How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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Entanglements with sociopaths always have consequences

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At a Christmas party on Saturday night, the conversation turned to hot water radiators. My husband, who is mechanically inclined, explained to a woman, who was trying to save money by conserving heat, how to bleed the air out of an old-style hot water heating system. Eventually, the conversation revealed why the woman was trying to save money. She'd purchased an old farmhouse for her business. She secured a $150,000 construction loan to renovate the house and retained a contractor. The contractor insisted on installing the thermostat for the hot water heating system on a wall directly across from a wood burning stove. (For those of you who are not mechanically inclined, this is a really …

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Radar not for the sociopath, but for the wrong people

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Most of the people who will be bad for us are not sociopaths, and so we want our radar to be sharp, not specifically for sociopaths, but for wrong, bad people of every stripe. True, sociopaths will be terrible people with whom to enter relationships; in the end, though, they will represent a small fraction of a much greater majority of very wrong people for us. As I suggested in a prior post, there are two keys to protecting ourselves from Mr. or Mrs. WRONG: The first is developing intelligent radar; the second is acting wisely on that radar. After all, good radar, no less than good CIA intelligence, is useless if it's ignored or devalued. Now, are there cases of sociopaths (and the lot …

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The getting in is easy, why’s the getting out so hard?

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If it's easy getting into a relationship with an exploiter, getting out isn't always so simple. What makes the getting out so difficult? In retrospect (if we're lucky enough to say “in retrospect”) it seems like it should have been a no-brainer. In truth there are many reasons it can be hard to leave a destructive relationship and destructive person. I've addressed several of them in previous posts, and the LoveFraud community in general has addressed this theme comprehensively. But here I'd like to consider a less-appreciated factor. I regard it as the factor of habituation. Optimally the best time to end a relationship with an exploiter is the very first signal you get that something i …

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Can victims become like the psychopath?

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This week we received the following email: My daughter is married to a man I consider a psychopath. My daughter has not spoken with me for many months. She has totally changed her personality, voice, she says things she never would have said before, she attacks me to my friends. My daughter and her husband seem to have their own version of reality, truth, and morality that is not consistent with those outside her marriage or in the world. My husband doesn't want to invite them to our house for the holidays or have anything to do with them. I feel the same way, too, because of their attacks and saying things that are not true about us. I have gotten advice on this blog to try and have a …

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It’s not weakness, but lack of clarity, that exposes us to an exploiter

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Editor's note: This article was submitted by Steve Becker, LCSW, CH.T, who has a private psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and clinical consulting practice in New Jersey, USA. For more information, visit his website, powercommunicating.com. You really need to admire yourself for surviving an exploitative relationship. I say this very seriously, not flippantly. We all, of course, hope to minimize our involvement with exploitative individuals. But in the course of life, as we know, that's not always possible. It is vital, therefore, if you've been victimized by and/or are recovering from involvement with an exploiter, to fully, genuinely appreciate (and remind yourself constantly) that you are …

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Heeding the exploiter’s earliest warnings

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Editor's note: This article was submitted by Steve Becker, LCSW, CH.T, who has a private psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and clinical consulting practice in New Jersey, USA. For more information, visit his website, powercommunicating.com. In my work with clients involved with exploitative personalities, it's not unusual to learn, together, that detectable, early warning signals went unrecognized, minimized, or both. This isn't to blame the subsequent victims of abusive partners; there are many instances where such clues were lacking (and even when not, blame is inappropriate). But it's to appreciate, undefensively, that the honeymoon phase of a relationship is almost, by definition, one …

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Why did I stay with the sociopath?

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I have wrestled with this question for a long time. While with him, I sometimes wondered, ”˜what on earth am I doing here'? Since gaining my freedom, I have looked back on those 4 years 9 months and wondered, ”˜what on earth was wrong with me that I stayed so long'? I know there are the physiological/psychological factors that compounded my convoluted thinking causing me to believe that I was incapable of leaving him. I know these factors attributed to my inertia and the resultant trauma bonding that held me pinioned in his unholy embrace. But none of these factors explain why an intelligent, well-educated, articulate woman did what I did — before the trauma bonding, the Stockholm Syndrome, …

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Humans are lousy lie detectors

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An article in last week's New York Times magazine contained the following amazing statement: "Repeating a claim, even if only to refute it, increases its apparent truthfulness." Although the article had nothing to do with sociopaths, the statement made me think of my ex-husband, James Montgomery. Among his many lies, Montgomery claimed to be a member of the Australian military, a decorated Vietnam War hero, and a member of the Special Forces. None of this was true, but from what I can tell, he'd been making the claims since at least 1980 (we met in 1996). They'd been repeated many times, for many years—which apparently enhanced their believability. Like most of us here on Lovefraud, I f …

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Sociopaths use our own dreams to seduce us

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Not long ago, a woman from the Philippines contacted Lovefraud. She had been involved in a long-distance relationship (LDR) with an American man whom she met over the Internet. This woman, we'll call her Juanita, fell in love with the guy, even though she never met him in person. Juanita sent her story to Lovefraud—a shortened version is reproduced below. But first, a bit of background. Juanita is separated from her husband and has a child. But although she'd like to find a new husband, she is trapped, because divorce is not legal in the Philippines. Looking for companionship, she turned to the Internet—which is what thousands of Filipinas do. In fact, the mail-order bride business, ma …

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The fantasy of magic moments with sociopaths

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Editor's note: The following essay was submitted by a Lovefraud reader. Snapshots By AlohaTraveler In our lifetime, we hope to capture the best moments of our lives in pictures. We keep albums of our family events, weddings, births, first dates, proposals, holidays, vacations, and so on. There is another kind of snapshot that keeps many of us longing for our sociopaths. These are the “snapshots” we hold in our minds. They are the ideal moments, the perfect words, the heightened romance that so many of us felt when we were being seduced by a sociopath. Browsing through my mental album, I see a snapshot of myself and the Bad Man, as I call him, passionately kissing in Safeway next to …

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