This is my first post on the LoveFraud blog. It’s a great pleasure to be part of this most worthwhile effort to teach people to recognise and avoid sociopaths. (Or psychopaths, as I prefer.)
Over at my blog – the top two inches – I have been thinking and writing about something that psychopaths invariably do to deflect things away from themselves and onto others.
Perhaps you’ve encountered it: the psychopath does something wrong, but the moment attention is drawn to this he (usually it’s he) magically causes you to feel bad.
Here are a few examples:
1. The wifebeater says: “Why are you making me do this!?”
Consequently she may think: “It’s true, I shouldn’t do X [usually something insignificant] because it makes him upset.” Do you see? Suddenly she’s the baddie.
2. “Shut up. At least I’m not as bad as OJ [or someone heinous]”.
In other words, You don’t appreciate me; you should be grateful, but instead you get upset about what I do. You, you, you (not me).
3. She (sometimes psychopaths are women) says: “Why are you so mad with me about this? Of all the things I’ve done before this doesn’t even make the Top 10!”
In other words, Hey, I’m actually improving; you’re the bad one for noticing that I’ve done something bad.
You get the picture. The moving stories by readers of LoveFraud cite many instances of this kind of misdirection.
The best technical term I’ve encountered for this mode of discourse favoured by the psychopath is paramoralism. It was coined by the scholar Andrew M. Lobaczewski
Here’s my definition:
A paramoralism is a psuedo-moral statement. It is stated in moral-like terms but with precisely the opposite intent and effect: to get what he wants and to bamboozle the other person into being unable to use their normal means of knowing right and wrong.
Keep an eye out for paramoralisms. Not because everyone who uses a paramoralism is a psychopath, of course. But I believe that we can develop our abilities to identify when someone is cleverly turning defence into attack in this way, and thus we can resist accepting moral blame that does not belong to us.
Let me know of any that paramoralisms that particularly strike you and I may write about them.
Good to be on board!
As I was going through the giving times of first my husband, then this male friend, who thought he was my rescuer, I figured I could have the same liberties with them that they took with me. But as I read the other stories here, I’m finding my own plight. We, none of us, had any freedom. Our opinions didn’t matter. As long as the money held out and we could continue to supply their needs, so what. And may the woman with the most money win.
I’ve waited for my turn and apparently it went to someone else. While trying to figure if I had any place in my husband’s life, this friend thought he was my helper. I have never figured how he helped me. Other than to push me to independence. It was at this time that I lent him money, because I trusted him. I am ashamed to say that I even maxed out credit cards for him, and I still trusted him, even though he wasn’t helping me pay off the bills. I wasn’t seeing what he was doing. Had I passed this to someone else, they could have seen. I was too close to the situation to see clearly. He was fleecing me and abusing me in the process. He would flit in and out of my life. He would run in to see me, and stay all of five minutes, because he had so much work to do. I finally told him even the President takes time for friends. I didn’t know what he was doing. I was too enamored to see him for what he was.
At this time, I had fallen and ripped up my shoulder. Rotator cuff, the works. I’ve been working two jobs for the last 10+ years and I continued to work all this time, with one arm. My jobs are physical so it was very taxing. He made no move to help me with the money that he owed me. I had to keep working to try and preserve my credit and credibility. Neither he nor my husband cared. I guess they figured as long as I was stupid enough to do it, go me. Finally the coin finally dropped, and I started to see both of them for what they really are. They aren’t real men. They are content to let the woman do all the work and they reap the benefits. Far be it from them to disrupt their life and plans to help me.
That’s when I started to formulate my own plans. I knew there was no place for me and I had been duped. I was so let down, to think that I didn’t see this coming and somehow I was undeserving of being loved. Only used. That’s when I started going behind the scenes and what I found out only confirmed what I suspected and maybe always knew, but didn’t want to admit it. I wanted to think that someone cared, but I finally admitted that I paid for a friendship and marriage. I’m now alone. I had to file bankruptcy because I couldn’t keep up the payments anymore. I got a small part of the money back, but the trust was gone. I can’t get it back. I try, but it’s not there anymore. I sometimes mourn for the woman I was whose innocence was taken without her permission. Then I think of the precious little ones, who have no one to protect them and they are at the mercy of their parents or whomever is in charge. I, at least, am in control now. I will not put myself at the mercy of a mere man. I’m finding that most men don’t want to get involved with an independent woman, because they are up to no good and she will figure them out. They want someone who is needy and clingy, for a time, so they can do their number then they are off and running, looking for the next victim.
I know I can’t live with regrets. I could why and what if this to death, but I’ve been learning to accept the unacceptable and know that I didn’t cause this. I don’t go around manipulating people and using them. I can sleep at night free of remorse. I’ve learned about obsessive thinking and that was keeping me awake at night. They worm their way into our minds and it’s an act of self control to get them out. I think, as humans, we don’t want to believe that someone could be so cold and calculating, and especially to us. We gave our love and trust so freely. How could they do this to us? But they did, and now it’s up to us to pick up the pieces and move on. At least I don’t feel quite as badly as I use to, knowing that I’m not alone. I can’t tell my story to just anyone, because they think I should have known better. I tell them to meet me at the Judgment. They will see what God sees and I claim Him as my witness. The Bible says He doesn’t lie. That’s my only defense. I now am as free as the manipulators think they are. They no longer have any power over me. I’ve taken it back and can see them for what they are. Someday their pride will cause them to stumble. They will have to stand at the brink of death and come to terms with the way they lived their life as will I. And I’m glad I’m me.
To Khatalyst,
Oh my goodness… how I do relate to you!
I was afraid to say it before because I never ever felt like I wanted to kill someone but with the Bad Man… I remember one day, I suddenly understood how a woman could snap and kill a man that was abusing her.
Being with an abusive partner that is taking you apart emotionally is like being eaten alive by a vulture… pecking pecking pecking away at you until you can envision yourself squeezing the life out of their neck. It is so awful to have ever even had that feeling. That is so not me.
During my time with this man, I remained so “ZEN” about the abuse. I didn’t cry a lot. And only twice did I call him any names even though I could write a very long list of the names he called me in writing countless times. Character assassination!
When I did reach my limit a few times on the abusive emails, or bizarre behavior, and called him a name… a GIANT spotlight appeared lighting all around me while a little teeny tiny idy-bidy pin prick of light was all he would allow on his MASSIVE amounts of abuse…. of course… I mean in his eyes. He barely acknowledged his abuse and called me “violent” and “psycho” and “out of control.” He used his Pastor talk on me saying, “Each person must take responsibility for their own actions and not blame the other person.” (he was referring to the ONE time that I called him an A-hole.) I remember I was so confused that I called mY Dad and repeated the whole thing about taking responsibility for ones own actions and my Dad said, “If a person punched you 100 times and you finally punch them back, that person has to take responsibility for how far theY PUSHED you.” RIGHT!!!!!!!!!! I knew this inside but somehow I let the Bad Man talk me out of all my good sense. How did he do that?! Never mind. I know the answer now.
And you know what else, in the very beginning of the relationship when he started saying that it was inappropriate for me to reach out to others and talk about our problems and that we should be able to “process” by ourselves… a little voice inside me started saying over and over.. “isolate the victim, isolate the victim.” That voice was ME! But I ignored MYSELF! ARGH… I will never do that again!
Time for bed. I can’t see straight.
Aloha… E.R.
A favorite one the victims of cyberpaths on our site is for the cyberpath to say:
I’ve moved on, so should you.
We tell victims the emotional & mental rape they experience from these cyberpaths is a static event. And will remain in their psyche for a long time while they heal.
“move on” sounds like a very moral statement and makes the victim feel bad for feeling hurt! Definitely a statement made in hell.
Dr.Steve!!! So happy to see you HERE! (Did you by any chance follow the breadcrumbs that *I* left to help you find lovefraud?) Regardless how it has happened… it is VERY Excellent to have you here!!!
— aka: terraflora!
spt/mgr – This might sound a bit old-fashioned, but here it is anyway. A woman in need (I don’t mean a needy woman but a woman who needs help) will evoke the wish to help in a regular man. So, if you’re struggling to carry a parcel he will have the impulse at least to offer to give you a hand. With these other guys, however, it is exactly the opposite: not how can I help, but how can I help myself!
alohatraveler – Dad understood because men have a different code to women.
This means that psychopaths need to use other tactics to con men. It would be enlightening to hear about some of those.
Fighter – Thanks – a classic: “I’ve moved on, so should you.” This is perfectly fine much of the time, but coming from certain mouths it’s sick.
AshesRising/terraflora – I came across this NB site during my researches into psychopathy. Glad to ‘see’ you here.
Dr. Steve,
I learned that the hard way. It took me being on the other side, to ask the question, “how did my lending him money,help me?” Another duh moment. I just shake my head at what I did, because I was needy. I thought I needed fulfillment as a woman, only to find out I was fulfilled. What could a man do that I couldn’t do for myself? He took my broken heart and broke it even further. All this happened when my husband finally told me the truth behind all his years of anger towards me, (financial ruin, etc.,) my children all left the same year and I was down in the depths of despair. The empty nest syndrome that is real. The joke of a marriage that I gave my everything to, to find out he loves money more than he ever did me, and this man was there, ready to “help”. Talk about a messed up head. I was a puppet and he kept pulling the strings. Mainly purse strings, but he knew just how to get to me. Then when I came back from the despair and confronted him and wanted my money back, and told him that I bought his friendship, he said I offered the money. Of course he’d never admit to what he did, but I can never trust him and am learning to forgive him. He still didn’t get my sex, but he did get money. Small price to pay for maintaining my dignity. Almost lost all my integrity. I learned to play his games to let him see what he does and if he complains, I just say, “you taught me everything I know. If you don’t like my attitude you should never have given it to me.” I like me so much better now. He doesn’t and neither does my husband, but they can no longer use me to provide for them. I, too, have the option of saying, NO.
After 18 years of deception and 8 months of revelation, I finally, finally, finally! realize that everything my husband says is pure manipulation. It’s horrifying. This is a man who has deceived virtually everyone. I thought he was my very best friend. Everyone–even our closest family and friends–thought we had the best marriage, that he was a devoted family man. It was all an illusion. He’s been living a double life for more than 14 years. I am still in shock. My therapist’s eyes get bigger by the week. Come to find out, my husband’s a sexual predator and addict, has had countless flings and affairs, and was planning to leave me and our daughter for a woman he’s been having a four-year affair with. And were it not for a couple of wild flukes and the fact that I turned into a detective, he would have gotten away with it. I would have never known anything. He would have left with some bogus excuse, some “need to be alone,” some reason, some bullshit concoction, omg, it’s unbelievable (well, probably not to anyone here).
Now that I’m finally on to him, his verbal tactics are astonishing. I’m not sure if what he does is more gaslighting or paramoralizing. Probably a lot of both, often used together in varying degrees. Whatever it takes.
When–at the end of May of this year–he was trying desperately to leave (without having it look like he was the culprit), he came up with a real lulu. Earlier in the day, in an effort to provoke me to ask him to leave without him saying he wanted to or why, he admitted to long-ago sexual encounters with 3 different women. When that didn’t work, he said he never had sex with any of those women, that he was only “practicing lying.” When I got angry, he said well then he just had to leave. “Now?” I asked, stunned and terrified.
“Well I just can’t bear the pain it causes you when you don’t believe me when I’m telling the truth,” he said.
Amazing.
More recently I told him I was feeling sad, that I’d always thought I was lucky in love. I was full of grief, tearful, still crazily thinking he was the one I could go to with my deepest pain. He got instantly nasty, horns and fangs, and snarled, “Why do you want to be a victim?”
He’ll never take responsibility. Sometimes he does the mock remorseful thing, and does it really well, but that’s all manipulation too. I see it now. It’s never sincere. It seems so at the time, and I’ve often fallen for it, but not anymore.
Up until last week, I kept looking for a loophole for my husband. I’ve been reading this blog for several months now, kept thinking, yep, that’s him, but I so wanted to find a way for him to be the man I always thought he was. I couldn’t let go. He joined AA; I felt hopeful. He started to come clean; I felt hopeful. He attended an SAA meeting; I felt hopeful. But all along and in between, he’d zigzag from seeming progress back to bold-face lying, cheating, exploitation, deception. I kept hoping God would work a miracle, my husband’s not really a sociopath, he’ll 12-step his way out of it, he’ll be a new man. In a way I was conning myself. At some level I knew what I was doing, but I just was not ready to face reality and let go of the dream.
How cruel he was to perpetrate a deception like that on another. I told him I’ll never understand how anyone could ever hurt another human being like that.
His response? “I never thought you would find out.”
I want to add that my husband moved out at the end of June. He started saying some things that scared me, that made me think he was planning on hurting me, or worse. I felt I had to let him know that I had shared my fears with a friend. When I did, he got furious at me for “maligning [him] in a fictitious scenario!” Then he left. Phew!
I’m sure I could think of examples, but mostly what occurs to me was that it was never his fault. Ever. Deny Deny Deny. Although, he would frequently do things behind my back- when I’d find out about it (usually involved MY checking acct or credit cards) he’d first try to deny it altogether- I’d say that no one stole my atm card of out my purse, used it at the atm machine across the street from his job-du-jour and then put back in my purse. THEN he’d say he didn’t tell me about it because I’d bitch. Well, yah, I’m going to bitch when you take $150 out of the bank, cause checks written to pay bills to bounce, and the only purchases you can come up with for $150 is a tank of gas and a pack of smokes.
Then to punish me for confronting him for stealing from me was to steal a check from the back of my checkbook, get someone to cash it, thereby putting my account $300-400 in the hole and not come home for a day. I ended up storing my boxes of checks and checkbook at work. Eventually it was a race to the bank to cash out everything on payday- before he woke up. (sociopaths need their beauty sleep.) Then pay the bills with cash. Unfortunately, he’d convinced the teller’s at the bank that even though his name wasn’t on my account, he was allowed to cash checks. They’d give him temporary checks that he would fill out and sign my name on- right there at the counter! My account was typically in the hole come payday. “But he had to do that because I didn’t give him the money he needed.”
If denial didn’t work, it was always turned around that it was some sort of shortcoming/control-freak/manipulation on my part. (Because actually paying the bills really cramps a socio’s style- right?)
When money would get really tight, and his mother wasn’t ponying up, he’d reluctantly, petulantly get a job. But of COURSE it was a crappy job with dreadful hours, ‘idiots’ for bosses, low low low pay and would otherwise cause ME discomfort/inconvenience/punishment. Whenever he “worked” it always cost more than he earned. But that, of course, wasn’t his fault either!
It wasn’t ALWAYS my fault- but it dang sure was NEVER his fault. I later learned that he told people, his family, our atty (what sociopath doesn’t have an atty friend?), friends, whomever, that I only gave him $20/week allowance and that I couldn’t handle money and he got chintzed because of it. But he loved me anyway. Gack.
This is obviously a topic we all know so much about. I think I might have an all time classic here.
The Bad Man typically had melt downs over… I can’t even remember what… and once he was on one of his cycles, he would not be able to stop for 48-72 hours. After one of these cycles, he would follow with his pretend remourse. One time, he came up with this. “When I get upset, a real women would realize that it is just because I love her so much and she would fall to her knees with joy and thankfulness at that revelation and then rush to me and F-ck away all the bad and yuck out of me.” FOR REAL.
Now, I would say that at that point, I KNEW something wasn’t right!!!
Reading Gillian and Glinda’s posts was like a stroll down memory lane.
A funny thing happened to me today. I was watching a movie on LifeTime Channel with some friends. It was called, “A Man and his Three Wives” and right at the beginning, I stated, “This is a movie about a sociopath.” Then, throughout the movie, I predicted his every move before he did it. My friends were amazed (and probably annoyed… who wants to be with someone that is narrating the whole movie?). The thing is, the writer of the movie did a disservice to viewers. They never stated that he was disordered or a Sociopath but it was SOOOO OBVIOUS!
And, I also got an email from someone that was seeming questionable recently and I recognized the pity plays and subtle manipulations…. danger… danger… delete… delete. I recognized the way he tried to appeal to my kindness and compassion and my not wanting to be hurtful to anyone. I didn’t engage… I just deleted. Buh Bye Bad-Man-Junior.
Aloha… Elise