By Fannie LeFlore, MS, LPC, CADC-D Fannie LeFlore profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide Habitual liars and cheaters, con artists and swindlers are extremely self-centered and controlling people. They focus on manipulating other people simply as a way of life, for their own benefit. People like Donna Andersen clearly know what this kind of evil looks like. They know because they once trusted people who turned out to be sociopaths—people who deceived them intentionally, who took from them both tangible and intangible things of value, through encounters in romantic, familial or business relationships, whether over a period of hours, days, weeks, months or years. Now, with t …
Is He A Narcissist? Is He Salvageable?
This is a big topic, and I fully intend to flesh it out in future posts. But allow me, here, to consider this question from the perspective of the work I do with couples. It is often surprisingly easy, from a couples therapy perspective, to weed out the narcissists from the non-narcissists; and more importantly, the salvageable from the unsalvageable narcissists. Narcissists, as we know, will struggle to see things from their partners' perspective. But let's be clear: it is the reasons they struggle with this, not that they struggle with it, that signals their narcissism. At the risk of oversimplifying, narcissists struggle to appreciate their partners' perspective fundamentally …
Trust, oxytocin and testosterone
Researchers have found that a pulse of the brain hormone oxytocin—instigated by a soft touch or caress—enhances trust, and a squirt of testosterone makes people more skeptical. Although this article doesn't address it, these hormones have implications in dealing with sociopaths. The predators instinctively seem to know that proclaiming their love for a target, and getting the person into an intimate relationship, makes the target more likely to trust them. And then the sociopaths go to work as exploiters. Read She doesn't trust you? Blame the testosterone on NYTimes.com. Link submitted by a Lovefraud reader. …
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”
By Ox Drover When I was a kid growing up, one of the “old sayings” that was bandied around the family was the one about “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” As a small child this didn't make any sense, since there weren't any Greeks that I knew of living anywhere around where we lived in central Arkansas. (The phrase actually refers to the story of the ancient Greeks invading Troy by hiding soldiers in a massive wooden horse that was given to the city as a gift—the Trojan Horse.) This saying could have been paraphrased as “beware of ANYONE that you don't trust bearing gifts.” Many cultures teach their children that if someone does a favor for you, the “law of reciprocity” means you are …
LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: Marriage, then discovering the lies
Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following letter from a reader who we'll call “Nora.” The names in this letter have been changed. One Saturday, in October 2009, I married someone I thought was the man of my dreams. When this man came into my life last year, I had suffered several losses and was very vulnerable. I thought I had finally met an honorable, loving, understanding, romantic, Christian man. We laughed together, planned our future together, and seemed like the perfect couple. I should have remembered when something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Although I didn't expect everything would always be rosy, soon after we were married, I discovered that everything I tho …
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Empathy among college students declines
A recent study analyzed data about 14,000 college students collected over 30 years. The shocking findings: today's college students are 40 percent lower in empathy than students from 20 or 30 years ago. Read Empathy: College students don't have as much as they used to, on Newswise.com. Link submitted by a Lovefraud reader. …
Even experts on bullying are clueless about sociopaths
The headline of a New York Times article sent to me by a Lovefraud reader last week was, Maybe bullies just want to be loved. Yeah, right, I thought. The article related the findings of two recent studies, one of them about schoolyard bullies. Dutch researchers from the University of Groningen investigated 481 elementary school children. Their findings, according to the Times: Bullies tended to divide their classmates into potential sources of affection and targets for domination. The latter were children who had already been rejected by kids the bullies cared about: They didn't count. Interestingly, bullies cared only about the approval of classmates of the same sex. Boys pick on …
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BOOK REVIEW: The Gaslight Effect
By Ox Drover I recently read The Gaslight Effect—How to spot and survive the hidden manipulations other people use to control your life, by Dr. Robin Stern. I highly recommend this book to Lovefraud readers. Robin Stern, Ph.D., is a therapist specializing in emotional abuse and psychological manipulation. She teaches at Hunter College, Teachers College and Columbia University, and is a leadership coach for faculty. This well-written book is quite reader friendly. Dr. Stern starts off by defining the term “gaslighting” as being “pressured by someone else to believe the unbelievable.” She goes on to show that gaslighting is “an insidious form of emotional abuse and manipulation that ca …
Sociopaths and Suicide
Although some see sociopaths as too emotionally deficient to experience the despair necessary to suicide, I see suicide as offering a viable option for some sociopaths, and I'm going to explain why. Let me start with a bit of crude, brutal logic: for many sociopaths, as we know, life is very much a game; hence, when game over, life over. No more game, what's left? The answer may be, nothing. And yet it may be less “despair” and “depression” with which the sociopath is left when his act has been shut-down than his preferring no longer to deal with an existence he knows will cease supplying the gratifications to which he's grown accustomed, perhaps addicted and certainly privileg …
Sex crimes and punishment
Stories in the newspaper yesterday were disheartening. After reading them, I had to conclude that full-blown sexual predators are everywhere, and doing something about them will be difficult. The first story I found was about Canadian Col. Russell Williams, an elite pilot who was commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton, the largest air force base in the country. In 2005 he was photographed with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip. On February 7, 2010, he was charged with murdering a young woman who had been missing for almost a week. That's not all. Williams, considered a “shining bright star” in the military, has been charged with the murder of two women, sexual assault of two oth …