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.
Tami:
I have a suggestion as to why your son has gained weight after stopping drinking. I have known a lot of people who drink who don’t eat sweets. They are getting their carbs from the alcohol. In my observation, they have all been thin. So maybe now that he stopped drinking, he is eating more carbs and gaining weight. Just my thoughts.
Tami, I understand it makes you feel better to maintain this relationship with your son with whom you are very close, at all costs. Just remember that in doing so, you are also choosing to keep a sociopath (his gf) in your life and all the drama and craziness that goes with it, by proxy. You are also modeling to your son that it is okay with you to have a spath in your life by proxy, i.e., that you are disrespecting yourself to maintain your relationship with him. This will keep a certain amount of stress in your life that will undoubtedly cause stress-related illnesses over time. Here you are about to have a facelift to look younger, but then adding more stress on the other end, which accelerates aging.
In addition, you may end up raising an addicted baby, which will pretty much set the course of your life for the next 18 years. You can expect a lifetime of drama and ups and downs. If you bond with the baby, you will always have the gf and her family in your life. This is a steep price to pay to maintain your close relationship with your son who seems to be making some very bad choices in his life, and dragging you into it at a time when you should be enjoying your own life. I find it disrespectul and selfish on his part. He didn’t want to “worry about you” for his own selfish reasons – to decrease his own stress level. So he only thinks of your feelings when it is convenient for him. Your son is disrespecting himself, and now has disrespected you. And you are allowing it. I think it takes a lot of nerve for him to even consider having you raise his baby. Was your 31 years of service to him not enough? It’s not as if he is a teenager having a baby.
Sorry I cannot say it as eloquently as Constantine, but I agree with his posts to you. It does not sound like a healthy relationship between the two of you at this point, but one of enmeshment. I can imagine the thought of losing your close relationship with your son is excruciating. But what a steep price to pay to keep it. I hope you will reconsider and save yourself. You deserve a spath-free life. Everyone does.
Tami
Am so glad for you to have communication with your son that put you at ease. I know how not knowing what’s going on with an unstable child makes a parent feel very anxious.
Am also concerned about some of his “answers” b/c they indicate some pretty emotionally unhealthy thinking. I wonder your observation that he is having to grow up fast? Isn’t he over 18? B/c what you write makes him sound very immature. I don’t like him throwing crumbs at you, saying he needs you to help him. Why would a MAN need his mom like that? All his compliments towards you (love bombing) came off as manipulation when I read it. It’s like he was egging you on in competition with her. (more triangulation). Pretty creepy. Am agreeing with Stargazer that he is disrespecting himself (emasculating himself as if he is a boy) and disrespecting you (mommy rescue me) and disrespecting her (blame blame blame rather than accountibility and dignity). From what you write, it would not go amisss to get some family counseling to help you establish healthy boundries so your son can be the man his kid will need him to be and not be the dependent child that will drive you nuts.
Best
Katy
Katy, you said it so well – I have such a hard time articulating sometimes. I don’t know if it’s been mentioned, but I wonder if Alanon might be a good resource?
Stargazer,
The boundry issues stand out in Tami’s dilemma don’t they. HUGE problems with boundries. Her son has a drinking problem. As Tami writes, her son says he has quit drinking SEVERAL times. Who quits drinking? I never have. The only people who NEED to quit drinking are the ones whose alchohol abuse has created life issues… like sonny boy. The problem for him is that quitting drinking doesn’t resolve his problem… his drinking is just a symptom of his avoidance. SONNY boy Def needs AA or sim program to assert some boundries and self responsibility. At minimal, he needs parenting classes. Sadly no one is going to do what’s best for that baby (adoption); it’s become a possession. Train wreck a coming…. boo hoo.
Star, I liked your post to Tami. Couldn’t agree more. My brother had a baby with a disordered woman…..I now know she was a spath.
It was a terrible experience for my mum particularly. My brother had a huge battle with the mother of his child…..for YEARS! He eventually met and married another woman who helped(rightly or wrongly)my brother see that NC was the only way with the ex……a massive price to pay. He didn’t see his daughter again and eventually went NC with my mum too. Not entirely sure what or why that happened. We …my sister and i…think that his wife didn’t want my mum interfering in encouraging my brother to go NC and the devastating results that that stance would incur.
My mother can be quite manipulative and she did try to influence his decision because this was her granddaughter and she had bonded with her and couldn’t see past her desire to have a relationship with the baby.
Anyway, it was a mess. My brother hasn’t spoken to my mum or anyone else …me and my 2 sisters… in 14 years. And we are all NC with his child who grew up just like her mother.
Painful, exhausting experience that I wouldn’t wish anyone else to
experience. Toxic people have looooong reaching long lasting effects.
His child is now….25. And still the ripples keep coming.
Sad. Devastatingly so
Tami, I agree with Star’s suggestion and think that you might consider Alanon for yourself, and You might suggest AA for your son. Though he has quit drinking he says now, since he has demonstrated in the past a serious tendency to “drink to excess” when under stress, it might be a good idea for him, in light of this baby coming for him to get some help and this would be a good place for him to start.
The whole situation is triangled with the “rescuer (mom) persecutor (girl friend) victim (him and the poor baby) but when you start trying to “help” him to rescue this poor innocent child from the bad mommy-person, then you will become the “persecutor” and the bad-mommy person will be the victim, along with her child, and sonny-boy will have to “rescue” the bad-mommy person and the child from YOU! And round and round it will go, like Emotional musical chairs with the music stopping and everyone getting a new chair/role, and round and round it will go again.
The Continual DRAMA RAMA that goes on forever with excuses, enabling, and acting out on the part of whoever is in the “persecutor’s” seat, enabling by the rescuer, and the victim doing the pity ploy! In the meantime, the child learns Dysfunction and lack of boundaries to go along with the pith-poor DNA he/she has inherited from Mommy dearest and maternal grand mommy dearest! and possibly brain damage from mommy dearest’s drug use during the first? Second? Third trimester? of the pregnancy!
While I realize from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE that it is difficult and painful to distance yourself from one of your children (in your case your only child) who is living a dysfunctional life, I also realize from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE that the dysfunctional life style is HIS CHOSEN LIFESTYLE. He voluntarily put himself in this position, and he voluntarily stays in it. As long as he stays with her for ANY reason (excuse) the drama will continue. My son’s drama continued until his wife and her boy friend tried to kill him. That did shake him loose from HER, but not to any long term reform in life style…his is still dysfunctional.
Also personal experience here going NC with immediate family members (sister and mother). It is not an easy thing to do. I so feel for the pain of this. It’s like cutting off your right arm.
Yes, Katy, boundary issues really stand out here. Boundaries the son has not set for himself, and unhealthy boundaries between Tami and her son (sorry for talking about you in the third person, Tami). Sound like a lot of codependency. Part of setting healthy boundaries is to figure out why (Tami), you feel this need to rescue your son. Once you find a healthier way to meet this need, it might be easier to let go. This takes some soul searching, asking yourself why it is so hard to let go, and what purpose this rescuing part serves for you. It is possible that you have overfunctioned for your son since he was young, and so it’s hard to step back and change that. The first part in changing any family dynamic is to change your own behavior. It shakes up the system and forces others to change, too.
A mother’s role is to raise her children to adulthood, not to be their best friend, confidante, or rescuer. Even when children are little, it’s important for parents to let them make mistakes and not to always protect them from the consequences of their actions. This is how they learn to be responsible adults.
This is not to say a mom should never be close to her son, but in such a way that she does not assume any responsibility for his mistakes. Even in a more healthy situation, a mom overstepping boundaries in her son’s life will often put the new wife on the defensive. When a man gets married, his new wife and family becomes his top priority, and this is appropriate. Even things like continuing to buy clothes for a son can feel like overstepping the wife’s role. Too many marriages split up (like my father and mother’s) because the man is a mama’s boy and will not have a healthy separation from his mother.
I think it is really overstepping your bounds to to interfere with the fate of the unborn child, even if asked. If both parents are deemed unfit to raise the child, there are other adoptive parents out there who could give this poor child a loving home. I know it’s tough love to say to your son, “I’m sorry you are in this situation, and I hope you can figure it out. There is nothing I can do to help you.” A good support group like Alanon will support you in asserting these healthy boundaries.
Star, your advice I think is very well said and valid and I agree with it 110%…it IS LIKE CUTTING OFF AN ARM to get out of the TRIANGLE OF PAIN, and with people you love, but realizing that we cannot “save” them from the consequences of their poor choices and are NOT RESPONSIBLE for saving them from those choices, it makes it easier to let go what is NOT our responsibility.
I think I will always have some “addiction” to wanting to “help” others but I have to set my boundaries on what is “help” and what is “enabling”—Yesterday I had to step up to that LINE when a “drama addicted” person I know called me and said she had suicidal thoughts and a plan….and when I started talking to her she hung up on me. Then sent me a snarky e mail telling me how UNSUPPORTIVE I was being to her, but I took ACTION, but NOT RESPONSIBILITY.
When people “mention” or “threaten” suicide I do not take it lightly and I don’t “play that game.” While I don’t really think this woman would actually have harmed herself, I think it was “game playing”—the RESULT was NOT what she had hoped for, because I did not fall into the “pity party” or “pity play” and she did not get “sympathy” out of me.
When the sheriff shows up at your door because you threatened suicide (BTW I have that threat in WRITING) it isn’t the result you expected…and it goes on your record and there is a police report made, including a copy of the e mail to the sheriff’s office.
TIP for Drama Queens: do NOT put your suicide threats/gestures in writing and don’t try to play that game with a mental health professional or former professional.
This woman is married to a friend of my son’s and mine, and I realize he is in this situation (the relationship) voluntarily, and I also realize that in order to spend time with him, we will have to spend a limited amount of time with HER, but I no longer play her games or allow them to upset me emotionally. I keep a mental and emotional distance from her DRAMA.
If her husband was my son, though, or someone I was very emotionally intimate with, I don’t know if I could have any kind of relationship with either of them, even for the sake of being around him. I tried to do that with my son C when he was married to the Psychopath, but it wasn’t satisfying or healthy. I would not do it again if the person was very close to me. Just my opinion on how I would conduct MY life, and each person has to make their own decisions for themselves….and live with the consequences.
Stargazer
The second half of my post did not appear. It was a message to Tami that echoes what you have written. Tami is caught in a pattern of excusing making for her son and it is emotionally crippling him, enabling his lack of personal responsibility. Tami needs to learn boundry setting as much as her son does. That is clear. Alanon is one solution, strongly recommend Alanon or similar.
What is telling is that child services is struggling to find someone to care for a baby that isn’t even born yet. That doesn’t happen except in the worst of cases. They’ve written off sonny boy, the gf, her family, and are looking toward Tami. I am sad for baby b/c I really do think best for baby is adoption out, but am thinking as I wrote, this baby is seen as a possession, there is NO emotionally healthy home for a child within this dysfunctional family dynamic.