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.
Wini,
: )
I did notice the lip service. I noticed it when he last called. I don’t know if it was you or someone else that said the line from Shakespeare….about protesting too much. I forgot what it was… never was quite up on the Shakespeare. Anyway, I noticed he was always giving me a reason or explaination for things… Instead of calling and saying “hey gem, could you call me.” It was “hey gem, I’m at home today, I’ve been out sick, etc. etc.” Just a constant round and round with explainations I didn’t ask for or need to hear bc it all sounded like crap!!!!
I think maybe I need to start watching my BTVS DVDs again. Silly as it sounds but it used to get me really fired up about my power!!!
Tryin to get there!!!
K, here is an assignment from me, lovingly, to you all…I think we should all take in what we have read so far today, and go enjoy the rest of the day/weekend. Everyone here right now seems to be more positive and ‘getting it’ and i think we should take advantage of that.
Let’s take the day, enjoy it, and meet up later tonight or tomorrow, and share with the blog what fun we had!
As for me, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do!
Talk to you all later 🙂
Letgoletgod, I think part of the problem or problems I have are twofold. Yes, he is a sociopath and he did everything he could to keep me off balance with the constant “cuddly” feelings one minute and not showing up or coming home late the next and I kept taking him back along with everything else he did. But having grown up with all females I was raised to “play the game”. Don’t respond, don’t call for awhile and they will eventually call you back. And this will in turn give you the relationship you want. (At least that’s what my mom and sister’s think).
Letgoletgod: You sure are on a roll … glad to read what you wrote … I have one addition to the rule theory. They have NO rules for which they abide by… that’s the thing, we play by rules … out of respect for ourselves as well as others in the world, they play not acknowledging that rules exist … never mind being broken … that theory too is as old as when they were used car salesmen.
We read a new law and abide so chaos is kept in check … they read a new law and find the loopholes …
In a nutshell, they are the loopholes of life … as society progresses they mutate bigger and better, more advanced to surpress the progress (opposites again, always the opposite).
Peace.
Hi Letgo:
You are so right about not taking anything personal about the parasite moving on to a new host after it has sucked the life out of you. I always think to myself that old cliche, “nothing personal, just business.” That’s how cold-hearted they are.
When my ex used to abuse me, i would go in the bedroom, shut the door and write about how i was feeling. I remember one note i wrote to myself from him. It went, “Dear wonderwoman, I’m sorry I ripped your pants, broke your camera and spit in your face. I’m sorry I did not keep my promises to you; especially the one that I would love you for the rest of my life. You see, I really don’t like myself very much. I’ve made so many mistakes and hurt so many people that I really can’t stand me. I don’t love you…but I don’t hate you either. I merely exist. Peace Out.”
Wow, even back then before I found out about the OW, I knew he was uncapable of loving and just existed. I nailed it a long time ago.
LGLG: thanks for responding … twice! i appreciate the time and effort you took to explain that to me. i feel much better.
and as usual, thanks to you all for being there, taking the time to make me ‘get it.’!
listen, gemini sistah. no need to ever play games in healthy relationships, except cute, fun ones! these games we have played weren’t ours, we never understood the rules (or they changed daily just as we thought we did understand them!), and we could only lose.
now, we have to have NO CONTACT at all, and take care of us. if you focus on what you want for you, do what YOU love to do, he shouldn’t be in your mind as much. it seems to work for me pretty well.
do i think about him every day? yes, but after 12 weeks of NO CONTACT, he is fading. yesterday, i found a photo of him and at first my body was shocked. then i looked at it closely and had very little emotional reaction. it was like someone i knew, but there was something about the pic that made me think ”who the hell IS he?”
one thing is: he is stunningly gorgeous. amazing body, deadly face, charming and smart. when i saw the picture, i actually said out loud, ”you’re not that cute at all!” and i meant it! he just looked weird, awkward, scared actually.
it’s not him that’s keeping you from moving forward, it’s your perceptions of him. mine had me thinking he was this amazing, fearless, man-about-town. of course i was jealous and missing him. but when i realized (as i looked at t he picture) that he isn’t that at all (all part of his facade — he’s really just a punk-ass loser), i laughed, threw the pic away, and went for a walk in the park!
TOWANDA!!!!!!!
LIG: He’s gorgeous on the outside but ugly on the inside.
Iw: indeed, he is. that’s why he looked so icky in the picture i found today. i used to LOVE that pic of him. but now he just looks like the loser he is.
hehehee…
If I think about it really hard – mine really wasn’t all that great looking. Ears so big you’d think he could read your thoughts… but there was something about him. Those eyes. I’ve read somewhere that they all seem to have those eyes. Those penatrating, hypnotizing eyes. It’s almost like that’s what they do – hypnotize you.
Gemini: My ex is not that great looking but he attracts tons of women. I put his ugly mug on don’t date him girl website.
He’s lived in town for 6 years now. In those 6, there are 4 whom were long-term relationships (ha ha!) that lasted almost 2 years length and numerous affairs. We all live in the same town. He doesn’t have to go far to find his next hook.
I should have heeded the red flags. One ex kicked him out and cut up his clothes in little pieces and put them in a garbage bag and threw it outside. When he told me that story and how traumatized he was he did not have anywhere to go, I should have known from then on he would set the next victim up first so he had a place to go when he got the boot.
He’s getting better at his game but it’s a small town. He was with me almost 2 years. I pulled up his phone bill from the time we started dating and there are women’s phone numbers all over the place. I called a few but hung up. One of the numbers is the OW’s. I was pissed off when I saw he called her just after we got back from a romantic Niagra Falls trip.
Wait and see, the OW will call me one day asking questions like, “did he abuse you?” “Spend your money?” etc…etc.