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.
LOL, Sky… Parole? Hehehehehe. I’m trying to imagine the priceless look.
I totally get what you mean about respect. I can’t say I felt ‘respect’, let alone ‘awe’ for the ex-spath. He was a baby-boy in need of help all the time. It started to bug me big time after a year that I was to be his princess who had to save the boy in distress. I only wanted to be a mother to an actual child, not a grown man. UGH! And yet, I still pitied him.
Your boundaries sound fine now, Sky. And it’s not that I’ve had a rosy coloured love life either the past 20 years.
Darwinsmom – I have always found an attraction to extroverted men as opposed to introverted. I am very domineering, not in a bad way, but I am very straight forward, I talk a good talk and will tell you straight up how I feel, the ex spath knew this about me and I think he saw me as a challenge. He swore to me that he was the “alpha” and not me – whatever that meant! I wasn’t competing with him, but I didn’t allow him to get me to fall for him very quickly either – he played his cards right, and hooked me when he knew he had me! I was suckered. Looking back now, he didn’t have many friends at all – but knew everyone in town, everyone knew him- he was adventurous, thrill seeking, but he was very “dominant” and had to be in control of everything. The thing about my exspath was that he was very outgoing, BUT only when he was comfortable in a specific setting, Before we broke up I took him to my work GALA where he had to dress up in a suit (it was semi formal) and he had to interact with people in the “white collar” world – let me tell you. He was so uncomfortable and even the drive to the event he was so quiet, I could tell he was feeling out of his element. I didn’t make him stay, we didn’t stay long, long enough to make an appearance, but thereafter all he did was talk negative about my co workers. I even tried to get him to come to another event with me and he made up some excuse that he can’t plan that far ahead, yet he was able to commit to the GALA a month in advance – come to find out he said he doesnt want to be around people like that; I thought to myself, people like that? Bottom line, he is an extrovert in his own element, take him out of that element and he squirms! That wasn’t my intention though (to make him squirm) but it painted a different picture of him that I hadn’t seen before –
Anyhow, my 2nd husband is more an introvert, good looking/handsome, adventurous, general contractor, and I am/was attracted to him; but I was MORE way MORE domineering than him – I had to take the “lead” on everything and initiate everything to where sometimes I felt like the “man” and I didn’t like that very much. I think what drew me to the exspath was that he took that control, but in a sick demented way — I dont need to be controlled, but I want to be with someone in an equal partnership where there is communication and we both “dominate” the relationship together; mutually if that makes any sense.
My 2nd husband would have done anything to make the marriage work, but I was so stupid and caught up in this dumb ass spath to see that I was letting a great man slip away!
DB7/Daisy,
Our situations do seem so similar. And I had to do a little lying and deception on my end to confirm my suspicions—but I would do it again in a heartbeat.
For a long time I kept asking if he wanted to stop, that I was fine with that. He always said no, but that’s because he knew I would have been fine with it at that point. He wanted to set his hooks deeper. I also cried to him and begged…what a fool. And he too was telling me, ‘I don’t want to hurt you, I wish I could make this better, i want to be friends, i’m so confused about my feelings’ The whole time he was just trying to confuse me to strenthen the trauma bond.
And I have played some of my own games, twisting him deeper in his lies.
Daisy – I just saw your post about looking back through some of my posts to see if I was the “woman” in your exspaths life. Now wouldn’t that be ironic if we dated the same spath –
Although, you’re in a different time zone than me, so that somewhat eliminates the possibilities, but heck these days you never know, right?
Daisy,
regarding the ‘discard’… One of the most important things for a spath is to “win”. So, being the first to “ditch” someone is important to them. They’re stuck in the childish teen phase of that when it comes to relationshits. And it’s not just even important to be the first to “ditch” the other. It’s also important to do it in the most hurtful way… That’s usually when they’ll pull off their mask and kinda do a “gotcha fooled.”
The ex sent me a one line message over fb: sorry, I met someone else. He then ended the relationshit status and asked a relationshit status with the new woman… all within 5 mins time.
Typically, if a survivor managed to leave them before they could discard the target, they will often come begging with promises of change, pity-play of how they cannot be without them, blablablbal…and then when they’re taken back will quickly move through the devalue and discard phase more ruthlessly. They basically wanted to be taken back in order to be the one to dump the survivor.
Moving
I am not laughing at you but OMG!!! My spth would ALWAYS tell me “I don’t want to hurt you and I wish I could make things better, but I can’t” I swear did all these men come from the same stork!??!?!?! SHEESH!
Darwinsmom – Interesting you say that if a spath gets discarded before he has had a chance to discard he will come back begging.
My spath has been able to discard every woman he has been with but he feels such guilt – or that is what he claims. he says he doesnt like hurting people and feels bad for woman. The way he discards woman is through text and/or email! I thought to myself chicken shit! While I was with him I told him don’t you ever dump me via a text or email; that IMO is so disrespectful and so chickenshit; but that is what he does. He can’t do the dumping by looking someone in the face, why is that?!?!!?? Aren’t spaths full of themselves? So they should have no problem doing this, right?
When i let him back into my life this one time, he told me he started online dating – he told me he felt bad for the women who would “wink” at him or send him a message wanting to meet him. He said it was sad that they are already alone looking for someone and were “ugly” so were probably rejected by someone and now they come online and he was “rejecting” them – how can he have these feelings? Is he really just good at acting like he has these feelings? Because his actions towards woman are those that would hurt/ruin a woman — cheating, lying, betrayal, love bombing, etc — I actually felt that he really felt bad for these women –
Anyhow, I got to dump him first, but he hasn’t come back begging — he knew i was freaking so pissed off when I left him house that if he had contacted me at that point, I would have ripped him to shreds (vocally of course). but then again, I know he was already working on his other victim so he wasn’t alone — he just let me go…..which is a good thing!
As for the “I’m being good. Don’t worry. There’s nothing going on.”
Ex-spath had a pure hypnotic gift in saying that. We could be standing in the open field in the middle of a hurricane type 5. I would see this with my own eyes, believe what I saw. Every fiber of my body would know and feel I was about to be struck down by a wind of 200 km/h. But if he were to say, “Don’t worry baby. All’s gonna be fine,” in his ultra soothing voice, my whole body would relax and believe I’d be standing in the sun, under a blue sky, with the birds warbling in the hedges.
It was utterly pointless to ask him anything about whatever thruth I may have heard about what he was up to. At some point, I knew this, and so didn’t ask or discuss anymore, but started to accuse him. I’d get all sort of answers to those: crocodile tears, banging doors and bashed in windows and threats of him leaving and me putting his luggage outside on the hall for him to pick up (you should have seen his face at that), or him imitating me and laughind and declaring I looked so sexy when I was angry (my stunned expression to that must have been priceless as well), and after a while the projection method – I was jealous and controlling. And the horrible thing was that wa exactly how I felt after he planted the seeds with a tell that he was cheating on me: jealous and controlling, and I despised myself over it.
Daisy,
they are attuned to the discard, in general.
Remember, they approach the relationshit in the IDEALIZE phase. That means they begin by idealizing us, love bombing us. I wondered before, if they KNOW what they are doing or wtf? I think I’ve figured it out.
They ACTUALLY intend to do the three stages, Idealize, Devalue and Discard. But because they believe their own lies, (remember Jerry, it’s not a lie if YOU believe it) it seems as if they are placing us on a pedestal because they really admire us.
In fact, admiration and envy are not that far apart. The difference is that when you envy someone, you also feel the shame of not being as good as they are and you hate them for that.
Although spaths may HAVE shame spaths don’t FEEL shame, instead they feel envy and pretend to admire us, while plotting to devalue and discard us. I know some of these things seem to contradict each other, but that’s because spaths are so retarded they believe their own lies.
The whole thing is a game to switch places with the person they envy. They want US to feel envy and shame.
They admire you and mirror you so that you will admire them. This is to gain the upper hand. Next, they devalue you. They don’t admire you quite as much, so they can watch you trying desperately to regain the love and affection and admiration that they first showed you.
Lastly, they dump you because you just weren’t good enough for them. At least that is what you are supposed to feel.
In my case, the spath knew I would never feel “less than” him. That’s why he called me “arrogant”. It’s not in my nature to compare myself to other people, so I don’t feel envy and if he was to discard me, I would just think he was stupid. (a bit narcissistic of me, maybe, LOL!)
So the plan was to kill me.
Their manipulation is absolute no matter what your defenses because in the end, I did lose my faith in humanity and my ability to trust the way I used to. He even called me once several months later and said, “Are you sure you know who you can trust?”
When we realize how completely we had been deceived, it undermines trust. I’m working on rebuilding my trust. I think it begins with trusting that God had my back, as always.
Darwinsmom said:
Exactly. That’s what kept happening to me.
But interestingly, in the end, when I left him he said, “I would never have left you.” And it was the truth, because the truth is that he wanted to KILL me, not leave me.