Oh, oh, best not to form close relationships with people you don't see in real space. Online is often off base and can end in hurt for a trusting and loving person as you seem to be. So sorry this happened to you.
People do and say things on line they may never say in real life mainly because they know they can get away with it despite that God is all knowing and all seeing. God bless..praying for you!
I need to correct you on that. You'll obviously never dealt with a sociopath before. I just extricated myself from a 9-year "relationship" with one. This man deserves an Oscar for Best Liar - he can lie bold-face right to your face and get you to believe anything. Oh, he can turn on the charm and charisma, opens doors for the ladies, the whole 9 yards... and whatever you can do, he can do better, he knows more, etc. etc.
Turns out he not only was in a relationship with me, but he also was living with another woman who he'd started a relationship with since before he and I met AND he had a third woman (a resident at the apartment complex he manages) caught up in his web of deceit. Plus, both of these woman had teenage daughters for him to play "father figure" to. Since 2005 he had his girlfriend and me, and since 2009 he had THREE women in play. And undoubedly he had more than just us.
The whole saga is way too long for me to recant here, but let's just say I gradually became wise to him, then found out the full truth about that I was part of a harem, and then told him the truth that I knew everything he had been up to. I did that over text, and part of me wishes it had been to his face, because I would have loved to see his reaction to know that *I* was the one who sent the anonymous note to his "step-daughter" to let her know that he was cheating on her mother with two other women. I told him he could respond or not, I really didn't care, because I wanted to forget that he ever existed in my life.
I never heard from him after that, and I'm glad. He really is a pathetic creature. He prefers insecure women who he can, not physically, but psychologically, overpower. He's 72 (and looks in his 50's), so he prefers women from that era when women were demure, genteel, and didn't challenge a man even when he openly disrepects them, and accept his lying, even when they know the facts, because they are scared to lose him because they've bought into the lie that they will never find Another Man Like Him. He doesn't like strong women with a feminist viewpoint on life, who openly challenge his words and actions when they don't add up. He's threatened by that, so that's when he starts pouring on the gaslighting and blame-shifting, and abandoning you so you'll then sit by yourself, contemplate what YOU DID WRONG, so then you can go crawling back to him, all contrite and apologetic. Ready for the next round, because it is a cycle that is only going to repeat itself until you wise up and learn. It takes a strong-minded woman to stand up against that and tell him where to go. Took me 9 years but, thankfully, I reached it.
And I'm one of the lucky ones - only my psyche is damaged. There are a lot of people out there who have lost their homes, their finances, and sometimes even their families to sociopaths.
