The sociopath left me to go back to his wife 5 times over the past 14 years

Editor’s Note:  This SPATH Tale was submitted by the Lovefraud reader whom we’ll call “Tilly Marie.”

I’ve been involved with a sociopath for over 14 years. We met at work and fell in love. At least I did.

We were both married to other people at the time, and there has been a merry dance led between myself and his wife ever since — he leaves her, sets up home with me, kicks me out, there’s a dramatic showdown, then he ignores me for weeks or months.

This has happened five times in 14 years — that last time being a few weeks ago.

I could never fully understand the reasons why he did this, to me or to her. He’s painted me as crazy to her and her as crazy to me. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

The last time he did this, he told me he was moving out of the house he was renting, to move in with his parents, so he could save some money, so he could plan for our future properly.

He was lying.

He was moving back with his wife who he was suppose to be divorcing, but just hadn’t got round to it yet.

This story goes a lot more in depth.

I did what I said I’d do.

I left my husband for him and moved out of my home — which I had to move back into when he kicked me out of the house we had gotten together. He’s done this to me, again, for the fifth time. He uses the fact that he misses his kids — always the victim over his kids and missing them — despite the fact he saw them pretty much every single day.

I realized that this behavior can’t have all been down to me, and reading this has led me to this conclusion — he’s a sociopath.

He treats me like garbage when he is wanting to be with his wife.Then he turns on his wife when he is wanting to be with me.

He’s a horrible person who cares about nobody else but himself.

He has no friends — and the way he is able to just cut himself off from whichever one of us that goes out of favor is unbelievable.

I’ve sussed him out. I haven’t told him because I haven’t had any contact with him over the last few weeks, and I don’t intend to, despite the fact that I see him every day in work, which is tough, but being with him is tougher especially now that I know what he is.

Here is our story

We met at work, nearly 15 years ago. When I looked at him I actually thought I’d fallen in love with him, just the way he looked back at me, in a way that nobody had ever looked at me before. Not even my husband made me feel that way. My sociopath is very good looking and well groomed. He was interested in what I said, wanted to know and learn more about me and what I liked and disliked, and basically was keen to learn what I knew about various subjects, such as music etc. He totally flattered me in every way. We were friends before anything happened.

We’d known each other for six months and when we ended up sleeping together on a work night out — something I regretted as I was married and so was he. I told myself it was a one off and wouldn’t happen again because we were both married and he recently had a child with his wife. But he relentlessly pursued me — telling me how his life at home was a sham, he was miserable, and he was forced into having a child he didn’t want by his controlling, manipulative wife. He told me he was only there as a source of income to keep her in the lifestyle she wanted, how she refused to allow him to have his children from his previous marriage in the house, or for him to have any friendships with anyone, and basically he had to be at her beck and call. He felt like a butler.

We ended up together very quickly after I’d started listening to what he was telling me. I felt like he’d had such a hard time. At the same time, my husband was creating havoc for me with his addiction to alcohol and drugs. It just seemed we were two people in miserable situations who had found each other — like it was meant to be. So I fell in love with him absolutely madly.

Pretty much straight off he started to talk about us leaving our partners, setting up home together, building a future, we’d spend each day together at work and every spare second we got we’d be on our own, making plans, him telling me he was putting money away for us, bringing me pictures of homes to look at, discussing where we would live. Then when we weren’t together he’d be constantly texting, or calling me, telling me he loved me, wished he could be with me etc. his time at home was terrible and lonely.

Then one day he called me and we were chatting on the phone, I heard what I thought was a baby starting to cry, he was in the car, but said it was someone with a child outside on the pavement. I had no reason not to believe him. A few weeks after that his wife called in to work on speck with the baby in the back of the car. She’d found text messages on his phone so had turned up to see what he was up to. She caught us coming back from lunch together, and it all came out, he’d had another child, with the cold hearted evil using woman who he couldn’t stand to have sex with, who he couldn’t even get an erection with, who repulsed him. They’d had another child.

With me #1

This obviously led to a showdown with his wife, and he walked out on her, told her he was in love with me and didn’t want to be anywhere near her any more. He moved in with his parents and began to introduce me in to his world, meeting his family and his children. His wife sold their family home and got involved with another man pretty much immediately. In the meantime I was still being convinced by him that things were as he said they were, and I was naive enough to believe him, because I wanted to. We were starting to emerge as a real couple, with family on both sides giving us their blessing.

Back with wife

All of a sudden, he tells me he missed his kids, and he had already moved back in with his ex. I was devastated. I was in the middle of trying to end my own marriage to my addict husband who wasn’t taking it too well. My sociopath just walked away from me, cut off all contact and refused to even explain why he’d done it.

With me #2

Until a few weeks later when he coolly announced to me that he’d made a mistake, he wanted me, it was always me, he’d gotten confused and felt guilty over the children and wanted us to start again, pick up where we left off, I was so in love with him that I agreed. So we started making plans again.

In the meantime I was receiving messages and threats from his wife, accusing me of relentlessly pursuing her husband for myself, splitting up a family etc. It wasn’t like that, not on my part, he did all the running. He said she was crazy and in denial and would eventually get bored, and although she did quiet down, he wasn’t as forthcoming with regard to his family and me being part of it this time around, and he was acting very cagy, hiding his phone or having it on silent, being more and more secretive and sneaky, and when I called him on it I was being paranoid and wrong for not trusting him.

Back with wife

Then I get a text from him, which was obviously meant for his wife, telling me how he couldn’t wait to get home to her that evening and how much he loved her. He was back there again and she was thinking they were together, just as I was thinking we were together, he was playing us both off against each other, telling me one thing and her something else, this again ended up with him cutting me out of his life, as if I never existed, for a couple of months, leaving me absolutely devastated and beyond heartbroken. Until he comes back yet again with his sob story over his kids and how he feels like he’s letting them down etc. but he’s had more time to think and he knows it’s not fair to bring them up in a loveless environment so he’d left her again.

With me #3

This time he actually did put his money where his mouth was and he got us a place to live, we moved in together and everything was amazing, I’d never felt loved so much in my life. It was like how it was in the beginning. His kids were coming to stay with us, they liked me, and we seemed to just have everything we’d wanted, living blissfully together for nearly six months, until I heard him talking on the phone in the bedroom, telling her that it wouldn’t much longer, that he had a few lose ends to tie up with the flat and he’d be gone. She didn’t know he was still with me. I called her on the phone after he’d finished speaking to her and she said he was coming home. I asked her how long this was going on for and she told me a few weeks and she wanted to know why I was calling and if I’d been around to collect my things yet. So I again confronted him with this and he refused to speak to me and walked out, leaving me there alone.

Back with wife

He came back the next day with his wife and said I had to leave immediately or he was calling the police to get me removed. He said I was trespassing and I had until the following morning to get out. That was two days before Christmas. I was absolutely devastated and confused and could barely function. I was in the middle of my separation from my husband and I had no choice but to go back there as I had no place else to go. Again my sociopath cut me off. He changed his number and refused to acknowledge me. He moved back in with his wife yet again.

The following year, he approached me, telling me he needed to talk to me. He said the reason he had to go back was because his wife was refusing to allow him access to the children while he was with me. So he had no choice. She’d told the kids he was moving home for Christmas and he couldn’t let them be disappointed. He also told me he was torn and it was me who he loved, that it was me who he needed and wanted,

With me #4

I told him that I was unsure after everything that had happened. Then he announced he’d left again and was back living with his parents. I continued to see him with caution, my trust has completely been eroded. I wasn’t going to go so blindly into the relationship with him again. Because of this he became distant and we argued a lot. He accused me of not having any faith in him. He said he was trying to balance being a good father with his choice of me for his future. We’d argue and have a fall out and he’d be back again telling me that he was being punished by me for loving his kids. He had my head in a spin every time Had me thinking I was sick in the head for mistrusting him so much after he’d given up everything for me, how our future was all he wanted.

So eventually he gets another house, we pick it together, I was in the middle of my divorce at this point, and this time last year he moved in, I was going to be having major surgery and he thought it would be best if I left moving in till after my operation and I’d recovered enough. So that’s what we did.

After my surgery I went to recuperate at my dad’s in Ireland for a few weeks and then I came back and moved straight in with him, again it was all wonderful. Although this time his family were nowhere to be seen, he was saying that they weren’t taking our relationship very well this time, and he was also trying to avoid upsetting the kids, so every other weekend I’d have to ship out and stay with a friend, just to make the transition go smoothly, then one afternoon his wife shows up at the house demanding to know what I was doing there, and not to want to rock the boat I refused to speak to her, when he came back I told him she’d been there and she also had the kids with her, which then led to the kids not wanting to set foot in the house while I was living there, according to him, although it had been nearly six months and they’d obviously seen my stuff hanging around there before. So with that my sociopath told me I had to leave, and again he gave me 24 hours to clear my stuff out and leave, so I did.

Back with wife

Again I was in shock, that he would do this to me, and true to form a few days later he was back in touch, telling me he didn’t want the relationship to be over, that it was about the kids, that we’d work things through and he really loved me.

With me #5

I agreed to continue the relationship while he sorted things out with the children and his family, convincing me that it was a softly thing, it would all be fine and we would be together, same flowery talk as before, and me wanting more than anything to believe him.

So we were seeing each other but not living together, doing things as a normal couple in the beginning, but it got less and less. He wanted us to stay in more and more, was becoming more sexually deviant, wanting to get involved with dom/sub scenarios, strapping me up, blindfolding me and slowly he was starting to physically hurt me more and more each time, and it was becoming very undignified and I was getting more and more uncomfortable with it.

Then he said he was getting rid of the house, was going back to his parent’s because his ex-wife was wanting more money and he was getting in to debt over her demands financially, so I agreed that he was probably right to do this, especially as my home had been awarded to me in my divorce settlement and he could move in with me if he chose to, he agreed to this but wanted to clear his debts first. At this point he was starting to spend time at my house for the first time, and again I was thinking everything was great, I had no reason to doubt him, that he was being upfront and honest, until a few nights before he was supposed to move back to his parents,

Back with wife

I heard him, on the phone to his wife yet again, exactly the same situation as before, him telling her that he would soon be home and they’d be a family again. This time though I didn’t take it as well as before, something inside me snapped and I lashed out at him, and physically attacked him, I just could not take any more, he was still on the phone to his wife while all this was going on, eventually the phone ended up getting smashed on the floor, he kicked me in the leg really badly and had me around the neck, I was struggling to breath, he let go and disappeared out of the house, leaving me in there yet again devastated and not knowing what had just happened. He came back about an hour later, telling me his dad was in the car outside, that he was moving back in with his wife, because I was unpredictable and violent (which I had never been before in my  life) and that it was over between us.

Only two hours before we’d been talking and laughing, had made love and he was telling me how much he loved me. I was totally confused, when he walked out of the house I followed him and it wasn’t his dad who was waiting for him it was his wife, and she was just as surprised as me as to what was going on, so much so she said we should all go inside and discuss what was going on. Which we did, and I had to sit there and watch him lie through his teeth, to her — telling her I was relentlessly pursuing him. How I wouldn’t leave him alone, or take no for an answer.

When I told her my side, he completely denied everything. Yet again I was devastated beyond belief. His wife was completely taken aback and all he could go on about was how I had ruined his whole life, and how he was now probably going to be all on his own and it was all my fault. His wife didn’t say very much, until he admitted to her that he loved me, although he didn’t know why because I was crazy. He said he probably mistook love for feeling sorry for me, but I don’t think she bought it. Anyway, he left me with her, yet again, and that was a month ago, but this time I’m not going to go back, this time I know what he is, and that’s nothing but a manipulative, lying, deceiving user who seems to get his kicks from hurting two women who loved him. I don’t know if he’s back with his wife and I don’t care, although I’d hazard a guess that he is.

I have to see him every day at work, and as usual, he’s true to form with his discarding behaviour and ignoring me like I don’t even exist, it’s taken me 14 years of hell to get to the point where the blinkers have come off and I’ve finally seen him for what he is, a damaged individual incapable of loving anyone but himself.

So that’s my story, and to be honest I cannot believe I was so stupid for so long, I just wanted to believe in him so much, he led me to think he was my knight in shining armor, but in reality all he’s ever done is keep sticking the knife in to me. My heart is completely broken, but this time he won’t be getting the opportunity to gaslight me or manipulate me again. I’m done.