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.
I actually found myself feeling a little jealous of the people who got the “charade” if only “for a while.”
I must have some kind of karma that changes the act in a few days.
I’m curious today about interactions with people who seem to be kind of on the borderline between reasonable person and sociopath. It’s easy to see exactly where things went off the rails, and how, on social networking sites like Facebook, or in written communications like e-mail. (For instance, I recently went through some old e-mails and felt the chill of an old “friend” who grew fangs as I watched it all on instant replay, slow-mo . . . .)
One of the things I’ve noticed is a kind of gaslighting where they change the history of the conversation while it’s ongoing. Like they’ll say, “I never said that,” when clearly, if you go back a few posts or e-mails, they definitely said that. Well . . . if you really mince words, you might see that you didn’t read it closely enough, “interpreted” them wrong — maybe. So you apologize. Why not? If they’re claiming they didn’t say it, it’s OK now, right?
If they’re good at this game, they’ll be apologizing all the time, too. For every little thing. Such a nice person!
Eventually, though, you start to notice a pattern, and you bring it up to them. That’s when things get interesting.
First they try to cover their tracks with yours, saying you were this or that unreasonable. Really?
But what totally freaks me out is when they delete their previous posts (can’t do this with e-mail, but it’s a lot of fun on Facebook) and then call it a gentleman’s move. “I’ve decided to delete all my posts because so-and-so got me wrong and I never meant to cause a disruption. Please pardon the indiscretion.” They never meant to start an “argument,” and for the life of them they can’t figure out what you’re all worked up about.
So there you are, standing there alone, arguing with the walls. LOL.
If they’re really good at this, they’ll follow up with a very politely worded private message saying, by the way, why did you get so personal, or angry, or abusive? They were only trying to help, or ask, or be a nice guy.
I have a very quick response to this. How about “up yours” for starters? The language goes downhill from there. . . .
It all conjures up images of some 18th-century fop slapping someone with a white glove. So polite. So refined. Such crap-in-a-can, all tied up in a pink bow.
The Internet surely didn’t invent this. It just made it easier to see. Probably happens all the time in the “real world.”
sistersister,
I can relate. I had that happen to me where a friend emailed me some words then denied having said it. When I quoted (via cut and paste) what they had said, back to them, they just pretended not to have said it and ignored the quote.
WTF?
They didn’t even bother telling me I had misunderstood, they simply denied having typed it. It made my head spin.
Chel1221:
I remember one of my early spaths chasing me through the streets with a huge boning knife. I ran right to the donut shop….you know there is always a cop if you need one, in a donut shop. lol. He stopped dead in his tracks, turned on a dime and made a bee-line back to our apartment. Two Highway cops chasing him. He broke a window and climbed to the roof…screaming he was going to jump. I was ready to make any deal to save his life, pleading with him, the police, God. Don’t jump. Of course he didn’t jump. Can you tell it was before I got my degree in Spathology here at LF? Today I would have turned around and walked and not looked back.
LOL. Standing on that ledge, gonna jump. I like to say, “Y’all can just jump.” Honestly, the world would be a better place.
My latest FB spath told me yesterday that he just couldn’t “engage” with what I was saying and this was an “old debate” he was tired of going over again and again. No kidding, I was telling him to stop going there — he objected to THAT. Just no coordinates, no map of reality because he lives in unreality.
The strangest part is, they can make you believe it.
They don’t know why, I suspect, but they unconsciously feel uncomfortable with what they said and want to erase it. And then find an excuse for why they erased it. Oh yes — the moral high ground. They’re taking the moral high ground.
Strange, huh, how some people can flip in and out of reasonable/psycho so quickly and seamlessly? You start to question what you saw.
I agree with Chel1221. Very well put.
People need validation, because what they’ve been through makes them question their grasp on reality. Did they really see what they saw? Or are they overdramatizing things?
Sometimes we need a crowd of people around us to put it to a vote before we’ll believe it.
I confess to still feeling very guilty about my sister, as if I was the one who abandoned her. She had cancer recently, and surgery, and I didn’t even call her. I have to keep remembering that she didn’t call me when I had cancer.
Blue Eyes sounds like he is most in need of a supportive group of people. I hope he has it in New York, where he presumably lives. I wonder if there are support groups for that among LGBTs, not to ghettoize people but it seems to me there are special issues around that and a lot of unhealthy crowds to hang out with as the default option. A kind of “normal” that’s populated by people who’ve been through a lot of pain and not dealt with it yet. Like for instance that culture of youth his ex was so lost in.
Even though I’m straight, I think you can guess why I’ve been to the LGBT Center in the Village a few times. I’ve noticed there are some programs there, and some of them look pretty good.
People change over time….we do, they do….(we being the universal “we” and “they” being the universal “they.) Some people get better some get worse.
In January I ended a relationship with a woman who has been my best friend for 30+ years….she is depressed, in a horrible marriage with a verbally abusive drunk, and her marriage isn’t going to get any better and she has chosen to “pretend all is well” when it surely isn’t! But, at the same time, in her depression and misery, she chose to attack me because I am NOT miserable. Her husband also attacked me. I left their home and have not heard from either of them since then and do not expect to. However, I DO CHERISH the 30 years of GOOD times we had, I am sorry that they ended, but “that’s life.”
18 months ago I severed the relationship with my oldest biological son C because he lied to me and broke an agreement we had about the circumstances of him living under my roof (for his benefit not mine)
It HURT REALLY BADLY when I severed the relationship with him, I didn’t see him at all for over a year and then have had VERY limited contact with him because I MUST in order for us to work together to keep his brother in prison and to keep my egg donor from funneling money to my P son which will help him to find and harm us both. I WAILED for weeks over the loss of my fantasy relationship with my son C….I had restored my trust in him and was totally BONKERED when he broke that trust for the “100th” time. However, I have healed from that and am at a point now where I can be around him on a lmited basis and not get my Blood pressure up. In fact, when my husband’s grandkids came for a visit (I hadn’t even told him they were coming) but they wanted to see him, so I invited him over for dinner and all of us went to the Scout Camp to see my son D.
I did “just fine” with the limited contact….no problem at all. With my GF it was much easier when I saw that there was a major problem with how she treated me NOW and that there wasn’t a thing I could do about it to rectify the situation. It is what it I. Period. It wasn’t the one lie he told me that was the deal breaker, it was the 100 lies he had told BEFORE that. I love him, but I no longer trust him. I will never trust him again. I can’t trust him because he has BETRAYED me too many times and I have RESTORED TRUST only to have it broken repeatedly and PAINFULLY.
Learning to SET BOUNDARIES and to be prepared to sever the relationship if and when those boundaries are BROKEN—-to expect and demand that people treat you with RESPECT and with HONESTY–is not “unreasonable.”
With my friend, During the time I was at her house, she was “snarky” the entire time, then when she and her husband both were RUDE to me, and I realized that it wasn’t going to change, I left. That was the end of it all. I didn’t need that drama and that pain in my life. While I realize she is NOT a psychopath, and I do also realize she is in pain herself, I cannot take responsibility for her pain, or her dysfunction, or her choice to live with a man that verbally abuses her, I cannot and will not allow her to take her anger, pain and humiliation out on me. Our friendship changed over the years for the worse, but everyone changes. There was a time when I would have “sucked it up” and put up with the pain from her “snarky” remarks and her hateful words…but I can’t do that any longer.
I have changed. She has changed. That’s okay, and I don’t hate her, and I can still cherish the relationship we HAD in the past. The memories of it are good. I am no longer grieving though over what “could have been if she had been different, or if I had been different.” What IS, IS.
Sure we all need support, and we all need friends, but I have set my STANDARDS higher now—that is a big change for me. My son has not changed, matured or become more honest, and I can’t accept anything less. It isn’t worth it to me.
Everything in life has a PRICE. Either in emotional coin or coin of the realm. I am not willing to pay a high price in emotional pain in order to have a “relation-SHIT” with someone who is dishonest and not trustworthy.
ps. Sister, those people who “flip” in the blink of an eye, I think were that “way” before they “flipped”—we just didn’t see it.
LOL. My little FB tormentor decided that my denying that I was getting all personal and not staying on topic, that the topic at hand WAS his need to ask this same question over and over again even though I’d answer it, that this was . . . . flinging “personal insults” again. So he’s decided to take the moral high ground (again) and not talk to me.
Are these people for real? Do they even hear themselves talk? And why do they bother for two seconds to try to reform someone who supposedly flings personal insults around? Shouldn’t they be going NO CONTACT on me and joining Lovefraud to talk about it? I’m obviously so toxic!
Mostly, while I’m not taking the blame for the surreal conversations this guy always seems to steer — starring himself as the always-reasonable hero — I’m sending out some prayers to the universe about my propensity to attract people like this into my life. I’m going to rewrite the plot of my internal “novel” to kill off all these characters . . . maybe introduce a dinosaur to eat them alive.
Yeah, Oxy, the reason they can just duck into a phone booth and presto, become Superman or Clark Kent in the blink of an eye is because they’re already wearing the other costume under their clothes.