What would surprise my friends?
I generally don't talk about the time I was married to a genuine psychopath. I was a fairly wealthy but vulnerable widowed mother aged 30 when we met. I escaped with my children after four years, with our physical, if not mental health intact, our money and home all gone. I had secretly found a small flat over a shop and moved things over, a little at a time. The night we left he tried to smash down the outside door to the flat to get at us. My children clung to each other and cried with fear. The landlord assumed it must have been my fault because J was such a nice man.
I mentioned it recently, for the first time ever outside the family, at a small gathering of women friends, and there was a silence. Someone changed the subject and a different conversation started. They are nice people, I expect they didn't know what to say, or perhaps they didn't believe me - just like the police, at the time, my solicitor, my friends, and my parents at first.
Psychopaths are charming, believable. Strangely, his sister was the only person who befriended me then. She was not surprised. He later, I heard, quickly married another young woman with children and her own house and money.
Now, after 40 years, I actually feel ready to talk about it but have been put off a bit. Perhaps it's just too gothic for social chit chat. Wrong time, wrong subject.