Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following from the reader who posts as “Kerisee04.”
How does a person know if they have engaged in a friendship with a female predator? So often it is the romantic relationships that are discussed, and usually about male sociopaths.
First of all, it’s important to note that if you are a male, to the female sociopath, you either a sexual target or a source of financial gain. In my experience with the female sociopath, in her mind, there is no man beyond her reach. She has sexual fantasies about all men she encounters and runs scenarios in her head to accomplish her goal. In my naive state of mind, I had no idea this particular female sociopath was after my husband.
There really is no “friendship” with a sociopath. While the female target may feel a sense of obligation and social grace toward the female sociopath, the sociopath feigns sincerity. Some of the signals I missed were:
1. Back-handed compliments. “You dress frumpy. You need to find clothes that fit you better.” Or, “I know you don’t give your husband everything he needs.” Or, “Do you know how hot your husband is?”
2. Immediate soul-mate connection with my husband. “He and I are so alike.” Or, “It’s like we’re brother and sister. I understand him.”
3. Fake displays of emotion, similar to histrionics. She would fly off the handle over any changes that were made to plans, she would manipulate everybody to feel sorry for her and eventually give in to her out of pity.
4. Lack of boundaries. She would come over every day and stay until I literally kicked her out at 2 a.m. After I had surgery, I managed to stay up until 1 a.m. with her and my husband until I passed out from exhaustion. I found out the next day that she stayed until 5 a.m., alone with my husband in my living room.
5. Lack of shame. She would pull me into sexual discussions of fantasies, comparing sizes of anatomy, and playing games of truth or dare. These are things I would never under normal circumstances allow myself to take part in. No subject or dare was off-limits to her, and I was given the impression that she was my best friend and would keep all my secrets. Only later did I find out that she took mental note of everything I said to use against me when her lies finally came out.
6. Her attempts to be alone with my husband under the guise of platonic friendship. “He’s coming over to hang pictures for me.” And, “We met for lunch since we were both in the same area.”
There are so many flags I missed. Or maybe I didn’t miss them; I just ignored them. The most embarrassing of all is my nonchalant attitude when her affair with my husband came out. My husband (now ex-husband) had fallen victim to her seduction. Granted, things were not great in our marriage to begin with, but we had managed to be faithful to each other for seven years until she entered our world. My husband had a guilty conscience and finally came forward with their affair.
Read more: Guidelines for dealing with female sociopaths
When the female sociopath found out about this, she immediately resorted to histrionics. “I can’t believe he would do something like this to me. I finally trust someone, and they stab me in the back.” And, “It was an accident. We just went a little too far during the truth or dare game. Now you’re going to hate me and I’m going to lose my best friend!” She was flipping out and crying.
I had no time to think about the implications. I was thinking about the ways in which I could have unknowingly facilitated the affair. That’s exactly what she wanted. When I finally pulled away and talked with my spiritual elders, I told them I was worried about her. She was so messed up mentally over this that I feared she might hurt herself. After all, I was her friend. Then one of the elders told me something that finally turned on the light in my head: “Anybody that would do something like that to their friend is NOT a true friend.”
It took me a few hours to let that sink in and realize the magnitude of my situation. In the coming days and months, the story came out in bits and pieces. Some from my husband, who was trying desperately to hold on to me, and some from the female sociopath, who was trying to downplay the affair until she was backed into the corner with the truth.
When all her numerous affairs (we stopped counting at 30) came out, her husband slowly began to realize the predatory trap that she held him in. She had cheated on him throughout their entire marriage, sometimes dropping their two kids off at daycare for a “mom’s day off” and driving to another town for a quickie with one of her men.
When she talked with our mutual friends and elders about the situation, she was sure to exploit every secret I had confided to her and she would twist the truth to seem as though I coerced her and my husband into doing what they did so that I could divorce him. It all seemed so sincere. Except, there wasn’t a shred of truth to it. In fact, she was using projection. Her goal was to get me to say and do self-incriminating things so that she would have ammunition against me when everything hit the fan.
It was truly a time of awakening for me. There truly isn’t good in all people. Just most people.
Though healthy individuals like to believe that change is possible, I have come to the realization that when a person is animalistic in nature, contains no actual emotions or feelings, and looks for manipulation in everybody she meets, there is no possibility of healthy change. This female sociopath’s parents have held on to the hope for the past four years that she would change. They have even at times helped her out financially, only to be confronted with more of her lies.
There is much more to the story. This, in fact, is only a chapter—the first chapter of my entanglement with this particular female sociopath. But I feel it’s important for people to understand the complexities of so-called friendship with a female predator. It’s important to recognize the signs and for your own good, to never give them what they want.
Learn more: Survivor’s guide to healthy people and healthy relationships
Lovefraud originally posted this story on Jan. 19, 2011.
LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: I lied to myself as I became close to him again
Kerisee04,
I totally understand where you’re coming from. I learned a new term to describe the predatory female that I was friends with, “malignant narcissist”. When I first saw those two words used together like that it really clicked for me.
Like you, my story is very long & twisted. My ex friend was also the exgirlfriend of my exboyfriend(the sociopath). We bonded over everything the two of us went thru with our ex. Sounds nice & cozy & comforting knowing you have someone who knows exactly the way you feel, kind of like being on here. Right?! We would talk literally for hours on the subject of our ex, who also happens to be the father of our 2 daughters ( mine is 16 months old, her’s 10 years old). We always would talk about how worried we were for our daughters’ futures. Mind you this all took place before I found LF.
I knew she had multiple affairs when she was with my (our) ex. She cheated with her best friend’s fiance, her best friend having no clue as they were apparantly so close. Of course now they don’t talk, they even moved to another town to get away from her. BTW – they are now married. But anyway, like you mentioned above, a total disregard for her best friend’s feelings. Just feelings of entitlement for herself, and feeling she could have whatever she wanted because in her head “she is God’s gift to men”. Also too, a total disregard for feeling sorry for what happened. She didn’t care…she was only sorry she couldn’t keep the charade going on for her own benefit. Their affair kind of blew everything out of the water. That and the fact she was sleeping with her exboyfriend, who would make visits to their house when my ex was at work. Do you know how he found out? When he came home from work one day their daughter said “Dad, Uncle (name of the exboyfriend goes here) was over today.” Of course he knew exactly what was going on and was the cause of their break up.
The only reason she stayed with our ex was because of the money. She thought in her head he would always stay with her and give her whatever she wants no matter what because he loves her sooo much. She would spit on him, she broke his arm with a bat, she was never affectionate with him. She used their daughter as a scapegoat – she slept with her mom in her king size bed every single night her parents were together. Why? Because she didn’t want him sleeping in the same bed as her. Guess where he slept…on the couch. Coincidently…guess where their daughter started sleeping after they broke up…in her bed, in her own room. It almost sounds like I’m defending him. I’m not. The funny thing is…when I started dating my ex…he would tell me (jokingly) that he was in an abusive relationship(referring to the above mentioned narcissist). And he would tell me how I was an angel, and he loved that our relationship was so loving and drama free. Can you believe it?!?!
Back to the narcissist…when I became pregnant (by accident) that’s when all the trouble started with my ex. His true colors came out! He knew I was mentally removed from our relationship because I was ready to break up with him, but then I found out I was preggars. Because he knew this…behind my back he was trying to get back with his ex (the narcissist). All this time he should have been bending over backwards to make me happy, emotionally support me, be there for me, try to make the situation better for us. Of course on the surface he was doing that…even though I knew something was not right with the picture. And there he is telling his whore exgirlfriend how much he loved her, how much he missed her & their daughter, hom much he missed their life together. Of course you know SHE ATE THIS RIGHT UP. Finally vindication for her. She was already dating someone else at this time, and I honestly don’t think she would have done anything with our ex because she was never really attracted to him…he is cute…but to her he was only a cash machine. It just made her feel good. She was back on top. And of course our ex knew how to pull her strings…told her everything he knew she wanted to hear so she would be on “his side”.
To get to the heart of the story…she felt that both she and her daughter(who btw is the sweetest, loving, caring girl I ever met. Weird because her mother is a narcissist and her father a sociopath. Totally defies the odds on that one. And she truely loves her baby sister, my daughter sooo much) were always going to be number one in his life. The thought of a new baby taking away attention from her daughter totally sent her over the edge. How dare her ex go out and get some girl pregnant and take the spotlight off their daughter!!! That’s exactly the way she felt.
I didn’t become close to this woman until after I broke up with my ex. We met and talked when I was still with my ex, and she he was always nice to me, but it wasn’t until he was out of the picture we bacame close. Of course she feigned being sorry and understanding what I was going thru. I was very apprehensive with her because i knew her history from everything my ex and his sister told me about her. But she was being so nice and friendly. I thought “oh well”. It did feel good to have someone that knew how I felt. At this time too I had no clue my ex had this disorder. I was blaming everything on his drug abuse, which by this time was worse than ever before.
His ex (the narcissist) totally believed everything our ex told her. She thought his heart belonged to her forever, bear in mind the mother(me!) of his infant daughter was a single mom struggling thru all of this. She would tell me that he told her his heart belonged to her. How selfish can you be?! And she always led me to believe that they had this magical relationship. Never mentioned how she broke his arm, talked down to him, slept around on him, stole $30,000 of his money, the list goes on. Nope…never told me a word of this because she wanted me to think that essentially she was better than me. In her inflated head she never thought our ex or his sister would have told me all of this. No…I was just this nice, sweet girl who she knew she could manipulate. When I did call her out on this I told her I was always under the impression they were so miserable together. When I said that she said, “well…I was no angel” but never explained herself.
Sooo..the only reason we became so close was because how much her daughter loved her new baby sister(my daughter). I was even apprehensive about this because I honestly didn’t want my daughter anywhere near her father, but I thought if he knew he had this support it would make him want to get help for his drug abuse. But fast forward I know he is hopeless when it comes to his drug abuse, and of course i now know about his disorder as well. Do you know she knew he had this disorder when she was with him. A therapist told her. And she still continued to stay with him. I should say “use him”. So that shows you what kind of a woman she really is.
A couple months ago I told her I couldn’t let my daughter grow up with her daughter as sisters. Sad for her daughter…I really do love her. But if her mom really loved her as much as she claims she does she would have done everything possible to make sure she would be close to her baby sister. Not play games with me and let me think I was “second best” in our ex’s life. She truly is a sick woman. A malignant narcissist!!!
Like you said…it was a true awakening for me as well. Not all people are good…even though they come off this way. But the good part for us is we become stronger & wiser from our experiences! Her bad is making me an even better person.
It’s nice to know I’m not the only one affected by one of these people. And thanks for reading this long story. There’s still so much …you have no idea…but I gave you the “short” version!!
Kerisee04, thank you so much for writing this very interesting article. I appreciate the examples you wrote about, I’m so busy looking for these traits in a potential mate that I forget about looking at them in a friend. I don’t know how your “friend” found so much time to do all this! I was suprised to read that she is married and has kids, she must be one busy spath. I believe you are right that there is no possibility for any kind of change in these “people”, I prefer to call them pods (term originated by lostingrief) because they are not human as far as I’m concerned, the word you chose… “animalistic” pretty much sums it up.
Thanks Kerisee for showing us the tactics used by female predators. I have had several in my life and it’s true, they act like they are your best friend. For whatever reason, spaths, both male and female, have the ability to get under your skin more quickly than a normal person. You bond with them easier.
My crazy husband stealing neighbor was this way. I felt like she was such a nice woman. She portrays herself as harmless and an animal lover that feeds all the deer and squirrels and birds and takes in lots of stray cats. Then she told me she only dates married men. At the time, I tried to be open minded – and my brain had already fallen out anyway – so I said, “you can have my piece of shit husband, if you want” and laughed. Little did I know that she already did!! LOL! It must’ve caused her a narcissistic injury to know that that what she thought was stealing, was actually just taking out the trash!!! LOL!
Ahhhh! feels good to remember the fun parts of “when all the evil happened”.
In truth this woman was hideously ugly and a spath. She didn’t want to love a man, but didn’t want anyone else to have a husband either. She was filled with envy at anything anyone else has. This was apparent to my spath, who can smell emotions from a mile away. He is like a bloodhound for emotions and specializes in envy and shame emotions – as they all do. He smelled envy in her and decided to use her envious nature to pit her against me. He found several women spaths and a male one to pit against me. It would’ve been great to know the actual words he used.
I’m sure that he slandered me but somehow he also used my own good qualities against me by targeting their envy.
I had very long thick hair for a while and when he thought I was considering cutting it, he was adamantly set against it. Now I know why, he used it as part of seeding envy in others.
The only other thing that I know he told people is that I think I’m a saint and a do-gooder. I have never considered myself that way, but I can see how I must seem that way to him (aka SATAN).
That’s the interesting thing about studying spaths, you can get to the heart of certain emotions much more quickly by studying what spaths notice. Their higher emotions are shallow, but the primal ones run deep. They see everything as symbolic (they know the words but they can’t hear the music) of either envy or shame. It’s the only two buckets they have.
A female sociopath is incredibly deadly. I was married to one
One i would consider to be a socially adapt psychopath.
on top of it she was good looking extremely potent combination !!
She had army of powerful and influential ppl vouching her
how she was doing it ?
She carefully observed what kind of a person you are , what makes you happy, what is that you are embarrassed about how to gain you respect.
For eg if you are not a religious person but you respect religion she will appear to you as religious and pious
at the same time making you feel uncomfortable discussing details which you don’t know. IE
She will present herself to be an expert in the field in which you are not comfortable ,
There onwards the game starts . you will be showered with regular gifts(but not expensive), parties, you are special she will cook for you
in between she will tell you sob stories how tough life has been for her , in every story she is the victim , and then she will ask for something … Life is so hard but i still want to be happy would you be able to do this for me ?
your answer : of course dear
return on the investment 🙂
I was amazed by the kind of person details she knew about her boss . As long as she gets what she wants everything will be just fine the moment you start to say no there is problem , she will turn from sweet to not being so nice. if you still don’t give in you become the bad guy in her story and before you realize the magnitude of the problem its too late
She was doing the same with YOUR boss as well…. !!! cheers
The is just one dimension of her behavior in public
private behavior is much worse .
Pure Evil will always come in an attractive package.
When a decent person makes an indecent request it should immediately ring alarm bells. Any contact which such a person is extremely detrimental for your professional and personal well being.
Kerisee04,
After you’ve been involved with a sociopath, you feel like you’ve been put through a blender. Once you’re apart from them, you do regain your equilibrium, but you must keep them at a distance. Sociopaths don’t know the meaning of friendship – how to even be one. I’ve thought this about my h-spath – he lies to everyone, using his “friends”, involving them (unknowingly on their end) in some of his b.s. stories, each “friend” catching on that he’s toxic and dropping him. It doesn’t even register in his brain why he doesn’t have as many “friends” as he once did – gee, probably because you’ve stabbed people in the back and they’re sick of it. It’s actually quite sad that these individuals are plagued with this disorder – it controls them, not the other way around.
My experience with a female spath was awful. I’m still reeling from it nine months later. I met her at work and we had a friendship. The apt. above us became available and she moved into it. The hell started within three months. Looking back I see she first tried to drive a wedge between me & my husband. When that didn’t work she drove a wedge between our landlord and us. The landlord was a total pushover for her. She demanded things and witheld the rent till she got what she wanted.
She was (unkown to me) sneaking into our apt. thru the basement door. She took about three thousand dollars over a span of about six months. One of her tricks was to call the landlord all upset, then when he showed up she would get in her car and leave. Leave us with the landlord. Well, one time she called to say her locks were “jimmied” (who talks like that??). She demanded the landlord call the police on us. He told her to call the police herself because it was her apt. She would not. That got me wondering why she would not call the police herself. Lets see…she claimed she gave a massage to a guy in her apt. and then he wouldn’t leave and she had to go to work so she got in the shower. I told her she was NUTS…well she claimed he took all her rent money…what was she going to do??? She wanted us to give her the money for her rent and we did not do it. Now her locks are jimmmied and she still won’t call the police? I noticed by then she’d been robbing us slowly but surely taking a little at time milking it. So, back to the landlord and jimmied locks. The landlord showed up to change her locks and as usual she got in her car and left. I waited for her to come back and I called the police.
Yikes! The detective that came ran her plate number–what a looong history of larceny she had. I told him we were missing money and since it was cash I thought we had no recourse. He said we should have called right away. The landlord told the cops there was nothing wrong with her locks he just changed them so she’d shut up. Well, once she knew we found her out…BIG criminal record…the war was definelty on. She was a effing nightmare. We eventually got a lawyer to break the lease and moved. She got evicted.
One of the things I did notice about her was that she HATED other woman. Her name for women was the “c” word. When I first met her I thought this was a woman going thru a hard time in her life. I had NO idea this was how she lived ALL the time! I’ve been reading this site for a while and she does not fit the physical description of most of the woman that have been illustrated on here. She was short and heavy and her personallity was aggressive and mean. She had a few boyfriends but they never lasted cause she’d pick fights with them and argue and they just wouldn’t come back. She thought she was superior in intelligence to most if not all people, yet she used the wrong words in a sentence a lot. She went to nursing school 20 years ago and never graduated, and never paid a dime of her student loans. I remember her getting calls still to give them money and she outright told them they would never get dime from her cause it was their fault she never graduated..ugh. I see a lot of traits that she had were like a lot of the men that are written about here. I don’t believe she was lesbian or bisexual. Very confusing.
I’m dealing with the aftermath of this person. I could tell ya stories that would curl your hair! My trust in people is gone, I hope not for good, but I’ll never see the human race again like I did before I met her. She loved to hear of other peoples suffering and emotional pain. Once when my friend of 25 years son passed away, she called and I told her I couldn’t talk-upset about friends son, she said”You wouldn’t believe the day I had at work today, that effing “c” blah, blah, blah” I just looked at the phone I couln’t believe it…On and on with stories like that. When I tried to get untangled from her the story just gets worse and worse. In the end she got evicted…but walked away after causing us and the landlord thousands of dollars and not to mention the emotional pain I’m still in. I want to go to therapy but I don’t trust anyone I don’t know! Including therapists, co-workers, men, woman, children!
Thanks for letting me get some of the story out. It’s all jumbled cause I’m all jumbled. I appreciate the people that post and give good insight about these “people” I read the posts here pretty much everyday, so thanks.
Ana,
I hear you! There are more good, decent people in the world than sociopaths (in my opinon). We’ve had a hands-on education in human nature, that there are definitely some people to avoid in life (and for good reason) – they’re trouble-makers with a capital T. Put your education to good use, causing it to make it a better you, more “street smart.” That’s how I’m viewing it now.
Sounds like a night-mare, Ana. I’m glad you’re here. There are a lot of good articles in the archives, including several on the female type of psychopathy. It helps to learn as much as you can. I hope you’ll stick around and share more of your experience with us.
I just wanted to extent my cyber hand, and welcome you to LF.
Thank you for your replies Bluejay & Kim. Yes, I will keep on reading. That new article about the female sociopath made my skin crawl! Her whole thinking process and how she views people…scary.
Hi Ana,
Welcome to LF. When I first joined this website someone said “welcome to the worst club with the best people”. So True!!! I extend the same welcome to you!! It really is a safe place to come to…whether you just read the stories and articles and/or post your own comments…it really is a safe haven. I wish you the best of luck in regaining your life & sanity back!!
I, like you, would feel like my head was spinning with everything that was going on in my life. There’s an article on here about when you have a sociopath in your life it feels like your head is in the spin cycle of the washing machine. I think everyone on here can associate with that feeling. Again…good luck!!!
I read that article about the female sociopath as well. Scary indeed…at least she was brave enough to give us “innocent” people what their thought process is like. I can’t imagine living like that. It’s funny because I always wanted to know what was going on in my exboyfriend’s (the sociopath) head. I couldn’t understand how he could inflict all this pain & devastion on me. It wasn’t until I found LF that I got a very clear idea of what his thought process was like. LF answered all of my questions about him!
I was wondering if anyone heard about Jesse James – the exhusband of Sandra Bullock – getting engaged. He just got divorced in March from Sandra, due to his infidelity! He met Kat von di (I don’t know if I have her name spelled correctly) this past summer and started dating her. They just announced their engagement yesterday, and Jesse was saying how 2010 was the best year of his life, mind you he divorced Sandra in 2010 because of his cheating!!! That seems wrong on so many levels!!! He was also saying how his new fiance is the most caring & loving person he has ever met, and he is so lucky to have someone like her in his life!!! Is it me or does Jesse James seem like a true sociopath?!?! And does it seem like Kat von di is totally being lovebombed as well?!?!