If your new romantic interest exhibits all or most of the following behaviors, be careful. He or she might be a sociopath.
1. Charisma and charm. They’re smooth talkers, always have an answer, never miss a beat. They seem to be very exciting.
2. Enormous ego. They act like the smartest, richest or most successful people around. They may actually come out and tell you that.
3. Overly attentive. They call, text and e-mail constantly. They want to be with you every moment. They resent time you spend with your family and friends.
4. Jekyll and Hyde personality. One minute they love you; the next minute they hate you. Their personality changes like flipping a switch.
5. Blame others. Nothing is ever their fault. They always have an excuse. Someone else causes their problems.
6. Lies and gaps in the story. You ask questions, and the answers are vague. They tell stupid lies. They tell outrageous lies. They lie when they’d make out better telling the truth.
7. Intense eye contact. Call it the predatory stare. If you get a chill down your spine when they look at you, pay attention.
8. Move fast. They quickly proclaim that you’re their true love and soul mate. They want to move in together or get married quickly.
9. Pity play. They appeal to your sympathy. They want you to feel sorry for their abusive childhood, psychotic ex, incurable disease or financial setbacks.
10. Sexual magnetism. If you feel intense attraction, if your physical relationship is unbelievable, it may be their excess testosterone.
For more on this topic, see Donna Andersen’s book, Red Flags of Love Fraud—10 signs you’re dating a sociopath.
Star,
it doesn’t seem to be about the shoes this time. I think you are noticing overall disrespect from her and it’s annoying you.
Anger is a red flag that comes from inside you. It tells you that you don’t feel safe. That’s what I learned from Kathleen Hawk.
Perhaps it’s time to go NC until you figure out why this person makes you feel unsafe?
I agree with Sky. Had to do something similar with a friend of mine and I think it’s picking up a general lack of respect. I am much more senstive to that these days and it really is a deal breaker for me. Repeated actions (even the subtle ones) that show distrespect are not acceptable in my world any more.
Star Maybe you could move to Japan where it is a custom to remove shoe’s… 😀
As far as her cell phone? just stick it in the microwave for 4 seconds 😀
ok thats my advice..
LOL, thanks for the replies, guys. Henry, I WISH I could live in Japan where people are respectful of rules. I already have decided to distance myself from her permanently this time. Anyway, I have let a lot of the anger go. I worked out for an hour at the gym and sat in the steam room. I missed the neighbor boy. He must have showed up while I was in the locker room. Then I sat in my car and listened to music for a while and got in touch with some much deeper feelings of hurt that have nothing to do with any neighbors – some of it over the pending death of my cat. Anyway, if I ever have another conversation with her, I’ll just tell her I just don’t have time to play games with her with the shoe thing and all the other things. And then I’ll call it a day with her. Life’s too short.
The neighbor boy, on the other hand, has been very sweet and kind to me. He offered to drive me to the gym tonight. I’m not sure if I’m even that attracted to him like I used to be. The power dynamic seems to have shifted, and it’s more balanced. I’m really hoping we can just work on our friendship and then see if anything can develop. He is a very sensitive person, so I need to tread gently. I hope he does with me, too. Anyway, I’m not attached one way or the other. I could have stayed and looked for him at the gym or called him when I got home. I didn’t do any of those things. I don’t really care that much any more. Whatever happens will happen. I released the outcome when I sent him that first email the other day. I know what kind of man I deserve. I’ve had a lot of other guys showing interest lately, too, so we’ll see what happens.
Good call on the neighbour… whether passive aggressive or active aggressive… she acts aggressive and disrespectful. You saw plenty of little general signs that she does not care really about you: not really listening, turning your house rule into a battle of wills and even then still walking all over it with her ‘slippers’. To me it seems like she did it on purpose and deep down you feel she does too (you just don’t want to “judge” her 😉 ) It’s like she’s parading over your carpet… “Look what I think of your carpet, your house rules and you.”
I agree that anger can come from fear and anxiety, but also hurt. Flight or fight? Fight-people tend to mask their fears and hurts by getting immensely angry and confront the source and towever above it. I tend to be a fight-person. Spathic people like fight-people because of it, because they’ll choose confrontation and thus drama over avoiding them.
My ex-spath tried to use this to even start makig out to be a person who’s mad all the time to my mother. He used it to get sympathy from her, but also to make me look like the angry one. When I think of it now, it’s almost always when I had to drop him off at my parents (language lessons from my mom, helping my dad with some fixing chores… and they paid him for it… he wasn’t really allowed to work, but it was a way to help both of us out) that he’d have some extra extravagant night out and he’d get me especially upset. I’d drop him off and leave for work. By the time I picked him up, I’d have calmed down but he’d be teasing me, and it would annoy me. So, my mom would hear from him with his pitiful look “she’s mad at me” and only see the teasing of him.
My mom would tell me that he was trying to get sympathy from her, and she always replied to him, “She must have a reason to be mad, and that is between you two.” And she tried to explain to him that it actually was a good sign: that I’d cool off naturally if left to my own devices. But she still felt sympathy for him.
Some of the crazy events he caused and bad things he did, shocked my mom immensely. She too was shocked how he had her fooled, although she said that in the last summer 20 2010 I had told her something over the phone, and she suddenly thought “he’s a bad person.” (she can’t remmber what exactly… either about finding out about his son, or his respons to my birthday gift for him). I only very recently confessed to her I’ve become a compulsive showerer after sex and I explained her what he had said to me at an intimate moment to start this off. She was totally horrified and feels it’s the worst thing he has done to me, because it was so personal and sensitive (and actuallya chemical reaction to his semen). Very recently she apologized to me suddenly for saying to me “he’s only teasing you,” when I acted huffy and puffy over the innocent looking teasing he did in front of her. I told her it wasn’t necessary. The teasing he did with me in front of her was only teasing, or so I thought. It would be normal teasing if there weren’t any other things. But I’ve only recently started to realize how he was trying to lie and manipulate people, including my mother, to regard me as either the one with a short fuse, a liar and reckless driver (lying about the speeds I drove, and lying about me causing a car accident while we noth knew my mom caused it) …
You are right about her, darwinsmom. My neighbor grew up in an alcoholic family where she was emotionally neglected. She is someone who is very quiet and softspoken, dislikes confrontation, and just seems to “hide” in general. She gets involved with a guy but then doesn’t have the assertiveness to know whether she likes him or not, so she just keeps going along….She never gets really excited or animated about anything. Being a massage therapist, I tend to look at people’s body types. She is very thin but has somewhat of a masochistic body type, rounded shoulders and tucked in butt.
I’ve had several confrontations with her over her behaviors where I’ve gotten very angry with her. She seems to accept it and doesn’t get defensive. We’ve had a lot of positive interactions over the years, and she has a lot of good in her, too. I just cannot take the unconsciousness anymore. We used to like to work out together in one of our living rooms. When I’d go to her condo, she’d be taking cell phone calls in the middle of the workout (!). So then I invited her over here. I’d tell her that the session was starting at 9:30 am sharp and please be on time because I had a schedule that day. So she’d knock on the door at 9:40. I just wouldn’t answer the door because my workout was already in progress. Or she’d ask if I can call and wake her up. Well, I’m not the babysitter.
Too many games for me. I think I’d feel better if I confront her, in addition to just keeping distant. I don’t like confrontation, but one of these days, I will probably have to just tell her how I feel. I shouldn’t have invited her over the other night. I’d been doing a good job keeping distant and wasn’t planning to interact with her again. I was just excited that I am talking to the rock star neighbor again. Her response was, “well don’t show any emotion this time.” WTF? Of course I’ll show emotion if I want to. Showing emotion was not the problem. That was my reply. It’s sad to see a 63 y.o. woman thinking like this. The guy she is dating is mentally ill. He is obsessive compulsive and after over a year of dating has not invited her to his house (I think he is a hoarder from what it sounds like). She just keeps dating him by default. She doesn’t seem too excited about him, but won’t break up with him. She keeps “giving him more of a chance.” I think she just lacks the fire to do anything bold in her life. And the passive-aggressive behaviors are all part of it.
hmmm, she sounds passive aggressive toxic to me, with a few red flags:
– whenever you ask her something that matters to you, she disregards it: not coming on time, walking on your carpet with her shoes
– she does not show much emotion
– and she advizes you not to show emotions, as if it would make you weak
Stargazer, up until after the spath I used to be very open about my emotions, including people I was upset with for disrespecting me. I did it to make me feel better, as an outlet, and then I could move on.
But ever since I realized that people like my ex actually take a jolly out of confessing how much they upset you, I’m starting to learn to just shut my mouth and bite my tongue off before letting them know they upset me and feed their drama-stirring, if I see that their behaviour does not alter after my first time honest convo. I’m also slowly learning to deal with the upsetness in other ways.
So, I’m sure it will make you feel better to tell her exactly how you feel about her disrespectful attitude. As long as you don’t expect her behaviour to change because of it, and you know you can stick to distancing yourself, and just do it to get it off your chest before closing the door, it’s a valid option.
Star,
I think Darwin’smom should sign up for the next “ann landers” column and her advice
So, I’m sure it will make you feel better to tell her exactly how you feel about her disrespectful attitude. As long as you don’t expect her behaviour to change because of it, and you know you can stick to distancing yourself, and just do it to get it off your chest before closing the door, it’s a valid option.
Is definitely an option.
My advice, however is, work on your own need to “tell her off” (remember we get closure from ourselves) and just ignore her.
Don’t invite her in, and if she comes over, just tell her that you are busy. This woman does not care enough about you to respect your wishes, and showing you she doesn’t is her way of giving you the “finger” and then denying it.
Who is “ann landers?” 😮
I do think that this neighbour lady might be a good case to deal with your upsetness in other ways, stargazer, without playing into her cards. A passive aggressive person loves it when they can continue to play the passive aggressive one, while others respond assertively to her disrespectful attitude… they can then pretend to be a victim (again) to their mind.
I so strongly know the need to confront someone about their behaviour, and I always felt justified and never regretted it. But it made me feel good, not just to let it out, but because I thought it was an act of strength of self-assertion to them.
Now, I realize that simply ignoring people for their repeated ill behaviour is self-assertion by itself. Just this week I realized someone was goading me into an intellectual unfair discussion, and all they want to do is stir the pot, put people down, etc…. I pointed the behaviour out in a cold analytical manner and said that I go no contact with people who display such behaviour and said my goodbyes. The individual still tried to goad me into answering, basically saying that I must have had no logical replies to his question and that I “blamed him” so that I had not to confess my inability to reason.
My fingers and my brain tingled immensely to give one more last reply, to prove to him how full of his holes his arguments were, how disrespecting to the subject. And then I realized my absolute silence to him, my ignoring him would aggrevate him to no sense, that I had nothing to prove to this negative jerk troll, and he’d been a jerk enough for a long time already, so nobody would agree with him trying to make me out as a ‘debate coward’ anyway. I had to repeatedly remind myself about why not to reply for another hour… it took a lot of resisting my “fight”-nature, but after an hour I felt immensely proud that I was able to do what my old self would have found almost impossible to resist. And my post where I told him goodbye because I go no contact with people with red flags like his in RL… it made the top of most liked post…LOL And why? Because I did what I told him I planned to do, instead of saying it and then still continue to step into his traps even when I knew it was a trap.
If you want to distance yourself and go no contact with her, you don’t need to defend yourself, you don’t need to first tell her why… just go no contact, just do what you told yourself to do: distance yourself. By going to her and unload your upsetness to her, you are doing the opposite of what you promised yourself to do [aka taking distance]
Darwin’smom, “Ann Landers” was an advice writer in the news papers for years here in the US..sorry I forgot not everyone is from US, it was a compliment. She always had a good answer!
I agree with Mom Star, DISTANCE YOURSELF. It is the “adult” thing to do….of course I RELATE totally to wanting to TELL’EM OFF as we slam the door, but it really is much more “adult” (and classy) to just QUIETLY close the door behind us as we SILENTLY leave….let them figure out WHY!
When I got the Xmas card from the X friend wanting to have “peace” now after TIME had passed (no apology) just saying that TIME had fixed things and now we could be friends. OHHHHHH I soooooo wanted to tell his assuming arse off….but it was so much more effective and classy to just ignore him. Let him “stew in his own juice” as it were.
BTW Darwin’s mom, GOOD for you for not letting that guy goad you into a debate…ohhhhh they hate it when they can’t make us engage with one of their diatribes!@.......