A Lovefraud reader asked the following question:
If the sociopath is not in it for money (he pays for everything with no access to my accounts) then what are other reasons to stay in a relationship if he doesn’t live with me nor do we share anything financially? Many of the posts I have read involve financial fraud.
If a sociopath has targeted you, it’s because you have something that he or she wants. Often it’s money, but not always. Here are 10 more things that the sociopath may want:
1. Sex
Sociopaths crave stimulation, and sex is highly stimulating, so they pursue it. However, sociopaths are not slaves to their physical urges. They often use sex primarily as a tool of manipulation to get something else that they want.
2. Services
Sociopaths may want you to do something for them that they don’t want to do for themselves, such as cooking, cleaning and taking care of children.
3. Housing
Even if sociopaths don’t directly ask for money, they may suggest living together. They may say it’s because they love you, when, in fact, they have no place to go.
4. Entertainment
Perhaps you’re part of an exciting social scene. The sociopath may want to be with you just to gain access to the people you know.
5. Status
Hanging out with you may be good for their image, especially if you’re rich, famous, successful or competent. Your status boosts their status.
6. Image
Perhaps the sociopath needs a partner like you to complete the image that he or she wants to present to the company or community.
7. Cover
Your presence may help them get away with a hidden agenda. You may be providing cover for the sociopath to pursue a double life of sex, drugs or crime.
8. Connections
Sociopaths may use you, your skills and your connections in order to pursue their grandiose dreams or entrepreneurial plans.
9. Duping delight
Sociopaths enjoy getting over on people—this is called “duping delight.” They often manipulate, deceive and use people just for the fun of it. Some will seduce targets just so they can break their hearts.
10. Domination
Sociopaths feed on power and control, so they sometimes pursue domination for its own sake. They want to prove themselves more powerful than you, perhaps even powerful enough to destroy you.
If a sociopath targets you, it’s because he or she sees you as useful in some way. Once you are no longer useful, you’ll be dumped.
Lovefraud originally posted this story on October 1, 2012.
To a sociopath, children are simply bait and leverage
OMG…everyone who has interacted with a path will read these and just say…yes. EXACTLY.
Then as time goes on, all these things that you provide become areas that he can attack. Suddenly your housekeeping or cooking skills are terrible. He notices that you bought yourself something when you “should” have bought something for him instead. You brought him into your social circle or activities that he hadn’t been a part of before, all of a sudden he’s critical of all of them, never liked them, or accuses you of being too social. Or, to increase HIS status, he urges you to buy expensive things – a new car out of your price range, a bigger house, lavish vacations – while he spends nothing (or is spending his money on other women). I will attest that their lust for domination and control is powerful enough to destroy you, which they will do with cold focus, then move on to the next while you wonder what happened.
Absolutely true.
The irony is that all of the things the spath now ‘hates’ about you, are the every things that they used to love about you, or never be bothered by…until you stopped worshipping the ground they walk on.
When the sun stops shining out of their ass for you, namely when you realize that they are fake, they don’t even bother wearing a ‘mask’ any more. You are no longer needed or wanted because you are no longer playing their fake spath games.
Oh yeah, about worshipping the ground they walk on! It has been a little over 6 years since I’ve seen my ex and still have a few lingering hangups about myself (I was with him for 7 years) and just recently it dawned on me that after the honeymoon phase to hook me, he did everything he could to make me feel bad that I was simply human and that is where these these hangups that I never had before came from. Example, I used to run my ass off to please him, commuting over an hour from his house to work all day, then 45 minutes to my house to take care of my pets, then 45 minutes to his house to cook for him and then I’d be falling asleep on the couch by 9, only to have to start all over again the next morning and he used to berate me terribly for nodding off just when (of course) he wanted sex. He honestly suggested I see a doctor for my inability to stay up to what he considered a reasonable time. Meanwhile he had a short commute and was home relaxing for hours while I was rushing around. If I asked him to come to my house to give me a break on the rare occasion he would do it he’d find a way to punish me for “having” to do it. I quit wearing any makeup during this time because I needed that morning time to make him breakfast instead before I left for work. Meanwhile, I was required to accept all his worst human habits with a smile. He was a nagging, whining, demanding infant when he was sick, but if I got the flu and needed to rest, he’d actually suggest that I was lazy and not active enough to keep up with him. Imagine being made to feel “less than” because you have the flu for a few days!! It’s amazing the clarity that comes when you realize what you’re dealing with and are out of it for awhile. He was a monster.
All of what you say, again…so true.
Life is about the spath, and only the spath. You can work your ass off trying to make the spath happy, but it is never enough.
Spaths are not happy inside, thus, nobody can make them happy. It is a lose lose. It is like a doberman or a rottweiler (with a docked tail), chasing it’s own tail….they are never able to get there.
It took YEARS for me, to fully realize that he used me, for his own ends..to have a farmlife, with marriage, kids (someday grandkids), a stable life as a respected rural community farmer, not a HS graduate who bombed out of 2 colleges because of mental health issues, to BE SOMEBODY, instead of a 9 to 5 working stiff. I was told by somebody who came to know him at the Tech School, that ‘he was shopping for a wife’, NOT a girlfriend. He knew I worked hard, my parents worked a small farm of their own, I was a small person (he didnt want a woman overweight, lazy), I knew how to work on my parent’s farm, and he KNEW that I was no longer in a relationship (he had enlisted in the Army)..so I was lonely, vulnerable, and JUST WHAT HE WAS LOOKING FOR..Bingo!! And, of course, all those positive things he said I was, became ammunition for his vicious verbal attacks after we got married, worked the farm and had the kids he wanted so badly. Everything I had ever meant for him, for good, was used against me, after marriage.
Very true, Hanalei and Bev. Currently one year NC with an s-path. To quote Bev briefly “when you realize that they are fake, they don’t even bother wearing a ‘mask’ any more. You are no longer needed or wanted because you are no longer playing their fake spath games.” This happened in my family (of origin) after grieving the loss of a sibling as well as the parent I managed to have at least some connection to, I decided to re-visit the family so to speak. Maternal narcissism is particularly painful for me. Never could quite figure out why I was unable to acquire love from the woman. She literally attacked me when I try to discuss our estrangement. I really saw some tru colors, and this inspired the LC now turned NC mode Im in currently. She is a monster toward me, behind closed doors, and acts like a martyr and saintly, practically angelic in front of her ‘circle’ whoever may be in it. I mustered up the courage to attend my sister baby shower. I took a train out to see her. The unknowing (naturally as no one seems to know these folks are monsters unless one has the misfortune of being targeted by one!)so only the target can see this. No WONDER I looked like a mad person all these years! I can imagine it being a little like a person having paranoid delusions) So I go to the event. All the preparations were done by her mother in law and some friends. (No one seems to know why us siblings are not very ‘close”) ha ha sound familiar? If anyone on this blog has a narcisistic s-path for a mother, and you have siblings, are your siblings ALSO oddly not “close” Hmm, think on that one. To this day still nothing seems to compute. Anyway, I showed up at the event hall and the in laws put me at the same table as guess who: the NPD mother. Sigh. so I had to sit through the entire thing with this woman. She literally ignored me for nearly 4 hours. Not even a glance. Ones own mother. Can you imagine. Frankly it was quite eery, not to mention heartwrenching. I had not even started LC yet at this point! I was still sending xmas cards, still answered any texts etc.at this point in time. Very very eery to sit right across from ones own mother – who is making no acknowledgement of her own child. I guess its because I was beginning to see through her and she must – deep down suspected this. I remembered thinking “what if I got on the train on the return, and say the train derailed, she will have had a chance to kiss or hug her daughter after losing one already…but she chose not to acknowledge that I was even there. Instead, she just blew it..wow” (My sister passed away only a few years ago, her first daughter!)What kind of mother sadistically ruins her own daughters sibling relationships as well as other relationships? Who does that? A maternal sociopath- thats who. Problem is that for me its very heartbreaking. one can always find a new spouse or a friend in life, a sociopathic mother on the other hand is a unique kind of pain.
Indeed, having a spath mother is a unique kind of pain. I can barely imagine this. Oh boy, what you have dealt with in your life.
I can say this. You have managed to emerge from a spath mother, as a wonderfully intelligent and empathetic person. A person who can see and, now live, only the truth. Only what is real. Only what is genuine. Once you know something, you cannot un-know it. That is no picnic, I always say. But, it is imperative that we live that way, otherwise, we will not thrive. We will die.
Wow, is all I can say to who you are. I am in awe of people like you.
Good information.