Editor’s note: The following story was submitted by a reader who we’ll call Mandy. Mandy is 15 years old and dated a sociopathic guy, who was two years older, for over a year. Notice how similar the sociopath’s behaviors are to what many of us adults experienced—an indication that this manipulative behavior is instinctual in sociopaths.
A person cannot be diagnosed a sociopath until the age of 18, but can start showing symptoms at a young age. He was 15 and I was only 13. We lived in two separate towns. We met on the computer off of an Internet website called Facebook and then started talking all the time on phone.
I was a perfect victim. I had no self-esteem when I was younger because of verbal abuse I had faced from classmates. I felt alone and just wanted to have a boyfriend by my side. We were constantly flirting on the phone, but I didn’t want this to be a cyber relationship. He seemed charming and sweet. Every time time I would ask him to hang out he would tell me that there was no one to drive him. His sister couldn’t and his mother would leave him home all day by himself and how alone he felt. So I had asked him, “What about your dad?” He said, “I never met my dad before.” It’s like he would make me feel guilty for asking him.
He started to say “I love you”
Weeks were going by, but the more time that passed, the more we were acting like a couple. He even started to say, “I love you.” I couldn’t handle this relationship because we never have even met! So when I finally decided to tell him we should end this, he told me he would kill himself and that he had written a suicide note. I couldn’t let go after he told me this. Promising me that he would he see me soon.
A few weeks later he started mentioning ex-girlfriend who he said he dated for three years. When I asked to speak to her, he gave me her screen name. I just wanted to speak to her to see if everything he told me added up. I ended up finding the ex-girlfriend on Facebook, which is when I found out from her that he was lying. He lied about never meeting his dad, and they didn’t date for three years, only two months, and that he made up a fake screen name. Also telling me he wanted her back. When the three of us were on the phone confronting him he said that he picked me over her and that he would never lie to me again.
$85 taxi ride
About a month later, with still not seeing each other, he told me to call his mother so we can see each other. When I had asked her she told me, “I don’t mean to be a bitch of a mother, but right now is not a good time. He needs to get his priorities straight.” From her finding out that we were talking, she quickly put a end to it by telling him to stop. But a couple of months later we started talking again. Sitting home sick on March 10th, he wanted me to come to his school to see him. I took a taxi, which cost me $85 for the whole trip with only my money. He was very nice, sweet, and funny and even introduced me to his friends. We finally met after four months, but I had to make the effort.
I started to notice that he was never going out with friends, and every time I would go out he would be mad because I wasn’t giving him attention. When I had asked him why he doesn’t really go out, he would tell me that because he used to be a bad kid his mom doesn’t allow him out very often because she cant trust him yet. Telling me that he changed and is trying to gain all of her trust back.
Yelling at me
So on a Friday night when I was going out, he had called me screaming to never call his number again. Telling me that I sent pictures to his friends. He kept yelling at me and screaming, how could I do such a thing? I kept telling him that I love him and that I didn’t do anything. As he heard me cry for hours to him; he wouldn’t stop yelling at me and told me to forget about him. I called back and said, “You know what? I know I didn’t do anything; just forget about it.” He said, “I love you I want to be with you,” like nothing even happened. I knew the story was all made up though. I didn’t want to let him go because I felt like he was the first real guy who actually liked me.
The next few weeks were fine, but now it was over five months, it started to come down to if this could actually work. The only way I can do this was if I received his mother’s approval of me. We started to argue about the whole thing because he wasn’t sure if he was going to go through with it. He said, “You would get a boyfriend and then leave me. You wouldn’t be able to say I love you anymore. Once you have a boyfriend, you would eventually stop calling me.”
Sexual acts
Basically from here to September, the new school year, all we were doing was deciding to be friends, to being friends with benefits to trying to be together. Just a repeating pattern from month to month. Until one night when I returned from babysitting he had asked me, how were the kids? Asking me if I ever thought about doing anything sexual with them. He tried to get me to share stories of sexual things I have done with the children. I thought he was joking, and tried to brush it off. Then he started to ask me to have sexual contact with family members and then my dog. I would ask him, “Why do you try to talk about these things?” His answer was, “I do this because I know you like it.” I found this disgusting and weird. This continued for months and he wouldn’t stop.
In January he came to my house; he actually made half of the effort this time with paying and getting in a taxi for me. We had to sneak to do this though. He wanted me to have sex with him, but I had told him no. He forced himself on top of me holding me down trying to get me to have it, but I kept screaming to stop and he finally let go. And you would think I wouldn’t want to be with him, but I was in denial because I didn’t want to be alone and believed that he loved me.
He had a new girlfriend
A month later I wrote a letter to his mother that I am a good person and telling her that I want to be with her son. She turned me down and basically two weeks later he had a new girlfriend and told me he just wants to be friends with me. We will never be together and all we were doing was fighting. Along the way, though, he made up lies after lies and manipulated me into believing that we could be together. He promised me for over a year that once he will be able to drive he could see me, but that never happened. He made promises to me that never happened.
It took me three long months to get myself out of depression about the question, did this really happen? I found myself crying every day and needed to go to a social worker in school. My dad knew some of the story, because along the way I told him bits and pieces. My dad warned me though. I got hurt.
Traits of a sociopath
He has all the traits of a sociopath, which my social worker thought too.
Glibness and Superficial Charm, Manipulative and Conning, Pathological Lying, Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt, Shallow Emotions. When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
Callousness/Lack of Empathy. Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others’ feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them. Promiscuous Sexual Behavior, Infidelity, Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts
He showed all of that along the way. This went on for over a year. Now he has stopped talking me for good, but I still feel like he will come back. His new victim, or would you say girlfriend, is a new girl who was new to his town who just had moved on. Perfect target.
Broken heart
I had to sum the story up, but it was really more to that. There were a lot of tears and me crying over him for a year and a lot of fighting. I took a lot of verbal abuse from him. My life revolved around him, with me blowing off homework and studying to talk to him. Me trying to make the effort to be with him. I loved him and I put my everything into him because I convinced myself that he loved me.
It’s been seven months since he stopped talking to me, but I still think about him everyday. I am traumatized by him, and still have a broken heart. I did spend a lot of my money on him, but did it cause I believed the lies he told me, but he just used me to get to what he wanted. He wanted me to go along with his sick fantasies. He never cared about me, and never will.
Mandy and LF Friends,
Mandy-While I am sorry you had this experience at such a young age, as others said you can use the experience to learn about yourself so that you can have healthy relationships and educate other people in your life about sociopaths. As a teacher of young adults, I am especially moved by your story, the maturity you have shown, and your willingness to seek help, information, and understanding with regard to what happened. I am also very moved by the responses you received – as always this community’s willingness to reach out to anyone regardless of age, gender, sexual preference, etc. is heartwarming.
Donna- Thank you for posting this letter – it really is enlightening to see that the setting and characters can change but the behaviors are consistent even at an early age. Given what I learned through my own experience, I am certain that I have had at least four students in recent years who I can say would likely be diagnosed as sociopaths… the most recent one last year was the most scary because he was so cunning, convincing, controlling and, sadly, so exploitive of the young girls.
As an aside, this whole “conversation” reinforces something that I have been thinking about more frequently: that when we learn and know what to look for in terms of sociopathic behaviors and traits, not only do we see them more clearly in the sociopaths who have deceived us, we can also see so many more of them in our society and communities!! Sometimes I feel like I am “diagnosing” too many people that I encounter as S/N/P’s but then I also remind myself that if it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck….well then it’s a DUCK!! No more rationalizing for me, LOL!
Hecate’s Path
Well even though you diagnose so many sociopaths, there are more good people..like all these good people like us coming together which makes us stronger. We all can relate to eachother and im only 15 and hes only 17. And for skyler here is a situation that reminded me of that. I remember callling him and asking him are we buying eachother gifs for valentines day? He said if you want putting it on me so i said I would. I bought him a gift, and he told me he will send me flowers or suprise me and find me a really good gift he said anything that I would want. He told me he will send it through the mall, think my gift ever came?…..Nope. Another promise that was broken. I felt like crap when it came to returning the gift. and when i told him i bought him one i remember him acting all exicted and glad, but really glad that i spent money on him and he was giving me nothing in return.
send it through the mail*
Mandy,
Reading your story made my heart hurt, and then muss over some songs by Aimee Allen (I absolutely love her music!)
sooo…..this is where you were (listen carefully to the lyrics)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWW5upmsAlY (A Little Happiness)
and this is where you will be (me too…hopefully soon!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW3o7B3L36U&feature=related (On Vacation)
Xxoo
Hi Mandy,
Yeah…..I know what you feel on the giving of gifts and you get nothing….
For 9 months I gave nice cards of encouragement (he claimed to be so down) and lent him money (what a dumb thing) and paid for dinners when he was “broke” ( he lost his job and his new one paid less)………..I bought a few gift shirts and his kids a few toys…..
Not once did I get a card or one little flower (I once hinted I didn’t need a bouquet of roses only a little wild flower would do)
One of the cards was entitled “To A Good Guy” about being a good father and being father’s day, (he had two kids from former marriage) I thought it was a nice idea to give him this. He seemed to love and cherish his children……The card went on about being a “good guy”…….Now, most people would read the card and look up with a smile and say” thank you, how nice!”
Know what he did? He had no smile and kept looking down at the card……Then he said in a cold voice, “So you think I’m a good guy…..” and he never looked up, never said thank you or smiled……..Did he feel guilty? Nahhhh……He more then likely was hiding how delighted he was in his deceitfulness…and what more he would take from me.
Yes, they are takers…..but we won’t let them or anyone else take from us, now will we?
I was thinking about your question about cruelty to animals. I only know with him, that he told me he didn’t like pets. He didn’t like dogs….but he liked rabbits……had a pet rabbit once……when he was a grown man at that,,
I can only think that a rabbit would be a perfect pet for a sociopath…..I represents us don’t you think? Like we are scared rabbits when they hold the control……
Sky, what do you think about that? Oxydrover? Imagine a poor scared, caged rabbit?
So, Mandy, it is the same with all of us…..They take from us what we let them take…..with the boundaries we will set for ourselves, we will be strong and not allow this to happen again….
I have set boundaries for myself and if works so well. I met a man at my friend’s house and after a very nice conversation of 40 minutes, he said, ” Let me give you my number for you to put into your phone and then call me right back so I have your number.” I didn’t feel comfortable with him having my phone number at this time…..Soooo……I took his number but didn’t call him right back and still have not called since I don’t want to now …..So I can choose to loose his or call when I want to ……He didn’t ask me if it was okay to have my number……that is what bothered me……he “told” me what to do…..The point I am making is that with boundaries we can avoid the pitfalls of slipping into another bad relationship no matter what…..
Higs!!
I will deffinatly listen to that music! and to Vision I believe we let them take things away from us and were able to give them things without anything in return because deep down we were hoping and waiting for our sociopath to be the good guy that we want. We wanted him to give us gifts back or atleast treat us the way we expected. We all have ideal pictures in our head of how we want a relationship and we were just waiting for our person to come around and give us that. I am really glad to hear that you have done that, I mean now we know the signs of a sociopath and how they act. So keep your guard up, but not to much cause we dont want to let the good ones go. So just take it slow at first. theres a difference between a sociopath and just a normal guy being a asshole.
Vision, smart move with not calling the number.
I’m so stupid I would’ve called right back. Not kidding.
It has become very apparent to me that I have not changed one bit, with my trusting everyone. Does anyone teach classes?
About the rabbit. I’m still confused with my xp’s love of cats.
I will describe what I experienced, but keep in mind that much of it could’ve been a lie:
He said that he always loved cats and used to play with/feed all the wild cats in the neighborhood. He had dozens as a child. He told me that his mother once took all the cats and put them in a bag and drowned them in the river. (remember, he hates his mother for divorcing his dad when he was 12) His mother very recently told me it’s not true. He did play with cats but her best friend’s boyfriend drowned the cats. At which point the best friend dumped him.
When I met him he had a dog named “dog”. That’s the best he could do with a name. But later we kept finding cats and I would adopt them. I gave them beautiful, unique names. After a few years, XP, would “remember” that HE had come up with that name. This happened with each of the 10 cats over 25 years.
He kept a picture of our first cat in his wallet to show people as his “son”. Later, he kept a picture on his laptop screen of a different cat. I had dressed that cat as “puss n boots” for halloween and made him take a picture. One day he said to me: “When I go into a restaurant I’m just any guy, but when I show the waitress the picture on my laptop, EVERYTHING changes” He had a wicked smile on his face.
He used his “love of animals” in stories about how he saved that kitty or bird, or how he would move the dead cat out of the road. Especially if he thought you were beginning to perceive his real face – he would come up with an animal story really quick to insert into the conversation. My evil neighbor with 10 cats began to do the same thing. I started to realize that witches use “familiars” or pets, just to lure you into thinking that they are animal lovers and that skews your perception of them.
Also, I had one very dear cat named Julian. The day he died, my xp came to the house crying and said he found him dead on the road. My radar picked up something strange and I got the intense feeling that he was feeling pleasure. This was 9 years ago, before I knew what he was. But now I think he bashed Julian in the head with a rock, but maybe not. Maybe he found Julian dead and just couldn’t help feeling pleasure knowing that I was going to be suffering.
Lastly, I now understand that he kept bringing home cats – I have 5 – in order to keep me hostage in the house. He knew I could never abandon my cats, and where does one go with 5 cats? I put all 5 into my little tiny car and left him anyway.
Thats intense, my s/p wanted other things from animals. but i guess it for all similar reasons for the control into getting what they want.
One of the things that infuriates me the most about sociopaths is how they steal innocence, or at least try to.
Whether they are molesting a child, manipulating a young girl, or conning adults, they always seem to leave us less trusting/ innocent than before they came into our lives.
Anf06/Mandy: You are a young girl with your whole life ahead of you. Although the experience and aftermath with this boy has been painful, the good news is that you are now armed with critical experience/information that will guide you in making wise decisions for the rest of your life.
It is very possible that the boy who caused you so much pain will come again one day in a different man’s body. He will have a different face, and he may be running a different con.
But, the core sociopathic traits will still be there. Hopefully, you will use your knowledge to recognize these individuals for what they are right from the beginning, and spare yourself the pain/anguish that these types dump onto their victims, and society.
You are a smart young lady with a very bright future. Don’t waste it on losers.
*The pop culture media is teaching you (young people) something completely opposite of what I am about to tell you right now: They like to glamorize “love” & sex in the media, because that is what sells. That’s the bottom line when it comes to movies, TV, and mags. Nothing more ($$).
That, however, is NOT real life.
Nobody that I know has a full team of hair and makeup people surrounding them, painting them up and spraying them down just before they have sex. Do you know what I mean? That only happens in movies and on the covers of magazines. (Actually, Erin B. may be the exception. She just got bouncy hair.)
It’s totally staged and MANIPULATED (by the best photographers in the business) to look hot and sexy, just like something else we all know about. So, don’t fall for the false images in your everyday life, OR in the media.
If you want a loving relationship, then sex should be with someone you LOVE, and who LOVES you back.
Be true to YOURSELF, and the guys will come. The right ones.
Men will NEVER tell you this. But, they really will respect you if you choose to wait. (They may not wait with you, but they will respect you for waiting.)
Actually, Mandy, you sound like you already know this.
But, I am posting it anyway, in case other young girls may be reading.
Thank you for sharing that. I remember when he had a new girl right after we ended I remember being on the phone so angry saying how can you have another girl right after me (like a day after) I love you and he sat on the phone laughing with a big smerk on his face and said you still love me? They dont care and they never will.