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.
True to Self,
Thank you for your words of wisdom. I do appreciate it very much. Thank you for telling me that I should not blame myself. I do know you are right. It is their fault, not ours. This is the only way I have been able to justify being with a married man. I still have to remind myself of the fact that initially, I was lead to believe that he was not married, nor was he in a relationship. It is how I keep my sanity about this aspect of the experience.
Many thanks, again!
Eden
“Do Sociopaths know that something is wrong/different with them?”
JustMe79;
Personally to me, my x-spath admitted that he “takes a while to warm up to people…”
However, online he describes himself as “caring, loyal, charming, kind, considerate and genuine, loving.”
Of course keep in mind that genuine lying about your age a couple months to change your zodiac, lying about location and lying about some other personal details…
I would say YES they know something is different and wrong with them. That is why they mirror us and take our identity, that way they dont have to be themselves..
My ex married for image creation. He married his best friend. Neither one of them were having any luck in the romance department and they both had the same goals for social and financial status. His poor wife is very unattractive and downright frumpy. I think that he used that as his excuse to get with as many pretty young things that he could find. He liked pretty brunette, naive, and lonely with low self esteem and I was right up his alley. He fell all over himself trying to be my best friend as soon as I moved to town and started working with him. He was flattering me to no end and love bombing. He was complimenting me to my boss. She told me that “he has it BAD for you”. “He acts like an absolute high school boy when you’re around and when he talks about you”. He’s smitten”. I blew it off and said he only wants to be friends. I wasn’t attracted to him at first but I thought he was so sweet and he was such the gentleman-he was 53 and I was 36. We bonded over baseball and talked all the time and had lunch a lot and I still never thought anything of it. He was very protective of me when other doctors were mean to me. Gradually my feelings became like his and we finally talked about it and that it was mutual. I was really freaked out by it. I had never felt like that about anyone in my life. I was 36 and had never been in love and felt like I was falling for him. I was horrified though about him being married. We were texting a lot at that point and talking more and that’s when he started to lay on the BS con. Telling me of the strictly platonic relationship with the wife. He wanted to divorce her but was afraid that she’s take him for all that he had. They hadn’t had any kind of sex in years because he was not attracted to her and he couldn’t perform with her, all she did was spend his money, blah,blah blah, etc etc.
I cannot believe how freakin naive I was to fall for that shit. I gotta say that if an award was given out for naivety, I would get the equivalent of the oscar. That resulted from childhood but that’s a whole other story. Anyway, I fell head over heels for this man and we were serious for a year. He was my longest and my most serious relationship because I never dated much. I was very inexperienced. I never had sex like that ever-my first orgasm. The bonding was so intense and so strong that it made me cry. He had promised to help me financially while I went to the police academy and he said he wanted to have a baby with me. That was the happy part of the relationship. The dark side: How do you think it feels when the man that you’ve given your whole heart, body and soul to, leaves you and goes home to someone else at night. He has dinner with her and sleeps in bed with her. I don’t care if he’s way on the other side of the bed. (the wife confirmed that he hadn’t lied about them not having sex). The pain of that was almost unbearable. When I look back, I cried way too much in that relationship. I cried myself to sleep EVERY SINGLE NIGHT that we were together. I cried so hard for him. On holidays, I couldn’t have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with him-it was him taking off on the 23rd to be with me. I remember how pathetic it was that I was so happy that he took off the whole day on my birthday from sunrise til sunset to be with me. Valentines Day really really sucked cuz he sure wasn’t with me. I was in love with the person that he pretended to be. After the wife found out was when I found out about all the women before me-after he promised that I was the only time that he stepped out on her because I was so special and the only true love of his life. I had never been so heartbroken in my life because he promised that he would never hurt me and that he would never lie to me.
Anyway, way to much writing about this and thinking about it. It’s so hard to believe it happened. I feel like it was a dream and some day I’ll wake up and it will have never happened. I did learn the most about myself though, and I won’t trade that lesson. I do strongly feel though that I am going to be kind of like a reformed virgin. I don’t ever want to have sex again unless I’m married. The break of that bond is too much pain for me and I don’t understand how so many women give “IT” up so easily. That’s what vibrators are for. NSA? No way. Sex is just too special for me to waste it someone that isn’t right.
Justme79: Do sociopaths know that something is wrong with them? Absolutely NOT! No way in hell. My ex believes that he can do no wrong and that the rules do not apply to him, that everyone should aspire to be like him and I have never seen a person who loves to hear himself talk more than him. My friend calls him the great vagina. I think it is a great disrespect to vaginas everywhere!!! He was in a full on psychotic break when he dumped me-total Mr. Hyde, calling me crazy in screaming at me on the front porch in front of my neighbors telling me I was BPD-it’s called him gaslighting and avoiding the real issue that he’s a freakin nutjob who needs to be formally diagnosed.
Well, he preached against homosexuality, abortion, Islam… and “family breakdown, crime, immorality and drink,” among other things. But I wonder: did he ever preach against wife-beating? Perhaps he didn’t!
I imagine if Stephen Green were honest, he’d tell us he believed beating was necessary to keep “discipline” in the family. He treated his whole family this way, after all.
There’s a close comparison with the infamous nutjob Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church (godhatesfags.com). Phelps and his cronies–mostly members of his own family–have much the same obsessions as Stephen Green, particularly that intense fear and hatred of homosexuality. Also, as with Stephen Green, there’s been a lot of abuse in Phelps’s family too.
The Daily Mail article said:
I would put this the other way round. The way the journalist wrote it, it suggests Green’s ultimate motive was to “control” his family–possibly just for the sake of control, as if “isolating them from evil influences” was merely incidental to that. I think we’d find instead that the fear of “evil” was UPPERMOST in Green’s mind, and central to his motivations. More than likely he was so utterly terrified of “evil influences” that he felt driven to isolate and control his family to “protect” them all–even if he had to beat them into submission “for their own good.”
As Alice Miller has said in her book of the same name, “For Your Own Good” is one of the world’s biggest lies. But the people who tell that particular lie, including very probably Stephen Green, honestly believe the lie. That’s part of what makes them so dangerous, especially to their own children, who have no way of knowing anything different–when they’re young at least.
On the evidence of this story, I don’t believe Stephen Green is a psychopath, though that doesn’t make him any less abusive, even dangerous. In certain respects this type of person is the opposite of a psychopath. Psychopaths are typically somewhat immune to fear. People like Green on the other hand are DRIVEN by fear, at bottom. His ex-wife Caroline pointed out how he later became “delusional” and in her words, “uncontrollable.” It’s their paralyzing fear that makes them so obsessed with controlling others, in a frantic attempt to keep their fears at bay.
One of many problems arising from this is that when people like Stephen Green are parents, they transmit their own terrors to their children. I expect there could be a genetic component to this behavior as well, but Green very likely had a father and/or a mother who terrified him as a small child with the same “fear of evil,” reinforced by beatings to “beat the Devil out of him.” Parents are Godlike figures to a small children, who have no way of knowing that what their abusive parents are telling them is nonsense and what they’re doing is cruelty pure and simple. Many children in that position are too fearful ever to question the beliefs that were “beaten into them,” in childhood, even after they’ve grown up. They can end up passing those beliefs on to their own children, together with the abusive treatment that inculcated those beliefs, just as Stephen Green was doing to his own family. I hope his wife and children are on their way to recovery.
The poor woman, so glad to see she finally escaped. I’m not 100% sure he is a classic sociopath though – seems he was relatively normal when they met in the 70s and it was his involvement in fundamentalist religion in the early 90s that sparked ‘the beginning of the end’ as his ex-wife puts it. I think the man is mentally ill – he bears all the hallmarks of schizophrenia, to me, with religious delusions. His behaviour is certainly sociopath-ic but the man himself I believe is mentally ill. Only because he was normal for a good 20 years of their relationship and it was religion that turned him into a maniac. He’s schizophrenic, I’m sure….
Yea Exploitation is the name of the game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brood_parasite. These losers must share some genes with cuckoos and other such. They have a shopping check list for what they are looking for and they want it a discount price.
Donna
Fabulous post. Just ticks every box as to what I experienced in the mercifully short time I had with the P. especially the passing entertainment, change of behaviour when he had my trust after selling me a load of pretty lies, using my connections to suit his own brutal agenda of robbery and stolen energy, leaving me washed up on the beach exhausted.
When the mask slipped, what I faced was indescribable. The lie was more than I could handle. I was totally devastated. On every level I hurt terribly, and felt the ground had been whisked from under me. Im back standing, a little wobbly but back. That creepy alien is out there with his inability to love, but incredible ability to lie. Watch out
I am new to Lovefraud and am really finding great help and support here.
I married my sociopath and had 2 children to him.
I had come from a physically and emotionally abusive relationship of 18 years when I met my socio.
Hmmm where to start?
I met him in Feb 2004 and he poured on the love. I thought I had met the man of my dreams and that all the crap I had experienced previously was now behind me. Think again girl!
He married me for 2 of the above reasons. The calculated exploitation and the image creation.
He had me hooked very early on and knew exactly how to play me. Only now have I worked out why? He has been with over 400 women and counting. So he has plenty of experience in hooking them.
He knew he wanted to marry me less than 3 weeks into the relationship. How? Because he met my father who had travelled from another state to visit and my father had met him and was talking about his latest business venture and how he had plans of making millions (this didn’t happen but the lure and suggestion were enough for my socio) So he had his plan. He conned my family and they all thought he was my knight in shining armour. Little did they know either.
We moved in together about 9 months later and married in Oct 2005. My father paid for the wedding and I even paid for the wedding bands..(should have got a hint there eh?)
I was actually 9 weeks pregnant at the time and happened to have a miscarriage on the day of the wedding. I spent my honeymoon in the hospital while he went across the road to the hotel and playes the pokies because he said he hated hospitals. I was alone and scared. I wil never forget that time. His response to me was – well I never did want children out of marriage. We can just have another one now we are married!
I should have left then, but I didn’t. I was so in love with this man I thought I knew. This image of the person I had always wanted. This person that said he loved me forever.
He inherited $50,000 from his Nan that passed and we were going to use it on a deposit on a home for our new family.
This never happened as I found out much later down the track he spent every last cent on ebay buying crap.
I might add he is also like so many of the others have described as a hoarder.
He has 2 warehouses full of rubbish that he says is valuable and when he sells it, it wil be for the children..
The rubbish I am talking about are old newspapers (not old as in valuable just read newspapers spanning the last 5-7 years) approx 80,000 cassette tapes,thousands of videos, old books, magazines, football memorabilia and general opportunity shop junk.
In 2006 I had my first child and that is when things really went downhill. I had been working up until 3 weeks before the birth and the day I left on maternity leave he calls to say he lost his job. Now I am stressed. I have my beautiful daughter and she is very tiny and has to stay an extra week at the hospital. I was heartbroken, I had to leave my baby girl there and go home. He never even seemed to notice. I would go in on the bus every morning before 8am because he was always running late for work and couldn’t possibly drop me off at the hospital and get to work now could he?
The same day I had given birth to our daughter he had caused a huge scene at the hospital with my mother because she couldn’t use her mobile phone properly. Screaming and yelling at her that it could have been an important call she missed. I had the head nurse asking him to leave.
My mum was going to stay for a week with me after my baby was born to help me out. She left in a couple of days because she couldn’t stand my husband any longer.
He robbed me of that time. He robbed me of many things. One thing that I think is noteworthy is that he never came to one obstetrician appointment with me. And when I tried to show him the video of our baby (done on the ultrasound) he was very disinterested. I put it down to stress and worry at the time. Now I know better.
Things were beginning to get worse. He said it was me that changed and sure I did. I just had my first baby and lots of things to learn and do with zero help from him. To this day he does not know what to feed our children or how much, how to heat it etc etc. He of course turned that back on me saying that I undermine his ability and he can never do it right, but I believe in showing someone how to do it is not undermining them but merely sharing the experience together. Surely as a father you want to know how to change, feed, bath or help your baby? That is where I was wrong.
I was pregnant with my second child within 3 months and this is where things went seriously wrong. I had now been out of work for 6 months and no more maternity leave money left and no more baby bonus payment from the government, he turned to working from home and claiming off the government. He made me lie for him. Now this is where I arc up because I will NOT lie for anyone. Now the arguments really set in because I don’t want to do it. I make myself heard.
He can rant and rave for hours. I am nearing 6 months pregnant and my daughter is screaming but he continures to shout me down, no matter how many times I say to him – please for our daughters sake- he just keeps on ranting that it is cause and effect. I am the cause and he is the effect. This statement rings in my ears even to this day. Why should I lie for him? He says it is the wifes job to stand up for her husband and support him. Well I am sorry I cannot support lying.
Anyway neighbours would call the police as the shouting and crying of the baby were so loud that they were even worried.
I was put on notice that if the police were called again they would take my child from me! Now he had something he could use to control me with.
So each time he would shout or want his own way he would say well if the police come you know what they will do.
The time draws nearer to the birth of my son.
It gets harder to do simple things like fit in the shower to clean it so I have to rely on him to do it. HA!
I have to write it in the diary with at least 2 weeks notice. What? Who doesn’t clean their shower at least once a week?
So I put it in and wait. Finally on the last day of the 2 weeks he begins to clean the shower but only does one wall and says he will finish it off the day later. A week later he does another wall and I am sure you get where this story is going. I just did it myself 8.5 months pregnant cleaning the shower.
Anyway this was normal life with him now. I literally was beginning to hate him.
I had my son and was put under general for it as there were some complications. Again my Mother came to spend the week with me and this time left the day after he was born. Why?
Same old. This time my socio husband caused a scene firstly on the phone to his mother who was at the time having a full on whinge that I had addressed a letter to her and forgot to write in MRS in the title. Terribly sorry and yes your grandson is beautiful thanks for asking.
Then the second argument with my mother was so loud that the nursing staff asked me to tell my husband to leave as the woman in the next room was frightened. Great. 2 children and twice he had to ruin that moment for me. Why? I think because he wanted to have the limelight, the control and all the attention.
The story continues that now I have a 1 year old and a newborn to look after. With all the promises in the world of his undivided attention and help. LIE! I did it all myself. And even when my son turned 2 weeks old I think it was I ended up unable to walk as after 2 c-sections in 1 year my back just gave way with the strain, I spent 4 months sleeping in a chair as I was unable to lie down at all. And when I stood I did so with my torso at 90 degree angle unable to straighten. I was taped upright and heavily medicated but nothing would work.
And during this time he never helped me. I stil looked after my baby and my 1 year old, fed, changed, bathed, washed, cooked etc. Looking back now I have no idea how the heck I did it?
The power of a mother eh?
We were looking for a larger house to rent and I found one brand new on the other side of the city. He was very disgruntled by this as he only liked living in the south. I was later to find out that is because the majority of women he was seeing were on the south side.
We moved to the west and after the promise of a new life with no shouting and a more calm atmosphere for our children. This lasted all of 3 days. After 1 month I said that is it.
I told him no more, No more broken promises, no more shouting and abuse, no more. And of course I got the usual catch cry of Cause and Effect but I was dead serious. You can mess with me but mess with my kids mate and that is it.
He begged to be allowed to stay and that I was being unfair. I said he could have 1 month to find a place to stay and he had to be out so he set it for the 1st July as that was the beginning of the new financial year. It would be easier to work out expenses that way.
You know my whole time with this socio has left me with a huge debt of $40,000 as it was always my credit cards that were used to pay for things. Even a car that when we separated he demanded I pay him half the value as he considered the debt was half his too, so I should pay him out as he was prepared to pay for half of the debt on the credit card. ?????
Not falling for that one I assure you.
After he left I always got the you put me on the street plight and I could be raped or murdered and it would be your fault guilt trip so much so I did let him come back once. That didn’t even last a month.
He would stay in backpackers and hotels. He even gave me and my children scabies once when he visitied. And then said it was my fault as I must have had someone stay in my house that had it. It wouldn’t have been him.
Well it wasn’t until he left and I started to go through all his stuff that he had left behind. What made me do it? I don’t know. Instinct? Things that didn’t add up?
I found out so much in that time. Businesses that he has ripped off whilst we were married, the multiple women he had been seeing, the lies that he told about why he had lost his job, the lies he told about family, the lies he told about his friends, the lies just in general. It was all so overwhelming, I could not believe the stuff I was finding. Love letters, notes, diary entries, phone numbers, email addresses, dating sites, emails, tax fraud, unemployment fraud, bank loan application fraud and the list goes on. He has 4 phone numbers. And phone messages left from other women, paying other women money. I even found proof that he had joined a new dating site 3 months after we married. WOW! Things started to fall in place. Why he didn’t have a job although he was out 12 hours a day searching, probably because he wasn’t looking but was with someone else diarised in code.
I have since set up a blog on this man and am calling for any other victims to come forward, whether business or personal. I know he has been with over 400 women so there is bound to be quite a few. He used me as an image builder and even though we are now divorced he still says and uses me and my children as excuses to others. Such as he needs it for his family and so forth. This man does not care about us and no matter how much he shouts it out I know that deep in my heart. As heartbreaking as that is, I know he does not care for his children. At 4 months my daughter had uncontrollable vomiting and I rushed her to emergency. He did not come. He was playing cricket. And at 18 months my son nearly died of an asthma attack. He never showed. He was volunteering at his local footy club. So things like that really bring it home to me that this socio is what he is and is totally unable to feel the love I feel for my children.
The thing that saddens my heart every day is the chance that because they are his children too they have the genes and may have biologically inherited this from him. But be assured I will do everything in my power to teach them to love, respect, care and have concern for all people and animals on this planet and beyond. That is my life long mission.
Thanks for such a great article. Very inspiring and I hope no-one minded me writing so much about myself.
@stopcalvinthom-sharing is part of the healing process. It helps us process & release the energy of what’s stored up inside. All of us that have had our own experiences with spathes, have to come to peace with the experience, and forgive ourselves too, for allowing it to go on for so long. Mine’s lasted about four months, three and a half months too long…In retrospect, I saw all the signs and simply choose to ignore it because I couldn’t accept that she was really totally remorseless and lacking in empathy.