Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
As I was wondering what to write about for my blog article this week, Southernman429 did me a favor and provided a topic. He posted the following on Dr. Leedom’s most recent article:
I’d like to pose a question to Donna, M.L., and Dr. Leedom”¦
Is it normal to go on with your life”¦ develop new relationships”¦ have new goals and new ideals”¦ years go by”¦ basically move on from the sociopathic experience”¦ but yet”¦ still feel a emptiness in a part of your heart, or a tugging at your soul”¦ a sort of grieving”¦ maybe partly for them, or about them, but also about yourself”¦ even though in hindsight, you have gained so much because of this experience and have used it as a springboard to a new life with a new mindset”¦?
Donna, I know that you have since re-married after your sociopath experience”¦ Does that bad relationship ever come up in your thoughts, affect your emotions or thinking”¦ even though you are happily married?”¦ At what point does this “go away—¦ or does it ever?
My experience with a sociopath
Let me answer the question by providing some background. I met my sociopathic ex-husband, James Montgomery, in July 1996, married him in October 1996, and left him in February 1999. In a short two and a half years, he cost me about $300,000, put me in serious debt, had affairs with six women that I know of, and had a child with one of those women. Ten days after I left him, he married the mother of that child. It was the second time he committed bigamy. I suspect he married her to get health insurance, because he had diabetes and I sure wasn’t going to be carrying him on my insurance any more.
I was divorced in February 2000. The judge awarded me all the money that was taken from me, plus $1 million in punitive damages, plus attorney fees. For the next year I conducted an international asset search for his money so I could get back on my feet financially. I never found it, and in May 2001, I had to bite the bullet and declare bankruptcy.
Those five years were the most emotionally tumultuous of my life. Fear, anger, betrayal, dismay, hopelessness, doubt, rage, numbness—I was wracked by every negative emotion under the sun. My stomach was always knotted. I couldn’t sleep. My face, arms, back and chest were covered with zits. Yet I had to hold myself together to deal with the divorce, get my business going again, keep my few clients happy. Frequently it all became too much and I collapsed into a puddle of tears.
I begged God to help me; I yelled at God for letting my ex get away with his crimes; I prayed to God to take away the pain.
The larger purpose
God didn’t take away the pain—at least not right away. I worked my way through it. Luckily, I had a wonderful therapist, a woman who I refer to as an energy worker. She helped me process the pain and see the spiritual reason for the journey.
I haven’t written this on the Lovefraud Blog (although others have), but I believe there is larger purpose for our encounters with the sociopaths. These traumas are opportunities for deep, profound healing. When our hearts and souls are ripped open by the sociopath, not only are we given a chance to release and forgive the betrayal of the predator, but we are given a chance to release and forgive the buried pain within us that made us susceptible to the sociopath in the first place.
But it requires work. The only way past the pain is through it. We must allow ourselves to feel, in all the gory agony, the traumas of our past that were brought to the surface by the deceit and betrayal of the sociopath.
It is a physical experience. It isn’t pretty. I spent many hours in the privacy of my meditation room, crying, raging, and finally collapsing when a piece of the burden was released.
In time, however, the pain within me dissipated. What replaced it? Love and joy.
Starting new chapters
To directly answer Southernman429’s question, in the past two years, there has only been one set of circumstances that triggered the old pain. It came each time I started a new chapter in the book I’m writing about my experience.
To draw up an outline for each chapter, I’d review my files, with all those massive credit card statements. I’d look at old e-mails, in which I tried to find solutions to my problems. I’d re-read my journal, where I wrote with raw emotion of the moment. Reviewing the materials brought back the knots in my stomach, and the incredulity that I let my ex-husband con me. But as I got going on each chapter, the knots relaxed.
I met my current husband, Terry Kelly, in 2001, about the time I finally decided to give up the financial battle and declare bankruptcy. I told Terry my sorry story on our first date—armed with the information that my ex was a sociopath. On our second date, Terry brought a copy of his tax return to prove that, unlike my ex-husband, he actually had an income.
We’ve been together seven years, and married for three. I have never been so happy. My life is full. There is an aliveness within me that I never experienced before. And it never would have happened if all the walls within me hadn’t been shattered.
The title of my book, by the way, is Cracked Open: How marriage to a sociopath led to spiritual healing.
Unwilling,
You know how they con? Once they know you’re in love and they know you are a good person, it’s like taking candy from a baby. They make you feel sorry for them, pity them because they are in a jam. You being a loving generous caring person acting as part of a couple give what you have because that is what couples do as a team. Ever hear of that saying, “there is no “I” in “T-E-A-M?” They do not contribute to the relationship. Only take. You stay in it because you feel like it’s only a temporary money problem and they’ll evenutally get back on their feet and pay you back..but they don’t ever pay you back. They kept up the game and we played into it. Not because we are stupid, but because we think everyone thinks and feels like us.
After reading the posts for the past few months, It seems they all had another woman in the wings….another supply source on-deck.
Unwilling, the month I ran out of money and complained that I needed help, my ex looked at me and said, “it’s time.” He was gone 3 days later to the OW. To the next supply.
It sucks looking back and actually seeing the true picture. It is shocking and unbelieveable. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know what really happened.
Unwilling, It sounds to me like you had a relationship at first with the guy, broke up, then at the point you started seeing him again (4 months later), the dude was just giving it to you straight–he told you upfront you were not a couple, that he was looking for someone else while seeing you. Seems he made it pretty clear the two of you were just f*** buddies. (call me old fashioned but that type of relationship is one I just don’t get anyhow, but I guess each to their own)
BUT from your post, it sounds as if he was rather clear on the issue, so although I sympathize with your hurt feelings, it really isn’t like he didn’t tell you what the relationship was. It sounds like you are still wanting to contact him because you can’t accept what he has actually TOLD you. Accept it. When a guy is that upfront in telling you he is looking for someone else and is in it with you just for the sex, he ain’t playin’. He means it.
Hi Jen,
You wrote what i was thinking regarding Nwillamon’s situation. Sounds like the guy is just immature and didn’t want a committed relationship.
Nwillamon, I wouldn’t give that guy the time of day. But, I would still read the posts so next time you’ll know what red flags to look for in case you encounter a Sociopath.
Jen — I read your post and was scratching my head there. I think that you meant that post for nwillamon? While I agree with you that when a guy tells you that it’s only sex, he means it … but that said, if that same man KNOWS that the other person has a vested emotional interest in a relationship or that the sex means more than just “sex,” it SHOULD be up to them as decent human beings to curtail the sexual activity, yes?
Iwonder — that helps explain things a little bit more, I guess, at least why I acted the way I did on my end. Yes, I did see us as part of a team. What pissed me off is that the temporary money problem would go away, but would he pay me back? Nope … spent the money he had on booze, fancy dinners, etc. Then there was another temporary money problem, and I was chipping in to help again.
Even during the last conversations I had with him, he still kept saying things like, “You have money.” And I’m thinking: Yeah, jackass, I do. And I’m not spending it on YOU! 🙁
Oops, sorry, yes I meant the post for nwillamon.
Sorry, but my relationship and the crazy stuff he did to me was so much more than the sex part. I guess I don’t know how to express myself very well or am just to tired to try and explain it. Believe me….he has all the characteristics of a sociopath, and led me down a long path of caring but would intermittently tell me that he was “looking for that perfect person” and that I wasn’t it. This man called me every single night, ALWAYS wanted to know where I was and what I was doing, bought me gifts, I could go on and on and on. So PLEASE don’t tell me that he was upfront with me about the sex part….it was just another part of his emotional abuse.
Sorry I offended you nwillamon, but I was going by what you said in your post about the time period (after the 4 month breakup) when you got back together. I have no idea if your ex is a socio or not, but was just basing what I said on what you said. Guys (and women too) just sometimes do crappy things and give mixed messages, but they justify it in their minds by telling themselves, well, I told her (or him) I was not committed and was still looking, so although I called them alot and spent alot of time with them, well, I told them soooooooo……
Of course, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt for the person who had an emotional investment in the relationship. But when you ask the question:
“I guess what I’m trying to understand is why I feel like I want to contact him after everything he has done. Again”I guess I just can’t BELIEVE he didn’t care for me.”
Whether you feel he was upfront or not, it still boils down to your accepting that he doesn’t care NOW and you do have to actually accept that before you can move forward. Wanting to believe isn’t gonna make it so, as he has already shown you. Although naturally you want to contact him since he is a habit you’re trying to break, if you can stick to no contact, slowly it will get better.
Iwonder: mine started distancing himself from me when i ran out of money too. but he never admitted to cheating and getting his new gf pregnant until he had the keys to HER apartment. then he was gone. no discussion or apology. after 20 years. i hope they have triplets and her body turns to mush!
Jen2008,
You did not offend me at all. There is just SO much to my relationship with this S, that I don’t even know how to begin to explain it.
I have had no contact for a month now, and each day gets easier. The hardest part right now is my anger and my wanting to make him pay for all that he did. I spent thousands of dollars on this man.
This website is a Godsend!
lost,
It is really hard not to hate the other woman, isn’t it? My ex-s had been “talking” to her over the Internet for over a year … obviously, setting up the next possible “target.” One part of me thinks, “Geez, hasn’t this woman got a clue?” The other part of me remembers how easily I was taken in by his lies and how he got me to believe that his last live-in girlfriend was Satan incarnate — he lied, lied, lied about all the things that she “did” to him, when in fact, she was the one who was bankrolling him for the better part of the year. Once her money ran out, he was GONE. Same thing.
I received emails from FIVE women … count em, five. Each one of them had the same story. Money, money, money … he wanted money from them, or got money from them. One of his lovers kicked up such a fuss, he paid her back, but she had to threaten him to get him to fork over the cash. The other lover told him she was going to give him some money and didn’t actually have it … she didn’t last too long.
Point being: you never know what the sociopath tells others. Mine was able to convince me to believe a lot of lies … I am ashamed that I believed what he told me about his last ex, totally ashamed. She was just like me. And the other woman in his life now? Will probably end up the same way as us one day.