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.
eyeswideshut ….
You wrote ”
So Southern man, I would say, yes there is an empty spot, a sad place left behind, but it is the empty spot left by the shattered illusion of who we thought we knew and loved, I think, it is missing “the one” we ourselves helped create.”
I think that is a very big part of why I have had this sadness for so long…. in fact, it seems that is the part that I just can’t seem to get over or get through… Like all of us here.. I have looked within and examined myself to see why there seems to be a wall that has prevented me to heal fully. I have focused on forgiveness for almost a year now… read so many books about the subject, I could write my own.. in my sleep…… Like Aloha, I have not tried to be in a relationship since the socio…. nearly 3 years now… part of me would like to be.. but a bigger part just doesn’t feel like I can do it….still………..I am reading a new book (probably my 100th in all of this post socio time) “Recovering from losses in life”… I am seeing some things that might explain my prolonged grief……As most here know.. I lost my wife after a long illness in early 2003.. Met the socio in the spring of 2005…..and although the first 6 months or so were truly the happiest of my life, that was when the devaluations began and continued for another 6 months when she finally tossed me aside. I believe that I have suffered from several different kinds of grief and post traumatic stress. I have had to say goodbye to many things both big and small since my wife was first diagnosed in 2000. Life has not been normal since for the exception of those first honeymoon months with the socio…. then with most of us, there was no closure when she turned on me and simply abandoned me and my son leaving me holding onto something that turned into ashes in my hand…..So… there has been a prolonged spirit of grief in my heart….I needn’t remind any here of the feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, self-esteem issues, anger, bitterness, rage, hurt hurt hurt hurt………..and not knowing why?……
Also like many here, my socio experience lead me to God…After so much disillusionment in my life.. with so much loss… I needed something… anything.. that I could heave myself upon and cry…..After so many lies… manipulation.. degrading…after so much LOSS…… I needed truth…. I needed something to believe in and even more then that… I needed healing…….. The socio left me broken …. God loves broken people… He does His best work through them.. and the best thing of all is “He’ll never leave you”………I know in my heart that the socio was a instrument in which God used to bring me to Him…… personally, I think He over did it.. smiles… but He got me and I have Him none the less…..
Like you Donna, I have asked the Lord to take it away… all of that pain.. and like with you, He didn’t.. I had to go through it.. but He was there with me.. and He gave me the Grace to endure it all… Everything……..
Recovery and healing isn’t a straight line…. it’s more like sharks teeth.. jagged… up and down.. back and forth…. but there is progress…sometimes big.. sometimes barely noticeable…..Those damn “triggers” and the coping skills when you and I are having a “bad” day.. Chances are.. I didn’t really heal completely from my wife’s death and all the things that changed my life so completely after she died….. I was unprepared when the socio slithered into my life…..
Like it has been mentioned here…. healing and recovery from the trauma is very hard work…..VERY hard work…. and everyday when I awake, I know that it will be mental work ahead… staying positive.. knowing that I didn’t do anything wrong.. knowing that I am a wonderful person…. I am a survivor…. and I have family and friends and internet friends who love me and my son and care for us ….I so want to be the man I used to be before the losses.. before “The Great Sadness” (The shack)….I want to feel happiness without the fear that something bad is going to happen… or really believe it when a woman say’s “I Love You”….but.. I do love the man I have become because of adversity… because I brushed up against evil… I have grown virtues such as endurance, perseverance, integrity, discernment….. and yes love…. Losing my wife changed me (naturally).. but the sociopathic experience took it to a whole new, higher level…..I hate that, but I embrace it….. God’s purpose for me will be party because of the trials.. but it’s the trials that shaped me.. refined my character and gave to me the biggest gift of all… The love of and for God in my heart.
Life
“Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living.”
~ Bertrand Russell
Peace and healing to all,
~R~
http://www.myspace.com/southernman429
Why do we let all of this affect us like this? when my S husband abandoned me in April 2007 I was a wreck. I cried every day for 4 months. I lost over 15 pounds and I couldn’t sleep. A psychiatrist gave me a prescription for AD’s but I refused to take them because I was grieving and it was all normal. I watched a show during those months about divorce and a woman (she was in remission from cancer) said she would rather have cancer than the divorce. I wanted to write to that woman so bad. That seemed so backwards to me.
I don’t know what her situation was with her husband but I know I have to remind myself that my husband is a S and he is incapable of feeling or loving and that it isn’t personal. Now I feel sorry for him that he can’t love.
I sometimes can’t believe all of the stuff he has done to me. It all seems like a lifetime movie. It is funny though whenever a lifetime movie comes on about a Sociopath I just have to watch it.
Dear Southernman,
I can completely relate to the SERIES of LOSSES that you had. I had had three job changes in about a year, (stress of change) then my beloved step father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I started taking care of him, then my husband died suddenly, burned to death in a plane crash essentially right before my eyes (I heard the crash and was first on the scene) then 6 months after that my step dad died, then 3 months after that, I fell for the P—like you said, the first few months were WONDERFUL I felt so happy, so rescued from so much pain, then BANG, that too turned to ashes in my hand!
Then the later attacks from my family of Ps, giving up my security in my home, leaving my home, having my entire family “against me” except my adoptive son….I LOST EVERYTHING, and three of my pets that I dearly loved either were killed or had to be put down in a 5 month period while all this was going on. I felt like even if that moment I was not in danger, that any second “the next shoe could fall” I was totally insecure….yet God led me by the hand through this “valley of the shadow of death” and to “green pastures and still waters”—my faith has been multiplied, my faith strengthened, and I am learning not to depend on ANYTHING except God and that if he leads me to a cliff and tells me to jump, He will either teach me to fly or catch me in His hands.
This morning my son D and I had a long talk about my newfound way of looking at my life, my faith, my spirituality, my strength etc. I’m not worrying about things that normally would have sent me into a spin of worry–like the current economic crisis our country is in. I am sure my 401K has taken a nose dive and lost no telling how much, but when the statement comes, I probably won’t even open it. GOD WILL PROVIDE, he always has. “take no thought for these things, your father knows you need them and will provide” (paraphrased).
I was always in a “rush” or a “hurry” and I no longer am. I don’t just pray in the morning or at night, I PRAY CONTINUALLY. If I look at the beautiful weather and scenery around me, I say “Thank you, Father.” I carry on this running conversation with God all day long.
I realize that my series of losses, one right after the other, and most of them traumatic, make me egocentric, focusing on ONLY my own pains and fears. I couldn’t even notice the wonderful blessings I had.
Sort of like the old saying about “I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man without any feet.” Sure, I had pain, and sure, I had losses, and sure it hurt, and sure I grieved, and grieved again, having one loss before I had time to complete the grieving for the first loss—read the book of Job, and look at how many losses he had. The ULTIMATE psychopath (Satan) took everything from him except his life and then his “friends” ( like some of us have friends like this) blamed HIM for his losses.
Sometimes we even BLAMED OURSELVES, I know I sure did. If I told myself how stupid I was once, I did a thousand times. If I BOINKED Henry with my “iron skillet” a time or two I BOINKED MYSELF TIL MY HEAD WAS FLAT!
I finally got through to myself that sitting and having a continual pity party for myself “forever” had to stop some time. Yea, I hurt, I miss having someone to love me unconditionally, my bed is lonely at night and the only male there weights 18 pounds and sheds and has 4 feet. TODAY is today, it is the ONLY day I have, yesterday is gone, and I can’t fix it, tomorrow may never come, so TODAY is all that is important.
Before my husband’s death I was like the story of the man in the Bible who had so much grain he decided he would tear down his barns and build bigger ones, he was “rich” beyond his dreams, he had everything he could want. I did have everything I wanted, maybe not in “this world’s goods” but I had a good marriage and felt “rich” in terms of having everything I needed, but wasn’t properly aware that you can LOSE IT ALL IN AN INSTANT, and that is essentially what happened, for “out of no where” a plane crashed and brought my world down with it, taking my husband, cancer struck and took my step father and my P-son and his “friends” struck and took my safety—I KNOW WHAT IT IS TO TRAVEL TO HELL AND BACK and I don’t intend to sit around any more moaning about my burns…I am going to ENJOY today and NOT WORRY OR CONCERN MYSELF WITH TOMORROW. Today was a GOOD day because I made it a good day.
I continue to study, like you and read books, and articles, and to pray and occasionally BOINK myself on the head with “the skillet” but the Ps have taken enough of my life, it is time for me to TAKE BACK MY CONTROL.
I look back at the “lessons” I had to repeat and repeat until I got them. I don’t believe God did this to me, but Satan and his P-angels did and God allowed it because I NEEDED THE LESSONS, and I think ( and hope and pray) that I get it RIGHT this time. I know that I am happier now than ever before. I want to continue to grow in that happiness, confidence, and love and care, and in FAITH.
Bill Gates is not a bit “richer” in the things of this life that are REALLY IMPORTANT than I am. I have enough food, housing, clothing, and love of my sons and my good friends. Who COULD have more riches than that? What more blessings could God bestow on me than this?
This attitude and these feelings didn’t come over night, or in a straight line, and are like you said “like shark’s teeth” or a range of mountain peaks—jagged and up and down, but each peak I climbed made me stronger and more confident for the next one. Southern man, we are P-FREE unless we let them “rent space” in our heads, and I for one intend to keep them evicted! Peace.
Good Morning Oxy,
Thanks for your post. It made me think about life. I don’t get bent out of shape about things that would have upset me in the past either. Trauma has a way of reshaping us. The world didn’t really change, we did.
I told my Dad a few months ago, “I get it. The bad things are never going to run out.” My Dad said, “They aren’t really good things and bad things… just things.”
I am still trying to get ahead of the Bad Things…. most of my worries now are financial and I keep thinking I am closing in on it all but then there is always some kind of set back. A broken windshiled… wasn’t planning on that. No work… wasn’t planning on that. Back goes out… wasn’t planning on that. hahaha.
Anyway, powerful post. I need to refocus myself on prayer and thanking the Father. Already, I am fairly happy most moments, no matter what “things” are happening. My happiness is my prayer of thanks.
Aloha
Dear Aloha,
I have missed you girlfriend! I’m sorry that things have kind of turned crappy for you for a little while, but “that’s life” and dealing with broken windshields is a CAKE WALK compared to dealing with a P. Compared to the Ps, it’s “all small stuff” and I know how strong you are, gal, so hang in there!
I’m feeling the financial pinch too with all the gas prices and so on, no more just “run to town” and make every trip count for 2-3 or even 4 things so don’t go out as often, not even off the farm very much. Went to town yesterday for an annual doctor visit and used the trip to run 4 more errands and visit a couple of friends who lived near the doctor’s office. S0n D is out of town with a friend for the weekend, left this morning, so I have just been piddling around here finishing up a few jobs I needed to do, then tomorrow a friend is coming over (I just especially love friends who have enough gas money to drive to MY house! LOL) Today is son C’s 39th birthday, boy do I remember THAT day 39 years ago!
Seems like yesterday until I look in the mirror or at his photograph. He still doesn’t have any more hair now than he did then though! LOL Bald as an egg he was, and is again! LOL
A big hug for you ((((Aloha)))))
Donna, I didn’t lose nearly as much money as you did. I only lost $10,000 — this included some money that I got in a divorce judgment. I only lost this much because it was all I had in savings. If I’d had six times the amount, I’m sure he would have asked for that, too. This doesn’t include all of the money that I spent on him from my paychecks. His victim before me lost $20,000. She got that in a P.I. settlement. These individuals really know how to pick their targets, don’t they?
To all of you who harbored warm thoughts or feelings toward your sociopath or wanted to ask, “Where did I go wrong?”, the answer lies in the realization that there’s nothing you could have done right! I know now that the “relationship” (deliberate quotes) was a joke to my sociopath. Email correspondence from other women he was cheating on me with and even a whole bunch from his past indicated he told them that he was just around because I’d given him the use of a car, computer and of course, the money that I spent on him. It’s a really hard truth to digest — that I meant nothing to this man, even though he seemed to use the “L” word so sincerely.
The sociopath in my life will not get away with it, though. I might have exhausted my statute of limitations for getting my “loans” back, but I can still make sure that he doesn’t do it again. He’s a tax evader. He hid a lot of income — by funneling it through other social security numbers. From what I hear, the IRS finally caught up with him. I hope that he has to pay every dime they assess against him. If he gets away with cheating not just me but the entire country, it will be a shame.
Dear Unwilling Raconteur,
I’m sorry you had to endure the pain and all tht goes with being a P’s victim, but I’m glad you are here at Love Fraud. Welcome. You are NOT alone, and for whatever comfort that is, the bloggers here ALL understnd what it is to be the focus of a P-attack. I hope you get your wish and the IRS etc. gets him at least for that.
AGain, welcome.
It’s a mindf—-, OxDrover. While I know this man never really loved me and that I should be able to put this behind me, I can’t trust anyone these days. I haven’t dated in more than eight months. I can’t even think of a time when I’ll want to. He still calls me and makes threats. Up until recently, he was using the number of my debit card. This never goes away. I wish that I could warn the world about these people. Isn’t there any way?
Well, this blog and others similar are doing some good in warning the public about “them”—and medical science is making some progress too.
My best advice to you is to read everything you can, start with the articles on this blog, read every one, Go to Dr. Robert Hare’s web site and also order his book “Without Conscience” and the “Sociiopath next door” and other books about psychoopaths (psychopath and sociopath and Antisocial personality disorder are all about the same thing so don’t let the different words fool you, though some think they are “different” they aren’t much different if ANY different)
There are other personality disorders as well that are similar but not identical to psychopaths but as far as I am concerned the label TOXIC covers them all. So which label you pin on them doesn’t matter much to me.
Yes, it is a MindF…and it isn’t like a “normal” break up with someone you have dated, it is totally different and I’m not totally sure why, but somehow it TRAUMATIZES and dehumanizes us, makes us feel like prey, and we are. They are predators seeking prey. Just as a lion can pick out the one animal in a herd of 1000 that has a slight “limp” and know that it will be easier prey, they can somehow spot “us” and in general we have good natures, tend to be trusting, and for some reason vulnerable to their “charm” (at first) then when the hooks are in our mouths they start to jerk the line and inflict the pain.
We go through a grief process, just like if we had lost someone to death in an accident or to a disease for this “mythical” relationship that we THOUGHT was real, and when we find out it isn’t, it is the adult version of finding out there is no Santa, no easter bunny, and no tooth fairy. I’m not making fun of your pain, because your pain is REAL and DEEP, but all of us are grieving for something that never existed—their love and how it made us feel. We are traumatized because we trusted someone who wasn’t trustworthy, so we lose confidence in our own ability to pick the real from the fake.
It takes time to come back to “normal” and so don’t rush yourself. Knowledge=power so the more you learn about them and somtimes they go by the P-play book just like a foot ball team has standard plays, there is so much in things with them that is alike.
Again, welcome, you will find support and undertanding here.
Hi Oxy,
Things aer actually going fine and even good I would say. I meant in general… things don’t get me down as much as they did before. I think having gone through what we have, life’s day to day worries are so much smaller now. Don’t ya think?
I am good though. I am waiting on a job offer to come through which represents triumph! This is the THING I have been waiting for. And I am dating an old friend. Nice and safe, it seems.
And I can’t keep up with everything here at LF. I just read the new essays and catch the first comments.
BTW, I love imagining you on your Farm. That is so cool.
Aloha……… E