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
Hens,
your dreams about your mom sound like rescuing dreams. She is laying somewhere and you think you should go help her. That sounds like maybe you wonder if she is ok? I can relate.
With the x-spath, those dreams seem to be juxtapositioning how you feel, with the truth you know about his deceit. Maybe your subconscious it trying to tell you that you don’t have cog/dis anymore. The truth is so obvious in your dreams and so contrary to how you feel, so it’s time to let go of the feelings?
My ex-spath has also been haunting my dreams lately. I can’t remember any details any more, I just remember he was lurking but not saying anything.
Back_from_the_edge
skylar: wow: eye-opener, you said:
“I think they all want to destroy us, but not all of them have the audacity to take it that far. They all need to destroy us because the want to BE us and there can be only one, you know. They want to usurp who we are and wear our skin. They don’t understand that they have to become their own self, instead of just trying to steal someone else’s self. it’s disgusting.”
Thank you. I completely agree with you. I have been seeing, in the past few days, that this is true. That it wasn’t ‘love’ it was jealousy and hatred. “IT” used my love and affection to be a tyrant. I have been seeing this and trying to get it through MY THICK SKULL, over-riding my feelings and emotions.
I am sorry that what happened to you, happened to you.
I survived too. I am still surviving. Despite “IT”. I will always survive. And I will do so in peace and quiet and living a life VOID of the drama and chaos.
There is no way I would EVER allow it ANYWHERE near me, ever again. It likes to taunt and play games just to let me know it has been ‘close’ and that it can get close but that is never going to happen. That is a fact. I am empowered enough now that THAT IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.
Hens, Sweetest – what’s with these nightmare/dreams?
That’s horrid. You need to think pleasant thoughts before you retire and stay away from the caffeine! I am sorry ((hens)) and I hope that tonight, you will sleep in peace. Just think about me kicking “IT’s” butt and that should give you a good smile before bedtime. 🙂 xxoo
Wow Ox, that was an amazing explanation and one I shall heavily ponder. I have been fortunate to not have any nightmares or night terrors. I usually FALL into sleep after exhausting myself all day. Then with the heart, it kind of has slowed me down a whole lot. I can say this, though:
If I had NOT NC’d when I did, I seriously believe I would NOT be sitting here, writing this, at this moment. I believe that either “IT” would have succeeded or I would have died from heart failure from the sadness and the frustration.
I am learning. I get stronger every day. I so hope I will make it before I go. That is my quest, right now.
I think you guys are all amazing and I have learned something from everyone of you. I will never forget any of you. Talking to all of you is like talking to the Angels themselves, sometimes. When you have nobody else to discuss this very real and very HORRID issue with, you all have been an immense BLESSING to me. Every last one of you.
Funny you mentioned, before, Ox, how you could ‘see’ how I could have gotten duped so easily because I had a good heart….my therapist said the same thing to me. She said: “You are so nice and genuinely so, vampires can see you coming from a million miles away….” You guys are right. I just didn’t think I had to install a SHUT OFF VALVE on my ‘niceness’….
My, things have really changed in my lifetime…
*HUGS*
DUPEDSTER
MoonDancer
Ox and Sky Thanx for your imput about my dreams. Sky I do wonder how she is doing and feel sad for her ( she is in a nursing home ) but at the same time, to go visit brings thoughts of the movie the exorsist …. I would feel the evil long before I entered her room, and when I entered she would spew green slim all over me..I fear her…the one I was trained as a child to keep up on that pedastle, until her mask came off and I saw what everyone else but me had seen for years…and quick as a lite switch she had no use for me and wished me dead because she knew I could see her for the first time..
one/joy_step_at_a_time
hi hens – i think you are in the process of letting go of them. these dreams are moon gifts. the dreams themselves are like the strange animals leaving the room. recently you spoke candidly here about your feelings for your ex. i think your dreams are actually another movement away from them both; you are processing letting go on another level…allowing yourself to see the truth and at the same time experiencing your hopes and fears. (who knows maybe your mom is actually on her way off this earth.)
Back_from_the_edge
I always wondered why, when I would relay information that I had went somewhere fun; or did something with my family; or got something new; or whatever happened that was nice in my life…I always wondered why “IT” would say: “I am jealous. I don’t want to hear about nice things. I am miserable and you need to pay attention to what I am saying.” And that ugliness just grew and grew to the point that I just wanted to hide under the bed until it went away again.
I let evil into my life because I wasn’t being careful. I let my heart over ride my instincts that were telling me: “::DANGER::”, and I did that because I believe in all of us there are two people..the good and the bad. I have worked with a lot of people in my lifetime but I have never met a person quite like this one. To laugh in the face of all that is righteous and good and to mock it as if it were ‘trite’ and ‘lame’, as “IT” would say. Nope, and a lot of you know my background – NEVER have I met or been around such a person as “IT” was.
I believe, with all my soul, EVIL EXISTS and LIVES and BREATHES. skylar – you were right; they want to be “US”. They don’t know how to be like us. We can try to show them but it just doesn’t matter anymore when they try to kill you on purpose and that moment that you realize this, it is overwhelming because to think you let “IT” that close to you…
I don’t know how long my shock and dismay is going to last. I hope not long. Then, I suppose the PTSD will kick in. Hmm? 🙂
Life is worth the struggles. That is what I keep telling myself.
Have a good night you all..
You will be in my prayers.
DUPEDSTER
skylar
Duped,
Everybody knows that my ex-spath is such an unusual person. So when I figured out that he was an evil sociopath, it was a shock but also an explanation.
Everyone who knows him thinks he’s larger than life, charming and a really good person. He’s a modern day tom sawyer, capable of amazing feats, and particularly good at convincing people of anything he wants them to believe. When you are watching him do this, you think it’s really amazing and funny. Little do you realize that he has the whole world conned. He’s good at conning because his entire BEING is a facade. There’s nothing real there. Nothing at all. So he is conning 24/7 and when he lets you watch, he makes you think he’s putting on a special show for you. But in fact, this is just another day for him. It’s not just what he does, it’s who he is.
So Duped, when you are that empty and out of touch with the real world, it creates evil. And this was not hard to understand, once I saw it.
What still boggles my mind is the average Joe, who turns out to be evil. That is what I don’t get. They go to work and raise kids, do chores, take care of business. Yet they still have time for evil and they take great pleasure in it. My ex-spath would find them and lure them into his web of evil so they could do his bidding.
KatyDid
Skylar,
Yep whatever word works. Dupes. Cronies. Sychophants. Toadies. etc.
My husband has NO trouble recruiting enablers. They are the wounded ones who think he is their answer. Men admire him for being a “man’s man”. LOTS of man crushes. Vicious, almost teenage girly jealousy of me by grown, married family men. Angry that I “got between their friendship” as if a wife was supposed to understand that she was a lower priorty than an acquaintance?
One day I was stunned to realize that I did not respect or admire ANY of my husband’s “friends.” He has NO close friends or good buddies although he knew them his whole life; not emotionally connected to any of them. NONE of them were honorable or respectable or good family men. NO good role models. IN other words, if I wanted to know what kind of man my husband was, I could look at his friends and see nobody that I’d want to invite to dinner. My husband enabled them, they enabled him. Lots of support to be incredibly cruel to wives&kids. NOBODY to wake them up and say “wait a minute, that’s not what being a man is about!”
Birds of a feather….
skylar
Katy,
I hear you. The spaths will slander you before you ever meet his friends. I had the most unusual encounters with them.
One guy, a very young helicopter pilot we hired to work for us, met me alone one day to get some supplies for the job. We met at a Denny’s parking lot. I said, “Hi nice to meet you, my name is Sky.” He gave me a look that I have seen only from my x-spath’s other friends. I don’t know what it means. It’s a look as if they are afraid of me and hate me at the same time – but that isn’t it.
Anyway, we talked for a while and he seemed nervous. Then I said, “I can’t remember your fiance’s name, what is it?” He stuttered like couldn’t remember for at least 15 seconds. WTF????
Well, Katy, yes there was a fiance because they got married later and I saw the wedding video and all that. But why couldn’t he say her name?
I’m pretty sure he is a minor spath because he’s a helicopter pilot. His job, that I hired him for, was to stay for a month in an RV waiting to be called to fly his helicopter. He was stationed all alone in an RV near a mountain (afaik, because spath lied all the time) I think he and spath were having sex there every day. Either with each other or with whores. Who knows. But there was guilt written all over his cherubic face.
Ox Drover
Sky, NOT ALL helicopter pilots are psychopaths. LOL I think he was one of your X’s boy toys, from the descriptions of this situation and from the past descriptions of your X. No one “hires” someone to sit in an RV and WAIT to fly a helicopter….(head shaking here!) The “fiance” and forgetting her name! That is so RICH!!!!
It is amazing what we can SEE in hindsight which is 20/20! But we were BLIND at the time. LOL
skylar
Oxy,
actually, yeah, that’s what I got paid to do by the farmers. I hired helicopters to stand by and got paid about $100-$150 day for standby time per helicopter, by each farmer. Then if it rained, the helicopter flew over the orchards and we got paid a bunch more but I don’t remember how much, it was like $5/acre and we watched about 100 acres. That’s all spath did for work each year. 2 months worth. I wrote the contracts, spath sat on his ass and waited for rain and complained about how hot it was.
It burns me up because that is what spath is doing right now, raking in the dough, with a helicopter that I now realize that he murdered for and no license to fly. While I sit in poverty and debt.
http://www.aneclecticmind.com/2011/07/17/drying-cherries/
There’s lots of articles on it if you google cherry drying.