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.
Candy, I dated a guy that was “bad news” years ago and one of my older and wiser friends knew he was bad, when I found out I ran to this friend and I said “Oh, I found out XYZ” and he said “I knew” and I said “why didn’t you tell me!!!???” and he smiled and said, “Would you have believed me?” and I knew he was RIGHT I would not have. The funny thing is that I HAVE BEEN WARNED about others and NOT LISTENED. I have also warned others, and been dumbfounded when they would NOT LISTEN. So, we don’t always learn from our mistakes—at least I don’t! LOL Takes me a WHILE to catch on, but I’m learning! LOL (((hugs)))
Ox – Right on! What are we like?!
I think sometimes we must act like a lightbulb to moths (spaths) cos they are attracted to us. But when we turn off the switch (NC) they flounder and move on. But if we give them even a little flicker of light they head straight back until the bulb is extinguished for good.
Hey…you remember the guy at the Club? Well he danced with me Saturday and chatted a bit about his farm – that was it. Oh yeah and when Pretty Woman came on he passed me and mouthed ‘pretty woman’.
No big deal and I’m not reading too much into it, but it made me FEEL like a million dollars. I’m very cautious and spath radar is working overtime. Don’t think I’m ready for a relationship yet but it’s good to know I still ‘have it’. LMAO
Dear Candy,
Well, gosh darn! Quit puttin’ yerself down woman!! BOINK!!!! And hey, there is nothing wrong with a friendship…..and ALL good relationships should start with a friendship!!!!
Sounds good to me and just because he’s interested in you doesn’t mean he is a P either, so just RELAX and enjoy getting to know him until and if you see a red flag, then bye-bye BOZO! LOL
That yo-yo that I went out with a couple of times, before I found out how irresponsible he was, made me feel good too…heck it even made me feel good because he came back here the other day….4 months AFTER he got married! LOL Showed me a couple of things, number 1 is that I WAS RIGHT, he wasn’t worth another date, and number 2, I WAS RIGHT, he wasn’t worth another date! LOL
It was a sort of TINY RED FLAG that I tossed him over, nothing that a lot of people would even notice, but I SAW IT and I HONORED IT….and I’m proud of myself for both seeing it and honoring it, and kicking his sorry arse to the curb.
We need to learn from our experiences, and I haven’t always done that, and I intend to rectify that NOW. I will learn from my experiences, and I will honor those red flags of dishonesty when I see them by turning and RUNNING the other direction! (((hugs)))
Sky and Oxy – I don’t think your opinions conflict at all. I just keep repeating to myself….NO CONTACT, NO CONTACT, NO CONTACT. I wish I had a pair of red glittery slippers that I could tap together to make it all go away!! 🙂 But for now those 2 words (NC) are what I am living by!!!
Eden – I am still in the beginning phases of healing, but the humiliation is definitely a normal feeling, as far as I can tell. And true friends and family that will hear you out, as to your whole situation will understand and help that feeling to go away.
Candy – I am working on shutting off that light bulb!! I love that analogy!!!!!
Ox – thanks. Ouch! That boink hurt! Looks like you made the right choice with ‘your’ guy. (((((laughing)))))) about the ‘I was right’.
Guess I was taken aback by the lack of love-bombing! I will keep the spath forcefield up for a while yet.
Toogood – yep, take the bulb out until he’s moved on.
Dear Candy,
Yea, the “spath force field”—-the “ASSHOLE-FREE ZONE” one of my husband’s former employees called our farm the Asshole free zone and had a joke that the cattle guard was a “force field” that zapped folks back on to the road….funny thing was, his son was the FIRST person who got “zapped” and told NEVER to come back and he and his wife were the last people! LOL (well actually, I guess they were the next to the last people!)
But you know, I am just so in-tolerant of arseholes now that I just don’t mess with them or mince much in the way of words. Why bother?
Dear toogood2betrue:
Ignore his pitiful voice messages and if it persists, block him and change your phone number. It is a power play. My spath, after he discarded me, sent me a creepy email where he tells me he “will always love me though.” They all say this. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a way to play with your feelings and hook you back in.
Thank you Oxy,
what you relayed to me really helped. I was able to read your reply before I went into my meeting (just no time to respond). I am aware of what you said, and agree 100%. It is just really beginning to affect me, this humiliation.
Thank you, Candy, as well for your input. The more I hear, the more it helps.
I wonder why the Humiliation aspect of this is just now hitting me so hard. Do you think it could be because the layers of crap are washing away, therefore other feelings are becoming more exposed/apparent? It is interesting. I don’t like it. The lack of control over it is most difficult.
Thank you, both!
E
Dear Eden,
Yea that might be it, really. The thing is sort of like “peeling an onion” there are so MANY layers of it all and you dig down through one layer, only to find another one that stinks just as bad! LOL
Google “Elizabeth Kubler-Ross” she did research on grieving and the grief process and what we experience IS GRIEF. It is dealing with LOSS–loss of something that was important to us. Grief doesn’t go 1-2-3-4-5 it goes 1-3-2-1-4-5-1-4-3-2 and up and down, so learn about grief, and processing loss and resolution until we get to ACCEPTANCE and then you’ll get there, then back slide again, and then get there AGAIN and back slide again, but eventually you will get there and STAY THERE with the resolution of the grief. I promise you that you won’t always feel this way. (((hugs)))
Eden,
you were talking about wanting to warn your old boss about the spath but not being sure how best to do it. It seems like those two things coincided.
I was unsure how to best answer so I looked up the word humilation and found a great link. http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/humiliation.htm
It says everything better than I could and it amazed me that everything it says relates to spaths and how they think, what they do and how they make us feel. It reminded me of the book “Why is it always about you? The seven deadly sins of narcissism”. In that book, Sandy Hotchkiss says that narcissism is rooted in shame and envy. Spaths are filled with shame about who they are deep down so they try to slime us with that feeling by behaving shamelessly themselves.
The link differentiates humiliation from shame by saying that they are the same except that the person feeling the humiliation believes that they don’t deserve it and have been unjustly humiliated, while the shamed person believes that they do deserve it.
In your case, I think you are feeling powerless to prevent the spath from continuing his spathicity because you don’t know how it will be received or if you will be believed. Furthermore, it’s possible that people won’t care because they will think your personal lives are your own business, they don’t GET that there is a great evil in the office. That feeling of powerlessness, I think is creating your feeling of being humiliated.
The link has some good points to consider for dealing with those feelings.
In my own case, when i left the spath, I recalled somethings he talked me into doing “to prove you love me” which were sexual and demeaning but i didn’t mind doing it to make him feel better about himself. Now I think he video taped them. I decided i was not going to feel humiliated because I did everything I did out of the goodness of my heart and my love for him. I even told my parents about it so that they wouldn’t be shocked if he disclosed the tapes. I didn’t do anything wrong because my heart was pure though my actions weren’t. I refuse to feel shame or powerlessness or even humiliation. In fact, when I spoke with him on the phone right after I left, he was trying to dig into my hurt so he could revel in it. He asked me what i was angry about. I said, “I’m NOT angry, spath. You didn’t do anything to me compared to what you have done TO YOURSELF!” He had nothing to say because he knew it was true. He has destroyed his own soul. That is really shameful.
Hope this helps
(((hugs))) Sky