Editor’s note: The Lovefraud reader who posts as “raisingtwins” sent the following story.
When I met my sociopath, he was good looking, fit, charismatic and career driven. In 2002, I moved across the country with him, since he was transferred back to an office with the company he worked for. We had a baby together in 2003 and he wanted nothing to do with getting married. I should have seen that as a giant red flag. He threw lavish parties for his work team and worked long hours.
We married in 2005 and his behavior was always very erratic. His weight went up and down and his episodes of anger started getting progressively worse. It was a life of constantly walking on eggshells.
In 2005, we bought a 3,600 square foot house and all at once he renovated the kitchen, bathrooms, put in an expensive pool, and hired landscapers.
In 2012, I began to notice strange behaviors, including him going to a baseball game with a former “girl” from high school and the two of them coming home drunk. I would find women’s hairs in the shower or receipts in the car from restaurants.
On Christmas Day of 2013, he kicked my mother out of our home since she began questioning his strange behaviors. My mother stayed in a motel on Christmas night. I knew then that this was not normal. I would Google things like “intermittent anger disorder,” as I had no idea about narcissists or sociopaths.
Ultimately, I reset his Gmail password and discovered he was leading a double life. He had multiple mistresses, a porn addiction, began ordering drugs from Canadian drug companies, and was meeting up with young prostitutes at high-end hotels. We began getting calls from collection agencies, as he had completely stopped paying all of his bills, including our mortgage. We lost our house and I was lucky enough to get away and rebuild my life. Ironically, he works in the banking industry.
As you know, these people are incredibly charming and manipulative. As my attorney used to say, he presents well in his pinstripe suit and glasses. He ultimately pleaded the 5th amendment to prostitution in our divorce case. Yet he coaches football in our local town and is well liked by the parents and children.
How loss through suicide creates perfect targets for sociopaths
Hi, I’m new here. After 24 years of marriage to an N, and giving the man 3 kids, I finally began the process of divorcing him.
I wanted to speak to something you mentioned in your post:
We began getting calls from collection agencies, as he had completely stopped paying all of his bills, including our mortgage. We lost our house and I was lucky enough to get away and rebuild my life. Ironically, he works in the banking industry.
In the last 24 years, my N husband (who works in the financial industry, at least when he’s working) and I have owned 4 homes…yet never sold a single one. Every house eventually got repossessed by the lender.
I’m still in the process of trying to figure out WHY he makes such crappy choices. He’s a professional speaker who teaches stock trading seminars, yet he never actually trades himself. All the money he made was by selling overpriced courses to a gullible public.
If I had any idea that he was qualified to do nothing when we met, I would’ve never married him. At the time, I had my education degree from an elite university and was teaching 4th grade, so he made sure to hide his lack of qualifications while we were dating.
I didn’t find out he was a college dropout until about 7 years (and 2 kids) later, when his sister let it slip. At the time, our family was enjoying a financial upswing. He was doing really well at work, and I stayed home to homeschool the kids. But I still decided to confront him about the lie.
I went to him and said, “I’m pretty sure the question of ‘where did you go to school’ came up when we were dating.”
He just shrugged and said, “You asked me where I went to school…not if I graduated.”
I spent nearly a quarter century on a financial and emotional rollercoaster ride to hell and back, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. In order to make money, he has to travel around the country teaching seminars for this or that company.
But then things would invariably go sideways: either he’d get “tired” of traveling, or else the company he worked for would begin getting complaints of fraud, causing the feds to shut them down.
When he’d lose his job, he’d hide it as long as possible.
When he finally fessed up, he’d assure me that we were fine financially, and I’d naively believe him for a while. (He was the one in charge of our business account, so he alone knew all the numbers.)
But then the phone calls would start: the mortgage company left daily messages on our answering machine; there would be warnings on my voicemail about our overdue Verizon account; our DirecTV service would be suspended; or our power would mysteriously be shut off. The worst was watching unfamiliar cars slowly drive by our home: they were checking it out because, unless we came up with 3 months’ worth of back mortgage, the bank planned to sell it at public auction next month.
Weve lost everything we owned, more than once. And every time, the loss became bigger and bigger, and his unemployment lasted longer between speaking jobs. He had no college degree, so he wasn’t qualified for real careers in the financial sector.
That didn’t faze him, though. All the attention and kudos he received from students in seminars became a powerful source of narcissistic supply, leading him to believe he could “teach his own material” instead of working for someone else.
Even now that we’re separated and I’m seeking a divorce (due to his repeated spectacular failures at starting his own business over the years), he’s still convinced that his desire to be “an entrepreneur” is a God-given dream rather than what it is: a preoccupation with unlimited power and success, coupled with a lack of humility necessary to be accountable to an employer.
Good thing you got out NOW. Don’t do like me, and waste the best years of your life on that loser. Despite what the N might be presenting as “normal”, its decidedly NOT normal to repeatedly lose your home, get your car repossessed, or pawn your wedding rings to buy Christmas presents.
Nancy44467 – welcome to Lovefraud. I am so sorry for what you have endured, but glad that you are getting out of the marriage. It is amazing how long they can continue. As you well know, he will never change.
Dear raisin’ twins and Nancy,
You both are in the right place, where there is support from people what have been skinned alive by sociopaths, but there is hope at the end of the tunnel . . .
Raisin’ twins, your flags should be up concerning he is coaching a youth football team . . . he may be a child molester as well. If I were you, I would check with your children to be sure they have not been victimized, just to be sure. Just ask in an open ended question, “has anybody touched you . . . without referencing him directly.
Nancy, in the future, when you remarry, PLEASE insist that you BOTH handle the finances TOGETHER, because even if you are married to the nicest guy in the world, should he pass away, it could be very difficult to take over the finances as a widow. Your bringing this up in your next serious relationship will be encouraging to the nice guy and drive the sociopath away!
You both deserve so much better . . .
Yours truly,
Monica