Red Flags of Lovefraud

zoe7 – The thing to keep in mind is that everything sociopaths do and say has an ulterior motive. Sociopaths never confess because their conscience is bothering them – they don’t have a conscience. However, they frequently confess because they want their target to THINK they have a conscience, feel sorry for what they’ve done, and want to turn over a new leaf. Most targets, being kind, loving people, then forgive the sociopath — which enables the sociopath to continue to bleed them.

Or, sociopaths may confess just for the fun of messing with their target’s mind. They try to make the targets BELIEVE the sociopath feels remorse, when it simply isn’t true.

I couldn’t comment on this because I haven’t read Donna’s book, so I’m not familiar with what happened between “Jesse” and “Larissa,” and what it was he was confessing to. However, I did form the notion that “Jesse” probably had an ulterior motive of some kind. Possibly he thought confessing to something would make him look like a “good guy” who was repentant, which might gain him forgiveness and further (misplaced) trust.

This did remind me of another, real life incident where a “bad guy” confessed to something I’d never have expected to gain him any advantage, but possibly it did. I’ve thought about telling that guy’s story here some time, but there’s a lot more to it, so it would take time to write it all up properly. Anyway I can mention this bit. He was a conman (among other things) and he met a woman with a little money whom he planned to exploit. But after striking up what she called “an acquaintance” with her, he didn’t pursue it immediately, but moved for a short time to a city some distance away. It’s interesting that he didn’t press his advantage right away once he’d piqued her interest, and I’m wondering if moving away was a cunning ploy on his part to get her more thoroughly “hooked,” on the principle that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Anyway he wrote to this woman asking her for money on some pretext or other. She wrote back chiding him for this request, but later she relented and sent him some.

Now here’s the strange part. He then returned the money to her—all right, that could be another gambit to convince her he was trustworthy—except that he enclosed a note with it admitting that he was a married man, and that he was in the habit of duping women for money! We have her word for this, stated in court, not his, so we know it’s true. Why on earth would anyone admit to such a thing (two things, in fact) when they didn’t have to, and you’d think anyone with an ounce of sense would be warned off by the admission?

Whether or not it was part of some devious psychological ploy to manipulate her, the fact is that when he returned, he told her he was separated from his wife and succeeded in getting her to move in with him. She paid for everything, and the poor lady ended up getting screwed royally. She can’t say he didn’t warn her! But some people seem irresistibly attracted to “reforming” people who obviously need reforming, so possibly that was the trait he was exploiting.