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
Yes….I’m also NOT fond of her….and I think she’s become a real biatch to her guests and attacks them even.
Beyond prosecuter….just BIATCH.
They must get a nice paycheck to put up with her belittleing.
But …..I do like her guessts and some of the info…..
I hate how sher show runs the same tapes over and over and over adnaseum. She could run so much more news if she didn’t go on ‘replay’ as if it was the first time shown.
Dear Gem,.
Stephen King made a good living making up Psychopathic stories—-but no one believed’em.
If we tried to write our stories as truth, few people would believe them unless they’d experienced a P before they read the story.
EB, agreed. I got hooked on her during the Casey Anthony spathisode, and never wanted to miss the newest information, and have been watching most nights, ever since…but yeah, I think it’s part of her persona to be ugly to people, and I’m sure they are paid very well.
if i wrote a book about my life with my mother it would read like a stephen king novel – she is locked up in a rest home for the mentally challenged – i lived in fear of her until she was an invalid – how sad.
Stephen King makes money because people can relate to evil if it’s cloaked in horror and fantasy, but they can’t relate to it in the real world.
I think that’s where stories like Rosemary’s baby come from…no one wants to believe this species exists here among us in real life…so it gets mythologized. That way it is both revealed and concealed simultaneously. By turning these experiences into fiction we nullify them, making the story less threatening.
I’m sorry, hens. That is sad.
Kimmie:
“no one wants to believe this species exists here among us in real life”so it gets mythologized. That way it is both revealed and concealed simultaneously. By turning these experiences into fiction we nullify them, making the story less threatening. ”
What a brilliant statement!!!
Well I personally gave birth to “Rosemary’s baby” and I think Henry must be my nephew, because his egg donor I think is the daughter of the devil himself, making her a sister to my P son!
Kimmie, the happy part of Henry’s life now is that his egg donor is locked up and can’t get out to hurt him!
Thanks, EB.
Tanya,
I can totally relate. When I confronted my sociopath ex about some concerns I had for my safety, he turned things around on me, claiming he was the one who was scared of me and that he’d been carrying his handgun with him to defend himself! Thankfully, the police believed me and wanted to file an order of protection and investigate him further by contacting his former employers (supposedly the U.S. government and large biotech companies) but I thought that would only give him reason to come after me.
The way they turn things around is mind blowing, and the fact that it’s so difficult to get people to believe us is incredibly frustrating!