I wonder the same thing. I just talked to the 1st wife of my latest P. They were married 11 years. Knew each other 3 yrs before that. She knew NOTHING about him. I went to her wanting to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of him, his background, childhood, etc. She knew nothing. I expected her to not be shocked at all by what I told her he's been doing to women since their divorce 6 yrs ago. She was in complete shock. It's like they were total strangers. I know more about him than anyone. He's done such a good job keeping everyone separate so that nobody finds out the whole truth. But after her, he married another woman last year, based on a con. Telling her he was a millionaire, doctor, etc. She figured it out pretty quick and annulled it. There's been other short term romances. But it's all catching up to him. He's constantly committing crime and getting caught, and getting sued by everyone under the sun, etc. His life is totally out of control. I'd be shocked if he's not in jail or dead by this time next year.

When I spoke to her she just seemed EXTREMELY gullible and naive. Like she didn't bother checking into anything about him. He told all 3 of us victims (me and the 2 ex wives) that he moved here at 17 from England with his family. Yet told them that his sister (3 yrs younger) was born in FL and raised in the US (she has no accent). He uses a very strong British accent. Yet, I talked to some ex coworkers of his who said he had no accent. It seems the accent is fake. Yet his ex wife that was with him for 11 yrs never questioned this story. It just seemed like she allowed him to get away with it for longer. Never looking into his stories.

It just totally amazes me that with the extent of what this guy does to people, his crimes and cons and everything, that he is still living. It's straight out of the movies. You never expect to encounter someone this evil. And this is after 2 previous experience with sociopaths who were sexual predators (one on the sex offender registry).

I think its amazing too how they can keep it going. But when a sociopath marry its only to have a place were he can hide their perverted nature. To keep a facade. There are no love or feelings from a sociopath no matter they stayed in your life for a days, months or decades. A psychopath/sociopath/narcissist used his marriage as a disguise, pretending to the outside everything is normal when its not. How they keep it so long I think depends on each situation and circumstances.

Most psychopaths cannot sustain a r/s or marriage for long.

http://psychopathyawareness.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/do-psychopaths-fall-in-love/

Kids and our ridiculous society's brainwashing project that says all parents actually love their children.
I only stayed with mine because I thought I was doing the right thing but it was a MISERABLE nightmare of a relationship and we split up every 2 years... then got back together with his promises that he went to counseling and was changing... like a broken record until I started taking psychology courses at college.

9 times outta 10, kids are the hook and the anchor.

The other exception is personal tragedy and/or absolutely no self worth.

I think there are flavors of psychopaths, with core things in common, but variation around those core characteristics. Some bounce from thing to thing, relationship to relationship. These may be the more impulsive, bored, addicted to risk ones. Or they may be the very cold, all about business, nothing personal (as they con and rip you off) ones. But there is another group that hides in plain sight with a family, acting like an initially doting, but later disconnected spouse and parent. And usually more, often hidden.

The lower-functioning ones (in our terms, but doing pretty well as a psychopath) may overlap into other personality disorders. In the case of mine I believe he is NPD/BPD/Psychopath all rolled into one. So, in my case, he was happily dependent on me for much of the marriage. When you have a deal that sweet, why rock the boat? So, no wonder HE stayed. It worked for him. He could have fun. As aagardfamily said, we victims mostly stay for the kids.

As many Ns/Ps do, he masqueraded as fun dad. I think this is because they are more childlike, irresponsible and immature, bored and active, so they resonate with children. After all was exposed, it was clear he cared a whole lot less than he initially put on. So, the "for the kids" hook works. We spouses are often unhappy for a long time, but just enduring it.

My psychopath was married 17 years but he maintained a secret life behind his wifes back the whole time. She had a life threatening illness to contend with (kidney failure) and therefore had more important things to be worrying about than his drama I'm sure. She eventually died (aged 35) and I believe that is when the full blown psycopathy kicked in (aided by substance abuse). He seemed attached to his wife even though he had absolutely no respect for her and cheated on her repeatedly throughout the marriage (and she seemed aware of this). Her mother has stayed in contact with him and used to come round and do his housework, she even had her own key (?) .. until I made him get it back off them. He seemed to want to keep them in the good books and if his car broke down, he would phone her to come and pick him up. He never had a nice word to say about the woman (or his wife) and said they were controlling and always poking their noses in where it wasn't wanted. (most bizarre)

* them .. his mother-in-law and her husband (who incidently, seemed more aware and less happy about his wife being used by him).

I read all stories and I think it is a lesson in critical thinking. Question things and people. My friend dated a guy for four years and never asked to go to his house. Later she found out he was living someone and had a double life. I'm getting better at this from the get go... not good to be paranoid but check things out, question things that don't add up and protect yourself.

One of my xN's thinks we were "in a rel" for 6 years, when, in fact, we were actually only together for about 18 months, scattered here and there in a 6 year time span. He dated OW the whole time, and on two of his long breaks I also dated two other ppl. The longest we were ever really together was maybe 2 months.

And my xNH and I were legally married for 5 years, but in reality the 'relationship' only lasted a week before we were headed for divorce but then reconciled, then 11 months before we were headed for divorce again and reconciled, and then 3 months before we were again headed for divorce but then reconciled...etc. By the time we were acytually divorced I would estimate we were actually 'together' for a total of maybe 2 years, on and off.

The one I was with was married but hid it very well for a year. He claimed he had a second weekend “job” there was never a weekend job, he was married and going home to see his family on the weekends. He went to the extremes of creating fake schedules, talked constantly about his other “job” and about the people he worked with. He even invented a coworker, he would tell me stories about his coworker and his family, he even said his coworker was having problems with his wife and wanted me to help him out. Through him, I gave a fake person advice. He would always relay messages to me from other invented people. My exP told me that his “coworker” was really appreciative of my advice and liked me a lot, and that him and his wife invited us to go out with them, they were so grateful to me getting them back together and they wanted to do something nice. He set up a whole made up evening about how we were all going to go out to dinner and go to bars afterwards but their son got sick last minute and had to cancel. While I was getting ready for the evening, he pretended to get texts from them and was relaying the messages to me, I am sure he was texting other women instead. I felt really sorry for their son getting sick. You don’t even know what it did to me to find out that all of it was lies. Like the dumbest person in the whole universe! lol!

That is just one example of how he hid his marriage from me. I have tons. They have no moral boundaries, they go through the sickest of extremes if need be.

I stalked him and found out a lot of things about him, I found his wife’s face book, not under her name so it was hard but I succeeded anyway. According to her face book she is happily married. Not sure how long but they have a son in his early 20's. She is all about her husband and family and had a family portrait of them as her background, they looked really happy. It just mind boggled me, after seeing her FB I knew that there was no point in contacting her to see if she could help me to stop him from stalking me. While doing all of this he also was seeing other women, catfished women online, was into swinging and group sex clubs, and strip clubs.

@Neive: This: " Through him, I gave a fake person advice. He would always relay messages to me from other invented people." made me LOL! My xNH also took me to his job site and introduced me to all of his "employees" before we got married. I found out later that they were co-workers and he was just a laborer. wtf? How can they possibly imagine that we will never find out?!?

And wow. I would have been so tempted to send his wife a message and a photo of the two of you together and tell her the truth. But then again, maybe she knew and liked being in a 'pretend marriage".

Some of these stories sound exactly like mine. I met a man who I thought was a very hard worker (due to all the "double shifts" he was putting in at work). He also told me that he was going through a very nasty divorce and gave me specific details about lawyer meetings, etc. I thought our relationship would progress once he got through his divorce. This went on a for almost two years. I saw him regularly, he was constantly in touch with me, and then one day I found out via facebook that he was actually in a serious relationship with another woman. I had absolutely no idea this woman existed. His "divorce" was just a cover up to keep me from getting close enough to find out about her, although he was cheating on her left and right. I can't believe that someone would go to such great lengths to lie can make up such an elaborate story to keep me from finding out about her. Instead of just saying he didn't want to see me anymore, or we had no future together, he was just using me, knowing all the while that he never really wanted to be with me. That is what hurts the most. I thought I was being there for him through this "divorce" but that entire story was a lie.

I was married to a psychopath for 30 years. He did not maintain a "relatiionship" with me. He multi-tasked throughout our married years, even in the first week of our marriage. He went right on living the life of a single male player. For periods of time, he pretended to go to work when he didn't have a job, but went off to party or spend his days with other women. He invented business trips he didn't go on. He recycled me about every 3-4 months and romanced me for a few weeks, then he disappeared again. Married or partnered psychopaths are just using the spouse as a cover.

I was the girlfriend of another P for 3 years. He had allegedly been "married" previously for 24 years. he was even worse than my husband. He had NO faithful periods EVER. He multi-tasked with many, many women every single day of our lives, which I soon discovered after we began living together. he would get up after I feel asleep and spend all night online with other women. He did it ALL DAY EVERYDAY, sneaking off every five minutes to e-mail and hit dating sites. Every time we were out, he hit EVERY BATHROOM, literally ditching into a bahtroom every 10 minutes to sext.

Don't ever think that marriage or cohabitation constitutes a relationship. Psychopaths fake relationships.

Kris my ex did the same...disappearing for lengthy periods to the bathroom. Or he would disappear for such a short time to the bathroom that there's no way he could even have taken a piss. I knew what he was up to and it would piss me off to no end but I didn't bother saying anything. He didn't have to get up at night to message women online. He only saw me once every 4-8 weeks depending on "his needs" so he mostly stuck with messaging his brothel the minute I was gone.