Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following e-mail from a man in the UK—we’ll call him “Tom.” Tom says his wife left him to be with another man, “Peter,” who Tom believes is a sociopath. Tom says he hasn’t seen his children in two years, he has been arrested on false charges nine times, and his money is gone. He has asked for help to determine what to do. If you have suggestions, please post them as comments.
My story is out of the movies and I have suffered so much that I no longer know what to do. I have lost my children, my home, my stability, my career and my wealth at the hands of two sociopaths. I am in recovery now, totally broke, practically homeless and mentally and emotionally scared beyond words.
I have been arrested nine times through false allegations aimed at financial and custodial gain. I have been denied seeing my children for two years and the lawyers have taken most of the benefit in terms of assets and cash and the wheels of justice slowly turn one full turn per year.
For the first six months I could not wash myself and shave without being pressured by a family member to do so. I had collapsed internally and had four near-fatal car accidents, survived the tsunami in Southeast Asia and my credit rating is worthless. I lay in bed hoping for death to take me and could not will myself to live anymore.
For a human being to reach such a state and be mentally and emotionally tortured without any legal protection or justice is beyond belief.
I believe that my ex-wife is being manipulated but I could be wrong as she has drastically changed, going from being an angel to a demon. What is sure, though, is the guy she is with is very knowledgeable with regards to the law and I can summarise his profile with proof as follows:
- Lacks empathy or regret, no remorse, no heart.
- Legal mind and knows the system and how police work.
- Reads books on crime and police investigations (he comments on Amazon).
- Runs a charity for a front.
- May know people in the system.
- Like games and political manoeuvring.
- Compulsive liar and a cheat.
- Has airs of grandeur (believes he is great and invincible).
My early years
My family and I have suffered beyond imagination at the hands of two people. Are they both sociopaths, or is it just a weak ex-wife being manipulated by one? I don’t know.
I met my now ex-wife in France back in 1992 and it was a fairy tale love story. We both fell deeply in love and on the face of it this is what it seemed. We spent our days in each other’s arms as we travelled for mini trips through Switzerland, the French Rivera, Monaco and Italy; each night in a different country.
We lived together almost immediately in 1993 and I was there for her when her father died of cancer from which he had been suffering. I recall wiping her tears from her eyes as she cried in her sleep as I stroked her hair and assured her that I will look after her. I thought I was saving her from all the loss in her life: her misery, her lack of success in academia and most of all her lost father. She seemed to come alive when with me!!
We moved back home to the United Kingdom and I helped her master the language. Both of us were working to make ends meet as I finished my master’s. I paid for her university fees and spent the first two years helping her adjust. My mother clothed her and treated her like a daughter, my brothers like the sister they never had.
2002—onwards and upwards
Fast forward 10 years. We had become very successful; equity rich with two large homes in the city and country, cash rich and wealth in the bank and two healthy jobs earning the best part of US$200,000 between us.
It was 2002 and I had had just made it into a director’s role after working hard for nearly 10 years. She was still plodding along and had not had any serious promotions or taken any risks to climb. My risk taking had cost me plenty of jobs but I was still upwardly mobile. I had managed to secure my family’s future and my future at cost to me.
My work as a director involves long hours at times—60-80 hours per week—and having to live in France where it all started for me with my now ex-wife. I worked Monday-Friday and at the weekend I plane hopped and was home with her and my son. I was very exhausted and lonely at times but persevered as I had always done so in my life to success.
Things started to change very subtly and quietly with my now ex telling me that she did not love me anymore. I also found out that she had been going out on at least two occasions, leaving my son with a babysitter without my knowledge or consent.
I called on one occasion and she acted strange; the background appeared sterile or orchestrated and I asked her if everything with okay?
She started to act strange when I called, often crying and trying to instigate arguments, which I was at a loss to understand. In the end I capitulated and returned home, leaving my dream job to stay at home as a home father and house husband in the UK until I found something of equal calibre and excitement. I finished the year in 2002 by taking my now ex-wife to the Maldives and Dubai for a wonderful lifetime holiday and experience. We had a wonderful time and all seemed great.
2003—the mystery year
In April 2003, I was cleaning her clothes and came across her suit jacket, on the back of which I found a silvery, shiny substance. I though it was glue but my mind was saying otherwise. I said to myself, “stop overreacting and leave alone,” and that my relationship is based on trust.
From June to December 2003 I noticed that I would make a call and she would not answer the phone, and yet three to five minutes later call me back and the background would seem orchestrated or sterile.
In June 2003, she invited me to attend her male colleague’s “renewal of wedding vows” church ceremony, party and family gathering. The guy was called Peter and it was the first time we met. He appeared like a family man on the face of things, had a five-year-old son and although he appeared like a liar in some aspects of his conversation about money and his home, I made no inference at the time apart from thinking that he stretches the truth.
What was more peculiar on this day was that his wife approached me and said that she though my wife and Peter, as well as the other colleagues, were as “thick as thieves,” insinuating that he was always talking about my ex-wife. This struck me as a strange thing to say or think but again I ignored or simply forgot the comment with time.
By August 2003 my now ex-wife repeated the same thing to me: “I don’t love you anymore.” Hearing this a second time was like striking a hot knife through butter. I got up from my bed and slept in the other room and my eyes filled with tears and I began to cry at her brutal and uncaring words. Five minutes later she followed me into the other room and there and then we made love. We had a holiday break in Spain we enjoyed playing with my son and teaching him to swim.
By October 2003, she was playing her games again and once again the calls were strange with a fake and orchestrated background when I called, or simply sterile. I decided to challenge her and said that she had been seen in a car with another guy and she better get her backside home otherwise I will be divorcing her. She returned in tears, protesting her innocence and that she had done nothing wrong. I had began to lose trust and faith in her, and simply remained silent as she returned back to work.
Within two months she started to spend more time out of the house and the lies were becoming worse, but I remained patient hoping that she would change. She made up stories that consultants in her office are paying for the restaurant and all her buddies are going so could she go? I agreed on all occasions but what was becoming apparent was that her social life had now begun to affect her duties as a parent and mother for our son. This reached a peak when she decided to stay out all night, despite my objection, to go to a company party at a hotel just 10 minutes away. Why would a mother prefer to stay in a hotel 10 minutes away rather than her comfortable home with her son and husband?
By November/December 2003, she walked in and told me she was pregnant and that we need to work things out between us. I was amazed and at the same time did not know what she was talking about, “work things out.” Work what out? Obviously she knew more than me!!!
2004—the downward spiral
I started working again in this year as a consultant for the third largest IT company in the world. I started to concentrate on my career again, thinking mainly of this, but also discussing names and other things that you do when you are expecting another child.
I became very aware that I needed to tie things down and hold a job down and start taking less risk with my career now. I had made it to middle/senior management and didn’t really care if I climbed with speed now!!
I attended my wife’s pregancy scans. On one of the scan appointments, just before entering the hospital, my wife told me that Peter and his wife will be there and that Peter’s wife was also pregnant and there for a scan. This appeared strange but again I showed trust!!
By June 2004, I was working and my ex-wife was now seven months pregnant. I was scheduled to collect her mother up from the airport and got a call from her telling me the baby was in danger and she had been advised to rush to the hospital some 20 miles way from our home. I was 40 miles away so it would have been dangerous for me to tell her to wait. I told her to catch a cab and I’m on my way. Her response was don’t worry and just go and collect my mother from the airport. I rushed in the car, driving dangerously, so that I could collect her mother and then go home. On the way I got a call from her telling me Peter had picked her and my son up and he was taking them to the hospital.
I was furious and relieved at the same time. I could not understand why she called a colleague to take her when cabs were just outside in front of her. She was seven months pregnant after all. I thought to myself, “be patient with her and just be calm.” So I let it go and never showed my anger or frustration to her.
By July I was working at full speed in preparing the nursery and repairs between both houses, such that I could give 100 percent concentration to my child at birth. Once gain, another strange event took place. My ex-wife invited Peter and his son into our home and whilst I was outside, he proceeded to take a shower in my home. He also demonstrated that he had previously been in my home in the way he relaxed on our leather couch, lifting a leg up onto the couch in comfort.
I had reached boiling point and waited until he left. I had no proof but it was becoming blatantly obvious that something was wrong.
By August 2004 my daughter had just been born into my arms at the hospital. Two weeks later my wife was gone, running off with the sociopath and leaving me in jail. (Peter had deserted his wife and son, and the wife lost her pregnancy through miscarriage.) I had been set up with a knife placed under my car seat and allegations made against me. Strike one and first set-up by them!!
During these 2 weeks, I had been tortured emotionally and mentally with words from her lips that I cannot bring myself to utter, but with one aim in mind and that was to bring out rage such that I would strike her, which I never did. Her Plan B was the knife!!!
She threatened that she was going to DESTROY me and more.
She whispered words of sexual behaviour and antics that she had enjoyed whilst pregnant in the back of cars.
She abandoned my son for three weeks with my parents and then came in full force with police in September 2004, bugged with a microphone and trying to get me to fall into her trap by her make leading statements. It was a scene from NYPD Blue and I was the victim and the culprit all in one. I handed over my son and that was the last I ever saw of him, as he was led away by his mother.
Within two months her false allegations amounted to nothing and my bail was over. I was free to find my children, who had disappeared with their mother and her lover into the unknown.
Within weeks I received a divorce petition with more false statements alleging that I was in effect the boogeyman and using this as a means to divorce me; thereby hiding the truth of her adultery.
2004-2006—the aftermath and key points
• I have not seen my children in two years of litigation. This is quite common in my country and fathers groups exist and are fighting a campaign for changes in the law.
• The legal system has failed me and is simply geared at making money. Although it suggests that it cares for the rights of the child or children; this is not really the case.
• The wealth is mostly gone, haven been eaten up by the lawyers. I expect her cream from the split went mainly to the lawyers, and with it, the cream for the sociopath, Peter. I know her costs are triple mine, as I was legally aided and she was private.
• The sociopath Peter still has a loving relationship with his son and a very good relationship with his ex-wife. Peter’s ex-wife is protective of him and was fully aware of all the details with respect to my divorce and where my paperwork had been sent and filed. She also has been told about my character and my family. This appears strange to me.
• My ex-wife is protective of Peter’s wife. She does not want me contacting her and when I do, Peter becomes rattled.
• It was declared by Peter that he left with the shirt on his back, in effect taking nothing into the relationship with my ex-wife. My ex-wife, on the other hand, has walked off with half the assets worth in the region of US$200,000, but this has been eaten into by lawyer costs.
• There is a new law called the Civil Partnership Act of 2004 that allows a 50/50 split in assets for non-married partners. She has declared him as her partner on all affidavits and court paperwork.
• Peter has started to work on my son and scare him about me. He is programming his mind and I believe my ex-wife does leave him alone with this man on occasions.
• I know Peter is in fear of me and the day that I reach him, as I saw the look of fear in his eyes. His response is to resort to police calls, false allegations and attempts to incriminate me on harassment charges.
Questions
1. Any suggestions, advice, analysis and comments welcome!
2. Are they both sociopaths and just him?
3. How should I deal with this situation? Legally this did not work. He has my children and they are using them as pawns. I cannot wait 12 years to see them again.
4. Is my ex being manipulated with promises of love only so that he can get his hands on money and assets? I believe she is a source of money and sex for him for now.
5. Do you think that this is a scam, with both Peter and his wife involved for capital gain (a joint operation)?
6. She has taken all of what she is entitled to in settlement now. How long will it take before he turns on her? Her settlement was final in May 2006.
7. Does the Civil Partnership Act of 2004 mean that Peter is entitled to half of my ex-wife’s assets?
Hi
You should contact your MP, mine is being very helpful, & does seem to understand & is fighting on my behalf. I told her that the law must be changed.
It broke my heart to hear your sad story, this has got to stop, but the only way is legally, so you must contact your MP to tell the story. Again, it seems like a big scam, don’t they all?
They may both be sociopaths or she may have learned from him. Have you considered going to the press? Find some papers or magazines that have done articles on similar subjects and write the writer or editor. Send them your story. Send your story around to TV shows as well. Exposure is what these guys HATE and it may light a fire under the police as well.
I can’t answer your legal questions since I am not familiar with the UK. However, I can tell you that HE is the sociopath, not your ex. She has been literally brainwashed into doing things she would not normally do. That’s how a sociopath can work their evil magic.
I can also tell you that he will stay in the picture until he has drained everything he can from her (and everyone associated with her that he is able to con). Finances, home, savings, investments, etc. He will leave no stone unturned. He will more than likely gain access to her credit and create very large debts for her. Many of us that become targets of a sociopath must file bankruptcy to get out from under all the debt. If she is gainfully employed, he will overtake and control her finances until he has it all. This will continue until she is either totally broke and destitute (which he will abandon her then), or she begins to realize that it will never change and she will remain under his power and control….until she leaves him.
Hopefully she begins to realize and understand what he is before he takes everything she has, and leaves her and those children homeless and broke.
Why is his ex still “friendly” with him after he treated her so dirty? His ex is also his victim / target. She is afraid of him, she knows what havoc he can and will cause her. He still has her mind under his control. The sad part is his son, a sociopath doesn’t “love” anyone….they can’t. He is gaining some sort of self centered gratification from the relationship with his son.
I don’t want to add to your distress, but that brings something to mind, you may want to request a paternity test if at all possible on the youngest child. She was involved with this man during the time she conceived.
Right now your best defense is to learn as much as you can about the sociopath disorder. Once you know EXACTLY what you are dealing with; making decisions will become easier since you are thinking with a clear head. The wondering why it happened and tormented emotions will no longer be the controlling factor on your side of the fence. Once you understand WHAT he is, you will begin to see things in a different light. You will begin to make progress against this man once you understand how his mind works.
You are on the right track now, just being here and asking these questions is the road to stopping the sociopath.
Take care, and just remember you are not alone. Everyone here has traveled this road and know it’s not an easy one, but you will make it and come out stronger than ever before.
Tom,
From my experience in a psychopathic situation that took over all aspects of my life, I would advise you to totally withdraw from the drama that is swirling around you. You will never find peace of mind until you do. You are just beating your head against the wall to try and figure out things using the concepts of fairness and logic. Those rules absolutely do not apply in a psychopath’s world, so stop trying to make them fit. The only pathway to peace of mind and therefore, freedom, is to walk away.
With your own sanity and peace of mind intact, you can start to rebuild your life ”“ even if it is from ground zero. Once you have made a firm statement that you are no longer prey for them, that you aren’t playing their game anymore, a new life for you will start to take shape. Maybe part of it will be taking your life experience and making something artistic and/or profitable out of it. You are an excellent writer and you have great material ”“ maybe this could be the plot for a novel or a screenplay. Doing something along those lines may be the best way to raise public awareness of the plight of victims of psychopaths and therefore possibly build a groundswell of support for legal protection in the future for victims of psychopaths.
In any event, if you want to survive now, you must immediately detach from this situation and do something positive with your experience. Don’t let the situation continue to drain you of your life force. As for your children, you will have no hope of getting them back until you get your own life together. Once you do, you will seem like a breath of fresh air to them and they will gravitate to you of their own volition when they finally start to see what a crazy trap they are living in. If you try to get them by being straightforward and logical, your efforts will backfire because you will be playing into the hands of the psychopath(s?) in your life. We all know what happens once we take the bait and step into their web ”“ we lose.
On a very positive note, you must be a wonderful person because I have found that psychopaths only prey upon those who have hearts of gold! Contacting lovefraud and sharing your story is a very, very healthy first step on your path of recovery. There are many of us out there who are willing to hold your hand and help you along the way as you continue taking steps to reclaim your life.
Best of luck!
Chadwick
Get advice on what you can legally do to protect yourself. Find out if it is ok to record phone calls for later use in court. Keep meticulous records of everything. Make sure you do everything in a legal manner.
Are you sure the latest baby is yours? Find out about having a paternity test. If the child is not yours, it will support your story in the courts (and amongst family and friends). Also, you don’t want to be paying years of child-support for his child.
With your son, make sure you speak to him regularly and often. Don’t make promises to him unless you can keep them. Tell him constantly that you are his real father and that you love him. Do not run his mother down.
I tend to think that she is being groomed by him in what to say, do, and believe. No doubt he charmed her when she was lonely – and now it would be hard for her to admit (even to herself) that she was duped. Psychopaths have a knack of knowing how to target a person’s most vulnerable points – and they could sell refrigerators to Eskimoes. He will eventually discard her when there is no more money – or when he gets bored.
Good luck. I hope you get some peace in your life soon.
Tom, I agree w/Chadwick that you have got to begin to make a new life. You have to clearly understand that you are a very valuable and vital person. Sadly enough, this is not about you, but them; however, you’re the one who is experiencing the most pain. My daughter, age 24, is married to a con artist. She married him on October 14 following his divorce from his wife on October 10 and she had only known him for 3 months. She is not stupid by any means … Dean’s list scholar, President of her class, honorary societies, etc. I have come to realize that the most intelligent can easily be conned. He found out that she had inherited a trust fund at 21 and set his sights on it. Since their marriage he has done the following: 1) Convinced her to remortgage her house–she only owed $50,000 on it–and now owes $131,000 on the house. 2) Convinced her to buy a new home. She owes $179,000 on this home. 3) Sell her vehicle and buy him a truck 4)He bought her a race car for a “wedding gift”–what a joke b/c guess who’s benefitting from that??? 5) Quit her job and work for him. 6) Buy all new, very expensive furniture for the new house… the list goes on and on. Every single thing is in her name. No amount of talking can make her see that she’s being duped. She says he worships the ground she walks on and that she’ll be with him for life! I might add that he has been found guilty of conspiracy in Federal Court and is scheduled to be sentenced on 12/7.
This has devastated her father, brother, and me. She no longer speaks to any of us because he has convinced her that we are the enemy. I found so much comfort in the Bible. God has led me to many different passages that have given me comfort. All of my family tells me to let go and move on but it is very hard to do when you want to but your heart won’t let you. You sound like a super person and soooo many people would be incredibly lucky to have you as a friend, mate, etc. Stay busy if possible. We can always look in the past and see why many things happened as they did. Again, it’s all in God’s perfect plan. Although we may not understand it at all right now, we will at some point. I wish you luck and all of us here will be more than happy to stand by you if you need to vent.
I can relate to Tom’s situation in a number of ways. My ex burned through a number of relationships with women during our marriage and after our divorce. Now he’s currently married to a woman who seems to be a sociopath as well. They’re the couple from hell. It’s often difficult to not obsess – I’ve often thought that if I crossed every t and dotted every y – and kept doing the “next right thing” – the situation would improve and they would tornado their way out of my life. Not the case. I’ve had to take so many post divorce actions. But fortunately for me, my children and I continue to move through the chaos and pain that these people TRY to cause. It’s important for me to focus on myself so I help my children focus on themselves and form FULL LIVES. It is a one day at a time process – and I try to force myself to be willing to accept that these people are like zombies and it will never be different and they’ll always have junk to toss at us. However, I can change, and so can my children. It DOES GET EASIER. It’s critical to feel the emotion, then move from the emotion to the intellect – and practice letting go after each “incident” -like a jedeye knight. I try to be willing to learn whatever lesson I’m supposed to be learning. Laughter and being silly has saved my children and me from being permanently emotionally disabled by the Couple. Remember – true heroes (men and women) face adversity, face tests – but we’re not alone in working through this stuff. Good luck!