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.
Skylar,
I completely agree with what you said about them envying our ability to trust. Mine said once, during what I think was an actually moment of truth, that part of his ‘issue’ is that he always thinks that someone has other intentions behind their actions. I told him it was because he always had other intentions behind his actions.
moving past the facade:
^5 That’s such a freakin’ awesome come back!
Do you remember what he replied? or the look on his face?
The psychiatric term for it is : projection.
But then, at the same time they do what is called “splitting”, where they believe two opposing things at the same time.
This is different from cog/diss, I believe, in that cogdiss is a belief based on a feeling despite evidence to the contrary. While splitting is believing 2 opposing things at the same time, for example, knowing that you are not being duped, while knowing that you are being duped at the same time.
Spaths hate us for being honest and trustworthy, so they project that we are NOT honest and trustworthy, so that they can believe we are just like them, while at the same time believing that we are so stupid we deserve to be conned.
It’s spathological. 😯
Moving past,
Mine always said he trusted me. That is one of the things that always threw me off when I suspected something. He never once fit that profile of projecting. In fact, most times he was more trusting than me. He never accused me of being insecure or jealous. He always tried to reassure me. Once when I told him that my instincts were always right about things and I felt he was not being honest, he calmly said “I don’t know what to tell you but your instinct is wrong this time”. What a mind F!
moving past the facade
Yes, spaths who believe that everyone does what they do. It’s just the they are better at it (WINNERS!)
I had a WONDERFUL career where it was REQUIRED to not HIDE or withhold info b/c it was such a risk that people might DIE. I thought it So liberating to be open and transparent. I didn’t have to hide to protect myself (as I did with my family, b/c they exploited and were predatory).
I embraced being open and transparent SO much that it blinded me to my spath, I had thought (Stuppid of Me) that my family were the awful people and that I had left them behind in my past so I was safe. NOT SO. I FAILED to apply my knowledge about how people are also predatory and NOT OPEN about it (my family was open about it).
It is my weakness (hook) that I still keep getting trapped, assuming that if I am open and transparent, then I can expect better communication. Only…. if the other person has an agenda, there is NO communication, there is only exploitation. I gotta work on not being so gullible.
Daisy,
don’t you see? If “your instinct was wrong this time”, then he was insinuating that there was some other cause, perhaps insecurity or jealousy.
Spaths don’t always come right out and accuse. My spath said that he like “to plant seeds”. He manipulated minds without ever letting the manipulated know.
daisy
I have a terrific therapist. She called certain behaviors by m spath as a “mindfuck”. That’s what your spath did to you. MORE likely he set you up to teach you to doubt yourself. BEEN THERE on that one big time.
I used to tell my spath, something feels OFF. I don’t know what it is so I have to think about it. That’s how much he messed with my reality, I lost my intuition AND my ability to know when I was being messed with.
Sky,
Yes. I think it is related to – the more distance towards the relationshit, the more you get to see the big picture. It’s not that the thought of him intending to do that never hovered around in my mind. It did, but in an unspoken, tip-of-the-tongue kind of way. Partly perhaps, because I may have not even have been willing to recognize he wanted to dupe me in such an awful manner, not because I feared he could be that callous, but perhaps because I feared that if I pursued that train of thought I might have discovered he might even have succeeded at it and thus possibly how stupid I might have been. I mean that these fears of finding this out about myself were subconscious. I can fully recognize he actually wouldn’t have pulled it off.
First of all, I had already put myself up to tourlead a trip first, rather than spend money on being with him for the whole summer. And while there was a financial argument to that choice in tourleading, there was also a totally personal one: I wanted to do something unrelated to him, travel and enjoy my travels without him. I had been pulling loose more and more from him in many way. And the knee operation and his lack of care and interest was the end for me. I was still wavering some, with addictive clinging to straws, but that wouldn’t have lasted another 2 months of his games… and I wouldn’t have booked a ticket from Peru to Panama or Costa Rica for the world in such times. I think he knew there wasn’t a chance in hell he could have pulled off the originally intended long con, and the only way he could still “win” was dump me the moment after my operation when I had reached out for the last straw the way he did. The way it played out, reveals that his hand was forced. Had he believed he could have pulled off that long con of me arriving in Nicaragua while he was in London, he would have done it.
As for the other Belgian ex… Ex-spath used to think she got her payback too – the cousin of his mate was a cheater and physically abusive. They’re divorced now, with a child. She’s with another Nicaraguan from the area now… although by all accounts he sounds much more responsible.
His MO though does fit my weakness… or my own injury when it came to men over the past 15 years: that they wouldn’t choose me to commit/over another woman. Of course he chose me in words, in love declarations, even in early actions of commitment (the lovebomb)… but then he’d gradually amp the ‘not choosing me’ in attention more and more.
Thank you Skylar,
He is very manipulative so that makes sense.
Again, what a mind F!
Skylar,
He was actually momentarily speechless. He gave me a look, like he was having an aha moment in his head. And he said, ‘I think your right’. I have to note, that this was during one of our ‘therapy’ sessions when I was going to ‘help fix him. So, although I do think that I what I said was true, any part of his reaction could have just been to make me feel like things were working to reset his hooks.
Mine uses projection when angry or when he feels that at risk of being found out or exposed. I know that he makes his wife think that she is the problem and has mental issues, so much so that she appologizes and vows to seek him.
Daisy,
When I felt something was ‘off’, mine would appologize and tell me that things were fine. I would question him for a few days- asking if things were OK, or if he still wanted to see me. He would say things were fine and of course he wanted to continue our relationship. He said he just had a lot on his mind (I now know that meant a lot of other woman!). Even when I first confronted him about my suspicions that their was someone else (yes an extra, extra marital affair) he was so kind and reassuring and swore there was no one else.
It wasn’t until I confronted him angry (I was also slightly violent, and crazed o_O !) and had proof that he couldn’t lie his way out of, that he started to show the the slightest bit of a negative reaction/defensivness towards me.
KatyDid,
I definitely see it now. He knew I was on to him the entire time because I look back and every instinct I had about him was right. I used to ask him if he thought I was stupid…LOL. I guess he did.
The thing is I really never doubted myself and he knows that. I always told him that the only reason I let it go was because I had no proof. He knew I didn’t trust him but yet I stayed in the relationship.
What purpose does it serve to f with us like that? I’ll be honest, I know there are some times I’ve probably been manipulative but never to the degree to mess with someone’s head.