Last week I happened to read a Dear Abby column in the newspaper. A woman wrote to Abby that she had been married to a man for 15 years who was controlling and manipulative, along with being emotionally, economically and sexually abusive. The letter-writer termed her husband narcissistic and passive-aggressive, but in my view he may be a sociopath. The woman is filing for divorce. Her dilemma is that her husband projects a “good guy” image, and she fears that if she accuses him of abuse, no one will believe her. Abby's advice was to tell a few close girlfriends what really happened. “The truth will spread like wildfire,” Abby wrote. I wonder if Abby gave good advice for this situati …
Is God A Sociopath?
I've been thinking lately about God, assuming He exists. Mainly, I've been thinking about the Judeo-Christian biblical conception of God, and asking myself, crazy as this sounds, if He exists, Is God a sociopath? I pose this question seriously, and apologize in advance for offending anyone by probing this idea. But consider: You are expected to worship Him. You are expected to acknowledge His perfection. You are expected to live by His standards. You are expected to fear His Judgement. You are expected to please, not disappoint Him. You are expected to do penance when you've strayed from His rules. You are expected to be in awe of, and fear, His omniscience. You …
Murderous partners
I'm going to address a disturbing subject: the motives, the thinking, of men who eliminate—yes, who murder—their partners. But first a caveat: Females also sometimes eliminate their partners and share, I suspect, similar mindsets and motives with male murderous eliminators. And so what I write, here, applies, I suspect, across gender lines. One other caveat—when I use the term “eliminate,” as you might suspect, I'm excluding killings in self-defense, of passion, and as responses to insufferable abuse. This will be apparent as the discussion unfolds. Last, by “eliminate,” I refer to two possible means of disposing of a partner—by one's own hands, or by outsourcing the job. So …
The high cost of locking up sex offenders
Twenty states have "civil commitment" laws to keep dangerous sex offenders off the street after their jail sentences are complete. This year, the programs will cost a total of more than $500 million—five times the cost of regular incarceration. Why? Because of all the behavioral therapists, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists who are treating the predators. In Lovefraud's view, this cost could easily be reduced, because many of the sex offenders are psychopaths, and psychopaths can't be rehabilitated. So the solution is to help those who can be helped, and throw the rest in jail. Read: Treatment for a sexual predator costs a whopping $175,000 per person per year in New Y …
What if he says he’ll get help?
Lovefraud recently received the following e-mail from a woman who we'll call “Callista.” I'll have some comments at the end. This is yet ANOTHER email from a woman who realized she had been with a sociopath. In my case, it's been for 8 years. He fits the bill on all counts, except that while his finances are always a mess, he met me when I was coming out of a divorce and mine were a mess too. So he didn't see me as a "mark" he could use and swindle. He is now paying me support and believe it or not he was not only impeccable about paying it to his ex-wife, he is also impeccable about paying me. This confuses me because he lacks the trait of screwing EVERYONE. Don't get me wrong, there i …
Domestic violence and digital abuse
In a local tragedy a week ago, a woman, Tracy Coleman, her brother and her 13-year-old son were shot to death by the woman's boyfriend, Sharif Whitlock. The murders took place 45 minutes after the woman had filed a domestic violence complaint against her boyfriend. The perpetrator fled the scene and later hanged himself. The case was the lead incident in a story published yesterday by my local newspaper, the Press of Atlantic City. It was entitled, Hamilton Twp. shooting deaths show familiar domestic violence outcome. The well-done story focused on the larger issue of domestic violence. In Atlantic County, New Jersey over the last two years, 13 people have been killed in domestic violence …
Is He A Narcissist? Is He Salvageable?
This is a big topic, and I fully intend to flesh it out in future posts. But allow me, here, to consider this question from the perspective of the work I do with couples. It is often surprisingly easy, from a couples therapy perspective, to weed out the narcissists from the non-narcissists; and more importantly, the salvageable from the unsalvageable narcissists. Narcissists, as we know, will struggle to see things from their partners' perspective. But let's be clear: it is the reasons they struggle with this, not that they struggle with it, that signals their narcissism. At the risk of oversimplifying, narcissists struggle to appreciate their partners' perspective fundamentally …
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”
By Ox Drover When I was a kid growing up, one of the “old sayings” that was bandied around the family was the one about “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” As a small child this didn't make any sense, since there weren't any Greeks that I knew of living anywhere around where we lived in central Arkansas. (The phrase actually refers to the story of the ancient Greeks invading Troy by hiding soldiers in a massive wooden horse that was given to the city as a gift—the Trojan Horse.) This saying could have been paraphrased as “beware of ANYONE that you don't trust bearing gifts.” Many cultures teach their children that if someone does a favor for you, the “law of reciprocity” means you are …
LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: Marriage, then discovering the lies
Editor's note: Lovefraud received the following letter from a reader who we'll call “Nora.” The names in this letter have been changed. One Saturday, in October 2009, I married someone I thought was the man of my dreams. When this man came into my life last year, I had suffered several losses and was very vulnerable. I thought I had finally met an honorable, loving, understanding, romantic, Christian man. We laughed together, planned our future together, and seemed like the perfect couple. I should have remembered when something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Although I didn't expect everything would always be rosy, soon after we were married, I discovered that everything I tho …
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Empathy among college students declines
A recent study analyzed data about 14,000 college students collected over 30 years. The shocking findings: today's college students are 40 percent lower in empathy than students from 20 or 30 years ago. Read Empathy: College students don't have as much as they used to, on Newswise.com. Link submitted by a Lovefraud reader. …