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.
one/joy:
I am here for you. I have all these crazy feelings, too. I think we all do.
Are you in the UK?
oh sky…..(face contorting with recognition and tears over here), ”what am I doing wrong?”
doing it right was always about ‘being nice and compassionate, letting go, etc…..’ i feel so lost and unloved. i am not lost, just searching, but i am unloved. love is a verb and it ain’t verbing in my life.
your melt down sounds really cathartic. (((((good for you sky))))
One Joy,
we were little and we weren’t doing anything wrong, but that’s not how we felt.
Narcissists want everyone to feel unloved and that’s what my parents did to me. when I was crying, it came flooding back, that i used to cry the same way as a baby and it was for the same reason.
hi louise, no I am not in the UK, just write like I am. 😉
there was a quote I found that i had taped into my daytimer in 2009: ‘ remind yourself of the obvious, so that it doesn’t become invisible.
it could have said: ‘remind yourself of the insanity that you live in, so that you don’t forget who you are.’
sky – i think i go there now, because everything has been such a mess for so long.
Joanie123..you wrote, “This was his mother’s way of letting me know his long-term girlfriend was more important to her than I was. This was his mother’s way of telling me I was a temporary replacement in his life. She never came out and told me he was a “diagnosed sociopath.” The whole gang was in on the con when he married me and they all knew, lock, stock, & barrel. In my eyes now when I look back on this they were all guilty as hell like neighbors who witness children being tortured by child abusers and don’t report it till someone is dead”
MUCH LIKE like my ex spath’s mother! She would “intermittently reinforce” with sacarin sweet things..for example..sewed a couple of garments for me, like a mother would do for her daughter..
..but I also remember when she told me that the first woman he had lived with (before his two failed marriages) had been “good for him” .. like she was OUTRIGHT comparing me to a “standard” to which I had to live up!
She was like the mother in the film, The Manchurian Candidate..had some kind of strange Jocastra hold over him..and several of his family members behaved like those kids in the movie, Children of the Corn! Talk about dysfunctional!
Jonie123 wrote, “the short term marriage it seems to be a classic sign” ..
Yep. Mine’s 1st marriage lasted only about a year. His 2nd marriage, I think lasted 12 or 13 years. It failed, too. He actually told me that his mother TOLD him he should marry the 2nd woman. Yep. Like the Mother of the Manchurian Candidate!
KatyDid wrote, “He APPEARED to have her back, but what he really did was sneak behind her back with women who knew he was married, didn’t care, and thought it was funny to do that” ..
With my ex SPATH, honking after married (taken) women was a SERIAL SICK HABIT with him, before me, during me, and he will probably continue. He stepped out on me with a MARRIED woman, broke up her marriage”.but it was the FIRST time he was able to actually (to my knowledge) break up a marriage. He admitted to me, early on, that he’d had an affair on his second wife with a MARRIED woman who told him, “I don’t want your problems to become mine” (smart woman) .. I would later find out from ex wife #1, that he’d had an affair with a MARRIED neighbor woman. The pattern REPEATED itself..again and again.
aliciad456 wrote, “It IS possible to fully move on from people like this, right? Please tell me that’s the case”
My answer.. yes.. it IS possible to move on, to a BETTER relationship. If I did it, you can, too. You may continue to have “residual” bouts of anger from it .. that can go on FOR YEARS, even after establishing a BETTER relationship with an HONEST man, after the spath, but I have found that I can CHANNEL those (very seldom, anymore) few minutes of anger into a more productive energy, like helping others (as we are all doing up here, or in other ways.) I also got great GLEE from exposing his nastiness on the intranet. I wouldn’t want any woman to get AIDS/HIV from his DL activities, and I suspect those WILL NOT stay in his past..suspect that he found another sucker to use as a “beard”..
Candy wrote to aliciad456, “When he told you about the other woman ”“ that was triangulation. So then he has to reel you back in by immediately love bombing you with a text. Spaths do it all the time”
.. the “reeling back in” is the “whipsaw” maneuver. Mine did it, too. After he’d moved out, he called me, asking if I wanted to attend a seminar with him that he’d pay for — one of those seminars that is sort of like “Life Spring” .. supposedly gets couples back on track, with a mediator. In the same convo, he asked me, “but what if you found something out you didn’t like at the seminar?”
Gee..I wonder what it was he wanted to SHOCK me with, at that “public forum” had we attended. Was he going to tell me about the MARRIED woman or finally admit that he’d used ALL of his past women as “beards”?
behind_blue_eyes wrote, “I was simultaneously victim to a spath relationship and an spath employer. Talking about never being the same!”
behind_blue_eyes .. So was I! In fact, my ex spath (at home) failed to “get it” .. thought I should “put up and shut up” about the spath boss, and keep zipped. But I “settled” with my employer, after I proved what the ER SPATH had done (he did it to others at my work, too!) Yep. They had to pay me to resign, as I had proven many EEO rights that the ER SPATH had violated. But proving it sucked much life out of me. The EX SPATH, at home, was sucking the rest of it out of me, though I didn’t fully realize it, at that time.
KatyDid wrote, “Question Authority was one of my life rules. Served me well in comparing legit from bs” ..
..exactly, KD..and that was why I KNEW I had to stand up to my SPATH boss, and why I KNEW that my at-home SPATH was WRONG about me “putting up and shutting up” about the SPATH boss..
gotta go.. sincere Luff to all,
Zim
DUPED_IN_SOCAL, The link to the Jonatha Brooke tune,
The Angel in the House:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQd0y61FOuQ
By “jocastra” complex..as I mentioned above (not sure if I spelled it right or not) .. in certain photos I see him with his mother (now that I view it closely, with all I discovered since, in mind..he appears to be a lilly livered coward), for example, at his mama’s 80th B-day celeb, he is standing next to her, .. she is practically leaning into him..practically hooking, for dear life, onto his arm, and it appears as though she is PRETENDING that he is her former husband, my ex Spath’s father. He did resemble his father, in many aspects. Not sure if my spath’s problem was a MIX of him being a victim of the “jocastra” complex AND and oedipal complex ..the latter being jealousy or hatred of his father, who he did not admit this to me until after he called it “quits”, he told me that his father had molested his niece when she was in her teens..used to come into her bedroom at night and touch her inappropriately. I think, of the few TRUE things he told me during our relationship, those THREE INCEST stories, about his family, were TRUE.
skylar wrote,
Katy,
“A resentful child has tendencies toward being spathic. My spath was so resentful of his mother for divorcing the spath father that he ran away at age 12 to go live with a prostitute”
Sky, I gotcha. I suspect that my ex spath, who had a JUVIE RECORD, possibly even ran away to prostitute himself WITH MEN. Thing is.. his parents did not divorce..they stayed together for the “appearance” of being a “together family” .. as I see it.
Zim
Skylar,
Though my parents divorced when I was age 15 (I helped rear my younger brother, subsequently..so, in a way, mother/daughter role models were “reversed” .., each of my parents, nevertheless, instilled strong moral values in me, “fed forward” to me what my strengths were, constantly .. always let me know they loved me), their divorce, to me was a HEALTHY thing, and I saw it as such. I much preferred MY “dysfunctional family situation” to that of my ex spath’s. But I think my ex spath SAW that strength in me (the reverse role model thing..with my mother), and preyed upon it. Why else would he have used me for nearly a decade, to help rear his daughter, hmmm? He KNEW that I would have made a STRONG/GOOD MOTHER, so he USURPED that energy in me..to my detriment. One GIANT VORTEX he was.
Zim
(((one/joy_step_at_a_time)))
You wrote, ” i feel i need to write ”“ about the spath and my life, but what? an article, a book, a graphic novel? i guess i just have to try and see what comes”
Do it! It helps. I spent three years writing my memoirs about the spath and other events, during my time with him, FILLED with several spaths. I even had a publisher I signed with. But the publisher breached it’s contract with me one year after I signed..something about how I wouldn’t agree to pay a lawyer hundreds of dollars to “vet” my book for “potential libel” . I assured them that I’d changed all names in my book, including my own as the author, so that no one would recognize anyone. It did no good. I have since discovered that others who signed with same author — others who would have been first-time, published authors — were “stiffed” similarly. I discovered this on the Net, about the publisher. I recommend NOT signing with Publish America. I have not given up yet. I may still create a web site to have my book read, via “Pay Per Chapter Read”, as an e-book. I still have confidence that my memoirs are quite good, replete with facts, statistics, and excellent NARRATIVE per my true story. If nothing else, I at least have it down on paper.
Zim