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.
Behind Blue Eyes
Yes. I do see the pointless part of trying to understand.
I asked my therapist about this yesterday. She said that she, a trained therapist, can understand the PATHOLOGY, meaning, she can understand OCD or sociopathy or schizoid or whatever, but she can NOT say she understands the unique PERSON because things are on a spectrum, and it’s unique, and one thing bleeds into another.
I’m providing the “because” part – I’m filling in the blanks for what she didn’t say. I’m guessing what she meant.
It was interesting for me.
So I can have an intellectual understanding of the illness, and never quite understand what’s going on inside his head, because there isn’t really a map to understand a unique person’s logic of it. I think.
Superkid
Superkid;
I find the pathology of sociopaths hard to understand because I cannot put myself in their position. For example, why lie and create dramas when a simple “no” would be sufficient.
Why manipulate when some openness would work better?
Lastly, how can they be so internally cold and externally charming?
Hi all, I posted this blog on another story on LF, but I needed to re-blog it again. Wanted to get others opinions and advice!
Reading through your blogs today makes me think about why we waste sooo much energy thinking about our ex-spaths when we know its all negative energy affecting our own energy. When we focus on the Casey Anthony case we are in a sense giving her in my opinion our energy and focus which is just what a spath craves even if it is negative energy. Because remember ,they have no conscience, no heart, no empathy, NO REALITY, so they don’t see it as negative energy ONLY MORE ATTENTION to feed their sick flesh.
What we should be focusing our energy on in our discussions is Caylee and sending her love and light. The poor baby never got a chance to know what love feels like, just like we had to endure with our ex-spaths. She (we) only got to feel the darkness of evil souls that walk this earth. Caylee deserves the attention NOT CASEY!
I am a big fan of Mother Theresa and one of her many quotes I hold dear to my heart is:
I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me.
I understand now what Mother Theresa was stating when she made this statement. She knew that focusing our attention and energy on evil ways will only create and empower more evil. BUT, if we focus our attention on peace we are creating love and light in the world. Isn’t that what Caylee deserves love and light even if its in the afterlight?
There is alot of power in Mother Theresa’s statement. I for one know because my ex-spath is darkness and evil and we waste way to much of our own time and energy engaging on thoughts of those predators who soul rape innocent loving human beings. We should be focusing on relighting and regaining our lifes back, something Caylee will never get to do.
I am only in my 7 month spath free, and slowly starting to wake up and realize with the help of LF friends and the tools provided by this site that the yellow brick road I was walking down with my ex-spath, with the lion (no courage), the tinman (no heart), the scarecrow (no brain, no conscience), and of course the Wizard (a little man behind a curtain, Fraud), was NOT REAL! It was only a dream”.a nightmare dream and I finally woke up!
Its not fair that we continue to waste anymore of our energy to these earth demons. Believe me I DO struggle everyday trying understand it and why I had to be soul raped by my ex-spath, and the fact that he justs moves on with no remorse or empathy, and he still seems to prosper and enjoy life, which sends salt to my already wounded soul. But, by me focusing on the darkness (my ex-spath) he continues to REAP my soul energy which in a sense feeds his darkness.
So when it comes to Casey Ant”.I don’t even want to finish spelling her name she does not deserve it. In fact, the short form of her last name describes her best”an ANT, an insect!
To sweet little CAYLEE, the world sends you LOVE and LIGHT Sweet Angel!
Many huggs to all of my LF friends!!
Chelsea;
While I agree with you 100%, for me it is easier said than done. While I am not as torn as in the past, I still wonder why I devote such negative energy to somebody I intellectually know is not worth it.
Chelsea and Superkid,
I spend all my time contemplating the spaths too. There are a few reasons for this.
One reason is that the spaths don’t operate in a vaccuum. When they say, “because I can”, it usually means “because I can get away with it, because you or society or some other authority, allows me too.” So we are partly in control of how they behave and it’s imperitive that we understand our part in it. The one spath we ran into, is not the only one. They ARE EVERYWHERE. The one spath is just a window into the disorder from which we can learn the red flags and how to stop enabling them. So in large part, we need to learn about them so we can protect ourselves from the next one.
Learning about spaths goes hand in hand with learning about ourselves. When they mirror us and when they attack our vulnerabilities, they are telling us things about ourselves that we won’t have an opportunity to see otherwise. They also tell us alot about our society and why evil exists.
There are so many good reasons to learn about them. Casey Anthony is a perfect example. if the 12 jurors had been LF bloggers, she would have gone down within an hour. None of us would question her guilt or the implications of her pathalogical lying. WE KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE.
Superkid, IMO, there’s nothing wrong with learning about the spath, just make sure you use your intellect and not your emotions when you foray into his world.
My reasons:
1) I feel I never had any closure with the x-spath. I was still in contact about him when I discovered the truth, via various online sources. I was so crushed, I never confronted him with what I found.
2) Since much happened to me after the x-spath, I had way too much time on my hands. I am working to correct this.
3) His subtle pity-play still gets empathy from me.
4) While I have dated guys that were more attractive, more fun, more interesting, I have not dated one who combined all his qualities, especially his age and similar common experiences, albeit not necessarily good one such as a depression history.
Thus, I did not want the younger, more attractive guy who was all hot for me, I wanted the older, “rough around the edges” one, the x-spath.
5) The was a bizarreness to my relationship with the x-spath that is unlike any other. Many WTF moments. I believe I now have an explanation for these, but tbh, only he knows the answer for sure and I am not about to contact him.
I am struggling with wondering why I keep crying over someone I know is not worth my tears. I am two months out of an engagement with a spath. I didn’t find out until one week after we had broken up..who he really was… (his twin brother told me to run for my life) I was and still am devastated by what I now consider the TRUTH about him…based upon his actions since our break-up and the cursory relationship autopsy performed by my friends, therapist and myself. HELP.. this is the first time I have experienced this and want to move past the pain and grieiving..disbelief..and realization of the truth.
Welcome Chel. Stay and learn. You will find out on LF what you have really been dealing with and how you cannot just ‘get over him’. All of us here have experienced similar feelings. Why? because we were spathed. Again, welcome.
Thanks Candy. “just getting over him” is what I am trying to do…and it’s not working. He, on the other hand, has moved on into several other relationships and telling anyone who will listen…horrible lies about me. It’s over..why is he continuing to do such a thing…when everything he is saying is truly about what he did. It’s horrifying…and makes me wonder if he knew what he was doing the whole time to me. Projection is what my therapist called it… I’ve been in therapy prior to the relationship ending and still going…and…in so much pain it’s sometimes hard to breath.
Chel. Yes they tend to have multiple relationships. They usually have several on the go at any one time. The ones, like you and me, are then discarded.
It can take a long time to ‘get over’ them, even then we are left with emotional scars and unanswered questions. It’s hard to get closure.
Telling others that we are crazy is what they do. It makes them look good (puke) It’s also blame shifting. Shifting his lies etc onto you – it’s what they do.
Well done you for getting therapy. You will find a lot of help here. We are from different countries so different people are here at other times.