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.
I’ve told myself that if I ever run into him with another girl, I would tell her to run as fast as she can…but I don’t know that I really would do that. He would just lie to her about me, use his charm to convince her that he is wonderful, and he’d once again look at it as a victory over me.
Dear prttywttyme,
Welcome to love fraud, Donna has so many great articles on every question you asked. Go back through the archives on the left and read EVERY article whether you think it applies to you or not (it will) There are articles and blogs on “should I warn the next victim?” No sense in me rewriting all the wonderful things that are ALREADY there.
Learning about th epsychopaths and how they work and think and so on IS YOUR BEST DEFENSE against finding and hooking up with another one. RED FLAGS are the warning signs that 99.9% of them give off EARLY in the relationship, and plus, you will also need to learn to set boundaries. That means that when someone treats you badly once you don’t let them do it again and get “door mat tattooed on your back”
So you come here often, read and learn because KNOWLEDGE=POWER. You are very welcome here and you will heal, but it takes TIME and EFFORT and a few backsteps too, (we’ve all done that) so don’t be ashamed or humiliated with this bunch of folks, whatever you did there is one or more of us that have been “dumber” LOL Don’t be too hard on yourself either! ((((hugs)))))
prttywttyme:
I debated that question for a while and … neh. If I wasn’t 100 percent sure that the girl he’s with didn’t know he was in a relationship with me when she first started playing Internet footsie with him, then I might have considered it. As it stands, she knew. She didn’t care. She proceeded, just like all of them did (my ex-sociopath used to be in the media spotlight and still has a lot of little fangirls panting around). She actually did me a huge favor, come to think of it.
She’s also very young. And my ex-sociopath tells me that she comes from a lot of money. Mom and Dad will bail her out when she gets in a sticky sitch, and she’ll learn a valuable lesson: be careful for what you ask for, because you might just get it. 🙂
hi Unwilling: The OW my ex went to knew also. I figured there is no use in warning her because he already tap danced enough cover-up lies she’ll think it’s me who is the psycho. Besides, she gets what she asked for.
I have a question. I read some articles that say sociopaths’ behaviour starts to get better after 40. Is anyone’s sociopath ex over 40?
Iwonder said: “I read some articles that say sociopaths’ behaviour starts to get better after 40. Is anyone’s sociopath ex over 40?”
Mine had just turned 44 when I met him and he was 48.4 years old when I last had contact. He was still the nightmare from hell. But I’ve read similar things that some of them seem to get better. I suspect the seeming improvement has more to do more with health issues or lower energy levels (so they don’t commit as many obvious antisocial type acts) rather than them actually improving as far as their core personality goes. But mine was still going strong even with the obvious antisocial acts.
Probably around 40, I would think that it would be difficult for them to “service” all their various women, and they’d stick with the one or two women who they knew were most solvent. I know that sounds like a crass thing to say, but it’s probably true!
On the OW issue being discussed, mine had a fling with a woman I actually met up close and personal prior to the fling. She made a big impression on me, because when I met her she had a boyfriend (she and the boyfriend worked with my ex) and they came to my house to look at a vehicle her boyfriend wanted to buy. She was a real talker and told me her whole life story while the guys were looking at the car.
She had only been divorced about 6 months (and was living with this new guy) and new guy had no credit so she was gonna try to finance the vehicle for him. But here is the kicker: she told me her ex husband was a psychopath and she had been under psychiatric care prior to the divorce because she had tried to kill herself because of what he did to her. And she said after all she had been thru, she just wanted to party and have a good time and this new guy was soooo perfect for her blah blah. The only thing I remember about the new boyfriend is he kept coming over to the patio table and getting my cigarettes and smoking them without ever asking if I minded (and I thought that was incredibly rude, not that I minded him having the cigarettes, but most people out of politeness would at least say they ran out and ask if you minded). Anyway, they didn’t get the vehicle though (don’t know what happened there) and about a month later new guy got arrested for drugs, then he hit the road and left the state to avoid prosecution (although I didn’t know at the time they had broken up).
My ex picked a fight with me and left (he had a habit of doing that and disappearing a few days here and there). Wanna guess who he hooked up with?
My X-BF-P was 62 when I “hooked up” with him, and it didn’t seem to slow him down at all. Besides, every TV show on the tube has ads for the “little blue pill.”
As far as them “improving” after age 40, DEFINE “improving”–means they don’t fist fight as much?
At age 48 my ex P was still the most highly sexed man I ever met. A day without sex would have been like a day without sunshine to him. I only knew about the one fling while we were together, but found out about numerous others later.
BUT come rain or shine, sleet or snow, or even when I had the flu, he still wanted to have sex.
oxy – do you know the generic name for viagra? (mycoxaflopin)