A Lovefraud reader recently asked the following question:
If the sociopath is not in it for money (he pays for everything with no access to my accounts) then what are other reasons to stay in a relationship if he doesn’t live with me nor do we share anything financially? Many of the posts I have read involve financial fraud.
If a sociopath has targeted you, it’s because you have something that he or she wants. Often it’s money, but not always. Here are 10 more things that the sociopath may want:
1. Sex
Sociopaths crave stimulation, and sex is highly stimulating, so they pursue it. However, sociopaths are not slaves to their physical urges. They often use sex primarily as a tool of manipulation to get something else that they want.
2. Services
Sociopaths may want you to do something for them that they don’t want to do for themselves, such as cooking, cleaning and taking care of children.
3. Housing
Even if sociopaths don’t directly ask for money, they may suggest living together. They may say it’s because they love you, when, in fact, they have no place to go.
4. Entertainment
Perhaps you’re part of an exciting social scene. The sociopath may want to be with you just to gain access to the people you know.
5. Status
Hanging out with you may be good for their image, especially if you’re rich, famous, successful or competent. Your status boosts their status.
6. Image
Perhaps the sociopath needs a partner like you to complete the image that he or she wants to present to the company or community.
7. Cover
Your presence may help them get away with a hidden agenda. You may be providing cover for the sociopath to pursue a double life of sex, drugs or crime.
8. Connections
Sociopaths may use you, your skills and your connections in order to pursue their grandiose dreams or entrepreneurial plans.
9. Duping delight
Sociopaths enjoy getting over on people—this is called “duping delight.” They often manipulate, deceive and use people just for the fun of it. Some will seduce targets just so they can break their hearts.
10. Domination
Sociopaths feed on power and control, so they sometimes pursue domination for its own sake. They want to prove themselves more powerful than you, perhaps even powerful enough to destroy you.
If a sociopath targets you, it’s because he or she sees you as useful in some way. Once you are no longer useful, you’ll be dumped.
Mine did have some good points. He encouraged me to buy better quality stuff, as before I’d always bought cheap stuff. He liked things like Wedgewood plates and bought me new pieces whenever he had money. So, from that I now don’t go for the cheap option, I treat myself and consider that I AM worth spending more on, so although he was parasitic at times, in one way he was a positive force.
Thats what I don’t understand sometimes. Sometimes he he was beneficial and a lot of the time not. Very strange.
It is so cathartic to read these stories. My ex was a textbook sociopath. No job, lost every job he ever had. Once as a teacher who preyed on an 18-year-old student. Confronted with this court document where he was fired from the teaching job for seducing a student, he denied it and said it was a conspiracy to get him fired over the content of a play he produced. He lived with his mom after his 3rd divorce. His mother is an enabler. Pays his rent when he cant, buys him gifts. He has every gadget and toy he could possibly want but lives on unemployment and food stamps. When he does get money he blows through it like a maniac. He buys movies. The man has three kids and no job but has to have every movie that is ever released. He only works long enough to get more unemployment. His kids are the real victims here. He is out of my life but will forever be in theirs. His phone was full of texts, emails, voice mails and facebook posts with other women. He uses Facebook as a dating sight. He never completes a project. He started work on my house but never completed it. When he discarded me like yesterday’s garbage he broke into my home while I was on a business trip. He stole some of my stuff. He is too much of a leech to pay me back the money he owes me so he cowardly chose to break in while I was out of town. Yesterday was his birthday and I sent him a happy birthday text. Why? Because sadly my feelings for him were real and I am still grieving the loss of what I thought I had. It’s only been 5 weeks. These men are predators and truly should be prosecuted for their actions. The word parasite is far too kind to describe these men. In the early stages of our relationship he texted me all day long and I was sucked in by the attention. He lives 130 miles away so it was easy for him to have a double life. I even paid the gas money when he would come to visit me. I knew deep down he was a complete loser and my family and friends all told me the same but I believed he was my soulmate and really understood my needs. The first time we broke up I had several conversations with his third wife and she told me horror stories about this man. But still I took him back. Throughout the nearly two years we were together, the attention he once showered on me became much more seldom. At the end he was really just dangling me along and then broke up with me in a text message. Now he has cut me off completely just like all the things you read about sociopaths. So how does a smart girl like me with a good job, a home and a 13-year-old daughter get duped by this guy? Did I mention he is fat and bald and not very attractive? That is the issue I must struggle with as I move forward. He wanted to put a tracking device on my phone so he would know my whereabouts at all times and he would demand I send him pictures through my phone of who and where I was. He tried to isolate me from friends and family and there was a long list of places I couldn’t go. I had to have female personal trainers, hairdressers, massage therapists, etc. He tracked my menstrual cycle so he could impregnate me and at one point demanded I marry him. He hated that I travel for work and suggested I find another job. He resented my volunteering saying it took time away from him and our kids. He wanted me to sell my home because I lived there with my ex-husband and dated a mailman who occasionally delivered mail to my home. He basically wanted me to give up my job and my home and move to his city where he has a tiny apartment and no job. Just writing these words brings up so much pain and anguish but is also helping me to finally heal.
Dear DLD, welcome to LoveFraud and I suggest that you read and read the articles here and educate yourself both intellectually and emotionally to what a psychopath is.
The ONLY way that you can heal is total NO CONTACT….and no looking at his FB page to see what he is up to, every contact sets your healing back.
Sure, YOUR love was real, his was FAKE entirely fake. Nothing real about it. That is hard to take, but it is a fact we must face.
Educate yourself and work on healing yourself and stay NC with him. You WILL feel better and you will grow, so hang in there and don’t give up, but it WILL take TIME. (((Hugs))) and God bless.
The ONLY thing “I” found ‘beneficial’, in anyway,
whatsoever, was acquiring the insight and the
knowledge of the low life I was actually all
twisted up and entangled with.
A parasite.
A violent and assaulting, rude, psychopath.
They all pretty much own the same “MO”,
it don’t matter what they have or don’t.
They are soul suckers and survive on
the kindnesses of others.
It’s not enough for them just to accept your
kindness, they want to take your LIFE as well,
if you don’t play by the rules. THEIR rules.
We must decide for ourselves
to put an end to the terror.
Dupey
I saw some interview snips of Arnold Schwartzenager.
He grinned through his responses to questions about his cheating and telling lies. I wonder how many of the traits on this list he has.
He said that he wanted to keept the “housekeeper” close to manage damage control…yes…control!
It seems that Mariea was dupped. He smugly believes that the past is past…no big deal to him…of course, he wasn’t hurt.
In many more recent pics of the couple she looks extremely unhappy. (But Arnold, the dirty bugger, is smiling!)
Many who interviewed him say he’s charmig…
I think that he dupped them too.
I certainly hope that at least one licensed professional will publicly question his smug statements and point out his telling body language during those interviews.
Publically exposing those with these personality disorders (especially elected officials) might lessen their abilities to con future victims.
More often than not, psychopaths use sex in order to manipulate their victims and to exercise their power and control. Psychopaths always spot the right person, someone who can easily be manipulated and influenced – the perfect target for their nasty plans. This, they can do for the fun of it, but even to take revenge on the victim. If the victim has done something that threatens the psychopath’s ego or self image; the target has perhaps refused the psychopath’s seductive advances or has done something else that the psychopath cannot tolerate could lead to something really nasty for the victim when the sociopath takes his/her revenge on the ’disobeying’ person. By using seduction, sex and other manipulative means they could make the target do things they would never normally do without the sociopath’s manipulation and influence. It has happened that a psychopath gained control over such person and by strong influence made the target do things that were downright illegal, just to get back at them for doing something that was disapproved of by the sociopath. At the end, of course, it was not the sociopath who was punished, but the victim him-/herself since he/she was unable to prove the sociopath’s manipulative methods. Thus, the psychopath was most certainly satisfied by misleading the justice system and, more importantly, by deceiving the target in order to get back at him/her.
G.:
Perfect description of what they do! I saw it happen…
Sex for normal people is a CHEMICAL BONDING with oxytocin being released by the brain…for the psychopath, however, they lack the “normal” number of RECEPTOR sites for the oxytocin to bond to in the brain causing the EMOTIONAL BOND.
Oxytocin is released when a mother nurses her baby, it causes contractions of the uterus that are very similar to orgasam, it is very pleasurable. Oxytocin is also released when a woman gives birth, and by stroking and touching of the skin.
PSychopaths have sex with a victim, the VICTIM bonds to them, the psychopath does NOT have a similar bond to the victim, so is able to MANIPULATE this person who is “bonded” to them emotionally.
So our bonding to the manipulators (if we are having sex with them) gives them a DISTINCT advantage over us.
The “love bomb” can also be asexual as well…because they get the victim to TRUST them…and trust also causes a kind of bonding even without sex, and of course they trust no one because they know that THEY are untrustworthy so they assume we are too.
Because we trust, and find it difficult to ACCEPT that someone we love/care for and trust would DO “that sort of thing” (whatever bad thing they have done) we allow them to take advantage of us and sometimes repeatedly before we actually attempt to disengage.
We must be very careful whom we trust….trust must be EARNED over a significant period of time in many different situations and then we must continually keep our eyes open for RED FLAGS of dishonesty.
It doesn’t matter WHAT kind of dishonest behavior the person does, it must be registered as what it is–dishonest! And if we cut out the dishonest people in our lives (and not all people who are dishonest or irresponsible are psycopaths) but ALL psychopaths are dishonest and irresponsible,, so by cutting out the ones who are those things, we cut out the psychopaths as well.
Doesn’t hurt at all to have ALL dishonest and irresponsible people out of our lives either.
I have been victimized again. I originally wrote about my experience here in the spring with a woman who is a sociopath and took advantage of me time and time again. She took something from me that cost me more then money. I have lost my self respect,dignity and am embarassed and ashamed that I allowed her to victimize me again. Here is my follow up to what has happened since I let her in again.
I wrote to LoveFraud back in April about a 50 year old woman who I dated for three years. I told about how she lacked emotion,lived like a drifter and finally landed an apartment right next door to her last boyfriend. Then her drug addicted sons moved in,wrecked the place and interfered in our relationship on almost a daily basis. I put up with excessive uncleanliness,her borrowing money from not only me, but everyone she knew. The fact that she claimed to be a christian and told me I was full of anxiety disorders because I did not believe in faith healing. She drove a wedge between myself and my sister,complained that I lived with my elderly father who treated her like a daughter. She was very secretive about things,would blow up when cornered and changed the subject whenever I drew attention to the fact that her stories never added up. She made a nickname for everyone she knew to endear herself to them. She told me how she loved me on a daily basis. When we met she told me she felt that she knew me her whole life and that we were meant to be together. I was very vulnerable as my mother had just died and believed everything she said. I suffer with OCD (something she knows) and when my instincts kicked in and red flags came up, I was confused as to whether it was an instinct or my OCD.
I suffered through many situations where she treated me very coldly and never would apologise for her actions. She cheated on me, I forgave her. She let an endless parade of outdoor cats fill her apartment,something she knew bothered me, but the more I complained the more the cats would be allowed in. I reached a point where I would break up with her for a few days, then a few weeks, then 2 months last year and one day realised that we would always break up around holidays and birthdays. She let me move her three times, borrowed money for food and then had a dinner with her family visiting from out of town and instead of having me over,she invited her ex boyfriend over, which her sister confirmed for me.
There simply is not enough time or space to write everything I went through with this woman. But with much embarassment and shame I am here again to tell you that after all of this,she broke up with me out of the blue on February 29th,as I have stated she took a leap! Four months later I was moving into a new condo with my father to help him out and came to the conclusion that I would have a new beginning, new email,new phone number and best of all a new place where I could be clean and de-stress from what I had been through with this woman. However after closing on our condo my father took ill and almost died. I was overwhelmed to put it mildly. I had to be out of our apartment and also had in the back of my mind that I could not make it financially and pay all the bills should my father not make it. Much to my surprise my sister had maintained contact with this woman, something she denied. One day I get an email out of the blue with a very lengthy explanantion and apology from this woman and how if I need her to for anything she would be there, but no pressure. At first I ignored it, but she persisted most convincingly that she was not a Sociopath, that she loved animals and everything was just a string of misunderstandings. She arrived at the hospital and seemed to be different to me. I let my guard down and before I could blink we were back together again. She told me that she had to go to another state for her fathers birthday and when she got back we could resume our shattered relationship. I continued to move and fix up my dad and my condo and didn’t give it much more thought.My dad came home and needed months to recover and my help as well.
She came back home and I invited her over. She seemed to be a bit more warm acting and I started to think my labeling of her being a Sociopath was just misguided thinking on my part. A few weeke later she ask for my help in getting her an apartment near me. I was surprised as she claimed to not like my town, but I helped her for two weeks until she found one a mile and half from me. She had a new job as well. I helped her move,loaned her money for a bed,a couch,helped her unpack and clean and while putting things away I came across a restraining order that was not filled out and also moneygrams that showed she was giving hundreds of dollars to her kids for drugs and then borrowing from me. I approached her about it and she became angry and said she would have only filled it out if I would have kept calling her a sociopath. I informed he that that was not a crime and that I was not a stalker and would never hurt a woman with physical violence. Then I am told by her that my sister encouraged her to get it! She then informed me that it was her business if she gave her kids money.Angry I left and drove around thinking about what to do. Like a chump I went back and tried to work things out. She told me to throw it out and we could move on.Another week went by and I was now spending all of my days helping my dad out and my evenings helping her out. I complained that I could not spend every night with her and that I was stressed out,drained and had a place of my own where she could come to occasionally. She blew up at me,told me that she did not like my condo,told me that my father who always treated her with respect made her uncomfortable and that my place was to clean for her. She asked me for her apartment keys back,then went and sat at the kitchen table I gave her and told me to leave. Shocked I exclaimed that if I left I would not be back. She remained silent and I spent the weekend in deep depression. The following Monday I called and emailed her. She ignored all of this and days later emailed me and told me that she didn’t think that the love she thought she had was real love and that I had nerve to question when I would be paid back. After more insults by her, she informed me that she wanted her old life back and male friends back.
I have dated many women and have had long term relationships and break-ups. None of them ever treated me as badly as this horrible horror of a human being, but I am dumb founded, ashamed and embarassed as to why I would let her back into my life,only to go through more hell and mental anguish. I know am trying to once again move on and wonder when she will try to come back and how I will handle it if she does. The only thing I have now is her words that she does not love me. I was used again,so shame on me! I hope that I can move on this time and find someone I am more deserving of. Thanks for listening.
Dear Torn,
Your very sad story reminds us all how IMPORTANT NO CONTACT IS with these people…no matter what they do to us if we do not maintain NC with them they will wiggle back into our lives and screw us over again.
I’m glad that you are back at LF and I hope that you will keep on reading and learning. Freeing ourselves and healing the damage they have done take TIME and WORK and is not accomplished in a few days or even a few weeks. I also strongly, STRONGLY suggest that you get Donna’s book “REd Flags of Love Fraud” and read it and read it again until you know these red flags by heart, and any time ANYONE shows you what they are, BELIEVE THEM the VERY FIRST TIME and never look back.
You can have a life after a psychopath…and the best revenge is a good life. I suggest that you work on your healing before you look toward another relationship because if not, like many of us here you may wind up with another one.
So now that you are out, stay out and get your life back. God bless.