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.
Everyone,
I could use your advice. I posted my thread last night on my reptile site called “Sociopaths Among Us”. I copied my original post on this blog last night. I felt pretty good when I got done and started seeing responses come in. Then it took a turn…..
I had nightmares half the night that the ex was hunting me down to try and rape or kill me. I woke up in a panic and wondered if maybe one of his friends saw the thread and sent him the link. I did not mention him by name, but I did talk about his army scam. That will identify him to some. Though I’m not so scared today, I do fear that he may try and retaliate, even by posting lies about me on the site. I’ve had so many precognitive dreams that I am always alarmed when I have them.
For those who know the story (as far as I know he has no history of violence, and I have not heard from him since early July) do you think I should worry?
I do have the option of contacting a moderator and having the thread deleted. What is your advice?
My main priority here is self-protection and self-preservation. I really felt I was making progress and that it would be good to try and warn people on the site. But the dream reminded me just how scary S’s can be. It now feels like a slight setback to me, even though some people thanked me for the thread.
There are also a few people posting on it that don’t believe in sociopaths and don’t understand. I made it a point to thank these people and not to argue with them.
StarG: What happened to NC? Were you bored last night? Had to go and stir the pot?
No, he seems to have left the site, so I didn’t consider this as having contact. But apparently it is a setback for me. I asked to have the thread deleted. I just got cocky and forgot just how this could come back at me.
I just had the thread deleted. OMG, what was I thinking? I really just need to skip my blogging about him confined to LF where it’s safe.
StarG: Big, big, big setback, I would say so … you need to focus on the positives in life (aka what you focus on becomes your reality) … or else, keep sliding back with the nightmares and freaking yourself out.
NC means stay away from ANYTHING regarding him (sites, friends, his family, co-workers etc) … there’s a reason for this … so you can heal, getting yourself back to a healthy way of living your life that YOU want to live, not dictated by someone else. You are suppose to be learning what you want to do again … where you are heading, what makes your boat float, what you want to do, what you enjoy … etc. etc. etc…
When you slip up and waffle over to anything regarding him … it puts your mind back there … that is not good for you.
peace.
Gemini — I’m not sure if this will answer your question about if they ever do something nice for anyone, but I can tell you this.
My Ex-S had two types of women that he was interested in. Normal ones, like me, with jobs and money; these tended to be his long-term relationships that he kept really well-hidden. These were relationships in which the women really did love him in a normal, healthy way.
Then there were the skanks. And I mean, we’re talking not just the bottom of the barrel, the squirmy white things underneath. Not a pot to pee in, always in the sex industry, drug-addled, nothing to offer. He seemed to be overly generous to women who exhibited sociopathic tendencies. One of his ex-GFs, who’s in low-level porn, wrote this blog about … god, I can’t even write this … how she wanted to molest little boys and how rape was actually exciting. He once told me that he liked eff’d-up women because he was eff’d-up himself.
No. Really? You don’t say–?
🙂
How are you doing?
Hi Star,
I was going to give you advice but you have decided to delete the thread. Hope you’re doing okay now. We’re always here on this site for you.
Wini, I consider myself boinked. I don’t even need the skillet. However, in some ways being here isn’t good for me, either because I keep talking about him. Yet it feels like a safe haven.
Usually when I backslide, I start missing him. I’ve never really been afraid of him until last night. It’s creepy and gives me chills. I will sleep better tonight now that the thread is gone.
I don’t really know who his friends are on my reptile site or if he even still has any.
But while I’m on the subject…..In the dream I had about him, we were all either working in the same building together or hanging out in the same building with a group of mutual friends. He had found a new gf. She was younger and very attractive. He approached me and said he wanted to put the past behind us so we can be friends. I ignored him and walked away. Later he followed me at night in his car and tried to corner me in a dark alley. I think he was going to rape me. I got away. Later on that night he followed me back to the same place. He had brought some accomplices and they were looking for me. I was just about to escape when I woke up panicked and scared.
Man, I really need to get more of a life!
Stargazer,
That is funny, BOINKING yourself! ha ah But sugar YOU DESERVED THE BOINKING for posting that. But I have done some things just as DUMB and for just the same “no reason”– “why the heck did I do that?” But that’s the way we learn.
I’m glad you deleted the thread. Poking sticks at the Ps, through the bars even, isn’t usually a good idea. Sending infor to his military commander for an illegal act is JUSTICE, posting him on the thread was maybe “revenge?” (not an accusation, just a question) But NC does, like Wini, said, mean NO, nada, zip, zero, none. Not even by “proxy.”