Explaining the sociopath

Why sociopaths can’t love

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One winter, my husband, Terry Kelly, and I traded colds. I got sick first, and Terry made chicken soup and did what he could to make me feel comfortable.

Then, despite my best efforts to keep my germs to myself, Terry got sick.

By this time I was feeling better. So I went to the store and bought cold medicine, tissues and orange juice, because I’d used everything up. I made him chicken soup. I even made him a pot of chili.

As I did all this, I noticed a warm feeling within me.

It was the joy of taking care of someone I loved. I was concerned about his health and wellbeing. I was happy and energized … Read more

Posted in: Donna Andersen, Explaining the sociopath

Does my psychopath miss me?

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Editor’s note: The following article refers to male psychopaths. Women can also be sociopaths, psychopaths and other disordered individuals.

Does my sociopath/psychopath miss me?

The short answer is “no.” The qualified answer is “yes, in appearance, but only as long as you can afford him.”

Since psychopaths are unable to have true feelings, once you are removed from his picture, you are gone forever. Somebody else with financial security will replace you, and then when the money is gone or things go sour, somebody else will replace that person.

Psychopaths, we know, are not able to feel gratitude, love, loyalty or any kind of guilt or remorse that could tie him to you. During the time of the … Read more

Posted in: Explaining the sociopath, Hooked by a sociopath

“Ordinary men” do not shoot their wives and daughters — sociopaths do

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Lance Hart of England shot his wife and daughter, and then himself.

Claire Hart, or Spalding, Lincolnshire, England, had just escaped her emotionally abusive and controlling husband. In July 2016, Claire’s grown sons, Luke and Ryan, packed up her and their 19-year-old sister, Charlotte, and moved them into a rented house.

Five days later, the controlling husband, Lance, shot Claire and Charlotte in the parking lot of a local sports center. Then he shot himself.

A Lovefraud reader just sent me a story about the tragedy that The Guardian newspaper published last year. You can read it here:

‘We didn’t recognise that he was dangerous’: our father killed our mother and sister

After the shootings, Luke and Ryan … Read more

Posted in: Donna Andersen, Explaining the sociopath, Media sociopaths

Here’s the absolutely best way to protect yourself from sociopaths

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Yes, you can avoid letting a sociopath into your life. All you have to do is listen to your intuition.

Security expert Gavin deBecker, who wrote The Gift of Fear, explains that intuition evolved within us over the millennia for one reason: To protect us from predators. Sociopaths are predators, and our intuition will warn us about them.

The key is to pay attention.

Sometimes the warning is blatant — one woman told me about feeling instantly terrified when a man approached her. But instead of heeding her internal warning, she berated herself for being judgmental — after all, the man had done nothing to her. She talked to him; they became romantically involved; he was, in … Read more

Posted in: Donna Andersen, Explaining the sociopath

15 valuable lessons from ‘The Sociopath Next Door’

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The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout, Ph.D., is a classic for describing sociopathic behavior. I’ve never written about it on Lovefraud. The reason is quite simple: I read the book when it was first published in early 2005, shortly before Lovefraud launched. I just finished reading it again.

I’ve learned a lot about sociopaths in the last 13 years, so this read was certainly a different experience. The first time I read the book, much of what Stout wrote was a revelation. Here are my observations from the second time around: Stout does a good job of describing sociopathic motivation, but her book fails to capture how dangerous and destructive these people are.

The reason, I … Read more

Posted in: Book reviews, Donna Andersen, Explaining the sociopath

Useless advice on how to spot a lie

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The Daily Mail just published a silly article in which a psychologist explains how to tell when someone is lying.

The behavioral psychologist, Jo Hemmings, dispenses all of the usual and useless advice about watching for microexpressions, lack of eye contact, convoluted explanations and changes in behavior.

Okay, so the advice might work for spotting a normal person who is uncomfortable with lying. It will never work for spotting a sociopath who lies like he or she breathes.

In fact, the article is accompanied by a sidebar in which new research published by Edinburgh University finds that it is hard to spot a liar. Why? Because liars may intentionally suppress the tell-tale signs of lying!

Finally, the real … Read more

Posted in: Donna Andersen, Explaining the sociopath

A sociopath explains how she loves

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If you’re like most Lovefraud readers, you’re here because you were romantically involved with a sociopath. This person probably declared love for you repeatedly, exuberantly and convincingly. Then the individual lied to you, betrayed you, cheated on you, abused you and perhaps even threatened you.

You were left stunned, distraught and devastated. How could someone who loved you treat you so badly?

A letter Lovefraud received recently might help you understand why that person’s love was so shallow:

I have read several articles on your site out of curiosity and boredom over the past few weeks, and I agree with almost all of their content. If I weren’t a sociopath I would probably find some of those articles

‘Dark core of personality’ — what antisocials, psychopaths, sadists and other miscreants have in common

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Is the disordered person in your life antisocial, narcissistic, borderline, psychopathic — or perhaps even Machiavellian or a sadist?

You may have struggled to figure out which definition applies, perhaps reasoning that a narcissist isn’t as bad as a psychopath. In reality, all of these disorders are bad news — people who have them engage in similar destructive behavior.

Now, research from Europe shows that all of these disorders share a common denominator. In a paper called The Dark Core of Personality, Ingo Zettler, a psychology professor at the University of Copenhagen, and two German colleagues, define the “D-factor” at the dark core. They write:

All dark traits can be traced back to the general tendency of

10 Facts to help you explain your experience with a sociopath

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The biggest reason why we get tangled up with sociopaths is because we don’t know they exist. We don’t know they live among us, so we don’t watch out for them, so we get in trouble.

Then, when we try to tell our friends and families what happened, they have no idea what we’re talking about — because they don’t know sociopaths exist either. So on top of the devastation we endure from the sociopath, when we turn to others for support, we are not understood or even believed.

If you’re trying to explain your experience with a sociopath, here are some facts to help you put your story in context:

1 . Approximately 40 million people in … Read more

Posted in: Donna Andersen, Explaining the sociopath

5 tips for dealing with a sociopath

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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.