Lovefraud received the following e-mail from a woman whose daughter is caught in the web of a sociopath. The woman and her husband are not enabling the relationship—the sociopath, of course, wants money. They are hoping and praying that their daughter will escape.
Here is her question to other Lovefaud readers:
What was the “turning point,” “awakening moment,” “realization point,” that woke them up OUT of the fog, the gaslighting, etc., and what made them realize they needed to RUN, to get away from their sociopaths? Â What finally “did it,” what finally “broke the camel’s back?” Â Where they realized what was happening to them, had been done to them, when they finally realized things were NEVER going to “get better?”
There must be a “trigger” here somewhere. I’m just trying to grasp what it’s going to take. Â What is going to have to happen to jar her awake from this brainwashing/fog?
My experience
I remember the moment for me.
I knew my husband, James Montgomery, was lying to me, although I didn’t realize the extreme extent of the lies. I knew all my money was gone; my husband had spent about $227,000, much of it carelessly. I suspected he was cheating on me, and when I discovered proof, I left him.
Still, even after I left him, I thought my husband was just one of those guys who can’t stay faithful. I did not realize that my entire marriage was a scam right from the beginning.
The real moment of truth came when I called one of the women my husband appeared to be involved with. According to bank records I’d found, she had given him $6,000. The conversation went like this:
“I’m Donna Andersen. I’m James Montgomery’s wife, and I’d like to suggest that you don’t give him any more money.”
“It’s too late. I already gave him $92,000.”
I almost dropped the phone. And with that conversation, I realized that my husband had married me for the specific purpose of taking my money. That was all.
Your moment of truth
This reader has asked a really important question, one that may glean some possible approaches from helping people escape the sociopathic trap. So please post your experience.
What did it for you? When did you finally realize that you had to get out?
Katydid [In the end, the thousand points of light were so bright, the truth was ablaze.] That sums it up, so many years of craziness in one sentence. Wow, very powerful sentence there katy……
Hope for joy –
“I tracked his computer and found him looking for mental institutions for a family member who is resistant to treatment, meaning me. Still I stayed.”
Thank God you got out when you did!!! How frightening for you. xx
For me? With spath number 1 (husband number 2), it was a nasty note in the mail, long after he had left me and I was still grieving him and still making excuses for him.
There had been so many huge, big, fat, enormous red flags for many months well before this, but I had reasoned them away or else ignored or “forgotten” them. Things that would have sent others running for the nearest hills way before I disconnected from him.
For instance, the time he tried to get me to commit assisted “suicide”, by feeding me painkillers while I was drunk (I didn’t – and still don’t – usually get drunk; I don’t even drink that much at all). I had been drinking to drown my sadness and anxiety at how he had been treating me and because my gut kept screaming at me that SOMETHING VERY BAD was wrong. He came into the room where I was and made fun of the state I was in (crying, miserable, rocking myself to and fro on the ground from the pain of it all). I had a packet of headache tablets and had taken 2 of them, as my head felt like it was going to explode – not from the drinking, but from wailing so hard for hours on end. He calmly stood over me and kept handing them to me every now and again saying thing like, “Here, have two of these. They will make you feel better”, and “Look at the state you are in! You better take two of these” and (when I asked how many I had had), “No, you only had two and now I’m giving you two more. It won’t hurt you”.
I was distressed and drunk enough to go along with it at first (after all, he was talking so softly and kindly to me – I had his attention and care for a change…) BUT I wasn’t so drunk that I didn’t at some point start to feel scared and doubt he was telling me the truth about how many I had taken. It’s blurry, given the traumatic circumstances and the booze, but I’m pretty sure that I took about 10 before I refused any more. (The maximum allowed was 8 in a 24-hour period).
Now – believe it or not – THAT was not a turning point. That’s how stuck he had me. Some weeks after that I came home to an empty house, an empty bank account, a pile of bills left on the kitchen counter and a note to say he couldn’t tolerate my craziness any more so he had left and that I shouldn’t try to find him. Even THAT was not my turning point. (I know, I know, I know!!!!)
I tracked him all over Australia, hired a private detective to confirm where he was living, caught a plane to the other side of the country with the last money I had to my name, sat on a bus for something like 18 hours to get to where he was, turned up at his doorstep on a Saturday morning and knocked on his door. He was there with the “friend” who had caught the bouquet at our wedding only 9 months earlier. it was 8.00am and she was sitting at the breakfast table, drinking coffee and reading a porn magazine. Porn videos of every variety were strewn all over the floor of the front room. She answered the front door, saw me and bolted, leaving the front door open and running out of the back door. I walked right in and up the passgeway calling his name. I found him crawling out of bed and pulling on his pants in a bedroom at the back of the house.
Fast forward from that, because even THAT was not a turning point – I still hoped he would come home and “get the help he needed”. About 6 months later, having relocated my life and started a new job, I was still sad and hopeful. (Ridiculous now, to think of it; embarrassing to write it and see it written…)
One day an envelope arrived in the mail in his hand writing. Prior to this I had been getting crank calls at my place of employment which my gut kept telling me were him but my heart kept arguing with me about. Inside the envelope was a note that said, “It’s amazing what a person can find out about someone, through Social Securities etc. I know where you live and where you work and what hours you work and I have people watching you”.
THAT was my turning point. It scared the living daylights out of me. I started divorce proceedings and never tried to contact him again. For a little while I still got crank calls at home and at work and the occasional horrible note sent by post, but I never responded to any of them and I think he eventually got bored that I wasn’t reacting. It has been 15 years since he has tried to contact me.
And that was the lesser of the two spaths I married….
Don’t have the energy or time to write about the Superspath (husband number 3) just now. Will come back later.
I’m new to this blog & recently out of my first ever relationship with a spath. This guy was a folk singer & he sang all these romantic love songs about idealized women from his past,or so he said. One night at a bar he dedicated this song to me about a hole that needed filling in. I was stunned by this ugly image dedicated to distorted me & I felt his disgust like acid in my veins. I had meekly tryed to get away from him several times prior to this evening..but this was a complete emotional catharsis for me..like a kick in the gut. No matter what he did after that I just kept seeing this dirty image of myself in his eyes..so after a while I crafted a complex revenge plan and got out by burning up the relationship so bad I couldn’t go back even if I wanted to…& oh god I was so sorry to have done it this way as I missed him..still do..never felt any resolution. So for me it was a direct feeling..not accumulations of bad deeds, not a lie or a betrayal..though of course there were many of both. I shudder when I feel his concentrated disgust & I’m still working on shedding this horrible reflection of myself. That’s the real damage..to be branded so ugly in the eyes of what you thought was your lover. I’m fighting hard to erase the spath’s image of me, but I can’t get his powerful message out of my head & fear I never will. That’s what they do..they taint you..they give you a slice of themselves & you take the distortion in. In a way their view is contagious..Despite all the lost time,money and the standard bag to tricks..it’s the feeling of pure hatred that still leaves me in a free fall.
Petra,
For reasons I choose not to express here at this time, I can tell you you will find a lot of help here, a lot of healing.
Your post has me in tears. It’s heartfelt…it speaks from a broken heart too.
Know that you can and will heal. It’s a long journey. I’m so sorry that you’re so wounded, but I can tell you, that it can and will get better, little by little.
Hugs.
LL
It was all very sudden.
Armed Marshalls storming into the house in a blizzard.
Watching them drive him away.
I knew exactly what had to be.
But it was still hard.
Coming to terms with how far I’d been taken”.
I didn’t want to believe it because I was ashamed.
I think it was more for my own self preservation that I hung on to the possibility that there was some other way for the story to go. Knowing all the while, there was not.
petra, nice to meet you, I am glad you posted,
I hope you will stay and read the articles
and post more, lots of good people here who have
really helped me a lot. It’s hard to come to a resolution
with somebody that always lies. Don’t believe his lies,
live in your own truth. How long were you together?
OMG Petra,
you described “THE SLIME”. They slime you. the feeling is one on needing to bathe or shower. My BF calls it “GET IT OFF ME!” (His mom was an N).
If you read the book “why is it always about you?” by Sandy Hotchkiss, it may help you to understand the slime.
There is something about what they do, and I don’t understand it, nor does anyone I’ve ever read, but their sickness is contagious. They can actually pass on what they have to those of us who come near them.
Andrew Lobaczewki describes this in his book Political Ponerology. He says that the only safe way to be around a spath is to practice emotional hygiene. His experience with spaths was in the environment of communist poland, which created an environment of spaths EVERYWHERE. The US is not much better but it IS better at hiding it.
My own spath has slimed me to a degree that can’t really be described. Words are insufficient. He did it without even knowing what he was doing. My belief is that the human condition is more complex than we have been taught to believe.
You see, my spath wanted to destroy my relationshit with my family/parents as he believed that they were the source of my power and self-confidence. They were. But that is because I believed their lies. I (and spath) believed that they loved me. But they didn’t, they are N’s. They may also have believed they love me but they don’t know what love is or how to have genuine love at all. They wanted me to be their scapegoat. To them, that IS love.
In the end, my parents are shocked that my spath has destroyed our relationshit. Because, when I left Spath, I went to them and they offered me refuge, so why do I feel so much pain from them? They said that Doug, the spath, has succeeded in his devious plan to separate me from them. What they don’t get is that he didn’t do it. They did it. They are so caught up in spathticity that they don’t even know it. When they offered me refuge it was just a desire for control on their part AND THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW IT. When I saw what Doug was (a controlling spath), I also saw how it was exactly what they had done to me. I had accepted Doug’s behavior because it was exactly what my “loving parents” had done to me.
So, slime is what they do to our old wounds. They size us up, see our old wounds and they inflict more damage where we are already weak. It is devastating. But it is also informative. We had been unaware of these wounds and scabs, so now we can use this new pain to find and cleanse all the old, putrified wounds. I’ve gotten to the point of seeing the wounds but I haven’t cleansed them. They still hurt so much. not sure how to clean out the bacteria growing there.
Thanks for posting Petra, it made me think more clearly.
I am new to this site… I’ve spent most of the last 12 hours reading…. and reading some more. I have just realized that my husband’s ex is a spath. I will get details from him and post his “turning point” details sometime soon. I am gaining a lot of understanding through reading here. Hoping to provide the stability that my teenage stepson needs.
OMG the stories I am reading are like something out of a nightmare. My heart breaks reading them. Can someone please tell me: What is N? I am trying to make sense of the differences between sociopath, narcissistic, and psychopath. Aren’t they very similar to each other?
I am starting to believe that my mother may also have a personality disorder of some kind. She has always been very controlling.
Please please realize that it is not the fault of the VICTIM, it is all on the ABUSER. Do not let their sickness continue to contaminate your life!