Loss 38/101: Loss of a reality: Mary Turner Thomson

#057. Imagine what it might be like to lose everything around you - husband, house, car, money, financial security, and even your trust in people. Now imagine what that would be like if it was all because you met and fell in love with a psychopath.   

This is The Silent Why, a podcast on a mission to open up conversations around loss and grief and to see if hope can be found in 101 different types of loss.

Loss #38 of 101 - Loss of a reality

Meet Mary Turner Thomson, from Scotland, who has an incredible story about the loss of her whole reality when her world - as she knew it - fell apart in 2006.

Mary met Will through internet dating, got married and had children, but six years later she had a phone call from another woman that shattered everything Mary thought she knew about her life. The man Mary had married turned out to be a serial bigamist, con man, convicted sex offender and a psychopath (by the true definition of the word).

In this episode Mary talks openly about her experience of multiple losses including the devastating loss of her wonderfully supportive mum to cancer, just months after it all happened.

Mary has used her experience to help many other women in similar situations and wrote an amazing book telling the full story (The Bigamist - https://amz.run/6C6Y). Her experience has since led her to study and write about psychopaths, which added a fascinating layer to our chat and prompted her second book (The Psychopath - https://amz.run/6C6Z).

In our fascinating chat Mary talks about what it’s like to process so many losses in one go, her desire to help others and not be a victim, the difficult loss of her mum which still affects her greatly, what the term ‘psychopath’ really means and why she doesn’t vilify the man who conned her.

For more about Mary Turner Thomson and her books visit: www.maryturnerthomson.com and for more about her new social enterprise The Book Whisperers visit: www.thebookwhisperers.com 

Transcript

Mary: 0:02

Hi, my name is Mary Turner Thompson and I'm here to talk about several losses, but mostly about what I saw as the loss of my reality.

Claire : 0:16

Welcome to The Silent Why. I'm Claire.

Chris: 0:18

And I'm Chris. And we're back from our short break.

Claire : 0:20

(Albeit littered with Covid, tissues, Lemsips and many other snuffly experiences.)

Chris: 0:24

With a cracking episode for you on The Silent Why. A podcast on a mission to explore 101 different types of loss, to see if it's possible to find hope in every kind of grief.

Claire : 0:34

But it is good to be back!

Chris: 0:35

Albeit with quirky old people voices.

Claire : 0:38

This is episode 57 and loss 38 of 101. And a very unique, incredible story from Mary in Scotland, about love, lies and loss.

Chris: 0:48

She was a single mom in the year 2000. And Mary was encouraged to try internet dating. 'What could possibly go wrong?' her friends would insist, well, it did go wrong.

Mary: 0:57

I lost everything. And I was suddenly plunged into debt, couldn't work, couldn't couldn't do anything. Lost my trust in people lost my faith in, in humanity, just because I met the wrong person. What could possibly go wrong?

Chris: 1:11

Imagine falling in love with a con artist.

Claire : 1:14

Six years after marry married Will, he turned out to be a serial monogamist con man convicted sex offender and a psychopath. By the true definition of the word.

Mary: 1:23

I have never had another relationship. I don't think I could trust myself and my judgement, to be honest, I mean, between between us and all the listeners, I think I'm utterly terrified of intimacy now. So I've lost that kind of ability to have a relationship because I don't think I could let someone in.

Claire : 1:42

Her experience led her into a huge amount of loss, which was Crawley followed by the death of her mum, the one person she knew to be true and who loved her completely.

Chris: 1:50

Yet, despite all Mary's been through, she's passionate about sharing her story to help others around the world.

Mary: 1:56

15 years of talking about it has helped me, but it's helped me more because it's helped other people that that sort of really built me up again, and really made me feel that my experience wasn't wasted.

Claire : 2:07

And her experience has led her to study and write about psychopaths, which adds a fascinating layer to our chat. And yes, we did leave the"unsanitary story" that she told us in the interview for you.

Chris: 2:17

So let's get things going, at a time when our voice was less croaky, and we started off our chat with Mary by asking her to tell us a bit about herself and what an average week looks like for her at the moment.

Mary: 2:31

My name is Mary Turner Thompson. I am an author and a publishing consultant, Managing Director of the Book Whispers Community Interest Company. An average week? I'm a mother of 23 year old, a 21 year old and a 17 year old so most of my week is spent, if not working, driving - permanent stage of taxi driver for my children.

Claire : 2:54

We can say I think your backstory is fairly unique, especially compared to anyone we've spoken to before. Just maybe give us an abridged version somehow of how it is that we came across you and what you've been through.

Mary: 3:06

So in the year 2000. It was the brand new thing called Internet Dating was just starting up. I was a single mum with a one-year-old daughter. So I had some friends who said 'Now why don't you try this newfangled thing called Internet dating. What could possibly go wrong?' So being a happy, healthy, fully employed, homeowning, professional woman with a daughter I went on internet dating. I met a man fell absolutely head over heels in love with him. We got engaged. We got married. We had two children, which was a medical miracle because he was supposedly infertile, and six years into our relationship I got a phone call from his other wife, who had five children to him and turned out he had two wives, five fiance's and he's a psychopath who actively impregnates women to rip them off for money. So I lost£200,000 to the man. He left me with credit cards he'd taken out my name to the tune of £56,000 and I lost my home, I lost my car, I lost my everything. I lost everything. And I was suddenly plunged into debt couldn't work, couldn't couldn't do anything. Lost my trust in people, lost my faith in in humanity, just because I met the wrong person. So yeah, what could possibly go wrong?[laughs] What I didn't lose was my sense of humour!

Chris: 4:27

Well done for summarising that because I know you've spent many hours go into into great detail talking through that story. What's been the sort of change in your experience of retelling that story, whether it be in formal interview settings or informal friendship and meeting people for the first time settings? What's it been like telling that story?

Mary: 4:43

Honestly, writing a book about the subject was the best thing I could have ever done. Because I've had 15 years of therapy on podcasts and television shows. Instead of having to go to a therapist and talk about it. I've been talking to people you know in speaking gigs, I've been talking to people on the radio, it's just extraordinary how writing it down, just sort of facilitated that kind of conversation. And that talking to people that actually allowed other people to come to me as well and say,'something similar happened to me'. And one of the huge things I've been, I'm a massive advocate for not victim shaming, and not just not victim shaming other people, but not victim shaming yourself. And so many people who have been in an abusive relationship, actually blame themselves, you know, 'oh, what was me I did something wrong' or, and, don't tell people because they're so ashamed of what happened to them. I'm the sort of huge advocate of saying, 'No one, no one should ever feel that they should be ashamed of having been a victim of a crime'. That's just, you know, that, to me is just absolute, you should never be ashamed to be a victim of a crime. So the fact that I sort of stood up and talked about it and said, you know, stood up, waved the flag and said, 'This happened to me, and I'm not ashamed', has allowed other people to come forward and say, they now get it. And having those letters from people and having people write to you saying, 'Thank you, because you've changed my life', just makes everything worthwhile. It means that no matter what I went through, it's had an impact on other people. And that that means that it was worth something. It wasn't wasted.

Chris: 6:19

Are they letters from people in very similar situations, or any any old situation with relationships?

Mary: 6:24

Gosh I mean, really, it's wide ranging, but quite a few very, very similar situations. And people who've, who happened to 30 years ago, and they've never told anyone, they feel so embarrassed by what happened, they've never told their family or their friends or anything. They've just, they've hidden it. And sometimes it's just infidelity. Sometimes it's having been conned by your partner. There was one lady who wrote to me from Australia a couple of years ago, who, who actually said, and it still still blows me away, she said that she was about to commit suicide, and then she read my book. Even if nobody else had ever read my book, even if nobody else had ever commented or anything else, that one would make it worthwhile. me having gone through what I went through and written the book, because somebody no longer feels their life is worthless. So that's, it's it's a really extraordinary thing. So yeah, 15 years of talking about it has helped me, but it's helped me more because it's helped other people, that that sort of really built me up again, and really made me feel that my experience wasn't wasted.

Claire : 7:24

It must be hard to have people I mean, fully understand the situation anyway, because I haven't really been through it. But at the same time you speak with a lot of compassion about, Will, your husband, I'm guessing it will be easy to sort of vilify the person that's done it because they've done a lot of things that were bad. You don't speak as if you hate him. And I'm guessing obviously, you fall in love with these people, so there's something about them that's amazing at the beginning. So what was it about him that was actually so kind of enticing?

Mary: 7:50

Well, he's a psychopath, I mean I'm not using that term as abusive, I'm not going 'oh, he's a psychopath!' Medically, I would say he is a psychopath. He scores, there's a psychopath test that is done by professionals in professional settings. But it's 20 questions, which is 0, 1 or 2 you get scored. So pathological lying - you'd either score 0 because you're not at all, 1 because you might be a little bit or 2, because you definitely are. They're just literally statements like 'many marital relationships', or 'juvenile delinquency' or 'criminal versatility'. And actually, when you when you have a look at Will Jordan, he would score 40 out of 40, he would score two for every single one. He is so clearly psychopathic, that he's actually been assessed in absentia by a couple of people, a couple of psychologists in America, who've done reports on psychopathy, and survivors if psychopaths. And they have assessed him as being a psychopath. When I use the term psychopath motive, I'm not doing it as a derogatory term. It's just the way his brain functions. And psychopaths basically they don't have empathy, they don't have conscience and remorse. They don't have that kind of, the easiest way to describe it is if I snapped my finger in front of you, if I just literally crack it in front of you, I can see, because I can see you, other people can't see you, but your your eyes crinkled, your head move back slightly and slightly down. And the reason that happens is because it's like two parts in your brain, just above the ears towards the back, that when you see someone else get hurt it's like too hot needles going into your brain. You actually feel physical pain when you see someone else get hurt. That is empathy. Psychopaths don't have that. So they don't have that response. So when they see someone getting hurt, and they see other people around that person reacting, they might copy the reaction, but they don't feel the empathy so that they don't have the capacity to love. They don't have the capacity to see people in those ways. So people become like toys. Have you ever ever seen that game Sims?

Claire : 9:47

Yeah.

Mary: 9:47

All right, says computer game where you manipulate people on the screen and make them do things. That's what life is like to a psychopath. All the people around them are just things to be manipulated their toys, they're moving parts. So they don't, it's not personal what they do to the victims, it's not personal at all. It's like, then the other analogy I use is like a cat playing with the mouse. You wouldn't scold the cat and then expect the cat not to actually carry on chasing mice, it's going to do it. That's what this does is nature. But it's nothing personal to the mouse. It's not whether the mouse was pretty enough or rich enough or kind enough, or whether had it, whether it had babies or not, is completely irrelevant to the cat, the cat's just, it's a toy. And that's how psychopaths see the rest of us. They just see us as, as things to be used. So no, I don't I don't hate him. I don't vilify him, I try and educate people so that they actually can understand and see the red flag so they don't get caught the same way as I did, hopefully, then I'll be protecting some people by doing that. And I think education really is the key, but he'll carry on doing it. If I can, I would stop him. I try and make sure that his face is out there so people can find him, do find him, and contact me. And we've got a nice sort of Facebook group of his victims. [laughs] It's like there's that many. I do my best to try and make sure that, I don't want to ever have someone come to me and say, you know, they've been they've been victimised by the same man and go, 'Why didn't you do something about it?' Because nobody did for me, none of his previous partners did anything before I did, so there was nothing for me to find when I went looking for, to check my partner out. At least now there is something for people to find - if he uses the same name, because he changed his name all the time.

Claire : 11:28

As a sort of a side note, if we don't ever have a psychopath on the podcast, do they feel loss?

Mary: 11:35

Um, not so much, I wouldn't think, no. I think, no more than loss of a toy. Psychopaths don't care about anyone including themselves. So they don't care about their future self, they don't care that in, you know, a day, two days a year, they're gonna go to jail. We care about our future selves as if it's another person. So you might not drink too much tonight, because you don't want a hangover tomorrow. So you're caring about that person you are going to be tomorrow. So they don't care about that person. This is like they'll look at it and go, well, that person hasn't done anything for me. Why would I look after them? So that they don't have that kind of continuity of care for themselves. They care about themselves right now, but they don't care about their future selves. So they can do sort of damage and harm to themselves. There is a story I don't know if it's sanitary enough for your podcast, you might have to cut this one out, but one of his partners complained she didn't want to have any more children and she was going to get our tubes tied. And he said, 'No, no, no, darling, I'll go get a vasectomy, it's much less invasive'. So he went away and he came back with what looked like two cigarette burns either side of his testes. And she, of course, got pregnant again.

Claire : 12:41

Oh, no!

Mary: 12:42

I always find this funny because this is where the men go'urgh!'

Chris: 12:45

I do feel empathy!

Mary: 12:48

It's not the fact that he did it once, he's burned himself with the cigarette once, it's the fact that a few seconds later, he still didn't care enough about the future self was going to feel the pain again, that he did it a second time.

Claire : 13:00

I can't work out if it feels like it would be freeing to be a little bit like this?

Mary: 13:04

Oh, I do often nothing, I think you know, it would be quite, I think it'd be very lonely. Because I think what what it comes down to is our lives are not I mean, that's one of the lovely things about having lost everything, it's like when you've lost everything, suddenly, material things don't really matter so much, you realise that that just doesn't matter. Your car doesn't matter, your house doesn't matter. I mean, the one thing I had left was my three children. They were seven, four and one at the time. And they are the only thing that mattered is the people the relationships you have the love that you have in your family, your life, the people you care about the people you can hold close, they're the things that really, really matter. And psychopaths don't have that they have nothing, the only thing that matters to them is money, sex and power. And actually, it's rather sad existence, because they'll never they'll never truly get that connection with somebody else. They might be able to manipulate them, they might be richer, they might be more powerfu, but ultimately their life is incredibly empty.

Chris: 14:01

Come back to you and your experience, you know, after this all happened, you've already highlighted several losses, some of them temporary, some of them permanent. Were there any sort of permanent losses that you felt most keenly that were the most devastating and heartbreaking and took you the longest to sort of grieve and process?

Mary: 14:21

I think well, I mean, the greatest loss of all is was only about two or three months after I found out that my husband actually had never existed and I indeed wasn't married because he was already married to someone else, my mother was diagnosed as terminally ill. So I lost her within another three or four months after that. So on top of losing everything, yeah, losing that one person who I knew absolutely loved me was absolutely devastating. And I still get choked up when I talk about it and that's 2006 - so a while ago. So that that was never, I will never get that back. But no, I guess the other, the other loss is I, I have never had another relationship. I don't think I could trust myself and my judgement, I don't think I want, I never wanted to bring another man into my children's lives and have it fail. So I was adamant that until at least the children were grown up now effectively, I wouldn't mind necessarily going into another relationship. But I to be to be honest, I mean, between us and all the listeners, I think I'm utterly terrified of intimacy now. So I've lost that kind of ability to have a relationship because I don't think I could let someone in. Because I was with him for six years, it was the longest relationship I've ever had. And I absolutely trusted him. I knew there was some very dodgy things about him, but I trusted that he loved me and I trusted. And you can imagine that sort of now at 56, well 57 years old, you know, six years into a relationship, I will be still waiting for the for the shoe to drop, I would still be waiting for the betrayal to come. So you know, I've kind of lost that ability to have relationship, I think I'm now permanently single, actually quite happily so, I don't feel that I am missing something by not having a relationship. But I have three wonderful children who I have relationship with, and I'm keenly aware that they're all about to grow up and, and go their their ways. So yeah, it's gonna be an interesting, next stage of my life.

Claire : 16:35

Quite often we talk to people about loss, sometimes it's a bereavement or as a death as definitive point when you lose somebody. And the grief either kicks in then or a bit later. But with something like this, was it on the day that you got that phone call in 2006 from the other wife, was that when you felt like the grief and the loss hit you? Or did it take a while for that to kind of impact?

Mary: 16:56

Weirdly enough, when I got the phone call from the other wife, in fact, she she dropped everything and drove up and we sat in a cafe initially and talked, she showed me pictures of her children, I showed a picture of mine, they were remarkably similar. All the children, the 14 that I know of so far, all look alike. It's quite frightening.

Claire : 17:14

Gosh

Mary: 17:14

Strong genes. So yeah, I mean, she she left about six o'clock in the morning, and I sent him a text just saying the relationship's over, didn't tell him why because she wanted to get down there and get the kids away from him before he found out the truth. And it didn't, it didn't kick in. But the weird part about that is that it was a relief. It was a relief. And I kind of felt slightly like you get out of jail free card because life by that stayed with him was quite horrendous. He was psychologically, emotionally, financially torturing me. And when I say he was psychologically torturing me, he had told me that we were being blackmailed, that somebody had threatened to kidnap the kids and rip bits off them and send them through the post unless we came up with money. I wasn't sleeping. I had three small children, seven, four and one years old. And I would get up in the middle of night hearing a sound and search the flat expecting to see someone having broken in to literally kidnap my children on purpose. You know, it wasn't that it might be a random burglar, but somebody who was actually targeting us, and it was six years of brainwashing by this stage. So the to find out that there weren't the shadowy people coming after this, they weren't these urm awful, situation, and it was just him, actually finding out that he was bigamous and a con man, and it was all him, was in this really strange way a relief, so that the grief of that loss didn't really kick in at all, not immediately. It just, that kind of, it took a while. I think also, I was in a lot of shock. It did sort of take a while for it to kind of creep up on me, I think.

Chris: 18:51

In the months and years that then follow that you must have found yourself in between sort of talking to maybe family and friends about it and talking to experts about it, but also talking to the media and those that want to hear this story. Was it ever confusing in the sense of which version of me am I going to be? Am I going to be the raw and emotional and just completely devastated, or am I going to be the sense of humour and let me let me be a storyteller?

Mary: 19:19

No, no, it was never confusing. I had a previous experience that changed how I viewed this situation. So I was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. Now that stopped when I was six years old. And I went through all the classic things that you do when you've been abused as a child, up until the age of about 26. At 26, I had had a revelation and I realised that what had happened to me when I was six had finished when I was six. Everything that happened in the previous 20 years, I'd done to myself, and I made a conscious vow when I was 26 years old, I was never going to be a victim. again. So when all this happened, I wasn't gonna victimise myself again, you know, I had been a victim of another con, very similar. I've been gaslighted I've been loved bombed, I've been groomed, manipulated and abused, but I wasn't gonna give him one more second than I already had. So because of the previous experience I just went 'no I'm done. I'm not going to throw throw any more time or money or, or any kind of my any more of my energy at him, I'm going to focus that one on myself and my children'. So yeah, so what came out afterwards has always been absolutely genuine me. And the other thing is that I told my children straightaway, which is an odd one, some people find it strange, but they've grown up knowing the story, they've never had it kind of creep up behind them. But in telling them the story, I also said to them, I will never, ever lie to you. You asked me a question, I will tell you the truth. Because, you know, having having got a father who's consummate liar, they needed to know that somebody in their life would always tell them the truth. So I have I had I also said, I would never lie to anyone else. So I have never lied either about my emotional state or about the situation, I will just always tell the truth. And the other thing about always telling the truth is never have to worry about what you say. You just, you just you just tell the truth, so you don't lie about anything to anyone.

Claire : 21:20

Has the experience changed how you parented at all?

Mary: 21:23

Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, completely. I mean, I actually had somebody at my children's school, when I mentioned that I talked to the children, she she actually said, 'That's tantamount to child abuse'. Telling the children the truth about the situation is tantamount to child abuse, because they should have grown up, you know, believing their father was a good person. And I didn't tell them, I didn't tell the children 'oh your dad's bad guy', you know, I said, 'Your dad has a brain situation in his brain, he doesn't have empathy, he can't love. And therefore, he doesn't love you. But it's nothing to do with you. It's to do with him. And he doesn't have the capacity to love.' so that they grew up, my middle daughter, for instance, used to sit on my lap and cry every day, and I would cry with her. And then after five or six days, it was there was a day without it. And then there was a day with it. And then it was every two or three days. But every time they cried, we would talk about it. And they would be able to actually express what was on their minds. And we went through it together as a family, the four of us, well my son was one so he really didn't know what was going on. But you know, the loss of their dad, you know, the loss of the person they thought he was we were able to talk it through. And so they grew up knowing and being able to ask the questions they wanted to ask, so they've never had any issues. I mean, they do have issues, because they didn't have a loving father, but they don't have issues because they didn't know anything. That was lovely. Actually at school, when the kids are running out to the school gates, most of the parents will be standing there and they go, 'How is your day?' and the kids will go 'fine'. 'So did you have fun?' 'Yep'. And my kids were coming running out of school 'Mum, mum, I did this today, and I did that today. And this happened. And that happened'. And the parents, other parents at the gate would turn around to me and say, 'How do you do that? Wow. Why? Because I can't get anything out of mine'. And I would just say'it's because I talk to them'. They know, they've grown up knowing that I communicate with them. I tell them what's going on in my life. I tell them what's what's upsetting me. And the good things are doing the bad. And there's so many parents that don't they just don't talk to the kids. And they think they're putting themselves on this pedestal to be the good role model and everything else. But what they're really doing is teaching the kids not to talk.

Chris: 23:29

What do you think would have been on reflection, the main impact on the children if you had made the decision years ago to keep it a secret until they reach 18 years old, for example, and tell them. What do you think would have been the main impact of that way of parenting?

Mary: 23:42

Oh, well, I've seen enough EastEnders to know that they would have come back saying,'Oh, I've met this lovely girl, you know, she's so like me, and we're pregnant'. And it'll turn out to be a half brother or sister you know. So that was really forefront of my mind because I know of 14 children ranging from currently 3 years old to 35 years old. And that will be the tip of the iceberg. I'm not a detective. That's the ones that have contacted me saying, 'I had a relationship with the same guy. I've got children with him'. So I reckon there's probably more likely to be about 40 out there. And they will come out of the woodwork later, as life moves on. They'll find out, they'll do Ancestry DNA, they'll find out they got a sibling, they'll get in touch. But you know, a lot of them won't. There was that side of things, but joking apart, when would be an appropriate time for them to find out, when they hit puberty? You know, they're going through all those hormone changes and all the troubles everyone has normally in puberty and just 'Oh, and by the way, your dad's a psychopath'. Yeah, it's not going to be the best time to tell them so if you leave it till they're 18, by the way, I've been lying to your entire life. There wasn't, you know, to me, there was no other option. The only option was to tell them as they were growing up and I mean, I didn't tell them everything right away. I said to them, bearing in mind, my two daughters were seven and four, so I said, 'when when you misbehave, I tell you to sit in your bed and think about what you've done. When a grown up, misbehaves and does something wrong, that the society thinks is wrong, they go to court, a judge tells them that the what they've done is wrong, and they go to jail. And they have to think about what they've done there'. So I did it in terms that they understood and said, you know, 'your dad has done something wrong, he's done something illegal, he has another family, you know, he's taken money from people, so he's been told by a judge that he asked her to sit in a jail, and he'll be there for a while'. And so it was, it was done in those kind of terms. It wasn't ever done with bitterness. And that was I think the main key wasn't done with 'I hate your father' or anything like that. It was just done very rationally. And I remember my seven year old went to school, because it was all in the press as well at the time. So there really wasn't any getting away from it either. But I think the day after I told them, my daughter went to school and her lovely, you know, colleagues at school, like children do, turned around sort of pointed at her and went 'your daddy's in jail!' and she kind of looked him straight in the eye and said, 'Yeah, and?' because she knew that was the right place for him to be. And she did get bullied by other things. But she never got bullied anymore about that, because she just didn't react the way they wanted her to. So gave her, it armed her with that knowledge to be able to actually stand up for herself, and not sort of feel that she had to defend him for some reason, because she knew that was the right place.

Claire : 26:31

It sounded like your mum was a great support through a lot of those early days and what you're going through, and she sounds like an amazing person from what I've read. So then, as you mentioned, sadly, you lost her not long afterwards. So just tell us a bit about how she died and sort of what the timeframe was with that as well.

Mary: 26:47

She had Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. So she had she she'd had some cancer that she'd beaten. And then suddenly, it came back in her stomach and lungs. So she was she was getting very, she'd always been a little bit overweight, and always been dieting, I kind of followed suit in that one, and suddenly, because she got the stomach cancer, she lost a lot of weight. And she's finally the size and shape she'd she'd always wanted to be, so she didn't tell anyone she had cancer because she kept going to parties and stuff and people would go 'oh my gosh, you're looking fabulous'. Just like she thought, 'wow, I might as well enjoy this while it lasts'. So I was one of the few people that actually knew the situation. So and luckily we I was I mean, when when this all happened, I ended up moving in with my mother, because there wasn't really anywhere else I could go. And then I did get a flat but I got a flat a block away from her. So I was literally able to kind of go across, it was actually a carpark at the back of our house and then cross the road and I was at our house. So I was able to be with her everyday. Spent a few months just doing her shopping and you know, making sure that she was comfortable. Yeah, and it gave gave me time to spend with her. And I wasn't working, because I couldn't work afterwards. I was a business advisor, and I found that the it was a little bit difficult for me having so publicly become a very, very bad judge of character, to walk into somebody's office and tell them how to, I was professional busybody and business advisor so walking into their companies and tell them how they should run the company better, when I just been defrauded of everything I owned, which was really gonna, didn't kinda sit so well. So yeah, so I kind of left and left my work and I actually got disability for distress at the time. But it gave me time to spend time with my mother, which was amazing. And it was like it was her who said to me 'write the story down'. She said 'if you've been through this, somebody else has too'. And the weird thing was I went to a bookshop, and I said 'I want to read a book about this because somebody must have been through it before me'. And the guy behind the counter just went,'that's not been done'.

Claire : 29:02

Was she your main support throughout? Or did you have other friends as a support network?

Mary: 29:07

Got very close family, so, but my mum was mum was the linchpin of the whole family of of everything. She just sort of held us all together. So yeah, I kind of fell apart a bit. I kept myself together for mum until she died. So I found out the truth about him on the 6th April 2006. And she died on the 15th of August 2006. So I think just I had just been kind of holding on by my fingernails until she died. And at that point, I just kind of fell apart completely. And that's when my kind of siblings took over. So I kind of did everything to up to that point, I was doing, you know, managing things and visiting her every day, but after that, I think... I don't even know how the funeral happened. No clue.

Claire : 29:58

I saw that you said in your book that 'it was a beautiful summer's day, but it felt like your your chest was being ripped open and you were suffocating'.

Mary: 30:04

I still get that. I still get that just even talking about her, I feel, you know, I understand, weirdly enough, I understand what people talk about about heartbreak, but it's more about my mother than it is about him. You know him I can understand, mother is completely irreplaceable.

Claire : 30:20

Did you ever get caught up in the question 'why?' in questioning or why did all this happen or...

Mary: 30:25

With him? Yeah. But because I was asking that question. I researched it. I mean, initially when I was, when I was trying to find out why, why did this happen? I was researching bigamy, and I was going 'Why does somebody become a bigamist?' And then it was because usually, there's only ever 10 cases of bigamy before mine was heard in, oh no sorry, there was 10 cases of bigamy in the year before mine way heard, and none had resulted in any custodial sentence. Because normally, it's somebody who doesn't divorce somebody before they marry someone else. So they're not having the relationships aren't overlapping. It's just the legal side is overlapping. If that makes sense? Whereas in his case, what he's actually doing is having ongoing relationships with lots of different people at the same time, and just happened to be married to two of them. So the bigamy thing didn't really kind of pan out with regard to research. It was when I came across, I think it was Love Fraud was the first website I came across that was talking about sociopaths. And I'd never really kind of come across this term before, I'd heard the term psychopath and sociopath in context of movies. But I thought you had more chance of winning the lottery than you had of actually meeting a psychopath. Turns out actually 1% of society of psychopaths. So it's one in 100 people full blown 100%, psychopathic. Up to 15% of society is on the spectrum. It's quite an extraordinary statistic. And it's like, if you look at some of the other statistics, 4% of CEOs are psychopathic or sociopathic, because that's something that psychopaths like. The three favourite professions that I'm aware of are police, social work and priesthood.

Claire : 32:00

Bit scary.

Mary: 32:03

But the finance industry used to be rife, absolutely rife with psychopaths. But it's a lot better now. It's apparently only about 10%.

Chris: 32:10

Only 10%.

Mary: 32:13

But you can see where the problems in society are happening. That because psychopaths I mean, the surgeons, psychopaths make good surgeons, because by removing their empathy, they don't have any issue about cutting into human flesh. So they have to, even if they're not psychopaths, when they start they have to actually dull their empathy to be able to do their job. So being born a psychopath does not make you a bad person, how you react to that. So people can have the capacity to act without emotion without empathy, etc, but it doesn't mean they necessarily do bad things to other people. It just means they have the capacity to.

Claire : 32:49

I'm guessing society might encourage that in you in some way, if you don't fit in in a certain way, it probably doesn't bring out the best side of that sort of time.

Mary: 32:56

Yeah, and it's also a some computer games, excessive use of computer games can dial your empathy. So even if you do have empathy. So technically, a psychopath is born without empathy or with dulled empathy. A sociopath is made because they're made by society. So if they don't get any love, affection, connection in the first five years of life, they don't develop empathy. So that's the difference between a psychopath and sociopaths. But by the time they're adults at the same thing.

Claire : 33:21

If you kind of delved into research as far as the'why' went when it came to him, what happened then when your mom died, and it's you've got a very different scenario there was was the 'why' question something that ever came up then?

Mary: 33:32

No, because I'm afraid we're all going to head that way. We're all gonna end up dying. It's the end of the game, isn't it? Yeah, no, I don't, I never kind of thought why about that, because it's just, that's that's just life. Yeah, you're born you live you die.

Chris: 33:50

I'm interested to ask about the emotion that you still readily feel when you think about your mum, when you talk about your mum, you know, 16-17 years on where you've had this absolutely, sort of world shattering event that you can talk so readily about with a sense of humour now. But there's still a lot of emotion there with your mum, what is, is that emotion sort of a good emotion? Is it a pain?

Mary: 34:15

Oh, it's definitely a pain. I mean, when I have, I think it would have been anyway, but on top of everything else that happened that year as well, if I'd had a loving husband, if I'd had - you're determined to maybe cry aren't you? - if I'd had a loving husband and someone to lean on, I think it might have been it might not have hurt so much. Because she is and always will be the one person I knew loved me. I know my kids love me. It's not it's not that, but I've never had another adult other than my mother who did. Does that make sense?

Claire : 34:58

Yeah.

Mary: 34:58

So yeah, that loss of having any any other adult who looks at you in that way loves you for that reason.

Chris: 35:09

And I guess you even, you lost a pure grieving period when your mom died because so much of that time you were having to do a lot of practical stuff and emotional stuff in both that and also the working out of the end of the marriage and parenting your children with your husband. So you lost that time. It feels like that continues because you still spend a lot of your time talking about this whole story with your husband, being married to a bigamist. Yeah, the pain the pain that remains is clearly there because it's actually the loss of your mum that causes you the pain still 16 years on.

Mary: 35:45

Yeah, no, definitely. I can talk to the cows come home about psychopaths and my situation, my ex, etc. But no, I've never been able to talk about my mom without getting emotional. Ever. I miss her everyday, everyday.

Claire : 35:58

Tell us about the crematorium, because I read that story, and I thought I've got to get her to tell this one.

Mary: 36:02

That was extraordinary actually, the 15th August 2006 she died and she was cremated on the 21st August 2006. And the reason I'm giving you a date, you can Google this, right? So we went to the crematorium, we were expecting a certain number, but we actually had to move from the smaller hall at Mortonhall Crematorium to the larger one because 150 people turned up for her funeral. She was an amazing person. And everyone came in bright colours because she was an interior designer. So suddenly wearing black, she didn't want flowers, she didn't want anything else, she didn't want any mention of God or anything, she just wanted a celebration of her life. So we went in and we had this celebration of her life. And then she had suggested as well that we all go back to her house and have smoked salmon sandwiches and champagne as a party afterwards. So that's what we did when we had an absolutely stonking party, everyone sort of celebrating her life and it was just exactly what she would have wanted. The next day, got up and read the news. Basically, my mother had been an interior designer, she was on the Saltire Awards, she was on all sorts of committees and very, very into art and architecture. And the one building she she absolutely loathed in Edinburgh was Mortonhall Crematorium. She absolutely hated it. And she constantly said she would burn it down if she could. And we wake up the day after the funeral to the news that Mortonhall Crematorium had not shut the crematorium door when it had been lit and it had set fire to the crematorium. The roof had gone on fire, they'd had 25 firefighters took six hours to put out the blaze. This was immediately after my mother's funeral. So we were just like, okay, so I rang the crematorium. And I said, 'Was it my mother's remains that were in the the crematorium unit, whatever it's called, when it was on fire? Was it her that actually burnt the place down?' And they said 'nope, no, absolutely not. There were there were no human remains in the in the unit when it was, when this happened'. And I of course turned around and said, 'But why was it lit then?' Yeah, it was so funny. But it's Yeah. So my mum literally burned down the crematory. Well, I mean, if there was one thing that she would have done if she could that would have been it. So it was utterly delightful to us. I mean, I'm terribly sorry, property damage, no one got hurt. I do think that was actually the most delightful thing that could possibly come out of my mother's funeral. It was brilliant. If you can't laugh at your own mother's funeral, what can you laugh at?

Chris: 38:28

That's incredible. Wow, what a story.

Mary: 38:29

She was an amazing person very, very difficult to follow that as an act, you know, sort of like she was just she was just one of the most sociable, delightful intelligence human beings on the planet. She was just amazing.

Claire : 38:44

Have you grieved, or do you know how to grieve something like the loss of trust?

Mary: 38:50

I'm still working on it.

Claire : 38:52

I can't quite get my head around what that, how that would look, I mean, we've, you know, obviously we've we've been through childlessness. And I would say it's a tricky thing to grieve, because there's not a definitive point when it affects you, you think there is when you find out and you think there is when you decide that's it, but it really isn't that easy. And with something like trust, it's even more vague. And yet there is such a massive loss there.

Mary: 39:11

It's almost like, I don't know whether it's similar in your situation, but it's like, as long as you live in the here and now you're fine, if you think about the future, and you think about what might have been I'm going to be going into my old age on my own. This is still my mum, you know. But yeah, the that that is as you when you think about the future that you're not going to have I mean, I suppose in your case, not have that child growing up, you're not going to see the future. You're not going to see their college days, their getting married, their having the... I'm sorry, I'm not trying to torture you here.

Chris: 39:50

Yeah, thanks, make us cry now! [laughs]

Mary: 39:53

But yeah, that's that's the sort of, with me as well. It's the - I'm not going to have that anniversary, I'm not going to have that walk in on the promenade with someone holding their hand - that is getting to me. That's the you know. Yeah, just, that's, that's what I grieve. That's, that's when I look ahead to that, but day to day living I'm fine. She says, tears rolling down my cheeks! I am really fine. And I'm quite, I can't imagine sharing my bed with someone, I would literally kick them out of bed because I am used to having the whole bed to myself. It's like I have to wrap myself around a cat. And I have the most wonderful dog who's my life partner. She's 15 now, so I had her from a year afterwards, a year after my mum died, I got her and she's just been the longest, most loving, most wonderful relationship I've had since my mum. And it's like, yeah, she's under the desk right now, snoring.

Chris: 40:54

I don't want to ask what happened to the original friend that suggested online dating. If a new friend were to suggest it again now - why don't you try online dating? What would be the, what would be the most polite response that you would give to that friend?

Mary: 41:07

I don't know, I don't necessarily object to online dating. The trouble is that not everybody online is a psychopath. But every psychopath is online. So you've got, you've got a good chance of have a better chance of meeting a psychopath online than you have in person really. I think I'm far more savvy, when it comes to that stuff. Now I'm far, far better at spotting them. I certainly can spot them in friends and the friends that talk to me about their relationships, I can kind of go hang on a minute, that's a bit of a red flag. I know I don't think that every single relationship my friends have are toxic. But you know you do tend to, it's much easier to see it from the outside, than it is from the inside. One of the issues if I did do online dating, again, is if somebody asked me, 'So what do you do for a living?' And I say 'I'm an author', the first thing they're gonna say is 'what have you written?' And of course, I would have to turn around and say,'Well, I've written this book about my ex, my husband', you know, so they're either going to think that one or two things, either, they're going to think that I must be severely damaged and a bit of a nutter, and it's probably better to avoid me, or they're gonna think, okay, so if I mess up, she's gonna write a book about me. So...

Claire : 42:18

Not even your titles really hide the subject matter for a little while either, is it? It's like, once it's out there, it's out there.

Mary: 42:22

Yeah, The Bigamist, The Psychopath, you know, so it was, so they might be the next one, you know. So I do think it's

Claire : 42:28

Is there like something that you would say, this is a kind of like, and I wouldn't lie. So it would be difficult, I could sort of not necessarily tell them what the subject of the book is, I'll just say,'Well, I'll tell you some other time or whatever'. But yeah, it could be you can imagine, it seems like someone getting past that at the very beginning. As I've always said, when the children are older, maybe. But as it's getting to that stage, I'm sort of realising that, I don't think I would be an easy person to date. Because I think, apart from anything, I can guarantee my siblings would all have private detectors on them. I don't think most of my siblings would let me date anyone without them being fully vetted first, you'd have to have a very, very patient person who was very committed quite early on. And the only person who would be committed early on would be psychopaths. So you know, kind of vicious cycle really, isn't it? good thing that's come from all of it?

Mary: 43:22

Yes, absolutely. I mean, all the people, I know all the people that write to me saying, thank you so much. 15 years ago, when I first stood up and said this, when I said I was gonna write the book, they said, 'Oh, are you gonna write it under your own name?' And I just thought, that's an extraordinary question, because it in itself is saying, I've got something to hide. And I've never, never, for a moment sought to do it under any other name. I was going 'no, I have nothing, nothing to be ashamed of'. And the amount of people who have said that that has made them realise they have nothing to be ashamed of. That's good, that is good. And that people that have been able to come forward, and there are there are quite a few books now about bigamous wives. And just the fact that, you know, helping people write books now as well with the Book Whispers, which is a online community, which was started during the pandemic to help people write, and to share their ideas and whether there's fiction or, or memoirs or anything else, but it meant that that's all the good that's come out of it, but I wouldn't be doing the stuff I'm doing now, if that hadn't happened to me. And I think my children are pre disastered as well. You know, it's sort of like a lot of children who go through teenage years, and they go, 'Oh, it's a disaster, you know, my boyfriend's left me' or whatever. My kids kind of go'ah, lived through worse', you know.

Claire : 44:40

Because we talk a lot about grief and I'm still grappling with it myself and what it looks like and how you get through it. Do you have any idea of what are the next steps are or what it would take to be able to ease that pain a bit that you feel over your mum's death? Is it just time? Is there something specific you feel like you'd need to do or do you have no idea at all?

Mary: 44:59

I have no at all, I think it is time, I think the fact that I can talk about it with you. Yes, I'm, I'm kind of emotional, but I'm not a mess. Whereas, you know, for the first 10 years I couldn't say her name or think about her at all without actually being a blubbering mess. So you know, it is time is changing that a bit. So, I'm not a religious person or anything else, I do believe in the energy of the universe, Mother Nature, whatever you want to call it, that, you know, when we, when we go, we'll go back into being energy of some description. So, you know, maybe I'll join her again then.

Chris: 45:35

An offthe-wall question if I if I offered you a magic button, that if you pressed it, any memory, any thought any wider talking point of Will, and your marriage to Will, would disappear, and from this point on, nobody would ever know of that or remember it, that would not be part of your life going forwards, would that be a button of interest?

Mary: 45:57

Absolutely not. No, honestly, genuinely think that you can't regret anything that's happened in your life. I mean, if we pressed that button, that'd be a whole section of my life suddenly missing. We don't define ourselves by the good things that happen in our lives. We define ourselves by how we deal with bad. And that's something I've risen from the ashes from if I didn't have that, then I wouldn't have written. So yeah, I think I think it has helped a lot of other people. So yeah, I don't regret any of it. And I wouldn't have my three kids, if I didn't have that. So no I don't regret a moment of it. It was, it was an interesting education.

Chris: 46:39

Well, it's been brilliant to speak to you, before you go what's your Herman?

Mary: 46:44

Okay, so my Herman, children learn by example, right? If you grab their hand and run across the road, you can tell them to you're blue in the face to look both ways before they cross the road, but what they're going to do is run across the road, they learn by what we do, not what we say. So my Herman, you know, the thing that I want to pass on, share, is talk to your children. Tell them how your day is going, tell them when you're upset, tell them when you're not feeling great, tell them when you're hormonal, but actually talk to your children, because then they will talk to you, the best piece of advice my mother ever gave me was, 'your children are going to be adults far longer than their kids. So you want to have a relationship with them their entire life. So you want to actually get them to a point of when they're adults being an equal, not you're subservient'. And so by the time my children were 18, I was saying, 'right, you're adults now, you're my equals. And we're best of friends. So yeah, my Herman is is communication, talk to your children, and you show them by example, how to talk and then you will teach them how to talk to other people as well.

Claire : 48:02

I think you'll agree that Mary has an incredible story, and her willingness to stand up, write and talk about her experiences, and her decision to not be a victim in her situation is inspiring, and we can see why it's helping so many other people who have been through something similar.

Chris: 48:16

Thank you, Mary, for joining us on The Silent Way. Thank you for your honesty and for sharing your grief around all the losses that you've encountered, including how hard the death was of your mother.

Claire : 48:25

Mary has written the full story with many, many more details that we couldn't even begin to cover in our chat with her in her first book, The Bigamist and her latest book, The Psychopath. And there's a reason why before writing the first book publishers said they'd take it on before they'd even read a word.

Chris: 48:39

To read more about Mary and her books visit her website, which is simply her name.com. So www.MaryTurnerThompson.com, and also her new social enterprise, which is the www.bookwhisperers.com.

Claire : 48:50

For more about us, our social media and how to support the show, visit www.thesilentwhy.com.

Chris: 48:56

We're finishing this episode with a quote from someone who particularly inspires Mary and many other people. It is Maya Angelou

Claire : 49:06

"You see, we may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat so we can know who we are, so that we can see oh, that happened and I rose. I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world. And I rose, I didn't run away. I rose right where I'd been knocked down. And then that's how you get to know yourself."