Editor’s note: A Lovefraud reader, we’ll call her Betty, sent her story. It’s a tale of a run-in with a female psychopath who likes to destroy people for the fun of it.
I got divorced and moved from Texas to California. I was 45 years old, and was hoping to transition from my career as an RN. I’d worked in the newborn nursery and the increasing numbers of drug dependent newborns were breaking my heart — I was experiencing burnout. I tried physical rehabilitation for adults, but that too brought me in contact with awful suffering, and I didn’t have enough to give my patients. I had a painful divorce and a painful career, and made the decision to pull myself together and start over. That’s when I met the person I think is a female psychopath.
I interviewed in the art history department of a large university, with the then-graduate adviser, Dr. Wilma (not her real name). I didn’t understand then how fragile I was, but I feel certain she knew in an instant. The fixed stare was there — I thought at the time, “What an intent, alert, person with so much energy!” I felt flattered that she seemed so interested in me. Writing that, I still feel a creepiness, sense of shame at being taken in, and a curling fear in the pit of my stomach.
Perfect victim
I craved attention, though I would have denied it. Looking back at my life, I can see how I trained over the course of it to be a perfect victim for abuse. My dad was an alcoholic, the mean drunk kind, and my mom was so gently needy. The overall feeling in our house was one of walking on eggshells, and the message to me was, “try hard and fail” because my older brother was the “successful, responsible child” so that left me with the “failure” role. My first husband was emotionally distant, and so was my second — I poured myself into those relationships, and of course, I cared deeply while each of them did not, and the colder they were, the harder I tried, and tried. And I found a job just as destructive and abusive as those personal relationships. So when I interviewed for the art history department, I badly needed some confidence and a sense of achievement. I’d also had a couple of bouts of situational depression, following the death of my parents, and after getting divorced.
Dr. Wilma seemed drawn to me at once: She’d call me to come in early to her office, heap praise on me to other teachers, strategize with me over my academic future (she felt I should get a doctorate and teach at university, “Just like me”) — she acted like a close friend and benefactor, and we’d only just met. Deep down inside, I was uncomfortable. I was making straight “A’s” but I’d done that routinely as an adult, and I genuinely loved art history, and found tremendous pleasure in studying it and discussing it — but still, I was a beginner in the field, and I couldn’t get over the fact that she was talking to me as though I was a peer. The other feeling was slower to surface: She seemed to be looking at me in a calculating, almost predatory way, and it seemed strangely almost sexual and at the same time, had the stamp of ownership. I can’t express it any better than that. She’d compliment me, but then say things like, “You walked into my office with interest, but no real academic talent, but I thought, why not? I’ll give her a class! See how far you’ve come!” Not an insult based in reality, but not a compliment based in reality, either, because I was a solidly good student, and I had achieved a nursing education and professional license, and a bachelor’s in psychology after that.
My mentor
Soon she invited me to walk her dogs with her in the mornings, and I slowly began to see how controlling she was. The animals were hyper and had to be constantly engaged or they’d get into trouble. I’m a cat person, so I didn’t understand you have to constantly stimulate and over stimulate most dogs to get them to be that hyperactive. She’d ask my opinions, but then she’d make “suggestions,” which meant “do it or else.” Over the next few years, I committed to specializing in art history, on her appraisal of me as an “excellent student who’s going to make a wonderful teacher,” I took on the burden of student loans — and I put my Texas nursing license on retirement, and didn’t activate it in California or take continuing education in that area to keep the license active. Dr. Wilma let me know that nursing wasn’t really a profession, and with a bright future as an academic, I didn’t need it. I had a “mentor” now to take me over the road of thesis writing and guide me into a wonderful teaching career.
I was really so stupidly, inexcusably naive! She told me what I wanted to hear — that I’d have a new career if I continued to work hard, and that I had a mentor I could depend on to help guide me through the intricacies of academia. Exam after exam came back marked “A,” with praise written in the margins for my “fine work.” Papers, too, received “A’s,” and the criticism lead me to believe my writing skills were well up to standard, and constantly improving, as I was striving to do. She wanted me to visit her office almost daily, wrote long and frequent emails, she’d phone me at home for lengthy calls — and one day, I began to feel (though I shoved that down quickly as well) that I was almost being courted in a creepy way…and it felt weird, off and not right somehow. But how could I complain? She was charming, so eager to “help” me find my way, I felt at a disadvantage academically and I worked frequently twelve hours a day writing and reading, trying to master my chosen field of study. I didn’t want other students to know she “favored” me so extensively because I’ve always earned my way. I felt ashamed at possibly taking advantage.
Always a home
She invited me to her house, and told me, “You’ll always have a home here,” and again, it felt off… it was too much, too soon. In addition, there was something there in that the words didn’t match the lack of emotion in her voice and in her expression — her words seemed somehow rehearsed. But how could I be so ungracious? I so longed for kindness, and I so appreciated it…my eyes welled up with tears … and she smiled. It was not a kind smile, but a one-sided curl of a lip, a cruel smile that didn’t reach her eyes. As I mentioned, I have a bachelor’s in psychology, but even at that lower level without clinical study except in nursing, how could I not have known?
She wanted me to house sit and watch her dogs for a week while she and her husband went on holiday. She’d pay me $300, and having put every penny into school, I needed the job. By this time, I’d finished all the bachelor’s level courses and was well into graduate level work — I only had a year and a half left before I could get my Master’s and could begin my dream of teaching art history in community college. I was also $40,000 in debt with student loans.
The dogs were a nightmare to care for and had to be watched every minute because they were so hyper they’d tear up the house and garden. Now I understand they’d been trained this way in response to their owner. I didn’t get much sleep because they required so much attention, but they were fed, watered, exercised, groomed — in response to the 10 pages of instructions she issued, and her house was cleaned, laundry done, and everything left as found. I’d been instructed not to wait for the them to arrive home, but to leave the evening of their arrival, two hours before they returned.
Flier in the driveway
Three days later, I got a phone call from Dr. Wilma. I was instructed to come to her office very early the first day of school following break. I went into her office, and she asked me to wait there while she went to her car and brought her dogs in (she always brought her dogs to school in spite of rules of no dogs on campus). She brought the dogs in, she looked at her watch, she closed the door and I can only say that she transformed entirely right before my eyes. I’ve worked in psychiatric lock up wards in the course of my nurse’s training, and I thought I’d seen pretty much everything, but I saw a self-possessed, controlled and controlling, smooth, charming, poised academic turn into a snarling, spitting monster within literally a second. I feared for my life, sat in a chair backed into a corner, the dogs now cowering and whining at my feet. She advanced on me, screaming at the top of her lungs, “You betrayed me! I can’t believe I brought that (meaning me) from my university into my house!” It seems I had left a newspaper, one of the little local fliers, in her driveway and not collected it and placed it on her kitchen table with the rest of the mail. She went on for a full fifteen minutes, screaming that I was “crazy” (I had confided to her about my instances of depression), and more abuse that I’ve frankly and thankfully blocked out, because what I remember of what she shrieked at me was horrible and I’ll never repeat most of it to anyone. My hand shook, but I wrote out a check for the $300 and returned every bit of her money. It was only my training, and probably experience as an abused child, that allowed me to remain calm, size up the room, locate something that could be utilized as a defensive weapon should the need arise, and calculate that I could fit though the window. She was physically blocking the door. I heard my own voice from far away say absolutely calmly, “I AM leaving now,” and I will never know how I got up on shaking legs and made it through the door.
Swore to ruin me
She swore to ruin me, and she did. Her co-workers and underlings (the department is small and only had two other full-time professors) were so under her thumb and so like her that there was no place to go in the department. I couldn’t get an appointment with the dean to state my case or make a complaint or appeal — I was told I could only see her with Dr. Wilma’s approval, “She’s a very nice lady,” the dean’s secretary said, “I’m certain she’ll help you sort out whatever it is.” Camping out in the dean’s office didn’t yield an appointment, either. The Ombudsman promised help — only to reveal straight away in the meeting that, “I have no real power here and all records of this meeting are the property of the university.” I had taken my qualifying examination, the last step before thesis writing, and waited for 8 weeks to get my results, and still couldn’t find out if I’d passed or failed. Appointments weren’t kept, then they were rescheduled and not kept again. Finally, around the tenth week, the Ombudsman called me for a meeting with faculty. Dr.Wilma had brought the other two full-time professors with her, and they were all in attack mode. For two and a half hours, I was soundly verbally abused and called names — the Ombudsman gave up trying to control or run the meeting, and exhibited shaking hands. “You can’t just pay for a degree — you have to earn it. We owe you nothing — it’s 100 percent all on you now…What do you want from us?” Dr. Wilma demanded. “I want to know the status of my qualifying examination,” I replied, “No one will tell me.” “Well I’ve just decided right now, this minute: you fail!”
After they left, and I could finally cry, the Ombudsman said she’d only done counseling of sexual abuse patients, and this was her first case in an academic setting, and she said she’d never seen anything like it. It left me bereft of my belief in the virtues of the university, of learning, and to a very great extent, in human goodness. I felt my insides crumble that day. I was flat out. I broke.
I tried going to another university, driving three hours to another school. I did well in my classes and applied for acceptance in their graduate program. I was told it looked good because my transcript and submitted paper and interview had all been promising. But I’d told them the basics of the truth when the committee chair asked why I left the previous university. They phoned, spoke to Dr. Wilma, and you can guess the rest. After what I was told by a professor was the longest meeting in their history of considering a candidate (three hours), they decided not to believe my performance, the evidence of my character, my skills, or interest in art history and love of education — they believed Dr. Wilma when she told them I was crazy.
Crushed
That happened two years ago. I’ve been deeply depressed and felt worthless and hollow since. It truly crushed me, though I wish it hadn’t. I’m broke, and it left me $45,000 in student debts and no degree, so I cannot teach and have nothing to show for a tremendous amount of work. There was no appeal at the school, and lawyers apparently don’t take cases like this, especially on contingency. Reactivating my RN license and bringing it current in California would be tremendously expensive. I began to come out of shock very slowly, and began to meditate, face and recognize the pattern of being a victim — not that I ever deserved this situation, but how I was in fact an ideal candidate for it. I processed the pain of being the child of an alcoholic, an abused spouse, and having survived burnout from a tough profession. I grieved for my lost financial security, my almost new career and how much I truly loved teaching, I grieved for the good will that died in my soul when those three women worked me over in the Ombudsman’s office while the Ombudsman (a certified counselor) stood by and let it happen. I grieved for myself that I didn’t stand up more and tell them off! That I wanted something so badly that I allowed myself to be demeaned by three ethically deficit “teachers.”
I began Tibetan Buddhist meditation, and sought to learn to forgive. I believe in the healing power of forgiveness, but I’m stumped because I’ve seen something evil. I can only forgive as an intellectual act — my spirit is stuck and it’s very painful. I’ve cried buckets of tears and “LET GO” over and over, and I will do until I have healed. I now trust myself to build a new life, but at 55 years, it’s going to be hard to get a job where I’ve no experience, especially in this economy. I could have taught for a good 20 years, paid my student debt, and provided for myself, but things look bleak now.
Armed with knowledge
I know that there are so many people who have lost so much more than I have. I know it, reading these posts, I realize it I’m actually lucky because it could have been so much worse. If nothing else, I am now armed with knowledge, and can hopefully walk on by the next ruinous person I encounter without letting them into my life. But I will always be shaken by this devastation — not by a lover or a spouse, but by a trusted, respected, and admired teacher. And I still feel ashamed, and like it was somehow my fault — until I read your posts.
Thanks you, Donna, for listening to my story. It’s healing somehow, and it helps me to know that I will recover from this. It has given me understanding and compassion for those who live with this these fundamentally lacking individuals. I so admire their strength and courage to survive and rebuild their lives, and also the genuine love and support evidenced on your site.
Learn more: Comprehensive 7-part recovery series presented by Mandy Friedman, LPCC-S
Lovefraud originally posted this article on March 4, 2009.
How knowing the truth about sociopaths changes everything
It’s really something to have a space where I could tell what happened and find acceptance. One of the hardest thing is the rejection by my immediate family about what happened. They don’t want OVER – no mention, no discussion — with the implication that I failed to manage the situation properly and/or it wasn’t really that bad.
I don’t want to think about this 24/7 or have it impede my getting on with my life one second longer than I have to, but when I wrote that it broke me, IT DID. It was like a huge part of me died. I don’t want to use this as an excuse not to move forward, but it weighs me down. This is the very first place I’ve felt safe discussing it.
That, aside from good manners, is why I keep thanking you guys. It goes beyond validation and into healing to hear what you have to say, and to be able to tell the absolute truth about what happened and what it did to me.
Opps! I meant to say “my family want it to be OVER”
greenfern: He kept insisting putting out his cigarettes on the cactus. He basically used it as an ashtray. I thought of the cigarette burns he had all over his arm, they were very old scars.
The more I think about all the things S would damage, in his mind they were me, a representation of what he would like to do to me. How twisted, or, to put fear in me to be nice to him and conform to his rules in my house. No way, it was not happeneing, in the end, when the fog was lifting to reality. And my anger began to come, to the reality he has gone too far.
This behavior I think goes back to childhood. I read somewhere that “EXTREME unreasonable immature anger” that is not corrected between 4 and 5 years old will be carried into adult hood.
I AM NOT talking about anger in healing. In healing you do have to get angry, mad as heck, and fed up as part of the process. With my anger I used that to talk of the situation to the S.
The article also said this anger at 4 or 5 years old, if there was parental intervention to correct the inappropriate anger response then, or even later in counselling, it could modify the intense unreasonable anger response. The S I knew had this anger of a 4 or 5 year old, and did not learn as a child to feel anger appropriately as an adult and did not care to change it, therefore he damaged my stuff.
That adds to the sickness of the S. After I bought the car that he needed to drive to work, we had a disagreement, (he could not get any credit and someone totalled his car and insurance value only did payoff), he ran to his new car and took a key and keyed his own car, a four foot long scratch that is still there.
With your post of the cigarette burns on his arm, that brought to mind, the scratch he put on his car, the car that was supposed to be for both of us, for us on weekends. Thanks.
I once had someone tell me, “He (S) , was the kid in the playground, that no one wanted to play with. Yes he was, a 4 or 5 year old in a 50 something year old body.
Betty: Sorry for interrupting with my post.
Re: It’s really something to have a space where I could tell what happened and find acceptance. One of the hardest thing is the rejection by my immediate family about what happened.
I feel the same with being here to vent and get validation, there are really N/S/P in the world and are destructive.
My family and friends did not want to hear it anymore. They are in denial of what the “Whole” situation was. I have had people say it takes two to tango. No it does not. An N/S/P does the tango alone, and pulls the unsuspecting in with them.
I didn’t go through that, with physical things being damaged, and it’s got to be hard. Personal belongings are an extension of self. Similar disregard was shown to me by having my education derailed on a whim. Basically, you get devalued, and that hurts.
This might be a key : people who love you/ care about you treat you with respect, period. Consistency: the words match the actions so “I love you” means I demonstrate that I value you by the way I live my life. You aren’t constantly walking on eggshells, trying to guess what’s in the other person’s heart or mind because they’ll communicate honestly with you. You aren’t constantly pleading for consideration and acceptance.
But when you are treated badly, it’s much harder to recognize that actual love is overall nurturing and not overall draining, much less enduring death by a thousand cuts.
Matt: Yeah, mine was also a one-man destruction crew when it came to my home and belongings.
I thought I was the only one that experienced the destruction of household things and have knicks and scratches on, or some things that mysteriously disappear in the yard during a disagreement.
I could have used your expertise years ago and the advice you offer, as a legal back up.
When I would find a new thing damaged I would not say anything right away, and then more things were damaged for the lack of a reaction. S would say I rage. Hardly, it was a question of what happened to this? There is no one else here that could have done that, but this was part of the thought out plan, to bring me down to mental incapacity, ie. the pre-nup, to make it invalid. If he did get the house, how would he pay for it? He cannot hold a job. My income would be lost and he still would have no money. The rage was a projection of himself, to his disturbed reaction to anger that I posted above.
The Louis Vuitton bag, it is different when it happens to them.
The S was always concerned where his CD’ were and accused me of having one here and there, it was the other way around, he took mine and denied he had them, until he brought them in the house to listen to, and the still denied he had them. Kid games and greed.
It feels as if I was his mother, he wanted to be taken care of, fed, driven around, etc..
Do the S’s in addition to be greedy and ripping you off, realize in my case, that they cannot take care of themselves? His rent is always paid three weeks late and says the landlord talked of throwing him out. Too much party hearty, he worked 6 months now unemployed.
I’m curious as to why these two things happens:
1. The victim “breaks”.
2. The victims family gets tired of listening, and/or cannot understand.
Are those two things related?
Is it a temperamental thing on the part of both victim’s and their families? My wife and my own family quickly grew tired of my stories, introspection and obsession, and did the exact same thing:
“Jeez, just get over it.”
“It’s not all about you!”
“So go work at a place where you don’t have to be around those kinds of people.”
I never got any good advice or words of wisdom, let alone a: “Git yer trucks and yer pitchforks and torches, ’cause nobody messes with our family!”
It’s not that my family didn’t care, it’s that they just couldn’t get it. Intellectually, I mean. I’ve always had to go outside of my family to find people who were willing to discuss and ponder this issue — a developmental psychologist teacher who I’d met, my latest supervisor who liked talking about dirty players, a motivational speaker who’s ear I chewed off on a dinner cruise once — did get it. I think you have to find people who have either experienced such a thing, or, who are intellectually curious and capable enough to understand how and why these things happen. I have my own mental model about how and why sociopathy evolved and works and exists but it’s abstract and hard for me relate to my family.
I even dropped an “expert”, a therapist I went to for a year because he just couldn’t get it. I didn’t want a sympathetic listener, or deep psychoanalysis, EMDR, or any of that crap (at least past the first few months). What I needed was simple answers:
1. How do I make myself less of a target?
2. What do I do if this thing happens again, despite all my best efforts?
3. How do I fight these kinds of people, if it comes to that, without risking serious jail time?
4. How do I get those closest to me to understand?
That therapist did offer books and some ideas, but when they kept demonstrating that they couldn’t fully understand the dark side of humanity (For chrissakes, psychopaths can come from any MBTI type? Sheesh!), I quit going. I found better answers for free on the internet, and a lot quicker.
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Student Of Sociopathy
Is opn, et al,
The “it takes two to tango” and “it takes two to fight” is drummed into us when we are kids and it is WRONG!!! It only takes a bully and a victim to “fight”—-I realize that some people DO “provoke” fights, but the Ps not only provoke fights but they ATTACK first and the “fight” starts when we HIT BACK! Reminds me of the joke about the two kids fighting and the mom asked how it started and the one kid says “It all started when Johnny HIT ME BACK!”
When my kids were pretty young (maybe first and second grade) they got into fist fights every day. My P-son was at that time the “little angel” and my older ADHD son was into everything, so it usually ended up that the older kid got the punishment until one day I heard my P-son provoking my ADHD son so much that Jesus himself would have decked the provocateur. So I told them at that point that I would no longer referee and that if there was a fight they both got punished.
It went on DAILY for six months and I wondered if they would ever stop scrapping, then one day I heard one of them say to the other, “If you do that again, I will hit you and then we will both be in trouble.” After that I don’t think they ever had another physical altercation. Things went pretty well until the teen years for the P-son when he morphed into “Hell on Wheels” as a psychopathic criminal.
In speaking about the cigarette burn scars on your P–I wonder if he was tortured or burned as a child or as an adult if he did it to himself. Sometimes kids who are tortured and abused as children DO grow up to be P-like creatures that are unable to connect, and become abusers themselves. I am not sure if it is because they would have become a P anyway, or if it is because they were abused, or BOTH. A child tortured like that if by a parent would also have a P parent (so genetics) and a P parent assures a terrible childhood (environment) so they get the worst of “both worlds.”
He sounds like a dangerous man to me, though others might not think “killing a plant” was any big deal, I think because it is VIOLENCE in that case it was—he was “killing” you symbolically, burning YOU symbolically. OUCH. Creepy!
I’m fairly sure I read this idea on LF, but I’ve been reading non-stop for the last day or so, so forgive the lapse.
I think that part of the reason our family members have such difficulty hearing us about the sociopaths is that it violates their personal “comfort bubble” too much. This marriage, relationship, friendship is supposed to work THIS way: you don’t bring in stuff that rocks the boat at such a basic level. When we do, after or while getting stomped by a sociopath, and the family members aren’t themselves seeing the trauma we’re enduring, it’s hard for them. If we’d been in an accident and they could see bruises and a cast, they’d immediately empathize — but this?
Plus, as SOS said, we’re obsessing because we’re trying to wrap our mind around something beyond our experience, a total mind freak. We go into over-drive because the threat is real — but they can’t see it. This is tough stuff.
I want answers, too. I don’t want to spend my life in anxiety, guarding against the worst in people. And Holy Cow, Is Opn and OxDrover, I haven’t experienced this in my family — it was just school. I’d like to be aware and informed, and live my life with open eyes and an open heart, but not as a target for more of these very deeply scary people.
Betty, Hopeful, Elizabeth, SOS: One important thing in this story — Betty did not MAKE Dr. Wilma angry. This was never about the flier in the driveway. It wasn’t about whether the house was cleaned or dirty. The whole thing was just to create the final scene of yanking all the reality away from Betty. Dr. Wilma was running a long con. This was a deliberate set-up with the payoff being the utter destruction of the target.
I think we may be able to see it better in this sort of a non-romantic context. I don’t even know if Betty was particularly vulnerable; more likely just the person with the right “good” qualities at the time Dr. Wilma was looking for her next twisted “project.”
I have seen that rage, just about 7 months ago. Almost precisely two years ago I walked away from my “romantic” partner who revealed that our whole year and a half together had been a total malicious fabrication. He had destroyed my business, my livelihood, everything I’d worked for, and money that others had invested in me — the whole time doing a very convincing job of being my “faithful partner” in all things. I fled in absolute terror, in shock. As SOS put it, “I broke.” I kept trying to pick up the fragments of my life, but I was too deeply devastated to even consider tackling thing monster, and with the economy spiraling in the tank, I had no way to get back into the business I’d done for 10 years.
I was so thankful when a loud, brassy, but “goodhearted” woman invited me to help her build her business. And because she had such deep sympathy for my situation, I could stay as a guest in her house while I helped with the business and we both moved forward. In the six months around this person I witnessed so many details of dysfunction, but it looked different from the way the “romantic S/P” presented. I saw lots of pointless behavior. She had a “volunteer” who would work with her a couple of days each week and she would rage at that woman. I didn’t totally understand, but it had that “Faked” quality to it. Finally she set her sights on me. She would flip from sweet, helpful, appreciative, to shockingly, terrifyingly raging and abusinve in her language. And no, I DID NOTHING TO “SET HER OFF.”
Somewhere one expert described ‘psychopaths as “crazy people who don’t have the DECENCY to just go insane!” I really don’t think we can know what we’re getting into. The really awful part is that I think they look for people who HAVE to put up with them, for some reason or other. With Betty, the deeper she got into the academic program, the more captive — which made Dr. Wilma’s “duping delight” all that much more “fun” and dramatic. In my case, as a result of the earlier S/P, I had no other options in hand other than to live in this woman’s house and endure the abuse, hopeful that my work would pay off and I could get paid all those back wages. Which of course didn’t happen.
Betty, I believe that there are other similar victims. And armed with some solid support for this sort of dysfunction — that people CAN be crazy in the way that Dr. Wilma is — you may get your settlement and your fresh start, and Dr. Wilma may get her “early retirement.”
Thank you for sharing the story. It has many important little details that help to further explain the behaviors of these dysfunctional people.