H.G. Beverly's Blog, page 5

The Sociopath as Coach, Part 2

Some sociopaths make the “best” coaches.

At least, that’s what everyone thinks at the time.

So during the athletic banquet at the end of each season, people will often spend more time applauding this beloved individual than they do the young players on the team. Even if those players just broke six individual records.

Parents will send “thank you” cards and gifts by the dozen to this coach.

Particularly if he or she’s also charming, humble, and from the same hometown.

They’ll talk constantly for weeks and even months about how happy they are that this particular coach came into their child’s life. How this person changed everything. Built confidence. Gave a sense of accomplishment. Brought out the best.

But what they won’t know is how the same coach might come up to someone like me and confide (if I can be trusted or scared into keeping quiet) that there’s no way I’m helping Noah Alton get any more distance. That kid doesn’t deserve it, he’s a total slouch. Doesn’t deserve to win. But that’s just between us. And I want Tyler to win, anyway. You know, so I’m not giving Noah anything. That kid can fail.

But Noah Alton won’t know. He’ll spend the entire season working as hard as he can to be his best. He’ll win the respect of his teammates and other coaching staff. People will admire his character. His parents will feel great about what he did manage to accomplish. And they won’t have any idea that the coach they admire was keeping their son from winning for purely selfish reasons. So they’ll stand right up and applaud him along with everyone else.

They’ll think he’s the best.

Because a sociopath knows how to fake it.

And that counts for coaching, too.

Stand with the parents. Talk about the progress.

Run their kid through the paces. Keep him moving. Give him mediocre to bad advice. Keep him moving some more. Make him feel confident and connected. Make him believe that he’s doing his best. Never tell him that he could actually be number one if you really taught him the technique. Never let him know that you’re holding it back so the kids you like will win.

Never let him know his potential.

The Sociopath Delights on Control

A sociopath loves the thought of making someone win.

Being the person who decides it.

And the thrill of standing in the center of everyone.

All eyes on me.

That’s what a coach needs. That’s often what a sociopath loves. And coaching is even more than that. When you coach, you have complete control. You have complete power. You can choose who will win—and then make it happen. You might make odd choices just for fun. If you’re slick, your choices will never be so odd that anyone will question you. Because you decide who plays and who sits. And you can devastate and burn out just as easily as you build up and spotlight.

And at the end of any good performance, that spotlight will often land on you.

You get to make people jump.

That kind of power and attention can be giddying.

For certain kinds of people, especially.

So before you get caught up in praises for that next, most-connected coach your child’s ever had,

take a second look.

Because sometimes the people who seem to bond with our children the most are also the ones who would do them in.

And coaching is such an opportunity.

P.S. If you think I’m just a bitter parent who’s angry with the coaches, I’ll tell you that my child wins. Yes, he’s naturally talented and works incredibly hard day after day and in my opinion deserves to win. The kid I’m talking about (above) might’ve gotten second in a whole bunch of places, including the state competition. But didn’t. And yes, he was coached that way.

This post can also be found on Lovefraud.com along with a community of supporters.

The Sociopath as Coach

So I married and divorced a sociopath, but we’re connected at the hip for life because we share three children.

(It’s been sixteen years so far.)

And last year, he sued for full custody of two of them. The boys. We’re still in court today, trying to work out the details of that.

Because despite all the issues I’ve experienced in the family court system since 2007, in this instance the professionals involved did (finally) manage to ask why we’re back in court and why I should lose custody.

My ex had his full list of reasons, but man, I’ve been fighting back. Which means defending myself as a parent.

Sending photographs to the guardian of the kids and I—since birth.

Reminding them all that I have no physical or mental impairments.

Reminding them all that there’s no real reason for cutting me out.

Trying to educate everyone I’m working with on parental alienation. Without offending in any way.

(And by the way, I have to admit that after all these years of being in court with my ex, I’ve borrowed and sold and bartered just about every way I can to keep up. The only reason I can continue today is because my parents have helped me out even more than they’ve been able to. They hurt because of me and my situation. So I’m not trying to look like a superstar hero by posting these things—these actions. Instead, I’d like to say that the only way it’s even possible for me to participate is because other people have lifted me up at their own sacrifice. And because of that, I will always and forever lift others up. In any way I can. Because I know what it’s like to need, and I know it can happen just after the moment of standing on your own at the top of your own personal success.)

So that being said, I’ll get back to the professionals and my vehement protests—”I don’t want to be eliminated from my children’s lives!” So they’ve given me a trial period. I can try to prove something to them.

That I’m a worthy parent.

Of my sons.

Regardless of what my charming, believable ex has to say.

The Sociopath is So Likable That It’s Easy to Forget

Now remember, my ex doesn’t want our daughter. Just our sons. Who knows why. But regardless of any reasons, you’d think that the court might raise an eyebrow over the fact that he’s actively trying to split the family along gender lines.

Nope. No one has batted an eyelash over that.

I haven’t heard one single curious moment in the past 13 months on that one.

Why not?

Do they think it’s normal to care more for the boys than the girl?

I have no idea. It makes me feel sick, honestly.

Regardless, no one seems to think it’s odd to only want two of your three kids. No one at all.

Except for me.

Sociopaths Like To Be in Charge

So while I’m spending time and money trying to prove that I’m worthy of participating as a parent, I’m also working with my ex and a psychologist.

We meet together with him once a month.

And he’s instructed us to save seats for each other at our children’s events.

After death threats and a public shunning for leaving him, I have to say that it’s pretty brave and maybe even foolish on my part to walk through the hostile crowd of people and sit next to my ex. He’s not just a sociopath. He’s a public figure—a beloved sociopath. And when I left him, no one knew why. No one could see what happened behind closed doors. And he made sure that everyone blamed me.

That was in 2007. Lots of his charmed followers still won’t look at me today.

But they come to our children’s events all the time.

So I walk through them and stand next to the man. The man who made them hate me.

They give him sympathetic looks. I have no idea what they’re thinking, but it doesn’t look kind. After years of this, I’ve learned to ignore it.

My Sociopathic Ex Wants to Coach Me

This is where I’ll get to the point. After all these years of abuse and aggression, I’ve been told to sit with my ex at our children’s games. So I’ve been doing it.

And his response is to violate boundaries.

This is why no contact—absolutely no contact—is so important.

Because he wants to coach me. 

What do I mean by that?

I mean it literally.

I’m pretty athletic, and so are all of my children. So is my ex. And he’s been coaching our two boys in track and field because that was his big thing so he wants it to live on through them. They’re doing well. And since the psychologist wants us to stand together at events, we’ve been interacting more in the past four weeks than we have in the past seven years.

And there are already a bunch of boundary issues.

Because I made the apparent mistake of throwing the discus a few times one evening with my sons. My ex was there. It was at his house. I was picking them up and wanted to do what they do. These are my big mistakes. Trying to be friendly. Trying to show the boys that I can participate in their things. Trying to be funny. Trying to be a sport.

Trying anything.

Trying to be friendly.

So my ex jumped right into the role of coaching me.

And what’s coaching? Part of it is power. Being the one in the know. Being the one who has total control in the situation. Being the one in charge.

So I quit throwing pretty quickly and then talked about how awkward it was for the next couple days.

But it gets even a little more awkward—because then he sent me a few texts inviting me to come back so he can coach me some more.

Not our sons.

Me.

He wants to coach me. A forty year old woman. In the discus.

The Sociopath Knows No Contradiction

While he’s inviting me to come back for a coaching session (and no, I’m not going), he’s also calling me on the phone and encouraging me to settle for minimum time with the boys.

He’s also keeping me in court, remember—trying to take full custody of our sons. To “save” them from the woman who is “unfit.”

And he’s even saying (to everyone around) that he can’t understand why we’re still in court. To me, he says, “I called my attorney and frankly, I told him that I’m tired of paying him! And that he better get all our kids nice graduation gift. Let’s just be reasonable and settle this ourselves. We don’t need to waste money on our attorneys. We can settle it. And so while we both know the boys don’t want to see you, I could agree to them seeing you once a week and every other weekend. I could agree to that.”

He’s saying all of these things even though he initiated and has prolonged the court process. And even though he hasn’t been able to agree that I should even have the minimum time when in court.

Confused?

Yes!

The beautiful thing for me is that I’m so detached that I’m not charmed or bewildered by him anymore. And I feel empathy for all those who are. I get it. I know why they like him so much. Why they do and believe what he says.

I just don’t want them to decide that he deserves to own our children.

And I don’t want him drinking out of my coffee cup.

I don’t want him as my coach.

Even if I stand next to him at our children’s events. Or if I decide to participate once in a while.

My participation is not an invitation for a complete boundary violation.

Or maybe it is, to a sociopath.

So for all of you who don’t have a court professional telling you that you have to have contact, I’d like to reaffirm the idea of NO CONTACT. Be really serious about it. Especially if you’re fresh out of the relationship.

It’s too confusing to maneuver.

It’s too much contradiction for one soul to take.

Just get yourself away from it—save yourself the time of sorting it out.

Because even if the sociopath enjoys coaching or controlling you, that good feeling is never going to last.

And they’ll still eat you alive. Even while it does.

This post can also be found on Lovefraud.com along with a community of supporters.

Recommended link: The Invisibility of Evil

I’m so taken by this review. Wonderful! I love the honesty about his struggle to believe and not to blame. Such a human response—I think many people will be tempted to wonder about me. Some of my experiences are just too hard to fathom.

Everybody Means Something

I have just started to read a book I bought as a result of Sharon Rawlette’s powerful review. The book is so compelling I thought I’d better not wait to finish reading it before flagging up its existence, most of all perhaps because, if my several searches are anything to go by, it puzzlingly seems to still lie below the radar of mainstream and professional reviewers. It’s perhaps no coincidence that, at this point, all four reviewers on the US Amazon site seem to be women. We’ve met this problem of remorseless malignity before on this blog, but scarcely at all from the point of view of the victim, yet this surely is an important perspective we should not ignore.

I am not even half-way through the book yet, but its perfectly chosen, breathless stifling style creates in me, as reader, the same trapped feelings of relentless pressure, confusion…

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What abusers say: 15 early warning signs

It’s almost strange how many times I can read something about psychopaths and sociopaths and still feel surprised like, “that’s exactly right!” as if I’m figuring it out for the very first time all over again.

Avalanche of the soul

Do you feel there’s something ‘not quite right’ about your new romance? Can’t put your finger on why? If so, you may have a budding abuser on your hands – and listening to what they say could prevent you from becoming their latest project. Here’s 15 early warning signs that are dangerous to ignore.

Photo by click

15 Early WARNING signs

1. He rarely – if ever – calls you by your name. You answer to ‘babe’ or ‘darling’ (because you’re an object, rather than a person). My ex managed to insert this into virtually every sentence, especially when he was making excuses for bad behaviour. Or, this unreformed playground-bully has thought-up a witty but cutting nickname, perhaps referencing the size of your posterior, which you are expected to find as entertaining as he does.

2. He tells you his marriage broke down because his wife was abusive /…

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The Invisibility of Evil

Here’s a clear and insightful book review on “The Other Side of Charm.” Many thanks to Sharon Rawlette. Visit her site for more of her published articles and reviews.

Sharon Rawlette

“You will learn that when the truth isn’t pretty, expected, or delivered with a fair dose of charm, people will almost always put their faith in a lie.” So reads one of many chilling lines in

H.G. Beverly

‘s recently released memoir

The Other Side of Charm

, about her unwitting marriage to a sociopath.

Before her marriage to Wyatt, Beverly believed–as I imagine most of us do–that evil is recognizable. “Like most anyone else,” she says, “you’ll think that evil must be somewhat easy to identify it might come right at you with a gun or it might have squinty or buggy eyes or it might be a man trying to trick you into his car or it might be a creepy uncle who pats little children on the bottom all the time.” But evil came to her in the form of a charming, romantic man she’d known since they were kids…

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Longing and Wishes

I woke up this morning face to face with my daughter. She’d come in to my room and climbed in bed with me during the night, but she hadn’t covered up. And it’s cold out. Her face and arms and hands were chilled and smooth, and her feet were like little popsicles. So I lifted and pulled and tugged to get her under the covers, and I stayed there with her for a moment to warm her up.

These are the beautiful moments.

When I’m just looking at her. When she’s deep asleep and safe, getting warm under her mama’s blankets. When I’m watching her in wonder. Thinking about how amazing she is.

And longing to give her a better life.

She’s nine now, and she’s been living a life of high conflict since she was born. The conflict belongs to her parents, and because of that, she doesn’t know any other way.

Conflict.

It takes two, right?

So what’s wrong with me? I’m part of the equation. Can’t I just make it stop? Can’t I just walk away? Can’t I just rally and smile and shake hands and move on?

Why am I still stuck in this cycle?

It must be the worst thing I could do for my daughter. To not just walk away.

I haven’t walked away. But I clearly understand parents who do—or should I say, parents who do whatever it takes to end the conflict.

I’ve thought of the Biblical story a hundred thousand times. The one where the King says that he’ll cut the baby in half when two mothers are fighting over it, and the real mother says, please don’t! She can have the baby. Just don’t do that.

And that makes me wonder if I’m selfish or bad for staying. Because my mere presence in my children’s lives rallies a dark force within my ex-husband’s core, and that force is entirely directing at pushing me off the edge of the earth.

He used to tell me that I don’t deserve to be here.

And he has a deep thirst for revenge.

Because I left him

and tried to make a new life.

I thought at the time that I’d be breaking the cycle. Everyone talks a lot about that. Get out! Go back to school! Heal your soul! Raise your head! Elevate your life! 

Protect your children!

And then the reality of the day-to-day sets in, and that reality doesn’t protect your children. Seven years later, and the court at best ignores us. The attorneys cost too much. The system rewards aggression. And there’s nowhere I’ve found in that dynamic where “protection” and “peaceful escape” can come true.

At least not that I’ve found.

And so since I’ve been writing and thinking about longing, I thought I’d bring this all up. Because when I was lying next to my daughter this morning, I felt it in my heart. Longing for the life I want to give her. Longing for a time when my assets weren’t depleted. When my credit wasn’t destroyed. Longing to be the mom I could be without the daily assault and constant trauma. The woman I could be if I could save my kids from living out lives in which their dad tries to use them as a weapon against me. Consistently. Without fail. Year after year after year. I want to be that better woman. I want to save them from all this. I want to take them to Disney before they grow up because they’ve always wanted to go and it’s almost too late and I’m not even close to having the kind of money it takes to make something like that happen. I’m not even close to having rent this month after I pay my attorney to explain to the magistrate why my ex doesn’t actually deserve to have full custody even though he filed for it yet again. I have to pay my attorney to explain why I should still be allowed to exist as a co-parent. And I want to be more than that. I want to be the best kind of mother I can be, regardless of anything. I want to be these things for my daughter, and for my sons. I want to make even a few of their wishes come true. The things they only talk about it in the quiet at random moments.

The things they wish for.

Mostly, they don’t wish out loud much at all.

And that’s something I long for.

For them.

Longing

I’ve known longing since I was 25.

And I turn 40 this year.

And I’m not talking about the kind of longing I have for lasagna or a new haircut or someone else’s clean-smelling car.

I’m talking about deep human longing—the kind that’s about human relationships. The kind that makes your heart swell until it fills up your rib cage and makes it want to burst. The kind that’s an ache that you carry around with you forever. The kind you feel when you’ve lost a parent, or a partner, or a dream.

Or a child.

It’s mourning and wanting and aching and loss, all wrapped up in one.

And I want to write about it a bit just because I never have before. Not directly. I want to talk about it because I believe a lot of people know it—a lot of us carry it around. We’re missing someone, whether they’re gone or not. And we’re trying hard every day to work up enough courage and grit to deal with what’s left. With what’s in front of us. And so we wake up in the morning unexcited. We roll and push and drag ourselves out of bed to face another day. We stand up and face the sun and work up a smile. When we do feel gratitude—because we still do!—tears roll out of the corners of our eyes and stream down our strained, silent faces.

This is the face of a person who is missing someone.

This is who we are, collectively. People missing people.

We know longing. 

And I want to spend some time talking about that.

If you’d like to add to the conversation, please do.

A Good Wife

A relationship is not a place

or a thing.

You don’t have to be

near a person to feel

your ties, and

you might even say

that what we see

when we look at each other

are our relationships

made visible.

Gratitude

Thank you to everyone who supported the launch of my book over the weekend.

I had more downloads than I even expected, and I’ve had lots of positive feedback. That means so much! My story was/is difficult to share (difficult and yet liberating), and so the support I’ve received has been incredibly important.

Thank you!

I’m full of gratitude.