5 tips for dealing with a sociopath
Lovefraud’s standard advice for interacting with a sociopath is not to interact at all, to implement a strict policy of No Contact. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible.
Perhaps you share children with a sociopathic ex-partner. Or perhaps you have a disordered boss or co-worker, and aren’t yet able to find new employment. Or perhaps some member of your family is disordered. If you have no choice but to interact with a problem person, here are some tips that may help you.
- Do not react emotionally.
Sociopaths will often do or say unpleasant things just to provoke a reaction out of you. Do not take the bait.
Lovefraud received the following letter from a reader whom we’ll call “Emilie”:
Online love scams are running rampant in Asia. A 66-year-old widow and businesswoman from Hong Kong sent HK$23 million (US$ 2.9 million) to a man she met online, but never met in person. The con artist posed as a British engineer who needed money for his projects. The woman sent him the money in more than 200 transactions between April 2014 and July 2018.
For everyone here at Lovefraud, there came a time when we could no longer continue in denial. We were forced to admit that someone we trusted had betrayed us. We felt devastation, anger, humiliation, grief and every other negative emotion on a therapy checklist.
No wonder mental health professionals don’t seem to understand emotional abuse. In trying to conduct research about it, they don’t even have a comprehensive list of typical emotionally abusive behaviors.
“I was dating a pathological liar” — that’s the title of a recent article in the “Craigslist Confessional” series by Helena Dea Bala. In this tale, a woman describes meeting a charming, attractive man at a destination wedding. They stayed in communication afterwards, and he told elaborate, compelling stories of his time as a Navy SEAL — until it all fell apart.
Donna Andersen is author of three books, including 
