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.
Duped: I will think long and hard about the injunction. The biggest issue I have is that I DON’T KNOW HIM like I thought I did….we broke up….i refused to get back together…his brother and exwife called me….two months later I have accepted he is exactly what they said… actions speak louder than words. He had a window of opportunity to reconcile and prove them wrong.
The man I knew..would of gone to therapy…worked it out for himself and us…lovingly supported our relationship. NOT lied about everything.
Interesting note: he did tell his brother, “the best way to handle her is to ignore her…and she will go away” is it possible he is saying..to ignore him and he will go away?
HOW DID I GET HERE? wtfreak????
Chel;
Something I learned here, but do not fully understand, is the “Madonna-Whore” complex. In normal people, emotional and sexual attraction are integrated. In some it is not.
Thus, these people cultivate one partner as a “soulmate” and others for sex. Sociopaths often have other co-morbid conditions, and this certainly seems the case with mine.
So, while mine was courting me as the “proper and reserved” British guy, who was neither flirty nor even talked much about sex, he had this other side I stumbled across online, where he was clearly looking for sexual action.
He posted videos of himself on x-tube. Has interested in porn depicting unsafe and sadomasochistic sex. Has accounts on various adult cam sites.
Yet he was insulted when I merely asked him back to my place on our third date…
How did I learn this? I accidentally came across a profile of his on a relatively mainstream dating site, albeit with a moderate gay clientele. I was there on the recommendation of a friend.
All I needed to do was google this profile name and I learned all the above. So, he either did not care to hide his true nature online very well, or he wanted people he might meet online to learn the truth about him.
And, if you saw what I saw and connected the dots, you would also come to the conclusion he is HIV+. Or certainly would ask that question if you met him in person.
Behind blue eyes:
I have heard about the Madonna-Whore complex but up to now hadn’t thought much about it…I am going to do some research.
You’re points have suddenly reminded me of odd situations such as: prior to our dating..he sent me a text message with a picture of his butt. I was shocked by it and debated how to handle it…so I called him and told him he made a mistake because I received a picture of his butt via text. He might want to forward it to the correct party. He was embarrassed. I let it go. Mind you we were not seeing each other as friends or otherwise. I didn’t think about it again as I felt it could of been an honest mistake..as well as…what he was doing and sending to others wasn’t any of my business.
He also use to tell me… he could never truly be himself around his first and second wives. He always felt like they were judging him and I was the first person he could actually relax around.
When we were together..ie.. he was living in MY HOUSE. He watched a lot of porn on his IPHONE. Like every day. The ones where you get a few seconds free and have to buy more. I looked at it with him a couple of times..but after a while..once I saw it ..I was over it…just not my cup of tea. I didn’t really think anything about it at the time. (this is when we had been together a couple of months..which I now know a couple of months equals a couple of years in spath language)
He rushed me thru the relationship. (I also allowed it…thinking I was OVER THINKING and just needed for once to go with the flow) Serious dating after Thanksgiving and engaged in March. (so four months and boom we are engaged)…on top of that he bought me a 16K ring. (who does that? I accepted the ring and didn’t set the date)
He talked about being a swinger and going on-line as the 3rd guy in a couple situation. When I said..not my thing so if that’s what you’re in to…just leave now. He would tell me…not interested in that any more…”you make me want to be the man I have always wanted to be…”
I felt on some level…he was trying to change…from what into what??? I don’t know. I got the impression he wanted desperately to be something else..someone else. Fit into my world etc. I saw something good in him..honest…and hurt… unfortunately, I believe everyone can change if they want to…and I reserved judgement.
I connected the dots and continue to do so…and the picture is regrettable…and painful… I don’t want to believe..but how can I not? I stumbled on this website and found me…and xpath..in everyone else’s stories.
OMG Blue…OMG…How will I ever recover? I felt like someone loved me beyond words…supported me regardless… a love of a life time….and besides that…my self esteem is in the toilet.
I am slightly over weight..have lost 40 lbs in the last year….when we started seeing each other..he told me I was beautiful and didn’t care if I lost weight or not…. then I hear from his brother and sister-inlaw..I was the smallest person he had ever brought around. But for the life of them they couldn’t understand why I would go out with him. I was either a FREAK like him or he was lying to me. (shaking my head)
I felt incredibly comfortable with myself when I was around him. I kept working out and losing weight…(still doing it now)…and terrified I may have just had the last relationship I will ever have. (pathetic…I know)
My father once told me… You can’t blame a snake for acting like a snake..it’s just what they do….
At what point will I truly accept who and what he is…stop second guessing myself and chalk this up to…”it happened..I will learn from it…and move on” ?
BTW-how did you find out his profile name on line?
behind blue eyes (M-W complex)
According to Freudian psychology, this complex often develops when the sufferer is raised by a cold and distant mother. Such a man will often court someone with qualities of his mother, hoping to fulfill a need for intimacy unmet in childhood. Often, the wife begins to be seen as mother to the husband—a “Madonna” figure—and thus not a possible object of sexual attraction. For this reason, in the mind of the sufferer, love and sex cannot be mixed. The man is therefore reluctant to have sexual relations with his wife for, according to his unconscious mind, this would be incest. He will reserve sexuality for “bad” or “dirty” women, and will not develop “normal” feelings of love in these sexual relationships. This introduces a dilemma where a man may feel unable to love any woman who can satisfy him sexually and is unable to be sexually satisfied by any woman whom he can love.
Behind blue eyes..I think this one is more accurate…
There is no one universally used definition of the Madonna/Whore Complex. Usually discussions of this complex revolves around the dichotomy of how some men can view women as two distinct and separate personas, that of saint and sinner, or of mother and whore. The complex can also center around the distinction between sacred love and profane love.
What are the psychodynamics involved when one is unable to become sexually involved with those whom they love and yet are able to became easily aroused with women who are not primary idealized love objects?
Most writers view the the Madonna/Whore Complex as the operation of unconscious dynamics when men view their idealized woman as a non-sexual, sacred love object.
The unconscious fear of incest with the mother is also stressed as a factor of the complex by many psychoanalytic writers. According to Freud, the Oedipus Complex arises in late infancy. He felt it was an inherent stage in the psychological growth of the child. During this time, the boy becomes attached to the mother, the daughter, to the father. Freud believed that the resolution or outgrowth of this attachment is necessary for a normal sexual life. Practically all analytic authors following him stressed the importance of the Oedipus Complex and/or of an over-tenacious psychological hold which the mother has on her son as an important factor in creating the Madonna/Whore complex. Some authors emphasize that this continued fixation by the son on his mother occurs since she was his first love object.
Such fixated sons, some claim, become ardent suitors in adulthood, but when the love object becomes wife and especially mother, unconscious memories of his own abnormally intense relationship with his mother intrude into the relationship. That is when the husband may unconsciously see his wife as his mother and then becomes a reluctant or even impotent lover.
* * *
When one considers the Madonna/Whore Complex from a viewpoint of primal theory, it becomes more reasonable to view the wife, now a mother, triggering in her husband unconscious memories of unmet needs for love from his mother. Rather than having a too close relationship with his mother as an infant he, in fact, was alienated from her. His search for a wife was based on attributes of his mother and having found her, he plays out his early infantile dynamics hoping for the love he had not received as an infant.
Fear of intimacy may develop as a defense against allowing those early hurts to become conscious. In such cases the search for his beloved mother continues through their spousal relationship and is the cause of unrealistic expectations on the part of the husband as he continually but unconsciously searches for his mother in his relationship with his wife.
The act out may continue for a lifetime with resultant mutual recriminations, adultery, divorce and unhappiness to both partners of the marriage. The marriage becomes a battleground as both the husband and the wife unawaredly transfer much of their earlier repressed feelings of hurt, anger and hostility originally directed to their parents, to their spouse.
Thus, both non-sexual and sexual intimacy of the marriage can trigger unconsciousnes memories of that first intimacy, the mother/infant relationship. In order to avoid triggers of such memories, the husband may begin to avoid sex with his spouse. The early infantile trauma may be particularly reactivated when his wife becomes a mother, since it brings into the forefront the repressed memories of his own mother/infant relationship.
It is not that the sexual drive became fixated on the first intimate relationship of his life and that he cannot relinquish the erotic attachment from his mother to his wife, but rather that originally the husband’s earlier need for love and security as an infant were not met and the dynamics of that early frustrated relationship seeps into all subsequent relationships, but sometimes especially with his intimate spousal relationship.
Intimacy in the present triggers the repressed memory of the hurt and deprivation of the past. Sexual addiction can be used as an act out — a way for avoiding anxieties of the repressed feelings, especially since such addictions are characterized by a fear of intimacy — a hallmark of the sexual addict.
A fear of intimacy can even be traced back to one’s birth. If our birth was traumatic and involved feelings of dying in the birth canal, in some cases, we may have an unconscious association of the holding of our lover with the early memories of the painful “touch” of birth. The deeper the feeling of intimacy and attraction the more likely these feelings of wanting to leave may be triggered in those whose early uterine development was painful. Our first nine months of life was a close and intimate contact with our mother.
If that first maternal “touch” during our intrauterine development was painful it can become compounded by memories of fetal death-like memories of suffocation, pressure and nearly dying during actual birth. The holding and touch between lovers can trigger these unconscious needs to get away from the pain being triggered by intimate emotional and physical relationships.
The problem is not the result of the incest barrier, but rather the seeping into consciousness of early frustrated needs, or birth traumas, which renders the husband uninterested and perhaps even impotent. Such men cannot view their wives as sex objects because if they do it would bring up buried feelings of their birth and infantile relationships with their mother. So, in a sense, there is a fixation on the mother by those who are stuck in the dynamics of the madonna/whore complex, but not in the way interpreted in psychoanalytic psychology.
Birth trauma compounds the neediness of the new-born and thus become an important factor in these dynamics. Pre- and peri-natal trauma reinforces, directs, and intensifies this drama — the lifeblood of soap operas, and of life — inherent in the Madonna/Whore Complex.
____________________
Chel;
In my situation, the first may be more correct and since its a gay relationship, may pertain more to the father side. I know my x-spath was abandoned by his father and was raised by his mother and older sister, who oddly still refers to him as her “baby brother.” All his online profiles end in “boy” or “lad” and he dresses mainly with American Eagle Outfitters, which is odd for a late 30s male but particularly popular with British teens. TBH, no American gay would be caught dead wearing that stuff.
So, he has this immaturity I did not at all see in him, save for his attire. I believe he might have viewed me as the big brother or father figure he never had. Not that I was much older, but I was physically much bigger than him.
But its odd that he was so “honest” online…
Need help!!!!
Hi guys,
I really need some direction. My ex-spath’s daughter whom I raised for 5 1/2 years has been visiting with me for the past two days. Her mother and I get along great and she allows her daughter to continue to be apart of my life. Her father (ex-spath) lives out of town 90 % of the time so he is not around to stop her from seeing me.
Here is my question:
What do I do? I love her dearly and I have always told her that I will never desert her. When her father and I broke up she ask me if I was going to replace her. Of course my response was, I could never replace her because she is not replaceable. She thinks of me as her step-mother. The problem is, is now her father has the new prey around her and from what I know he has his new prey watching her when she is with him. In fact, this poor new prey has quit her job, she has two small kids, is going through a difficult divorce and my ex-spath now takes care of this lady. My step-daughter shared with me that she thinks daddy’s new girlfriend is very sweet, and that she feels sorry for her because she does not have much help or support. REDFLAG, my ex-spath already has this poor lady under his web. I KNOW he convinced her to quit her job because he did the same to me. Now his daughter is feeling sorry for this lady.
How do I help my step-daughter? I see how her father is and know what he is doing to this new prey, and his sweet little daughter who has a kind heart is now getting emotionally involved. I have made it a point with to NOT discuss her father with her when she visits with me, but she does bring up stuff about him when we are together. I try and just shut the conversation down quitely with responses such as, thats good sweetie, or sounds like you really like this girl. But, I so know what is happening and it KILLS me that I cannot participate in supporting her emotionally.
Funny thing is, is her father told everyone I was a danger to his daughter when we broke up, but I was not a danger when we were together and I was raising her for 5 1/2 years while he went off to work out of town. Anyways, he called his daughter yesterday when she was with me and she told him she was with me. After she hung up with him I ask her if her dad wsas mad that she was with me and she said no he knows I still hang out with you. BUT he told her when your with her (me) make sure you steal back everything she (me) took from us. I NEVER TOOK ANYTHING from him. In fact, he took tons from me. I was sooooo pissed off when she told me what he said that I finally stood up and told her daughter what I thought and know about her father. I used caution with my words, but I started the conversation with:
Do you believe what your dad saids about me? Her response “No”
Do you think I stole from your dad? Her response “no”
Do you think its right for your dad to say all those terrible things about me? “her response “no”
Was I a good step-mother to you for the past 5 1/2 years? Her response “yes”
Does she understand why her father and I are not together anymore? Her resonse was silence. So I know she knows what has happen but its like she is afraid to say it out loud in fear she will hurt her dad.
So I said, you know from what your mother has told you about your father that he lies alot, and he cheats on his spouses? She responded with “I know”, so I just want you to know that I love you and I am sorry that you have to go through this, but I just don’t want you to think what your dad does to people is healthy, its abusive and he hurts people’s lifes with his behavior. I don’t want her to grow up and date a man who treats her poorly. She is obviously afraid of her father because she tries to protect him. When her mother tries to talk to her aboout her father she tells her not to talk about her daddy to her…why is that?
Her mother told her to not get attached to daddy’s new girlfriend because she will be tossed away just like the rest of his relationships. Her daughter just kept telling her mom, ” but I feel sorry for her she has noone to help her”. His poor daughter feels sorry for this girl and I guess she feels that her daddy is helping her so thats good.
Any advise?
Should I detach from his daughter?
I feel horrible to just walk away from her?
She (his daughter) actually spent the night with me lastnight? I was only going to have her for the day and she ask me could she stay with me. What do I do, do I give up on her? I know she is going to visit her dad this next week and she will be around the new prey, and there is nothing I can do to stop it, so what do I do? She is my step-daughter not my birth daughter? Although, I love her like my own.
Help….any advice LF friends????
Thank you!
Behind blue eyes:
fascinated once again. My x-path was exceptionally immature as well. Emotionally stunted. Father basically not emotionally available. Over-bearing Mother who favored his twin and still calls him (xpath) her baby. She is the one he runs to when he is unhappy or fragile. She is an alcoholic and all that entails.
He dressed very youngish…and liked to go to bars…sing kareoke…and frequent concerts…(which wasn’t a big deal but not my interests at all however, I was open to new experiences)
As for your situation…have you ever thought…he hides what he does because he knows it’s wrong and unaceptable to main stream society? The reason I ask..is because I know my x-spath was supposedly very guarded about what he did on his personal time. (now that I said that he might of been lying about that too) wtfreak…
I do know for a fact he only gave a portion of the truth to me..and left out the rest of it which would of caused me to bolt. 1/2 truths…just enough to get the “I don’t get it but I won’t judge look”..instead of the “what the heck…I gotta get away from you stare”.
Sexual addiction from I gather is part of the MO of such personalities. It’s the way they relieve anxiety and their attempt to fill the whole in their souls. An act not an emotional connection. I remember my x-path saying out loud, “I actually have feelings when we are intimate…that has not happened to me before”. I was shocked he would say that..and started crying.
behind blue eyes…
per my therapist…subconsciously we all create situations in which we can resolve an unresolved past experience. It’s like being given an opportunity to “do over”..learn and move on…if we don’t learn whatever we are supposed to learn…we just keep getting opportunities to experience the situation again and again..and again…
Kinda of sucks..I must need to learn something huge.
Chel;
1/2 truths — exactly. All my x-spath mentioned about his past was that when he moved to London, he was “like a kid in a candy shop.” I thought nothing of it and said I was about the same when I moved to NYC…
I had a warning sign when talking about clubs in New York and were he had gone, since him and his friends were on holiday and had gone out before he met me. I asked if they had gone to this one particularly notorious spot. He said no and asked me about it. When I told him that it was one of the few places in New York that still had a back room, he became very curious. I even said to him “you don’t need to go there.” But the way he looked when I told him about that place always stuck in my mind and I am sure he has been there since.
The problem with spaths is that its impossible to understand their motives. Why was he so closed to me about his sexual fetishes and such but so open online? Is he embarrassed to talk about them? He is somewhat shy. But not shy enough to post online videos of himself masturbating…
Interestingly, he was also profiled as “less sexually experienced.”
Personally, I think the 1/2 truths are given hoping that you won’t drill too deep. I did not.
I was also operating under the presumption that when two gay guys date, at some point early on if HIV is an issue, it is discussed…