Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following from the reader who posts as “Kerisee04.”
How does a person know if they have engaged in a friendship with a female predator? So often it is the romantic relationships that are discussed, and usually about male sociopaths.
First of all, it’s important to note that if you are a male, to the female sociopath, you either a sexual target or a source of financial gain. In my experience with the female sociopath, in her mind, there is no man beyond her reach. She has sexual fantasies about all men she encounters and runs scenarios in her head to accomplish her goal. In my naive state of mind, I had no idea this particular female sociopath was after my husband.
There really is no “friendship” with a sociopath. While the female target may feel a sense of obligation and social grace toward the female sociopath, the sociopath feigns sincerity. Some of the signals I missed were:
1. Back-handed compliments. “You dress frumpy. You need to find clothes that fit you better.” Or, “I know you don’t give your husband everything he needs.” Or, “Do you know how hot your husband is?”
2. Immediate soul-mate connection with my husband. “He and I are so alike.” Or, “It’s like we’re brother and sister. I understand him.”
3. Fake displays of emotion, similar to histrionics. She would fly off the handle over any changes that were made to plans, she would manipulate everybody to feel sorry for her and eventually give in to her out of pity.
4. Lack of boundaries. She would come over every day and stay until I literally kicked her out at 2 a.m. After I had surgery, I managed to stay up until 1 a.m. with her and my husband until I passed out from exhaustion. I found out the next day that she stayed until 5 a.m., alone with my husband in my living room.
5. Lack of shame. She would pull me into sexual discussions of fantasies, comparing sizes of anatomy, and playing games of truth or dare. These are things I would never under normal circumstances allow myself to take part in. No subject or dare was off-limits to her, and I was given the impression that she was my best friend and would keep all my secrets. Only later did I find out that she took mental note of everything I said to use against me when her lies finally came out.
6. Her attempts to be alone with my husband under the guise of platonic friendship. “He’s coming over to hang pictures for me.” And, “We met for lunch since we were both in the same area.”
There are so many flags I missed. Or maybe I didn’t miss them; I just ignored them. The most embarrassing of all is my nonchalant attitude when her affair with my husband came out. My husband (now ex-husband) had fallen victim to her seduction. Granted, things were not great in our marriage to begin with, but we had managed to be faithful to each other for seven years until she entered our world. My husband had a guilty conscience and finally came forward with their affair.
Read more: Guidelines for dealing with female sociopaths
When the female sociopath found out about this, she immediately resorted to histrionics. “I can’t believe he would do something like this to me. I finally trust someone, and they stab me in the back.” And, “It was an accident. We just went a little too far during the truth or dare game. Now you’re going to hate me and I’m going to lose my best friend!” She was flipping out and crying.
I had no time to think about the implications. I was thinking about the ways in which I could have unknowingly facilitated the affair. That’s exactly what she wanted. When I finally pulled away and talked with my spiritual elders, I told them I was worried about her. She was so messed up mentally over this that I feared she might hurt herself. After all, I was her friend. Then one of the elders told me something that finally turned on the light in my head: “Anybody that would do something like that to their friend is NOT a true friend.”
It took me a few hours to let that sink in and realize the magnitude of my situation. In the coming days and months, the story came out in bits and pieces. Some from my husband, who was trying desperately to hold on to me, and some from the female sociopath, who was trying to downplay the affair until she was backed into the corner with the truth.
When all her numerous affairs (we stopped counting at 30) came out, her husband slowly began to realize the predatory trap that she held him in. She had cheated on him throughout their entire marriage, sometimes dropping their two kids off at daycare for a “mom’s day off” and driving to another town for a quickie with one of her men.
When she talked with our mutual friends and elders about the situation, she was sure to exploit every secret I had confided to her and she would twist the truth to seem as though I coerced her and my husband into doing what they did so that I could divorce him. It all seemed so sincere. Except, there wasn’t a shred of truth to it. In fact, she was using projection. Her goal was to get me to say and do self-incriminating things so that she would have ammunition against me when everything hit the fan.
It was truly a time of awakening for me. There truly isn’t good in all people. Just most people.
Though healthy individuals like to believe that change is possible, I have come to the realization that when a person is animalistic in nature, contains no actual emotions or feelings, and looks for manipulation in everybody she meets, there is no possibility of healthy change. This female sociopath’s parents have held on to the hope for the past four years that she would change. They have even at times helped her out financially, only to be confronted with more of her lies.
There is much more to the story. This, in fact, is only a chapter—the first chapter of my entanglement with this particular female sociopath. But I feel it’s important for people to understand the complexities of so-called friendship with a female predator. It’s important to recognize the signs and for your own good, to never give them what they want.
Learn more: Survivor’s guide to healthy people and healthy relationships
Lovefraud originally posted this story on Jan. 19, 2011.
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: I lied to myself as I became close to him again
Dear LL,
Sugar you had x number of years with an abusive man and all the trauma that goes along with all those kids….then one by one the problems with the kids….then got involved with a married man who was also an abuser (jumped from the frying pan to the fire) so now you are finally where you can concentrate on yourself, maybe for the first time in your life, and now Junior pops up acting just like daddy!
Yep, you’ve got a big onion to peel and you will cry with every layer. It isn’t going to be over in a week, a month or a year…this is the rest of your life that you must maintain the journey toward healing and growth.
YOu are educating yourself, KNOWLEDGE=POWER so you are taking back your power.
You are impatient, you want to be done with the pain NOW—but it didn’t work that way with child birth and labor and it won’t work that way with the healing either….and no one can do it for you. There is no “c-section” for self-birth! LOL
I know you are TIRED I know you want to hurry, but slow down, breathe and keep on putting one foot in front of the other one.
Tackle today’s projects and not next week’s—
The little boy is gone, but there are memories there that are good. I threw away a lot of my P son’s stuff…the older stuff high school etc. but I kept a book he made for me in second grade called “my mother….” and the last page was (he had to complete the sentence” “My mother’s hands are” >>>>>and he filled it in with “MADE FOR MILKING GOATS.” LOL
He also wrote a story called “Andy the allegater” and I kept that. I love remembering that little boy, but the MAN is a stranger. I know you are living with your son so it probably makes it harder to deal with since you are not NC with the grown-er up.
For now, put the pictures away, and you don’t have to make the decision to keep them or toss them yet…Just slow down and make decisions when you must make them….just a few at a time, not try to peel to the bottom of the onion all at once. It just doesn’t work that way.
Hang on sweetie, you are making progress, good progress but it takes TIME!!!! You are starting to sound SANE if that helps! ((((hugs))))
Ox,
But the PAIN is UNREAL…I know what you’re saying, one thing at a time………I understand and I get that………
But that little boy, SO CUTE! I understand about your book he made for you. I have one that spathy son made for me too. It’s beautiful, hand prints, pictures of him in class…just darling.
This hurts, Ox. And I’m left alone to deal with the pain. It helps to be here right now, because I know so many get it…but maybe you might get it just a little more, or Mama Gem too when you have the potential for a spath kid…..
It makes it harder that he’s living at home. I can’t wait for the full Psych eval. I’ll be saying prayers about that. But I know what I have to do if it doesn’t turn out the way I hope it will…just like with my other son, I was prepared to let go…so much letting go and so much pain…
I do know what you’re saying Ox.
I don’t know what to do with the pain. I DO want to pass go and not pay the two hundred, ya know? LOL…
But I know I can’t this time.
This takes guts. sometimes I wonder if I have it in me….fighting it seemed so much easier………
Ox, Will it ever end? Will I ever HEAL from all the damage caused and created???
I’m scared that I wont???
LL
DEar LL,
Of course you will….and the pain IS UNREAL, just remember what labor pain was like…..and how just before it ended (for a minute) it felt like it would NEVER END and you knew you couldn’t take one more second of it…but it ended….and then it started again and you were so scared and in such horrible pain.
This is like that, it will come in waves and each wave is TOTAL and each wave is horrible, but it will end….and in the end, you will give birth to a NEW YOU.
Your son may indeed be high in psychopathic traits….but there isn’t anything you can do to fix that…he’s a big boy now.
Even if he was “wonderful,” the LITTLE BOY IS GONE…. I know it hurts and hurts worse than bringing them into the world, but it isn’t something that you can back down from….avoiding the truth doesn’t change it or make the pain any better either.
I do feel for you, I do understand….and okay you weren’t a perfect parent…neither was I. So unless it was the Virgin Mary no woman has been and her son was perfect so she didn’t have much of a problem but I can only imagine how she must have been afraid for him to become what he became, to stand there and see him suffer on the cross….so you know, we will get through this, YOU will get through this.
For now, put the pictures away, feel the pain, and then let it go….just for a while….take a breath. Pray, meditate, read, and realize you are NOT ALONE….(((hugs))))
Ox….
Ohhhh through six labors I sure remember! The epidural, when it worked with two of them, was good though…
This one was a natural birth.
I REMEMBER holding this baby in my arms.
He had such bad migraines as a small child, Ox. I would hold him in my bed at night as he SCREAMED in pain….through a hospital stay when his appendix was removed, through a two week hospital stay because we almost lost him to ecoli….
Damn psychopathy. damn it all to hell.
I put the pictures away. But my heart doesn’t forget.
I love him more than life. All of my children. God help me if I lose another to psychopathy. God help me, Ox.
I’ve lost so many to it. You know, I know you know….
I feel for you, for Mama Gem…God this hurts like a bitch.
I already know Jr is not normal. I already know what I have to do.
I don’t know that I can take ONE MORE pyschopath loss in my life….it’s like losing someone you love to terminal cancer, I swear to God……
I don’t know if I can bear it, if he cannot be cured……….if he is eternally ill…
This hurts. So much. SO much!
LL
Kerisee04…I can so relate to the female sociopath’s swath of destruction. Someone I thought was on of my best friends for 11 years turned on me and did exactly what you describe. She took all the confidences I had revealed to her and twisted everything into a mish-mash of untruths. She maliciously slandered me to mutual friends…so much so that they will have -0- to do with me. The reason? I asked for confidentiality about a personal matter. She exploded into narcissistic rage and the rest is history. We worked together also…so you can imagine what happened with work. I still work there and she does not. I’m still having to deal with the people that she manipulated at work…it has caused some bad problems and I’m still trying to adjust to working under these conditions. As everyone knows, the S/P, P and/or N is believed and we are not. Oh, well…chalk another one up to experience. This has left a hole in my soul that may never be filled back up again.
Yes, there is the possibility that a “friend” will have an affair with your mate, but what about the thought that, regardless of any sexual game playing, a “friend” just might not know how to form a friendship or be a friend?
I thought I had a friend…she told me that I was her best friend (Huh…where did that come from?). So, I decided to become more friendly with her.
For over 15 years, she failed to remember my birthday (which was the day after her daughter’s b-day).
I had major surgery…still unknown news in her memory many years later. (Of course I had only mentioned my complications from the surgery maybe 20 times over 12 years, so it must have been that I didn’t say things in a way she could understand….but I she was/is an LPN and seemed to be empathetic each time it had been discussed.)
When we went out to eat I’d share my food with her…but don’t recall ever tasting hers.
When we shopped together it was usually for clothing for her. When she was trying on dresses for an upcoming family wedding, I spotted the perfect dress and brought it back to the dressing room for her to try on. She bought it and two weeks later told me that she had found the perfect dress…she had forgotten that I was with her and I had picked it out for her.
Of course there were those times when she simply forgot that we had made plans to do something together. I would blow it off thinking that maybe she just wasn’t as intelligent as I had thought…she hadn’t forgotten on purpose…maybe my expectations were too high. Months later she’d forget that she had been a no show.
I thought maybe she couldn’t help what happened…maybe she just had a memory problem.
Although I think she was trying to be nice, I was really taken back when she blurted out that my physical handicap looked cute on me!
She was obsessed with celebrities…failed to understand that I wasn’t fascinated by the antics of people like Paris Hilton.
She loved to be told how pretty she was, but never said the same about any other women…other than celebrities.
On one shopping trip, I tried to talk her into buying some really comfy shoes…identical to the pair that I was wearing. She wasn’t sure at the time. Weeks later she showed up wearing those same shoes and commented that I must have bought shoes just like hers..(.and she really hated it when another woman was seen waring the same things she was wearing…unless they were in different colors.)
She talked about her “quasi-celebrity” in-law who did everything so much better than everyone else.
It went on until one day I decided that friends should remember important things about each other…and I haven’t looked back.
I’m still not sure if she was narcissistic, just had a learning difficulty, or both.
Hi, I am AB, i have alot to write so be prepared to read. Back October I met this girl who was friends with my roommate, at the time they had something going on but i found her very attractive and even talked to her online. In late november, I heard that she was gonna come stay with us cuz she lost her house and job cuz of drugs and alcohol. I was still attracted to her and she told me online that she thought i was attractive but didn’t really act like she was interested, she stayed with us for 10 days, at the time i couldnt stand her, she was so distant, i noticed she drank alot and that is when she was more interesting, one night she came home from getting drunk and she came in my room and started playing with her dog, she threw the dog against the wall and the dog ran and hid and she was being loud and obnoxious and was telling me to go look for it then she was trying to get aggressive with me so i pushed her away, then she came to me again and i pushed her away then she got on top of me and started breathing in my ear and stuff i gave in then she eventually passed out. The next day she left but wanted to come back the next day and I wasn’t happy about that cuz she got on my nerves. We were drinking playing truth or dare, and something sexual happened and then we were all over each other, and she told me to promise her i will always be like that. The next day she wanted to be by me all the time, she would stay in a hotel with her bf so i would stay with her a few nights while he went to work. We had sexual relations twice but mostly cuddled. I started to get attached to her cuz she paid attention to me and i thought she really liked me. One night she drank like two four locos and went crazy on me and i started to cry and she started to get angry at me for crying. I didnt hear from her in weeks, cuz she went to jail. I hung out with her a few times after she got out of jail and witnessed a fight she had with her bf, she was drunk and tried to take his car and he was trying to restrain her so she bit him and hit him in the face he was restraining her, he went to jail that day cuz i took her side, this was around Christmas time, she stayed with me and my roommate for a few days, til christmas eve and then she was told she had to leave. I came back that night and stayed the night with her. Dec 26th was the last time i seen her cuz she was going to phoenix, i thought she was in rehab but she was in a halfway house. We texted sometimes, i wouldn’t hear from her in weeks or days, then in march i was intoxicated she called and said to look something up on the computer and i did, she said her phone bill needed to be paid, she didnt ask me to pay it but i told her i would. I ended up being overdrawn cuz i had neglected my phone bill. She started calling me alot and telling me she loves me and i was loving it. Then one day i noticed she wasnt on my fb anymore and i flipped out. I told her she doesnt even care and i should start listening to what others tell me she said get a clue and hung up on me. I didnt hear from her in like four days, i didnt want her to be mad at me. I felt bad for the things i have said. Later that month she showed up in town n which she got arrested that day cuz she had a warrant but a day after she got out of jail, i talked my mom into letting her spend the night, it was good, we cuddled watched tv but she mostly just wanted to sleep, I was having a panic attack and she comforted me. The next day was different, she did make me breakfast, did the dishes, but she started to act really distant and weird like before so I decided to drink some wine with her, we drank, she just had like one glass and she started getting hyper and aggressive, taking my phone, calling all these men, telling them she will give them oral sex for weed, I was beyond pissed but i started to get a lil buzzed also, we started play fighting and she bit me a few times really hard then her demeanor changed, she thought i was trying to fight her so she she said she was gonna leave, i was trying to tell her i wasnt, i was just playing, i didnt hit her or anything. I tried to get her to stay and it was a lil fuzzy and everything happened so fast, i grabbed her and she scratched me and bit a big gash in my hand, i let her go and this car mysteriously pulls up and she gets in, like it was planned. I was crying so i drank more and took a handful of aspirin and vistiril and was in th mental hospital for 7 days, all i thought about was her. I got out, i asked her bf where she was and he said she went back to phoenix, so i tried to take care of myself for alil while, i was on antidepressants and i was feeling good, til one day she sends me a message saying she is in town again. Then she called, I tried to fight it but i still wanted to see her, i went and picked her up, it was her bday, She gave me lots of affection i let her stay with me for a few days. Her bf who she seems to never get away from is going to Cali for some work so she went, she was gone for four days, i stayed drunk, i flushed all my antidepressants down the toilet. She called and said she missed me and i asked her to be my gf(I know i feel pretty stupid) i picked her up and she stayed with me for weeks, but she started to act distant and always on my computer talking to someone and when i would mention my feelings she projected blame on me, saying i am always playing on my phone, that is only cuz she was on the computer and i had to find something to do cuz it was driving me crazy, on some days she was affectionate and we would cuddle, some days we couldnt stand each other, she ended up staying a few weeks. The last day, her bf and his lil cousin came to my house he got her a four loco and we were just hanging out, by the way, all she did was talk about her bf’s 20 year old cousin most of the time, and i knew that meant she liked him, she must think am stupid, her bf was out smoking she was on the couch trying to touch his cousins penis in front of me. I tried to hold it in, i didn’t say much but inside i was so angry. Her bf wanted us to go to his house so i thought she was gonna ride with me but she rode with him and i had no gas and i tried to follow them, he let her drive, her being drunk, they faded off in the darkness so i tried to go home and i ran out of gas alone in the dark, scared out of my mind. I called 911 cuz i started having a panic attack. I sent her a bunch of angry messages saying how can u leave me like that and she said she was sorry, i told her we were done and she begged for a few days, my mom will hurt her if she came around me and she knows that, the other day she tried to tell me she has no place to live but she is able to get on a computer to tell me that? I always think about her and worry about her and its exhausting, i am depressed all the time. I just got diagnosed as borderline personality disorder, so i am trying to figure out what her deal is, she is a iv drug user and alcoholic, she does whatever is given to her so i had two aids/hep tests done cuz of her biting me last march. I was thinking she was bpd but has more qualities of a sociopath cuz she hurts animals. She moves from one place to another, now she has a new lover and posted it on fb, i finally deleted her yesterday. Can u help me figure this out? Please? I am afraid im never gonna get over her, i will never forget her cuz the scars from her teeth are in my hand. Sorry for the long message but i had to get a better opinion i had to get this all out, it’s consuming me, she still has control over me but now she isnt responding to anything i say so i give up.
I havent figured out to post blogs yet so sorry if this is off subject. I just need some opinions, i feel so stupid
ab1980,
she sounds very dangerous.
But you have bigger problems than her. You’re allowing your emotions to run your life and you’re doing drugs and alcohol to facilitate that.
Get yourself into therapy QUICK before you become the world’s victim. There are A LOT more spaths where she came from and they FEED on emotions. You look like a walking buffet to them.
well she has a record, she spent time in prison, my friend tried to warn me but i had hope in people now im losing hope for everyone. Yeah i just deleted her from my fb and i am educating myself on this because i don’t want it to happen again and i did have this fear of being alone. I was seeing a therapist but i stopped, i am gonna go back and tell her all this because the last time i talked to her was right after this person bit me. I don’t want to be the world’s victim, I feel like a victim but I don’t want to be and i just don’t know how not to be. I want to be stronger and less trusting. I either trust too much or no trust at all. She wanted me to run away with her but i had refused because i don’t want a criminal record and i have family that has something to do with me and i couldn’t live her life but i still care for her. It’s really complicated.