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.
Wini – You make me smile……:) thanks
Henry … that’s because you are healing and can see the reality of them being the stunted infants of the universe. The more you heal, the more you get back to yourself … hey, they just knocked us off our feet for a while … we’re not out for the count yet.
I’m glad to see your sense of humor again … smile, it’s contagious.
Peace and hugs, hugs and peace.
You know Henry: We can take a group photo … all of us standing behind a lemonade stand … or wearing T-Shirts with LEMONS on them… that will be our secret LF blogger’s shirt.
Tee hee.
PEace.
OxDrover:
Thanks for your story about the Bushmen. I love learning new things — this is something that I definitely want to read more about!
When I felt the “knocking,” I wrote it off to paranoia. At first, I couldn’t believe that this wonderful man wanted ME. Oh, you know how it goes. So when he asked to borrow form me for the first time … I hate to admit it, but that was the first time that I felt that tapping of conscience. Very clearly elucidated in my mind was the thought, “He could just be taking advantage of you, you know. You could be a joke to him.” But the way he treated me offset my suspicions at the time … so why did I still feel that warning tap?
If you’re not a naturally paranoid or suspicious person, it pays to acknowledge that tapping on your shoulder. That means something’s wrong … the dots are all there, but they haven’t been connected. There really is enough information to make an informed decision, it just hasn’t been linked together. Now that I did link it, I know just why I felt the tap … because the story was about to happen to me, not someone else.
I have a question for you guys. Did any of your men or women ever admit to an infidelity (or anything else really bad), deliberately rub your nose in it with calls and voicemails giving graphic details, then later on deny that the woman or man he made sure to flaunt in your face (where you actually saw them together with your own eyes), that it never even happened, and not only that, but that he never called and left voicemails or said any of the stuff he did, and tell you that you imagined the whole thing?
Mine did this, and he was so good at it and so confident and so persistent with the lies that if I had not SAVED the voicemails (which I would have to go back to and listen to because he had me doubting my sanity) , I’m not too sure he wouldn’t have convinced me I was totally nuts and really HAD imagined the whole thing.
Dear Jen,
Yes, this practice of rubbing your nose in something and then denying that you even did the thing much less rub your nose in it is called “gaslighting”–I’m not sure if you are aware of this concept or where it came from but it is from an old movie where a man was using gaslights (the lighting of the time) to drive his wife “crazy”–it sure fits.
I have also heard this technique, I think it comes from the Psychopath’s play book, page 101, anyway it is also called the CRAZYMAKING. It screws with your REALITY. You know you heard/saw it, and you know it happened, but they deny it and call you crazy until you begin to wonder yourself if you are crazy, or did you really see it, hear it etc.?
My mother did this to me with her lies. She would say one thing, then deny she ever said it, or say, “oh, you must have misunderstood, I actually said …” Since I could NOT EVEN CONCEIVE that my mother would deliberately LIE, and my own short term memory was severely impaired from the PTSD after the plane crash, it DID DRIVE ME CRAZY. LOL
Once I finally realized what was happening though, then I saw what was deliberately going on. Yep, they do it “all the time” any time it suits them and I think must be a particular pleasure to them to see us squirm on the skewer.
Dear Jen2008: It depends on how bored they are. Some will flaunt it to see your reactions and others (like my EX) never give anything up … because of the ultimate motivation of getting what they can get from you before they move on.
If you’ve read Cleckley or Lowen … you’d understand the concept of the anti-socials have denied their emotions since they were kids (some out of horrific abuse in their lives … and others of what I think is their egos not wanting to listen to simple reprimands from parental figures when they are children) … either way, they deny their emotions to survive as children … it becomes a way of life for them … hence, that’s why they can do such horrific situations in life to others … cause they can’t feel the pain they cause other people.
For your EX to ensure you knew … then deny it … is typical of them doing this. It’s seeing the reactions for themselves … and learning what they can get away with for later victims that come into their paths. He could care less, because he can’t feel the effects of the damage he causes to you … and at the time, if he was still living with you … he had to deny it … for the time he still stayed with you … he needed to get his ducks in a row to find another place to live.
All of us are stepping stones to the next victim… what they can get away with and what causes them problems.
If they could feel what they do to others … I don’t believe they would be doing any of this in the first place. It’s because they’ve denied their emotions (which naturally goers dormant) over the years … is why they can do the most outrageous things in life.
Actually, they need to be incarcerated (and NOT for punishment purposes … for healing purposes) for years so mental health professionals can work with them to break down the walls to their emotional self. I for one, haven’t given up on them … I just think it’s such an exhausting and overwhelming undertaking that it seems hopeless.
I keep thinking what positive motivational speakers say … about how it takes the average person half the period we were in an abusive situation to heal (e.g. if you were married for 20 years … then the healing time is basically 10 of those years to work the abuse out of your life). If that theory is correct … then if these folks are in their 40s, 50s, 60s etc. and have been denying their emotions for 35, 45, 55 years … then therapy for them is half of the 35 years, 45 years, 55 years. That’s what I think the probably is … it takes this long to break their walls down.
Peace.
jenn: my ex confessed to cheating for months (lied about it the whole time until he finally did confess), he got the new gf pregnant, then vehemently denied — ready for THIS? — that he hadn’t used a condom! uh. let me get this straight. you cheated on me and slept with this girl repeatedly for months and months, she got pregnant, but you ALWAYS used a condom?
now THERE’s a lie!!!
“i swear to GOD i wore one EVERY time!” (like it mattered at this point!) but once i called him a dirty street whore, and he realized that he WAS one, he backtracked to try and make himself look … uh … good?
omfg!
anyway, he used to tell me that if he ever cheated on me that he would come back and have sex with me while he told me all the details. he never did that, but i guess it was only a matter of time. i thought he was joking. silly me.
what a disgusting, slimy, repulsive, revolting, lying, cheating, whoring pod!
i hate him!
(okay, thanks for letting me vent. GOOD question, jenn.)
There’s a whole story to come – I need to just get it out – but I saw this and was shaking my head because mine, up until the very last – even AFTER I put him out – day denied that anything was going on between him and the 18 year old (who graduated from H.S. last year) that he wasn’t having sex with her. I went to his place (rather his mother’s place) to give him back the rest of his crap and saw her car. He looked me dead in the face and said she wasn’t there. Then when he offered to have me come up to the apartment if I didn’t believe him and I called his bluff and said “sure why not” then suddenly I was confronted with his shouting at me in the parking lot telling me I was crazy. They are NUTS!!!
(Thanks for the rant. Hope to post my story here shortly)
Early Warning Signs???
• Girlfriend
• Previous prison stint for extortion
• Lived with his mother
• No car
• Divorced and had not seen his son in almost a year.
• Verbal warnings
I suppose you could say that it’s my fault that I got myself involved in this situation. I’m embarrassed to even be feeling so hurt and betrayed. After all, I got involved with this man even after I knew he had a girlfriend. I guess I deserved what he did to me. After all, he was cheating on her with me why wouldn’t he do the same to me? I tried to end it in January. I told him that it was a situation that wasn’t working for me and what I wanted was a relationship which he could not provide. It worked too. At least for two weeks it did. I did not contact him, did not talk to him outside of work. Nothing. And he the same. I didn’t think anything of it when he asked me if I wanted to have coffee after work so we could “talk”. The talk ended up with us in bed together.
For months, he told me he couldn’t be in a relationship because of his girlfriend who was sick and lived out of state. He said where he didn’t really having any real love feelings for her she had been there for him through a lot. I admit, I couldn’t quite get what a 20 something girl had that I did not. She lives with her parents, she is so sick she cannot work or go to school. But in the beginning I looked at it like we’re “just friends” who on occasion had sex. I didn’t think anything of it when he first asked me if I would pick him up and take him to work. I didn’t think anything of it the first time he called me and asked me if I could wire him money because he couldn’t get a hold of his brother or mother. After that I sort of kind of let it take on a life of it’s own. I offered him rides to and from work almost daily and because I felt badly for him offered to pay him to paint my place. Eventually I went on to buy him hundreds of dollars worth of stuff for his birthday, Christmas or because I felt like it. This was all BEFORE January. And still I didn’t think anything of it.
He never exhibited any of the characteristics I saw when he eventually came and stayed with me. I never once saw him drink during that time. I would literally go to work with him and drop him off afterwards to his mother’s. He always seemed very adamant about his relationship with his girlfriend and so I decided to as I stated to end things. From January until the time I put him out of my place in May is quite literally a blur. I don’t know how it happened or why I let it happen and I guess that’s where I just don’t get it. Or like I said, maybe I deserved this.
The Story
When I first met “Arthur” it was at work. We hit it off almost immediately. Introducing ourselves to one another and talking with ease. I took it as it being because we were the closest in age compared to everyone else we worked with. By the end of the night we had exchanged numbers (for work purposes of course) and said we’d touch base if we needed help covering a shift.
Eventually we had dinner one night after he got off work and it was then that he explained to me that he was originally from the area that we live in and, after a brief stint in prison, he had come home to help his mother who was ill. In addition to that he was dealing with a sick girlfriend who lives in another state. Okay, so these should have all been clear signs that I needed to run for the nearest exit, but I felt sort of bad for him. After all people make mistakes and we were just going to be hanging out friends so what harm could there be.
Fast forward to a year later and I feel as if my whole world has been ripped apart. These days it seems impossible for me to believe that it’s only been a year that I’ve known him because it feels like so much longer.
When I realized that I was developing feelings for him it was about 3 months into the “relationship”. I was picking him up and driving with him into work almost everyday (he didn’t own a car), and at various time I was loaning him money (of which he always paid back) and even going so far as buying him a $100 gift certificate for his birthday and buying him over $100 worth of gifts for Christmas (in addition to a rather hefty farewell dinner before I headed back to my hometown for the holidays).
By January of this year however, I realized he was never going to leave his girlfriend to which I couldn’t rationalize. Why would a man in his late thirties want to be with a girl who was barely out of her teens? So I wrote him a letter and verbally stated to him that I could no longer deal with what we were doing and I needed to end things. And it worked too. At least for 2 weeks it did. I did not call him to chat, offer him a ride or anything else. I saw him at work, we were civil and I went on about my business as usual. Likewise he did the same. And then one day he asked me if I would prefer he not talk to me at work. I replied to him that there was no need to go that far and that it was fine for us to still speak. Next he was asking me out to have coffee or a drink after work.
Don’t ask me where my rationale came in at this point. I guess it didn’t. But I agreed and one thing lead to another, I was back in his arms and he was back in my life. By February he had slowly but surely (or maybe not slowly ”“ quickly as it seems to be the case with them) moved into my house. At this time he still had the girlfriend out of state and I tried to push that aside as they were barely hanging on ”“ his words ”“ and that we were working towards our own relationship. We were now, living and driving and working together. It was fine for the first month. We hung out together, went out to eat, watched movies and of course had as much sex as two people could. He always paid for everything. Then, he got another job back at the place he had worked when he was nineteen. I was ecstatic for him. This new job meant he would have more responsibility and make more money and would therefore bring more money into the house.
Then things went bad. At first, and up until very recently, I honestly thought his new job had been what had changed him. Suddenly, he was back to smoking, ( I had bought him the patch to stop as a Christmas gift), he was drinking more often and on more than one occasion came home high out of his mind, our “pooled” money was more him putting my money with his and him giving me the bare minimum to pay the bills to which I ultimately ended up with no cash on my person at anytime. Now, I was used to him taking my car out at night after we got off to go hang out with a mutual friend of ours (or at least I thought that’s where he was) and I was used to him coming home late, but ultimately he would come home so I just shrugged it off. Then one night, as I waited for him at his job to take him home he told me, “I’m going to go hang out with Paul ”“ his co-worker- so you can go ahead and go home without me.” I was pissed! Yelling at him that he didn’t have to let me sit there and wait for him if he wasn’t going to need me to take him home. He yelled back at me telling me not to disrespect him in front of his co-worker. I went home, alone and pissed waiting for him to come skulking back in late. It never happened because he never showed up.
When I called him early that morning to blast him for it I was met with “You aren’t my girlfriend, I’ll come right now and come pack my stuff and leave right now.” I countered back with “you could have at least called; I don’t want you to leave.” He told me not to call him on his phone for the whole day ”“ until he was ready to talk to me. I should add in here that the phone he was referencing was MY cell phone that he was using because his had been disconnected. After turning off the phones and crawling back under my covers to cry, he came home in the early morning hours of the a.m. drunk and mean telling me he had been trying to call me all day and why wasn’t I answering and that he expected for me to behave better than I was ”“ all before he forced me to have sex with him.
Now again, a normal rational person would be like enough is enough but obviously it wasn’t for me. And like Charlie Brown with Lucy, it happened again because just a week later I found out the night of his disappearing act he had slept with a co-worker’s friend.
I was hurt (though thinking back on it I had no right to be ”“ after all I was with someone who had a girlfriend and if he cheated on her he’d do it to me) but that aside from that I thought ’I’m different. I’m older, more mature, have my own house, car, job.’ I confronted him, argued with him about it and ultimately he had me convinced it was a one time thing. They were drunk and it happened.
But it didn’t just happen and it didn’t just happen with her. By April/May by checking my cell phone bill I found numerous calls placed to numbers that I wasn’t familiar with him calling ”“ aside from his mom, brother, best friend and out-of-state girlfriend. After Googling nearly half of them I found out that a lot of them directed me to escort/prostituting services and one in particular stood out ”“ the one that ultimately caused me to put him out. It was one number that I was able to correspond with a contact logged into his phone (I had looked through it one night while he was yet again passed out from being out at all hours) and it was labeled “Fun Bunny”. The problem I had ”“ the girl it belonged to was 18 YEARS OLD!!!! I have to tell you my emotions were overrun. Why would he be with an 18 year old girl, just out of high school, who still lived with her parents and someone he worked with on top of that?
Through all of this I was still trying to hang on. After all, he still was having sex with me, albeit the fact that it was getting crazier every time. Although he didn’t outright physical abuse me he would have extremely violent sex with me often striking me and verbally making comments about me. He was still sticking around. I was so confused. One minute he was telling me everything was going to be okay and that we were okay and that he didn’t want anyone else but me. Things with the girlfriend were winding down and eventually we’d go on a trip together and just spend time together and the next he wasn’t showing up and when he finally did he was drunk or high or both and either screaming at me and telling me I was causing him stress and that was why he didn’t come home or came home late and the next I was his most favorite person to be around and hang out with even though we no longer ever did anything together. I don’t know how I even managed to get through day-to-day. I spent a lot of time crying and often (mostly when he didn’t come back home) called into work because I couldn’t manage to drag myself out of bed. I was (and still am) taking Ambien by this point so that I could at least at night quiet my thoughts and not think about whether or not he would should up or where he was and who he was out doing it with. At some point I managed to decide to take some time and go home to visit my family.
When, after a brief trip home to visit family I came back to hear from my neighbor that they had seen an unfamiliar car in my driveway and corresponding it to the car of this young lady I flipped out. I called him at work, told him I wanted his stuff out of my house and proceeded to do things no self-respecting thirty something woman should do. I called the girl and threw nasty barbs towards her. I called her repeatedly (30-40 times a day ) almost everyday at home and on her cell phone even once confronting her and asking her if she was with him ”“ she said that she wasn’t.
The weeks after that were the toughest I have ever had. Ultimately, I got him out of my house (minus my cell phone which he took with him) yet still I found myself driving to his mother’s and upon seeing the girl’s car parked there flew into yet another rage towards him (and he was moved out by then). It has not been until recently that I’ve been able to control those impulses and even now I find it difficult. I have had to disable my account from Facebook because I know that the two of them are “friends’ on it and I can no longer even go into certain areas of the city we live in. On top of that I have moments where despite all I have gone through I miss him terribly and want to talk to him and see him and then the next moments where I wish nothing but bad things will befall him. That he’ll lose his job; that the people he works for will see him for what he is ,or that he gets arrested again and goes back to finish out his 5 year of back time. Not only do I often wish these things on him I wish them on her too and I know that this isn’t even her fault. I know you aren’t supposed to put negative out there but I just get so pissed sometimes when I think about everything I went through and everything I did.
I am so THANKFUL every day for finding this site. As I’ve stated in a few of my other blogs (I’ve just started) I really just need to have a place where I can vent. I want to get over this so badly and begin to heal. It’s taking a great deal of effort for me.
Anyway, Thank you to the lovefraud community and if anyone has anything they can provide me in the way of feedback I’d greatly appreciate it because some days I really think maybe I AM crazy and this person isn’t a sociopath at all and I’m just a dumb@.......$%.