Explaining the sociopath

  UPDATED FOR 2023. Before my marriage, I was absolutely clueless about the games psychopaths play. I know about them now, but I am still shocked by their audacity. Here's what I witnessed, up close and personal: At 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, wearing new lingerie from Victoria's Secret, I awaited the arrival of my fiancé, James Montgomery. He'd been out of the country on a secret military mission (so he told me). But he could escape his duties for a short time, so he was driving more than 1,000 miles, from MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, to my home in New Jersey, to meet me for a passionate rendezvous. He arrived in a vehicle I'd never seen before — a black Gr …

Games psychopaths play – flaunting other women (and men)Read More

If you’re a sociopath, and you sense that your latest target is tiring of your antics and getting ready to leave, what do you do? Well, many sociopaths threaten suicide. What sociopaths want most is power and control, and one of the most forceful ways to achieve it is to threaten suicide. This strategy is especially effective when they’re trying to hold on to their romantic partners. Why? Romantic partners care about the sociopath. If this is you, you are emotionally attached. Even if you’ve come to the conclusion that your relationship with the sociopath is not healthy, you don’t want to be the cause of anything bad happening to him or her. So when the sociopath threatens suicide if you le …

When sociopaths threaten suicideRead More

Perhaps you suspect that someone in your life has a serious personality disorder. You’ve been reading everything you can find on narcissists, sociopaths and maybe even psychopaths. You keep coming across the term, narcissistic supply. What is it? Here’s how Tiffany Kettermann, LPC, CADCI, MPA, described it in her Lovefraud webinar, Understanding and Recognizing Narcissistic Abuse: Narcissistic supply is anything or anyone that feeds the narcissistic person’s ego and keeps the person artificially pumped up, protecting their fragile view of themselves. “Think of narcissism, the ego, as a HUGE tank that needs constant filling,” Tiffany says. “It’s an addiction, a need, for someone to pr …

What is narcissistic supply?Read More

Many of us may be dealing with a psychopath and not realize it. The person’s behavior is so inconsistent — one minute he’s calm, and the next minute he’s raging. She can seem so warm, and then she’s cold and uncaring. So we wonder, sometimes they’re just fine — do they just need therapy to help them stabilize? The answer is no. I’ll explain six behavior modifications that psychopaths will never internalize. Training with Dr. Robert Hare Back in 2004, I traveled to Great Falls, Montana, to attend a workshop with Dr. Robert Hare, a top psychopathy researcher and author of Without Conscience — the disturbing world of psychopaths among us. The book perfectly describes my ex-husband, and it’s …

6 behavior modifications that psychopaths will never internalizeRead More

By Joanie Bentz, BS, M.Ed., LBS Have you ever had someone unexpectedly confront you with false narratives about your life, such as your plans, decisions, activities and experiences? Were you stunned by the outrageous lies, or maybe blindsided by how the truth was cleverly mixed in with lies that made this information very believable? Perhaps it was a family member that said these things about you, or a co-worker. Sometimes, it could be an acquaintance that hardly knows you, and it's a wonder  how this person could make such determinations  with little contact or communication. A false narrative is simply misinformation about a person or situation. Gossip about the false narrative is almost a …

8 reasons why narcissists create false narratives about their targetsRead More

Awareness of phenomenon that all of us at Lovefraud and throughout the survivor community have been talking about for years has gone mainstream — gaslighting. In fact, the Merriam Webster Dictionary named “gaslighting” as the word of the year for 2022. Gaslight was the title of a play written in 1938, which was made into a movie in 1944 starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. The story is about a con man who marries a young heiress. As he searches for jewels that he believes are hidden in her home, he tries to make his wife believe she is going crazy. He hides things and then asks her what she did with them. He causes the gaslights to dim and brighten, and when his young wife notices, tel …

Gaslighting — 5 key points you need to understandRead More

UPDATED FOR 2022: Lovefraud received an important question from a reader who wanted to know why psychopaths don't change. She asked: I've read in multiple places, written by multiple specialists that psychopaths/sociopaths cannot be rehabilitated or changed. Surely I'm not the only person to have asked this:  Why not? The short answer to this question is simple: Psychopaths don't change because they don't want to. The key to any kind of behavioral change is desire. It's hard work to change the way we relate to other people, the world or even ourselves. The reason any of us embark on a self-improvement project is because we are not happy. Our relationships are not fulfilling, we …

Why psychopaths don’t changeRead More

UPDATED FOR 2022. Editor's note: This is Part 2 of a two-part inquiry from the Lovefraud reader whom we call “Carlotta.” She asks, "Are sociopaths opportunists?" Read Part 1, “What if you see some signs of a sociopath, but not all of them?” On another note, a personal concern of mine is that I may have chosen that sociopath, not the other way around. I was walking through a department store and out of the corner of my eye I saw a man standing still facing me. I looked up and he was smiling at me. I smiled back. Then we walked in separate directions. But later we passed one another in a different area of the store. I was lost and he was again just standing there smiling at me. I smiled and …

Are sociopaths opportunists?Read More