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.
Oxy:
Sorry 🙁
Thanks, Louise and Star,
Star you are so right, we must eliminate (to the best of our ability) the psychopaths from our lives. That is why I have such admiration for those mothers who must deal with these beasts for decades for the sake of their children.
I cann also relate, Star, to your identity crisis as well. I’m going through the “getting older” and “retired from career” phase of the natural changes in the life cycle. The physical health decline, the mental acuity decline, and the rearranging of my life to fit what I am still capable of. The giving up of some of my favorite hobbies because they are either no longer physically safe or I am no longer able to have the agility to accomplish them.
So, I am taking up new hobbies and interests to replace the ones I can no longer do. Making a new identity as a RETIRED person rather than as a practicing RNP. An identity as a single person, not part of a couple, not a married woman.
I’m also finding, too, Star that this new Oxy is a pretty fun skin to be in!
Same here, Oxy. I have finally done the short sale on my condo. I am no longer a homeowner and my credit is in the process of being ruined. I know how much of a goal it has been to have a man in my life. But I’ve had some opportunities lately for romance and passion. But I keep looking at what I have to lose by getting involved with them – my peace of mind! I don’t want to get hurt again and go down the same road I’ve gone down so many times, giving my power away to a man. So I’m staying true to myself and really holding back right now and just taking things very slow, focusing on myself and my life. I cannot tell you how hard it was to resist a fling with the hunk from Chile the other day. But I have a greater vision for my life. I can hold out.
In addition, my massage clients have dropped off the face of the earth. And I don’t miss them I am using the free time for a career change. I will do some volunteer teaching English as a second language and see what it can lead to.
It’s very very odd not having “relationship” as one of my goals in life. It has been such a part of my identity for so long. I really do believe I’m destined for much greater things – maybe teaching and healing.
So I totally understand where you are coming from. Finally. You have advised me all along, but I just wasn’t there.
BTW, This is for Louise – I think it was you who wanted to know whether the laser body sculpting treatments work? I have had one week of a two-week treatment. And I’m considering doing a third week. The treatments are quick and non-invasive – you just lie there and fall asleep. Then you get on a machine that vibrates you for 10 minutes. You do this 3 times a week for a total of 50 minutes. However, they put you on a very strict diet of high protein, no fat, and no carbs while you’re undergoing the treatment.
So, after one week………I’ve lost at least 6 lbs, and my midsection does look smaller. However, I wouldn’t rule out that is it primarily from the near-starvation diet I’ve been on for a week now. lol The weight I’m at now, I was probably at in 2010 after 2 weeks in Costa Rica. So it’s not completely out of the ordinary for me. The second week will tell if it works or not. I will give you an update after the second week. This is when the inches are really supposed to melt off.
I will say that even if it’s just a placebo and if the loss of inches is due to dieting, at least it gave me the motivation to diet. It’s been really really hard. I crave food all the time. But I don’t get the money-back guarantee unless I do my part, which is the diet. So I’m doing it. 🙂
Oh, and he also hasn’t asked me for any money yet.
Stargazer:
Good to hear! A high protein, no carb diet will definitely help. It really helps with the belly bloat and fat.
Yay, 6 lbs.! Good for you!
I crave food, too. I think I have replaced sex with food.
Yea, our body craves carbs, but the number of calories DOES count, so the bottom line is you MUST BURN or eliminate MORE CALORIES THAN YOU TAKE IN in order for your body to burn off the excess adipose tissue–(that’s medical talk for FAT but it sounds better than “fat!” I think! ) LOL
I’m having to get back “in gear” for the weight loss and lose another 30 pounds. I’ve been gaining and losing the SAME 3 pounds for 10-11 months now, so I have to quit “fooling myself” and get real again! I have a friend who has been “quitting” smoking for 5 years now…this is ALWAYS THE LAST PACK I am going to buy….this new pill, gizzmo, or green tea is going to help her quit, and oh, welll it is sooooo hard to quit completely when her husband smokes, and excuse after excuse after excuse….so it all boils down to truly making up our minds to REALLY CHANGE and then DOING IT.
Star, I too felt that I “needed” a relationship in order to be complete…and that was why I was so vulnerable to the psychopath looking for a respectable wife to cheat on. LOL I also become VERY heavily bonded to who I sleep with. I just can NOT do “casual” sex and it not make me want to be with that person. Being celibate is not all that bad either I have found…and I sure as heck do not need a dysfunctional relation-shit (Hens, thanks for that word, it is soooo descriptive!) in my life.
I am focusing on me being contented, peaceful, happy, and satisfied with myself and those few people that I am really close to and TRUST….and guess what, it is working. There is NO wasted energy dealing with how to fix a relationshit with dysfunctional friends, or dysfunctional lovers, or any thing else in my life that is DRAMA-RAMA.
Yea, I have been preaching to you for a long time, Star, and I know sometimes you got tired of hearing the same sermon over and over, but I’ll keep on putting the information out and people can take what they want to at the time they want to and leave the rest for someone else. LOL It is like a place that has every food in the world out there for you to choose from….you take what you want that day leave the rest. I don’t get my feelings hurt if people don’t agree with or take my advice. Everyone on this blog (as far as I know) is over 18 and can make their own choices….they are not obligated to agree with me, or to take my advice. Heck, sometimes I don’t even take my OWN ADVICE….and usually when I don’t, I get into trouble….but I digress. LOL We all make our choices and get the consequences of those choices. Making better and wiser choices sometimes take making less wise decisions and seeing what the consequences are. I’m pretty hard headed too, Star, and I only learn by some severe BOINKS! That’s why I wear a hat! My head is flat! LOL (((hugs)))
Oxy, I have no regrets about my past choices. I would not be at the realization I’m at today if not for doing what I’ve done. 🙂 We can only be where we’re at I guess. 🙂
The philosophy behind the Zerona laser treatments is that it particularly targets the midsection – tummy and thighs. The idea is that it actually punctures and flatten the fat cells where they are released through the body. Since there are apparently no lymph ducts in that area for the fat to escape through (this is how it was explained to me), it is a very difficult area to target just through diet and exercise. I have dieted and exercised for a year but have not been able to get rid of my belly. I wanted to really work on this before I go into menopause because I hear it’s even harder to keep the weight off there then. They also will not do the Zerona treatments on women who are actively in menopause.
Oxy and all who responded. I KNEW you all could help me. As soon as I saw NC, I almost felt like a ding-a-ling! Like I said, my emotions are getting in the way of my reasoning with this situation. This is my only child…my bouncing baby boy…that is now 31 years old!
Yes, I have to go totally NC with BOTH of them. I haven’t had the chance to talk to my son about any of the things that she’s done…not really. I’ve only talked to him to determine if he, too, had a drug problem and wanted/needed my help. My son has had a problem with alcohol for years and then she kept saying that he had developed a problem with opiates, too. I have pleaded with my son over the years to get help with his alcohol problem but realized that he would only get help when HE decided that he needed and wanted it. I’ve always told him if he ever made up his mind to get help with the alcohol addiction, that I would be here to help him. And, of course, I would have helped him get treatment for the alcohol and the opiate addiction especially if he wanted my help as she claimed.
That’s what I was struggling first to find out. My son has always been able to talk to me about ANYTHING and has certainly NEVER held back from asking me to help him before! I couldn’t figure out why HE, himself wasn’t asking me to help him get treatment. However, my son knows HOW I help. I would have taken him to get a professional opinion about what kind of treatment program would best address BOTH addictions and would have paid the treatment center directly. I stopped giving him cash years ago. I’ve went grocery shopping a few times for him and met him at gas stations to put fuel in his car but these were times when he was either seeking employment or had just started a new job and needed gas to get there and back until he received his first paycheck. He learned years ago NOT to ask me for cash. I don’t even give him cash gifts for his birthday because I never wanted to feel that I, personally, provided him with the money to buy alcohol.
Alcohol is the weakness that got him entangled with this girl. He was living with my husband and me at the time he got involved with her and we did not allow him to drink here. Her apartment was a place that he could do that. However, she kept telling me that she had told him that she could not tolerate drinking and that she had cut him down to a couple of beers on the weekends. I have NO idea why she had such a problem with his drinking given HER lifestyle. He’s not a violent nor even a sloppy drinker but it’s clear that he needs to drink every day. I worried much more about his dependency for the alcohol and the damage that it was doing to his health than I did the way he behaved under the influence. He is very nervous and it was very apparent that he used the alcohol to self-medicate and calm himself down. Not good, either. He even told me that he started taking pills because she would not allow him to drink! That didn’t make any sense to me as the two have totally different effects.
I STILL don’t know if he has a problem with pills. He claims that he is getting treatment, too, for the alcohol AND the pills. However, the medication that he says the treatment center is giving him dulls the effects of alcohol and it is also very dangerous if combined with alcohol as it slows a person’s breathing. He has been seen buying beer several times since he claims that he has been taking this medication. And, the medication does not address alcohol addiction at all. I hope and pray that he is only telling me that he is going to this treatment center to cover for her. You see, my son thinks like this. When I told him that I KNEW that she was using drugs and trying to get money from us to pay for her own treatment. He KNEW that I had found out about her or I wouldn’t have said it. So, he knew he might as well just go ahead and admit that she had a problem and had been using during her pregnancy. He knows me probably better than anyone and know that I do NOT give up until I get to the truth.
In his mind, he thought if he could convince me that he, too, had a problem that it would take my focus off of her being the “bad” one. He kept telling me that…that HE was the bad one. I even talked to one of the drug dealers…yes we mothers can be crazy…and THEY told me that he did not have a problem but that she was a total junkie. Said she was showing up every single day and calling round the clock. They even told me about the fit she pitched on them when they cut her off…threatened to turn them in, etc. They realized that she was trouble along about the same time that they noticed that she was getting bigger through her mid-section. She even tried to deny that she was pregnant and acted as though she was insulted by them suggesting that she was fat! They told her they knew she was lying about the pregnancy and tried to talk to her about the damage she was doing to her baby. She continued to deny that she was pregnant. I know there is no such thing as a “good” drug dealer but these people have children of their own and sell a couple of pills here and there. They don’t sell large quantities or to total junkies or even want them around because they said a junkie would get them in trouble sooner than anyone because they are crazy. They also said once they cut her off, they haven’t seen or heard from my son since. Unfortunately, these people are former neighbors of mine. I am actually one of their son’s godmother. Neither of them certainly didn’t sell pills for years and started this nonsense shortly before I moved from that community.
And, my son thinks I’m hung up on the topic of sociopaths anyway simply because I developed a great interest in learning everything I could about them after the experience with my ex husband. If I came right out and referred to her as a sociopath, he’d laugh at me!
And, as far as any money that is owed to us, my husband told her that she didn’t owe him a thing…that she could have the car but to please leave us alone and give us some peace by NOT asking for any more money because she was NOT going to get it. And, neither is my son.
And, no, I do NOT still have my son. I have NO idea how she has managed to convince him in a few short weeks that after 31 years of unconditional love for him that I am a bad person. I know that she lies but feel that my son knows me well enough that he SHOULD be able to see through any lies that she might tell him regarding me. I raised him alone from the time he was 13 when his father passed away. He always considered me as his best friend. He’s always been a mamma’s boy but not to the point that he couldn’t leave me to have a relationship or marriage with a girl. Since becoming an adult, he still came to me to help him with business matters that he didn’t understand or if he got sick and was living alone. He would asked me if he could stay at my house until he got better because a high fever and such scares him. He was sick a lot when he was growing up and I guess he came to trust that I knew how to get him well. I guess that’s the whole point I’m trying to make. He’s always trusted me more than anyone because he knows that I love him and would never misguide him or do anything to hurt him intentionally. I am his MOTHER! I can’t wrap my mind around how she managed to destroy that. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with my telling her NO. He’s heard the word multiple times over the years from me.
My mother has seen him once since this mess started, and a few of his friends. They reported to me that he seemed horribly depressed. I saw him very briefly and have to agree. And, the strangest thing yet is that my husband just saw him at a local convenience store around 2:30 today and he came into the store wearing a sweats and a bathrobe! Sweats is one thing but I can’t imagine him wearing his bathrobe into a store! He was driving the car that my husband repaired and he asked him how it was running, etc. He said my son gave very short answers and started backing out while they were still talking!
But, yes, NC with both of them is the best route. I’ll just have to pray that my son is not mixing meds that he shouldn’t with alcohol and isn’t suffering some kind of breakdown given that he is wearing his robe in public! And, I’d also like to request those of you on here who pray to include him in your prayers. In the meantime, I hope that you all can bear with me as I process all of this. I know you all can help provide me with the strength I need.
Thanks again to everyone for your advice and I WILL follow it although I expect a lot of sleepless nights and weary days.
Okay, ladies…you all have struck up another topic of interest to me while I was writing my last “book” to post which might serve as a great distraction for me. I, too, am going through the identity crisis and retirement thing. I packed on 30 pounds in a little over two months in the spring simply from sitting on my rear, playing computer games and watching true crime programs on the tube! I have now lost the weight but it has left me flabby! I’ll be 52 in January. Call me vain but I plan to have a full face and neck lift after the holidays. That is the only part of me that never fully recovered from me ex spath husband leaving me for a girl 18 years my junior. He really did a number on my self-esteem during our marriage and the discard. My current husband totally understands as he, too, was married to a spath (what a family we have!) and he had a hair transplant after she left him. We are both planning to hit the bowflex that I dust from time to time after the holidays and my recovery from the surgery. Some of our concerns about our appearances may just be normal things that come with mid-life. We feel totally secure with each other but both fantasize about how wonderful it would be look 35 again! LOL! While we realize that is impossible, we do realize that we certainly need to exercise for health reason as well as to improve the shape of our bodies. So, fill me in on this high protein diet that helps reduce tummy fat. A friend of mine did one of those and she claims that it got completely got rid of her love handles and muffin belly. However, I’m glad she feels that it worked for her but I saw her in a bikini and saw no signs of her imaginary love handles or muffin belly BEFORE the diet! She’s 39! What does SHE know? LOL!
Dear Tami,.
I think you have your head on straight, it is just that the TRAUMA, emotional abuse, etc. that has been going on has sent you into “mama bear mode” to try to protect your son from her, and also from himself.
He very well may be severely depressed, and self medicating with alcohol….and addicted to it….and/or the drugs too. It is also obvious that he is hooked into whatever games she is playing as well. But only HE CAN EXTRICATE himself from this darma rama.
It is difficult to let go I know. When son C was involved with the P wife and all that was going on, I knew he wasn’t a psychopath like his brother, but he was doing some things that were not wise, and were also hurtful. I chose to “blame” his problems on the wife, when in fact, HE WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS OWN WOES because he made the choice to be with her. He didn’t want to see us, so he allowed “her” to keep him isolated from us. Mostly he was isolated because he knew we would not approve of the unwise financial decisions he was making….among other things.
After he “repented” of marrying her (when she and her BF tried to kill him) and he decided I was a “prophet” to have been on to her from day one…he still didn’t want to change HIS ways….so the last time he lied to me, that was the LAST LAST CHANCE. I can’t trust him to be honest with me, and he is not going to change his choices. He’s 40 years old so he can make his own decisions, but my decision is not to trust someone who lies to me, and doesn’t keep his agreements. If he gets down and out because of his poor decisions, I will drive him to the Salvation Army shelter though…I would do that for your son, and I would do that for mine. I would do that for a stranger even.
I will keep you and your son in my prayers, Tami….((((hugs)))) and God bless and give you strength to do what you have to do.