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 think the problem with this way, Sky, is that the rest of the family doesn’t “get it” and don’t want to upset the family (and mama) by the shunning and supporting Lynnie Girl & her husband ….that’s part of the problem is the DIVIDE AND CONQUEOR that the psychopaths do in families.
Look at what happened to me, my entire family SHUNNED ME because the Ps had them convinced that I was the crazy one, that I was being mean to them. DUH! And of colurse the more drama she can create and presenting herself as the SELFLESS VICTIM, pooooooo babeeeeee! PUKE!
I understand Oxy, but it seems that the family IS united on hating the Lynnie’s spath, they just don’t know how to deal with it. So if Lynnie can convince them that this is the quickest way out of the situation, they might go along for a while anyway.
Your family is so bizarre! Who would take the side of a convicted killer over his mother?!
Not even worth dealing with those people. You are so much better off knowing what they are and getting unslimed!
LOL ROTFLMAO “Who would take the side of a convicted killer over his mother?”
WHO ELSE—my “mother!” LOL ROTFLMAO You are right, sky, they are definitely bizarre! LOL ROTFLMAO
I’m so glad I ican laugh about all this shiat now! It was a while there that I couldn’t laugh over ANYthing. Now I can laugh and see the bizarre humor, the gallows humor in it all.
Today is one of those rare perfect spring days…rained last night so stuff is maginificantly green and clean…partly sunny, 74 degrees light breeze, and quiet and gorgeous. My wild flowers are blooming in my wild flower garden (before the beating summer sun burns them back since their sheltering tree had to be cut down last summer. The stump has blossomed out though, and actually looks like a really COOL oak bush. My son and I both independently decided to keep it like that at least for this year as it is kind of cool in an odd way. (it’s ugly in the winter though but we never got around to cutting it to the ground level) Oh, well, enjoy it’s uniqueness while we have it.
I wanted to add that some victims get addicted to the perpetrators.
I went through that kind of addiction with my alcoholic, the one who I finally entered Al-Anon for because I’d break up with him and then go back when I got lonely and could con myself into believing he wasn’t that bad.
He wasn’t a P or anything close to it. He was a congenial drunk, a pleasant drunk, but booze was his life. He could become down and depressed about life and of course, that was my cue to step in to comfort and encourage him. Helpful Hannah here just kept getting crazier trying to figure out what I could do or say to help him not realizing that he wasn’t going to change.
Concerned Father, sadly, the courts don’t get it. Lots of people report the domestic violence training is a joke. Help is available, but you need to be your strongest and most active advocate.
Reading here will help. We tell the story as it is. Good luck.
G1S Many depressed people “self medicate” with booze…they aren’t psychopaths but they wreck their own lives and the lives of those who enable them and love them…and no they are not going to change. They will drink themselves into a jaundiced grave with liver failure..financial failure, relationship failure and failure in every life pursuit except getting soused every night.
I dated a guy like that once..he was my first “true love”—I was 21. I remembr turning 21 alone because we were broken up over his drinking (he was older than I was) Believe it or not we are still “friends” but he is 80 now and his poor wife…bless her heart. He is slightly senile, and still a boozer, but his mother is 101 now and still lives alone. LOL So who knows how long he will live or how many brain cells he will have. Better that woman than me. LOL Not all the drunks I have known were also psychopaths but there were plenty who were. Even those who went to AA and dried out. AA calls them “dry drunks” because they are truly psychopaths and they are hateful even when sober…DUH!!!! Alcohol is not always the CAUSE of relationship problems, sometimes it is a symptom not the cause.
This alcoholic had a mother who was also an alcoholic. His little sister had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Really sad. She would never be normal.
He didn’t introduce me to his family for the longest time because his mother was still heavily drinking and she embarrassed him. When we were engaged, I was there one time with her lying on the sofa talking to me while her hand was busily searching under the sofa for something. When I asked him about it, he said she was looking for her bottle.
I’ve been in Al-Anon for over 25 years and know AA pretty well. Both programs view alcoholism as a three-prong disease affecting the body, mind, and spirit.
The body part is the actual ingestion of the alcohol. You can stop drinking, but still have the all the behaviors of an alcoholic on the emotional (spirit) and psychological (mind) levels. That is the dry drunk because a person is no longer pouring booze into a physical body, but emotionally and psychologically, they’re as drunk as if they were drinking gallons every day.
Curiously, if an alcoholic doesn’t imbide at all for ten years then picks up (a glass of booze) after that time, the alcohol will affect the body as if the person had been drinking booze that whole time. It does NOT affect the person like someone new to drinking.
No AA or Al-Anon would view a person who had simply stopped drinking as “sober.” A sober person has to also be working on his or her emotional and psychological issues and working “the Steps” and his or her recovery. Both programs differentiate between the two and anyone who has been around for even a little time will know of the differences.
Spirit in terms of spirituality is a huge part of the 12-Step recovery programs. Both AA and Al-Anon talk about people being spiritually bankrupted. We need a connection to a Higher Power.
Neither AA nor Al-Anon talks about psychopaths or psychopathy. That’s because AA and Al-Anon try to keep things simple. They are strongly opposed to clinical terms or treatments – not because they don’t view them as helpful or valid, but because incorporating those things into their program dilutes what they have to offer. Anyone can pursue whatever he or she chooses outside of the time spent attending meetings.
It’s quite possible that people were throwing around terms without understanding their full meaning, which is one of the arguments why clinical/therapy terms are discouraged from use. People make up definitions or have no clue what something means other than what another misinformed person tells them.
Instead of sorting through new ideas and philosophies, they simply keep to what they know, which means a sizeable part of their knowledge comes from the 1930s and 1950s when they were founded.
That isn’t to say that new information hasn’t crept in or that they’re stuck in the past. They’ve made mistakes, too, and have learned from them, but for the most part, their programs work as they were originally conceived. They’re just trying to keep things simple.
Part of Al-Anon includes, “The family situation is bound to improve whether our alcoholic loved ones are drinking or not.” I was warned early that didn’t happen for everyone and in time, I reluctantly had to admit that I was in that group.
That being said, if they knew of or understood psychopathy or psychopaths (as we define those critters,) I wouldn’t have wasted the years that I felt I did trying to use Al-Anon to improve my relationship with my family. In fact, a few years back when I discovered psychopathy and began discussing it at meetings, it was frowned upon. It simply wasn’t Al-Anon.
It was good information and valid for me, but not for the Al-Anon members.
I should have known enough to keep that topic out of the rooms and discussed it elsewhere. I was excited. I finally found the answer to what I had struggled with all those years and wanted to share it. In particular, I was angry over the promise that “the family situation was bound to improve.” It did for me because Al-Anon enabled me to break away, but that wasn’t what was implied.
The reason my family relationship didn’t improve was because we were trying to apply to the wrong medicine to a misidentified problem. Even today, we know how little is truly understood about psychopathy and psychopaths. Jeepers, even a lot of therapists don’t have a clue, although a lot of what Al-Anon teaches DOES apply to how to detach from a P, not get involved with the drama, and to not take responsibility for things one didn’t do.
Anyway, I do get going and didn’t mean to go off like this.
No reflection on you, Oxy. I’ve often said that I should join Overwriters Anonymous.
G1S we both could for a chapter and Kathy hawk can join in too! LOL yep, we get on a roll and keep on going!
Thanks for all that AA information I have only been to a few AA meetngs as a guest and really not all that well informed about their philosophies.
My egg donor’s brother, as well as her grandfather and several generations back from that were all NASTY alcoholics, viscious actually. I refer to her brother as “Uncle Monster” and he was indeedy a MONSTER, a psychopath with ALL the tools and accessories as Sky said. He should have been put in prison for the things he did. Was showing disturbing signs by age 7 of being a monster.
I definitely agree that our healing path must include a spiritual aspect, even if the person doesn’t believe in a “higher power” at all..there is still a spiritual aspect to any human I think. If there was no spiritual aspect then P-ism is GREAT because you can do anything you can get away with and it is all okay! And no conscience to hold you back! LOL There is no right or wrong, or morality at all.
Unless you’re an alcoholic, I didn’t find attending AA meetings very helpful. It’s OK to go to see what they talk about and how they handle things, but …
If you need insight or help how to live with, cope with, or overcome being impacted by an alcoholic including being raised by one or two of them, Al-Anon is the place to go.
A lot of AAs view Al-Anons as the enemy because we don’t take their BS anymore. Some of them resent that highly, but the ones with good recovery understand where we’re coming from and that they’ve made our lives miserable.
I view alcoholism as a two-person disease. It’s really tough to be an alcoholic without enablers in one’s life.
Al-Anon and AA are like a coin. Each side is very different, but they do belong together and complement each other.
Getting back to dry drunks, people think that alcoholism “skips” a generation because there is no booze in the house. What’s in the house are dry drunks and the “isms” (the behaviorisms of alcoholics and their co-alcoholics/co-dependents.) The only thing that isn’t present is the liquid stuff. Everything else is pretty much the same.
There is also something called “wet brain.” Wet brain is when someone has drunk so much alcohol for a long time that the brain becomes “pickled” in the sense that it is permanently damaged and the person appears to be and acts drunk even though he or she isn’t.
Hey, Oxy, our conversation got me out to an Al-Anon meeting tonight and had me signing up to volunteer more. I could blame that on you, except in Program we say that we are “powerless over people, places, and things.” I’ll take responsibility for those actions. 😉
G1S,
I haven’t been to an AA meeting or an Al-Anon meeting in over a decade. I used to attend regularly and much of what I learned in the program has helped me get through many different things in my life.
At first, I think one of the things that I did benefit from going to open AA meeting (I wasn’t able to grasp this with Al Anon alone) was that I FINALLY was able to really “get it” (and accept it) that alcoholism was a disease. And I had to hear the alcoholic tell their stories over and over again before I had the a-hah moment and thought …..Yep, there is a definite pattern here.
By the time I found my way to the doors of AA & Al-Anon the damage had been done.
From growing up in an alcoholic home and then marrying an alcoholic.
But in the end Al-Anon was what I needed.
So for me, both programs were important to attend, especially at first.
What I find rather interesting is that even though every alcoholic touches many individuals in their lives…..In my small town we no longer have Al-Anon meetings. People just stopped coming & it was always difficult to keep the meetings going.
Yet we have AA meetings 7 days a week 2 times a day! the Al-Anon meetings should have been standing room only…Yes?
Lol.
Witsend,
That’s true for much of Al-Anon. I think a lot of that has to do with, “Why should I go? I’m not the one with the problem.” Little do they realize…
There are a lot of AAs who work very hard at their recovery, and then there are always the ones who like to entertain each other with their “drunkalogs.” I have a lot of respect for those AAs who do work their program.
I used to think that the theory that sometimes it is easier to tell an alcoholic family by the non-alcoholic’s behavior than the alcoholic’s applied to my family because my mother’s behavior was so off-the-wall. Now, much of what I thought was co-alcoholic behavior was simply spath behavior.
Definitely what I learned in Al-Anon definitely helped me to cope with my S mother and P sister – like detachment, how important is it, letting go and letting God, this, too, shall pass, and one day at a time.
Several people commented, when we were in the middle of their worst attack against us, that they were surprised by how well I was managing and getting through everything. Can’t say that I was coping well, but I was managing because I was taking things 5 minutes at a time.
Alateen has been a godsend for my son. He has peers who can talka about dealing with their crazy family members, too.
I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for Al-Anon.