By Amber Ault, Ph.D., MSW Toxic relationships cause damage to partners' self-esteem and self-confidence, to partners' connections with their support systems, and to their confidence in their own judgment and the goodness of other people. As a coach and therapist specializing in supporting partners and exes of psychopaths, narcissists, and people with Borderline Personality Disorder, I have come to believe that a valuable healing resource for survivors comes in the form of sympathetic connections with others sometimes as one-on-one therapeutic relationships, sometimes as communities of people who have had similar experiences, and sometimes as new relationships with supportive partners. These …
British girls, aged 13 and 14, murder a helpless woman
Two girls from the United Kingdom were recently sentenced to life in prison for beating a woman for more than nine hours, stopping only to pose for pictures, and then leaving her to die. The girls were 13 and 14 years old when they committed the crime in December 2014. The story was forwarded to Lovefraud by a reader. She wrote: "In my opinion, the most shocking aspect of the reporting and analysis of this horrifying story is the fact that the girls/murderers have never been described/diagnosed as psychopathic, despite the fact that their joint attack on this defense-less women and their demeanor in court showed a complete lack of conscience or remorse. Most disturbing is the fact that …
British girls, aged 13 and 14, murder a helpless womanRead More
After the sociopath, date differently
Many women, after realizing they were romantically involved with a sociopath, say they'll never get involved in a relationship again. I do agree that you should refrain from dating for a while, maybe a long while, until you are reasonably healed from your experience. But "never" is a really long time. If you never engage your heart again, the sociopath will win permanently. And that would be a crying shame. But how do you try again? You fell for the lies once. Can you trust yourself to spot a predator? To help women who want to move forward, my friend, Teagin Maddox, is producing a free series of interviews with recovery and relationship experts, including me. It's called: Spot …
Five Ways To Know He’s Not Here To Stay
By Nava Renek I should have suspected something was wrong last year during March Madness when we'd gone to a neighborhood bar to watch the Final Four. At half-time, a lively woman with short gray hair in a pixie cut wandered over and struck up a conversation with us. She seemed a little tipsy but was friendly enough, and as we continued talking, we agreed to meet her next door at another bar where she claimed a good band was playing. She said she was planning her 60th birthday, and after a few more shots of tequila, I had the feeling she was trying to pick us up. When she finally leaned into me and asked if we were monogamous, I answered “yes.” My partner said: “no.” We didn't take her up on …
Victims of Sociopaths and Victim Blamers
Searching for inspiration for this post, I stumbled across some pretty unattractive, “victim blaming” directed to someone who had been involved in a relationship with a person who is likely a sociopath. Victim Blaming I find victim blaming unattractive for humanitarian and moral reasons, but I also find a deep irony in victim blaming—that the person accusing others of naivety and a lack of insight about human behavior, is in fact, themselves, displaying profound naivety and a lack of insight about human behavior. It's as if they are assuming that all people have the same experiences and opportunities, hence if someone is deceived by a sociopath, it can only be due to that person's inherent …
Prosecutor says teacher accused of sexual contact with his student married her so she won’t testify
Alabama math teacher Matthew Shane Wester, 38, was indicted for having sexual contact with a student, Amy Nicole Cox. So he divorced his wife, and two months later, married his alleged victim. Blount County District Attorney Pamela Case calls the marriage a "sham." She says Wester married the girl so she couldn't be forced to testify against him. 'The marriage is a sham:' Teacher, 38, married his eighteen-year-old student just 67 days after divorcing his first wife to avoid having to testify in trial, says DA, on DailyMail.com. …
Frightening story of a stalker who wouldn’t quit
A man in the U.K. stalked a woman and her husband for years. The couple decided to move away, and instead of abating, the stalking got worse. Eventually the stalker showed up at their door with a gun. Read the entire outrageous story: The stalker and the woman who refused to give in, on BBC.com. …
Wife fights U.S. military for 10 YEARS for $500,000 insurance after her soldier husband cut out her benefits before parachuting to his death
For 10 years, Kathy Mills, a former special education teacher and Mary Kay sales director, has been at war. Kathy, of Pickerington, Ohio, has been fighting her husband a West Point graduate and Special Forces operative, the Ohio National Guard and the United States Army. She wants the $500,000 she should have been paid when her husband abandoned her to deploy to Iraq and later died in a parachuting accident. The response from the military, courts and elected officials? Mostly, 10 years of runaround. 'The worst part was not being abandoned by my husband,' Kathy said. 'It was being abandoned by the military and abandoned by the court system.' 'I had been a taxpayer, a contributing member of …
Profiting from child custody payments
[youtube_sc url="https://youtu.be/196XCAXfqrI"] Many, many sociopaths fight for custody of their children. Sociopaths are incapable of loving anyone, including their children. So why do they want the kids? One big reason is to torment the other parent by depriving them of the kids. Another reason is to make money. If the sociopath is the custodial parent, the other parent will have to pay up until the children are 18, or even older, for kids who go to college. Child support payments are often determined by the courts. New research shows that the formulas courts use to set the support payments may overestimate the cost of raising a child by 200% to 400%. See this video produced by …
Sociopaths Serve Up Double Standards
Double standards are one of the many hallmarks of being in a relationship with a sociopath. Trust me, as a well-educated woman who was taught that she could hold her own with any man, I didn't think I had married someone who viewed me as a puppet and whose only purpose for me was to service his needs. But, as months slipped into years, profound double standards emerged in my relationship with "Paul." Of course, now that I believe Paul is a sociopath, I understand that Paul held these double standards all along. Although he did not display them at first, at some point, they became part of the poisonous air I breathed. Double Standards Deliver Double Benefits For A Sociopath These double …