How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: People will never understand I am married to a sociopath

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Editor's Note: This Letter to Lovefraud was submitted by reader whom we'll call “Juniper.” I have been married for 22 years and have five children. I realized the first year of our marriage that I had married a "psycho" but thought I could help him with my unconditional love and support. He is completely controlling, manipulative, abusive, selfish, and has never shown empathy or compassion to me or our children. He doesn't have relationships with his kids because he chooses not to bond with them. I stayed with him because I believed there must be some good somewhere in him, after all, he was a born again Christian, knew almost every verse in the Bible from memory and sometimes preached on …

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LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: Fluffing the pillow wrong

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Editor's Note: This Letter to Lovefraud was submitted by the reader who calls herself "Allergic to Spandex." Other names have been changed as well. By the time my sociopath husband "The Dope" (now, thankfully, my ex) developed testicular cancer, I knew that he was not a "consultant," but a marijuana dealer who didn't even make much money at it. He explained this as noble guerrilla warfare in the fight to legalize marijuana, a cause I still agree with despite him. He claimed that the people he sold pounds of pot to made sure that it got into the hands of medical patients. This was probably a lie too, but it's how he brainwashed me when I was 18. There's cheatin' goin' on I knew that …

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LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: My sociopath partner gave me HIV

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Editor's Note: This Letter to Lovefraud was submitted by a reader who calls himself "Fred." I bloomed late.  At age 53 I grew tired of a lonely and celibate life, I finally admitted to myself and others I was gay. It didn't take long to find my first boyfriend who was a super sweet, moral guy, like myself,  but after nine months it was apparent we weren't a match. Drawn to downtown guy Many months passed and I again was so lonely. I saw this guy at a downtown club. I'm not sure what the draw was. He was bald, slightly chunky but seemed to be the most beautiful guy I've ever seen. Funny now, because others tell me he's not attractive. I'll call him Adam. I tried to work up the courage …

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Faith After A Life With Sociopaths

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Editor's note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud's statement on Spiritual Recovery. When you've been entangled with sociopaths for a long period of time, few (if any) facets of your life are left untouched.   Becoming a person of faith has shown me how deeply my upbringing  has permeated my adult life. My sociopathic parents controlled my every move - dictating when I could bathe, eat, or sleep, what I could read, who I could be friends with (if any), what music I could listen to, what I could watch on TV.  Depending on how volatile their mood was, I'd have to ask permission to speak. In her book Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman states "The dam …

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Abuse in Britain’s boarding schools: One man’s personal perspective

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Writer Alex Renton returned to his alma mater, Ashdown House, to help him write this report on the generations of boys sexually abused in Britain's boarding schools. Reporting on his own experiences at the  boarding school attended by some of Britain's most powerful men, he talks about the existence now of a thriving area for counselors and therapists called Boarding School Syndrome — a private "survivors' group" only those with money seem to know about. Renton writes, “psychiatrists I have spoken to agree that, yes, while sexual and physical abuse is the headline grabber (and what makes criminal cases), real damage is done to children and adults by long-term psychological abuse. A child …

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Bail reduced for William Allen Jordan, AKA Liam Allen

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William Allen Jordan, of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, had a hearing on May 7, 2014 to reduce his bail, which was set at $60,000. Jordan, you may recall, is the con man who convinced multiple women that he was a spy. And despite claiming he was never married and had no children, he actually has 13 children with eight different women. See the story of his arrest on April 22 here: Lovefraud con man William Allen Jordan - AKA Liam Allen - busted by his latest victim in New Jersey, on Lovefraud.com. Mischele Lewis, Jordan's most recent victim, attended the bail hearing. Here's what I heard from her: I am seriously livid......    So I went to the bail hearing today, didn't tell anyone (like th …

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Tell Me About Yourself!

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This request always left me at a loss for words.  It made me really uncomfortable.  Most of the time I would just state basic facts:  the city I grew up in, where I went to school, what my profession is.   I wasn't trying to be unfriendly.......I honestly had no idea how to answer this.  I only recently realized why this was so difficult for me. When you are raised by psychopaths, or in a relationship with a psychopath, the lines between their life and yours get blurred.  They swallow you up like a sinkhole.  Your desires, feelings, goals and interests no longer matter.  If the psychopath likes something, you'd better find a way to like it too.  If they think something is ridiculous, you'd …

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The Sociopath as Coach

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So I married and divorced a sociopath, but we're connected at the hip for life because we share three children. (It's been sixteen years so far.) And last year, he sued for full custody of two of them. The boys. We're still in court today, trying to work out the details of that. Because despite all the issues I've experienced in the family court system since 2007, in this instance the professionals involved did (finally) manage to ask why we're back in court and why I should lose custody. My ex had his full list of reasons, but man, I've been fighting back. Which means defending myself as a parent. Sending photographs to the guardian of the kids and I—since birth.   Reminding them …

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Trauma can be passed on in molecules of DNA

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Research has shown that a traumatic experience can cause changes in a person's mental health, and can also change their DNA. This means trauma may get passed to future generations. At the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), researchers have discovered that the short RNA molecules that perform a wide range of vital roles in the body were altered in mice when exposed to trauma. "We were able to demonstrate for the first time that traumatic experiences affect metabolism in the long-term and that these changes are hereditary," said Professor Isabelle Mansuy, as quoted by the Daily Mail.  "With the imbalance in microRNAs in sperm, we have discovered a …

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Dancing to death: Katsura Kan, butoh dance master, drives his student, Sharon Stern, to suicide, family alleges

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'The dance of darkness,' for the beautiful, happy and vibrant Sharon Stern, became the dance of death. Sharon Stern, 32, of Hollywood, Florida, aspired to perfect her performance of butoh, a Japanese style of contemporary dance. Instead, she lost her sanity and committed suicide, allegedly driven to despair by her butoh master, Katsura Kan, according to a lawsuit filed by her family. "Katsura Kan brainwashed her against her family and her life," said her heartbroken father, Tibor Stern, 65, of Hollywood, Florida. "He made her forget everything that was happy about life, and told her she needed to experience pain and suffering, until he had full control over her." I just wrote this …

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