Zora, Another Girlfriend-Sociopaths and Sex Addiction

Women Turnover

I could never make sense of the turn over of women.  I would think to myself, there is no way that he is actually sleeping with these women, maybe flirting.  With the speed of turn over that he would have with these women, in addition to the fact that there were more than several going on at once, I could not fathom.  Unfortunately it is possible, and it happens all the time.  It’s called sex addiction.

As all of this was going on; my mind felt like it was on fire.  I would try to think and rationalize and make sense of what was happening, but I could not.  For me I hadn’t really heard of sex addiction, nor had made any connections to the spath about it at that point.  It sure would have helped me put the puzzle pieces together about what was going on a lot sooner if I had.

Zora the Testosterone Provider

A year after my daughter was born we visited his parents in his home country.  After a very, very long trip to get to Central America with a baby, we finally made it into the hotel room in the city.  Of course he left me and the baby there so he could go out.  For moments I was at rest in the quiet, but then also felt strange being so far from home and alone in an unfamiliar place.

There was the itch.  The detective-like urge that controls your life when you know your spouse is being unfaithful.  You want to know what is really going on.  You want to come out from under their cloud; out of the shadows you live under.  I realized that he had left his phone in the room to charge.

There was a burning inside me to check it to see if I could uncover something that would incriminate him enough for me to leave him.  I wanted all this wondering to be over.

So I picked up the phone and started to go through it.  By this time I knew where to check, all the hiding places on the phone, all the deleted stuff.  I didn’t have to go that far.  Scrolling through the text messages I found a conversation with a girl named Zora.

The spath was bragging to her about his office, which I decorated and leased, and was asking her for testosterone shots.  I believe she was in the medical field of some sort.  She had sent a picture of her, surprisingly clothed, and she looked nothing like what I thought his “type” was.  I thought to myself, it couldn’t be.  I didn’t know he was into women like that.  Apparently he wasn’t really into women like that, he was just into women period.

Stab in the Heart…Again

Then the dagger.  After several attempts on his end to get her to meet with him and her conflicting schedule, he finally mentioned for her to take her Wednesday off work and that they could spend the whole day together.  My heart raced, I felt my stomach come up in my  mouth and my body began to shake.  Not only was he being unfaithful, it was the way he went about it in connection to our relationship.

Since the beginning of our relationship, he never wanted to spend time with me.  It didn’t matter what it was, there was always a limit.  A couple hours here, a couple hours there.  I began to form an anxiety when we would hang out for any extended period of time because I was afraid we were spending too much time together and he was going to get annoyed, angry and take it out on me how I take up too much of his time.

A Twisted Relationship

I learned how to make myself scarce.  I learned to pretend that I didn’t need him around or want him around to shield what I really desired which was to have a partner to do things with.  I had been neglected and turned down and made to feel like an annoyance for so many years that I had to twist what was normal in a relationship to accommodate him and what he wanted, which was for me to not be around much or need anything from him.

So to hear him suggesting to another woman, while he is married, for her to take a whole day off work to spend with him was an astonishment.  It was a personal slam to me in so many ways.  I wondered to myself what was I that I didn’t receive the same courtesies or attention?  Why was it so hard to attain from this person?  Why was it that I never felt special or that I mattered?  What was it that she had that I didn’t?  Why do I feel like such a failure and insignificant?

The answer came, but years later when I learned about sex addiction.  Sex addiction is a sociopath trait.  It’s almost inherent in sociopaths.  Sex addicts aren’t necessarily sociopaths, but most sociopaths have a sex addiction.  I believe it comes from the fact that sociopaths have no relation to a conscience, they are empty, an empty shell of a person.  Sex addiction helps to fill a high that they are seeking and also allows them to act without a conscience.

Here Comes the Lie

After searching through the phone, I called the spath.  He didn’t seem alarmed, which was usual of my questioning.  He did tell me however that he purposefully left his phone in the room because he knew I would look at it.  How sick.  How sick of a game he was playing.

Let me try to remember the lie on this occasion.  Oh yea, he told me that she was just a doctor friend of his that slipped him testosterone shots under the table so to speak for his cycling.  That he needed more testosterone to be able to compete in the cycling club that he was in.

He had asked her to hang out just to see what she would say, but that was it, there was nothing going on.  I believe he also tried to spin that he was pretending to talk to her for one of his friends because he was too shy to start talking to her himself.  I’m like really?  What are we in high school?  That didn’t make any sense because of the phone number situation.

He was talking with her on some chat app and he tried to convince me that it was some kind of an alias account or something he had set up to help hook his friend up with this chick.  How extraordinary.  The length that he went through to conjure up a story like that was phenomenal.

I knew what I knew, I knew what I saw.  What was I to do?  The feelings of being trapped, not just in the relationship, but physically where I was, was almost enough to send me over the edge.

Always Two Bad Choices

My options were to stick it out in another country where I am not fluent in the language and be at his mercy, which was nothing grandiose, for a month with a baby, or create a huge fight and travel back home with a baby by myself and wait for a month until he returned home to deal with this.  Neither option was good.  That was the thing.  Being with a sociopath there was never a good choice;  there were always two bad choices.  There was a choice, but both choices would result in extreme anguish and pain.

He would not follow me if I was upset.  He would just let me go and show no care in the world that I was hurting.  This was even more infuriating.  To know that I could leave the country with his daughter by myself and go back home because of something I saw on his phone, and him continue on his vacation with no feel was incredible.

Then I would be stuck at home with no contact and no chance to try and resolve and or uncover what was really happening.  I was under his control; stuck in a corner feeling like there was no way out.  I think I really wanted him to tell me something that would convince me that he wasn’t doing what I knew he was doing.  I really wanted to believe he wasn’t.

The reality of it all was just too painful to swallow.  I thought that if I stayed, at least he would be there for me to continue to ask questions and he would be forced to answer.  That was my deception.

Stable State

Somehow between his manipulation and my desire to not want to believe he was cheating again, lead me to a somewhat stable state.  I put the experience in a far back memory in my head and continued on with the trip.

Traveling deeper and deeper into the heart of a third world country where I would be showering in a bucket of water, eating strange foods that made me sick, taking care of a little baby, and being left alone in a 8×8 concrete room for hours with no air conditioning or access to anything I knew was where I was going.  Left to sit and think alone about what was really happening in my life.  I felt completely helpless, sinking into a dark hole of despair and confusion and pain.

I don’t know how I made it through that trip.  I don’t know how I made it through 10 years of being with a person that sucked the life and all the good things out and then sewed fear, resentment, anxiety, anguish, chaos, strife, confusion, abandonment, disgust, and despair into my being.  I don’t know except by the grace of God I have another chance at life and the person who I really am, which is none of the things he brought into my life.