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 ValleyGirl, congratulations on your 10 weeks NC!!! That is a wonderful start to a LIFE TIME OF NC !!!! A life time of living P-FREE and to being “normal” again.
You are doing really great!!!! Just keep on reading, learning, posting, growing….it gets better!!!! I promise. (((hugs))) and yea, being grateful for the blessings we have is necessary to being the kind of person I think most of us want to be. There are plenty of people in the world who have no clean water, or reliable source of food, who have no warm comfortable place to lay their head, and no chance of finding any of these things in their lifetimes. Even the poorest of people in most western countries have these things and we should be grateful for each of those basic necessities of life. If we have more than the basic air, food, water, shelter, then we are RICH by anyone’s standards!
Ok, so I need some more advice all! Friday after noon was my last contact with ex-spath. I told him to stop calling and texting. He complied until last night. First message he says he’s regretting having me give all the stuff back, blah blah blah…then he simply says good night and that he will always love me, then middle of the night I get one where he is asking me to help push him through this, that we are still friends and he really needs me when he breaks down. I have not responded to this point. Do I totally ignore these messages, go “gray rock” on him, or what??? Thanks for your advice, I know it will be the right advice!
Update…so he started the text rant when I didn’t respond. Saying he can’t believe I am treating him like this, blah blah, blah. I finally texted 1 message back saying that I am at work, and will not jeapordize my job. Said he respects me and has quieted down for now. Is it time to just block this guys number???
Dear 2good2Btrue,
His claim to want all the stuff back was a way to “keep in touch” and sound like he had a reason to. Now that you gave him back his “stuff” he is going to try to use it to keep in touch anyway by saying he wants you to have it back, and pooor him, he is going through such PAIN at the break up…YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO HELP \HIM/ GET THROUGH IT???? LOL ROTFLMAO
Block him, you can already see if you don’t do what HE WANTS (control you) then he will go into a RANT of anger.
Anything nice he says is a LIE, and the rest is the truth…the man is a control freak. BLOCK HIM COMPLETELY. The standard pretty much accepted by everyone (except Sky! 🙂 ) is No Contact. Not only on this blog but by just about every blog/psychologist who knows what they are taking about. No contact frustrates them, but most of the time they eventually quit. If they continue to stalk you or harass you for long, they would have done that no matter what you did.
Read “The Gift of Fear” which is an excellent book about how stalkers (and many if not most psychopaths) think.
Good luck. ((((hugs))))
too good,
any action you take in response to him is a REACTION, which is what he wants. They need to know that they can push a buttton and get a response. I see now that returning his stuff was a mistake, because it was a response to something he said or did. Responding to them is being supply, no matter what the response is.
Of course there are some responses that they like more than others, such as emotional responses , but they’ll take anything (money, legal action, emails)
Think of yourself as a mouse being toyed with by a cat. Play dead.
Oxy, I do understand NC is the simplest way to go if you can do it. Sometimes, we can’t avoid them and there is a need to be prepared wiith specific behaviors that will discourage them from more contact. Being boring is one of those.
Understanding their motivations is important so that we don’t lose sight, in the middle of their drama, of what they REALLY want: power to control. That power to control is such a foreign concept to normal people that we would never imagine it, so we get distracted by their drama. If we consistently take away that power, they will go away.
Sky, I’m gonna have to agree to disagree with you on that statement —there are some that will NEVER GO AWAY as long as they get ANY response (Read the “Gift of Fear”) however seldom it is. Staying NC will at first sometimes make them increase the trying to contact (control) and get a response, but if you are CONSISTENT in no response, the vast majority will go away. Those that don’t go away with NC wouldn’t have gone away no matter what you did to be boring.
Oxy,
I don’t think you are disagreeing with me at all. we are both saying “don’t be responsive”. The only difference is that sometimes you cannot avoid being in physically present so that you are not actually avoiding contact (NC). But even then, it is still possible to be unresponsive. Like a mouse playing dead.
For the first time, I am unable to figure out the most appropriate place to post. I hope I am not changing up the subject here, too much. If there is anyone that can possibly offer me some words of wisdom or advice, I would be most grateful. I am going through a major Humiliation phase. I had not felt this aspect of the healing process, or aftermath, however it started to creep up about 4 or 5 days ago, and has gotten progressively more intense. I have looked for help with this on-line, however there is nothing that I could find that was relatively close. My therapist is away for two weeks, or I would be addressing it with him. If anyone here can be of help to me with this, I would be eternally grateful. I am going into a meeting for the next hour and a half so if anyone does reply to my enquiry and does not receive a response back from me right away, you will know why. I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t feeling desparate.
Thank you so very much!
Much Love, and have a great day,
Eden
Dear Eden,
Sugar I have felt the HUMILIATION AND THE SHAME and I think I know where you are coming from…having “everyone in the world”–and especially YOURSELF—know that this creep hornswaggled you is humiliating. Shame/humiliation/face is that feeling we get when the whole world knows we have been duped, or that we have done something wrong. It is like PUBLIC GUILT=SHAME/HUMILIATION.
But, do did not do anything “wrong”–you are not the one who SHOULD be ashamed/guilty, it is them that should feel ashamed/guilty but they are not going to because they have no conscience.
We also want someone else to validate that “yes, Eden is a good person, a smart person” etc. but you know, we can VALIDATE OURSELVES and we don’t HAVE TO HAVE someone else to agree with us about what we KNOW IS THE TRUTH.
We aren’t perfect, but we are GOOD, and GOOD ENOUGH and that’s what matters.
Back when columbus was the only person in the world who thought the world was round, it didn’t change the shape of the world did it? Truth is truth even if only ONE PERSON believes it.
Our culture says that our “name” and our “reputation” is important and it is, but most important ***MOST IMPORTANT*** is what we think of ourselves. (((hugs)))) Hope your meeting went well. God bless.
Eden – Humiliation, the realisation that we have made a fool of ourselves – NO!! – the realisation that they made fools of us. These feelings are part of healing, they are normal.
After spath left I felt unable to face the world, that everyone would point the finger. However, the opposite was true once they heard my side of the story. I did not want people to feel sorry for me I just wanted them to understand – and they did.
Yesterday I went to see an old friend and his wife. He was a prison chaplain until recently. He said ‘I saw what he was right away’ and I asked why he’d not told me? He just looked at me and I answered my own question with ‘I would not have listened, I was blind’ and he just nodded his head.
How could we, level headed people that we are, have been sucked in? Answer – because we ARE good people and the sort of people that spaths target.
So don’t be too hard on yourself, this feeling of humiliation will pass in time.