Yesterday I had the occasion to help my daughter’s third grade class sell lemonade for charity. The location was picked as the school’s neighborhood and some of us moms got together to hold up pitchers to the passers-by. The idea was to pass on some useful info to our kids about the general goodness of people. Some need more than others.

But there was a snag. The reason we moved into the neighborhood in the first place, and the reason we were at that wonderful school was because we were props in an identity a sociopath was working out for himself.

That’s the best way I can put it after a couple of years analysis. In act one, he developed trust with us. He bonded with my daughter and with me and after a year, in act two, we became a “family.” In act three, he set up a whole different life with some poor girl while he was finishing out his stint in our lives. But he couldn’t bear that we think badly of him so he concocted an elaborate lie about his son who “cutting himself” and needed his father. Of course, we would encourage him to go help his son whom he abandoned at birth (literally, walked away from his baby son at the airport and never looked back but for a few token visits a year).

He carried on a romantic relationship with me the entire time he was courting his new girl in his new life up to the very week he was to get married. He made up some story about how his ex-wife was dying of cancer and he had to go up to Seattle to take charge of his step-son. Seriously, are you keeping track? But of course, he was on his way to getting married.

The most unforgivable thing he does is build elaborate lies on the backs of children he’s known. So his son this, his step-son that. He convinced his new bride (who was just 21 years old btw) that the reason he was still in contact with us was because of my daughter. The truth was, he promised to see her but never did after the day he left. Not one time.

The fallout of this hideousness was that somehow the girl tracked down my emails and accused him of “cheating.” Of course, she had no way of knowing that the house he’d been using to get her to fall for him (nothing says ‘i love you’ like a big house in the Hollywood Hills) was the very same house he bought “for” my daughter and me. The one he paraded in front of my daughter as in “this is going to be your bedroom and your bathroom.”

Anyway, the girl sobbed hysterically after “finding out,” but the poor thing was poorly matched for a seasoned sociopath like this Brit. He is so good at the web of lies he builds most any woman is capable of shutting down the most sensible part of her brain to believe him. You’ve seen guys like this on Oprah.

The girl married him anyway because, ka-ching! He agreed, out of desperation, to marry her without a prenup. Not the smartest move for a fickle sociopath to make but what can you do? This is my only consolation in all of this. I often calm my urge to burn his half-built house down with the knowledge that he has married to a girl will ultimately lead to his financial ruin.

All of this to say that, unfortunately, our afternoon was ruined by his driving by in his shiny black BMW with his soon-to-be-very-wealthy bride. But the worst part was, he didn’t even look up and wave at my daughter. I didn’t expect him to acknowledge me, after all, he can’t even talk to me or his bride will cash in her no-prenup and it’s bye-bye Charlie. But to not look up to an eight year old girl who once was deeply attached to him? To just keep looking straight ahead while you’re stopped for a few minutes? What kind of a monster does that?

I write this because I remain, after almost two years since the last time I saw him, stunned at his inability to feel anything that most humans feel. You have to feel almost sorry for someone that afraid. When I knew him I was always amazed at how unattached he was to things like cars, computers, clothing and houses. He would just move through them. And I asked him once, do you do that with people too? He said, of course not!

I am grateful that there is one young woman who can avenge all women he’s fucked over. I pray she waits for her shot and takes it. Maybe they can pony up $20 grand and he can have one sperm extracted from his sterile man parts and they can have yet another child he will then abandon, leaving behind another woman who will be railing against him. Only this woman, this girl, will have half of everything the bastard owns. That is getting him the only place he lives.

Of course, I know that I am the one to blame for all of it. I sensed there was something wrong with him from the beginning but he was so charming and funny and interesting I kept thinking, like most stupid women, that he would change. The other frightening thing he does is pretend to give over power in the relationship to the woman, as in “if you ever leave me I’ll kill myself. It was never to that extreme but that’s the general idea. The truth is, he is the one who always leaves. ALWAYS. Women must learn to pay attention early on to these clues. I should have known that any human being who is capable of leaving his crying infant son at an airport is capable of anything.

This is the affliction he has, I discovered, in case anyone is interested.

Here is a better definition.

The bottom line is this. If it sounds too good to be true? It usually is.