by Quinn Pierce 
The Perpetual Victim
I don’t know how he does it. It’s a skill he continues to practice and perfect, I suppose. What’s astonishing is his ability to twist any situation- no matter how absurd- into something where he can paint himself as the victim.
Anyone who was even remotely involved in our lives last year would know that my ex-husband reached a new level of vindictive, hurtful behavior. He manipulated every resource he could access including doctors, courts, school systems, and child services in two states. It was such a forceful and constant barrage of attacks that I didn’t even have time to collect my thoughts before responding.
And that was his goal all along.
Keeping You Off-Balance
The favorite and most commonly used strategy of my ex-husband is the surprise attack. He will always do his best to catch me off-guard, or corner me at in-opportune times when I’m distracted or not prepared for what he is doing.
He preys on vulnerability and indecisiveness. It’s a tactic that has always proven successful- especially with me. What he continues to fail to understand is that while he is incapable of changing, growing, or healing, that is just what his children and I have been doing.
Every day.
A One-Sided Game
My son once returned from a visit with his father and tried to explain to me the bizarre conversations with, and explanations from, his father. My children are completely aware of their father’s character flaws, shall we say. But, there are still aspects of his personality that baffle them at times.
For example, my son was explaining how my ex-husband described what he believed to be my motives and rationale for things he thinks I’m doing.
The key word here is: thinks . What he thinks I’m doing.
That’s what was confusing to my son. He knew that none of the things his father was talking about actually took place anywhere in reality. It’s as if he is fighting a war against me, except that he doesn’t realize that I’m not actually participating. My ex-husband and his wife spend most of their time talking about and anticipating my next move, which would be more conceivable if I ever planned anything ahead of time. Ironically, one of his biggest pet peeves during our marriage was how ‘unprepared and unorganized’ I was.
It’s funny to think that he now pictures me as some kind of sly, cunning, well-planned enemy biding my time before attacking. Ironically, I usually consider my day a success if I only lose my car keys once.
Planning ahead is not my greatest strength. Not engaging in his fictional game of war, however, may just be.
Unraveling at the Seams
My ex-husband caused so much devastation in our family last year, that my older son is now estranged from him completely. It was a year of blaming, accusing, lying, and threatening me and my children, and yet, my ex is shocked that his children harbor any anger towards him at all.
He insists that I have alienated him from them, and that I have brainwashed them with lies and accusations. But, while he was playing this fantasy game of war, standing on every soap box he could find, and shouting through every social media channel he could access, I did”¦nothing.
I didn’t have to. Once again, he failed to see how strong, independent, and responsible his own children are. He treated them like they were young, naive, easily manipulated toddlers. More like an image of himself, if you will.
I simply stood back and watched his one-act show go down in flames. His lies started colliding, his actions became desperate and tantrum-like. His credibility slowly eroded.
Strength Overtakes Fear
And just like that, my own fears began to fade- giving way to a strength I didn’t know I possessed. It’s a strength that comes from watching your children come up against adversity and conquer it with a grace that steals your breath. It’s a strength that comes from feeling hopeless and helpless and not giving up.
It’s a strength that comes from surviving years of emotional abuse and believing in yourself enough to say: I will not allow this any more. It’s a strength that comes from raising children whose integrity and courage inspires others.
And it’s a strength that comes from trusting in the goodness life has to offer in order to find happiness and love.
It’s a strength we will all find on this journey together.
Happy New Year…
New Year’s Resolutions for Lovefraud readers
Dear Quinn,
I totally relate to everything you have shared. I extricated myself from my ex 8 years ago and there is not a week that goes by without his vindictive behaviour which always implicates myself and our 2 children, now going on 10 and 12 years of age. People close to me struggle to believe this as a reality. After all, he has moved on (immediately), why would he bother? People so don’t get it that I tend to keep things quiet at times, worried that they will think I am an insane drama queen.
Back to the point, my children are seeing through his behaviour and sadly seeing him for what he presents. It’s sad, but necessary.
Thank you for articulating so much of what I am experiencing so clearly!
All the best to you and yours…
Wonderful post, Quinn!
My story is identical to yours, and my children’s stories appear to be nearly identical with your children’s.
After I divorced him, and after he remarried, he and his wife ramped up their character assassinations against me to the extent that I had a viable Defamation lawsuit – tried in civil court with 6 jurors. It’s extremely difficult to bring that type of suit to court, but I had to. Being silent, and soldiering on in the face of their verbal and emotional abuse of myself and my children looked to them like compliance. I was very reluctant to take that step, but looking back – I have no regrets. It took that action from me to reclaim my and my children’s lives back.
You mention that your ex painted you as a vindictive person. Mine did also – and I began to see that his accusations and name calling of me, mirrored his motivations. So if he accused me of lying or manipulating, I knew that’s exactly what he was doing. I learned not to take any of that personally, as it’s best to do when somebody is projecting all their stuff at us. Detach.
Like you, I believe we are given strength that we might have thought was beyond our reach. It is there. It’s important to reach out to people we trust.
As somebody said “Name the darkness and lean into the light.”
You just did this in your post. Thank you again.
Watching self destruction must be a beautiful thing to behold. After 3 Sociopaths in my life I now understand their behavior. Read and education is your best defense. Read Donna’s books! Read Read Read; “The Gaslight Effect”, “The Sociopath Next Door”, “Snakes in Suits”. A good offence means a good defense is essential, know the signs, prepare yourself because they are out there, un harassed by law enforcement because they fly below the radar. 1 in 25 people walk among us with this disorder. However you can, make your friends and their friends aware of the “Social Predator” the person really is.
Amen to that
I think even more empowering than “no contact” is finally being able to reject the manipulation and rise above the BS of the sociopath. He can’t have your weakness anymore. With shared children, the no contact, although good advice, is not practical. So we must rise about and now I pitty him but I am so tired of the victim thing and the constant issues that need to be solved (they are never-ending) and always somehow trying to make me feel guilty about his problems…even though I am the ex and supported him for years while being betrayed. Still baffles me how someone can F up their life so badly even with the support of a good wife and children and continue to blame them somehow….S Paths are a breed of their own.
Let me start by saying how much I appreciate your story. While I understand how helpful it has been to share the utter devastation experienced by these individuals, there is something so uplifting and encouraging to read a post as this. Thank you!
This being said, I can only hope my 9 year old daughter will finally catch on to her father’s games and deceit. He has her so manipulated, it sickens me. Unfortunately, I agreed to 50/50 shared custody when we divorced, thinking at the time (5 yrs ago) that it would keep him happy, when in fact I have learned nothing will ever make him happy. You would think after this long things would be functional, but that’s what I got for thinking! Up until recently, I have remained single, mainly because I knew my ex would torture whoever I was dating. You would think now after my ex has remarried (after I refused to get back with him the 6th time), dating would be okay now and things would definitely get easier. Delusional! It only escalated because I didn’t act like I cared that he remarried. They have been married for about 3 yrs now and she is literally his puppet. She complies with whatever he tells her and believes all his lies. Both of them now work overtime to exclude me from all matters with my child, including medical and educational choices that clearly I should have a say. What’s worse, the courts never hold him or HER accountable. Honestly, I have given up on the court system. The only thing I can honestly say I lean on now, is GOD. I trust that one day my daughter will truly know in her heart the truth and be able to identify all her father and now step-monsters, behavior. It has been a very difficult,trudging road to walk, but I too believe my not reacting as I have so many times, does in fact make life easier for me. Sure, both my ex and his wife only continue to plot the next move, but I don’t have to allow it to control me as it has so many times in the past. The truth is, my allowing it to do so,only proved to my daughter I was nuts, just like her father told her I was. That was a hard chunk to swallow, but once I became truly aware of it and decided to do something about it, things got better. My hope is that one day my sweet girl will be able to identify all the things your kids have been able to. Unfortunately, only time will tell. Oh yeah, before I forget. The guy I’ve been dating for the last 8 months has a backbone, thank the lord! It was discovered that my ex was pretty much stalking him trying to get some scoop on him. He didn’t, so he attempted to just tell me he didn’t want his daughter around him because he heard he was an out of control drug addict. Two things good came out of this… My new guy could care less what lies my ex comes up with and I refused to react. Obviously this doesn’t mean anything as far as what he will plot to do next, but there is something so empowering about not giving two shits about what he thinks, feels, believes or conjures up. What a great feeling that is, after years of torment from his nasty ass.
Peace ladies! Let’s continue to ride this bitch out together and prove we are stronger then we ever imagined.
It took me a long time to recognize what the spath was doing to undermine me… I can relate so much to this explanation of tactics used to confuse. My spath would bamboozle me with a barrage of accusations to keep me from detecting his real motivation or agenda – which was to avoid DETECTION!
Recently I just listened. He jumped ship so many times that I found it hard to keep up. Not once did he own it, just blame projected. I was still busy trying to defend the first accusation while he was on the 5th when I just sat back and listened… what an eye opening experience that was!
Now to the business of watching his life crash into a million pieces while knowing I had nothing to do with it – he crossed a line that he cannot return from… I can almost chuckle but I’m not a vengeful person 😉
Listen to the disordered person and theyll tell you everything you want to know. They told you right in the beginning how lousy of a person they were. You laughed together with you thinking they were sarcastic. They weren’t. They told you in the beginning how everyone thought they were an ass. You sympathized and secretly vowed to never listen to those obviously-stupid ppl. Remember, there’s wisdom in a multitude of counsellors. Right from the start you heard how their son or daughter or mother twisted their words or actions and now wouldn’t speak to them. You were aghast that their own flesh and blood would do this cruelty and determined to love the spath even more unconditionally. The spath used truth, their family’s NoContact, to produce pity when it should have produced terror in you.
Now in the midst of the chaos its hard to hear the truth they speak about themselves becuz ur so busy dodging bullets. If you can step back and just listen, as undertheradar did, youll hear it.
And you can mentally vomit and then emotionally go stonecold so you can physically leave the heinous beast you pledged your heart, mind and soul to.
My ex has spent the last 5 years getting his new woman to post the most awful things about me on social media and the internet. Tried to make out there was a restraining order on me (was thrown out by court as no evidence)and accused me of harassing her kids (never been to their dwelling – deliberately on my part). Then she started posting about my death etc. and how she had turned to witchcraft to achieve this. Police were called at that point – and she has been cautioned a few times now about threatening me.This is still all online and I’m waiting for the law to catch up with this problem so I can get it removed. All rubbish. My ex has self destructed in his own way – he now lives with this woman who has two kids by two different fathers, in a rented house with one elderly car between them. She sold her house to ‘fund his search for justice’ against me – in reality he was prolonging the whole legal separation himself to try to keep in contact with me. He has spent $40k of her money and wasted nearly $200k of mine on unnecessary legal bills and for me holding up everything financially when he left. He was diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder in 2008 during a joint counselling meeting he insisted I attend (I was the mad one of course – the fact he was out shagging the office help at the time didn’t get mentioned by him) – but I had no idea what that meant then. Someone needs to warn her – but its not going to be me – she still believes the charm and the lies. I know he was with someone else at a conference a few years ago in DC when she wasn’t about – as its a small world and people talk. Fortunately all my friends know me well enough and have been the brunt of his anger and lies, including his family, and have stuck by me. That’s one thing I’m grateful for.
As for me – I have a great life now. I have money to spend on what I like, trips abroad, my dogs and so on. I cannot believe I put up with the rubbish from him for so long – the affairs, spending money on himself to make him ‘look good’ etc. The worst was that, as a SP he nearly convinced me it was all my fault – when it was him. However, it was my fault I didn’t get out sooner – I pandered to his manipulations to try to appease him. Hiding to nothing there! If anyone would like to see some of the stuff a SP posts to try to harass and denigrate someone I am happy to share the blog site.
I can totally relate Lulu. I was 40k into my lawyers before I realized every meeting, ever arbitration, every mediation, ended in the same stalemate. I was lucky that I had no minor children involved so I fired my lawyers and spent the next 8 months Pro-se. In the end he only got what I had offered him from the beginning and he got a lien from his lawyer for 80k for her legal “expertise” right there at the close of our divorce hearing. The court system is a self perpetuating money machine, and all the players play their roles. He ended up selling the GORGEOUS condo I bought him to induce him to move out of my house, to pay his bills and now lives in a 40k run down shack in the bowels of PA, with some unsuspecting nurse as his new bride. I sold my 1.5 mil dollar home for $2000 over what I owed on it (everyone started to think I WAS crazy) but it gave me great pleasure to hand over his $1000 share of the profit instead of another 2-300k had I priced the house at market value (the house sold in a matter of weeks for cash). I had given him enough as far as I was concerned. I know he will self destruct someday, he already lost his big mansion and nearly million dollar salary, he got as my employee. I do believe in Karma.
oh u are so wicked!
i love it!
good for u to give up 150K just to be able to screw him.
bravo, my dear. i bet it was worth every (potential) penny 🙂
Thetenthchair
Good on you! This won’t be the first time I’ve had to start again…. While the spath sits in “my house” and I live in a box, I’m sure his day will come!
Actually, I’ve finally gotten to a place where I can let go of all we had built together – I doubt I’ll end up with nothing as I’d made sure we were set up for life financially, but if him winning the majority makes him appear to have won, then bring on the end I say!
Quinn, I could be written this. Thank you for your eloquence. I have struggled to explain to people what it has been like – 1 month divorced and 10 days in my own place. He’s on a new campaign as I emailed him to say he was not we!come here. I can visualise his head spinning as he he has now lost control of the one thing he loved to control most. Our kids see him for what he his but they love him and all I can do is sit tight and offer them respite. Luckily he works away which has enabled me to undo some of the damage he has done but only time will tell. I still can’t believe how he has pitted us against each other which they can see but he has the money to buy them and the tenacity to keep at it. He has someone new and has already ‘done it’ to her but she is hanging in there. I made sure he dated first but by seeing someone I’ve proved I was having an affair all along. All I can do is sit and watch now as he has burnt bridges and contradicts himself and lies and talks rubbish. Ive never had to badmouth him as he has always done the damage himself. Its so hard not to get drawn into the email arguments but it is also liberating to make the choice to not take part.
Secretary, I am a few years beyond you, and send you Strength to deal with the kids, and Support for your decision to go N/C.
There really is no other way, and trust me I have tried, so for all the other options you may have considered, this is the Word on them:
Forgeddaboudid, those people are not In There.
Nocontact
You cracked me up! The word… funny 😉
You’ll be pleased to hear that things have finally changed in my world and I’m no longer required to assist with the investigation so I took the first opportunity the spath presented to me and told him I wasn’t in love with him and wanted nothing to do with him anymore – we’ve both been no contact for a full week now!
Hi jenna 23. I think they do sometimes we can not see it.
I believe that one way or another what goes around comes around.
Yes I believe so. I also want some kind of justices but sometimes I feel it takes away too much of my good energy.
Either way they will in due time reap!
I agree, you don’t always get the satisfaction of seeing it but eventually it will happen. My ex’s dad took 20 years. He lost everything, his big house, money, wife and died alone in a bedsit. I got a volley of emails today. He has to have the last word. He is very bitter at the settlement not acknowledging that I havent asked for maintenance and when I moved out the only electrical items I took was the old TV (for the kids) a radio and the iron but he’s so focused on what he hasn’t got. Hes seen his solicitor – more cost – to get me to pay half the value of what he has to replacement. He ended his email with ‘ha’ !!! Really? Its like arguing with a child it was becoming funny except I know it won’t stop. He’s a dog with a bone. All I can do is sit back and wait and watch while his behaviour becomes more ridiculous and people start to laugh at him (hopefully out of court). His undoing is when people meet me as I am not as he describes and adds to the consensus that he is a complete bullshitter. The running ‘joke’ is halve it or double it and you get somewhere near…
My ex-husband’s wife was like this. I only met her once! I think she made things up in her head and believed I was attacking her. The truth was, I never gave her a thought. My ex and I were over. At first I didn’t realize she was attacking me, but by the time I did, I had another issue with my family of origin that kept me busy trying to cope. So I just didn’t care. She would mount legal attacks on me having to do with custody of our child, and I just contacted a lawyer, had the venue moved to my county (160 miles away) and that stopped. She tried so many ways to “get at” me and I would just laugh and throw her letters in the garbage without reading them. Sometimes doing nothing is the best course of action. Also, I prayed a lot. I mean A LOT! That worked the best. Knowing there is someone more powerful that you can turn it over to relieved me of a lot of drama and pain. I was very matter of fact about it, too. “Here, God, you take care of this while I handle what’s in front of me”. And He did!
Hope everyone can look forward to a wonderful and spath-free NEW year!
Newlife43
What a nightmare! I wish you peace from that evil monster!
New Year, new beginnings ★
Bravo newlife.