Anyone Can Marry a Psychopath!

Although I spent high school preparing for college, I didn't enjoy it and returned home to further my business career. The company I worked for was purchased by a large national company and soon I was working in their advertising division. They provided tons of training, including goal setting, and being ambitious, I quickly established myself in a leadership position. I hated the cold weather where I grew up though so my wonderful mentor helped me secure an interview with an ad agency on the west coast. Shortly after turning twenty-one, I hit the road and never looked back.

I spent just over three years on the coast, having the time of my life, but I was fast approaching twenty-five with no solid marriage prospects. I submitted a transfer proposal to the president of the company which secured my job in one of our southern offices. Less than a year after moving and just a few weeks after my 25th birthday, I moved into my newly-built house. Two months later, I met my future ex-husband. A month shy of my 26th birthday, we were married. At the time I wasn't even aware I'd reached my first goal.

The first year of marriage was tough, as it is on many couples, but I never would have guessed the real reasons why. For two years I thought our marital problems stemmed from my insecurity and paranoia that he wasn't faithful. Little did I know that my instincts were closer to the truth than I ever imagined. The shock I initially felt when I discovered him running up huge bills on my cell phone by calling sex lines and the subsequent cover-up lies about an apparent sex addiction were nothing compared to the trauma I would soon face.

One day, loud pounding at the door brought a startling reality ~ well, not really. My bank account was nearly empty and I had dealt with my first ever bounced check (and the second, third, and who knows how many). Worried it was another visit from the constable, he offered to answer it. When he didn't return after a few minutes, I went to check it out, thinking it must have been a neighbor. I innocently opened the front door and discovered several members of the SWAT team and local police force in the process of arresting him (shirtless, of course, just like on COPS). The image of him being handcuffed with a gun pointed at his head is permanently seared into my memory.

You'd think his being arrested for sexual assault with a deadly weapon would have been my wake-up call, but as I mentioned, psychopaths are good liars and manipulators and I never knew the full charge until many years later. The lies continued to pile up and I bought the entire lot ~ for a couple more years! His charade was all-encompassing: family, friends, business associates, neighbors...everyone was fooled. The shock was astounding, with the exception of his parents who, unbeknownst to me, had helped him cover up an eerily similar criminal mishap with a woman, about a decade earlier.

During the drawn out legal process, I became pregnant. He went to a therapist weekly (I know because I paid the bills), but I don't believe it helped him since I remember him mentioning that he had acted out and called one of those sex lines right before he was due to stand trial (at a time when he was so concerned for me since I was 9 months pregnant). He took a plea and shortly after my son was born, was sentenced to prison for more than a decade. The charade continued for a few more years because he was incarcerated nearby. Soon though, without his daily influence, the stranglehold loosened and I felt like myself again. It took four years, but once I finally realized he had lied, I divorced him and never looked back.

He did his best to guilt me into staying with him and continued to send me cards and letters telling me he loved me. Fortunately I had realized by then, that I never really loved him in the first place. I'd had doubts before we married, that I brushed off as pre-wedding jitters, but my gut instincts turned out to be right and I promised myself I'd never ignore them again. One of the hardest things about the entire ordeal was facing the fact that it was my decision to let this person into my life. No one likes making a mistake, especially one so close to the heart, but in the end I realized it was more about him than me. I made a poor choice based on what I thought was the truth. It was an honest mistake. I wasn't tying to manipulate someone to fulfill my needs. So I let it go and moved on without blaming myself.

I've had close to a decade without my ex around, and I've changed dramatically as a person. I have had so much therapy that I'm practically capable of teaching it to others. A few important things have changed: after a quarter of a century of struggling, I finally nurtured and maintain a healthy self-esteem, I never ignore that little voice of intuition, I graduated from college with honors in a creative field more suitable to my personality, I no longer have rigid goals that cause me to emit that "desperation" pheromone, and I don't try to protect and mother everyone around me (just my son). I still have faith in people, but it's now peppered with underlying skepticism and caution.

As a side note, my ex will be released from prison in less than a year, and it should be interesting to see how he handles the new me.

Stardate: 2012 and beyond...it's been over a year since I wrote this lens and for me and my son things are looking up! We are happy, healthy and are moving forward right on schedule. Luckily for us, the court system saw through my ex-husband's deceit and right to his sordid and extremely long criminal background that he and his family lied about and he is no longer legally a parent to my son. My eyes are forever opened, more so now than even a year ago when the custody issues began. After finally reading the actual criminal files, I am 100% convinced that he was guilty. I doubt it will be long before his criminally deviant behavior surfaces again. I remain vigilant so that my family is safe and yet I haven't succumbed to letting it control my life to the point of not living. I finally feel at peace.

Thank you to everyone for the supportive comments and emails. To everyone in this or a similar situation, my best advice remains to listen to your intuition. Never ignore that little voice that speaks those truths to you, whether you want to hear them or not. Mine has never been wrong; my only mistakes have been when I failed to listen! Best to you all!