A sociopath looks deep into your eyes.
“I never loved anyone like I love you,” he says. “We are so special together. People will never understand why we’re so attracted to each other. They say we shouldn’t be together, but they’re just jealous about the intensity of our love. Love can overcome anything, you know. It’s you and me against the world, kid!”
With words like these, sociopaths launch one of their most important strategies: Isolating you from friends and family.
It doesn’t seem that way at first. In the beginning, sociopaths want to be with you all the time. They proclaim that they are so wrapped up in you that they can’t bear to be apart, and it feels flattering to be so desired. Slowly, this morphs into the sociopath always wanting to know where you are, which morphs into jealousy if you spend time with anyone else, including your family and long-time friends.
They want you all to themselves. Not because they love you, despite their flowery proclamations. It’s because they want to control you.
Isolation tactics
Sociopaths employ many tactics to keep you from the people who love you. Here are a few of them:
- Sociopaths intercept phone calls and mail, and “neglect” to give you messages.
- Sociopaths purposely insult or pick fights with your family and friends, so that the people you know find it easier to just stay away.
- Sociopaths say they are “protecting” you from the people who want to drive the two of you apart.
- If you do see your family and friends, the sociopaths call and text constantly, interrupting your visit and making others uncomfortable.
- Sociopaths make up lies about what friends and family are saying about you.
- Sociopaths lie to family and friends about you, trying to turn them against you.
- Sociopaths rage at you when you leave, and rage again when you come home.
- Eventually, sociopaths forbid you to have contact with family and friends.
My experience
I remember how James Montgomery worked it with me. At first, he was solicitous towards my family. But nine months after we met, my family was suspicious of him, and my brother wanted to run a credit check. I knew Montgomery’s credit was bad—he’d already told me so, put expenses on my credit cards, and wiped out my savings.
I informed Montgomery, in anger, about my family’s concern. His first reaction was to tearfully ask if I wanted him to leave. Believing that my husband was working towards out mutual good, and wanting to get my money back as he consistently promised, I said no, we’d stay married.
But from that point on, he used the incident to drive a wedge between me and my family. He refused to attend my other brother’s wedding reception, stating that he wouldn’t go where he wasn’t welcome. He raged that I was an adult, I’d made my decision to marry him, and in some places people could be sued for interfering with a marriage. He disparaged my family and friends.
So as life with my husband became worse and worse, there was no one for me to talk to about it.
Pleas from family members
Isolation takes away your support system. When your contact with other people is limited, it enables the sociopaths to control the information you receive. And the more control they exercise, the more you lose your sense of self.
Periodically, Lovefraud receives distraught calls and e-mails from people who have lost sons, daughters or other family members to sociopaths. They want their loved ones to return, but the victims refuse. The sociopaths have so much power over them that it seems like the victims are lost forever.
The sad thing is that frequently, very little can be done until the victim himself or herself is ready to end the involvement. Psychologically, Dr. Liane Leedom explains, the victim has to take on his or her own distress. If family and friends are distressed, they are carrying what should be the victim’s emotional burden. For healing to begin, it’s up to the victim to start making a change.
For more information on this, read Dr. Leedom’s blog, How can I get my _____ away from the psychopathic con artist?
Find the strength
Are you in this position? Has a sociopath separated you from all your friends and family, so that you feel like you have nowhere to go?
Know this: If the sociopath is the one telling you that your friends and family want nothing to do with you, that the sociopath is the only one who loves you, there’s an excellent chance that he or she is lying.
If you’ve always had a good, or at least decent, relationship with friends and family, they’re probably worried sick about you, and willing to help you escape the prison built by the sociopath.
All you need to do is find the strength to contact them.
The h-spath didn’t keep me away from friends and family. He enjoys being around people, actually telling me that he loves having house guests (the more the better). He just has these bothersome traits (eg. lying, stealing, etc.) that others just don’t take to. Once they find out how he really is, I imagine most people kick him to the curb, keeping their distance from him.
Great article, Donna! Thanks for this very timely article!
Fantastic article! If there is anyone out there that is isolated from family and friends and you are scared to call them and reconnect, be brave and do it! Pick up the phone! I am guessing they will love to talk with you!
Donna is so correct with her comments and description of the situation. Thank you Donna!
I also watched the video of Donna speaking about losing her money to James Montgomery. It really touched my heart when she said, “The amount of money ($250,000) is nothing compared with the family relationships that she has heard about being lost because of Sociopaths isolating the victim from the family”. Thanks for your sensitivity and caring. You have done so much to help many people around the world.
Donna, These are exactly my experiences with the spath as well. I didn’t even notice in the beginning, I was too wrapped up in the guy that was obviously so in love with me that he didn’t want to share me.
The first time he physically hurt me I was working with my parents and they noticed the bruising up one arm. They questioned me and I told them what happened.
That night I went home and told him that my parents wanted to know what happened and I told them.
He went around to my parents house and apologised and told them he needed help but I have to take some responsibility it what had happened as well because if I wasn’t so augmentative it would not have happened.
From that moment after he walked out my parents door my parents wiped him. Mum said ” I love you and I will always be there for you but I will not have anything to do with him ever again and dont ask us to”.
I know my parents did what they did out of love and to protect them selves but Spath turned that around and then turned me against my own parents. I left my job and did not have much to do with my parents for years.
Even when Em was born I was not allowed to take her around to meet her Grand parents. Spath would say” if you go to your parents for anything you know we are over because that would be the ultimate betrayal of my love”
I lost every single friend that I ever had and I had very strong friendship some since school days. If my brothers visited, Spath would go sit in another room and watch TV, He made it obvious that he was not happy about me having any visitors.
The best thing was when I left him all my old friends come running back with love and support and although I was in a lot of pain, my world was starting to make sense again, normal again, because for the first time in years I could have friends and my family again and that was beautiful!
It is the worst thing being a victim of a Spath loosing total control over your life and your being. It gets chipped away so slowly over such a long time that by the time you realise what has happening it is too late as by that stage you are in survival mode, just trying to get through each day!
Dani, I am so glad that you had the friends and family who were there for you when you escaped from the gaslighting and chaos. It is unfortunate but sometimes people lose those support structures forever.
I am glad that your parents were strong enough and had good enough boundaries to stand their ground and to refuse to enable you in the situation. You are fortunate to have parents who did what they did out of love for you, even if it meant being separated from you for some time. I know they must have hurt inside to make that choice, but to me at least, that proves how VERY MUCH they love(d) you. That had to be a hard decision for them.
God bless your parents!
Thank you Dear Oxy, My parent are very strong people and I look up to them in so many ways! Mum was clear, clear in the fact that she loved me and clear that she would always be there is I needed her. But one thing she has never been even when we were little kids was an enabler. She was strict and clear cut in her morals and what she would and wouldn’t tolerate. I have always been soft and love my mothers strength and character.
I didn’t see them out of fear as I could never have the opportunity to sneak over and see them and Spath would always be phoning me when he had not seen or heard from me in 10 minutes. When we had the business together Spath loved it because he know where I was every second of the day!
The day I turned up at my parents ( betraying Spath’s “Love”) they opened their hearts and home to me and my 3 kids without question and I know I am one of the lucky ones because I am where I am now because of the love and support from them all xxoo
There are women in Shelter’s lonely and frightened with little support, these are the women I feel for most other than the women and of course men still living under the same roof as a Spath!
Dani,
You were lucky to have escaped from all that brainwashing. Your spath did the same thing as the article talked about, isolate you from those you love. They make it seem like they love you more than anyone else in the world when in reality they just want to possess you.
Dear Dani,
You are indeed fortunate! Tell your mother for me just how wonderful I think she is. I wish I could have been more like her with my own kids….I actually thought I was not being an enabler, but I FOOLED myself! That’s the saddest part of it all!
The women in the shelter have at least gone that step in the right direction. The ones who are worse off are those still WITH the s-path!
BTW, just wanted to tell you, that I think you inherited some of your mom’s strength! You put your pride in your back pocket and went “back home” to your folks’ house, and so many times people will let that (false) “pride” keep them stuck in the dance with the psychopath! THAT also takes a lot of strength and guts, so don’t down play your own strength! You’ve got it chickie!!! (((hugs)))))
Donna:
I was just explaining this to a friend this morning…..about alienating us….me and kids from HIS family early on…..
What wife would want to expose her kids to abusive, tortorous people, let along family? He kept the seeds planted and nourished to keep us away from developing a relationship with HIS family…..too close, they held too many secrets.
Now…..with marriage being over……none, NOT ONE of his family is in touch with kids……
Kids don’t miss it, because they never knew his family to begin with.
He robbed his kids of relationships and family….
The splitting is quite a game, and really not that hard to accomplish.
Lessons involved…..NEVER give up any relationship you have…..for a spath……
Thank you Donna for such a descriptive article.
I believe so many of us can relate to this!
🙁
Eb my eme has no contact with the spaths family either except for his other daughter that he had done the same to and their mothers. It is just so very wrong!!!
Hopeforjoy!! the most confusing part of it back then too, is that I have never felt so hated as well! The roller coaster between Love & hate was just as intense as each other!
Oxy I will pass your words on to my mother 😉 I am glad you know the “Pride” thing! I had already taken my elder 2 children through a divorce from their daddy and I so wanted to give them a stable loving family… my god, did I get that one so wrong lol… Anyway in the end I had to admit to my family, my friends, my kids and the hard one, to myself that I had stuffed up again and this time I had done a doozy! In trying to give them the world because of course that is what was initially shown and promised, I showed them hell! They were very protected from what was going on but they could see the pain and confusion written all over my face.
And talk about pride, I had lost every cent from my first divorce and some, I was heading to my 40’s with no money, no car, a shyte load of debt and was an emotional mess!
Oxy don’t be down on yourself, my Mother had never been exposed to a spath, she was not conditioned, she just hated what she saw this person was doing to her daughter and seeing her daughter allow it, that is the only reason she cut it off then & there!
For you being a Mother of a P is so very different! you birthed him, loved him, wanted to the world for him. That is what Mothers do! You were conditioned like us all because you loved! I enabled my spath every single day I was with him! I loved him I wanted to fix & help him with love and support!
All you have to remember is, You were the very best Mother you knew how to be. And be proud of who you are, we were handed a really crappy hand of cards, we did the best we could and we have survived! Maybe wounded and changed for life but we survived it. Some dont! xxooxxoo