program and following the guidelines. I really felt prostheletized (sp). I have nothing against 12-step programs. I know people who are helped by them. But they are not for me. I really was just trying to understand what a sociopath was and what had happened to me. I was going through the very predictable stages of recovery. I didn’t need the added burden of her judgment of my character.
So it was a strange and bittersweet period of revelation. I lost my pet sitter over it. She was a great pet sitter and loved my snakes. And I became even further alienated from the 12-step crowd, having now had one more negative experience with one of them.
Dear Stargazer,
This woman may have shown you a 12-step Bible and she may have said she was a recovering alcoholic, but She is NOT/WAS NOT in a healthy recovery, 12-step or otherwise for telling you that she could not be in contact with you if you were trying to break free from a sociopath.
Her “judgment” of your character was NOT legitimate judgment (see my article published today about “it’s okay to be judgmental” she was mind reading, and projecting her OWN PROBLEMS ON TO YOU so trying to run away from her own problems by running away from you. I wouldn’t leave any pet, even my “pet” rattle snake (and you know what I do with rattle snakes) with her—-but don’t blame it on the 12 step program, it is just like any other belief system from the catholic church on down, there are S-PATHS in the “fold” of all of them. Boy Scouts are a great organization, but Charles “Jackie” Walls III was one of the single worst serial rapists of little boys that has ever been convicted–over 1500 victims. BSA is still a good organization. At least they didnt’ try to cover it up llike the catholic church apparently does/did on a regular basis.
Stargazer,
I wondered myself why your petsitter felt the need to run away from you like that…If people start telling me about a boyfriend or husband that sounds like all of these people that we blog about everyday…I try to help them and recommend this website and tell them what I know…even though I just started my no contact again…I can still give the advice even though I didn’t always take it myself. I think that was odd for her to act that way.
Oxy,
I could see that this woman had her own issues and I had triggered them, and she had never worked through her issues with her exspath. Fortunately, I have enough healing myself not to take this on, too. It was just the last thing I needed. I was hurting so much, and she was one of the few people I reached out to. I have nothing against 12-step programs. I have met a few people who are working the steps very earnestly. But I’ve met more who are very unhealthy.
Ironically, though, that woman told me what a sociopath was and ultimately was responsible for me finding lovefraud.
Me too, mending. I could see as soon as I started to tell that woman the story that she had been triggered. I could see it in her eyes and the way she kept blinking, as if blinking back her rage. Her issues were not my responsibility.
Star,
I have a bit of an issue with the 12-step program too. I guess it’s because so many that I have been acquainted with have just been “playing the system”. I guess they were probably spaths too, now that I think about it.