How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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If the truth is inconvenient, sociopaths lie (with great calm and conviction)

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Every week, a chapter of my book, "Husband, Liar, Sociopath: How He Lied, Why I Fell For It & The Painful Lessons Learned" (available via Amazon.com, just click on the title or book cover) will be published here on Lovefraud. To read prior chapters, please see the links at the bottom of the post. Chapter 51C: The Earthquake Strikes I tried to fight the wave of despair cresting above me. I could not. Gravity won—it always does. Anguish and hopelessness pounded down, expelling the air from my lungs and the tone from my body. Yet, driven by the instincts of a mother bear protecting her cub, I pushed through the emotional train wreck and crafted a response to Paul’s email. As before, the i …

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When women ‘of a certain age’ meet sociopaths

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Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following email from a woman whom we’ll call “Annamaria17.” Donna Andersen responds below. I met the SP in 2006 and he was a supervisor for electric utility company where I live. Due to a power outage he was the Environmental Rep and came to my home.  He had just moved here from out of state and I immediately fell for him.  We had lunch the next day and that was when I found out he was married.  Unhappily of course. Over the next few months, it was agonizing as he would disappear and I had already become addicted to him, the sex and everything else about him. Long story made short, he moved in with me and a month later a friend of mine disclosed tha …

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How to spot an abusive relationship before it gets bad

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[youtube_sc url="https://youtu.be/ythOTBEkUZM"] Are there warning signs that a romantic relationship will turn abusive? Emphatically YES!! Lovefraud has been saying this for years, and Dr. Dina McMillan, a social psychologist, agrees. A Lovefraud reader sent me the above video of a TEDx Canberra presentation by Dr. McMillan. She says that about one in three teenage girls and women endure physical or sexual abuse from a romantic partner at least once in their lives. That adds up to 1.16 billion people. And it doesn't count those who suffer emotional and psychological abuse, but no physical abuse. Interestingly, Dr. McMillan refers to the perpetrators as "abusers," but never mentions …

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Using “projection,” Sociopaths accuse you of being manipulative and unethical, while they play the saint or victim

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Every week, a chapter of my book, "Husband, Liar, Sociopath: How He Lied, Why I Fell For It & The Painful Lessons Learned" (available via Amazon.com, just click on the title or book cover) will be published here on Lovefraud. To read prior chapters, please see the links at the bottom of the post. Chapter 51B: The Earthquake Strikes Two weeks later, as Paul dropped Daniel and Jessica off at school after a mid-week overnight, Paul told them he had a girlfriend and that she was moving in. The moving van arrived from Chicago the next day, as did Linda Peters (the name from the UPS package), and her cat, Freedom. The cat’s name struck me as ironic, because anyone involved with Paul was d …

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My First Unsuspecting Year in My Marriage to an Exploiter

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By Eleanor Cowan With a sparkling wedding ring on my finger, I’d claimed a much-desired new identity – no longer the binge-drinking daughter of an alcoholic mother who’d taken her own life, no longer the thrice-raped young woman drowning in shame, but instead newly married to a handsome, highly educated university student. I’d begun a whole new chapter of life. Still, I noticed things. Little things that I dismissed. That summer of 1973, after my regular work hours at the library, I waitressed part time for the extra cash to pay for my fall university courses in Paris. While I noted my husband’s five-year high stack of unpaid student loans, I decided that his finances were none of my bu …

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Maybe this tune should be the ‘Sociopath Song’?

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[youtube_sc url="https://youtu.be/6ZBuRtDWJhs"] The Brothers Osborne are a hit country band that took home a couple of Academy of Country Music awards this year for Vocal Duo of the Year and New Vocal Duo of the Year. Their most recent hit single is called, It Ain't My Fault. A Lovefraud reader suggests that it could be a theme song for sociopaths. What do you think?   …

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7 steps to breaking emotional ties with a sociopath

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If you're like most people who read Lovefraud, you may know, or suspect, that the person who is creating havoc in your life is a sociopath. Whether the offending individual is a romantic partner, parent, another family member or a friend, he or she checks all, or most of, the boxes of the sociopath checklist. You know the individual is bad for your emotional and psychological health, your wallet, and perhaps your safety. Still, you may struggle to break free. Sometimes there are financial or legal issues that make it difficult to escape. But often the ties that bind are emotional. Emotional bonds can be extremely powerful. This is understandable, because sociopaths are skilled at …

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I didn’t want to admit my husband was a sociopath; now I realize how blind I was

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Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following letter from a reader who posts as "rosered." Dear Donna, I have been a follower of your website since  last year. That was when, after four years of mental anguish, trying to understand inexplicable behavior, praying for my children (and myself), financial crisis, and wondering what it was that I was doing so wrong, I finally left my husband. In the week after, in which I was a totally emotional wreck, my sister urged me to follow links in an email she had sent me 6 months before. I had been reticent to read it at the time, brushing off her message as "totally ridiculous." The email subject line was: "He is a Narcissist." In retrospect, I …

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Divorcing a Sociopath? Get ready for your children to be used as pawns to hurt, drain, and distract you

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Every week, a chapter of my book, "Husband, Liar, Sociopath: How He Lied, Why I Fell For It & The Painful Lessons Learned" (available via Amazon.com, just click on the title or book cover) will be published here on Lovefraud. To read prior chapters, please see the links at the bottom of the post. Chapter 51A: The Earthquake Strikes  The devastation of the sham that was my life—of the betrayal, of my naivety, my weakness, my precarious financial predicament, of some of the qualities that I like most about myself being turned against me (my empathy, love of the country, mountains, and a simpler life) was overpowering. I did not want to kill myself, but I wanted to die to escape the s …

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My 3 sociopathic relationships — I am a therapist, and they fooled me

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Three of my most serious relationships have been with sociopaths: my second marriage, an engagement, and most recently, with a man I was in a serious relationship with, lived with, and became pregnant by. My second marriage was with a man I met at work, who had been sober for 5 years in AA when I met him. He suffered from (diagnosed) borderline personality disorder, but I believe was also a full-fledged sociopath. He was a convicted abuser and had done jail time and anger management for that. He confessed to me that he was a prostitute for many years (with men), a porn performer, and a jewel thief. But because he was in AA and I believed honest, I thought he had changed. The abuse started …

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