As human beings, we all want love and companionship in our lives. It’s a basic human need, right up there with the needs for food, water and shelter. When we are lacking an intimate relationship, most of us try to fill the empty space. That leads to dating.
Here is what you need to know about dating and predators.
1. Evil exists.
What the evil is called—psychopath, sociopath, antisocial personality disorder, narcissist—really doesn’t matter. There are evil people out there, and they can be found in all segments of society—rich, poor, male, female, all races, all religions, all communities. They look like everyone else, but they are predators.
2. If you are dating, you are a target.
As an unattached person, you’re probably feeling a bit lonely—that’s why you’re looking for dates. This is natural and understandable. What you need to realize is that predators specialize in targeting lonely people. They know exactly how to find this vulnerability and exploit it by seeming to take the loneliness away. They shower you with attention, flatter you and promise you a lifetime of happiness—exactly what you’re looking for.
3. Meeting people on the Internet is extremely dangerous.
Yes, there are normal people on dating sites. But there are also predators, and communicating via the computer you do not have the tools you need to spot them. Most of the true meaning of conversation comes from nonverbal cues—voice, facial expression and body language. None of that is available in an e-mail. So what do you do? You fill in the missing pieces with your imagination, and the person becomes what you want him or her to be. You fall in love with a fantasy. For more information, see Internet Threat and Online Seduction on Lovefraud.com.
4. Predators are often charming.
If you meet someone who is glib, charismatic and has a quick answer to every question, be aware that these traits may indicate excellent social skills—or a psychopath. Pay close attention to what is actually being said. Are there gaps or inconsistencies? Is the person evasive? Does the person change plans or break promises—and always has an excuse? If you’re nodding your head, proceed with caution. For more information, see Key Symptoms on Lovefraud.com.
5. Watch for the pity play.
According to Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next Door, the best clue that you are dealing with a sociopath is an appeal to your sympathy. If you’re dealing with someone who tries to make you feel sorry for him or her, blaming other people or “the system” for his or her problems, consider it a warning that the person may be a sociopath. For more information, see The Pity Play on Lovefraud.com.
6. Predators are often great in bed.
Many people who were involved with sociopaths have told Lovefraud that the sex was amazing. Sociopaths are often skilled lovers for two reasons: First, with an excessive need for stimulation, they are hard-wired for sex. Second, they get a lot of practice, often with anyone who comes along. In reality, sociopaths want only two things: sex and power. They do not feel love.
7. Do not ignore red flags.
Maybe something seems wrong but you can’t put your finger on it. Perhaps there’s a nagging feeling in your gut. Pay attention. Do not let him or her explain away your doubts. Do not tell yourself he or she has gotten a raw deal and your love is the solution. To avoid becoming the victim of a predator, your instincts are your best defense.
Pfff, OMG, I think Oxy’s suggestions might be the right one. Ugh!
Wow, you know I don’t want to go on and on about this, but I am having a real lightbulb moment here.
My husband and I still sit around talking and trying to figure out WHAT this woman had against us, what did we do to annoy her in the first place. Generally people like us, this was instant with her. All the people we told her to interview to understand what was really going on, she ignored. She didn’t need to, that wasn’t ever in her plan.
Now it makes sense, she didn’t need a reason, she was a P who wanted money – period. It was never about us, Grand or the sorry excuse for a daughter.
I can’t wait till hubby gets home to tell him.
Oh good grief! I MUST be losing my mind. I left out the MOST important part about the phone call from my son’s spath gf and that is what prompted her call to call!
I got a bit frustrated with son’s off and on coolness towards me yesterday. I have been asking him for several days if he planned to attend an early Christmas dinner here next Sunday that I’m hosting for my father’s side of the family which he has always been very close to. I host and the other women cook and I having been attempting to get a head count for them so they will know how much food to prepare. There have also been a couple of other questions that I’ve needed answers from him for that he has refused to answer. I had asked him what he wanted for Christmas and at first he told me not to get him anything because I had already done too much for him. I told him that I had always gotten him Christmas gifts and would be getting him something this year as always. He told that he could use another pair of Keen shoes like I got him a couple of years ago. He said he wore them every day to work and that were starting to look at bit worn. I asked him to check the size…sometimes his size varies a half size dependent upon the brand. I starting asking this question LAST week. I found a great sale on a pair and told him this and once again asked him to check the size…no response…but then he’d eventually pop back up on the IM and make a very general statement regarding the weather, his break, or his work. It finally dawned on me that he was being totally evasive about Christmas and I realized that it was probably because she was not going to allow him to see me anytime during Christmas and Lord only knows what she has planned for any gifts that I’ve bought him! Burn them, cut them up, make him return them for the money?
I got really pissed and told him that I realized what was going on and apparently that he had allowed this girl to take full control of his life. Once I got started, I couldn’t stop. I asked him if he had considered that he only knew this girl a little over a month before she got pregnant and if he knew anything about her history at all. I asked him if how he could NOT notice that she told huge elaborate lies for NO reason…embellished tall tales. I asked if he he knew that she had said bad things about him to me and his grandmother like that he was insanely jealous and even told his grandmother that he told her if she ever left him that he would kill her. I asked IF he said that and told him that it didn’t sound like anything he would say. I asked him if hadn’t noticed that all she talked about was money…OTHER people’s money. I asked him to please proceed with caution because I feared that since he had a child involved that I knew he wanted very badly that I would really hate for him to find himself not being able to see it some day or even know it’s whereabouts. Didn’t dare say anything about doubting it being his. I asked to take into consider that he had to look at her as more than his girlfriend but as the mother of his child, too. He failed to answer one single question. He got angry and shot back at me that THIS was WHY he didn’t talk to me. I told him that I was only asking him to take these things into consideration because I loved him and was concerned by how she had used the baby immediately as a weapon against my husband and me when we wouldn’t give her anymore money and feared that she might use it in the same manner against him someday. He told me he had heard enough and immediately sign out.
Approximately 15 seconds later is when my phone rang. She began by saying that my son had just called her and told her that SHE needed to talk to me! I told her that NO, I didn’t need to talk to her. She said that HE said that I did and asked WHEN I was going to stop lying! This infuriated me…not only her suggestion that I was lying but that my son would sic her on me! She said she felt that we needed to talk and that SHE wanted everyone to get along. I sat in silence for the longest time and then managed to squeeze in the empathy test that I referred to in my earlier post.
My stepson, my son’s half brother that I raised from age 4 who is no 37, is a true Godsend. We talked for 6 hours straight! In a nutshell, he told me told me that he loved me and even though I haven’t officially been his stepmother for over 18 years (since his father passed), that I would always be the woman he thought of as being motherly to him and not his bio mother. He said that he loved her but that she had just never FELT like his mother because she never acted like a mother. He told me that he learned what a real mother should be like from me and because he was in the age group to date women who usually had children that the first thing he observed about them is if they treated their children like I did him. He said if they didn’t, he didn’t want anything to do with them. His fiance has two children…they were 1 and 2 years old when he started dating her. They are now 11 and 12. He said that his fiance reminds him SO much of me and she even reminds ME of myself. The children’s father is deceased so he is the only father they’ve ever really known. He also thanked me for showing him how to be a good step parent. He asked me if he, as a step child, saw me as being everything that a mother SHOULD be, then how could I allow this girl to convince me that I was not a good mother? I told him that I feared that SHE was convincing my son that I was not a good mother. He told me to let him see what it feels like to NOT have a mother to be there for him anymore, let him learn the hardest lesson he’s ever learned alone and to enjoy MY life. He told me that any day now when the car that I gave him 3 years ago dies (and it will…300,000 miles now, using and leaking a little oil which he NEVER checks) to tell him that she or her father will need to help him get another one. I’ve given him EVERY car that he’s ever owned by passing my used ones down to him when I decided to buy another one. My stepson was the one who made average grades while my son was the straight A honor roll student. He told me that IF my son had of followed my advice and example as he, himself did, that he might be making twice the good salary that he makes on his job that he has had for 19 years and not have to ask anyone for financial help at all. He also told me that my son was about to get to see what a BAD mother really is once the baby is born.
Tami,
your step son is exactly right. Your son is not the angel you think he is. There is a manipulation and a petulance that I’m picking up from what you write in your posts.
I believe that he is using this situation to mess with your head. He is not a healthy person. If he were, he would not be with a manipulating drug addicted woman.
I know that you don’t believe me. You are too close to him, so you can’t see it. Find a therapist that you can trust and get help disconnecting from your son.
With the information about the contact you had with your son about Christmass, I’m getting the same vibe as Sky does. There are two cotrasting stories… first he asks you to be there for the baby after he will distance himself from the spath gf once it is born, but then it seems as if he had her call you when you confronted him about how he lets her control his life.
That was a puzzle piece missing in my previous response to the claims she made about your son.
Yes, it seems best to go NC with both.
Tami,
The Psychopathic woman is NOT THE ONLY PROBLEM YOUR SON HAS, just as my son C who was married to the P woman used her not liking me as a way to distance himself from me, and from his good brother, and even at that time from my egg donor and my step father. He used it as an excuse to be “broke” all the time, when in fact, his being “broke” was HIS DOING…
Your son may not be a psychopath, but he is NOT FUNCTIONAL, and he is in a bad situation because of HIS OWN MAKING—if she wasn’t pregnant he would find SOME OTHER EXCUSE to be with her….he has CHOSEN this life style (and you admitted he had a problem with alcohol prior to being with her). It really doesn’t matter if he has a problem with alcohol and/or drugs, he has a problem with LIVING A FUNCTIONAL HEALTHY LIFE and until HE DECIDES to change, there will be no improvement.
My son C “changed” for a little while, but when he felt se3cure again, he started to spend his money on toys and not on providing for himself (why should he, he had a cheap place to live here) a home, newer vehicle, emergency financial cushion, etc. he chose to spend all his money on toys, and to violate the RULES and the AGREEMENT under which he was allowed to stay here for a cheap place to live. He paid me more than enough to cover the extra expenses of an additional person in the house, and I actually made a little “profit” on him being here, but there is no way he could have rented a place and bought groceries etc. as cheaply as he lived here. The agreement was that he would SAVE 1/3 of his take home for EMERGENCIES ONLY, and when he violated that and spent his savings for a hot shot new computer, he COMPOUNDED the breaking of the agreement with me by LYING to me about it.
It wasn’t a “big deal”—he hadn’t robbed a bank or assaulted some one, but I am DONE with anyone, and that includes my kids that I love, who LIES TO ME OR BREAKS AGREEMENTS OR IS NOT SELF SUPPORTING or doing ALL they can to live a morally upright life.
My son C is a great employee, he is a good man in many ways, but he has BETRAYED me in the past several times when he knew that others (his brother and his friend the trojan horse psychopath) were doing BAD things to me, and he did not warn me. He knew after that, that ONE LIE would be all it took to sever our relationship and that he would never again be eligible to come to me for “help”—if he were homeless, I would drive him to a Salvation Army shelter is about all the help I would extend. But I would do that for anyone I wasn’t afraid of.
It hurts, TAMI, it HURTS BADLY to accept this about the child we love who is NOT A PSYCHOPATH, but simply troubled.
You are FORTUNATE to have a step son that loves and respects you. I have an adopted son that loves and respects me. He treats me like he loves me. My biological sons, the psychopath one that is dangerous to me, and the other one who is NOT a psychopath, just a weak spineless man that I cannot trust, but I’m not afraid of him but I can’t have him in my life, it is too chaotic.
It will be 2 years ago in January that I asked C to leave my home….and other than working with him on matters of MUTUAL PROTECTION about his P-brother, Patrick, we don’t interact in each other’s lives.
I totally agree. Yes, he has problems and instead of working on them, he creates more and makes a point of inflicting them upon ME! I’ve never wanted to be involved in his personal business but have allowed him to drag me into it. He’s always created drama between me and the girls that he’s been involved with. He’s like the community gossip who has nothing better to do. He runs to me every time something goes wrong and asks for my advice…the “all-knowing mother”…I give it to him and try my very best NOT to be biased. I learned a long time ago not to take sides on his part or their part. Either way, he ended up angry…either for NOT taking his side or because I said a girl was in the wrong. I learned to just listen and wrapped it up by telling him the same thing that I’ve told my friends who have asked me for relationship advice. And, that was basically, if you can’t get along, get away from each other. If you want to be with the person, then accept them as they are and shut up about it. In my son’s case, the gals always end up turning on me. I honestly think he likes to stir up trouble. It’s almost like he WANTS to try to make the girls jealous of ME by somehow leading them to believe that they are competing with me! Why, me, his mother? And, then, when I have confronted him about it…he actually starts accusing me of being the problem by saying that I want him all to myself, want him to live with me the rest of his life and want to keep him my baby! I don’t know WHERE he gets this crap! All the hell I want is a nice, quiet, peaceful little life and I don’t want ANYBODY living with me and my husband! My son used to drive me nuts moving in and out all the time. He’d move out, I’d get my house back in order and then a few months later, he’d come back and literally try to take my entire household over! He’d rearrange the furniture, take hangings off the wall and turn it into what HE wanted it to be. I’d come home from work to a kitchen that looked like it had been hit by a freight train…tell him to clean up his mess, get told that he would and the mess would still be there the next day. If I confronted him again, I got told that I had OCD! It would lead to an argument and he would THREATEN to move out as though he thought I’d be devastated by that! And, yes, he broke agreements that he promised to keep each time I allowed him to move back into my house. I FINALLY said NO MORE and told him that he could NOT live with me EVER again and that he’d better find a way to make it on his own.
Definitely NO CONTACT with my son or the girl. I WAS looking forward to having a grandchild but I’m not willing to deal with the drama I’d have to in order to have a relationship with the child. I know that sounds cold but with the attitude this girl has and her thirst for money, I’d be afraid if it got a bump on its head or a scraped knee, I’d either be accused of beating it or we’d be sued for an injury that happened on our property! So, they’re on their own with the child, too.
Tami, I too wanted grandchildren “more than anything” but I’ve come to see that NOT having them is a BLESSING…and every time I talk to MiLo and all that she has been through raising her Grandchild, I re4laize just how fortunate I am to not have a child to be attached to that can be jerked away by someone else any minute!
I do know it hurts to want a relationship with your son and not have one, but the more you talk about the problems you’ve had with him in the past, his irresponsibility, his triangling you and the girlfriends, the alcohol, etc. the more I see that he has a pretty dysfunctional life. I too got sucked into “helping” or “giving advice” to my son C but I am done with that because HE IS THE ONE causing his own problems REPEATEDLY…there is a PATTERN HERE….and just as your son projects his problems on to you being a controlling mom, I realized that my son C’s problems are HIS not mine.
When C lied to me the last time. I was heart broken, but now I see the relationship more in a light of reality rather than in the light of FANTASY and what I wish might be. It ain’t easy,, Tami, you know, and I know, but it will get better! So hang in there chickie! You will make it! One day at a time. One step at a time. God bless. (((hugs))))
Hey guys ~ If you really want a grandchild, I know where you can rent one – REAL CHEAP.
He is housebroken (most of the time), eats anything (and everything), does chores (after hours of nagging), cleans stalls (then forgets to wipe his feet).
If you are interested, I have him advertised on Craigslist.
Milo, If that was an attempt at humor I am not laughing.