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.
I came back because I remember what I wanted to say in addition to what I did previously: MINDFULNESS.
Isn’t that a wonderful word? Since we can’t trust our emotions right now and it’s difficult to trust, MINDFULNESS really is a great word. Be MINDFUL about yourself, your life, your family and your health and safety when dealing with these types of people.
MINDFUL about the healing we need within.
Sometimes without.
MINDFUL of the truths about our situations.
MINDFUL like my spath said:
“Well, you can complain all you want to but YOU allowed it to happen.” And, he was right. I did. Irregardless of the disrespect, I allowed it to continue. It was MY FAULT for caring.
I don’t care anymore.
Yes, I still ruminate, at times; yes, I still am sad, sometimes; but not so much. I have been going through this ‘breaking off’ process for the past three years, in a BIG and HUGE sort of way but sincerely and earnestly, since 1JAN. It is now the middle of June and what is that? 5-1/2 months of ‘coming out of the fog’ time? Be patient with yourselves. Don’t believe their lies.
YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! We don’t need THEIR validation nor any of the other cockroaches they congregate with.
Okay; NOW I am away on my mission…
Talk to you all later.
DUPED
Thanks DUPED. You said it all so wonderfully. No contact is the only way. As long as I was still having contact and even just a little bit of contact such as ONE text, it kept me in the madness. Now, not to say that I am still not sad or that I cannot get him or the OW out of my head. They are still there and I am trying so, so hard to get them out. But having NC helps a ton.
How’s it going Louise?
Duped – HOLLLYWOOD! You lucky ducky. Live the dream eh?
candy:
Going pretty OK today! Tuesday I worked 11 long hours and was wiped out so yesterday was pretty slow. But today I am back to normal and am getting ready to meet a girlfriend for dinner. This is a truly good friend, salt of the earth kind of lady. I have known her for a long time, but haven’t seen her in awhile. It feels so good to have a friend like this that I know will not hurt me.
How are you?
🙂 Hey Candy…
yah, spent the afternoon at the Grove in Hollywood, on the set of EXTRA with that cutie Mario Lopez. 😉
In the U.S. the show I was on will air 27June if anyone will care to tune in! “Extra-Extra!” 🙂
As far as ‘living the dream’….
Don’t know about that but I am desperately trying to get out of the nightmare I have been living in!
I like that idea about those T Shirts, Hens…
I think we should all go in together and have some made up at a discount rate from somewhere; ahahahahahahaha
That saying is soooooooooooo priceless, I have repeated it at least 100 times since I heard it. hahahahaha
OMG: so true!!!!
🙂
Peace & Light to you all….
Louise: if you allow yourself, you will see that you are strong and that you are going to come through this and be just fine. Our foundation has been shaken but the building didn’t fall down.
mwah! xx
DUPED
Louise. Busy lady. I hope you have a lovely evening with your friend. It’s good to have a bit of normality.
I’m doing fine. There was something bothering me about spath which I could not lay to rest. There have been sooooooooo many ‘aha’ moments lately. So, I’ve signed up to a site to track down his criminal record. I need to prove to ME that I was right and he was the spath I believe him to be. It’s the…. not knowing, after all the ‘tells’ I just want to know the TRUTH. It’s all confidential so I’ll see what comes of it. I think it will be £35 well spent.
Have fun
Duped – OMG we are rubbing shoulders with film stars here. Brilliant. Whoop whoop.
Thanks, DUPED!! 🙂
candy:
I had a really nice evening with my friend. She is the sweetest thing and would never hurt a fly, but guess what? Of course her husband of 20 some years cheated on her and left her for another woman about 6-7 years ago. He married her and they are still married. And he doesn’t want anything to do with their grown son who is 21. They adopted this son as a baby and he apparently had fetal alcohol syndrome and so now even as an adult, he has all kind of problems. He is emotionally and mentally stunted and gets in trouble all the time. Sad. And this poor woman is so good. But she is VERY strong. She just keeps truckin’. Anyway, we had a good visit.
Ooooh can’t wait to see if you find anything out about your X spath!!
I believe I have been victimized by one of these sociopaths, and I wish I would have seen this list before my life was torn asunder by someone that claimed to love me. I feel compelled to share my story, as it serves as a warning.
This involves a woman, which is why I wanted to post about it, as I find fewer accounts of dealing with women than with men here.
Everything on this list… from the cold stare to the mood swings to the pride in the ability to not feel guilt about anything at all … it’s like a portrait of her.
I met a girl that was in what she termed a “failing” relationship. We chatted online quite a bit, and became quite close quite quickly. She held on to her old relationship as long as she could before she had to move out of the house she shared with him. Before long, she moved halfway across the country to start a new life with me.
Within a month, she had alienated my family with her confrontational attitude as well as her insistence that we go out drinking and partying every night. Part of the conditions of living in the house I was allowed to stay in involved us not coming and going at all hours of the night, and she resented this. At the six week mark, she informed me that she was falling in love with one of my best friends … but not to worry! She still loved me, too, and wanted to have a three-way relationship between himself, herself and myself.
I wasn’t thrilled with this, nor was he. She only revealed this happy fact to me after I’d caught her in a complicated (and poorly thought out) web of lies, and upon catching her … she reacted with violent anger. She beat me black and blue, telling me I was just like her worthless ex-boyfriend for being paranoid and that I was a terrible person for not trusting one of my closest friends. After this flurry of violence, she started to cry and have a “panic attack”, when she recovered from this she admitted to being unfaithful to me with my friend the night before.
This was only the start of my troubles.
Not long after that, I was kicked out of my house because of her behavior. Her boyfriend allowed us to move in with him, and claimed that he had no intention of stealing her away from me and she claimed that I wasn’t to be forgotten. I was quickly put on the wayside, as her new boyfriend had financial resources that I did not. He was able to take her out to dinner and provide her with liquor, cigarettes and drugs, three things that she insisted on having at all costs. I was forced to lie about the nature of their relationship to our mutual friends, and if I ever brought up my own feelings of betrayal or if I reacted poorly to stumbling upon them making out …
I was being selfish.
I was being childish.
I was the one that was in the wrong.
If I REALLY loved her, I’d accept the fact that she NEEDS to love more than one person at the same time. A GOOD person would understand that. The thing is, she never indicated anything of the sort before she moved in with me. Until she got here, she was telling me how much she was looking forward to spending the rest of her life with an amazing person.
Then there were more beatings, and I became aware of what their purpose was. I believe she was baiting me into hitting her, that way she’d have something to show the world to prove what a terrible person I really was. I never raised my hand to her, I stood there and stoically took each blow she threw. My non reaction seemed to infuriate her even more, and after awhile I began to take a bit of satisfaction at watching her get angry at me for being a decent human being.
I had nothing left to cling to … what else DID I have? I couldn’t confide in anyone nor did I have the support of the woman that I “rescued” and who claimed to love me more than life itself … as long as I could bankroll her preferred lifestyle.
My limited financial resources were drained quickly, when her boyfriend was at work I was expected to spend every single penny I came across on her and her needs before I saw to my own. The day that my last dollar was spent, she blew up at me for making a comment along the lines of “I may not be worth much, but I’m definitely worth more than this.”
She determined that my attitude was reason enough to get rid of me (although I theorize that it was because I was out of money) and her boyfriend thew me out on the streets with absolutely nothing. Associating with her had cost me a relationship with my family and none of my friends had the space or resources to put me up for more than a day or two at a time. I was able to convince a family member to take pity on me and they took me in and helped me start to get my life back on track.
After I was removed from the situation, my ex attempted to turn my friends against me by telling some of the most outrageous lies I’ve ever heard. I wasn’t sure what was more astounding, the stories she told or the fact she expected people who had known me for years to believe them. My friends didn’t believe a word that came out of her mouth, and as a result she instructed her new boyfriend that they were bad friends and that they shouldn’t associate with them any more. And, for the most part, that has happened. She’s cut the guy off from his support system, just as she had done to me.
It’s almost a year later, and my former friend and my ex are living a superficially happy life (that she tries to parade in front of me whenever possible), but given what he’s told other people and my own experience with my ex … he is miserable and she is still manipulative and controlling. She is now a mother, and is incredibly resentful that she must stay in and care for her child instead of being able to go out and party five or six nights a week. I sometimes worry about the fate of that child. I wonder what will happen when it becomes a burden instead of a means to her ends.
My own life is still broken. I have a lot of trouble coping emotionally with the whole thing. I keep blaming myself, even though I’ve been told over and over that the only fault I should own is that I love too much and too easily. I am dealing with some fairly alarming psychological symptoms that carry shades of PTSD … I have powerful flashbacks to times and places where I was being beaten and yelled at. For the first time in my life I’m experiencing panic attacks. I am unable to go places where she might be because I’m legitimately terrified of her. My moods are erratic, and I have trouble controlling crying fits or bouts of anger that pounce on me from seemingly out of nowhere.
I am no longer the bright, bubbly, creative person I once was. I am a shell of the person I used to be. I gave that woman everything I had … and it wasn’t good enough. I’m dogged with the overwhelming feeling that I’m not good enough for anyone, and that there is no such thing as love for someone as lowly and worthless as I am.
If she could betray me … and if my so-called friend could do the same … who’s to say that the next person in my life that I have feelings for won’t do the same?
If you are in a relationship with anyone that exhibits any of the signs on this list… please, get out. Don’t become like me. Don’t be a shell.