How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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Why falling for a sociopath doesn’t mean you’re stupid

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UPDATED FOR 2023: Lovefraud received the following email from a reader whom we'll call "Agatha." She wonders, does falling for a sociopath mean you're stupid? Since I found your website I have been doing a lot of reading, learning, and understanding. I made my break from my spath about three years ago. I keep reading how a spath knows who and how to catch a person in their web. Seemingly being very intelligent as to getting exactly what they want from us. In my case, my spath doesn't seem to be all that intelligent. Does this mean that I was taken in by a man of low intellect, and what does that say about me? I'm having trouble understanding how a man who seems to have no common s …

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Games psychopaths play – flaunting other women (and men)

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  UPDATED FOR 2023. Before my marriage, I was absolutely clueless about the games psychopaths play. I know about them now, but I am still shocked by their audacity. Here's what I witnessed, up close and personal: At 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, wearing new lingerie from Victoria's Secret, I awaited the arrival of my fiancé, James Montgomery. He'd been out of the country on a secret military mission (so he told me). But he could escape his duties for a short time, so he was driving more than 1,000 miles, from MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, to my home in New Jersey, to meet me for a passionate rendezvous. He arrived in a vehicle I'd never seen before — a black Gr …

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Why are you distraught about the lying, cheating sociopath’s silent treatment?

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You’ve discovered that your romantic partner is lying and cheating on you. When you confront, this person turns on you and refuses to talk to you. You’re the one who has been wronged. So why are you distraught about the sociopath’s silent treatment? A Lovefraud reader, whom we’ll call Lucy20, asked exactly this question. Here’s what she wrote: I have ridden the merry go round for 10 years with a guy that has cheated and not told the truth. We break up (usually me pushing him away and him acting the victim and then we never can stay away.) He begs, I reject and then he retreats and I feel overwrought. Horrible. I feel heartbroken every single time. So hard to understand and get out of t …

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Here’s the worst lie a partner can tell you and what to do about it

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If you’re looking for a romantic relationship and you’re also reading Lovefraud, you probably have some awareness of sociopaths and you’re trying to figure out how to not hook up with one. To help you, I will reveal the worst lie that a partner can tell you. If you encounter this lie, you absolutely should not excuse it. Lying sociopaths All sociopaths lie. This presents those of us who are honest with a huge problem. First of all, sociopaths are really good liars. They’ve been lying all their lives. They tell big lies, little lies, stupid lies. They mix lies with the truth. They lie like they breathe. Secondly, human beings are really bad lie detectors. Research shows that most people …

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After the sociopath, I still feel numb – what can I do?

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UPDATED FOR 2023. After discovering that someone close to you, someone you trusted, totally betrayed you, it would certainly be expected that you'd feel anger, outrage, or sadness. But many people who have this experience simply feel numb. For example, Lovefraud received the following email from a reader: It has been about 3 years since I discovered what happened to me. I've had no contact with my spaths. Yet I still feel numb and broken. I feel like I have tried almost everything to get through this dark time. I feel so lost. I feel so robbed of my life and my children have been too. What can I do now? I'm running out of solutions. I don't want to feel like this anymore.... please …

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When sociopaths threaten suicide

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If you’re a sociopath, and you sense that your latest target is tiring of your antics and getting ready to leave, what do you do? Well, many sociopaths threaten suicide. What sociopaths want most is power and control, and one of the most forceful ways to achieve it is to threaten suicide. This strategy is especially effective when they’re trying to hold on to their romantic partners. Why? Romantic partners care about the sociopath. If this is you, you are emotionally attached. Even if you’ve come to the conclusion that your relationship with the sociopath is not healthy, you don’t want to be the cause of anything bad happening to him or her. So when the sociopath threatens suicide if you le …

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What is narcissistic supply?

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Perhaps you suspect that someone in your life has a serious personality disorder. You’ve been reading everything you can find on narcissists, sociopaths and maybe even psychopaths. You keep coming across the term, narcissistic supply. What is it? Here’s how Tiffany Kettermann, LPC, CADCI, MPA, described it in her Lovefraud webinar, Understanding and Recognizing Narcissistic Abuse: Narcissistic supply is anything or anyone that feeds the narcissistic person’s ego and keeps the person artificially pumped up, protecting their fragile view of themselves. “Think of narcissism, the ego, as a HUGE tank that needs constant filling,” Tiffany says. “It’s an addiction, a need, for someone to pr …

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Early warning sign that a baby could grow up to be a psychopath

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UPDATED FOR 2023. Research suggests that a baby who prefers to look at a red ball, rather than a human face, may be at risk for developing callous-unemotional personality traits and could grow up to be a psychopath. Callous-unemotional traits, when seen in children, can precede the development of full-blown psychopathy. Researchers at King's College in London studied five-week old babies. They hypothesized that babies who paid more attention to an inanimate object, rather than a human face, would show higher callous-unemotional traits when they were two and a half years old. The researchers were right. Callous-unemotional Psychologists who study the origins of antisocial behavior …

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Understanding why the sociopath is just like your parent

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Most people who call me for personal consultations want to talk about an abusive romantic partner. They want to know if their partner is a sociopath, and usually, based on their story of lies, manipulation, cheating, stonewalling, gaslighting and sometimes violence, the answer is yes. Then, as we talk about how they were vulnerable to this person, they say that the sociopath is just like their parent. For example, here's a letter that I received from a Lovefraud reader: I was involved with a narcissist in 2013 and after a year of being with a complete nut case went no contact. (Can write a short story about it.) It's taken a few years but free now in my mind. My father is a narcissist …

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Her husband was engaged in theft, embezzlement and laundering money

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Editor’s note: Here’s a story submitted by a Lovefraud reader. Not only was the man she married cheating on her, but he was engaged in theft, embezzlement and laundering money. We met in an AOL IM chatroom in 2005, for people in their 40's. He lived more than 600 miles away from me. Two months after meeting online, we met in a public setting. He told me he was getting divorced when I first met him online: lie #1. He was still married; however, his wife at about that same time had found out about other affairs he had had locally, and left him the weekend he drove out here to meet me in person. Prostate cancer He found out he had prostate cancer 6 months after meeting me, had his prostate …

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