The Maria Story and My Dog’s Stress – Sociopaths Doing What They Do Best

Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.

Maria #1

Let’s start with the wonderful fact that this story is about Maria…number one.  Yes there were two Maria stories in my marriage to a sociopath.  This is the first one.  I first found out about Maria on a secondary phone the sociopath had.  There’s another story that brings me to finding the secondary phone, but I will start with when I first found out about Maria.  It was a Saturday night and of course spath “had to go and check the jobs.”  I had given birth to my little one about a month prior and was at home with her.  I put her to sleep and then went for the night time routine.  I wanted to charge my IPOD so I went into my office to find the cord to do so.

I went to the computer to look for my cord and guess what I found!?  I found the secondary phone the spath had charging on the back of the computer. (Most of the time when I found things, I found them accidentally not because I was looking for them.  I think this was God leading me.)  He probably thought that I wouldn’t go down there that night, or maybe he just didn’t care.  I had been waiting for a chance to see what was on that phone for quite a while and now I finally got the chance.

A hot flash ran through my body as I looked at it, removed it from the charger and took it upstairs.  I started looking through the phone and found naked pictures of women.  Then I started looking through the text messages, but he had cleaned most of the messages off.  One could tell that someone had been texting and the fields were being cleared periodically.  For some reason the text from Maria stood out to me and I just picked her to text to see what would happen.  I sent her a text message something like, “hey what’s up?”  She responded, “is this (my name)?”  I about fell over on the bed!  My name?  She knows my name?  How does she know that it was me, all I said was “what’s up?”  Then she texted me and told me that she is going to call me in a minute.  I’m like, what…the..?  I can’t explain the anxiety that was going through my body at that moment.  I waited.

Spaghetti Story

She called.  When she got on the phone with me it was around 11 pm and she said hi, then it sounded like she walked outside.  She almost spoke in a whisper; maybe he was there at the location she was at that night and that’s how she knew it was me and not him.  Apparently she had been wanting to talk to me for a while.   Her and sociopath had dated the entire summer, which was the summer I was pregnant.  He had told her that we were separated and that we had decided to only stay married until I had the baby.  She said she thought something was weird because she had gone to the place he had told her that he was staying, which was with a roommate, and when she went into his room there were no clothes in the drawers.  Also that he had horses and she would go riding with him.  Pshhh he doesn’t have horses.  Buuuut he did.

After she found out that we were not separated, she cut it off with him.  Apparently he continued to try and contact her.  That sounds about right.  She continued on with more information and I just told her that was enough that I couldn’t listen to anymore and hung up.  I hit the ground and let out this wail that came from the innermost part of my soul.  It was…so…deep.  I think it was part my post par-tum emotions combined with so many other feelings.

I asked myself why, why was this happening?  Why would someone lie about being with their wife especially when they were expecting a baby?  It was a personal betrayal on so many levels.  Women are already vulnerable when they are pregnant in a lot of ways and this just laid me bare.  I try to search for the words to describe the feeling, but I can’t.  I pulled myself together and then called him.  I told him about the woman I talked to and asked him to explain.  He was calm, no emotion.  He said that we could talk about it later and hung up, like nothing.

Mind Blown

I almost lost my mind at that moment.  To be shut down like that and not get the explanation you deserve makes steam brew up in you and come out your ears.  I sat there in the dark for hours and hours and hours, and I brewed.  I brewed hot.  And then I sat longer and longer into the night.  Maybe until about 2 am the sociopath strolled in the door.  I had been sitting for hours stewing on this information, waiting to confront him.

Because here’s the thing, if I didn’t confront him in the right way, I would make him so mad that he would disappear for days without an explanation.  Then I would just suffer longer.  So I had to hold my composure and try to be calm to keep him calm so I could get the explanation I needed and get it as quick as I could so I could put it to rest.  Doesn’t that just sound insane?

So I opened dialogue with him trying to be as calm as possible with a non emotional voice.  I really wanted him to tell me something that would make me feel better and I had waited this long and didn’t want to compromise getting the information because he got mad and left the house.  Sometimes before I would confront him about these kinds of things I would hide both sets of car keys so when I would confront him about something, he couldn’t leave and he would be forced to answer me instead of giving me an answer like he gave me that night.  SOMEHOW the issue became my fault.  When I asked him about Maria, he fumed and turned it back around on me.  He never answered any of my questions, instead he said that is why I shouldn’t be calling people.  He said that is what I get for calling people.

I think I was trying to control the situation but it was my own disillusionment.  I thought if I handled these situations well enough, he would see that I was a good wife and that I was graceful and forgiving and that he would stop.  Also I didn’t want to lose the relationship, the marriage.  I knew if this didn’t get dealt with, the marriage would end.  We talked into the early morning and I finally persuaded him to delete her out of his phone.   Also he let me filter his phone and ask who everyone was in the phone.  Then I started see weird names in the phone like 4-17-11 M and stuff like that.  Well I think we all know what those are!

I don’t know why I didn’t make connections about those earlier, but it’s easy to see now those were fake names in the phone for other women that he didn’t want to give names to.  I asked him about all the names in the phone including these.  He answered vaguely for some and then others he said he didn’t know, so I deleted them.  We went to counseling.  The end.  Just kidding.

Silent For a Year

The Maria situation went silent…for almost a year.  After my daughter’s first birthday party, spath said that he had to go and “check jobs.”  So I spent Saturday night at home until he strolled in at 2 am.  I had gotten up to get a drink of water and he crept into the house and went to change in his closet.  He got a text message.  I grabbed the phone since it was right next to me thinking what is this text that’s coming in this late?  He had texted someone asking them if they wanted to dance.  There was a reply that said she did not want to get in the way of him and his girlfriend that he was with.  I felt my body explode on the inside, what in the world?  I mean really.

He walked out of his closet stunned that I was standing there and I confronted him about it.  He was calm and made light of it.  He said that he stopped somewhere after work just to chill for a bit, some house party.  Yea right.  He claimed the girl he was texting was some real estate agent that he knew via business and she was there and he just asked her to dance out of courtesy.  I couldn’t believe that.

That was about the most stupid thing I have ever heard of.  He downplayed it like it was nothing at all.  Told some more lies, whatever.  I was very upset and confused and was trying to makes some sense out of it.  He didn’t care that I was upset about it, what he cared about was having sex.  It was like some sick high of his to do that when he knew how broken down I was.

I now knew the phone number of this real estate agent lady and the next morning I was propelled to call.  It was not some random real estate agent, it was in fact Maria, again.  I asked her what the eff the deal was.  She told me I needed to talk to spath.  I know I confronted him again and he had to have soothed me with some lie.  Then a couple days later, I think it was on a Wednesday I was working in my home office and I got a call from an unknown number.  I answered.

The Sister Call

She told me that she was Maria’s sister and she had heard what spath was doing.  She said that she was married and she understood my position, but she wanted me to know what was really going on.  She told her sister to stop talking to spath and to get away from him, but that he wouldn’t leave her alone.  She said that his friends were not my friends and that he was not a good person and that I needed to get away from him.  Also that he came in with another woman and was kissing all over her and that they left together.  Luckily spath was upstairs getting ready for work.

I told the woman if that was true she could tell him herself.  She AGREED.  Why on this earth did I not take action on this information?  I don’t know.  So I walked upstairs and put it on speaker phone and she spoke to him directly.  She told him what he was doing to me was wrong and that he was a sick person.  She asked him some questions and then told him other things.  He didn’t say a word.  He didn’t have anything to say.

After I hung up with her I addressed him again.  I was really, really mad by that point.  I raised my voice, I screamed, I cried, I wailed.  I was just the foolish wife.  Him?  Nothing.  No emotion, no feel, just nothing.  No expression, nothing.  Instead he told me that I needed to be quiet because one of our employees was working in our office downstairs and he didn’t want him to hear us.  I didn’t care at that point.  He made up some stupid lie and then he left.  I started to boil over.

Dogs Are the Best

My good, loyal dog sat next to me.  I looked down at him and he was shaking.  He was shaking like he was almost having convulsions.  He was feeling what I felt,  feeling the anxiety and the stress.  He was absorbing all the energy I was outputting as I was being destroyed from the inside out.  I started to shake myself from the mass amount of stress.  I paced in circles upstairs like a maniac trying to figure out what I was going to do.  I talked to myself, I thought, I cried some more.  I didn’t know what to think or really what to believe, or didn’t want to believe what I thought.  I felt defeated at that moment.

That was not the result I was looking for, that was not the closure and confirmation that I was hoping for.  I did not feel at ease, I did not feel comfortable.  For some reason that day I gave up that fight.  Maybe there was part of me that didn’t want to keep digging for the truth because I wasn’t ready to accept it although my body itself knew what was true already.  I decided then that I was not going to look at his phone anymore and that I would just trust him, or be ignorant, maybe a little of both I don’t know.

Another Year and New Phones

A year went by and I was in the shower and a thought just came out of nowhere.  The thought was totally unrelated to anything I was thinking at that moment.  I believe this was the Holy Spirit speaking to me; this is usually how he works.  The voice said, “Go check the phone records.”  It was very direct.    I pulled up the phone records for the entire year.  He had NEVER stopped talking to her.  There were thousands of text messages and phone calls back and forth.

I think he was confident because earlier that year we got new phones and he didn’t think I had the information to be able to check the phone accounts anymore.  Oh but I figured out how to get in to check them.  I sat there and I printed out every page and highlighted every single message and phone call.  Then I packed up my little one and sped down the street to our office; I was NOT going to wait until he got home to deal with this!

I walked right into our office and went straight past the reception desk and right into his office.  Door closes.  He looked at me with this glaze in his eye, and then there was a little sparkle and almost a smirk.  I think he was excited about what was going to happen next.  It was weird.  I slammed the papers on his desk.  What is this?!  What is this?  Acting dumbfounded he tried to lie.  Nope.  Not today.  What is this?  Then he tried another lie.  Nope,  What is this!?

The Real Truth?  Nope, Still Not

He took a deep breath, his face calmed and he acted sweet.  The story about Maria that finally came out that day was the same story that he told our Pastor in counseling in the weeks to come.  His version of the story went something like this:  This girl was a family member of one of the businesses that he had recently been in contact with that were working with his ex brother in law in his country.  The business?  Drugs.

They would set up for someone to steal drugs from other dealers.  So he said that he wanted to remain on good terms with them which was why he was pretending to like her.  He didn’t want to tell me the truth because he was trying to “protect me” from what he was doing with the drug business.  Am I really telling this right now?  Did I really believe this BS?  I did.  And he sat right in the Pastor’s office next to me and told this story with a sham of regret.

He told our Pastor that he didn’t want her to get mad and put my daughter and I in danger so he was keeping it from me.  Does that even make sense?  Oh, my, gosh.  My Pastor asked me after this what I would need in order to believe this was true.  I told him that spath would have to call this girl and tell her that he never liked her and for her not to call him again and that he was never going to talk to her again.

We left the counseling that night and I had to sit through an agonizing dinner with him.  Then in the parking lot going home I followed through with my request.  At first he tried to protest it like he never intended on actually doing it.  I was like, no this is happening and it’s happening now.  I told him to put it on speaker phone.

He went to call and I looked at his phone and it said “Maria’s work”.  This was different than the other number he had called her on which was her cell.  It went to a voice message and he left a sissy A message.  I realized right there and then that he had called that number because he knew she wouldn’t answer, and in turn I wouldn’t hear her fight with him about the real story.  Then he would just call her back later and make up some new story about why he left that voice mail.

Is ANYONE confused?  Because I am!  I think I left it at that, but of course it was always in the back of my mind.  That is how I lived, with all these stories in the back of my mind.  They ate away at me every day.  What was true?  What wasn’t?  There was never any closure to the stories.  I was afraid to ask for more confirmation to prove what he was saying was was true, because I believe deep down I didn’t want to know.

Last night before I turned in for bed, I looked at my dog.  He was lying there looking a little older than usual and I knelt down to pet him.  I told him that all that stress is over now and he can relax and be free.  We bonded that day up in my bedroom when we were both stressed to the max.  I am glad it is over and now my dog and I can have some peace.