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.
No one will argue with your statement Unwilling Raconteur. It’s all in Proverbs to stay away from them … for they bring DEATH.
Peace.
Mine did that. Kept saying he was working at the restaurant so he could save money and go back to school – he used to talk about how smart he was and all. I would give him articles about getting financial aid, etc. and he’d thank me for days. It’s been a year and I can almost assure you even with NC that he’s nowhere near going to school and won’t be.
And yes, no when will argue with your statement unwilling. He is indeed one of those.
Wini & Unwilling: Thanks for the reality check. Mine replaced me before my $ ran out. When the money was gone, he left for her place. Now he goes shopping like we did at the same supermarket with her, uses her car (because i took mine back,) she pays her mortgage & living expenses for them (he & sociopath son,) same old…same old. When he left me (because I found out about OW,) he said he needs to change. He doesn’t want to ask anyone for $ anymore, wants to get his own car, etc. It aint gonna happen. His job won’t cover it all and he’s back in the same boat. This time, she’s the supply.
He is supposed to pick up his last remaining items from the garage today. He told me last Thurs he got a storage facility. That was also a lie because he texted last night he just got the facility Sat.
I don’t know why they have to lie. Just tell the truth! It would have been so much easier if when I’d met him he had said, “Well, I would like to pretend to love you so you give me use of your home and everything else you have. Oh yeah, and I’d like a car too…something nice. One more thing, in exchange for my company and services, you should buy me nice clothes. I forgot to mention. My 12 year old son also would like to stay with us so i hope you have extra money for food and clothes for him too. I also hope you don’t mind me not working 50% of the time. I’m real lazy and prefer to play computer games as much as possible. I would also like to abuse you verbally if you don’t mind. All this in exchange for me to say the words “I love you” constantly and to bed you occassionally…that is when i’m not in bed with someone else.” LOL!!!!
I put this here too in another place but;
Sociopathworld * Warrning!* This site is dangerous ! But it is also a view into a mind of evil !
Don’t post ! Just read and Leave
If you back this serpent into a corner it can only
invenomate you ( poision )
Love Jere
That can’t say that because who would actually agree to all that.! LOL! I said the same thing. Even when I told him I wanted to leave I stated to him “look at it this way now you are free to be with your little 18 yr old” and he actually said still with the lies – “I’m not with her!!!” She was with him 2 days after I put him out and still kept lying. Lies, Lies, Lies – I think that’s a Thompson Twins song – anyway, I digress. I almost fell over when he said he’d bought a car. I had to wonder if he stole it or in fact it belonged to someone else. Couldn’t have gotten it from the 18 year old. Last I had seen she was still living with her folks and driving a car they gave her unless he somehow hoodwinked them and managed to find a way to move in with them and give him a car to use though highly doubtful too cause he always has his crazy mama!
Mine never took or asked for any of my money, and I don’t really have any money anyway, so I would have had nothing to give him. He was actually well enough off, having a free townhome on the army base and a very generous monthly stipend (which he used to collect snakes and play women–namely me). He paid for all of our dates, insisted on driving us everywhere in his nice SUV, and wanted to buy me all kinds of things and take care of me. He was a total gentleman and the sweetest, most humble guy you’d ever want to met–the next door. He was totally respectful of my home, always taking off his shoes and even helping me fix a few things. He was so great with my friends, and they loved him. They thought he would be the guy I’d marry. And so did I. And so did he!!!!! (so he claimed)
When I found out I’d gotten played (only for sex apparently, but not for money), I was in shock. It’s still hard to believe. I never saw an evil look in his eyes or heard him raise his voice. He was incredibly laid back and never lost his temper around me. It’s still hard to believe that it was all an act. That’s why I occasionally slip back into denial. I actually have to remind myself that he lied about his divorce, pretty much discarded me after a night of intimacy, and turned out to be defrauding the U.S. army with our tax dollars. I have never in my life experienced anyone like this. If someone had ever told me that people like this exist, and that I COULD FALL FOR ONE, I would not have believed it.
But the thing that really convinced me was to hear him lying to my friend on the phone. She conferenced me in, and I heard him lie to her 3 times without skipping a beat. She, of course, did not know he was lying. But I did. He sounded so sincere and convincing, especially when he told her how much he cared for me. I cannot tell you how angry I felt and how my heart sank that evening.
Hi Star: You are lucky you didn’t get soaked for any money like a lot of us did. Maybe you found out in time before that happened. What ever happened to his hearing? Weren’t you and your friends going to testify?
Mine asked me for money 3 x in a year and only the 1st two he paid me back for 1) while he was out of state (visiting his girlfriend no less) 2) To help him get his child support to his x before his cut-off date 3) so ( I found out later) he could gamble. He soaked me for my money in a very slick way. Since both of us were working at restaurants (he had since moved on to another) we both usually only had cash on us. He “pooled” our money which of course made it seem as though he was paying for half of the bills. Most of the time he “pooled” it he gave me just enough to cover expenses but I never had cash on me at any time. Long winded way of saying Star YOU WERE SO LUCKY you didn’t get stiffed for the money. I’m still trying to keep up with bills that have overlapped each month because of him.
Gemini: I got soaked for groceries, car payment, car insurance, registration, maintenance, $800 repair, $1850 in lawyers for him to file a divorce from his wife..he spent that money on something else, video games, his cell phone bill, plane fare to Punta Cana I paid for, I could go on. All over a period of 2 yrs. He got me good. Almost got my condo cuz he wanted his name on the deed.