Two recent news items about life in today’s digital age caught my attention:
News item #1
Recent studies of more than 11,000 people revealed that one in six marriages are now between people who met through an online dating site — more than twice the number of people meeting at bars, at clubs and other social events combined
Additionally, the studies show that one in five new committed relationships, including marriages, are between people who met on an online dating site.
News item #2
Facbook fueling divorce, research claims
Divorce lawyers claim the explosion in the popularity of websites such as Facebook and Bebo is tempting to people to cheat on their partners.
Suspicious spouses have also used the websites to find evidence of flirting and even affairs, which have led to divorce.
One law firm, which specialises in divorce, claimed almost one in five petitions they processed cited Facebook.
Digital technology and the Internet have created a parallel form of life. We could call it Cyberlife.
Cyberlife is built on information—which may be enlightening, misleading, authentic or fabricated. Words on a screen may be true, false, or subject to interpretation. Images and videos may depict actual occurrences—or they may be staged, cropped, edited or Photoshopped.
In Cyberlife, information available instantaneously. Information that was once inaccessible may now be found. And information—whether correct or inaccurate—lives forever in digital caches, located wherever Google and other archives keep it.
Online exploitation
So what does all of this mean when it comes to sociopaths?
Sociopaths live by exploiting people. The Internet and other tools of digital technology give sociopaths another avenue for exploiting people. And it’s a powerful one.
Internet fraud is a huge growth industry. Here are annual dollar losses due to Internet fraud reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center:
- 2007 – $239 million
- 2008 – $265 million
- 2009 – $560 million
For sociopaths looking to exploit individuals in romantic relationships, the Internet and online dating sites allows them to fish in a very big pond. They can troll for victims 24/7, around the world. They can bait their hooks with fictitious profiles. They can work multiple targets at once, to see who actually bites.
Helpful information
Yes, the digital age gives sociopaths a lot of tools—but it also provides tools to the rest of us.
Lovefraud is proof of that. Lovefraud provides information about this personality disorder, enabling people stuck in the fog of manipulation and confusion to finally understand what they are dealing with.
Besides general information about sociopaths, the Internet allows people to acquire specific information on people they meet. Websites like DontDateHimGirl.com, Womansavers.com and Ripoffreport.com allow readers to post names of people to be avoided. Exposure works—many people have been saved from predatory relationships by finding the case studies on Lovefraud.
Seduction in the mind
One of the fascinating things about Cyberlife is that it brings into sharp focus how much of our lives take place in our own minds.
Lovefraud has heard of several cases in which people were involved online relationships, to the point of severe emotional trauma, with people who didn’t even exist! Some sociopaths play this cruel game. The sociopaths don’t get money, or sex, or a place to live. But they send flowery, romantic texts and emails, promising  future happiness that will never happen. They manipulate their victims, just for fun and entertainment.
These situations are extreme, but every relationship that starts online starts in the mind. All you have is digital information. You don’t see a person across a room and feel a twinge of animal magnetism. You don’t fall in love with the sound of their laugh. So what happens?
As the Internet Threat page on Lovefraud.com explains, 65% to 90% of human communication comes from nonverbal cues. When communicating online, therefore, 65% to 90% of the meaning is missing.
What do we do when reading email and text messages in communications with a potential romantic partner? We indulge in our hopes and dreams. We fill in the blanks with what we want the communication to mean. We fall in love with our own fantasy.
Yes, our minds can trick us. Awareness, however, is also in our minds. We can educate ourselves that these predators exist. We can learn the warning signs of exploitative behavior. We can read about the experiences of others. All of this can be done online—that’s what Lovefraud does every day. As we say here on Lovefraud, knowledge equals power.
The conduit
In the end, therefore, the information revolution, the Internet, digital technology—it’s all just a conduit, and the conduit can be used for information that is either helpful or hurtful.
But we do need to understand what happens in Cyberlife, and how messages on the conduit can be manipulated. Digital technology is a tool. How the tool is used makes the difference.
Great and very timely article, Donna.
Even people who “meet” in real life, but live at a considerable distance from each other and thus maintain a “relationship” over the internet do the same thing, I think…build up this fantasy relationship, and even though they may meet from time to time for a couple of days or a week or so, their “real relationship” is still on line.
To me, the not getting to know someone, their environment, their friends, family and coworkers; and instead, coming up with a “fantasy life” to fill in this blank is just as dangerous as if you had met them on line to start with.
Not only is meeting on line dangerous, even if you met someone in person first, maintaining a long distance relationship by e mail and telephone is not the same as an up close and personal relationship. Too many spots for our minds to “fill in the blanks”—the “answers our minds WANT the blanks to be filled with.”
Great article, Donna!
The Internet is a wealth of information. Sites like Lovefraud are invaluable, actually I find Lovefraud the most valuable. Especially understanding sociopaths and why they do what they do…..and only up until recently coming out of a 3 and a half year relationship with a sociopath, do I now know what I was dealing with……thank God for people like Donna and her website and the decent people and bloggers that contribute to it….it’s been a God send and if it wasn’t for Lovefraud, I don’t know where I would have ended up.
But also on the other hand, the Internet is also an avenue for sociopaths to find their next victim. I haven’t posted on here for a while, but there is another episode in my life I care not to remember. I carry the shame and guilt of being so gullible. But just to enlighten others how adaptable and the scope these predators can be, and making me look like an total idiot in the meantime, I want to tell you another type of predator that’s just as happy to destroy you and get their supply in the comfort of their own home.
I don’t write as eloquently as some people on here, I’m just your average Aussie guy, so bear with me as I attempt to string some words together….
Anyway..a few years back prior to my 3 and a half year relationship with a sociopath, I began talking to a 27 yr old girl called Mickey in California via a chat room out of the blue. I live in Australia. This “cyber relationship” lasted close to 4 years.
We had never met but we became very close indeed. It all started out innocently enough but then started hearing stories from her (Mickey) that were absolutely shocking. As the stories unfolded, I quickly found out that she was in a violent relationship with her husband, an LA policeman. He was always under the radar from authorities, and I was told he knew how the system worked.
So over the next 4 years approximately I was told harrowing story after harrowing story of human misery and existence. These elaborate stories got worse and worse over a course of nearly 4 years. I began to ask myself, how the hell do I help someone so far away? How do I help this young American girl?…we’re supposed to be allies aren’t we?…lol…but seriously, the depression, the anxiety, the total despair I carried with me in every part of my life. I couldn’t function knowing this was happening to a person so innocent as this, and to no fault of her own…and I hate to say it, I fell in love with someone I’ve never met before. And the thought of being so far away not being able to help, was excruciating.. Ok some people reading this will think I’m a total fool or boofhead (Aussie for dope)…..oh well u get that!…How the hell do you fall in love with someone that you’ve never met?…how the hell do you fall for stories from someone that you know nothing about? But this was a gradual thing that evolved over the years…and let me tell you, falling in love with a person you have never met is very easy indeed….as the above post implies, it’s all in the mind which fill in the gaps.
May I just make an observation. Even though this relationship is termed a “cyber relationship”…the emotions are very much real. It’s the same as if you experiencing this in reality. Actually the mind can do a number on you!
Anyway I started to wonder how something so innocent as talking to a girl in a chat room, would turn out to be a living nightmare. I thought the pain I was dealing with, compared to Mickeys far outweighed mine, so I hung in there determined to not to abandon this girl for anything…she needs me, even at the cost of my own mental state…I thought to myself, I’ll will never give up on this girl period!…this is the right thing to do, damn the emotional cost…
There is so much more to this story but I’ll cut it short. Eventually after a couple of years Mickey escaped from her abusive relationship with her husband, and found a safe place with an elderly lady called Sally a few hundred miles north of LA. Sally was 65 years old. So I thought safe at last. I thought this was the last of all the misery and now was a time for her to heal. But I was wrong. Because of the years of abuse Mickey had sustained eventually leading to many hospital stays, she had medical complications. By now I often spoke to Mickey by phone, and understandably was a very timid, shy, broken girl indeed. I also spoke to Sally, the little old lady that gave her a place to stay. Sally knew of Mickey’s past and reassured me that now Mickey was in good hands. Mickey is now in a safe place and I was so relieved. Sally was a tough extroverted lady and she reassured she’d take care of Mickey. So I often spoke to Sally on the phone regarding Mickey over the years….I often spoke to Sally first to ask how Mickey was doing, then she would hand the phone to Mickey so I could chat to my baby……both very different people indeed.
Mickey often told me about her kidney problems due to the trauma she sustained over the years of abuse (I know most people don’t die of kidney problems but I was far too gone mentally at that stage)..But in the end, the abuse on Mickey took it’s toll. One morning unexpectedly I received an email from Sally and was told Mickey had suddenly died overnight due to kidney complications….I couldn’t believe what I was reading….my life then fell to pieces.
By this time my existence became a blur….I had lost touch with reality….I wanted my life to end as I couldn’t cope anymore…..I remember sitting in front of my computer screen with the opened email, tears streaming down my face unable to focus anymore,…I didn’t know what to think anymore. I wasn’t functioning at all…all I knew that it will never be the same again.
I mostly kept all these stories and my relationship with Mickey to myself, until one day I confided in a friend. Things didn’t ring true with him when I told him about certain events. I even told him how insensitive as not to believe what I was telling him regarding Mickey’s circumstances. She was my girl, and no one was ever going to question the truth or her intentions towards me. My mate pushed and pushed for me to phone the police as far as substantiating the death of Mickey. So I phoned the county police in the US, and they replied they really couldn’t do much about it. I was determined, I needed to know the true and the circumstances regarding Mickey’s death. So a couple of days later I phoned them again, and rightly or wrongly, I told them I believed foul play was involved and believed Sally had done Mickey in. I really didn’t believe it, but at least they would investigate the death of Mickey and I could then have some closure.
A few days later I get an email from the police in California, and I was in shock….I could not believe what I was reading. My girl has died and they’re telling me what?…surely I’m not reading right….the police officer in his email told me this…”as a result of our investigations, we believe Mickey and Sally are the same person, no one has died, Mickey doesn’t exist, she never had, there is no such person”…………………So I’m distraught by the death of my girl that never existed?….4 years of misery for nothing?….so distraught by a fabrication of my mind?…..wanting to suicide cause I couldn’t cope anymore?…..the last 4 years was one big fat lie and scam???……..
So even though I had never suffered physically or directly from the hands of this person, and never scammed for money and only the stuff I decided to send her she received (another subtle scam), but the emotional damage is real, so very real…..not unlike my last relationship in real life with a sociopath….and in my innocent early days of not knowing the existence of these type of people, I often asked myself why would someone take great pleasure and effort to deceive someone?…..not just one lie, but 4 years worth…..and then I found this site….
I leave it you to sum up to what I was dealing with…as I mentioned before, there’s another type of predator that’s just as happy to destroy you and get their supply in the comfort of their own arm chair…..they’re out there…..in the real world and in cyberspace….
jake b, I think you write very well!! This story sounds somewhat similar to what happened to another poster on this website. I am sorry you went through all this with the “cyber” girl and the P you were involved with at home. There is so much to learn about how crazy these people are. Thank you for sharing your story and helping others. I am very wary of meeting people over the internet after what I’ve learned here at LF!!
jake,
you said, “We fill in the blanks…”
perfectly worded. It explains exactly how sociopaths control us. Human beings naturally make assumptions about what is being communicated or presented, based on what we are familiar with, AND WHAT WE WANT TO BELIEVE. They know we will fill in the blanks. It is happening all around us ALL the time; in the media, in government, in the organizations and authorities we trust. It’s happening because we don’t want to believe that there is so much evil in the world. Even for those of us who have experienced it, we will still hesitate to paint so many people with the same brush, EVEN WHEN WE SEE THE RED FLAGS. It’s too frightening. I hope that, rather than be frightened, we will all learn to see these behaviors for what they are: childish. immature. patterns. time to stop feeding the parasites.
So sorry for the trauma inflicted on you.
Dear Jake,
I am reading a novel right now called the “Night listener” and it is about a situation VERY much like you described. Also, there are many reports of just such a situation as you report—for WHAT REASON? Only God knows, and you know, I don’t think you are a dope at all….gullible, trusting, caring…yep, a dope? NO!!!
There are others here who have had similar cyber relationships that were just as phony…so don’t feel so stoooopid. Chit happens!
Glad to have you aboard, we need more guys here so this is not such a hen party! Glad you are free from the relationships with the psychopaths. Sometimes there is NO way I think we can even begin to comprehend The WHY or the WHAT THE FRACK DO THEY GET OUT OF SUCH GAMES? Is that the drama they need to breathe? Just doesn’t make sense to most normal people. But then rape doesn’t make sense to most people either? Who would want sex with someone they had to FORCE? Well, there are people that that is what turns them on…but not normal folks. Same with the scam you described. WHAT did that person get out of it all? I wish I honestly knew, maybe it would help me to comprehend it more…but sometimes just saying “control” or “drama” doesn’t quite describe it.
Thanks for your story, and you do write very well!
I had the chance to see the baiting and grooming that is done. It was professional. I was impressed by the way hemanaged so many online relationships so deftly.
And how women respnded so much the same to each invitation to take a step closer and closer. There must have been about 30 of them when he was arrested.
And, my guess is most of them stayed on for a good while after that. Who knows ( or cares) how many there are now.
But after that insightful experience, I won’t ever do it again. Ever.
How could you know?
Email? Not unless there is a flesh and bones relationship first.
Period.
Now matter how they execute, the damage is devastating.
And it lasts for a long time after it turns you inside out.
It affects the healthy relationships in your life and even after you realize what happened to you, nothing is ever the same.
I believe we can all relate to the betrayal. the story however different is the same. And always stunning in the examples of deceit. Now matter how its done, we know what its like to feel the moment of realization.
Me, I hope I never forget that and that it serves to light the red flags. And I hope I never remember what it was that caused me to believe in the first place.
Jake. I’m sorry for your experience and how you were robbed. I know it takes some real getting over. AS I read your story, the catharsis of the healing for having told it is almost tangible.
Hold onto that it is a chapter in the story of you. And that in time, it will be a much less key chapter in the story of who you are, who you were and what you will become.
Best
Jake,
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Know that you are not alone. I have heard stories much like yours several times – it is exactly what I was referring to.
I think we believe them because we can’t imagine that someone would make up such disturbing stories. And we don’t know that there are people who delight in telling such fabrications – just to see if they can get over on people.
I am so sorry for your experience – but I’m sure that writing about it here on Lovefraud is enlightening to many people. Thank you for your contribution.
Jake,
I had one like this in high school. For one year my ‘best friend’ was delivering letters to me from a guy I believed existed. I got gifts, photos, everything but a chance to meet the real guy.
Along with that, stories of the tragedy in his life – how his sister was killed in a car crash the week before we were supposed to meet for the first time. The cancer he got suddenly, and then the twisted lie that ‘he’ told me via a letter – that my ‘best friend’ (the one who had been delivering all of ‘his’ letters to me) actually had cancer. The list goes on.
It got more and more disturbing, until one day I found out the truth. You guessed it – my ‘best friend’ was the one behind all the letters that this make-believe/ficitious guy sent. Of course, my best friend played victim, went around telling horrible stories about me to everyone, and, even better, my mother offered to help my best friend because of all the problems I was causing. It was so sick.
You don’t need the details, but I should probably mention that I do suspect that this ‘best friend’ was doing more than messing with my head for fun. This person wanted me to stick around so badly, so that she wouldn’t be left alone (plus she was gay, and had her own interest in me), that she made all of this up. She knew she hooked me with tales of trauma after trauma, which create a kind of bond, if you possess a soul that cares and believes. I can’t explain her behavior any more than that, I just know why I was vulnerable to it, which helps in retrospect, but what a nightmare.
Sorry you had a live one too (mine was in California, as well!). I do know how it is to believe the unbelievable, and how it can feel when others discover just how many outrageous lies you believed.
Take care,
Psyche
Oxdrover;
As usual, a very wise observation. I see now how my long-distance relationship with the x-spath played into his hands.
First, he was far “warmer” via text, email and phone then in person. For example, on the phone his british charm was quite effective. And lying is far easier when not done face-to-face. More important, distance allowed him time to play his game, most of that being an online game.
I am not an online dating type person. From my past expriences, I get too nervous and for every good experience I have had two bad ones.
However, for some, within certain guidelines, online dating is a viable option. Those guidelines include nothing long distance, no build-up — meet asap, no expectations, no online flirting, avoid “too good to be true” red flags, those with activity profiles more than a couple years old.
jake b,
You are a caring, decent human being. I grew up in a home where I got the message that you stick it out with anyone to the end (even at the cost of you own mental well-being). Today, I don’t think that way anymore. I am sorry that people will play these sick games – glad you found out the truth, being free of this warped woman.