How to Divorce a Sociopath

I am not a lawyer. The content of this article should not be taken as legal advice, and is not guaranteed to produce any sort of result.

This is simply an account of what I myself went through recently, posted in the hopes that you will find it useful and helpful in dealing with your own situation.

A more proper term for sociopath these days is "antisocial personality disorder."

Personally, I don't like that. It plays down the disorder, and makes them sound almost innocent -- and they're not. Even the word 'sociopath' is a misnomer invented to be more 'sensitive.'

I don't understand the need to be sensitive to these people myself. Dr. Robert Hare, who wrote a book called Without Conscience, says that he believes they are not insane, and can be held totally accountable for their actions.

Unfortunately, this also precludes us from having them committed.

They used to be called psychopaths. We all know that one.

Sociopaths are some of the most dangerous people you will ever meet. Lovefraud.com is an excellent resource if you need to figure out if you're dealing with a sociopath, and according to them, you just might be... they also quote Dr. Hare as saying that three million of the people in North America are sociopaths. I'd guess there are many more than that. These people are sneaky, manipulative monsters, and they typically only push the envelope far enough to drive you completely out of your mind... but not so far that you could actually call them on anything (to me, that's a good definition of evil).

As a result, I'm sure many more millions of sociopaths go undocumented and undetected.

I joined the Army in August of 07.

Oh, I was so excited, so proud... so ignorant. Just like any profession that gives you a weapon and any kind of power over other people, the military attracts sociopaths.

I was surrounded, and didn't even know it.

You would think that someone so good at confusing and manipulating people would be intelligent. Not so. Many sociopaths are almost autistic in a way -- they know a great lot about manipulation and brainwashing, but next to nothing about anything else.

Even the most idiotic sociopath can drag you under if you don't have your eyes open to the warning signs, and poor me, that great believer in the basic good of humanity (well, okay, not really, but I still had just enough faith in people to get caught), I just didn't know the warning signs. I had never heard of a sociopath.

Well, in the midst of all of these obvious users and abusers, I found the one who wasn't obvious. In fact, I found one that was a better actor than most of the people in Hollywood combined. Oh, he was such a wonderful guy.

A wonderful guy who decided (at the end of July last year, when his wife told him she was pregnant), that she would never leave him now, and it was time to, as we say in the wonderful Sociopath Victim Circle, drop the mask.

I didn't like what I saw underneath that mask (I would like to dedicate this Understatement of the Year award to...).

The man underneath the mask started small. He began to buy a lot of beer and video games before the bills were paid. Well, I had a brother-in-law and a lot of male friends. I shrugged it off as a guy thing, gently prodding in my Wonderful Wife way and trying to convince him we needed to pay the bills first.

It was in one ear and out the other.

I would let him know I wanted or needed some small item (a book, say, or some Neutrogena for my face), and he would tell me we couldn't afford it. He would come back later in the day after buying something ten times more expensive, such as a new XBOX 360 or a remote controlled helicopter.

When the bank account became increasingly overdrawn, I did two things.

1. I thanked God I had been smart enough to keep my separate account.
2. I told him I needed to be the one managing the money.

Well, naturally that was met with resistance. I just didn't know it was going to be a horrible mess.

We spent an entire month eating nothing but Burger King because he had coupons and wanted to save as much money as he could for more beer and video games.

When the coupons ran out, my pregnant self spent two weeks eating nothing but spoonfuls of peanut butter.

"But Elegy!" you might ask. "You said you kept a separate bank account! What happened to your money?"

Well, let me tell you how the irresponsible operate when married.

The money comes in. The bills set up to automatically come out of his pay are the only ones paid. He spends the rest of his pay on beer, video games, whatever. I spend every cent of my pay, which is less than his because the Army is a sexist and disgusting organization which believes that men are the only ones capable of handling money, on bills. When emergencies come up, I am the only one who has a dime left over. I end up overdrawn because his cats and his ferret, which he refused to let me get rid of, need food/flea medication/whatever.

Well, I quickly realized my 'nice guy' was nothing but an overgrown little boy. But I still didn't know he was a sociopath.

I kept asking him to give me the account numbers for his bank so I could manage the bills and hopefully save us from sinking. He told me that when he went into basic training, he had his mail sent to his sister. He promised to give me the numbers next time he called her.

He called. I asked. He ignored me.

I ended up finding the account numbers by accident on a pay stub. He acted as if this were great. On the inside, he was angry that I had found them.

When the bills started to get paid on time and the money was under control, he started to get overdrawn spending money he no longer had on beer and video games.

I told him I'd had enough. We fought. He stopped spending so much. I saved nine hundred dollars for the baby.

He stole it when he went on leave. I called to ask where it had gone. He said he had it 'for emergencies.' He spent it on Christmas gifts for his family, because presumably their opinion of him is more important than whether or not the baby ended up sleeping in a padded dresser drawer.

Still sounds like normal relationship issues, right? Well, this is how they get you. Their insanity seems so normal, and you seem so unreasonable, that you always end up wondering if you're just a nag and he's just a normal human being.

Then, when that works, they get worse.

He bought a pair of skinning knives from a smoke shop.

He started to keep them beside the bed.

When I complained about the money (or anything else) from that point on, he would 'jokingly' threaten to skin me.

When I locked the bathroom door, he kicked it down, claiming that 'married women don't need privacy.'

I couldn't take a shower without him trying to invite himself in.

If I called my mother and tried to talk to her in another room, he would pout, refuse to speak to me, then once again 'jokingly' threaten to skin me.

When he wanted the money back, he claimed it was because he thought I was cheating on him and planning to run off with everything he had. And what was everything he had? A perpetually overdrawn bank account, a beat-up Chrysler he ruined days after buying it, and a trashy, overpriced apartment I struggled to find because he didn't want to help me hunt for places to live? Yeah. I was a real gold digger, all right.

Then he started calling me names. Of course, after the first time he hit me with the 'b word,' he realized I was not going to be pleasant. So he would say I was just acting like one, and that wasn't the same as calling me one. Then I was the 'c word,' but that one only once, because that's one thing I wouldn't tolerate, even as depressed and hopped up on painkillers as I was.

Anyway, you get the idea. This all got worse and worse. I waited until he was on a field exercise for a week, and went to a marriage counselor.

This is a step you DO NOT WANT TO MISS if you want to divorce a sociopath. She forced him to go to anger management.

He claimed to go for a while, then admitted that all he did was tell his chain of command he was going... and then went home.

All right. Well, I knew I needed out. I was mildly brainwashed and confused, not stupid. I was terrified, of course, and that's how they get you. He knew I would be afraid of a custody battle.

You know what you do in this situation, if you already know the man is insane and you just found out you're pregnant? You go find a lawyer and you lie. Don't tell them you're pregnant. File for divorce, and get the hell away from him.

Of course, it was too late for me.

So I did what I had to do. I pretended everything was fine. I told him I wanted to go home to have the baby. The Army gives you the option to get out if you get pregnant, and I took it. I was already injured anyway.

The sociopath told me he wanted to send me to his sister, because he knew her, and didn't know my parents. More insanity. I fought him. I told him that they raised me, and I was alive. I told him that I didn't know his sister, and wasn't about to go have my baby around a bunch of strangers who worked full time and had a child of their own.

He caved.

I went home.

While I was at home, I had time to really think it over. I listed everything I could remember that he had done. I got it clear in my head that he was abusive, a sociopath, and that there was no hope for change in the relationship. Still... I was afraid of the custody battle.

The websites say it is impossible to get sole custody when dealing with a sociopath. I believed them. I was willing to stay for eighteen years of this, to take the abuse if it meant my daughter would never be alone with him, out of my sight... but then again, when someone snaps and kills your baby, you go to jail too, because you let the child stay in that dangerous situation.

That needs to change. Of course you should be discouraged from staying with someone like that, but not everyone has family they can run to. Some women have no place to go. What needs to happen is that judges need to recognize sociopaths for being the dangerous people they are. They need to realize that there are typically no witnesses to an abusive relationship. Abusers abuse in private. Abusers should get life long prison sentences.

Of course, I don't have the power to make that change. I wish I did.

Anyway, after the baby was born he came out on leave to visit.

The first time I spoke to him, he told me my baby's first word was going to be the F word if he had anything to do with it. He then told me I'd better be nice to him or he'd 'shank me.'

So the whole time he was there, he saw the baby twice, supervised, and the rest of the time she and I stayed behind a locked door.

He spent a month on the couch, playing World of Warcraft, and only bathed once, because he thought if he refused to use the hall bathroom, I'd be forced to let him into my room so he could use the shower.

No dice. I guess it didn't bother him that his clothes could stand up on their own.

He conned my father into buying diapers, saying the ATM was broken. Shortly after, his stupidity kicked in and he bought things himself, same day.

He asked me repeatedly to 'go out to dinner with him.'

"Isn't that kid on bottles yet?"

He asked me to go to the shooting range with him. I hate to think what was going through his mind when he cooked up the idea that a woman who had just been through a c-section not a week ago would want to be alone with him in a place full of guns.

Well, when he went back home, he called me a few times, mostly to pretend he was horribly depressed in order to pump me for money I didn't have. I checked the websites for the bills he was supposed to be paying. He had a new cellphone!

I checked the numbers.

Divorce attorneys.

I made up my mind. I had enough on him to make a good case for sole custody.

I typed up a thirteen page report on everything he had done. I brought it to my lawyer. We filed.

Now, you have to notice what I did, here.

I hung around just long enough to make sure he had been through marriage counseling and anger management.

I pretended everything was fine (as far as I could without risking mine or the baby's safety) because informing a sociopath that he is a sociopath is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.

I went back to my family, where I would never have to be alone with him, and would have witnesses to his behavior. If you don't have family or friends, go to a battered woman's shelter.

My lawyer is a man, and as such he tried to convince me I didn't need a temporary restraining order. I fought, and got a PERMANENT one. Don't let anyone make you feel silly for being SAFE.

When it was time to talk to the judge, I told the facts, and kept emotion out of it. I told him I was perfectly okay with SUPERVISED VISITATION, as long as I was the one who got to supervise. IF YOU TELL A JUDGE YOU DON'T EVER WANT THE OTHER PERSON TO SEE THE CHILD(REN), THAT'S THE SUREST WAY TO END UP WITH JOINT CUSTODY. Judges HATE that, and they DO NOT UNDERSTAND that this person is dangerous. 

Anyway, at the end of this story, I am sitting here writing an article on the whole thing, my baby is in her playpen, safe and sound and watching the squirrels in the back yard. Her grandmother is keeping an eye out.

The sociopath is not allowed within 1000 feet of our house without calling first, I supervise visitation (which hasn't happened yet), and unless he somehow gets over his alcoholism and decides to learn how to save money and file for a custody change (unlikely) all is well.