Since Lovefraud launched in 2005, I’ve collected 2,850 cases—people who have contacted me to tell me about their experiences with a sociopath. In nearly 100 of these cases—3.4%—the person who contacted me was not actually the victim, but was a friend or family member who was trying to pry the victim away from the sociopath. For example, here’s an email that Lovefraud recently received:
I have a sister-in-law who is dating a married man, who claims he will be getting a divorce, which is still yet to happen. Now she’s pregnant with his kid so things are more serious. They were supposed to move out together a couple months ago, but when the day came he disappeared, then a couple weeks later she found out she was pregnant by him then they were in contact again. Anyways, they went ahead and got an apartment again, which he’s not living in because he is still living with his wife, so it’s a come and go when he pleases”¦ He’s using her! This is not his first child out of wedlock, in fact, he has no contact with the other one and he has now cheated on his wife six times! All these red flags, and all she does is cover up for him. I’ve noticed she’s been depressed and been doing irresponsible things with her health as a result of this guy! Everyone also bluntly tells her that she’s basically his whore, so she knows how everyone feels. What do I do to open her eyes?
Lovefraud’s standard advice in this situation is that there isn’t much someone else can do—it’s up to the person who is involved with a sociopath to open her own eyes and see what is going on. In order to break away, the victim must feel, and own, the negative emotions associated with being controlled and/or abused. This will spark the victim’s desire to get out.
The best thing loved ones can do is stay in contact with the victim, because the sociopath will try to isolate him or her. Friends and loved ones should be emotionally supportive of the individual, but not supply material support, such as money or a place to live. The idea, essentially, is to wait it out, and then, when the relationship crashes and burns, be there to pick up the pieces.
Dr. Liane Leedom explained this approach in her article, “How can I get my _____ away from the psychopathic con artist?”
I’ve sent many, many people the link to that article. But every time I do, it is so dissatisfying. Isn’t there anything a loved one can do?
I understand that people become deeply bonded to sociopaths, especially when they are emotionally and physically intimate, and more especially when they are pregnant. I wrote a whole chapter in my new book, Red Flags of Love Fraud, that explains exactly how this happens. Chapter 6 is called “Sociopathic sex and bonding,” and it explains the psychology and biology of how this powerful psychological love bond is formed.
Here’s a chapter by chapter summary of the book.
Still, I don’t like the idea of just waiting around the victim hits bottom. Sometimes, by the time that happens, the victim is so broken that there is no recovery. And sometimes, when the victim hits bottom, she is dead.
So, I ask Lovefraud readers: Have you ever conducted a successful intervention? If you were the friend or family member of someone in the clutches of a sociopath, were you able to get him or her out? How? Or, if you were the person bonded to the sociopath, did anyone ever do or say anything that gave you the strength to leave?
If anything works, please let us know. I’d love to be able to offer more heartening suggestions.
i have never held a successful intervention, i haven’t been on the outside of a situation like that to do so.
but i do know that while i was with my spath, some of my friends were considering confronting me, as a sort of intervention, as they were afraid for my safety and sanity. they had seen the desctructive and eventually violent relationship my spath had had with his wife, and they didn’t want me to go end up in the same situation. they told me they decided not to do it because they thought i might get upset, and wouldn’t leave him anyway. they chose to make subtle hints about their disapproval of him, let it be known they were not too thrilled with this character.
these days, i’m very appreciative that i have friends that cared so much for me, but at the time, i may have felt like they were getting into my business and felt angry at them.i can say, i dont know if i would’ve listened to them anyway. i was already aware of all of the things they were going to tell me, and i just refused to believe it would ever effect me. i thought i was different i thought i could love him better and i thought i must be stronger than the wife was, that i would work it all out and have a happier ending.
i thought the same things about my involvement with an alcoholic. i had to hold an intervention for a dear friend with a drinking problem, as i feared for their life. it did not go over well, it nearly destroyed our friendship because he felt that i invaded where i had no right to. but i did let his family know of his problems, so at least people who cared were aware and able to have an eye out and offer support. in some situations, thats all that can be done i believe.
so the people who are reaching out on behalf of someone, trying to get them away from a sociopath, while it is not any comfort to them, i think in some ways just being there, being honest about their feelings about the abusive person and how they are effecting their loved one, sometimes that is the best they can offer.
trying to drag someone away from a sociopath is like trying to drag a bottle out of an alcoholics hand, in some ways. its very difficult, and can often make them want to be even closer to the sociopath, just like the alcoholic turns more to the drink when you try to take them away from it. there is something very addictive about the rollercoaster of the sociopath, the adrenaline rush you sometimes get while trying to survive them, the constant state of heightened alert. its very hard to come down from, even though you aren’t always sure its happening.
i think what gave me the most strength was my family, hearing the hurt in their voices when they tried to console me after whatever awful thing the spath said or did.
and i think that after i realized what was going on, having the support of my friends was very important too.
and then of course, finding this place and seeing that there were other people in the world who understood this absolutely bizarre thing that no one else seemed to grasp, that really helped me too.
maybe the people who are seeking help for a friend or loved one, could point them to this site? if they were willing to take a look, they might recognize themselves in some of the folks who are here, and get the strength to takes steps to get into a better place.
i wish them all the best.
Donna,
I have never, either personally or professionally, had a “positive” intervention. I have taken in a couple of people who were friends who finally DID leave their abusive partner, but I took them in with large bruises and contusions, not because I convinced them to leave. Even then some of those people have gone back to the abusive relationship or into another one just as bad.
I have two friends now who have sons in prison who are, in my opinion, psychopathic, but neither of those parents will “give up on my boy.” One set of parents at least listened to my information about psychopaths and didn’t seem to become angry at me about it, but I pushed it as far as I thought I could go and not alienate them.
In another instance, I had a friend whose BF was regularly beating her up, and she would have him arrested, then come to my house and play a rousing game of “oh, ain’t it awful” while sporting a black eye, THEN she would go down the next day and bail the arsehole out….after several times of this I said to her, “Marilyn, it is obvious to me that Dave is not going to stop slapping you around. I love you but from now on WE WILL NOT TALK ABOUT DAVE, we will talk about our kids or anything you want to talk about except DAVE.” That was the end of our friendship really,, and she ended up leaving her job, selling her house and moving out of state with him….I lost contact with her after that.
At times I have felt guilty about saying that to her, but other times, I have felt I responded the only way I could, and that was to tell her the truth. She was not going to change HER behavior either and he sure wasn’t going to change his.
I’ve had home care patients whose mates were abusing them and there was nothing I could say to get them to do anything. I’ve had patients who were in the DV shelters and they would go back to the abusers…
I wish I knew the answer, Donna, but I don’t know except to “be there when they crash” but each of us must make up our own minds about WHEN to give up that malignant hope that we have hung on to for so long. We each have to decide when to get out of denial.
Actually, the other day I told someone on this blog to buy two copies of your book, one for themselves and one to hold to give to a friend. That MIGHT get them to see themselves, or they may just toss the book aside and not read it. I’m out of suggestions.
A huge part of the problem is LOYALTY.
Maybe we need to write and entire BOOK on Malignant Loyalty.
A huge part of why I stayed with the spath is I just didn’t want to be disloyal because I promised I would be loyal. He accused me of cheating on him early on and made me feel terrible. He made it quite clear that he expected loyalty.
Maybe the way to get people away from spaths is the same way you get them away from a cult: kidnapping and several days of de-programming. But it’s hit or miss even then, isn’t it?
We need to get the message out in the mainstream so that everyone can spot a spath and know one when they see one.
Sky, even “deprogramming” someone who is in a “cult” is risky, and may leave some folks in “kidnapping” charges. There was a big deal years and years ago about these people kidnapping their adult children and putting them through a deprogramming from these religious cults, like Jamestown type things…and the thing is you do not have the right to do taht to an adult no matter how deluded they are as long as they know who the president is and what month and year it is. (i.e.l are “sane”) People have the “right” to be STOOPID and wear aluminum foil hats as long as they are not planning to blow up a building or kill someone else, or don’t marry their 9 year old daughters to the prophet.
So the thing is that it must be persuasion and education, hopefully to prevent someone BEFORE they get hooked. But you know I WAS “educated” and I still was in DENIAL. So education alone isn’t the answer either. I wish I knew what was “the answer”
Just a little quote today from my daily Dilbert I thought it applied to this article:
“Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.”
-The Dilbert Principle (1995)
Excellent quote Oxy,
it kinda goes right along with the Seth Godin quote, doesn’t it?
It’s so good, it’s worth posting again:
I am having a hard time processing this judgment stuff.
I mean, when I was a teenager, I decided to be a certain kind of person. And in a NORMAL relationship, all these values that I embraced and live by would be an asset, make me WORTHY. They only fail when I am in a toxic, or spath relationship and WHO LOOKS for an spath? I didn’t. Thought such a thing was easy to id, those were the loser guys.
My spath did not look like a loser. He came from a Old established family, he worked always. He was well known in the community, well thought of (appeared so anyways, truth is while they knew his name and face, few community members had any interaction with him except for the very shallow… i.e. socials at weddings/funeral. NOBODY had heart to heart talks with him, not even his “best friend” knew personal details about his opinions or experiences.) My husbands relationships with his parents is typical of the community, his ma is heavily religious and chose one son to be her special confidant. His dad is a tough cold farmer, strong as an ox, can be personal in a very superficial way, and his wife was his servant, not his friend or partner. Typical of their generation.
What carries this background into spath territory does not show up with casual observation. You’d have to be a trained psychologist LOOKING for it and then you might see clues but what they meant would only be revealed by talking to the VICTIMS.
Am I also a person of malignant loyalty as well as malignant hope?
In order to have been able to assess that, I’d have to know that my husband was spath. ANd that I didn’t know until AFTER I left him. I knew SOMETHING was wrong. It wasn’t until I found THIS site that the pieces made sense. Up to then, I thought my husband a Peter Pan Syndrome guy, an abuser, a fraud, self absorbed, a player, a backwards thinking logic person, arrogant. But I had no idea these were SYMPTOMS of an spath until I found LF.
I don’t like taking the qualities that make us human and then saying having those qualities makes us dysfunctional. I was not dysfunctional for being trusting, considerate, giving, not a quitter, and loyal to my husband whom I stood before God and community to pledge my troth forsaking all others until death us do part.
What made it dysfunctional was how an spath infected my life and used my good qualities, slowly, incrementally twisted them into weapons against me.
Not recognizing him for what he is was my problem. If I had known the animal, THEN I would have known what a waste of time he was (just like Michael is a waste of time b/c you can’t know what’s authentic -nothing- and why is he here since this is not a site for helping psychopaths?). Spaths are NOTHING but a poisonous WASTE in my precious life.
Sky,
I totally follow the malignant loyalty comment. It’s not hope, but my loyalty that can be my worst enemy. It is one of the values highest on my list I think.
What is “loyalty” except “hope”? I think the HOPE is what makes us LOYAL to someone who keeps wounding us. We expect/hope if we are and continue to be “loyal” that we will be repaid with better treatment and love in the future.
KatyDear, of course your GOOD points, your LOYALTY and your HOPE were the very things he turned against you. The things that made you a good friend, a good lover, a good family member, that loyalty and that hopefullness is what made you stay around when the treatment you got from him was abusive.
If you had been a person who had no loyalty, who had no hope, and wouldn’t stick around, you would not have been a very good friend, family member or lover.
The marriage vows are generally “for better or worse, for richer or poorer” which says “we will be there come hell or high water” are the things that make us who have loyalty and hope stick around for the better (we HOPE) when things are bad. Of course with a psychopath there never is any lasting “better” and any apparent “better” is just a fake to keep us loyal and hoping—against hope!
As for self-professed personality disordered people who come here to LoveFraud to “educate” us and interact with us, I have no desire to interact with them either, Katy. In fact, I have no desire to interact with anyone who claims to be a psychopath, on this board or off. I have no desire to interact with anyone that I think is a psychopath or high in P traits. My suggestion is if his presence offends you, just ignore him. Don’t let the presence of anyone who is offensive to you interfere with your own healing. This is an open board so anyone can read or post as long as they are not overtly offensive, so there isn’t anything we can do about that except not interact with them. He has come here before and acted badly and Donna deleted his posts and banned him and he would come back under another IP address and another name…it usually didn’t take long for him to be recognized though, and she would ban him again. The very fact that he kept returning showed that he did not have respect for the rules here etc. Maybe he has realized that Donna won’t put up with abusive behavior. So as long as he gets attention he will come back, but as long as he doesn’t become OVERTLY abusive, she will tolerate his presence.
I’m not going to let him bother me…so just ignore him, KatyDear, attention and bothering you I think is the point of it all. (((hugs)))
For me it’s something totally distinct, Oxy. I can be loyal without having hope.