Woman meets guy online. Woman decides guy is not for her. Guy doesn’t want to hear it. Guy wants wants to meet her RIGHT NOW to hug her neck. Woman doesn’t respond. Guy promises the greatest love ever. Woman tells guy to STOP. Guy ramps up the attention.
Read the entire audacious interaction, complete with the guy saying it was all a joke, at womenexplode.com.
Erin with all due respect hon, I think you were letting your own stuff get in the way of your responses to Anne there xx
I too could see many red flags – the insides churning bit made me instantly creep out and though I might have emailed once to see if it was just a daft man phrase, I most certainly would not have telephoned him. But Anne is not me and I am not Anne. Nor is she you. We are all different and all have our individual frames of reference. This does not make us wrong nor even label our choices bad. Just ‘choices’ based on our own individual frame of reference and context. The fact that the man was local for example had an impact on Anne’s individual frame of reference. Might not have had that effect on us but this does not make Anne a woman who makes bad choices. Just a woman who made a choice according to the context in which she found herself. Like the rest of us.
No matter how experienced or educated we think we have become through this, we can still be duped by a spath at any moment. None of us are immune 100% and never will be, though our injured hearts in their quest for safety try to continually assure us that we can be. We are almost immune, more wise than the general population who are still blind to their existence, but we remain human and fallible. It is a grave, and counterproductive, mistake to apply a ‘Well you should have known better by now’ to any of us at any time because, seasoned and wise though we have become, we remain human….
Anne you could never have 100% predicted what this guy was going to do much as we all wish you and us could have! Sure you had an idea at the start as we all can see, but at some stage, for a million possible reasons that are individual to you, you were duped. The key is that you got out quickly, more quickly than you might have had you not been wiser. Don’t blame yourself – you made your choices for reasons that are between you and your own soul, the rest of us are mere onlookers responding from our own frame of reference just like you were. xx
Let’s not forget how ‘good’ these folk are at pulling the wool over our eyes. Look how long it took us to reach the point of wisdom we all have now. And we are still not 100% there. Our goal I feel is more realistically about using our newfound wisdom to act as fast as possible, as Anne did, when we encounter an spath. We won’t always be able to avoid getting involved with them in the first place – most are simply not that obvious. But we are wiser, meaning we can get onto them quicker and can get outta there a damned sight faster than we did before! And that’s something!
Notes on his language use – it all sounds very intellectualised, second and third person and descriptive. Like he is quoting or giving some sort of book report. That tells me quite clearly he is a spath. Though there are those who can appear to speak from the heart too.
A note on Ted Bundy – watching footage of him on video I could tell straightaway he was a spath. Laughing and smiling in appropriately, widening and pushing forward his eyes a lttle too much. I totally can tell – to me it’s glaringly obvious that he was a spath and I don’t think I was even born when he committed his crimes! But look how many people were duped at the time by that very same behaviour. Professional people too who you would think would be experienced/seasoned enough (like Anne perhaps?!) to notice- police and law workers. Doesn’t make them unaware or irresponsible. Just human and fallible. And totally blind, as we all were once, to just how evil and good at faking these spaths are.
Lets not judge each other harshly and when we wish to give criticism that is constructive, let us take a step back and ask ourselves beforehand whether it is truly about that person to whom we are giving the advice, or if it is really about us! xxx
I kick myself over the troll who lived next door to me until recently (mentioned in other posts, about to be charged with assaulting my friend last week and stalking me for close on a year now).
I was still in recovery from my ex-husband spath nightmare (the saga of which continues even now) yet I allowed a pushy new neighbour, about whom I had reservations from the moment we met across our common side boundary fence, to bully me into agreeing that he could do some work in my yard.
Long story short, when he messed up building a small wall and when (after 2 months of waiting for him to rectify it) I eventually got another person to finish the job off properly, all hell broke loose over the fence – and he is still paying out on me. I was under siege in my own home for 10 months until he moved out recently – I could not step outside without being abused and having things thrown at the fence or into my yard, etc. etc. Now, I can’t go to the local store or to the post office or to see my doctor without him following me, abusing me in public, attacking me, driving his car straight at my vehicle or trying to run my car off the road with his own.
I had lived through 7 years with a sociopath already.
I have endured 4 years of harassment by the spath since the spath and I split up and then divorced.
How could I have walked right into the shennanagins with the troll next door?
Well, for a start I hadn’t researched sociopathy up until this year; the troll moved in last September. Up until about a year ago, I still thought my ex-spath had BPD and/or some other mental illness. It was only in the last 12 months that I truly realised that he is a spath – beyond doubt. It was only in the past few months (around July/August 2010) that I found LF while researching sociopathy – and THAT’S where/when my learning REALLY began in earnest. Learning from others like me who weren’t just studying and categorising and rationalising and pegging behaviours into boxes with labels – but who had LIVED what I had lived (and was still living)(and am still living).
Even so, I ask myself, how could I have walked right into this second trap (with all of the dire consequences that continue to issue from that encounter)????? I guess that I was still shaky and vulnerable. I was determined NOT to go back to the spath, but it wasn’t because I knew that he was a spath (at that stage, I DIDN’T), it was because of how appallingly he had continued to behave toward me.
What I CAN tell you now, is that when the new neighbours move in, I will not be introducing myself to them unless it absolutely can’t be avoided. I won’t be offering to help them out with anything, as I did with the troll and his partner. I won’t be saying, “Hey, come on over and help yourself to my fruit trees”, as I once would have done. I won’t offer to feed their pets while they go away overnight. My gates will stay locked and my front door shut.
Dear Aussiegirl,
Have you got a no contact order or are the police involved with this “neighbor?” BE CAREFUL!
Can I make a suggestion about your new neighbors? DO get to know them, but just don’t be OVERLY FRIENDLY until you get to know them much better and SEE what their ACTIONS are. DON’T give them trust up front, but DO give them a chance to EARN it. At least as neighbors if not friends.
I have one CRAZY neighbor (psychopath, ADHD and maybe bi-polar as well) sued me for huge damages to HIS MENTAL STATE when the plane that my husband was in when it crashed crashed in his pasture….he didn’t get any damages though! But the other neighbors ran him out of the community for several years. He is back now, but lives like a hermit on his place.
I’m not really “friends” with the other neighbors, and they range from “nice” to white trash, but we are “neighbors” in that we speak when we see each other, and we watch each other’s property, and if there were animals out we take care of them, etc. If I asked to borrow something from the neighbors they’d loan it to me and I’d return it and vice versa, or feed my dog or whatever. “Neighbors—but we don’t play cards together or celebrate each other’s birthdays. The white trash probably wouldn’t steal from me, but they are thieves, and rowdy when they drink, I sure wouldn’t want to party with them (LOL) but they are okay as neighbors.
At least by knowing them,, I sort of know what is going on in the area….don’t build yourself into a cave so much you don’t know what is going on in your neighborhood. Might be good to have another pair of eyes looking out for your place. Might want to tell them how glad you are to see “normal folks” move in since you had such a nut job for a neighbor before! That ought to open up the conversation….LOL Just don’t be so quick to trust them or offer your help! New people—take it slow! (((hugs)))
Hey Oxy, I have both – the Misconduct restraining order as well as police involvment. None of it has made any difference so far – he is completely out of his tree. Not a spath – he does nothing to cover up his reputation for starters – he’s just an out and out criminal.
I tried to post a reply to EB about this on another thread last night, but it disappeared when I hit the save button.
Anyhow, the gist of it was this – I held off talking on here about the troll (my pet name for him since this all started in November 2009) because I already had the spath to talk about and I felt so stupid. After all the craziness the spath has put me through, I should have been more discriminating. I DID try to take things slow with these neighbours but they snowballed me.
He would appear at our common side boundary fence every time I was pruning my roses or watering the garden or feeding the dog. I was under “friendly siege” even before things turned sour. He wore me down over a number of weeks and bullied me into giving him a small job in my yard, building a wall. He messed the wall up and then never came back to fix it. After 8 weeks of trying to talk to him about it and get him to do something, I let him know I was getting a friend in to rectify the problems. This was when he began to let rip.
Daily, between November 30 last year and October this year (when they finally moved out) I was screamed at and abused across the fence. Things were thrown into my yard. He tried to bait my dogs with poison and he stole my cat and dumped him miles away in bushland (it took me 3 weeks of searching to find Cricket and bring him home). He crept around my yard at night, damaged all of my vehicles (can’t be proved it was him), cut stringlines I had for marking out new garden beds, threw dog poo into my yard and deliberately did things to wake me up between 1.00am and 6.00am every morning.
His kitchen window directly faced my bedroom window, so he would begin his daily ritual by sliding open his window and shrieking and swearing out of it, bang repeatedly on the window and the wall next door and turn his radio up very loud for a few minutes until he figured it would have woken me, then turn it down or off.
He rigged up spotlights all over his yard and would shine them into my face and follow my movements around my yard with them. He had lights he set up to shine into my bedroom window that he would leave on all night, and others to light up my back porch area. I had to put aluminium foil all over my bedroom window to deflect the light – and I could not open that window for 10 months while this went on. If I adjusted the curtains or tried to let a little air into that room, he would scream things at me like, “Pervert!”
Since moving, he has taken to accosting me in the street, at the store, and on the road, trying to run my vehicle off and driving straight for me (3 times last week, after not having seen him for several weeks). The police wanted to wait until he moved house before charging him because they were worried he might hurt me if they charged him and he was still next door to me.
He was in prison some time ago for drug trafficking and assault. (I did not know this when I let him build the wall)
I would hear him regularly yelling abuse at his partner and have told police about that also. (This also had not happened prior to wall incident)
There are two more witnesses to be interviewed this week and police statements need to be taken from them. Then the case gets handed over to the detectives at a nearby regional centre. The timing is lousy because it’s smack bang in the middle of Xmas and New Year and Public Holidays, so I’m holding my breath. The detectives will then re-interview me and my witnesses and the troll. Only after all of that will a hearing date be set. If he pleads not guilty at the hearing (which he will because he’s a fruit-loop) a trial date will be set. I don’t know how likely he is to be held on bail in between the two dates; it may well be that he’s still walking these streets up until then.
I have taken every precaution I can for my safety, and a friend moved in with me after this started last November and then the spath breached the VRO by coming here last December (it was a time for double-whammies) – so I’m usually not here by myself anymore.
I just didn’t talk about the troll much before because I felt like such a twit about it. (I’m getting over that now).
I also didn’t want to appear like I was all, “Hey everyone! LOOK at ME!! I’ve got a spath AND a troll!! I’m so special…”
aussie – oxy can raise you at least 2 p’s and, a trojan an p parent!
this situation you describe is brutal. i am glad you are dealing with the cops and it can move forward. and very glad the prick moved away. i have had some harassment in the last year by a an n landlord and his schizophrenic step son, and the 2 douchebags who lived downstairs – but nothing like this. it is so wearing and destabilizing to deal with these assholes all at once – a p and a troll!
thing is – i doubt this will ever happen to you again, you will be all over it like white on rice. what i have learned is that i ask once for civility and after that I hammer them with whatever legal recourse there is, and that i have the emotional resources to push. i am learning that most fucked up behavior isn’t personal and i have to hit back like it isn’t personal also. i just need a big ‘no’ inside myself and the cops.
this isn’t anywhere near the same situation, but i had 2 years no sleep because of partying neighbours….long story short, it took two years to shut them down, because no one would help and i was too ‘nice.’. i moved and this year when another houseful of partying students came into my life, i slammed them hard again and again and i wouldn’t have stopped until they did. i asked nice once. then i started calling the cops and showing up and lecturing them when they were all fucked up on pot. it scared them (they, however, are not disordered). i have learned to pull my scarey older woman attitude out and come down hard. not allowed to bear arms here, but i have an array of other things on me when i go to mess with them. thing is, i guage the situation and then hit as hard as i can. i never want to be sleep deprived again. i had years of it with fibro, and those jerks brought it back. now, i fight. and the healthier i get, the more i am going to fight.
Dear Aussiegirl,
Yep, I can “see you and raise several p’s” so don’t feel tooooo special having more than one! Actually, there are several of us here (I think the majority) who have had SEVERAL run ins with at least people with HIGH PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS. LOL You are NOT a twit for having a couple!
The troll sounds like he is maybe ALSO mentally unstable as well as psychopathic, so BE CAREFUL.
I just ordered a copy of a book about a guy like your TROLL who terrorized an entire town in Mid USA until in 1980s two people shot him to death in front of 50 witnesses and NO ONE SAW ANYTHING. They never did convict anyone even though they brought in the federal bureau of investigation (our FBI) and the wife (whom he had repeatedly raped and beaten and had 2 women living with him and a houseful of kids by both) said who she thought pulled the trigger (there were two guns involved) but the entire TOWN clammed up and kept mum. The 30th year anniversay is coming up about this killing is why it was brought up. I had read about it in the past but there is a new updated book on it, so I ordered it. It is only about 300 miles from where I live. Your TROLL sounds a lot like this guy.
The man who was shot 30 yrs ago had shot others and almost killed them, stolen, vandalized, terrorized and assaulted people for 25 years when the town finally came together to off him. I can’t say I approve of this, but at the same time, if the law doesn’t protect people they WILL protect themselves.
i agree with you there oxy – he sounds psychotic, and possibly schizophrenic, and with a car as a weapon. OY!
about this old story oxy – some people need killing. i don’t blame those people in the least. i know we are all concerned of ‘slippery slopes’, but i am pretty comfortable with some calls, and as you describe that situation, that is one of them.
Ya…I admit I did my stint with online dating…was hooked up with a Narcissist, who even TOLD me that he was accused of being one, but I placated him..oh NO…how could ANYONE say that about you? He WAS Mr. Perfect…ummm NOT…took me a year to figure that one out. He was a college professor who did seminars for young black men on being a man of honor, made sure we prayed before meals, well spoken and, I might add, very physically beautiful…. but, learned the hard way on that one, when he left his browser open and I went snooping when he wasn’t home…OY!
Life lesson here…when someone tells you who they are, you gotta believe them.
Not daunted by this disaster, (I was widowed with 6 children, so admittedly a bit vulnerable) I again plunge into the “cess pool”. End up being temporarily snagged by a (and I SWEAR I am not making this up) by a gubernatorial candidate for a state in Nigeria, who lived in Canada as an immigration counsel. This was all well documented online. and THIS man was a stalker. He proposed to me the first time we met, which was after several months of emails/calls. He had extensive plans for my children to attend boarding school in Africa. He had actually already purchased a diamond. When I told him I was entirely uncomfortable with that, and sent him on his way, the following weekend, he drove 19 hours straight to me, when I was not answering his calls, because he was “worried” about me. When I again sent him, red-eyed and exhausted, packing, the stalking in earnest began. Gifts and cards began arriving almost daily, I would send them back unopened, well, I did peek at a few…then the coup de grace happened. His brother, who was a high government official, was assassinated , and now he was the cheiftain in his stead, and now the pressure was REALLY on for me to fill the role as his wife or “first lady” as he liked to refer to me as. His relatives from around the world began to call me to pressure me to give him another chance. DOUBLE OY! Finally I think he moved on, although now and again I do receive an email from him using another email address, which I continue to block
Two big internet dating strikes for me…NOT to be deterred, I again dip the toe…but THIS time, hit gold… with a man who is EVERYTHING I wasn’t looking for. We actually were emailing, laughing about the fact that we both had 6 kids, and were on a dating site…He’d write to me about toilet training his 3 yr old son- his ex is a borderline, so he was single dadding it, with the help of his mom who moved in to help care for the kids while he worked. We met, completely on a whim, he’s professional musician and I brought my best friend as a back up. When I saw him walk up, my first thought was “Dear Jesus I hope that’s him” His smile was incredible, and it WAS love at first sight. Our first official “date” he volunteered to bring all of his divorce papers, including the psych evals done on he and his wife…what is this???? Transparency??? Why I never…..
We’ve been married 4 years…Have the Brady Bunch X two. I guess my point is that yeah, sometimes we’re stupid. I certainly wish I had known about this site back in the day- maybe it didn’t exist then- but I’m glad it does now. Life is a crap shoot…this site helps the odds! I think it’s okay to try internet dating if you can do it with a huge amount of caution and safe guards in place. I always had a separate email account that was completely non-identifying, did research guys to the best of ability before talking or meeting. Always met in a public place during the day, letting friends know, and getting some calls from them during the time as a safety check, or “out” if I needed an excuse to leave. Creeps are everywhere, but so are nice folks..I’m glad I ended up taking that final chance. I’ve never been so loved and appreciated.
Dear Roodyzoo,
It sounds like you DO have a “roodyzoo” around there with 12 kids, but on the other hand, it gives the rest of us hope, if a woman with 6 kids of her own can find a partner, then you know the rest of us have hope! LOL Seriously, I am glad that you found a new and loving partner. Unfortunately a high percentage of the “single” guys on dating sites are married.
But I know lots of guys who have dated some really ODD BALL WOMEN off the internet too, and one who married a REAL con woman. The Marriage only lasted a week, when she wanted to go back to her home state because she wanted the house to be remodeled before she could possibly move into it, but BTW, she WOULd take the new car her groom had bought for her. DUH!? Well, he kept the car and sent her packing, but she went home and used his SS# to open dozens of charge cards in his name which she ordered bunches of stuff with even after the marriage was legally over.
He told me later, “but we spent so much time on the phone” (they hardly ever were together before the wedding) and she SEEMED SO NICE, SO LOVING!” ROTFLMAO That is like my egg donor screaming in wonder after they stole $28K from her and tried to kill her grandson BUT THEY WERE ALWAYS SO RESPECTFUL TO ME!!! ROTFLMAO Yea, how do you expect them tc con you, say “give me your money bitch!” or to say “Oh, sweet grandma, could you advance me some money for this or that?” LOL The sugar coat the con so we will swallow it, and then WE are surprised when it has a hook in it.
Oxy, oh so true!
I love your analogies…or are they similies…swallowing the sugar coated con, till it’s too late and we discover the hook…perfect!
My spathy son is pro at this… when he’s good, he’s the best kid I got…but all a giant act. He’s transfering from jail to Prison today. Merry Christmas…what a horrible way to spend your 17th Christmas.
Like my birth mama always says…if you can’t take care of yourself, society will.