In my post last week, I referred to an article on Salon.com called, Facebook status: In a scam relationship. The article starts with an anecdote about a guy who met a woman on Myspace. She supposedly lived in Ghana and proclaimed her love, then told him a hard luck story. He sent her a total of $14,000, even though they never met. The person did not exist. The guy was scammed.
After relating the anecdote, the article stated, “He’s a victim of what’s called ”˜love fraud.’”
I had two reactions to that sentence. The first was, “Wow—”˜love fraud’ has entered the lexicon.” The second was, “This writer doesn’t get it—love fraud is not limited to cyber scams.”
Then, a few days ago, I received an inquiry from a television talk show producer who is considering doing an episode about “love fraud.” He Googled, “love fraud,” and of course, immediately landed on this website and blog. He too, however, seemed to think that love fraud was limited to fake romances conducted over the Internet, which turn out to be money scams.
It’s time to set the record straight.
When I learned that my ex-husband, James Montgomery, was a sociopath, and that millions of sociopaths were out in the world putting peoples’ lives through a meat grinder, as had happened to me, I realized that the public needed to be educated. Although I was in the midst of my divorce and couldn’t immediately embark on an education program, I decided that I would eventually build a website.
So 12 years ago, on August 7, 1999, I reserved the domain name, “Lovefraud.com.” If you want proof, check the Who Is information.
Lovefraud.com launched on July 20, 2005. Our logo is trademarked. “Love fraud” is my term. Therefore, I will define it:
Love fraud is the intentional exploitation of an individual through manipulating emotions and trust in a personal relationship. The exploitative relationship is frequently romantic, but can also be between family members, friends and associates. The relationship can take place in real life, or exist only through communications media. The people who engage in love fraud are sociopaths.
For years, I’ve heard from people who want to tell me about their “love frauds.” In fact, I have collected more than 2,500 cases of people who tangled with sociopaths. Yes, I’ve heard about online scams. But I’ve also heard about betrayal by high school sweethearts, long-term spouses, family members, first dates, co-workers and business partners. This type of exploitation is widespread. In fact, it is epidemic.
So to all you bloggers and journalists who are suddenly interested in love fraud—this is not just an online money scam. Love fraud occurs any time a disordered individual uses a personal relationship of trust for the sole purpose of exploitation. Unfortunately, it happens much more frequently than most of us realize.
((sopris))) to quote: “It makes more sense on the other side of the pain.” That is an amazing statement. Thanks for that. 😉
Yes, definitely NC saved me. Literally.
HA: truth/rage bomb. Is that what you call my PISSED OFF reactions the past four years? hahahaha – that’s great. 😉 Thanks for the definition. It will always make me smile when I think of it.
I like too what you said about revenge, sopris…
revenge will always come back to poison us and that is what they want. They want that power to destroy us by using ourselves. They mock us and laugh at us under their breath. They find us petty and trite for our deep seated caring and emotions. Our abilities to feel and think and love so deeply. They are jealous of our very virtues that make us the strong people we are and the people they want to be but don’t know how. They have no souls. Just soul less beings, wandering the earth, devouring souls. They live an empty life and we nor anyone else can save them from their destinies but themselves. All WE can do is save ourselves.
Yes, superkid: YOU CAN DO THIS.
YOU have to do this to get to the other side…
((night everyone))
dupey dupedster
Skylar
I realized you asked a great question – was I actually SURE that my spath and I had things in common, or was it just mirroring?
Yes, we had some things in common. Certain sports. A geography. A sexual attraction.
But there was a huge chasm in the things that count.
I like people.
He hates people.
I am straight forward.
He’s smoke and mirrors.
I’m monogomous
He likes to triangulate
I think that’s enough for now, don’t you? Great question. Thanks.
Superkid
“The veil of illusion, is when you hear what you want to hear, and disregard the rest”.
Duped
Superkid;
Spaths use mirroring to reinforce the initial attraction. Often, the mirroring is on small things, to keep us distracted from the fact that there are not many big things in common.
Yes, we both liked travel and like to travel to the same types of cities, but he is more limited in only really liking warm places. The biggest thing binding us were some regrets about the past and looking to a better future.
His mirroring was pointing out all these little things we had in common, from both of us only liking white wine to a fondness for potato chips. That’s deep. We did have similar taste in art, but not music. We both urban exploration.
But, I like sports and I am very active in such: cycling, gym, cross-country skiing. He does not of that.
I am health conscious. While nominally he watched his diet out of concern for the cancer that killed both his parents, he smokes and drinks heavily.
I am motivated not only career-wise but to be a better person. He is content being a flight attendant who gives nothing back to society.
I am honest and open. He is illusive and dishonest.
Funny, the biggest things that attracted me where he had obvious family and relationship issues. I have these to a lesser extent and thought together we could work on our issues. He has no desire to work on these issues.
This has been a bad month for me. I always have been affected by summer heat which gives me a low mood, but ever since my heart problem started, it seems I am more affected. Last summer, being particularly hot, was horrible. It is also when I came across the x-spath’s second dating profile which clearly showed me what he was after “boys, beers, fooling around” and I had a melt-down and exhibited poor judgement such as looking at his FB profile, his sisters wall (it it open) and I accidentally may have left trail on a porn site he frequents.
I was very concerned about this summer but was fine because the heat came later. I was doing OK trading stocks but when the financial turmoil started, the summer heat kicked in and I began making some poor judgements and lost a lot of money — $40K in a month.
I was hoping to make a go at trading for a business but now I have doubts about that. While I picked a wrong month to start that kind of work, it is very stressful and I am not sure that kind of stress is good for my health.
On the bright side, I still have a lot left from settlement, but I feel really down that I allowed myself to make these mistakes. I am so embarrassed at losing so much and don’t really have anyone to talk to about this.
BBE,
After my husband’s sudden and dramatic death, I also made some bad business decisions as well and lost a considerable amount of money from my assets. I can look back now and see that the decisions I made at that time were pretty obviously BAD/POOR ones, but at the time they looked okay to me because my thinking was not solidly rational.
Anytime you get involved in something RISKY (and right now the stock market is risky) especially when you have had HIGH STRESS in your life in the previous 3-4 years (and yes, it does take that long to work through the traumas caused to our systems by prolonged stress of any kind or cause) you tend to make mistakes and poor judgments.
Near death from cardiac problems and/or open heart surgery has been shown to cause many emotional changes/problems in patients. Nurses have a non official term for people who have had open heart surgery and/or serious heart attacks, we call them “cardiac assholes”—-though this is just an observation by nurses in general, there was some actual research done on the personality changes in cardiac patients that bore up that they have higher depression, etc. and My guess is PTSD. Any time you face DEATH IN THE FACE and survive it has an impact on your outlook on life.
You had MULTIPLE high level stressors including the heart problems, job loss, etc.
I suggest that before you make ANY major financial or career choices or moves that put you at RISK that you wait a few more years until you have had some PEACE under your belt so to speak, and I think (Just my opinion) you still have a lot of anxiety and stress going on.
I can tell you right now, after my husband died I was NOT ABLE to work at something as IMPORTANT to my patients as my judgment being good 100% of the time, and I was not SAFE to practice medicine/nursing. With short term memory still being a problem (though it has improved) I am still not safe to make decisions on which people’s lives depend in the short term.
My “summer of chaos” was in The summer of 2007 (where I had to run and hide from the stalkers) so it has been 4 years since then, and 7 years since my husband died, but there has been ABSOLUTE CHAOS/STRESS for all of that 7 years except the last 2 years or so has been FAIRLY free of Chaos, only a few episodes of any importance, but my life is improving, my memory is improving, and my judgment is improving SLOWLY and it is an on-going process I am still not the person I was the day before my husband died. In some ways I am BETTER in emotional health and judgment, and in other ways (short term memory) I’ll probably never get back to where I was prior to the plane crash.
My financial situation was adversely impacted by the Summer of Chaos and some poor financial decisions I made prior to that even, but mainly because I am NOT able to pursue my career any more so my income has been drastically cut. I AM fortunate though that my basic needs are met, I am not in debt and have a roof over my head. Some people end up on the street after their encounters with the psychopaths, or just because of the recession.
My suggestion to you right now is that you FOCUS ON YOUR HEALTH, and on PEACE AND CALM and LOW STRESS in your life. Keep change to a MINIMUM. Maybe go to some classes of some kind that would be interesting to you, but keep all RISKY behavior to a minimum. Trading stocks is not low risk, or peaceful in my mind at least. I think the last thing you need is a stressful rush.
Ox;
Thank you very much. Your advice is exactly what I needed to hear. I am going on vacation next week and no more of this stock day-trading stuff. I have some minor surgery left to clean-up the scar and I am going to accelerate having this done so I can concentrate of finding something stable, rewarding and without a lot of stress.
The silver lining to this is that I was beginning to realize the benefits of a full-time job and I was going crazy from loneliness. Since I am under no pressure to find a job, I can take time to network and find something rewarding.
If it was me, I would not care about the lost money. But I have always felt bad for my mother. When my dad died, he did not leave her in a good financial position. Although she has a very good job, she has always lived in an apartment and my dream was be able to given her enough for a down payment.
This is why I took the job with the Wall Street sociopaths. One good bonus and I would be able to buy her a house to live in. I feel so bad that I just blew that down payment as my goal was to make $40K or $50K to give her.
Dear BBE,
I can understand your desire to buy your mom a home, but don’t kick yourself for not being able to do that….the past is behind you and you can’t undo it.
While you are waiting to find a “job” to occupy your time, think about volunteer work to keep you occupied and give you something to get up for in the morning.
Ox;
First, my little vacation in Canada — nothing expensive. Then I need to move up that elective surgery, although that is minor. There is a certification I have been putting off and I will get that and this requires some studying.
But you are right I do need to find something as at least losing money was keeping me occupied…
Ox;
Actually, one of the driving things now to get me back to a productive job is that I still have more than enough to get her into a nice place. It won’t be tomorrow, but if that will give me some peace.
I know children are not supposed to be their parent’s parent but this is an issue I have troubling letting go.
The funny thing is that my mother salary wise does quite well. It is just that she never had enough to put down on a house and keep money in reserve. It kills me that 5 years ago, we could have walked into a bank and gotten whatever we needed… But we always played by the rules.