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.
Well, my fiancee has finally dumped me and has done his final devalue and discard. He accused me of cheating, when he is the one who has cheated. He has also called me every kind of b-tch that he could. I am so heartbroken that I don’t know what to do. Why id he do this to me ? Why is that he doesn’t want me anymore ?
because you couldn’t offer him more supply. Once you’re tore down,completely decomposed and have no resistance to offer AND you revealed him, it’s game over.
It just feels as if my whole heart has been ripped out. So, I guess he isn’t going to call and apologize. I guess that he now is going to go around lying on me, trying to destroy my good reputation by saying that I am a dirty b-tch who cheated on him.
Bebe’s story is all too familiar. As she says, there are minor differences in the stories but underlying is always the same plot.
Donna’s education for teens is invaluable, but how many of us are way over that age?
Quite simply we find this website when it’s too late and we are bewildered, confused, broke and desperate. It’s amazing to read similar stories and learn that we ourselves are in fact not crazy, we have just been touched by a sickness that no one should ever have to experience.
I myself was 40 when I met mr perfect (won’t bore you all with details, it’s been written here 100’s of times before)… I never knew anything about sociopathy and thought that a psychopath was 1 in a million Ted Bundy type.
Where’s the education for us? Hindsight is 20/20 and like the rest of you, looking back every single warning sign/red flag was there, it was just I couldn’t comprehend the underlying reason for the red flags.
It seems to me that a lot of 40+ divorced/single women are “targeted” as many of us are comfortably off with perhaps a nice home/job and reasonable social status etc and combine that with perhaps being a little lonely it makes us ideal “victims”….
My ex put himself on a dating site as “naive, divorced and honest”. Not one of these are true (and it’s not me he’s still married to either, I found out about his wife when he was arrested!!)….
But his BS profile hooked in another 48 yr old so it’s still effective….
open eyes wrote:
“Well, my fiancee has finally dumped me and has done his final devalue and discard. He accused me of cheating, when he is the one who has cheated. He has also called me every kind of b-tch that he could. I am so heartbroken that I don’t know what to do. Why id he do this to me ? Why is that he doesn’t want me anymore ? ”
Sunflower is right- the cycling has ended. Like me, you no longer supply the drama and thrill that the sociopath was thriving on. I ‘called’ my ex-GF on a string of gaslighting and BS that she waged against me. I stopped reacting the way I had been and stopped assuming the prostrate position and stopped begging for forgiveness.
Day by day, I recognize and ubetter understand each incident that had me perplexed and confused and pushed me into the state of cognitive dissonance. She always had an ‘explanantion” and a story to explain her ridiculous actions. It seems that she HAD, ABSOLUTELY HAD, to have an explanation – even if it sounded so implausible as to be ridiculous – almost comical.
And unfortunately many of us still ‘love’ these people. This is a testament to our vulnerability, their deceitfulness, and, our desire to want and love the ‘illusion’.
My ex-gf exhibited many of the signs or ‘flags’ talked about in this article – but she was mostly very subtle in her approach.
One flag that I would suggest would be ‘PROJECTION.’
I spent time with a therapist that warned me that my GF would be projecting bad behaviour onto me. She was right. It happened so often that it boggles my mind and, I lost count of how often it happened.
Interestingly, the fiancee has just called me and left a message saying that he keeps calling me and that I won’t pick up my phone. He sounds a little less angry, but I don’t trust it or him.
I am glad this holiday season is over. It was particularly hard this year.
Louise I know what you mean about acting fine and saying “I’m doing great” etc. I talked to my sister back home yesterday and she said I sounded good. Well, I do when I’m talking to somebody because I have to concentrate on the conversation and I can’t think about the spath crap momentarily. I know he had a great christmas with the friends (minions), his kids and new girlfriend(target). Probably on a warm beach. None of the stuff he wanted to do with me. Guess what I was for. It’s been seven months. I’m tired of the up and down.
Mo Mac You are right. People don’t get it and don’t want to know. I gave my book” 10 signs you are dating a sociopath” to a friend to read so she could be informed. That was 2 months ago and she hasn’t even opened it yet but, she was also the one who said I should be happy for the “good” things I got from the relationship. Really? When I think about any instance in the 4.5 years I get absolutely no good feelings because I know it was all a fraud. Now when I think about the spaths great smile all I can think of is a hideous, soulless, monster with an evil grin. Glad to be back on here.
HeatherCT,
It is amazing to me how similar these stories are. Its like these guys(or girls) are all cut from the same cloth or went to the same dirt bag seminar. I cant believe my eyes when i read the things that were said to you guys and remember the same exact words being said to me. Do they attend a meeting together once a week and talk about how to ruin peoples lives?I just don’t get it.
I also know what your saying about finding this site to late. I had help removing him from my life a few weeks ago, and then started looking around for answers. But i cant help being mad at myself for not looking into it sooner. I could’ve saved myself a lot of distress. However, i cant help but feel that i am much younger than all of you. I am 21 years old as is my ex. And it wasn’t somebody who had just came into my life and snatched me up. We were friends since middle school and there was a small amount of trust already there. But he moved away along time ago and came back into town on a big white horse and swept me off my feet with a big fat story. I wont go into detail as i will have written a novel by the time I’m done, but i also find it interesting when guys talk about looking back and seeing all the signs. why couldn’t i see them before. He was so perfect for the first few months and i was hesitant because no guy had ever treated me that well before and it scared me he wanted to get married so quickly i was at a loss for words. I am so young, definitely not ready to be in a marriage yet but how could i deny someone i felt loved me so much. But as soon as i confessed my love to him after being so hesitant its like he switched. He was someone else cold and cruel and he didn’t seem to care about how he made me feel. I was so confused but i put it in my head that it must be a phase or something because every once in while he would go back to the man i fell in love with and do something sweet or chivalrous and give me hope. And the signs go on. He also was quick on moving in with me and my sister and brother-in-law and he wanted to play the real adult couple type sharing bills and finances. But it all got way out of hand so quickly before i knew it i was in debt up to my eyeballs and there was always an excuse as to why we needed money and most of the time he convinced me i was to blame even though i was the only one who could hold a full time job. But it was all gonna be paid back with the sale of “his house” and we were going to be fine, so he said. This house he bought with his inheritance that he was in the process of selling because it was a big mistake buying it in the first place because he spent all his money on it. Another reason i felt like i had no choice but to stick it out until his house sold and my debt was all paid off. But i couldn’t wait for that any more. Not only was he taking advantage of me he was taking from my family too. So i had to get out. A week later, I found out through a friend that works for the city that the house was NEVER OWNED BY HIM! It was owned by his friends mom and he was just staying there when he moved back to town. That SOB has been lying to me since the day he came back!! And every time i asked him about it he responded with such detail I just had no reason not to believe him and if i did doubt him about anything he would become very angry and throw out that i don’t trust him so i always let it go because i hated making him angry Because it always resulted in me begging for forgiveness when i did nothing wrong..i cant believe he had that much power over me. I feel good that i got out when i did but i still wish it would’ve been sooner, and thank god i never married him! If he had it his way we would’ve been married months ago but I just couldn’t. I wanted to wait and make sure it was the right thing, It was an ongoing fight between the two of us with him saying I didn’t love him because i wouldn’t marry him now! All the signs were there i could go on for days..i feel so stupid. I mean for crying out loud this kid proposed to me the day he got FIRED!!! Why did refuse to see that as a sign? Now i know I’m young and i have a lot of time to fix all this but i feel like the life and the future i had planned for myself is ruined. I cant even go to school because I have to pick up a second job. My credit is ruined …DESTROYED rather. Along with the many other things in my life he’s damaged. And to top it all off he is fine! Hes moved on to someone else is as happy as a clam in high tide! While I’m sitting here mentally, emotionally, and financially destroyed. I have to see a therapist and my mother calls me three times a day to make sure I’m not thinking about committing suicide. AND HE IS COMPLETELY FINE! It makes no sense to me.
Thanks for listening and thank you all for your comforting words.
Bebe09,
my ex also wanted to marry me the same day he sexually assulted me and the day after discarded me. He was also completely fine and moved on to his next victim. I had the same thoughts as you and felt the same. Your story is somewhat similar to mine. Keep reading the articles here on LF and you will get your answers. He’s FINE cause all he cares about is himself. He believes he has done nothing wrong and he’s the victim – it’s all your fault. Do not believe him. Keep reading. Listen to people’s advices in here cause they work. Your life is not over, hang in there. You’ll be fine, but it will take some hard work and time.
If they meet up at a roundtable discussing destroy-destroy-destroy tactics?… it would not surprise me… probably a web site out there somewhere.
Bebe09,
You are young and you can learn to recognize a spath in the future so that you don’t fall prey to another one of them. I’m 38, successful, smart, educated with degrees up the wazoo but that doesn’t mean I could spot a spath. I felt/feel dump to have fallen to such a phony piece of crap but I did. I’m only a little over 4 weeks of no contact with my ex and I’m now starting to work on myself so that I don’t fall prey to a spath ever again. I need to look within to figure out why I felt that I deserved no better than what my exspath had to offer. It’s a long road to recovery and not an easy one by no means, but you can do it! Like you said, you’re very young and have your whole life ahead of you. Don’t let this devil take any more of your youth than he already has.
Everything you have mentioned so far is identical to what my ex did to me….it’s what these people do. I was just as floored as you seem to be when you learned that your ex is a spath. I thought the entire time it was all me– now I realize it wasn’t me, I am not crazy, my only fault ( if you wanna call it that) was not knowing enough about the “Red flags.” Read Donnas book- I have read it at least five times and for some reason it really makes me feel better! Probably because I finally see that the problem was not me —
Hang in there, keep posting but more importantly READ READ READ! When you’re feeling down come back to this site and post something, someone will answer you/ be here to talk to you! It’s the best therapy!