UPDATED FOR 2024. Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following from a reader who we’ll refer to as “Tanya” about her experience of trying to expose the sociopath.
I was 35 when I met my sociopath — we’ll call him Dave. I was in a top twenty graduate business program — a magnet for narcissists and sociopaths, by the way! A culture that so prizes appearances, financial accumulation, and power must seem irresistible to people with those disorders.
Dave seemed so great at first — attentive, interesting, intelligent, open, honest, fun. My friends warned that he was too flirty — but I only took that as a sign that he was desirable and, hey, I won him over when others had failed.
We were off and on for a few months — the usual drama of dating a pure sociopath took its toll right away. He did very scary things early on, like drink and drive, show up at my door in the middle of the night, call a dozen times a night, etc. etc. In the alcoholic daze that is your typical business school culture, his behavior didn’t stand out as much as it might in real life — but it really should have at the time.
He’s engaged
Finally we broke it off completely. Then one night I got a call from him — he was in Brazil on holiday (he lived there for a few years before coming to Business School) and he was calling to tell me that he was engaged to a girl he’d met there. He put her on the phone so that she could be reassured that he was no longer involved with me. I thought it was crazy, but in my own attempts to CONTROL the crazy (always the first mistake), I took it upon myself to tell his friends at school about the call. I framed it like “Congratulate Dave! He tells me he’s engaged!” He was furious with me when he came back and his friends no doubt thought I was insane.
Later, his “fiance” called me a few times trying to find him. I “googled” her name on my computer — again in an attempt to control the crazy— and found that he had been emailing her from my computer during the time we were dating. Then I found emails he had sent to a sex tourism site called Club Hombre. Over the previous two or three years, he had posted HUNDREDS of emails to this site, explaining his sexual exploits with prostitutes all over the world. His “fiance” was a prostitute. On the boards, he talked a lot about having unprotected sex with prostitutes in Rio and Turkey (both high HIV areas).
I reported what happened
I was so petrified. I went to the school clinic and explained my situation. The nurse told me that I had a one in thirty two chance of having HIV and I had to wait a week for test results to come back (thankfully, negative). During that week I went to my school counselor (a 27 year old kid new on the job) and tried to explain my situation. I brought in print-outs of the postings Dave had made to the sex site, and a note from the clinic explaining the risks he had exposed me to. I wanted to somehow get this guy on record before he put other women in our school at risk, even if it meant humiliating myself. The counselor was skeptical. He asked me if I wanted to file a restraining order and I said “no.” I thought that would only make things worse.
As per procedure, he had to bring Dave in as well. When he asked Dave if HE wanted to file a restraining order, Dave said “yes!” So, as a reward for my efforts to work within the system, I got a restraining order filed against ME for harassing DAVE. One of the worst days of my life.
Can’t control the crazy
That was three years ago, and I still definitely bear the scars of the experience. I try to put the details out of my mind and, even as I read this, I can’t believe it happened.
I do my best to not fault myself for getting involved in the first place. As so many others on your site have said, I was behaving normally in an abnormal situation. What I DO fault myself for is trying to CONTROL the crazy. Every time I tried to control it and expose the sociopath, I only made things worse for myself. The true trauma wasn’t the stuff that happened between me and him, but the stuff that happened when I tried to expose him to others. It was so awful to see how easily sociopaths can bend the system to their will. Before then, I believed I lived in a just, fair world and that I could trust the system to protect me when I needed it. After Dave, I know now that I have to protect MYSELF.
When I’m philosophical about it, I just think that it’s only human to want to believe that we live in an ordered, just world. We want to believe it so much that we ignore the disorder and unfairness RIGHT IN FRONT OF US, and this blind spot is where the sociopath functions. I’m so thankful that I emerged with much less damage than some others. I only wish that there was a way to constructively deal with this — to raise awareness about sociopathy in the same way that people raise awareness about cancer or drug abuse.
Thank you again for your site — it was cathartic to share my story.
Learn more: How to report your abuser’s crimes so the police take you seriously
Lovefraud originally posted this story on Dec. 16, 2009.
How the messages we hear all our lives keep us vulnerable to sociopaths
Guys, I think TW is a high level N and lower level P, but that doesn’t mean he is not a selfish arse DELUX VERSION and feels ENTITLED to whatever it is he wants.
Yea, his game is off because he lost “supply” and got publicly outed. He lost a great deal of income from his being outed, his golf game was probably not 1/10 of his income, it was endorsements. He may have a 50M$ house but he is gonna be on welfare before long if he doesn’t get to putting the little white ball in the holes on the green pretty soon. He NEEDS to get on O and FAKE a “oh, so sorry” gig or he will never recover. Actually I don’t think he will recover, I think he is on his way to the pits with the rest of the bottom feeders. Good enough for him in my opinion.
Did anyone watch Oprah today? The story of the “child brides” of Rev. Tony alamo? That man is such a scumbag, makes TW look like St. Francis! Those girls have guts and back bones, and some of their mothers testified FOR Alamo in his trial while the girls testified against him. WOW!
As for the “stare” they in my opinion take the return STARE as a CHALLENGE and in most cases I think it makes them more determined to kick you down, but like EB said, if you just show that you are not going to back down, but not going to attack either, they may back off rather than percipitate a fight.
Remember, they don’t have a normal fear reaction…or impulse control, so challenging them could provoke a suicide effort on their part. Believe me I’ve done too much of that and only found out in retrospect it was a BAD IDEA TO DO. Hind sight is 20/20.
Some of them will go into a “shoot out” with you, some will be “sneaky” with you and stab you in the BACK.
Some will actually LITERALLY “suicide by cop” or murder-suicide if you hurt them too badly. Some may try to kill you with the deluded idea they can get by with it, like Scott Petersen.
It sort of depends on the situation and what level of violence they are involved with. I tend to be pretty cagey now with someone I consider a real psychopath because I think many of the higher level ones are definitely capable of extreme violence and lack a lot of judgment.
A stare is different than eye contact.
I’m suggesting eye contact…..with intent. Like you would do in a business meeting where you wanted to say something with intent and have it be heard. (NOT that a S hears anything).
In a business meeting you would not look down or away or ‘behind’ the contact person(s). You look directly at them.. You don’t stare at them…..staring is blank.
Oxy….”Some will actually LITERALLY “suicide by cop”” SHIAT….if we could only be so lucky!!!!!
Only if it is BEFORE they kill you! That’s the horrible thing about them, sometimes they are like the guy at the brewery who shot 8 or 9 people then turned the gun on himself because he got fired for being caught stealing. Of course it WASN’T his fault that he killed 8 people cause they had “discriminated” against him, even his family buys that EXCUSE. He wasn’t a “monster” his mom said, just a poor mistreated guy who KILLED 8 OR 9 PEOPLE THEN HIMSELF.
Just like Tony Alamo was commanded by God to Marry an 8 year old. NOT! One of his “wives” said “Tony you said that they had to reach puberty first, so how come you married this 8 yr old?” and he said “God commanded him to do it, though others wouldn’t understand.” LOL
It is amazing to me how they can come up with EXCUSES that I think in some cases they actually believe for the most outrageous acts.
I totally think they believe everything they think or say….
This circumvents any sort of ‘obligation’ to feel bad.
The stare…I wish I could do it. I cannot believe what a wuss I have been. I have been completely obliterated by this guy and this is a guy that I had no problem telling off at the end of our marriage, and standing my ground when I started to put up boundaries with him. But he has me flailing around like the fraidy cat I am or have been rather! I have to get this together. When I was in court a couple of months ago I just wouldn’t look at him at all. I pretended he wasn’t there….and I felt so alone…no attorney with me, trying to fight this myself….and now trying to understand what EB you say about bspath. I am starting to get it. I see how he acts like theh authority and everyone believes him. THe funny thing is I can be just like that…when I am wtih clients, or teaching medical students….but I have lost my confidence around this creep hence the hiding and shaking and inability to speak like the intelligent, usually calm person I am. I end up feeling full of fear, shaking, unable to get what I need to say across. And that makes me look emotional and just like he tries to make me look….unhealthy, unfit, whatever. Wow, I need to really continue to work on this…and as I trust in my resilience and ability to face reality I know I can let go and move on.
EB–thanks for the inspiration. i’ll take that attitude with me into the court room and in each transition with our child. Tells me today child said, “Mommy tells the truth.” He didn’t like the inference of this insightful toddler–reminds me of your post above. Questioned me about it, had I been saying bad things about him to child. (I have not, I WILL not, I do not for the sake and love of my child.) My cool response, cold eye contact and firm statement sent him on the defensive! I LOVE breaking that conflict cycle. TOWANDA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think ya’ll are right about the eye contact as an effective tool to establish your power and limits on their BS; but when I wrote that post I was thinking about disengaged disinterest to not feed the N’s ego. They hate not been interesting, funny, charming, right, all-knowing etc., as we know. It’s so important to have a variety of tools and know when and how to use them, this goes as much for drills and wrenches as it does for psychological manipulation, I find.
I think it is so interesting that Elin is studying psychology. I think she knew his personality type and knew that nothing, not
even a beautiful, loving caring wife and mother to his offspring, would fix their marriage. I also think it is interesting how carefully she choose her words, “A marriage without love and trust is good for no one.” Or words to that effect–I know exactly what she means. It’s hard to love someone who can’t love you back once you have see it clearly. It’s like an egg you can’t unscramble. Also, those words do not blame or publicly criticize Tiger, she’s a smart cookie–one thing that is evident from the course is his temper and foul language.
Dear Fearless,
The “disinterest” can be expressed I think by simply not rising to their bait and getting “upset” be like an attorney or a judge and “poker faced” without any emotion, just “matter of fact” about everything like he is a business client that you don’t particularly care for…disdain.
When we let them upset us we give them power over us. Even if they DO upset us we have to pretend they don’t and not let them ever see us bleed.
The British wore red coats so that in battle their blood would not show up (they should have worn brown pants too! LOL) but that is the thing we must do is NEVER LET THEM SEE US BLEED!
They want to see us bleed, to see us wounded, to see us hurt. That is their reward. I’m just too much of a stubborn old bat now to let them get that up on me. And as outspoken and as open as Ii am it is DIFFICULT not to show emotion.
Even my therapist when I changed therapists thought I was a paranoid delusional nut job and I had to take in my son as a witness and court documents to prove I wasn’t out of my gourd!
When I hired an attorney to fight my son’s parole until he saw the EVIDENCE I had that my son was a psychopath, he didn’t get it either, he thought I was a nut job!@....... NOW he gets it! LOL
I don’t tell my story much any more because I do KNOW THAT FEW IF ANY PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE A WORD OF IT….;that is what is nice about lovefraud, is that people here GET IT. They have lived stories just as crazy as mine, so they don’t think I’m a nut job or crazy or making this carp up!
Yea, I bet there is a bunch more story to the Woods’ marriage. Elin has been a Dignified lady about it all (except the night she went after him with the golf clubs, but I think she had been pushed to the brink on that night so I’ll let that one slide, I’d probably have done worse!)
His temper tantrums on the golf course and his other arrogant behavior and side-stepping I think all go together to show off his narcissism if nothing else.
Oxy, and all of you,–that Spath stare! My older daughter used to do it, started when she was around 16, she was having sex, drinking,prob. popping Es as well,totally out of control. My ex was no help, as with the strain of his biatch D, he started drinking again after nearly 10 years of sobriety. Then I had BOTH of them out to all hours geting pissed!If I challenged her in any way, even if I bent over backwards to couch what I was saying in soothing, polite words, she literally went berserk!Shouting, screaming,violent, one time she threw a red hot steam iron at my head,{luckily it missed by a hands breadth,}Shes 2 inches taller than me,Im 5 foot 8inches.
But that spath STARE !Actually more of a GLARE!! It used to curdle my blood. I literally used to shake when she was around me.! Where had my sweet, obediant, quiet, teen with straight “A” grades gone?
She left school and ran away from home for 6 months. The poice wouldnt even help me look for her.She was reading a paperback one day,”The Sh ining.by Stephen King.”I saw her looking at me over the top of the book, and Ill never forget the pure HATE in her eyes,it blew me away!My pastor told me she hada “walk in “evil spirit that came and went.Im sure it was true.Mama gem.XX You couldnt make this stuff up! No-one but LF guys would even believe it!!
Did anyone catch Nancy Grace tonight….Mark Klass was on and they were talking about the ‘cheerleader’ who was recently murdered and the guy who was arraigned today on murder and sodomy charges.
(I didn’t see the arrainment tape)…..but apparantly the guy was as cocky and antagonizing to the family with his looks at them…..
Mark Klass said Richard Alan Davis (His daughter Pauli Klass’s killer) was the same way to him in court the first time…. Mark Klass said he stared him down with a cold hard stare never wavering, and he stared at him until RAD looked down. RAD never looked directly at Mark K again he said.
Funny that came up tonight…..just when we were talking about it!
I missed it last night, EB, but watch it almost everynight, that and Jane Valez Mitchell. I can’t stand NG, but love her show. LOL. She has a way of getting to the heart of an issue doesn’t she?