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.
Unwilling, I’m not doing too hot. I honestly think I may have to breakdown and get my number changed. Which sucks because I have had it for 11 years. That’s A LOT of people who I have to call and say I have changed it. Local and long distance. Not calling him seems to be the easiest and even that is not. But the constant and obsessive caller ID screening is the thing I struggle with. I can literally have the phone beside me and have the ringer on and still pick it up every few minutes to look at the caller ID.
Yours sounds like me. His ex-wife from all accounts I’ve heard is older than he is and has a good job and seems like she has some sense. His girlfriend I don’t really know about but I know she grew up poor and I know that she met him at a rave. You know it’s suddenly occured to me how he described her as his girlfriend. He said he “made her” his girlfriend. ?????
Gemini — your ex-S sounds immature to me. Really immature. Mine was younger than me. We’re not talking Ashton and Demi, but younger. The problem was not his age, but that he didn’t act it! I often found that I felt like I was conversing with a teen.
If changing your number makes you feel better, then by all means … but do weigh all the pros and cons. I once had my number changed, and in retrospect, it didn’t do any good, because he got it anyway, and there ya go. I have my ex-S’s number set to “silent” on my cell phone so I don’t know when his calls come in.
Gemini_Fairy: Did you ever hear the saying “This too shall pass”.
Peace.
Ha ha, okay I’m laughing at myself now. The motive was not so much revenge as need for validation from my community. In a way, it is like living a double life to be hanging out there but hiding this part of myself that has just been raped by a sociopath. They see me laughing and goofing around, but they don’t know what I’ve been through. It’s always been so frustrating to me to have to hide my truest feelings from friends and co-workers because they cannot possibly understand some of the things I’ve been through. Every once in a while I take a risk and tell a co-worker something personal that they cannot relate to. It rarely has been a positive thing. They already think I’m a wierdo for having snakes.
It was pretty naive to think I could warn a reptile site about sociopaths. You can’t really know what it’s like unless you’ve been there. However, there were a few people that could relate and who asked for the link to this site. So maybe it did some good anyway.
Unwilling – Yes, he is ridiculously immature. He’s only 2 years younger than me and 6 years from his x-wife. I used to have a special ringtone set on my cell phone but I disabled it. I don’t know what I want to do as far as my home #. I can turn my cell phone off but I still find myself checking vmail first thing. And I used to unplug the phones but again, vmail. It’s just so hard. Then there’s the fact that maybe it really doesn’t matter at all cause I may very well not hear from him again. I don’t know. BC I have at least done so well by not trying to contact him I don’t really no much. I don’t know if he still lives with his mother, or still uses her cell phone (cause once I disconnected his line he being the parasite he is started using hers), I don’t know if he works in the same place, is or isn’t still with his girlfriend or even if he is or isn’t still with the 19/19 year old. For all I know she went away to college I just DO NOT KNOW. And sometimes it kills me not to know and sometimes I’m glad I don’t.
Wini, My mother says it all of the time and I have to tell you that I know that it will right now, today on a day I specifically remember as one of his two days off and trying not to contact him is really difficult. I dread Mondays and Tuesdays.
Dear StarG,
I’m glad you are laughing, that’s a big step to healing is to be laughing at ourselves, to get our sense of humor back.
Yes, our need for validation is strong. I think tht is one of the things that makes it sooooo difficult sometimes is that most people in our circle of acquaintences (A) aren’t really interested (B) think we are histerical/crazy (c) don’t believe that anyone can be as bad as we are making out etc etc. A-Z, but no matter what we tell them, they ust “don’t get it”
That seems to be almost “universal” with our friends and family. They also don’t get how deeply we are wounded or that it isn’t “just a normal break up” it is 1000 x worse.
One of the things I had to learn was to VALIDATE myself and just keep my mouth shut to most of the people I know. But you know, at this point, it’s not hard any more. I can VALIDATE myself.
Gemini_Fairy: My grandmother (maternal side of the family) used to say to me during breakups while I was in the moping around stage “Wini, be careful for what you ask for, you just may get it” … and she also used to say “God has you go through these difficult breakups … so that when you are crying over it … he’s trying to tell you that’s what you’d be doing if you were still in that relationship”… you are really explaining to yourself by being upset, that this is an upsetting relationship. You just don’t know it yet, but you’re getting there.
In the meantime, be good to yourself, pamper yourself.
That’s OK, you’re just purging yourself of all the toxins of a toxic relationship.
Peace.
It takes a lot for me to get through work and not cry. I started on my way home from work and couldn’t stop. I keep saying I’m going to take a kickboxing class to get all of this anger out. I’m so pissed and depressed and sad all rolled into one. He used to say he was scared I’d stab him in his sleep in the middle of the night – must be bc someone tried to once.
You are right, OxD. I also made the mistake of telling a co-worker why I didn’t sleep last night when she asked me. I will not do that again. The need to be seen and validated is particularly strong. It’s good to realize that because then I can give it to myself. I am actually having a healing over this.
On a positive note, I spoke with a man on the phone from my dating site who is absolutely adorable and seems very “normal”. I mean not lonely or needy like so many of them are. Just very nice and happy. And I’m chatting with a few others. It’s fun, and it makes me smile. I don’t think I’m ready to date, so I’m just making friends at this point. I’m really guarded about getting close to people after what happened. Fortunately, there are so many ways to connect with new friends without having to open up so much emotionally. Hiking, playing music together, cuddling snakes….. I look forward to getting back to my life, and even back to dating some time soon.
But if you want to boink me anyway, go ahead. I deserve it! LOL