Today, my new book, Red Flags of Love Fraud 10 signs you’re dating a sociopath, becomes available on Amazon.com and through all other distribution channels.
This book reveals, for the first time, the tactics of social predators who pursue romantic relationships not for love, but for exploitation. It explains how sociopaths seduce their targets, why it’s hard to escape the relationships, and how people can protect themselves.
Of course, Red Flags of Love Fraud has been available in the Lovefraud Store for several months, and many of you have written to me to say that it precisely describes your experience. Here is one of your letters:
I stumbled across your site in 12/2011 ”¨while Googling the words “pathological liar.” I was Googling those words because the guy I married on 12/16/11 abandoned me on 12/29/11, just 13 days later, all while leaving a trail a lies. The article “10 signs the guy you’re dating is a sociopath” popped up and I read it with my mouth wide open screaming, “Oh my gosh, this describes him exactly!”
I ordered your book with the same title and it has helped me gain understanding and closure. I have spent countless hours trying to figure out what happened, until I read your book. He literally used to say some of the exact phrases you used in the book. The hardest thing and the most helpful thing I’ve had to do is accept that the guy I knew and loved never existed.
I cut all forms of communication back in February. That also has helped me a lot. I’ve since found out that he was addicted to drugs and he stole jewelry from me when he left. I now realize that I should be happy he left me because he could have so easily destroyed me if he had stayed. Although it hurts, I say thank you God for looking out for me. I just wanted you to know that a woman in South Carolina has begun to heal because of you allowing God to use you in writing the book. — T.H. in South Carolina
Thank you T.H. for your kind words! I’m sorry for your experience, but glad that my book you.
Now, the Red Flags of Love Fraud Workbook
In addition to explaining the sociopath, I want to help all of you develop the awareness and internal strength to avoid or escape them.
When sociopaths are on the prowl for a hook-up, they engage in calculated seduction. They probe for our strengths and weaknesses, and then use them to worm their way into our lives. So I also created the Red Flags of Love Fraud Workbook, which focuses on you. The Workbook enables you to identify your vulnerabilities before the predators do, so you can recognize when you’re being targeted. Or, if you suspect that you’re already in an exploitative relationship, this workbook helps you figure out how you were seduced, what you need to do to leave, and how to protect yourself so that it never happens again.
The Red Flags of Love Fraud Workbook contains a dozen checklists and nearly 50 questions to encourage you to think objectively about your situation. I’ve included space right in the book for you to record your answers and observations. You’ll clarify:
- Personal beliefs that make it hard to recognize an exploiter
- Your traits and needs that make you vulnerable to a sociopath
- Your positive qualities that a sociopath would love to abuse
- The strategies a predator may use to seduce you
- Your reactions to internal warnings, or warnings from others
- Why you may overlook or excuse bad behavior
- How to leave an abusive individual once and for all
A sociopath cannot have an exploitative relationship with you if you don’t cooperate. The Red Flags of Love Fraud Workbook helps you fortify your internal defenses so that you can avoid, or escape, a damaging involvement.
The Red Flags of Love Fraud Workbook is available EXCLUSIVELY in the Lovefraud Store. A $6.95 value, it is FREE with your purchase of the printed Red Flags of Love Fraud on Lovefraud.com (just pay the shipping cost for an additional book).
If you’ve already purchased the printed Red Flags of Love Fraud, you can request a free copy of the Workbook just pay the shipping and handling. This offer is only available to readers who purchased the book previously in the Lovefraud Store, and your prior purchase will be verified. Offer expires July 15, 2012.
Red Flags of Love Fraud e-book
Finally, Red Flags of Love Fraud is now available as an e-book. In the electronic version, the links to outside reference material are active, so if your device is connected to the Internet, you have immediate access to more in-depth information about sociopaths.
The e-book is available for any device—Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony Reader, Apple iPad and iBook, and e-reading applications for your computer. This will be especially helpful for Lovefraud’s readers located outside of the United States, because you can now get the book without paying international shipping costs.
Order your copy of the Red Flags of Love Fraud today! In fact, order one for yourself, and one for a friend or family member who also needs the information!
Lovefraud Store
Printed book, Workbook and e-book in all formats
Amazon.com
Printed book and Kindle e-book
BBE, while the LF survey sheds some light on the perceptions of the victims…it really isn’t a “scientific survey” because the people who are being “labeled” as psychopaths by their victims, may or may not actually be psychopaths, it is the PERCEPTION of the people taking the survey that they fit the criteria.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the results of the survey are not meaningful, because I think they are very meaningful. Looking at psychopathy from the PERCEPTION of the people who see themselves as victims of “love fraud” is a very interesting and informative way to look at things even if it does not meet the strict criteria for a scientific experiment.
Victims’ perceptions have not been looked at very often or very clearly I don’t think, and because this survey which asks volunteers to offer their opinions about the behaviors of those that they perceive victimized them, I think it gives a picture of what those victims who are willing to take the survey observed in the person who victimized them.
Deceitfulness is a hall mark of the psychopath, though all people who are deceitful are not psychopaths.
Some people have noted the intense eye contact that some psychopaths have, but I don’t think that a percentage has been figured by anyone scientifically. Intense eye contact is a predatory behavior across species. Border Collies who herd prey animals (sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, etc) use intense eye contact to cause the prey animals to change direction and to pack up. Just as wolves and lions do the same thing.
I found Donna’s survey very interesting and informative. It is only another bit of information in the collective of information being assembled by observation and research about psychopaths, but it is another blank filled in.
Ox;
Very good point. Did Donna have any access (direct or indirected) to any of the “sociopaths?”
You prefer the term “toxic” to anyone who is incapable of a healthy relationship, for whatever reason. This would include, but not be limited to sociopaths.
BBE, no Donna did not interview or survey any of the “sociopaths”
I don’t “prefer” the term “toxic” for everyone but the thing is that ANY relationship where there is abuse is toxic to the victim for sure! I don’t think that an abusive relationship (depending on the level of the abuse) is necessarily one in which there is a psychopath, but it is surely not a healthy one and not one in which I would want to be involved in any capacity.
Many people learn dysfunctional ways of coping wiht family Drama-ramas rather than learning to set healthy boundaries.
As children in unhealthy families we learn to survive, to do what we need to do to cope with parents or social situaitons where we are not treated with respect due to us as human beings. We learn dyfunctional patterns of relating, of interacting, that become what we think of as “normal” because that is what we grew up with.
I know now that the family I grew up in my FOO was highly dysfunctional, yet, for years I thought we were a “normal family” with good ways of behaving. I realized eventually that I had bought into many of these dysfuncitonal ways of behaving myself. Those dysfunctional ways contributed to me allowing others to abuse and use me. Of me not knowing how to set reasonable boundaries.
I go back to the way I was taught that my feelings did not matter, that my job was to make other people “happy” no matter what it cost me in terms of allowing them to abuse me.
Fortunately I had a good man for a step father, my “daddy” but he too was somewhat involved in the dysfunction though he was a caring man and I realize that he loved me very much. He supported me in ways that I didn’t even realize until I was an adult. I am grateful for that. I am also grateful that I was able to spend the last 18 months of his life with him, caring for him, and being able to understand more about our relationship. Even in retrospect, I can see that the good parts of me came from him.
He too was such into a lot of the dysfunction and keeping his own counsel when I wish now he had spoken up, but he would not “fight” my egg donor. She had him in thrall as well. He did come to my defense the one time she really physically lost it and was beating me with a belt, buckle end. I was defying her and she went postal. He pulled her off me.
He loved my son Patrick when Patrick was a kid and was a mentor to him, but he did realize that Patrick was a worthless individual and that his “repentence” was a fake though. I wish I had listened to him more. It would have saved me a lot of grief. He didn’t push his opinion on me though, and I was so deep in denial that I didn’t want to accept what he knew as truth.
I can only accept that I made my choices, and I lived in denial for a long long time about Patrick.
My son D said when the summer of Chaos started that if my dad or my husband Morgan had been alive “none of this would have happened” and I believe that, but they were both gone by that time. I realize now that Daddy kept a lid on my egg donor’s behavior that I didn’t realize at the time. After he was gone and Morgan was dead, there was no one to keep a lid on her need to control the dysfunctional dynamics of the family. When I started setting boundaries she panicked and then things went to hell in a hand basket. Even from his prison cell, Patrick continues to control my egg donor. Though she thinks she is in control. LOL It is a case of the psychopathic controlling the dysfunctional.
Ox;
In my family, it is my mother who keeps the “lid” on dysfunction, especially regarding her younger sister. My aunt is such a controller that she has made her life miserable because she cannot step away from her children’s lives.
For example, she lives on a fixed income and her main asset is her house. 4 years ago, when the markets were high, I tried to get her into a reverse mortgage to provide some extra income. She would not do this, for fear she would leave less to my ungrateful cousins.
As soon as I leave this comment I’m headed to the kindle store to buy the book. I want/need to read more about the sexual deviance. My spath was very into pornography, BDSM, objectification of women and violence toward women. I have now learned that his sexuality isn’t restricted to women. It’s not about the woman, the man or the whomever -‘it’s all about power and control. I just learned last week that he is zeroing in on his next victim – a slightly older, overweight woman with glaring self esteem issues. Keep up the good work, stay strong and support your fellow victims. It does get better, but it’s not an easy or linear process.
Hugs,
Bree
JustBree;
My ex-spath was exclusively homosexual and I do believe him on this. His deviance may have been for younger. I have several reasons to believe this. First, several of his web profiles say so. Second, he dressed like a teenager yet he is in his late thirties.
But most chilling was a “matching question” on one of his profiles. “Would you date somebody convicted of a sex crime.” Since my ex-spath is a small person and with no real physical strength, if he is alluding to something in his past, I doubt it is a physical crime.
Just bought two copies of the book and workbook! Look forward to sharing them with the head of our local DV organization.
So excited there is a workbook! Cannot wait to see it!