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?
I had several turning points or dawning-on points too. The first was when I noticed a different knife left on the kitchen center island every night for weeks and pointed toward the stairs where I came down in the morning to make coffee. It stopped when I asked him about it. He next asked which vitamin pills in the cabinet were mine and which were our son’s. When I asked why he needed to know that, he said because he was going to put Quinine in mine. A few days later he gave me a bottle of Ultimate Woman vitamin pills that had been opened and a handful missing. Subtle death threats lead me to place tape recorders around and I found he was talking to other women, but he didn’t even sound like my husband. He sounded like a very mean perverted person who only talked naughty to the women. With one of them he had been seeing secretly for 10 years of our marriage, I honestly think they were planning my demise. I hired a detective that caught him in parks, at sleezy motels, meeting women behind buildings….wow stuff. Living like a millionaire by day, but wouldn’t buy me a gallon of milk…a preditor in sheep’s clothing. He had been stashing money in secret bank accounts all over the place for years. I think most of us would say the turning point is really a series of points. Few of us women are differentiated enough to just say “Hey buddy, these are my rules. If you break one of them, you’re out on the first strike.” Breaking free of these types can be dangerous, but it has to be done and sooner is better than how I did it. You just lose too much of yourself by staying in it with compassionate boundaries. Divorce court was a fiasco…swearing on a Bible that he was telling the truth, then lying about being with women, denying hidden bank accounts, even telling the judge I had boyfriends on my mission trips…on and on. Then he would call me all night after the Hearings, crying that his attorney made him do it and he couldn’t live without me, etc. It was a difficult situation to get out of and he took everything, even the furniture and pictures off the wall, but thank the Lord I am still alive and free of such craziness after 25 yrs of marriage! Get out faster than I did and get some counseling help. You can heal from these relationship traumas. Learn how to set firm boundaries and protect your heart. Forgive AFTER you are safely away from the guy…the sun will shine again.
original13, thanks for the comments.
Wish I knew about LF before. I tried so hard to make things work. LUCKY for me money management is my strong point. No way was I going to let anyone take over my finances. Recently, I learned from the first husband that he lost his home because of her. He worked, she paid the bills and in the end of the marriage she kept the money instead of paying the mortgage. It was too late to save his home.
My daughter was born with spina-bifida, L4-5(between lower vertebraes 4 and 5), she has a shunt in her head to drain fluid through tubing into her stomach. She uses hand crutches to walk. In the summer of 2007, for about 10 weeks, she had violent stomach pains every time she’d go back to her mothers(my 1st wife). She was fine at my house then would get ill. (We have a 50/50 custody.) Once I woke up to the sociopath, my kids mother(1st wife) and I started speaking again. Of course, the sociopath(SP) did not want me to speak with my children’s mother(no email,no texting, no phone.) She’d go nuts if I ever spoke with her. Since my jailtime/separation from the SP we put 2 and 2 together and came to the conclusion that the sociopath was poisoning her(daughter) in an effort to make her(mother/1st wife) look bad. The sociopath told a bunch of lies to nurses and got the Dept of Children and Families involved in teh mother’s life. The SP hated my first wife. The lies told to the DCF caused them to pursue the mother for improper caring of the kids. Her life was miserable. It was all based on lies from the sociopath.
Eventually, my daughter ended up in the hospital with brain and stomach surgery. The poisoning (we believe) caused the shunt tubing to get infected with a cyst, which required a complete replacement of the device, 20+ days in the hospital.
My daughter is doing fine now and my relationship with her mother is back to normal. She’s an 8th grader, 15 year old and we just got hand-controls in my car and she’s now driving!! ….Should I warn LF when we hit the road:):):)
Reading all these is heartbreaking.
What never ceases to amaze me is the SP’s lace of any emotion…
I have read it in so many of these stories.
Mine showed no emotion on 9-11. NONE. Made me feel bad for being sad when my grandmother died. ugh.. the list goes on and on.
Good grief.. Thank God we all got out.
Michael I’m very glad your daughter is better. Really, Why are these people breathing? I’m really glad that I don’t live near her or anyone like her, cause I’d be in jail myself, MY GOD, YOUR DAUGHTER?. My N mother invited a friend over, whom I learned had his son in the hospital for 3rd degree burns. You shoud have seen him run when I poured a pot of hot water on him, & that was over 25 years ago. You help me remember that Michael. You are a champion because you & your daughter SURVIED!
Michael, Your situation sounds very similar to the situation my husband, R, was in with his ex. The order of events was a bit different. R’s final straw was when Ex filed charges against him for domestic abuse. Ex had slammed herself with the car door and claimed R had beaten her.
It’s absolutely horrifying that these less than humans get away with these abusive behaviors for such a long, agonizing time before we finally realize that there is something seriously wrong. The more I read here, the more I recognize traits of so many people I’ve known in my life! This site is a Godsend.
I do hope that you will stick around and read. I’ve only been here for one day at this point, but I plan to read and learn as much as I can to help my 15 year old stepson to grow into a well adjusted adult. I hope and pray everyday that Ex’s influence does not taint him for life.
Oh Michael, I just read your post about your daughter. Thank God that your family is all right!! Blessings to all!
Dear Mother of a daughter…
Sorry so long a reply – I hope something in this or the other posts help you on your journey…
Dear Love Fraud friends-
Before I read what everyone’s moment was I wanted to respond from my heart …. (I am definitely going back to read you all) – first a little poem I’m sure you’ve heard before….
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
~ Emily Dickinson
Dear mother of a girl like me-
The second stanza of the poem really speaks to the situation – sore was the storm that finally abashed this little bird. Somehow maybe it is my ability to hope that ultimately did me in….
Please know I am so sorry for your pain and the fear you must have watching this man destroy your daughter. Having been in a relationship like the one she is in and also having two daughters of my own (not his) I can with a pretty clear head tell you that I would intervene in ways that you may not be prepared to do at this time.
I firmly believe I was a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. If you have no knowledge of this or just a partial understanding I suggest you read here: http://counsellingresource.com/quizzes/stockholm/index.html …
There is also an excellent book by a man named Lundy Bancroft titled
“Why Does He Do That? – Inside the Minds of Angry Controlling Men” – it is quite eye opening and speaks to the same things as you will read here but from the perspective of someone who was privy to the reasoning behind these men and their behaviors, the tricks they used – the full knowledge / awareness they have of what they are doing to their victims and how they perpetuate the attachment and revel in their power over another person.
Basically the issue is – how to break your daughter’s attachment to this man. And while I wish kidnapping her and getting her un-brainwashed would work it probably won’t – because she is attached. She would return like a drug addict for more – at least I did.
For me – I constantly had hope that he would go back to being the charming wonderful person who had swept me off my feet after I came out of a cold marriage and was lonely. I was willing to suffer so many indignities and so much abuse in hope he would love me again and help fulfill my dreams of a happy relationship and life. I did not understand that he had never loved me but that his early behavior had been a lure, a trap. And once he saw I was dazzled the cage door slammed shut. He fed me, Pavlovian like, enough little positive strokes or hints at a better future between us that I kept coming back for more.
The thing that broke it was my exhaustion. I am a strong woman and I have coped with some incredibly difficult life situations. I have a positive outlook and am upbeat and happy. The relationship exhausted my ability to cope or be happy and one day when hanging on and on and on, I had yet one more moment of – this is not going to change – it keeps getting worse… One night with one phone call from him being crazy I was done. It was like some internal switch had been flipped. No one could flip that switch for me. No one. It was such a relief to be done.
My advice to you to help trigger that switch is to support your daughter emotionally. To – if you are physically close enough – get her to spend time with you without him and make sure she has fun. Make sure she laughs and feels good. The best thing anyone did for me was to listen to me – hold me when I cried and wait – and to make sure I had fun – their love, their effort to make me laugh and have moments free of his control and to exist in a world of people who are kind and loving and respectful. Those moments in contrast to the horror I was living reminded me that I did not have to be miserable. That there was joy and happiness without him. Because he had me convinced that joy and happiness would come from him only instead of what the truth is – it is inside of me I only need to be free to release it – I have to choose it.
If there are possibilities for weekend jaunts or going to dinner and a play whether it is a free one in the park or elsewhere – to dance – in a living room or at the local night spot… Help her to feel pretty and attractive and valued. The contrast to his devaluing of her will hopefully help her to awaken. really I felt I was in a coma and my responses to his demands became automatic – I did what he told me to – things I would never have done before. It is embarrassing the degree to which he had me under his spell and what I allowed as a result.
I have empathy for your girl. I pray she gets free soon. A little book that was a piece of my waking up – because really it is a whole series of little moments over time that brought me to THE moment…
“What Smart Women Know” by Steven Carter and Julia Sokol. Really brief little items – a book full of simple one paragraph or one page things that is an easy read and strikes home. It showed me that my desire for decent treatment were not unreasonable expectations but actually a baseline for how I ought to be treated and anything less I should walk away from. Also the knowledge that his behavior was actually a strategy – was planned – that helped open my eyes as well.
Finally – for you I suggest prayer. It helps. I ask my God, Higher Power, Great Spirit – whatever it is for you – I ask for help. I ask for specific help – ie: Dear God, should the situation arise please give me the right words to help my daughter”…. etc – it has worked for me – in moments I faced that normally I would have reacted emotionally – with fear or anger – I have been able to respond with calm clarity – without thinking words came to me that rose above the situation and stopped it.
May God bless you and your daughter.
Dear Breckgirl, thank you for your wonderful post, and to the many others here who have responded so well and with so much compassion and honesty—thank you, and to Donna for this wonderful thread….THANKS!!!!
My turning point did not come from friends begging me to see who this man really was, it did not come after I caught him in multiple lies, it did not come after he starting rejecting me and treating me poorly. It came after HE finally ended our relationship when I confronted him about another woman (who was married) who was “lending” him money for a down payment for a car. After a year and half of loving this guy, helping this guy to get back on his feet thru rent assistance, loans and help and getting him a job he dumped me suddenly because I became a thret to his new source of income (but he kept caling me daily for 6 weeks, sometimes at 1 am and wanting to be friends) – keeping me on a string. Finally I said NO MORE and have instituted the NO CONTACT RULE. 3 days passed and I am ignoring him – the anxiety is high…but the energy and control that is returning to me is incredible. YOU MUST BE STRONG!! Turn first BEFORE they turn on YOU!
Dear AMposter,
Congratulations on instituting NC. It will work, and it will help you to recover….YOU ARE STRONG because you choose to be! Hang on to that strength! Don’t let it go! Welcome to LF, Knowledge is power so keep on reading here and learning.