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.
Gemini — ((Hugs)) I understand how you feel. This is my home city, and I love it here. I haven’t found another place like it. My Ex-S moved here, and now it still feels like “his,” because everywhere I look is a place that we went together. I don’t feel those pangs of sadness, nor do I miss him. I don’t. What I do regret is that I can’t get those years back. I haven’t posted about everything that went on, but my dad died when we were together, and I feel that my relationship with my Ex-S prevented me from being there for my dad in the way I should have been there for him. Had I been in a loving relationship, it might have been different. Knowing that I turned my back on my own father for this … THING … I haven’t found a way to forgive myself for that. Now, THAT is something that I do still cry about.
StarG — Loved your blog! Mine is getting excellent response; I’m posting the second in the series that’s a lot like yours tonight called “Meet the Sociopath.” It outlines basically what you wrote about, only in greater detail. We’ll see how that one does, too.
Unwilling: TOWANDA!!!! The word is getting out. My thread is also doing quite well. A discussion started, and while most of the members are goofing around there, one woman actually admitted to dating a sociopath. I told her about this site. I feel like some good is being done. Though I didn’t mention the S by name (and therefore not breaking the terms of service), I think a lot of people know who he is and remember when he and I were hanging out. I posted all the “symptoms” and Robert Hare’s test. I think it’s doing some good.
Unwilling
That is the Lie! IT , IS THE LIE ! THAT’S IT’S GAME! To make you believe the lie ! That you are to blame ! I said this earler that I felt like it was my fault. that I could’nt see ! now if God has Power to do Good would’nt it go the same way for It to have power to do evil?
Love jere
Unwilling,
yes, even just (1) year. I want it back. I keep saying I wish I had a time machine to go back and rewind this past year. I know people tell me to look at everything as a “learning” experience but this is something I really could have done without learning. Who wants to learn that everything that you believed you loved and cared about. For that matter DO love and care about, is this empty, nothing of a person. It makes my stomach knot up just writing it.
He (or IT) whichever is a perference didn’t start this way. His parents, his genetics, his upbringing shaped him to be this way and that is especially saddening. When I see kids who are abused – verbally, mentally, whatever, I just always think “why have them?” It makes me sick. Some people need to be pre-approved before they should be allowed to have kids. This is not by any means my endorsement of abortion or any of those methods but seriously it seems like it’s getting increasingly worse.
They should all be laid on a conveyer belt and pre-screened into reject or accept.
Evolution Of the mind not the body.
This is fact! If a niche is created in Nature , that void will be filled! an Animal a plant an organism will find it and exploite That Niche ! It’s Prmial Instinc ! This is how they are getting away with this legaly!
Go Back say 10,000 years, your in a group of people, Hay look almost all of them are your Family, Ok you picked up two loners Last spring when you where up in the far place where the hunting is good and they became part of your group. follow?
Now one of these loners is a suckup (brown noser) at first but then He is found out. what do you think happens to this one?
1.He is killed and fed to the dogs
2. He is cast out of the group, a individual alone In Nature is like a sitting duck!
But this does’nt happen to this person any more because science has explained POSSESION as a Syndrome
like everything else only worse Evil Syndrome! DR Jere here that will be $1,000.99 have nurse Hatcht set up your appointments Three per week Have a nice Day Dear
NEXT!!!!!!!!
:)~ Love jere
Gemini —
I know how you feel. The old “learning experience.” I hate it when people say that. What did I learn exactly? That there are really crappy people out there in the world who’ll trick you and bilk you for everything you’re worth? How can being conned so professionally be a “learning experience?”
As for the parenting aspect … you know, ex-S’s mom is really a good person. She really believes that she did a good job, but she was one of those single moms who believed that as long as you put a roof over a kid’s head, gave him whatever he wanted, and encouraged any wacky dream he had, he’d turn out a good person. When he didn’t get along with his peers in school and started going absent, she took him out of the school system (bad idea!). She wasn’t a disciplinarian in any respect. They have more of a “peer” or friend-type relationship — it’s quite unnerving. He doesn’t speak to her with the same respect or deference that most people use when they speak to their parents or elders. She’s broken-hearted about his treatment of her and me and a lot of people, and I could point out exactly what happened down the line that made him turn out the way he did.
Unwilling, I never guessed what your ex-S’s “scheme” was. You have to tell me. Sorry so slow.
As far as parents as you saw in one of my posts his dad is a definite sociopath. He (the ex) actually believes his father did not murder his stepmother but from everything he has said about him “I’m the one in charge”, all of his many siblings, the fact that this man would beat him with a board if he got out of hand, and even the accounts I’ve found through my own research on-line there is no question in my mind.
Then there is his mother -maybe I’m mistaken and she IS a good person but from what I’ve seen/heard from her. She’s an alcoholic for one. Her current boyfriend dables n drugs and for most of his life his mom has had issues with black people even though her ex (his dad) is. He told me (this could have been a lie but I don’t know) that she actually would tell him constantly as a kid that he was not black or even part black that he was white, period because she didn’t want him to have any of that association yet would send him to his dad to get disciplined. ?????
it’s crazy because it’s almost like they have this weird co-dependent relationship with one another – “oh my baby, he can do know wrong.” and then when she’s drunk “you are a piece of **** and your just like your dad.”
She was ALWAYS coming to our restaurant to get money from him (has lost various jobs) and when he moved in with me she would constantly seem to say things to him that indicated she missed him and was glad to get rid of him all at once.
And I don’t think mine’s mother is broken up over what he did to me or anyone else. I know she was probably standing with her door wide open when I dropped him off because I’m sure she was not at all surprised.
Gemini —
You’ll probably laugh when I tell you what my Ex-S’s scam was. We lived together, and of course, he got me to give him money whenever he ran out, buy him expensive things, loan him a car, computer, etc. But the biggest scam was that he’d taken pre-orders (money) for a book that he hadn’t even written. People were starting to threaten to turn him into the AG’s office, demanding their money back, etc., it was a mess. So obviously, he had to get product out. I basically “ghostwrote” his book — he gave me the ideas for it and a few chapters. He’s an “okay” writer, but nothing you could publish. I’d already had that experience as a published magazine/newspaper writer. He took the book, printed it, and *poof!* I was supposed to get 50% of proceeds. He even had me INVEST my own money. Now he’s spinning off other product, assuming exclusive rights. Filing in federal court is expensive; just hiring an IP attorney is expensive. If I hadn’t “loaned” him all that money, I could have done it. I have no idea how much money I would have made, probably never will.
Sometimes I’ll see people comment about how wonderful “his” book is, how they just love it, and it makes me ill thinking of all the time and love I put into it, for his sake.
Unwillling, What an piece of *****!!! Mine had a scheme to. That he was going to “take care of” someone for $300,000. Not that it’s not serious. Him not having anything i.e., soul, empathy, etc. he could have very well done it but I think his plans fell through out of shear laziness and given his less than brilliant hand at trying to extort money to which he failed and ended up in prison for.
They’re all just vile! I’m having one of those days/nights. I may need ya again.
While I am here can I pose a question? Anyone? I have been back and forth in my head over all that has happened and although I feel without a shadow of a doubt that he is a sociopath there are times when I wonder what/why I wasn’t “better than” an 18 year old or even a 20 something (his girlfriend). So my question is – sorry it’s so convoluted – do they do nice things in order to get things. For instance, his girlfriend had a surgeon do a botched surgery on her (supposedly) and currently or has (as I don’t know if it’s come to a head) a lawsuit against this doctor to which HE put up the money – I( think that’s part of the reason he’s stayed with her is to wait out the settlement.)
He also at one point had been living in Florida and she had gone to live with him. Anyway, Is it possible he could really have just loved her and did all of this bc of love? Or do u think it was/is all a ploy to ultimately get what he wants. Before he came to live with me he used to visit her every week in the hospital and then it was like she never existed. He didn’t go see her the entire 4 months he stayed with me. I guess if he REALLY loved her he wouldn’t have cheated on her with me and two other women but still I don’t know there’s just so much overwhelming evidence to his being an S.
gem
Bingo B i n g o Bingo and Bingo was his name Olove jere