How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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7 steps to breaking emotional ties with a sociopath

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If you're like most people who read Lovefraud, you may know, or suspect, that the person who is creating havoc in your life is a sociopath. Whether the offending individual is a romantic partner, parent, another family member or a friend, he or she checks all, or most of, the boxes of the sociopath checklist. You know the individual is bad for your emotional and psychological health, your wallet, and perhaps your safety. Still, you may struggle to break free. Sometimes there are financial or legal issues that make it difficult to escape. But often the ties that bind are emotional. Emotional bonds can be extremely powerful. This is understandable, because sociopaths are skilled at …

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I didn’t want to admit my husband was a sociopath; now I realize how blind I was

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Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following letter from a reader who posts as "rosered." Dear Donna, I have been a follower of your website since  last year. That was when, after four years of mental anguish, trying to understand inexplicable behavior, praying for my children (and myself), financial crisis, and wondering what it was that I was doing so wrong, I finally left my husband. In the week after, in which I was a totally emotional wreck, my sister urged me to follow links in an email she had sent me 6 months before. I had been reticent to read it at the time, brushing off her message as "totally ridiculous." The email subject line was: "He is a Narcissist." In retrospect, I …

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Divorcing a Sociopath? Get ready for your children to be used as pawns to hurt, drain, and distract you

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Every week, a chapter of my book, "Husband, Liar, Sociopath: How He Lied, Why I Fell For It & The Painful Lessons Learned" (available via Amazon.com, just click on the title or book cover) will be published here on Lovefraud. To read prior chapters, please see the links at the bottom of the post. Chapter 51A: The Earthquake Strikes  The devastation of the sham that was my life—of the betrayal, of my naivety, my weakness, my precarious financial predicament, of some of the qualities that I like most about myself being turned against me (my empathy, love of the country, mountains, and a simpler life) was overpowering. I did not want to kill myself, but I wanted to die to escape the s …

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My 3 sociopathic relationships — I am a therapist, and they fooled me

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Three of my most serious relationships have been with sociopaths: my second marriage, an engagement, and most recently, with a man I was in a serious relationship with, lived with, and became pregnant by. My second marriage was with a man I met at work, who had been sober for 5 years in AA when I met him. He suffered from (diagnosed) borderline personality disorder, but I believe was also a full-fledged sociopath. He was a convicted abuser and had done jail time and anger management for that. He confessed to me that he was a prostitute for many years (with men), a porn performer, and a jewel thief. But because he was in AA and I believed honest, I thought he had changed. The abuse started …

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How to clear the emotional pain of your experience with a sociopath

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[youtube_sc url="https://youtu.be/0ErVkIcgOns"] I am so excited. Now, Lovefraud offers you a way to relieve all the painful emotions that result from tangling with a sociopath — betrayal, despair, anger, guilt, shame, grief, disappointment, depression, even PTSD. Yes, I said even PTSD. In fact, this technique is being used to help combat veterans suffering from PTSD. It can help you. For years, I have been recommending that Lovefraud readers check out EFT Tapping (Emotional Freedom Techniques). Now, Lovefraud offers you a webinar on tapping that is specifically designed to teach you how to recover from a sociopath. In this video webinar, I interview Stacey Vornbrock, MS, LPC. Stacey is a …

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Donna Andersen talks about relationship abuse in the Press of Atlantic City

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All year long, the Press of Atlantic City, my local newspaper, has been running a series of stories about domestic violence. A couple of months ago, I wrote to the reporters — not everyone who is abused suffers physical harm. In fact, Lovefraud's research shows that people who sought therapy because of an abusive relationships reported the following types of abuse: Emotional - 98.1% Psychological - 95.7% Financial - 70.1% Sexual - 49.3% Physical - 40.9% Other - 18.4% I was interviewed for the most recent article in the series, which appeared today. You can read it here: The kinds of domestic abuse that don't leave physical scars, on P …

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Patrick Giblin does time for scamming 132 women, gets out of jail and does it again

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Meet the original large-scale dating scammer, Patrick Giblin, 53, formerly of Ventnor, New Jersey, but most recently residing in a Philadelphia prison. Lovefraud first wrote about him in 2007, when he was sentenced for scamming women that he met on telephone dating services. Patrick Giblin trolls phone dating lines, taking money from 132 women, on Lovefraud.com. Giblin was paroled in 2013 and went right back to scamming women. Now he'll spend another five years in prison. Giblin pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler to one count of interstate travel and use of a facility in interstate and foreign commerce with the intent to launder money. Judge Kugler imposed the …

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Quelling is not coping — how my siblings and I dealt with our sociopathic mother

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By Eleanor Cowan In our family of ten children, our main objective was not to recognize the gross abnormalities of how we were treated, but to quell them. When a storm erupted, we’d leap into action. Unpredictable rages meant that we, Mother’s children, speedily grouped to control the situation and do as needed to quiet her distress and end the drama. Lightning-fast signals fired between us: “Storm clouds overhead,” I’d say, or “Hurricane Warning!” If Mother was revving up for a full-scale crackdown, “Earthquake! Earthquake!” would be whispered as we gathered our younger siblings to dash outside or hide in the basement. Usually, one of us would front the voluble outrage, the insults and s …

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3 Steps to begin dating again after the sociopath

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A reader posted the following comment on Lovefraud's Facebook page: "This website helps me too, but now, as I venture into the world of dating again, I find that my past is terrible hindrance. So difficult. Any advice gratefully received. Just want to be happy." Many times I've been asked, "After what your con artist ex-husband did to you, can you ever trust again?" Yes I can. I do. I am remarried, and I am happier now than I've ever been, in fact, I'm much happier than I ever was before the sociopath. So how do you climb out of the abyss of profound betrayal? How do you recover? How do you move forward, to the point where you can actually love again? Here are some lessons I've l …

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With no empathy and ethics, a sociopath’s capacity for deception and betrayal is limitless

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Every week, a chapter of my book, "Husband, Liar, Sociopath: How He Lied, Why I Fell For It & The Painful Lessons Learned" (available via Amazon.com, just click on the title or book cover) will be published here on Lovefraud. To read prior chapters, please see the links at the bottom of the post. Chapter 50B: Oh My GOD!  Hoping against hope that Paul had only used her for phone sex, I checked our bank statements. What were the odds? On the exact same day as the escort charge on our credit card, Paul had made a withdrawal at an ATM in Chicago. From deep inside, my body released a primal, guttural scream. My knees buckled. I dropped to the floor in a heap of disbelief and tears. I he …

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