His mask slipped on our wedding night.
It’s a moment seared into my memory. The party was over, we were alone in our suite and he looked me dead in the eyes and said it.
‘By the way, I don’t want to have any more kids with you – or anyone.’
I could have cried right there in our hotel room. I was a single mother of one when I’d started dating David* two years earlier. I had always wanted more children, and until that point, David – who was also a single parent when we met – had said he did too.
Oh, my God, I thought. It was all a lie. Why would he lie about that?
My whole world, my vision for my future and our marriage, fell apart in a matter of seconds. But the look on his face didn’t change.
I wish I could go back in time, grab the naïve, frightened woman I was then by the shoulders and say: ‘Run. Just get out of there.’
Sadly that wasn’t what happened.
My husband’s mask slipped on our wedding night. It’s a moment seared into my memory. The party was over, we were alone and he looked me dead in the eyes and said it… (Stock image)
David was a narcissistic sociopath, incapable of human emotion. He concealed his true self from me for two years until our wedding night.
Then he trapped me in an abusive marriage for 17 unbearable years.
You’re probably wondering: why so long? He abused me so often it became ‘normal’ and if I wanted to leave he threatened to destroy me. Whenever I tried to escape him, he would physically overpower me. I often went to work with bruises on my arms. When colleagues asked why, I had to lie to their faces.
Every day during our marriage I would stare at the front door desperately wanting to leave – but I couldn’t. I was trapped in my own home with this demon of a man who controlled my money, my decisions, my whole life.
He stole nearly two decades of my life, not to mention almost all the money I earned during my successful career as a real estate agent.
And during his relentless campaign of physical and psychological abuse, he stripped me of everything that once brought me joy: my confidence, my sense of identity, my friends, my career, my freedom.
I can still remember the woman I was before we married in 2006. I had a career I loved, a child, and was happy with my lot in life.
I wasn’t actively dating when a friend introduced me to David at a lunch in 2004. He was a few years older than me and seemed kind and charming. He told me he was divorcing his second wife. She had got everything – the house, custody of the kids, the money – and he had to declare bankruptcy.
David* was a narcissistic sociopath, incapable of human emotion (stock image)
Still, David came across as someone who was loving and caring. I now recognise our courtship for what it really was: love bombing.
Love bombing is a manipulation tactic used by narcissists and sociopaths to overwhelm a person with affection. He would take me out to dinner, buy me flowers and gifts, and act as if I was going to be living a lavish life with him.
I should have picked up on the signs then.
It started with throwaway comments about what I wore or about what he thought of my friends. These remarks became an everyday occurrence.
Six months into the relationship, one of my friends told me something that should’ve made me break up with him immediately.
‘You know, he’s a real bully. He’s bullying you. He’s already telling you what to wear. He’s already telling you who you can be friends with,’ she said.
I had a beautiful piano and he didn’t want me playing music. When I bought a house a few years later he said, ‘I don’t want some old-looking piano in the house. You’re going to have to get rid of it.’
I had a cat I absolutely adored, too, and he made me get rid of it, which broke my heart. I just wanted peace so I didn’t push back.
I was complacent and obeyed his demands even then.
There were red flags about David, but our author was convinced he had a ‘loving and caring’ side. All that went out the window as soon as they married (stock image)
I also became David’s personal secretary because of his stubborn refusal to learn how to use a computer. I would stay up night writing letters for him.
When I told him I had to go to bed because I had to wake up early the next day for work, he would reply: ‘Well, that’s too bad.’
He was a really nasty, coercive control freak, but I didn’t realise it at the time.
It got to the point where he controlled everything I did – I couldn’t go out, I couldn’t catch up to see friends, I couldn’t spend money on things I wanted. Every single phone call, everything I did for work, he would monitor it.
Even when we were planning our wedding, he said: ‘You’re not allowed to wear a dress that shows any cleavage. I don’t want people to see your breasts.’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Before the wedding, a friend of mine called me in a panic. ‘I really don’t think you should get married. I know it’s embarrassing to call it off, but I really think you’re making a massive mistake.’
Yes, you’re right. I’m so scared but I have to stop this.
That’s what I should have said. Instead, I made excuses for David.
‘Oh, you know, he’s a little bit different to me but it’ll do me good to be part of a family again. It’ll be good for my son too,’ I replied. I was already falling under his spell – in what I now know is a tactic called conditioning.
Fortunately, those same friends never gave up on me. They were the ones who offered me a bed when I eventually escaped David 17 years later.
The thing about dating a narcissistic sociopath is you don’t realise what you’re losing until it’s completely lost. It’s so incremental. You don’t step back and look at what the person is taking from you. I started to think living in his prison was normal.
His controlling behaviour much worse a few years into the marriage.
While out at dinner, he would tell me in front of everybody, ‘You’re not having another glass of wine,’ even though I had only had a glass or two. It made me feel so embarrassed, like I was some kind of alcoholic.
I began to dress to hide my figure because he wouldn’t let me wear anything nice. I only began to question it when one of my friends told me: ‘You used to wear sexy clothes and now you dress like a grandmother. I’m worried for you.’
I tried starting my own business but he constantly put me down and said it would be a failure.
Little by little, it got to the point where I was constantly living in fear.
I would go to bed crying but he made sure I couldn’t sleep by turning the TV’s volume up piercingly loud.
He would force me to have sex. He would grab me by the arms and the hands and lock me in the bedroom until I submitted to him. I was terrified this would be my life until the day I died.
When we moved from Sydney to the Gold Coast I was offered another job and accepted it. When I came home, he scolded me for not asking for his ‘permission’.
I was shocked – I had to earn money for us somehow. But he said that was irrelevant and he had to ‘approve’ everything I did.
I was still working in real estate and he would insist on coming with me to every appraisal or open home to monitor everyone there.
In the end, he just said to me, ‘I don’t like you working there, I don’t like that guy that you work for. You’re going to go there today and resign.’
And so that’s what I had to do, I had to leave my career of 25 years behind. I didn’t have a choice. I used to be a nurse so I went back to do that.
I thought I would die under his control. Then, in 2020, I saw an opportunity.
Covid hit and, for a limited period, the Australian government allowed eligible people to access $10,000 from their superannuation – a type of retirement fund – even if they hadn’t reached retirement age.
I had just turned 60 and I saw this as an opportunity to make a financial escape plan without David’s knowledge, as he still controlled all my money.
Still, I didn’t escape straight away. David’s control over me was so strong that it took almost three years until I managed to free myself from his clutches.
I packed my suitcase as he kept saying, ‘You’re not going, you’re not going.’ I had to push him out of the way – 17 years of fear and frustration pulsing through my veins -then dashed out of the house and into the car.
He roared and raged in the rear-view mirror as I slammed the accelerator. Tears were flowing down my face, my heart was racing. I drove straight to the police station.
When I arrived, I pulled in and grabbed my phone from my handbag. I called David and said as calmly as my body would allow: ‘I’m at the police station and I’m going to report you – or you’re going to let me come back now, get my stuff and leave.’
He responded: ‘Okay, well, come back – but if you try to leave me, I’m going to make sure I destroy you financially. You will walk away with nothing.’
And that’s exactly what he did.
I took him to court but the experience was so traumatising and stressful I had a heart attack.
During divorce proceedings, my husband refused to provide full financial disclosure, only offering two pages of a bank statement from his brother.
He dragged out the divorce over 20 months, meaning I lost almost all my superannuation to legal fees and rent. At the end of it all, he lied to the court – just like he’d lied to everyone during our 17-year marriage. I wasn’t even left with enough money to buy a one-bedroom apartment to retire in. He even took my beloved dog away by claiming it was his.
The court ruled that since he was older, he would get the majority of the assets, even though I had contributed significantly to our finances during our almost two decades together.
With no prospects of home ownership at 62, despite having two successful careers in nursing and real estate, I have decided to live in a caravan when I retire. The one silver lining is I’ll get to travel around Australia and really enjoy life.
Even with David out of my life, he still lingers in the serious health issues I now live with as a result of the years of stress he put me through. I can’t work full-time. I would like to resume my online business, but it’s hard being so poor and unwell.
But despite everything I’ve been through and I all continue to suffer, I consider myself lucky. I stared a monster straight in the eyes and survived.
- As told to Carina Stathis. * Name has been changed
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