Meet Jeremy Meeks. His photo was posted on Facebook in mid-June. With his high cheekbones, steel-blue eyes and tough-guy tattoos, the image quickly went viral.
Where was the picture posted? On the Facebook page of the Stockton, California Police Department. Jeremy Meeks is a criminal, charged with 11 felony counts of weapons possession and gang activity. This is his mug shot.
No matter. Women were apparently lusting after him, and sending him their phone numbers.
Women lusting after sexy felon Jeremy Meeks are pissing off his wife, on Gawker.com.
I saw the picture on TV last week. Multiple media outlets—including Time.com— reported that because of the photo’s more than 100,000 Facebook likes, Meeks had been offered a modeling contract. This turned out to be nothing more than a rumor there was no modeling deal, at least not yet.
Woman marries confessed killer Joran van der Sloot
Also last week news broke that Joran van der Sloot, the Dutchman suspected in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, married his girlfriend in a Peruvian prison.
Van der Sloot is serving 28 years for the murder of Stephany Flores in Peru in 2010. He confessed to beating, choking and suffocating her.
Apparently Van der Sloot’s past meant nothing to Leidy Figueroa, his new bride. She met Van der Sloot while visiting a relative in prison, and is pregnant his child.
SEE IT: Joran Van der Sloot’s pregnant new bride arrives at Peruvian jailhouse for wedding service, on NYDailyNews.com.
Woman will leave children to marry prisoner
Here’s another story, sent in by a Lovefraud reader.
Jennifer Butler, of Suffolk, England started writing to Christopher Mosier in a Minnesota prison in July 2011. Mosier is due to be paroled in September, and Butler plans to leave her three young children in England to move to the U.S. to marry him.
Butler met Mosier on writeaprisoner.com. According to his profile, he was sentenced to 15 years for a violent burglary and drug charges.
British mom of 3 young kids will leave family for U.S. prisoner she met online, on NYDailyNews.com.
Butler saved up enough money to travel 5,000 miles to visit Mosier. When she got to Minnesota, he had been in a fight with another prisoner and lost his visiting privileges. They had to talk through a glass window.
Still, Butler keeps the faith.
“Chris is a wonderful man,” Butler says, according to the New York Daily News. “Sure, he made a few mistakes in the past, but everybody deserves a second chance.”
Overlooking the criminality
All of these guys are convicted criminals, and we’re not talking frat boy pranks or drug court. These guys were arrested for gang activity, burglary and murder.
Why are the women willing to overlook such obvious criminality and fall in love with them?
For most of the women who think Meeks is hot, it may just be a goof. After all, clicking the Facebook like button is not really getting involved with him. Some women, however, sent money for his legal defense.
And the women marrying Van der Sloot and Mosier I’m sure they are catching a lot of flack. But Van der Sloot and Mosier are probably telling them something like: “I know I messed up. But with you at my side, babe, I can be a new man. Your love will keep me strong. Your love will save me.”
The women are likely falling for those sweet words. However, I want to be cautious about criticizing, because they are exhibiting behavior that probably all of us involved with sociopaths know too well:
They are believing what they want to believe.
Our mind in love
I’m always amazed by the degree to which the love we feel is in our own minds.
When we fall in love, we don’t just fall in love with a person. We also fall in love with an idea, a promise, and a dream of the future. Someone comes along who appears to match our vision, and we believe we’ve found the person we’ve been looking for.
Another key component of our love is our concept of ourselves. We may believe that we’re compassionate, nonjudgmental, supportive and forgiving. This is central to our being, and the way we want to live. We turn our beliefs into reality through the individual that we choose as a romantic partner.
Beliefs and dreams
Sociopaths know this about human nature, either overtly or instinctively. They use our desire to believe what we want to believe in order to exploit us.
That’s why they ask us questions and listen carefully to our answers. That’s why they study us.
Sociopaths work to discover our beliefs, so they can mirror them.
Sociopaths convince us to reveal our dreams, so they can promise to make them come true.
Staying safe
So what’s the answer? How can we stay safe? How can we make ourselves not believe what we want to believe, and accept reality instead?
Perhaps the answer is to first believe in ourselves. If we believe that we deserve true, authentic love, we may be more willing to recognize that our partner isn’t really supplying that love.
And if we believed in listening to ourselves, we may be more willing to pay attention when our intuition is warning us to get away from someone.
Belief and love are totally intertwined. To stay safe, we need to be sure that what we believe in, and who we love, are real.
Yeah – I sure wanted to believe. I wanted to believe I had finally found what I’d been waiting for. Then I believed in keeping my word. None of it turned out well for me.
Donna .. you wrote:
“When we fall in love, we don’t just fall in love with a person. We also fall in love with an idea, a promise, and a dream of the future. Someone comes along who appears to match our vision, and we believe we’ve found the person we’ve been looking for.”
And ..
“Another key component of our love is our concept of ourselves. We may believe that we’re compassionate, nonjudgmental, supportive and forgiving. This is central to our being, and the way we want to live. We turn our beliefs into reality through the individual that we choose as a romantic partner.”
This describes my experience so perfectly. These pictures I held in my head significantly clouded my judgment. And not just in romantic relationships .. I think we tend to do this with other toxic persons in different roles in our lives as well. Another component is self-worth. We may not feel we are deserving of anything better, so we try to ‘find’ the good in a toxic person and we cling to that good come hell or high water.
Thank you for posting this article!
Indie Mom – I’ve spoken to many people who have been targeted by sociopaths. The most difficult part of the recovery is coming to grips with the idea that everything you believed about life, people and the world needs to be adjusted. There is a certain subset of people for whom everything you believed simply doesn’t apply. That means changing your beliefs to accommodate what you’ve learned the hard way there are exceptions.
I saw this photo on the internet and did a double take. The picture reminded me of how good looking the sociopath was that I once ‘knew’. And how mesmerizing it was for me to be with someone so beautiful. On the outside.
Aside from our concepts about love, being ‘good’, and having our dreams mirrored, we also have deeply embedded ideas/feelings about very good looking people. As if their looks imbue them with an importance, a status, even a goodness and deservingness that the rest of us don’t possess. They are often worshiped by complete strangers, given favors/jobs/sex, and coveted as partners or friends. The man I knew would walk into a room and everyone would turn to stare at him. Complete strangers would walk up to him and say he was one of the most beautiful men they had ever seen in person.
My experience is when the disordered person is particularly good looking even more feelings, and perhaps unconscious ideas, are triggered. Our lust is ignited. I know this was true for me. In a way it was my personal version of hitting the jackpot. My ego was completely engaged. Somehow his being so beautiful shored up my insecurities about my appearance, my worth, my ‘importance’.
My own unhealthy narcissism was triggered.
It really was embarrassing to realize how much my entanglement had to do with his looks and his sex appeal. I felt so foolish when I finally understood how much weight I had given to his physical appearance. Because in truth, from the beginning, he was a pretty loud and obnoxious person. A slob. An energy hog. Inconsiderate. I could see all this. Of course, as most spaths are, he was also an excellent wordsmith.
One of the things that broke through my delusion about what it meant that he had chosen me (because by crazy-logic it meant I was also beautiful) was that I met a number of women he slept with, and some he would eventually sleep with. None of them were as beautiful as him. And many were downright unattractive. All of them were totally smitten with him, ga-ga.
He could have had stunning women. He chose not. My guess is his narcissism kept him from choosing someone who would be too competitive with him, and likely have her choice of many gorgeous men.
Boy did I eat humble pie.
slimone .. thank you for this perspective. I never looked at it like this. My x was very attractive. A beautiful man. I did perseverate on his looks and excused a lot of behaviors because of that overriding emotion now that I really think about it. And I dated a very attractive man with piercing eyes who was not kind to me. Again, it was hard for me to walk away from that. Also, the OW my former husband chose was very unattractive. I was absolutely shocked when I saw her. I realize now that the disordered men may indeed pick women who are less attractive, maybe less accomplished, etc because it will be more difficult for them to leave.
When I first started dating my ex anytime he would leave I would get sick to my stomach. People started telling me it was because I was in love. I told myself that must be it. Now looking back I think it was my subconscious trying to warn me only I didn’t listen. Sadly I was also warned by HIS ex that he would ruin my life, unfortunately he already had me convinced that SHE was crazy. I have been divorced from him since 2007 and am still not ready to even think about dating anyone. I still don’t trust my instincts when it comes to people. I figure I am happy to be living a somewhat normal life without drama. The only drama we have comes from the EX but no where near what it used to be for that I am thankful.
I want to take a moment to add the other perspective. There are women in prison who attract guys like I can not believe. There are web sites and FaceBook pages dedicated to women like Jodi Arias, Casey Anthony, and others. This is just as sick as women who lust after guys in prison. It makes absolutely no sense to me at all what other guys see in these women, but obviously some guys do.
My recommendation is the same as everyone else on this site – run away from dating a sociopath, do NOT start a relationship, heed the warning signs and red flags. Just a friendly reminder to keep in mind that the sociopath might be a pretty female trying to get her hooks into a guy, not just a guy whose mug shot went viral and adored by women.
It goes both ways, as we all know.
Keep up the excellent work, thanks to everyone for all you do!
This article is disturbing, but I can see these feelings in myself. I wonder if that after 25 years with my husband, I don’t believe there is a different kind of person out there. It’s almost as if I don’t believe that any other kind of relationship exist.
Thank you for helping me see my absurd thought process, Donna.
“The women are likely falling for those sweet words. However, I want to be cautious about criticizing, because they are exhibiting behavior that probably all of us involved with sociopaths know too well:
******They are believing what they want to believe*******.”
Donna, I think this is overly simplistic and sounds like victim blaming and ignores the emotional and mental dynamics that the victims are subjected to, while underplaying a romantic manipulator’s ability to romantically manipulate.
Nope. No dynamic here. The females fall for guys with high testosterone. Not every brutal ape in prison is a sociopath but lots of them attract women (and sometimes men) easily. It’s biology + stupidity on part of certain females and males looking for thrill. Another thing is that many people weren’t raised with the right way of thinking about life and themselves.
Sociopathy is a psychiatric illness, it’s not present in every mean or violent person. Some of them are SPaths, most aren’t. I guess people need to be warned that even though someone may not display all the traits associated with sociopathy, they still need to be avoided if they behave badly. Its not that we should be on constant red alert for sociopathy, it’s that many of us need to cultivate self-respect and the sense of self-worth that won’t allow us to put up with bad behaviour, be it coming from sociopaths or not.
It is not quite so cut and dry. As an abandoned child (one of the worst kind because it was in plain sight…living among the blind and angry…in other words, my family of origin), undoubtedly led to my undoing.
Their total disregard of my thoughts and feelings, in fact, my very existence, probably led to my accepting the first person who was ‘like me’ and who was also socially rejected. Even after physical assault (including sexual) and pain from constant ‘put-downs’ that led to my not being able to formulate a response (that undercutting of your already ‘self aware weaknesses’) I chose to stay with the spath…and even panicked the last year of high school at the thought of losing this ‘friend’ (enemy in reality).
In other words…nobody is ‘stupid’ (an ugly word that is totally demeaning in every way). In what way, Mr. Strannick (and I can tell you are a male) are these women ‘stupid’ in a way that you have ‘never’ been?
Stannik
Really Strannilk?? no dynamics? Wrong
The idea of “victim blaming” is always a touchy subject. Becoming involved with a sociopath isn’t like walking down the street, minding your own business, and getting mugged. The sad truth is that when we become romantically involved with a sociopath, we participate, in one way or another, in our own exploitation. Yes, the sociopaths are skilled manipulators, but still, many of us don’t walk away until we have no choice but to walk away – or we’re discarded.
How does this happen? What makes us susceptible to the manipulation? Often it’s our beliefs. Beliefs such as, “Everyone is good inside.” Or, “Everybody just wants to be loved.” Or, “With love, anything is possible.”
Then there are the things we don’t want to believe such as warnings from everyone we know, and the sociopath’s ex, that the person is bad news.
In the end, this is often what we beat ourselves up about – acting on our beliefs, rather than the evidence.
I have been thinking, of late, at how my spath was able to control and manipulate me. Yes, the shaming (finding fault over my every little weakness and dwelling on them)…but also chuckling and/or laughing when she saw that I had pride about some of my characteristics (usually because of how others viewed me).
My spath and I were on our way to a skiing venture, and I mentioned that my mother and sister had said, “Even if you can’t ski, at least you can be a ski bunny…”
About a month later, just before the ski trip itself, my spath said (with implied ridicule), “Didn’t your mother say you could be a ski bunny?” (and the ‘inner’ laughter in this spath’s voice was clearly implied). I felt like a god-damned fool about mentioning it, even though it was the opinion of others (including the spath’s father) that I was very pretty.
I felt terrible and very ashamed. I became ‘inner ugly’, and I am sure it projected on the outside as well. I felt masculinized many times by this spath. In fact, physically I became what she wanted me to be (muscles in my upper arms that others undoubtedly noticed and probably gossiped about me as being ‘gay’ or a ‘trannie’).
Meanwhile the spath became more and more attractive, and actually fit the profile of a Playboy centerfold…very slim and with big boobs (she said it was from the birth control pill she was on…) while I had become masculinized. Now I know the power of a ‘self-belief’ system … that you can actually ‘become’ that belief physically!
Very sad. I broke away from her after high school, and even though I saw her the summer after that first year of college, I jettisoned her out of my life when the pain was just too terrible. She was horrible.
I moved to Canada and enjoyed total, unabashed freedom. I lived in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City. I just moved in whenever and wherever, and met a guy who had seen it all (he had canoed 1000 miles on that mighty Yukon River).
I only came back to Mass. to finish an education that I had left behind (as my Canadian friend went on to the University of Quebec).
When I met my husband I was tiny…size 5 (and sometimes a size 3). My body was considered ‘small boned’, and even though my muscles remained, the hanging fat was gone and I was confident enough to wear a bikini. My sister told me she saw guys watching me on the beach, and when we got back to my car there were six of them waiting to talk to me. She said later she felt like a discarded old rug…I hugged her and told her that compared to my life with a spath, this was Heaven indeed…and she cried and clung to me. I said, “Just remember…every guy I brought over to Mom and Dad’s home asked about you…thought you were very cute.”
Thank you for this added comment, Donna. For me, when all has been said and done — and even with all of the work I’ve done — I still struggle with how tightly I held on to a very toxic relationship because of my beliefs in love and family, in wedding vows, in the false belief that children need both parents (even if one is abusive). I get so angry sometimes at the people who parented me from childhood on and who molded my belief systems. It can be such a twisted situation. Takes a long time to iron it all out.
Having read all the comments while trying to come to a better understanding of why I was having a hard time with the differing perspectives, I offer this:
The intent of this article, in my opinion, focuses on some women who are attracted to ‘bad men’ and actually show an interest to hook up. They send money, or ‘like’ him on Facebook, etc. all because he has a beautiful face (the picture). Are they victims? Not yet. They are choosing to attempt to connect with someone based sole on his looks which have superseded any judgment they may have regarding his rap sheet. I don’t have a comment about the other criminal examples because I don’t know how these women became connected with those men in the first place. It could have been through mutual exchanges of letters, or meetings, where the sociopath was able to get their hooks into the woman.
My former husband was not a convict. He was functioning and succeeding in life and I chose him for certain qualities that I wanted in a potential partner at that time in my life. I had no idea what a psychopath was. If I had known what I do now, all the red flags I saw would have stopped me, most likely, from progressing in our relationship. But instead, this excerpt below is what kept me engaged with him for most of my adult life:
~~~~~
psychopathyawareness.wordpress.com
“Instead of the Cult of Self-Improvement Cultivate Self-Respect
In earlier posts I explained that a psychopath controls those who need him for a sense of self-worth and meaning in life. Any woman may be initially hooked by a psychopath during the seduction phase of the relationship. But those who stay with him of their own volition once his mask of charm comes off often suffer from an extreme form of dependency. They have little or no independent self-worth and need the psychopath’s periodic validation to feel sexy or attractive or brilliant or like a good mother and wife: whatever form of validation they need depends upon him.
“Willing” victims of psychopaths and other control-driven individuals are not necessarily suffering from low self-esteem in a conventional sense of the term. In fact, they may have a very high opinion of themselves. But they do suffer from a highly dependent or mediated self-esteem. They need a “special” person’s control to feel good about themselves and to get a sense of meaning in life. These are the most loyal and promising long-term victims for psychopaths, who stand by the disordered individuals no matter what they do wrong. They give their psychopathic partners a kind of absolute power over the lives in a similar manner that cult followers do to their pathological leaders.
In so doing, they relinquish agency and control over their lives. Such highly susceptible individuals may stay with a psychopath even once he stops validating them on a regular basis, and offers only tokens of praise or fake “respect” from time to time. By that time, they’re already trauma bonded to the psychopath, which may keep them emotionally and mentally enslaved to him for life. The psychopath uses such dependent personalities for his own destructive purposes. He never offers them any genuine love, though he may offer them the false validation they so desperately need.”
~~~~~
Yes, I was his victim, yet I do not blame myself for staying. I am NOT engaging in victim blaming. I did NOTHING to deserve the treatment I received while married to him, and I knew much of it was hurtful and wrong, yet I did not have the skills to remove myself from the marriage. I was a mentally unwell individual and he was able to manipulate me because of that.
There are different kinds of scenarios for how we get entangled with a sociopath, is all I am trying to say.
Donna, Again I say, not enough importance is being given to the Manipulation and mask and the bonding that takes place which colors everything to follow. We may believe what we want to believe after the psychopathic bond has taken place and after we are emotionally invested, suffering from PTSD and cognitive dissonance, but mostly we believe what THEY want us to believe.
Of course our beliefs play a part in the whole mess at some point but only because out beliefs are based on what we have experienced before we met these asshats.
“Then there are the things we don’t want to believe such as warnings from everyone we know, and the sociopath’s ex, that the person is bad news.”
I disagree with the use of the word “want” in this article. Can’t believe would be more accurate, again cognitive dissonance, ignorance, being naive about their existence and the damage they can cause.
Of course we don’t walk away until forced in one way or another but that doesn’t mean it’s as black and white as “participating in out own exploitation”.
I don’t know….this article just seems off track to me and in opposition to some of the other articles I’ve read here and elsewhere.
Donna, I wasn’t doing anything with Spathtardx that I haven’t done in my past before him without the devastating consequences this entanglement brought about. It wasn’t like I woke up THAT morning and said…..I feel needy and think I’ll go out tonight and find someone who will eventually make me thanks my lucky stars I’m single. This was different than ANYTHING I have EVER been through and It wasn’t because I had changed, it was because all of a sudden I was with a Spathtard. Like I’ve said before…..My friggin brother is a sociopath and even that life long experience didn’t prepare me for this. He picked my lock, plain and simple. Zeroed in on a part of me that NO one has ever been able to get to. How? He tricked me into “thinking” it was safe to let him and then he sh*t in it.
He looks psycho to me
All too optimistic, coming out of what I believed to be the “worst” marriage, and looking for sex as my first husband was impotent from even before we met, something I had accepted early on, but later missed because all connection ceased eventually”. I was a sex starved, never looked better 35 year old” but I had been emotionally beaten down” the perfect mixture for being a target. I told myself positive things, this was my opportunity to do things right this time around and not make same mistakes” so when the man who ended up as husband number 2 and a spath, unloaded how his ex fiancé had cheated on him and he had never gotten over it” and never really had found that right woman, yet, even with many tries in his pocket” I saw him as a man in my similar position” wanting to do things right this time. So his love bombing, I thought was a genuine connection with 2 like minded people. I saw what I wanted to see” and projected the desires I had for myself so much I believed he was seeking that..
Having gone to the hearing to extend protective order against him recently, I was able to ascertain that he is still the same arrogant, entitled person I failed to see early on” I did not look directly at him, but I could see his mannerisms and my family told me his behavior as he walked into the courtroom” ugh. Our minds can truly view things however we want” reality is the challenge.
Thanks for the article!
So did you see what YOU wanted to see or what HE wanted you to see?
a little of both I think. He likely picked up on many of my dreams as I talked a little bit in the beginning. Good point. However, Donna makes a good point too in that we allow ourselves to see what we want, my friends thought he was arrogant right off the bat, I saw it as confidence. So in the same given social setting I saw something in a much more gleaming light than others around, which goes to validate the article.