Two Lovefraud readers have created animations related to their experiences with psychopaths. They're posted on YouTube. Take a look—you'll certainly be able to relate! But I love you—daily psychopath talk By Openeyefilms Be a warrior NOT a psychopath By Sarah Strudwick …
Getting over the relationship that didn’t exist
Lovefraud recently received the following e-mail from a reader: How do I process a relationship that had so many lies in it that I don't know really with whom I was involved? I miss the person I thought I knew so much, but at the same time, he was involved with someone else, and others, since at least last June. I thought he had had one affair—but not anything to the extent that it looks like now. How do I process a relationship I never had? Was he lying the whole time acting out the "I love you's", the romantic comments, and the idea that we should be together? Is it all an act? Most of us are reading and posting on Lovefraud because we were intensely, callously, brutally deceived in …
Criticizing bishops in the Philadelphia clergy abuse scandal
In February, a Philadelphia grand jury indicted four priests of sex abuse and found evidence that an additional 37 had also abused. The panel that reviews sex abuse cases for the Philadelphia archdiocese was as surprised as anyone. In an article in Commonweal, a lay Catholic publication, the chairwoman of the review board criticizes the archdiocese, saying it "failed miserably at being open and transparent." The problem, writes Ana Maria Catanzaro, was the clergy's attitude of superiority. She writes: So why haven't they gotten it? In a word, clericalism. In his book Clericalism: The Death of the Priesthood, George B. Wilson, SJ, articulates “unexamined attitudes” typical of clerical cult …
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Relating to Maria Shriver
With all the uproar over Arnold Schwarzenegger and his "love child," our friend Ann over at WomenExplode.com just wrote about her own experience of a cheating husband. Read I can relate with Maria Shriver ”¦ at WomenExplode.com. …
Sociopathy runs amok in murder of 15-year-old boy
This case is so shocking that it's difficult to know where to begin. It's a mix of multiple disordered personalities and vicious actions that exploded into the incomprehensible. The trouble apparently started when 15-year-old Seath Tyler Jackson of Belleview, Florida, a town of about 4,500 people located 65 miles north of Orlando, broke up with his 15-year-old girlfriend, Amber Wright. The breakup was public, played out in real time on Facebook. Wright had apparently taken up with a new boyfriend, 18-year-old Michael Shane Bargo. Jackson and Bargo hated each other, and Bargo allegedly wanted to do something about it. Here is what happened, according to media reports that quoted police …
Now, more SEAL impostors than ever
On Lovefraud's Is he or she military? page, we state that 11,000 soldiers actually completed Navy SEAL training, but fraud busters have found more than 35,000 fake SEALs. Now that Navy SEALs have taken out Osama Bin Laden, there are even more frauds, including a pastor from central Pennsylvania. Don Shipley, a real ex-SEAL who exposes the fakes, says it's not unusual to find members of the clergy pretending to be former SEALs: "It's something with these guys who are in a position of trust that causes a lot of them to do it," he said. "The fact that they are in a position where whatever comes out of their mouth is believed -- I think that causes some of them to take advantage." Shipley has …
Grooming a new generation of victims
Yesterday I attended a family celebration in honor of my little niece's First Holy Communion. The guest of honor, my niece, is in the second grade and is a beautiful, vibrant child—blond hair, blue eyes with a sprinkle of freckles across her nose. In her white Communion dress, she looked like a little angel. It was a sunny day and a pleasant get-together. Most of the guests had left when my niece and her friend, another little girl, wanted to put on a “show” for those of us who remained. We, of course, agreed to be the audience. With a video clip from the Internet providing the music, the girls sang and danced to the song Beggin' On Your Knees by Victoria Justice. I was horri …
Psychopaths, silly science and James Bond
The headline of an article that a Lovefraud reader recently sent to me is: Why women really do love self-obsessed psychopaths With a headline like that, of course, I had to read it. The article, from 2008, describes research on the “Dark Triad” and mating behavior. The Dark Triad refers to the personality disorders of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. I had some problems with the article, but before I ripped into it, I figured I'd read the original study. Here it is: The Dark Triad: Facilitating a Short-Term Mating Strategy in Men This study was published in the European Journal of Personality in 2009, and the lead author is Peter K. Jonason. To be honest, I find …
Chernobyl–mistake or mischief?
Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time. Russia and the Ukraine held ceremonies to mark that terrible day. Read the story and watch the video on Russia, Ukraine mark 25th anniversary of Chernobyl nuclear meltdown at NYDailyNews.com. What caused that terrible explosion? In Nuclear Renewal, Richard Rhodes writes the following: Without question, the accident at Chernobyl was the result of a fatal combination of ignorance and complacency. "As members of a select scientific panel convened immediately after the...accident," writes Bethe, "my colleagues and I established that the …
Naming the social predators among us
Editor's note: This is a more complete explanation of a proposal I made a few weeks ago. How do you avoid a social predator? First, you have to know that they exist. I didn't know they existed. So when a charming, charismatic and supremely confident man swept into my life, I didn't know that charm, charisma and overconfidence were red flags that he might be a predator. And he was. This man took a quarter-million dollars from me, cheated with at least six women during our 2.5-year marriage, had a child with one of the women, and then, 10 days after I left him, married the mother of the child. It was the second time he committed bigamy. “He might be a sociopath,” my therapist com …