Isabella Cullen's husband, Ben, hit her in the face as he held their child in his arms. Wendy fled her ex-partner with her children. They had only the clothes they were wearing. "Rachel's" injuries are documented by a doctor who runs a forensic domestic violence service. These are some of the stories included in "Hitting Home with Sarah Ferguson," a documentary about the "epidemic" of domestic violence in Australia. It airs Tuesday, Nov. 24, and Wednesday, Nov. 25, on ABC in Australia. As the women tell their stories, they describe the same behaviors we discuss here on Lovefraud every day. The stories are chilling. Woman whose husband punched her until she was bleeding in the face as he held …
10 rules for keeping psychopaths and Cluster Bs out of your life
Editor's note: The Lovefraud reader "Jay Anthony" posted the following as a comment on November 10. It is reproduced as an article so that readers who may have missed it can benefit from Jay Anthony's insight. Highly sensitive individuals are certainly going to suffer from shock, among other deep emotional symptoms, after dealing with a psychopath. I was raised in a highly dysfunctional Italian family so the ability to rebound has helped tremendously in adult life. My childhood was a sink or swim situation of whose lessons I've carried into adulthood. This has made it much easier to overcome the experiences I've personally had with psychopaths/sociopaths (and there has been more than …
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Profiler offers $25,000 reward for killer of four prostitutes, and describes how the murderer thinks
Nine years ago today, on Nov. 20, 2006, the bodies of four women were found in a drainage ditch outside of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Nobody was ever arrested in the case. Now, a criminal profiler from New Jersey, John Kelly of S.T.A.L.K. Inc, is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. The profile Kelly and his team developed is chilling. It reads, in part: "He has an extreme foot fetish and has a collection of women's shoes and the shoes of his victims ”¦ He is nonsocial and likes to keep to himself. he is narcissistic (everything revolves around him), and he is also very concerned with making himself look good in all aspects." Donna An …
When You “Lose Yourself” Due To A Sociopath, Recovery Is Hard–Really Hard
If I hear one more reporter or talk show host ask a victim of partner abuse, “Why did you stay?” and not really listen to the answer or not try to understand the psychology of how emotional, psychological, financial, and/or physical abuse can rewire your brain and murder your soul, I will scream. I want to scream because I don't think the interviewer is really looking for an answer. We Are Strong, They Were Weak Instead, it's as if the questioner is seeking to label the victim as “weak” and “not like us.” This creates a sense that the victim is different, and that perceived difference creates the comforting illusion that it could never happen to us or someone like us. After all: We are stro …
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LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: I should feel lucky to be free of the sociopath, but it’s tearing me up!
Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following email from a reader whom we'll call "Caitlyn." I was being lied to for about 6 months by the guy I had been dating. He was very charming, great sense of humor, and seemed to be very caring and genuine. Always told me I was beautiful and after about a month or so he loves me and is in love with me! Red flag number one! Why did he say those words that soon!!? I chose to ignore it because he seemed different and the chemistry was great. He also said things to make me think we were soul mates and we were going to have a future. Away a lot He is an otr trucker so he's gone a lot. We've gone out of town a few times, dated, etc. but I started to feel …
LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: He painted a future, telling me how we were going to make this work
Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following email from a reader whom we'll call "Gabriela." She lives outside of the United States. My heart is aching because of what happened to me. I met a guy, I don´t know if he´s a sociopath, but he betrayed me. I met him once in at the pool area in a casino hotel in the U.S. I was traveling there with some family, I´m from another country. We had this great chemistry since that day that we met. We spoke for hours, invited me to go out but I couldn't. Then I came back to my country but kept that in love feeling that I had never felt before. I couldn´t even understand it because we only saw each other for those few hours, but still I searched him on fa …
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Sociopath Math
"It feels like I have a target on me," said a woman who had repeatedly caught the eye of sociopathic men. "You do," I replied. “So do I. So do lots of us.” Believe Who They Are When They Show You The First Time Why are empathetic people especially likely to get trapped in long-term relationships with sociopaths? We stay in these relationships too long, in part, because we discount and misattribute malicious, selfish, destructive behavior. We give people the benefit of the doubt. We have to stop doing this! Or at least, we need to become far more selective about when we do it and with whom we do it. We need to take Maya Angelou's words to heart — “When someone shows you who they are believe …
Traits that make women attractive to psychopaths
Many people think that women who've been snared by a psychopathic con artist are weak, gullible and lacking in self-esteem. Well, many people are wrong. In a recent article for SheKnows.com, author Kiri Blakeley lists seven traits that make women vulnerable to psychopaths. They're not what you may think. Donna Andersen, author of Lovefraud.com, was quoted in the article. 7 traits psychopaths are attracted to, on SheKnows.com. …
Married To A Sociopath — How It All Began
My Story Since ending what turned into a toxic marriage, suffering through a divorce from hell, and enduring severe post-divorce emotional, legal, and financial aftershocks, I have educated myself about sociopaths. It is clear to me now that my ex-husband and the father of my children is a sociopath. By sharing my story and painfully gained insights in my book Husband, Liar, Sociopath: How He Lied, Why I Fell For It & The Painful Lessons Learned, and on the lovefraud.com website, I hope to help others identify some of the markers that indicate someone in their life might be a sociopath as well as to recognize and offset the qualities in oneself—as in all of us—that encourage us to give t …
He’s a sociopath – he’s been lying to me since the day I met him
Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following story from a reader whom we'll call "Arlene." Five months ago I found myself in one of the worst situations of my life. I found out that my boyfriend, the love of my life, the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and grow old with, the man I thought I knew better than he knew himself, of 8 years ... was a total stranger and never existed. This is my story. I started dating a man 11 years older than me when I was 24 years old; I am now 33. We supposedly, in my mind, fell in love very quickly. Three months in, he took me shopping for a wedding ring, and two weeks later he told me that he had been making payments on the one that I loved, …
He’s a sociopath – he’s been lying to me since the day I met himRead More