S
Susan999
Guest
I found this site while trying to find more info about what is a psychopath. What I am learning scares/relieves me.
I met this guy 35 years ago, really didn't want to continue the relationship at the time but he was so intense and I was alone. Then it seemed we had so much in common plus the things that were missing in my life seemed to an important part of his (like my parents sent only my sister and I to church with some neighbors who church hopped. It was confusing to me and made me afraid of God as they were all "God as controller" type churches and he was a strongly faithful Catholic who had a strong moral base..or so he made it seem).
I was battered by my mother, and he was the only person to show me any sympathy on this. Back then, it was the kid's fault. I would get lectured by teachers and the school counselors on how I was supposed to be helping my mom more even though I did 95% of the housework as well as babysitting to provide my own clothing, lunch money, bus far, etc., since I was 11. Looking back, though, the one time he was present when a beating was about to start, he suddenly had to go home rather than stick up for me.
After he was raped by his father, it suddenly became important to him that I should become pregnant. He presented this as a way for him to help me escape my violent home and he would marry me. I was 16.
The rape by his father I know to be true but didn't know about for many years. His father was a pedophile who molested both within his family and outside of it and I have talked with persons who were aware of this problem. Again, back then, the police weren't typically called into these situations in the Midwest but would be neighborhood knowledge to keep your kids away from so and so.
He was very seductive (I was a virgin) but once I was pregnant, he became hard to find. I was pregnant with the promise of marriage on one side and my violent mother on the other. I also had a tremendous fear of abandoment which my guy used to his advantage. I continually hunted him down and eventually we did get married and had two children.
I am embarrassed to even type this stuff but I think there is someone at this site who will understand.
So what happened next?? After a year of marriage, he entered the service and promptly started using drugs. He had never even drank in my presence up till then. For the next ten years, we lived in absolute poverty due to his drug use (he was dumped from the service after 2.5 years).
He would have arguments with me about whether I was a human being or a "piece of s__t."
He frequently vanished.
And everything evolved around him, even how I prepared meals. They had to be his way. If he thought I put some onion in something, he would throw the food against the wall. Our son, at less than 2 years of age, he would "carry" down a flight of stairs by having our son (don't want to use names) hold onto my guy's thumbs and dangle all the way down. At my protests, he claimed this "built trust." Needless to say, my son does not speak to him today and neither will he speak to me.
After my guy sobered up, he became a work addict and was rarely home. His Sunday NA meeting would turn into an all day affair. This was the one day he could be with his family but didn't bother. I have since learned he just sat at the halfway house where the meeting was held watching sports or "counseling" good looking females.
He confessed after sobering up to anonymous sex with women when he drove cab as well as two other affairs. Then he said he was leaving us, but he never did. He acted as if nothing had happened. He even would tell our two young children he would be moving out at the end of the month leaving everyone in turmoil.
Besides, no matter what happened, he was not at fault ever. Once he had me helping him move a TV into an entertaiment center and he dropped his end knowing I would not be able to hold my end up myself and I smashed a couple fingers. He had said he would tell me when to set my end down and when I confronted him as to why he didn't do this, he told me the first rule of teamwork is to watch out for yourself.
He also lies continuously. He even told me once that he had throat cancer and was going to have his voice box removed at a major medical center two hourse from home. He cried and everything. I went around trying to garner support for him through this difficult time. He never went to the hospital and I looked like a liar.
To cut to the chase, three years ago, I began suspecting he was having an affair again. Confronting him, he would say no. Then a name came up on my caller ID. When he came home from work, I confronted him on that. Again, no affair. So I called the number and spoke to a woman who had been in an off and on again affair for years with him. Even then, he wouldn't admit it was an affair but they were just good friends even as she was telling me some pretty specific things.
The next day, my guy took me to see a priest (one who did not know him) so he could confess. After seeing the priest, he knealt for a long time at the foot of the cross and went home and changed our phone number so she couldn't call him again. Months later, I spoke with this women and found that very day, he called her with our new number.
I learned a lot about this guy from her and even called a couple of his co-workers to get more info (he doesn't have any friends. He just hooks up with people who can help him with stuff he wants done and then doesn't bother with them anymore). Anyway, as the dust was settling, he got me to go to a marriage program with him that really seemed to help. We learned how to share feelings in a particular way that he said really helped him. After a few months' though, he quit doing it and the philosphies he had been proclaiming no longer applied, at least not to him. I was supposed to forgive. I was supposed to trust. I was supposed to love.
His lying continued on over the most ridiculous and unimportant things. I learned he would go the library to read some sort of In the News ecology items (each a paragraph long) and then would go to work to impress everyone with his intelligence as he would spin these items into speeches.
I also learned that he had told people at his job that I was a lesbian, that I ran up huge charge card bills, manipulated him continually to work overtime (I was pleading with him to stop working OT) among other things.
Then I discovered that some of people I worked with had friends and relatives who worked with my husband and new about my husband's activities. Over the years, I had reached out for friendships on my job and couldn't understand the standoffish attitude but that explained it. News travels fast and I had been the object of gossip for so many years. My coworkers knew about my husbands antics as well as heard all the character assassination. I had simply retreated to the point of "just doing my job" and given up on a social life anywhere. Eventually, I left this job even though I loved it.
Over the years, I thought I was messed up due to the child abuse I experienced and spent a lot of time in counseling, but no one asked about my husband and I never mentioned him. Or perhaps they asked and I assured them everything was fine. I don't really remember.
Actually, years ago I had learned never to say anything negative about him to anyone since bad things would then happen. Once he shrunk all my sweaters (I was just helping you with the laundry. You never appreciate anything I do for you). Another time my current favorite top disappeared (gee, I looked everywhere. You must have left it some place and forgot). Or I would find myself spending even more time alone for a while.
After he confessed about his anonymous sex and two affairs, I had asked him to go to marriage counseling. I had recently lost a significant amount of weight but was terribly shy and uncomfortable with the attention it brought me. When we arrived at the counselors, he told me that since his affairs were "old stuff" and drug-related and he was now sober, I shouldn't mention it. Then he proceeded to tell the counselor that I wanted to date and the counselor made me sign an agreement that I wouldn't date while we were in couneling.
Another time, when we were seeing a family counselor due to some problems our son was having, the counselor confronted him for "invalidating" me. Two days later, Social Services was at my door saying I had been reported for child abuse of my daughter. I was stunned. After SS left, my husband suggested that the counselor did this and was trying to break up our family. I much later learned he had gone to see the counselor and told her I had swung my daughter around by the hair and flung her into a wall. The counselor was required to report this to the authorities.
I guess I can stop going on. Is this a sociopath or a psychopath??
I handle all the money. He does nothing without being told and then you can't count on it happening without checking up on him.
He plays games with me. Example: I had a followup letter for a job interview that I did not want mailed until July 3 but I prepared it and put it out where I would remember it. I told him not to mail it. I explained I was mailing it on Monday so the manager would get it when she returned from the 4th of July holiday. He left it alone for a few days but on Thursday I saw it was gone. He had mailed it. His excuse? Oh, I thought you wanted me to put it in the mail for you. He claims he knew nothing my asking him to leave it alone, that I would take care of it. A small thing, but a continual thing.
I always had such a terrible fear of abandonment and it is embarrassing to write this stuff and realize what I have allowed in my life. He also keeps telling me what fine "character" I have.
I must also add that no one in his family, my family (including our children), or his workplace will speak to me. When I have asked why, I get glares.
My daughter is a lot like her father and i would do anything for my kids beyond what people typically do for their adult kids. Then, when she got married and pregnant, she started sending me emails saying she got to say whether I ever saw my grandchild and insinuated I had better do what she wanted. Well, I didn't do what she wanted. The next I learned, she was asking people not to tell me anything about her or her child (I have since learned she has two and perhaps now three children).
The one time I got her to agree to sit down with me to talk about what issues were bothering her, she swore at me (in front of her husband and mine) for an hour and a half but never actually gave an answer. Mostly it was character assassination like, "you are a mean person". When I asked for an example so I could understand better, the response would be a glare from her husband and she would say "You know perfectly well what I mean."
A few weeks ago, I found a Mother's Day card from the second year of her marriage that she made (she always loved making her own cards) and on the inside she had written "Thank you for being such a wonderful mom to me and such a wonderful mom-in-law to M_____."
I feel as if I am on the verge of coming back from crazy to sanity. I really think this stuff runs in families (my father-in-law, my husband and now my daughter). Can anyone relate. I set up an appointment with a psychologist who works with personality disorders for two months from now so I can read more. When I spoke over the phone with him about what I was looking for, I said I wanted to talk with someone who KNOWS about this stuff so I can get my questions answered.
I have been squirreling away a little money and started looking for a better paying job. I took a job outside my career field which pays half what I used to make. I have nothing left anymore. I suspect the character assassination my husband did on his job he had been doing in our families as I have never had a falling out or argument with any of them (outside my children when they were teenagers which I think is normal). I even am thinking of changing my name after I leave (not take back my maiden name).
I'm sorry for rambling. I hope someone can identify and tell me a person can recover from this.
I met this guy 35 years ago, really didn't want to continue the relationship at the time but he was so intense and I was alone. Then it seemed we had so much in common plus the things that were missing in my life seemed to an important part of his (like my parents sent only my sister and I to church with some neighbors who church hopped. It was confusing to me and made me afraid of God as they were all "God as controller" type churches and he was a strongly faithful Catholic who had a strong moral base..or so he made it seem).
I was battered by my mother, and he was the only person to show me any sympathy on this. Back then, it was the kid's fault. I would get lectured by teachers and the school counselors on how I was supposed to be helping my mom more even though I did 95% of the housework as well as babysitting to provide my own clothing, lunch money, bus far, etc., since I was 11. Looking back, though, the one time he was present when a beating was about to start, he suddenly had to go home rather than stick up for me.
After he was raped by his father, it suddenly became important to him that I should become pregnant. He presented this as a way for him to help me escape my violent home and he would marry me. I was 16.
The rape by his father I know to be true but didn't know about for many years. His father was a pedophile who molested both within his family and outside of it and I have talked with persons who were aware of this problem. Again, back then, the police weren't typically called into these situations in the Midwest but would be neighborhood knowledge to keep your kids away from so and so.
He was very seductive (I was a virgin) but once I was pregnant, he became hard to find. I was pregnant with the promise of marriage on one side and my violent mother on the other. I also had a tremendous fear of abandoment which my guy used to his advantage. I continually hunted him down and eventually we did get married and had two children.
I am embarrassed to even type this stuff but I think there is someone at this site who will understand.
So what happened next?? After a year of marriage, he entered the service and promptly started using drugs. He had never even drank in my presence up till then. For the next ten years, we lived in absolute poverty due to his drug use (he was dumped from the service after 2.5 years).
He would have arguments with me about whether I was a human being or a "piece of s__t."
He frequently vanished.
And everything evolved around him, even how I prepared meals. They had to be his way. If he thought I put some onion in something, he would throw the food against the wall. Our son, at less than 2 years of age, he would "carry" down a flight of stairs by having our son (don't want to use names) hold onto my guy's thumbs and dangle all the way down. At my protests, he claimed this "built trust." Needless to say, my son does not speak to him today and neither will he speak to me.
After my guy sobered up, he became a work addict and was rarely home. His Sunday NA meeting would turn into an all day affair. This was the one day he could be with his family but didn't bother. I have since learned he just sat at the halfway house where the meeting was held watching sports or "counseling" good looking females.
He confessed after sobering up to anonymous sex with women when he drove cab as well as two other affairs. Then he said he was leaving us, but he never did. He acted as if nothing had happened. He even would tell our two young children he would be moving out at the end of the month leaving everyone in turmoil.
Besides, no matter what happened, he was not at fault ever. Once he had me helping him move a TV into an entertaiment center and he dropped his end knowing I would not be able to hold my end up myself and I smashed a couple fingers. He had said he would tell me when to set my end down and when I confronted him as to why he didn't do this, he told me the first rule of teamwork is to watch out for yourself.
He also lies continuously. He even told me once that he had throat cancer and was going to have his voice box removed at a major medical center two hourse from home. He cried and everything. I went around trying to garner support for him through this difficult time. He never went to the hospital and I looked like a liar.
To cut to the chase, three years ago, I began suspecting he was having an affair again. Confronting him, he would say no. Then a name came up on my caller ID. When he came home from work, I confronted him on that. Again, no affair. So I called the number and spoke to a woman who had been in an off and on again affair for years with him. Even then, he wouldn't admit it was an affair but they were just good friends even as she was telling me some pretty specific things.
The next day, my guy took me to see a priest (one who did not know him) so he could confess. After seeing the priest, he knealt for a long time at the foot of the cross and went home and changed our phone number so she couldn't call him again. Months later, I spoke with this women and found that very day, he called her with our new number.
I learned a lot about this guy from her and even called a couple of his co-workers to get more info (he doesn't have any friends. He just hooks up with people who can help him with stuff he wants done and then doesn't bother with them anymore). Anyway, as the dust was settling, he got me to go to a marriage program with him that really seemed to help. We learned how to share feelings in a particular way that he said really helped him. After a few months' though, he quit doing it and the philosphies he had been proclaiming no longer applied, at least not to him. I was supposed to forgive. I was supposed to trust. I was supposed to love.
His lying continued on over the most ridiculous and unimportant things. I learned he would go the library to read some sort of In the News ecology items (each a paragraph long) and then would go to work to impress everyone with his intelligence as he would spin these items into speeches.
I also learned that he had told people at his job that I was a lesbian, that I ran up huge charge card bills, manipulated him continually to work overtime (I was pleading with him to stop working OT) among other things.
Then I discovered that some of people I worked with had friends and relatives who worked with my husband and new about my husband's activities. Over the years, I had reached out for friendships on my job and couldn't understand the standoffish attitude but that explained it. News travels fast and I had been the object of gossip for so many years. My coworkers knew about my husbands antics as well as heard all the character assassination. I had simply retreated to the point of "just doing my job" and given up on a social life anywhere. Eventually, I left this job even though I loved it.
Over the years, I thought I was messed up due to the child abuse I experienced and spent a lot of time in counseling, but no one asked about my husband and I never mentioned him. Or perhaps they asked and I assured them everything was fine. I don't really remember.
Actually, years ago I had learned never to say anything negative about him to anyone since bad things would then happen. Once he shrunk all my sweaters (I was just helping you with the laundry. You never appreciate anything I do for you). Another time my current favorite top disappeared (gee, I looked everywhere. You must have left it some place and forgot). Or I would find myself spending even more time alone for a while.
After he confessed about his anonymous sex and two affairs, I had asked him to go to marriage counseling. I had recently lost a significant amount of weight but was terribly shy and uncomfortable with the attention it brought me. When we arrived at the counselors, he told me that since his affairs were "old stuff" and drug-related and he was now sober, I shouldn't mention it. Then he proceeded to tell the counselor that I wanted to date and the counselor made me sign an agreement that I wouldn't date while we were in couneling.
Another time, when we were seeing a family counselor due to some problems our son was having, the counselor confronted him for "invalidating" me. Two days later, Social Services was at my door saying I had been reported for child abuse of my daughter. I was stunned. After SS left, my husband suggested that the counselor did this and was trying to break up our family. I much later learned he had gone to see the counselor and told her I had swung my daughter around by the hair and flung her into a wall. The counselor was required to report this to the authorities.
I guess I can stop going on. Is this a sociopath or a psychopath??
I handle all the money. He does nothing without being told and then you can't count on it happening without checking up on him.
He plays games with me. Example: I had a followup letter for a job interview that I did not want mailed until July 3 but I prepared it and put it out where I would remember it. I told him not to mail it. I explained I was mailing it on Monday so the manager would get it when she returned from the 4th of July holiday. He left it alone for a few days but on Thursday I saw it was gone. He had mailed it. His excuse? Oh, I thought you wanted me to put it in the mail for you. He claims he knew nothing my asking him to leave it alone, that I would take care of it. A small thing, but a continual thing.
I always had such a terrible fear of abandonment and it is embarrassing to write this stuff and realize what I have allowed in my life. He also keeps telling me what fine "character" I have.
I must also add that no one in his family, my family (including our children), or his workplace will speak to me. When I have asked why, I get glares.
My daughter is a lot like her father and i would do anything for my kids beyond what people typically do for their adult kids. Then, when she got married and pregnant, she started sending me emails saying she got to say whether I ever saw my grandchild and insinuated I had better do what she wanted. Well, I didn't do what she wanted. The next I learned, she was asking people not to tell me anything about her or her child (I have since learned she has two and perhaps now three children).
The one time I got her to agree to sit down with me to talk about what issues were bothering her, she swore at me (in front of her husband and mine) for an hour and a half but never actually gave an answer. Mostly it was character assassination like, "you are a mean person". When I asked for an example so I could understand better, the response would be a glare from her husband and she would say "You know perfectly well what I mean."
A few weeks ago, I found a Mother's Day card from the second year of her marriage that she made (she always loved making her own cards) and on the inside she had written "Thank you for being such a wonderful mom to me and such a wonderful mom-in-law to M_____."
I feel as if I am on the verge of coming back from crazy to sanity. I really think this stuff runs in families (my father-in-law, my husband and now my daughter). Can anyone relate. I set up an appointment with a psychologist who works with personality disorders for two months from now so I can read more. When I spoke over the phone with him about what I was looking for, I said I wanted to talk with someone who KNOWS about this stuff so I can get my questions answered.
I have been squirreling away a little money and started looking for a better paying job. I took a job outside my career field which pays half what I used to make. I have nothing left anymore. I suspect the character assassination my husband did on his job he had been doing in our families as I have never had a falling out or argument with any of them (outside my children when they were teenagers which I think is normal). I even am thinking of changing my name after I leave (not take back my maiden name).
I'm sorry for rambling. I hope someone can identify and tell me a person can recover from this.
