Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following story from a reader whom we’ll call “Marjorie18.”
I was engaged for three years to a very handsome retired master sergeant in the Air Force. He had two boys the same age as my two boys. We lived together in my home until this Good Friday, March 30, 2018.
He had been moving things out of my house into a storage unit because after his divorce, naturally, he had a lot of stuff that he needed to store and most of that came to my house. He had several vehicles, including a car trailer full of stuff, and then my garage was full of his stuff. So when he started moving things into storage, it was under the guise of wanting to put a collectible car of his in my garage. So that did not seem odd to me.
I came home from work Good Friday (I’m a teacher) and I was making dinner for my son. I was under the assumption that my fiancé was out of town for work. As a matter fact, the Thursday and Friday I’m speaking of he texted me a few times asking me how my neck was (because I have neck problems), telling me how tired he was and that he had other meetings to attend, etc.
When I got home Friday after work, I laid on my bed to relax. I went to my walk-in closet that we shared. It was empty of all of his belongings. My heart dropped. I ran outside to see if I could see his vehicles, which were parked on the side of my property. They were all gone.
I started texting and calling him and I got no answer. I only got one message via text, which said, “There’s nothing to discuss. The electric is getting turned off tomorrow. You need to put it in your name. I am moving on. You need to get your shit together. And move on.“
He refused to speak with me ever again. He only spoke to two of my girlfriends and told them that he left me for various reasons, which were statements blaming me, accompanied by statements to my girlfriends of how “You need to take care of her. I want her to be OK.” As if my girlfriends are responsible for picking up the pieces of the destruction he made in my life!
I reached out to his mother and the stories that he told her were also not true.
Well, he also left love notes all over my house on a regular basis, telling me how much he loved me, we are soul mates, I am is everything, etc. Please marry him, three years we’ve been together, etc. etc.
By the way, our three-year anniversary was March 20, 2018. He left me 10 days later. But yet, there were love notes from him (80 at least) referencing our three-year anniversary left in my home. So those were left while he was NOT OUT OF TOWN FOR WORK BUT SNEAKING IN MY HOUSE while I was at work to clean out his stuff March 29 and 30.
So unbeknownst to me, while I was at work, he was coming in my home packing up his stuff preparing to ghost me on Good Friday. I had never heard of the term ghosting until this happened to me.
I went through six weeks of extreme emotional breakdown — tears, weight loss, confusion and inability to concentrate. I don’t know how I could continue working as a teacher.
His mother sent me a message on Facebook April 21st with the most heartbreaking news. She told me that after he left me he met a gal and married her April 20 — not even one month after ghosting me.
Then I found out another heartbreaker: He had bought a house March 5, behind my back, while he was still living with me.
The last thing that really has thrown my mind into a tailspin is this: About two weeks ago I was getting ready for work and I walked into my bedroom and I saw something funny behind a mirror on my wall. So I stood on a chair and I reached behind the mirror and I felt something squarish with tape all over it. I pulled it down to discover he had had a camera in my bedroom without my knowledge.
I am having an extremely hard time understanding how this man, who told me he was my soul mate, begged me to marry him, entered my life, used me, and then so quickly abandoned / deserted / ghosted me (during a very difficult time in my life personally) and married someone three weeks afterwards and bought a house behind my back.
He also took from me a ring and a bracelet he had given me — which I’m assuming he’s given to his new wife — a football jersey he bought for me, and some other objects of mine from my home.
I have contacted the sheriff’s department and other connections I have in law enforcement, and I really have no way to prove he put the camera there. Therefore I can’t press charges.
I am a well educated, attractive woman and teacher. I have been absolutely changed forever by this experience and my heart has been broken. I would like to write a book or a screenplay about this experience because it’s so horrible.
It has not been two months yet and I am still every day dealing with either emotional pain during the day or nightmares at night. I just don’t know how to move on.
Her daughter’s wedding should be a time of joy, but her ex is causing havoc
I will pray for you. Something very similar happened to my daughter nine months ago. They were going to get married on their 3-year anniversary. 48 hours before the wedding, he told her she was not affectionate enough for him and he couldn’t marry her. The week before that, he was talking about what he wanted to do for their 1st year wedding anniversary. Once that bombshell was dropped, my daughter had nightmares every night. She still has them once or twice a week. I found this website when I was trying to figure out how in the world a man could do that to someone he had been in love with. Sociopath describes him perfectly. She is still dealing with the pain of a broken heart. I really think my daughter should be seeing a counselor to help her deal with the PTSD, but she hasn’t gone yet. I offer her as much moral support as I can. She found a church with people who have shown her the love of Jesus. I am grateful she was lead there. She loves her career. She started dating a few months ago but then decided she wasn’t ready. I recently started reading “Love and the Mystery of Betrayal: Recovering Your Trust and Faith after Trauma, Deception, and Loss of Love” by Sandra Dennis. She has been through the same experience as you and my daughter. I will pass this book onto my daughter; I needed to make sure she is ready to walk down the road with this author. Someone does need to write a screenplay about these types of criminals. Men like this are not murderers, but just as evil because they shred your heart. There should at least be a Dateline or 20/20 that would want to cover this.
Be gentle with yourself. Talk and yell at him (even tho he is not there) but be kind to yourself. The same thing happened in a slightly different way for me. We had a house together, lots of college kid stuff around, that I didn’t notice until one day I realized he didn’t really live here anymore. He was just going through the minimum motions. I also felt watched but could never find the cameras. But I didn’t look very hard. By that time the mask was off and I was a wreck. Try to regain what he really took from you, what they really take from us, your sense of self and safety in this world. Take it back. It takes time. Love to you.
This is just astonishing on the one hand, and completely ‘normal’ on the other. Either way you look at it though it is just pure hate and contempt that drives these people. The higher they can take us (love bombing, promises of a bright future, etc) the farther we have to fall when they push us over the edge. He certainly wanted you to fall from a VERY great height. By totally deceiving you, moving bit by bit, buying a home, and marrying he has devalued everything, every moment between you; showing you that they meant nothing, that you meant nothing.
He is a complete sadist, for sure. He is cruel and heartless. Void of any stripe of humanity.
I am very sad to hear about your experience. Sad that you have to go through the emotional upheaval he has created for you. I did not experience near the level of deception that you have and I thought I would lose my mind, and that my life would never be solid again. And so I can only imagine how devastated you are.
I won’t go into how you will recover except to say that it is possible to regain every bit of your life, heart, mind, and soul back. It will take time.
I hope that you will continue to come here to LF and read and get support. My heart goes out to you….
Slim
It appears he was merely pooling resources with you while he planned his next move. All the gifts and love bombing were meant to distract you and make you dependent on him so he had a secure place to stay during the regrouping process. I can’t even imagine how painful this must be for you, but you are better off without him. He’s just going to do the same thing to the next woman. Maybe not right away, but eventually her life will be an emotional holocaust and he will simply move on to the next sucker.
You will eventually see you are better off without him.
Wow, reading this took my breath away, something similar happened to me, fortunately I never found any cameras. You will recover, move on and make a better life for yourself. He however will repeat this scenario over and over for the rest of his life, what do you think his new wife would think of his behaviour if she wasn’t brainwashed and was in a position to really knew the score? The wedding ring she now wears won’t protect her; her turn is coming for sure.
That’s a sociopath for you! They say and do anything in order to get what they need. Act the way they conditioned themselves to . .then when it gets boring (to them)..they are off with the poor unsuspecting one. It’s not about you what is about you is that you need to focus on your recovery and that’s it I’m not gonna lie it is very hard but you will get better you do get better and you’ll never ever let this happen to you again and you’ll see the signs because as you start to get better ..you start to see things that you dismissed.
I had one relationship with one sociopath I will never have one again .
Has nothing to do with education they go where they think they are going to finally feel what they have been longing to feel their whole life..But they don’t they don’t they are wired to feel love they are not wired to feel empathy sympathy or anything only stimulation…in a way it’s kind of sad.
But they know what they’re doing and that is what makes him so rotten ..
Do you lots of luck and love you will get better you do get better you just focus on you !
Please don’t take it personal that he moved on so quickly. He just found someone else to mine their resources. Feel sorry for her because she’s legally entangled with him now and stands to lose everything that he can get out of her. Count your blessings that he left and that you didn’t have to escape. I’ve been going through a divorce with the narcissist for six years now.
as I said, you will eventually see you are better off without him.
Thank you all for your support. The plot has thickened since I sent that to Donna at lovefraud. He had a pair of very expensive safety glasses sent to my home as part of his work. They were easily $1000 and with his prescription they cost even more. When we were together he had bought two pair on the company card. I expressed to him concern that he might get in trouble for doing that on the company credit card. Well since his disgusting departure, STRANGELY this new pair of glasses arrived at my home two weeks ago . At first I scratched my head thinking, “all of his other mail was sent to his new home ..why would he have these glasses sent to my house?” These are not the kind of items that you just automatically refill and they come to your house every three months. I believe he had them sent here on purpose.I’ve debated on what to do. I can’t contact him because he has me blocked. So I was on Facebook one day and jobs were popping up in the area and HIS management position at his company popped up!! I started thinking, “did he lose his job?” BTW, he had lost two other jobs in the 3 yrs we were together, so I wasn’t necessarily surprised if that were the case. So I contacted his human resource manager at his company on Linkedin to let her know I have these glasses and that he and I are no longer together and what would she like for me to do with them?? At the same time I contacted his mother on Facebook messenger and expressed to her the glasses issue. She said she would get in touch with him and ask him what to do with these glasses. She was under the assumption he was still working at his position and I informed her that I believed he had not been working there for sometime, to which she answered “maybe he didn’t get terminated ? maybe he left.” Then she followed it up with well “last time I talked to him, he was on the phone, couldnt talk, on job interview” and told me to send them TO HIS ATTENTION to a residential address in California, which she gave me…,,,Of course I said there’s no way he would leave a great job and then be in a car on a job interview on the cell phone- sounds like he got fired. Also, why would he leave his brand new house and his two children -one who just graduated high school and one who is starting 10th grade who live 3 miles from his new home who split time with their mom, and voluntarily leave his job!? None of it makes sense. He just closed on that house March 5 ( behind my back while living here in my house) here in my area! And the target he married works 35/40 mins from his new house and has her own job. This led me to look up the house he bought (behind my back here in Florida) which apparently he still owns, according to the property appraisers website -but there are five other people living in the home I’ve never heard of -so they are probably renters( whitepages.com via my girlfriend sleuth). The house he wants me to send his glasses to is at a tesidence as I said earlier, in California; so being the sleuth that I am, my girlfriend looked that address up on realtor.com-?and it is owned by a seemingly happy married couple!!!, whom I know he doesn’t know( maybe new wife of his knows them but a LONG shot); I also looked the owners’ names of this California address up on Facebook. SOMETHING is f”@&$d up here! I relayed this info to his mother on Facebook messenger- I asked her if she realized the address he wants the glasses sent to in California is less than an hour from where she is living (with her older daughter, his sister.)? I am sure that came as s hurtful surprise to her! She said the last time she spoke to him was a couple of weeks ago and that he was on the phone in the car on an interview and “couldn’t talk.” He seems to say this to his mom a lot..and she repeats this a lot to me… she is 76 yrs or older; I told her all about this fishy new address in California, and posed questions/ thoughts to her – told her this is not right. She got upset, said she didnt like it and this was bothering her and upsetting her. About an hour later, she responded back and said “please send him the glasses to that address . nothing fishy is going on.” BULLSHIT! Here is the real KICKER: she said that HE TOLD HIS MOM TO THANK ME for sending the glasses to address in California -because he’s been looking for them….. That the eyewear company didn’t put his new address in.. Well, which address!!? His new home here in Florida or this fishy, strange occupied address in California? Does he actually think I’m going to do him the favor of mailing glasses to him that he charged on the company dime after all the shit he did to me? And shit he stole from me? Has he lost his mind? Hell no. I’m not giving back those glasses. I contacted his former boss and she did say he no longer works at the company, and she would like the glasses and is curious about the purchases. Lastly, someone found a photo of him on a little motorboat on the river w a long haired woman- on facebook- it was a post from one of his four kids telling him happy father’s day to his “role model.” I didn’t know what bothered me more: seeing him for the first time since March 28, his new target, his son’s comment or the whole thing. It is really hard to say I don’t hate him.
Sandra Brown has an article on emotional detachment. the opposite of love is indifference, not hate. as long as you hate him, you are still involved.
Thank you Sunnygal- I am ashamed I hate him. I do understand logically that hate means I still have feelings. Thats shitty.