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.
His dad and his uncle, too, huh? What a delightful family that must be.
Yep! And all I did was feel so sorry for him. Dad, Mom, Uncle -I only spoke with his brother once and he appeared decent but he too had his stint in prison for armed robbery so who knows.
It’s funny they should be called “vermin” in a post above. My S’s name is Vernon, and my friends affectionately call him “Vermin” *snicker snicker* It makes me laugh every time they call him that. His user name on the reptile site is “crucified” (note the religious reference). It turned out to be very fitting after I turned him into the army and gave them all the evidence they need to crucify him.
There are just some parts of this whole ordeal that are quite funny. Like when he followed my friend and me around at the snake show. He came up behind me (unbeknowst to me) like he was trying to smell my hair or something. My friend jabbed him twice in the crotch with a snake hook (!!!!) to get him away from me. “Vermin” was so upset that he stormed out of the show never to be seen again. When my friend told me what he did, I laughed so hard for the rest of the day, I kept spitting out food and drinks, and tears were coming out of my eyes. (You had to be there). The hook almost caught on his zipper and “exposed” him, leaving us laughing to a round of “player getting exposed” jokes.
I have told the “snake hook in the crotch” story to several of my friends, and we always bust up laughing over it. The humor really seems to help me get over him!
Stargazer: That’s because he believes in himself and only himself … not that anyone above him created the world? Daaaaaaaaaa. I’d ask him to make the sunshine, make you a flower, make it rain … make the heavens and the earth. Hey, I’ll ask a simple question … make me the ocean (LOL).
He’ll think you were talking mubble jumble anyway, that’s the arrogance at work here, plus their insecurities … all jumbled up.
There’s no breaking through to anyone living in their ego. They listen to their own thoughts thinking that’s the way to go … instead of reading wisdom from the “you know what book”.
Peace. Funny story, you made me laugh.
Interesting you mention crucify. Mine said to me once when he was doing his usual “oh boo hoo my sad life” that his grandmother asked one day. “what’s wrong with my family? I mean were we there when they put Jesus on the cross?” This was a women he described as smacking you to the floor if you spoke at the table. I guess mine really didn’t have a chance in hell not to grow up any differently than he did. That’s the only time I start feeling awful.
I mean to know he’s messed up bc of his genetics AND his upbringing.
And I spelled vermin wrong – opps!
: )
Well, gals and guys, I started my blog series on sociopaths today. We’ll see how well it does and what responses I get. This has been cathartic. I’ve prepared a week’s worth of blogs on the various angles of sociopaths.
I even wrote about why I felt that the women’s movement of the 60’s ended up being a double-edged sword for us in many ways. Equal pay, equal rights, equal property rights … back in my parents’ day, it was unheard of to ask a woman for money or expect her to contribute to the family income. It wasn’t even proper to “go Dutch.” I wish that I would have gotten some of your inputs before I wrote it, though — I mean, am I completely off-base in assuming that because women have more, that means a larger pool of potential victims?
Unwilling: I agree with the 60’s era hurting women more than it did good. We should never have burned our bras. Now that men feel they don’t have to be the sole provider, they can skate on a woman’s coatails if they find one with money.
A man feels like a real man when he can provide for the family. That’s the way it’s been since the beginning of time. My mom never worked. My dad worked his but off to support a family of 5 children. We were poor but we were emotionally stable and taught money isn’t what counts…it’s the soul..doing what’s right in life.
Wini always references the S’s insecurities. I think there may be a connection. If a S can’t provide and is being taken care of by a woman, he gets insecure that another man with money may come along. That’s what happened with my S. He didn’t want me working out of the home…but I couldn’t do that financially. He was always insecure that I would meet a suit guy at work with money…no matter how reassuring I was. I also didn’t want me to go to school 2 nights a week because I’d meet a man more intelligent. He was a mess. Very jealous, controlling, etc. but he didn’t realize his problems were the demise of the relationship. He was holding on for dear life to me and in so doing was suffocating. He blamed me for his insecurities and wanted me to get down to his level with a job that paid like his. It just wasn’t feasible. I needed to pay the mortgage. He started finding excuses as to why he couldn’t better himself. I didn’t care he had no money in the beginning because I thought i loved him. I thought eventually, he’d get on his feet…that our love was his purpose in getting his act together. Nah. He just took everything and gave nothing back. He told me my job was better because I’m white. He used race and everyother card as an excuse.
Hell, if he had wanted to work 2 jobs and let me stay home I’d be ok with that…but he doesn’t have that in him. Always minimal wage doing whatever.
But in the end, a sociopath without a conscience or empathy is going to damage women in ways other than just financially. So I’m not sure the 60’s turn around exposed women to more S’s. I think Wini referenced these types of people in the Bible somewhere.
Wini…where is that Bible reference?
Iwonder,
Someone wrote that all these people must go to the same sociopath school — LOL! I agree after reading your comment. Mine wanted me to quit my job, too. I made decent money, enough to get by. He couldn’t have provided for us on his income, there is just no way. Plus, I got health benefits (I have a hereditary auto-immune disease, and I need the coverage) and pension. So he was actually proposing something that would have been to our detriment, and I didn’t get that. He couldn’t see me as an equal partner.
The 60’s might not have exposed women to more S’s, but I’m wondering if it made us more vulnerable to them. My mom and dad used to talk about the rare gent who tried to pull this stuff in their towns … and how he was shunned, talked about, etc. Women back in those days didn’t have property rights, so there was only money to lose, and other tangible items. S-type behavior back then just didn’t seem to fly, because it was obvious to everything what he was doing.
Dear Iwonder: The reference is to re-read Donna Anderson’s quote about her anti-social character James Montgomery… WE ARE THEIR BUSINESS.
Yours, mine, the rest of the anti-socials don’t come into our lives to better the relationship, they come into our lives to take us for a ride … that is what they do, We are their careers … that is it in a nutshell … find us, pretend to love us … then take us for what they can take us for … money, a roof over their heads, vehicles, deeds to this, deeds to that, food in their stomachs, you name what we have, they want it. That’s why they don’t care to better themselves in the “normal” way … they are better themselves when they meet us (their latest victim).
Sad but true, this is what they are all about.
The reason why it’s difficult to get to closing for all of us after they are gone … is that we never knew the REAL game they had us in for, until it was over … then it takes months/years to comprehend it … by then they have gone on to others to do the same thing over and over and over again.
They are professionals, and we are their careers… Scamming and conning those that work, produce and provide. When they date someone that can’t give them anything … that’s OK, it’s just a pits stop … besides, they cleaned us out so they can pay for a few dinners and a few bills … they do like to act like the nice guy/gal once in a while. Just not with us … where they scored.
Peace.
Wini,
I’d just like to add to this … what they want can be a professional service that they don’t want to pay for. My ex-S had a really good graphic designer do a layout for him, promised to pay her. What she got was a little wining, dining and a good lay, but never any money. Once she was done with the project, he was done with her. This didn’t take very long for him to accomplish, either. These people are whores, sorry to say it. But that’s what they are, in my eyes.