By Fannie LeFlore, MS,LPC
Since she founded Lovefraud.com in 2005, Donna Andersen has heard heartbreaking and horrendous stories from people across the globe who’ve been victimized by sociopaths. Her new book does what we’d hope parents and schools do on a routine basis: Better prepare people for the complexities of real-life relationships and social interactions, whether business, romantic, family or friends. This requires, as uneasy as it may make us feel, acknowledging that some human beings simply are not interested in being decent, but actually seek to cause harm to others as a way of life.
Red Flags of Love Fraud—10 Signs You’re Dating a Sociopath, released in Spring 2012 by Andersen’s publishing company in New Jersey, goes where few books go in calling interpersonal abuse the evil it really is, and is backed up by Andersen’s extensive research combined with the depth of personal knowledge from having experienced a sociopathic ex-partner, first-hand. The book’s examples from diverse people who completed Lovefraud.com surveys explore the human degradation, pain, confusion and loss caused by exploitation, deceit and manipulation within personal relationships. The stories of those victimized by sociopaths show just how far people can go in attempting to destroy the lives of others, often on multiple levels, far beyond the norm of what we think when defining dysfunctional relationships.
As hard a pill for many to swallow, Andersen makes it clear that extricating oneself from a relationship with a sociopath is the only path to recovery and healing, despite how tempting it can be to buy into fairy tales that love can help anyone grow and change for the better. As many who’ve suffered severe harm know all too well, this kind of hope may not be based in reality, since not all people are willing to honestly face and work on their issues. Less known is how false hope can also disable those who are victimized, clouding their thinking and preventing them from becoming clear about the need to let go of a damaging relationship and take responsibility for taking care of themselves.
That’s also why, as a mental health professional, I appreciate Andersen venturing into brave new territory by issuing a clear challenge to the mental health establishment to make sociopathy fully known as the serious personality disorder it is. Sociopathy reflects a deep level of moral insanity that is most evident among those who focus primarily on controlling others, beyond reason, without regard for consequences, without regard for reality.
For every sociopath out there, multiple lives are at risk physically, mentally and spiritually in large part because the general public has a Hollywood-sanitized perspective, with misleading stereotypes and sound-bites that provide only surface awareness of sociopaths.
Andersen’s book offers far more than mainstream media provides, in very clear language and terms that demonstrate visceral understanding of the depth of depravity among the human predators who are hard to identify simply because they look like the rest of us.
Fannie LeFlore, MS,LPC, is a psychotherapist who served as editor of “The Road Less Traveled and Beyond,” by the late M. Scott Peck, MD. Contact: fannie@leflorecommunications.com.
Red Flags of Love Fraud—10 signs you’re dating a sociopath is available now exclusively in the Lovefraud Store.
20years,
it is confusing because there are so many LAYERS of lies.
As you said, somtimes they are aware that they are blaming someone else for their own transgressions but that is easily fixed by adding another layer: she deserves it. Justification is such a handy weapon.
When you realize the utter and complete disconnection from reality that these creatures live in, when you really comprehend it, it boggles the mind. And you realize that you will NEVER really comprehend it.
I was really interested in Seemona Sumasar’s story – the woman who was raped and framed – because her spath used the police, just like mine did. So I did some more research on her spath RatRotten, and I found this interview of him:
Insisting on his innocence, he says,
WTF?!!!! Who SAYS stuff like that?
4 sides? The if? The maybe? The whatever? WTF?
This just absolutely defines the mentality of a spath. They’ve gone so far into denial that reality has begun to fragment into 4 sides. LOL!
http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/vengeance-part-2/17ymt6uhp?cpkey=232a3c9d-884d-44cf-8b80-af286b2b4bcc%7c%7c%7c%7c
Edit:
I would translate his “The whatever” to mean, “whatever else I might think of to say happened.” It’s as if anything he imagines, becomes real just by the fact that he imagined it as a possibility.” 😯
Skylar — that is hilarious. As well as classic. And profoundly TRUE. I think spaths are profoundly fragmented people. A veritable hall of mirrors.
Behind_blue_eyes: when I was reading about BPD and “learned” that there are more BPD females, and more NPD males, something inside my head said, “hmmmm…. maybe this is due more to socialization and sex roles than hormones or something else?” I don’t know the answer — but I did note that the traits overlapped and also I kept telling myself, “these diagnoses are just academic constructs which are useful in describing it, but not the thing itself — I bet there is more to it, or some unifying factor, and so far we have missed it.”
My ex-husband has MANY borderline traits, as well as lack of empathy. He fits more borderline traits than narcissistic… except for the empathy piece. But his wife is the true evil anti-social or sociopathic one. She is the one who premeditates and delights in creating drama while appearing innocent herself.
It is interesting to me that I was taken in by my ex-husband for many years, and I was confused by his wife for the first few years I knew her, but once I learned about sociopathy, I got her and her machinations were suddenly patently obvious — and thus no longer worked on me. (time to go gray rock!)
I do think that both males and females can be borderline, but the males may project their anger outwards and the females may project theirs inwards, due to the hormones and/or socialization of gender roles.
20years;
Is your husband gay?
behind_blue_eyes,
Great question. I never thought so or saw/had any proof of it. But interestingly, our best man (good friend of mine since college) is a gay man, and he introduced us. He was friends with my ex-husband for about 3 years before he introduced us. My friend has always told me that he thinks my ex-husband is closeted gay. But I am not sure what it is that would lead him to think that. I am sure there was never anything between them like that (I know my friend very well).
(it is another question for another day, why my friend set us up in the first place — yes, it was that — more than “introducing” us — haha)
So I guess I don’t REALLY know. But my gut tells me that if he is, he has not acted on it. Can’t say for sure, though. AFTER we were married, my husband told me that he had hired (female) prostitutes. Nice to find that out AFTER marriage, right? (we dated/were engaged for 14 months before we married). As far as I know, there was no cheating during the marriage. I left because of the abuse.
to clarify — my gay male friend did not let in on any of his thoughts that my husband was closeted gay until AFTER I divorced him.
I just don’t see any shame from my ex spath. There were even a couple months after the divorce when he actually asked ME to HELP him get back on track with some of the family he had “burned”. Stupidly, I took his words to mean he actually wanted “help”.
I told him he needed to make sincere apologies for starters. This went on for 2 weeks. Then one day he blew me off and actually said to me “when are you gonna learn, I’m just a brat?”. That was the END of any contact beyond gray rock with him.
Some of his friends have told me he is a LOST soul, but I do not believe he HAS a soul. We are in the midst of our oldest childs’ wedding preparations. He continues to try to manipulate me by LOVE BOMBS; manipulate our child in all directions; and flaunt his girlfriend and her family in our faces.
He definitely knows right from wrong and the QUOTE he has on his FB page is a laugh!!! He has preached this quote all through his life and his ACTIONS have and continue to be the opposite.
Spaths have no soul. I’m convinced of that.
The thing we must keep in mind, I think, is that though people who are called “psychopaths” and “Borderlines” have many things in common with each other, they are not equal or identical.
By this I mean that not all Paths are identical to other Paths and not all BPDs are identical to other BPDs there are “grades” or “levels” whatever you want to call it. Just as we (victims) have some similarities we are not all identical in why we fell for the various things that hooked us.
While psychopaths have little empathy, here again as Dr. Baron-Cohen showed in his research, there are DEGREES of empathy from “Zero” to some, so while we can say that a “psychopath has no empathy” that is a bit of an overstatement, as a few of them may have a little bit of empathy.
Just as some psychopaths are physically violent, others are more emotionally abusive. Some like Bernie Madoff are big financial con men and others are bank robbers or muggers, or sexual predators like Ted Bundy.
Just as we might describe a certain breed of dog, we can describe a “psychopath,” but just as all of a certain kind of dog are not IDENTICAL, neither are psychopaths (or Borderlines) and the idea of a “psychopath” or a “borderline” are, as someone above pointed out, just a “verbal construct” to define a SET of BEHAVIORS that are sort of in line with the construct. The behaviors themselves are variable.
However, just as not all Pit Bull dogs are vicious and not all Beagle dogs are loving, we are more wary around the Pit Bull dogs because the breed as a whole are more aggressive than the Beagles. So as we learn about dogs and which ones are more likely to bite than another, and which ones are actually more dangerous than others, we learn about the “breed” of the psychopath and how to distinguish them from other “breeds.” (Donna’s book the RED FLAGS describes how to distinguish them) Since in the case of psychopaths versus other humans they have two eyes, two ears, two legs, two arms, etc. just like everyone else, it is by BEHAVIOR ALONE that we can distinguish them….and because behavior is somewhat variable even in psychopaths and normal people too, we have to watch for the PATTERNS of that behavior in order to distinguish potentially violent, lethal or untrustworthy individuals which we call psychopaths or sociopaths (or borderline PDs)
20years;
The reason why I asked is that the gay mind is neither male nor female but somewhere in between. Because of this, it is possible, via tests, to discern a person’s sexual orientation, whether they act on it or not. Or admit or not. The best example is that men tend to do better in math and women in verbal. SAT scores are evidence of this. However, I am a gay male and actually scored higher in verbal than math. Thus, it makes some sense than more gay males would be borderline than straight ones.
I have dated at least two gay men who are sociopaths and neither was violent or outwardly aggressive. However, they both exhibited inappropriate, dramatic responses a certain times which could be interpreted by some as borderline.
Ox Drover;
We think in terms of “continuums” which is true but take that one step further into a three-dimensional view — thus, the Cluster Bs are like a series of peaks along the same ridge…
BBE, that’s a great analogy! Peaks along the same ridge.
There has been some research showing that testosterone levels in the womb are somehow connected (they think but have yet to totally prove) to psychopathy in the child later.
Many psychopaths are also not that much of a behavior problem until puberty when the hormones kick in.
With more women tending to be “borderline” and more men tending to be “psychopaths” I think there is a difference in the behaviors related to hormone responses. Males are more aggressive in response to hormones so I think it is possible that the hyper emotional black and white thinking of the borderline may be a form of PMS. I know myself, my moods fluctuated some with the “time of month” until menopause at which time they leveled out. My mood fluctuations weren’t to the level of the borderlines and my thinking wasn’t as black and white as the typical borderline but there were definitely hormonal fluctuations. A day or two before my period started I was “cranky” for sure. LOL