Here at Lovefraud, we’ve heard thousands of horror stories of marriages to sociopaths. Thinking about these unfortunate involvements, it seems to me that there are three types of romantic relationships with sociopaths. I call them the Marriage Masks, and they are:
1. Calculated exploitation
The sociopath targets an individual for the explicit purpose of exploiting him or her, using the unsuspecting partner for money, sex, a place to live or something else that the sociopath wants.
My ex-husband, James Montgomery, targeted me because I had what he wanted: money, good credit, my own home and business connections in the city where he decided he was going to make a fortune. He sweet talked me, married me and drained me, and then he moved on without a thought.
2. Passing entertainment
The sociopath finds the partner to be a suitable involvement for the present—until the sociopath gets bored, antsy, or some other individual catches his or her eye. At this point, the partner is discarded.
Mary Jo Buttafuoco described her husband, Joey Buttafuoco, in her book, Getting It Through My Thick Skull. To me, it seems that Joey Buttafuoco was one of those sociopaths who was simply looking for a good time, for entertainment. He worked and she was a stay-at-home mom, so he wasn’t using her financially. But eventually he had an affair with a teenager, then visits to hookers, then a new wife. Changing women was like changing the scenery.
3. Image creation
In order to secure a coveted place in society, the sociopath may seem devoted to his or her spouse or family in public, but life at home, behind closed doors, is another matter entirely.
Here’s an example that was recently in the news. Stephen Green, founder of a fundamentalist organization in the United Kingdom called Christian Voice, preaches against homosexuality, abortion, Islam and Jerry Springer. “The enemies of God are having their say,” proclaims the organization’s website. “It’s time to hear the Christian Voice!”
Green portrays himself as the guardian of morality in the U.K. However, Caroline Green, his former wife, paints a totally different picture—domestic violence:
He told me he’d make a piece of wood into a sort of witch’s broom and hit me with it, which he did,’ she recalls, her voice tentative and quiet. ”˜He hit me until I bled. I was terrified. I can still remember the pain.
Stephen listed my misdemeanours: I was disrespectful and disobedient; I wasn’t loving or submissive enough and I was undermining him. He also said I wasn’t giving him his conjugal rights.
Here’s the whole revolting story in the Daily Mail:
Missing: Ability to love
These categories are not hard and fast, and some sociopathic relationships and marriages may show signs of two or all three types. But however the disfunction manifests, the root problem is that sociopaths are not capable of feeling real love.
They are, however, capable of acting like they feel love—at least in the beginning of a relationship. I call it the luring stage—the period of time when sociopaths do everything you’d ever dream that smitten partners would do. They call, they want to be with you, they give gifts, they make you feel cherished. They do this until they hook you.
Then, sociopathic behavior starts to reflect the real agenda—calculated exploitation, passing entertainment or image creation. The change may be subtle or sudden. The relationship may gradually devolve, it may swing back and forth between normal and unconscionable, or it may suddenly evaporate.
But at some point, the Marriage Mask slips, and we come face to face with the truth: We are being used.
I stumbled upon a web-site the other day that was entitled, The Authoritarian Sociopath, Or something of that nature. I read a four part series that began by taking a look at Stanley Milgram’s work concerning obedience and then looked at the Stanford prison experiments. Ther series then went on to study athority and power and the effects they had on normal people, as well as the opposite. Being in a submissive role and the effect that has on people. Very interesting.
You guys might like to take a look aat it if you can find it.
I’m unable to post a link or I would.
Hope ya’ll are doing well. I’ve been totally knocked off my feet by the flu. Day eight and I’m still not back to normal.
Oxy,
that’s right one can not know what would do under certain circumstances. We are human not saints, we all have our little wicked side, it’s human nature. I’m sure there are people that would rather lose their lives than being deprived of dignity, including being passive witness of that violation of others. But that just can be known in the very moment. To theorize is too esay.
Skylar i understand you’re angry with your parents. But you can not change them. If they’re bad people, you won’t change them. It’s not your fault if they’re bad people.
KIM!
I was wondering where you went and missing you!
Your grandkids had the flu and they gave it to you.
I found the article.
Here’s a link to the 4th part, it addresses hypocrisy:
http://www.examiner.com/muslim-in-san-francisco/authoritarian-sociopathy-part-4-power-and-hypocrisy
Oxy,
Your post was right on. The problem is the dangers involved in standing up for the scapegoat. Even Saint Peter understood this when he denied Christ 3 times before the rooster crowed. Then he was ashamed because he had said he would NEVER deny his Lord.
It wasn’t Peter that was the problem, he didn’t lack compassion he was trying to survive and the bullys make sure you fear them in order to create sheep control. I wouldn’t even say that the sheeple mentality is the problem. It is the middle tiers, the henchmen, who are the problem.
Your son C said, “I told them not to”. Guess what? I don’t believe him. He has proven that he lies to you, so what else would he say to you?
“I was enjoying the moment”?
“You deserved it because I’ve always had my own resentments against you”?
or “But they promised me a cut”?
Eva,
I know what you mean. They are certainly not the saints that I always believed them to be.
They are very worldly and good at sizing up people. So they knew that my exP was a rotton fruit. They WERE enjoying the moment, they DID believe I deserved it for rebelling against their control. They didn’t even want a cut. They didn’t want my wealth, they just didn’t want me to have it.
The question is: just how pervasive is this “SECOND TIER” kind of thinking? My parents hide it sooooo well. You would never see them for anything other than 2, hard working, dedicated to their family, pious, salt of the earth. It’s only from seeing the fruit they bore that the truth is revealed.
Oxy
You are so write. I for years would distance myself from the toxic people in my life since I took a course on dealing with toxic people years ago. The only toxic person that I did not was my daughter. I could see her faults but did not for one minute think she could get this toxic. Actually to be honest I did not even look at her as toxic. Her brothers sometimes did and I would stick up for her and just say that is her personality you can not change it but she is your sister you have to love her anyway. She love us it is just hard to see at times. By the time they all become adults they all got so sick of me sticking up for her. If my grandchildren were not involved I would distance myself from her now to. I have to try my best though and find the strength and wisdom to hang in there for my grandsons. It is the wisdom I lack in this situation so I am sure you will hear from me lots for awhile Thank you love L.F. friends.
Skylar,
if they really enjoyed to seeing you constructing your own ruin and belived they’re such gods to decide you “deserve” it, then i’m sorry for you. I think they’re really Bad people.
But still you can’t put all the responsability on them because, yes the first years you were very young, but what about when you were in your late 20′ or first 30′? They’ll use that argument if you confront them, and there’s some truth in it.
But it’s also true i’ve never known of a parent who loves his/her daughter/son “enyoing” her/his misfortune or the future possibility of it.
Eva, believe me though I have seen (and experienced) the psychopathic parent ENJOYING and perpetuating the misfortune of their children.
I’ve also experienced the “duped” parent who has convinced themselves that the adult child “deserves” to be “punished” and made to suffer for not towing the family “line” of dysfunction.
Personally, I’m not sure which one is worse, the psychopath in their N-injured rage, or the one who punishes in “righteous justification?”
Sometimes they seem to “gang up” and work together against a victim as well.
Sky, I’m like you, I’m not sure I believe that son C “told them not to do it” but on the other hand, he may actually have told them that, but I have decided IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE if he told them to stop or not, he DID NOTHING but stand by while he KNEW they were abusing me. He may not have “lead the posse” that was “gunning” for me, but he sure rode along with them.
But when he was “down and out” and feeling insecure, he came “home to mommy” until again, he felt more secure, then he was willing to shuck me off because he no longer “needed” my support.
The Old Testament of the Bible is a continual saga of how the Jewish people (and their ancestors) had an off-again/on-again relationship with God. How when they were doing well, and the crops were good and the surrounding tribes left them alone, they were not really very obedient or close to their God, but when things started to go to hell in a hand basket, mostly because of the bad decisions they made, then all of a sudden they got really “humble” and turned to God and quit worshiping idols and sacrificing their own children on alters to “strange gods” as human sacrifices etc.
My son C seems to have that same attitude toward me. If things are going well for him he’s happy to have little or not contact with me, but if he is bereft of things going well for him, (usually because of the bad choices he makes) then he is “ohhhh sooooo sorry about how he has treated dear old mom.”
He sent me one of those “sentimental” mass email forwards the other day “may you have enough” a story about some guy who saw some old man saying goodbye for the last time to his daughter in the airport and they wished each other “enough”—enough work, to appreciate the leisure, enough sickness to appreciate the health, etc. One of those things that is supposed to make you tear up with sentimental tears when you read it. I haven’t seen son C in a year though we have had a few e mail conversations about his brother and the parole hearing, but I guess he has decided that it has been LONG ENOUGH that maybe I’ve forgotten some of the “carp” he pulled and that we will “just pretend none of that happened.” NOT gonna happen.
Eva,
I take as much responsibility as anyone else here on LF for being blind and naive in my 20’s and 30’s.
But here’s the clincher, my parents’ did like Oxy’s son C. They overheard my spath telling someone that he was only with me for my money and they didn’t tell me! Just like C, who KNEW what her family was trying to do to Oxy.
Add to that, the fact that the WAY my parents raised me is the REASON, why my spath seemed normal to me. I was accustomed to that kind of abuse.
That isn’t the worst part. The worst part is that at this point in time, they continue to pretend to love me and act so innocent. I’d rather they just admit the truth and say, “no we don’t love you but we want you around because we like to control you.”
As I was telling LL, this crap runs in my family. My grandmother convinced her youngest son, the golden child, to marry a particular woman who turned out NOT TO BE A WOMAN AT ALL! Well he did not marry again until he was in his 40’s. The result was that she got to keep him around and took more of his paycheck than she would have if he had a wife and child. My grandmother had all 3 sons giving her money to support her. But my dad gave the most, she left us penniless while she lived. The middle son was a spath and didn’t give her anything but that’s because he was spending it on the OW’s he cheated with.
Anyway, part of the problem is that when I had money, I didn’t give them ALL OF IT. That’s what they wanted and expected since they had been raised like that by their own parents. “HAND OVER THE MONEY”.
It’s amazing the ideas that sociopaths come up with to torment us. My grandmother KNEW what a psychological shock it would be to her son to find out his new wife was not a woman. She knew it would traumatize him from wanting to marry again. All his friends and relatives would know that his marriage didn’t last and possibly why and it would shame him on top of everything else. This was her ploy to keep him tied to her apron strings. I wonder how long she sat around thinking that one up? What kind of mother would want to destroy her child like that? An N-mother.
It runs in my family, that’s another reason I have no doubt about my parents’ motives. The rotten fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Skylar,
I have no much knowledge about narcissism but i’m starting to see it is probably the root of most, if not all the suffering in this world. For the greed, the social status, the appareances at all cost many people sacrificies a lot of values and lots of good people. Yes, it has to be very hard to face such a degree of hypocrisy in a family. It’s understandable so many go by the N or P side, since it must be easier.
Ox,
I know that’s true, that many are convinced children are sort of a property who have the obligation of towing the line of dysfunction in the name of that social institution called family. You know the other day i was about to go the doctor to ask for some anxyolytics because the persecution and smear campaign of the psychopathic teacher created in me the asfixiating feeling that we were slaves.
I really believed freedom existed, and some kind of equality and justice. But seems nothing has changed. The slavery is just more psychological and subtle now.