My Story: Psycho-Shrink Ex Husband

August 22, 2005

I was married to a Psychiatrist and a Sociopath. 

 

He was a doctor of medicine when we married but he wanted to specialise in Psychiatry, which he did after our first  son was born. 

 

He was fourteen years older than me.

 

I came from a background of a mother, father and tree younger brothers.

It was not a professional background.  My father was a Master Builder and Decorator and had his own business. We were intelligent children, did well at school and were brought up to be honest and have social consciences.

 

He always made me feel and treated me as inferior because of my lack of a University education.  I lived in London and was at Grammar school when the war started.  Due to the war in Europe my education finished when I was thirteen years of age.

 

Before we were married I knew I was with a man who was not good for me. Unfortunately , I was brought up to think that you do not have sex before marriage.  My husband was 34 and I was twenty when we first met.  He was experienced and had many affairs and some of his women were married. I only found out about this later.

 

Considering how my husband kept telling me how important it was to have a good character I was very hurt and disappointed to find out his character was not what he had led me to believe .

 

He was all talk and I began to see some of the ways he had and I was very hurt and disappointed. It made me feel let down and I lost my respect for him, as I had looked up to him as a man of honour. Maybe I was too young and naïve.  

 

Because he was experienced in life and love, he wore me down and with the promise of marriage, I had sex with him He treated me very badly and was violent before our marriage, but due to my upbringing  I felt I could not go to another man as I was no longer a virgin. Had I been able to accept as I can now,  that not being a virgin was no big deal, I would never have married him

 

I was trapped and had to make the best of it. Friends who knew him and were also doctors said, ‘ Are you really going to marry him? Don’t you know he is crazy”? I realise now they knew what they were saying.  I thought they were joking at the time.

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When we met, I was a fashion model in the West End of London having attended a well known Modeling School in London. While we were courting  he showed jealousy and anger and was very possessive.

 

Fool that I was and like many  women, I took this to be a sign of his love for me. He resented it when I was asked to sit for a Royal Academy Artist who wanted to exhibit a bust of me. I refused in the end just to please him.

 

I lived with my Aunt and Uncle at the time and they having never had children looked upon me as a daughter.  They warned me about the way he was behaving and was very upset that I gave up my career because he did not like me modeling. I only modeled suits and gowns. I would not model underwear or swim wear.

 

My parents lived forty miles away so I could not travel home so far.

 

He did not like me to visit my parents and slowly he made me think they had treated me badly as a child. That my mother  was jealous of me and was neurotic and that my love for my younger brothers was not normal.

 

He made me believe he was the only person who really loved me and I stopped all contact with my parents and my brothers for a long time.  The day I got married I sent them a telegram.

 

He changed my way of dressing and made me very dowdy. He stopped me from presenting myself as I would have liked to by keeping me short of money. Saying I was a spend thrift. Even when he reached the height of his profession and had a good salary  he still kept me very short with only the money for the weekly food shopping. He never let me learn to drive till I was forty two.  When he said I could . his reasoning was, ‘The children are now old enough to cope without a mother should you be killed.“

 

He insisted that every penny he gave to me was spent on food and expected only the best. I used to make most of my clothes and a  lot of my children’s I did buy an item of clothing for my youngest my son at a sale once  and he behaved like a madman and we had a dreadful fight. Many times I tried to leave him and did so when my eldest son was five and my daughter was two.

I went to my parents who let me stay with them. I told my mother that I thought I was going mental as my husband repeatedly told me he would have me committed. I was depressed down at heel,  very plain with no make up and a bun My Mother was very upset to see me like this.  She told me in no uncertain words that my husband was the one who was mad and I should get the idea that there was something wrong with me out of my head. He came to my parents a few times  to try to get me to change my mind and go back to him.

 

One time he brought his aunt with him to try to get me to return to him then he brought an elderly woman friend. My parents were wonderful to me and gave me back my life. I felt better than I had for years. I was  happy again.

 

Our courtship had been one of constant analysis. My husband would question me about everything in my past. Once I told him that when I was eight my father had fondled me in a way I had not liked.  I had forgotten about it but the constant questioning from my husband awoke this memory.

 

When I refused to go back to him he told me that he would go to a solicitor and tell him that he did not want his little girl in the house with a man who had molested his daughter when she was a child.

 

This way he had me! I could not let this happen!

 

I had never told anyone and I knew what it would do to my parents. So against my parents warning I went back to him knowing that I could never leave him now as I had nowhere I could go and no one to turn to.  So I lived for twenty seven years with this man who I finally divorced. I knew my children were old enough to understand and by this time they had also suffered from their father’s abuse and tyrannical ways and had not enjoyed a normal family background.

 

I was strong ! My youngest son was fifteen and I wanted to make sure he was not going to be subjected  to the ravings of his father any more.  Also  I suddenly developed difficulty in breathing. I asked my doctor if I was going to become an asthma sufferer.

 

My doctor said it was due to my husband and the way he treated me  He said he had seen the way my husband  behaved when I had a slipped disc and how he told the doctor I was neurotic and was acting. My doctor replied at the time  ‘If you had what your wife has Sir,  you would not be able to walk.’  My husband replied, ’I hurt my back gardening a few weeks ago but I got better; she is neurotic.'

 

I asked him if he would talk to my husband and he replied, ’How can I, a GP talk to a Consultant Psychiatrist about his behaviour?’ I knew then there was no one who could help me and so I started divorce proceedings. My friend a lady Psychiatrist who had been my husband's assistant in earlier years told me that when you find your health is suffering then the powers of self survival kick in.  However with some women they do not follow this instinct as they lack courage and end up living their late years as invalids.

 

Now as I look at the picture of my marriage, I realise I was married to a Sociopath.

 

All the symptoms I have read, show this without any doubt.

 

The biggest concern I now have is what he may have done to his patients.  I realise he had a need to be  admired  and in control. He wanted victims who looked upon him as a savior and in Psychiatry there is a situation which is called Transference.  You encourage the patient to fall in love with you so they will do your bidding. (You don't "encourage" it; in psychoanalytical psychiatry the transference just happens.) This method is supposed to help the patient and then when they are on the road to recovery comes the weaning period where the Psychiatrist weans the patient away from him.

 

By being a Psychiatrist my husband was allowed to fulfill the need in him to enjoy a victim. He had the opportunity to get someone who would follow him blindly never questioning his motives or his advice.  They would have someone they saw as kind, sympathetic, caring  honest and learned.  Never knowing the true personality of the man and what made him tick.

 

So they would willingly believe that he was unbiased when he gave them advice. That he had no hang ups that would make his advice questionable. 

 

He had charm, was quite good looking and was from Vienna the home of Psychoanalysis. He played the part well and with his accent looked the typical picture of the Psychiatrist as we have  been shown.

 

I spent my years trying to please him. I tried not to have rows because of my children.  He belittled me in company and was surprised if I knew something he did not.  He assumed all I had learned was from his teaching. He would say’ Come children’ and that included me. Luckily I come from a family of strong women and I thank God for this as had I not I would have ended up in a mental hospital. I am sure he actually wanted this to happen  as that way he would think there was nothing wrong with him. That is what he wanted my children to believe when he continually said that their mother was a neurotic.

 

I was faithful all through our marriage. He even made me feel as though I was chatting up the coal man when I gave the man a cold drink on a hot day after he delivered the coal. I was always afraid if a man talked to me  as he would think I had been encouraging him.  Later he was paranoid and was trying to say that every young man had his eye on me and that was right for me to feel I wanted him. I told him he was sick!  I knew he would have been happy to be able to use the word ‘whore’ as he used to call me when in a temper. I know it would have pleased him to feel he had good reason to call me these names.  It would have confirmed his belief that I was a slut.  Another word he liked to use.  But I would never give him that satisfaction.

 

I thought he hated women as he had loved one and she let him down and I decided he was making me suffer because of that. Always looking to find an excuse for his bad behaviour. He treated our daughter with the same disdain and was sadistic in  what he would say to her. Our eldest son was  put on a pedestal and could do no wrong.   He was the only important thing in my husbands life .

 

 I used all sorts of excuses to satisfy myself that he could not help the way he was. He would tell me he loved me even though he never showed it and that he would change. Like a fool, I believed him.

 

I know now that I am one of the many women who believe these men and so I am able to feel better about myself. Yes! 

 

Having  read and studied the behaviour pattern of Sociopaths,  I now accept that my husband had all the symptoms.

 

Sadly my eldest son shows the same pattern with his life. Both his women who have children by him have suffered abuse and violence. He, talks about them the same way his father spoke about me.

 

He says they are neurotic, they are idiots, and that they provoke the situation and are the cause  of his behaviour.  He can never see or accept he is at fault in any way. He is charming, intelligent and gets women easily. They fall for him but soon recognise him as selfish, vain, unsympathetic, a user, a taker , and with a bad temper.

 

My son is now fifty-five and I am no longer in touch with him as he abuses me verbally on the internet. I married again and had twenty-one happy years of love and respect from a normal man.  :) I was never neurotic as my husband tried to make me out to be.

 

After I divorced him, I became a successful business woman an artist, a ceramicist,  a published writer and a poet.  I was on committees and did a lot of charity work. My life was happy and I never looked back.  I was like a bird let out of a cage and I flew high. 

 

I am seventy-eight now and am able to let go of my son .  I do not have to put up with his abusive outbursts. I had enough from his father.

 

I have been honest with him and stupidly I have tried to make him see where he goes wrong but it is of no use. I am in touch with his women ,  the mothers of my grandchildren. I sympathize with them and stand by them.

 

After all who can understand better than me how easy it is to fall in  love and live with a Sociopath? Julie

Dear, dear Julie, A harrowing tale indeed, but one with a happy ending. Thank you for sending in your story. God bless you, Dr. Irene