Every week, a chapter of my book, “Husband, Liar, Sociopath: How He Lied, Why I Fell For It & The Painful Lessons Learned” (available via Amazon.com, just click on the title or book cover) will be published here on Lovefraud. To read prior chapters, please see the links at the bottom of the post.
Chapter 44C: A Second Honeymoon
Finally, I had Paul back. More importantly, I was getting “me” back. Plus, I was going to be able to escape the suburbs and live in the mountains. I had scheduled a few interviews for teaching positions at schools in Connecticut. I cancelled them. My brother was skeptical and downright worried. He thought it was all happening too fast and that Paul had a hidden agenda. But I argued that Paul was different now. Once again, he was the man with whom I had fallen in love and married. We were closer than ever before. Finally, we would have the more grounded, simpler life that I had always wanted, and we were going to do it in a beautiful place. His business was thriving, which would allow me to travel back East to see my parents any time, and Paul would stay with the kids while I did. It would also be a great fresh start for Daniel.
To make the move happen in less than three months, I went into superwoman mode. I purged our family’s belongings, built up over almost two decades together, repaired, staged, and put our house up for sale, and I worked hard to keep the house and yard in pristine condition to help it sell fast. In Utah, I researched schools, teams, karate studios, doctors, and so on. It was overwhelming, but feeling that Paul and I were part of a team once again, I put in eighteen-hour days as logistics coordinator for the move. Paul’s mother came for a week to help. Although, over the years of family visits, Ruth was always more focused on getting things done than on being a doting grandmother, I had always appreciated her help and companionship, especially because my own mother was considerably older and unable to visit frequently due to her and my father’s health issues.
By the end of June, the wheels touched down on our flight to Utah, and we closed on our new house in the mountains. Every item we owned had been given away, thrown away, or packed, and our house in Connecticut was under contract. It had been a Herculean effort, but I had done it. I felt strong and empowered.
The second day we were in town, Jessica met her new travel lacrosse team. I had prearranged her spot on the team while in Connecticut. After looking at her stats and talking to her Connecticut coach, the Utah coach had given her a place, sight unseen. I chatted with another mom, Melinda, about being new in town and noted the different style of play in this team versus the team on which Jessica had played for years back in Connecticut. Paul joined the conversation.
“No one cares what you think about the team’s attack strategy,” Paul said to me in front of Melinda. My breath caught. Melinda’s eyes widened. The conversation screeched to a halt. What?
“We’re just really happy to be here,” I said, trying to ease the tension that had resulted from Paul’s insulting comment.
Determined not to make a mountain out of a molehill, I did not even bring up the comment when Paul and I were in private. I just let it go. Moving out here had been like sprinting a marathon. We were all excited but also stressed and tired from the effort. It was a lot of change, and change is unsettling. That had to be the reason for Paul’s behavior.
Two days later, Paul left for several days on business. I was alone at the house when the movers arrived with all our belongings and our cars were delivered. Still, with the new energy I felt, I treated the work of setting up the new house as a fun challenge. Waking up in the mountains was exhilarating, cleansing, and soul-affirming.
Yes, life was good—for about a week.
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Notes
Identifying names, places, events, characteristics, etc. that I discuss here and in my book have been altered to protect the identity of everyone involved.
She presented as a sweet person with good manners, but she was a covert narcissist
O.N. Ward thank you for sharing your book here. Your story and writing resonates with what happened to so many of us, it sets us free knowing we are not alone. Love to you! I look forward to your next chapter.
ONWard,
I’m wondering at this point in your story how your children are behaving towards you. Specifically, your perceptions and inner intuition of your children leading up to this point. Based on my own experience, I already had more than a sneaking suspicion that one or more of my children were ready to sink their fangs in me if I left him. Since You already contemplated divorce seriously what were your thoughts about your children. The undercurrent for me leading up to filing for divorce was that I knew that once I took a stand and filed for divorce my family would be ripped in two. And I knew then that I may end up with no children. And not because of a heated custody battle, but possibly, but because some or all of them would show me the hatred they harbored toward me. Though my children were mainly respectful toward me, I could feel, one daughter in particular, resentment toward me and her thinly veiled admiration toward the very malignant almost never present spath. Leading up to filing for divorce I felt an uneasiness when this particular daughter would ask personal questions about my extended family. She displayed no interest In the spath’s family. I felt she was building a ‘file’ so to speak. My sister actually vocalized her uneasiness about my daughter’s probing. I started to withhold information. And this was on he eve of filing for divorce.
Presently, some of my children, as I stated before, live with the spath. The daughter I’m writing about is nothing more than an attack dog toward me. I receive hateful, vicious and threatening emails from her and that’s the only time I hear from her. She’s all of about 15 years old. She’s an erupting volcano. Her hatred truly frightens me. I have to keep my young daughter in my care not my only away from him, but from my other daughter as well. In other words, my young daughter can’t be around any of them or she will turn into a mother hating rabid attack dog too.
One of the really good things about my divorce process was the thing I feared the most was loss of children. The children who went to live with him belong with him. And the children who stayed with me belong with me. And the children who stayed with me have gone through a personality transformation. They have actually become happy loving people. The removal of all that negative was not a loss. I actually gained two children.
Dear becomingstrong,
It has always appeared to me that your intuition about your children was spot on.
You now have the answer, in the flesh, so to speak. The children who remained with you are warm and loving. The children who remained with the spath definitely are not and likely have at least the one disorder that the spath has, if not more than one disorder. These personality disorders can absolutely be inherited, as we know. That may be why you had feelings about each individual child long before being aware what those feelings meant. As you pulled away from the spath toward divorece, your gut feelings were magnified as ‘those’ children began exhibiting even more overt disordered behavior.
You are such a special gem. Keep being you and your life will be what you want it to be. Peaceful and loving.
B