How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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Editor’s Note: Resource Perspectives features articles written by members of Lovefraud’s Professional Resources Guide.

Questions to ask yourself when you want to go after a sociopath

By Fred Dunsing, Attorney at Law

Fred Dunsing profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide

I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or a counselor. I’m a lawyer. Therefore, I’m wholly unqualified to write about sociopaths and the specifics of their mental health disorder.

I do, however, understand the definition of sociopath and generally understand what constitutes sociopathic behavior. I have seen many of these individuals during my years in practice as a family law attorney, and I can say that most of the sociopaths I have come in contact with have been within the context of fraudulent relationships. Most of these individuals have been men (although I must admit that I represent mainly women in my practice).

These individuals have been textbook cases. Men who look for recently single and/or otherwise vulnerable women that have what they need – usually money, credit, sex, or the ability to provide them with children. Generally, their whole lives are lies. Their education, military service, jobs, assets, friends, and even marital status are fabricated.

What has struck me in these cases is that these individuals often share other characteristics. They are often controlling. They are usually supreme narcissists. They have such an inflated and unrealistic view of their own intelligence and abilities that they think they are smarter than everyone else – police, lawyers, judges, and especially the women they victimize. This attitude is always their downfall.

Of the cases I have taken to trial involving these personality types, these individuals have not only always lost, but have always lost in a big way. They lose because of their utterly unjustified opinion of themselves, and of their abilities to con other people. They lose when they finally pick the wrong person who won’t just go away. Someone finally takes them “to the mat” all the way through the legal process. In the context of outright fraud or theft, that may mean the police and the local district attorney. In the context of a child custody or divorce case, that may mean taking it all the way through a civil trial.

These people are predators, but in their minds, they’ve done nothing wrong. They don’t believe a case will ever go to trial because they will outsmart or frustrate any court or lawyer and at the very least, they will convince the victim to drop the case – it’s just another con to them.

But the end of the road for these people is usually when they victimize a strong or determined person. The cases that typically are the most successful are those that involve women who were willing work countless hours to research and document the lies and the damage long before going to see a lawyer. It becomes a mission with them. And even after a lawyer explains the weaknesses of the legal system, these victims all have a common characteristic – they are not going to be victimized and they going to make sure that the sociopath never does it again to anyone else.

Now, this is often easier said than done. In most cases, it is expensive. The cost of the necessary discovery and litigation can be incredibly high. Moreover, the impact on the victim’s personal life during the period of litigation can be devastating.

In my experience, a person who is contemplating taking a sociopath “to the mat” needs to answer the following questions: 1) Do I have the financial resources to pursue this course of action? 2) Am I willing to put my family through the process? 3) What are my goals? Am I seeking some measure of justice? Am I doing this for my family? Am I doing this to teach the sociopath a lesson? Am I doing this for myself?

There is an old adage that most everyone has heard, “you can spell principle two ways – with an ”˜al’ and with an ”˜le.'” It’s OK to spell it with an “le.” You are entitled to seek justice. You are entitled to stand on your principles. You just have to understand that in our legal system, it usually costs you money (principal spelled with an “al”). You also have to understand that in some instances, judgments against sociopaths may not worth the paper they are written on – particularly if the assets taken have already been squandered and the damage has already been done. You can’t collect on judgments if you can’t find the assets to execute on.

It is, however, an entirely a different situation when the stakes are not just missing property or ruined credit, but instead are whether helpless children will be exposed to a sociopath or even worse, raised by one.

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  1. one/joy_step_at_a_time

    Silvermoon – I have some great quotes by winston churchill somewhere…

    I read the ‘bounce’ Patton quote when you posted it earlier – I liked it a lot, and have always wanted to believe this – but i am not sure i am finished going down in this round, and i think it has a bit of the ‘American Dream’ (heavy on the dream part) woven into it – which i just can’t believe in anymore. but i like the quote nonetheless.

    i took your suggestion to heart. i have written a letter to myself – a letter speaking to myself, for myself and as myself. these three things are different from one another – but you’ll understand when you read it.

    Dear One Step,
    I know you miss your mother. She would be the one who would write you a note to encourage you. Although it didn’t happen more than a handful of times, it did happen a handful of times. Remember that list she wrote a few years ago? She said you were loyal, loving, intelligent, artistic, compassionate, creative”don’t remember the rest of it off the top of my head.

    But I know that you feel blasted out of the water; you don’t know how to define yourself right now, can’t touch ideas and words without finding pain and tears. But you look at yourself and you see a resilience that has been hewn in heartwood in the last year. You see both your creativity ”“ the way you work with people to help them focus their businesses ”“ and you see your fear that you cannot do that well or consistently right now. You have experience, but you also make it up on the fly ”“ you assimilate information and think on your feet, you have learned how to take the time to think when you are unsure. And right now you are terrified ”“ you fear that you cannot work on the fly,; that you cannot work with other’s dysfunction (and they are everywhere) and not be slayed. All your weaknesses and fears laid bare. Unemployable. Shamed. The fear, the need to hide this about yourself weighs you like field stones tied on your ankles. And although you sit on the river bank of the swollen early spring river, the rocks are undeniably in the mid stream of the river.

    Sit quiet, find the stillness, ignore the other side
    of the river where the ’normal’ functioning lays
    green as the grass. grasp one rope in each hand,
    and pull yourself into the freezing water”gasp
    and stand still. You can be in this water. You have
    been in a shed wearing a toque all winter.
    Slowly, slowly pull against the ropes, move across
    the current to their weights. With a straining
    rope in each hand, a rock to each side, turn and
    open your chest to the flooding river, and be
    cleansed.

    You think that others would at worst take relish in your pain and failure, and at best you expect they would hide their eyes and turn away”. My girl, you are not like this. Why ”.ahh, I see. It is the experience of this last couple of years that tells you others would act this way. I am so glad that you never gave the spath one word to feed her violence in the devalue. Not one. One, you are smart. You didn’t know what you were dealing with, but you are fucking smart.

    I wish you could not work for awhile. Just be in the sun somewhere for a few hours a day. You must give yourself some of this right now. I know it seems impossible, but you must. And look, look how hard K. is working to find you a business opportunity? I know you fear, because all these meetings require you to think and be on your toes”and to have business clothes and you are eating in pain”.and your clothes don’t fit. If you give yourself time to be in nature right now”I know there are many problems and even trying to write this out, you are overwhelmed. So, we will leave this, and veer back on to the side of the road that says: support.

    You are coming to know that your value is not in any thing you are or have been. This is probably the most important thing we can ever do. One of the things you learned supporting the ever dying and melting down spath was, that you have an innate belief in living. That, no matter how bad life is, you believe in it. You couldn’t find a reason for this ”“ it just is. You have lived an amazing life. I know there is a lot of emotional and physical pain right now, and that it is clouding the moon of your being, but not only is there a bedrock worth in both you and in life, there are things in and of you ”“ the manifestation of your being that must be worthy of note.

    I know you really identified yourefl with your compassion for the last few years. And how this imbalance has landed you hard on the gravely dirt. And how your hands and art and business were so entwined and how the loss of the use of your hands in the way you had always been able to use them, cut you to the soul”but the overuse of your hands was also an imbalance. (I know it is hard to find something you can do, that is okay for your body.) But the theme here is ”“ you are being given purification opportunity after purification opportunity ”“ to lose your identifications and value youself no.matter.what.

    One step writes: it is all I can come back to, this
    core, this worthy core; just because. I cannot say
    I am this or that, I am either too damaged and/
    or to smart to go there right now, as it may be
    counter to this very strong emergent focus on
    innate worth.

  2. silvermoon

    That is lovingly beautiful and I have no words that add to what you write except to say how much I admire the worthy core that is so very obvious to those of us at a distance.

    Thank you for sharing the beautiful words. They reach far across the ether.

    I think you said it when you wrote: value youself no.matter.what.

    Think I need my teddy bear……..

  3. kim frederick

    One-step, the thing that stood out to me in your letter was the cold clear water of the river….did you know that is a symbol of the unconscience? You are in a very good place, a healing place, full of enlightenment. This may be a sort of baptism of the spirit, in which you come to a new understanding of yourself. There is a crystal clear quality about it all, and you seem to be a pproaching it with faith and curiosity.

    Many years ago, when I was in colledge, I took a class in dream interpretation, so was intensly interested in what I was dreaming. I had a rather uncouth dream of being in a bathtub with a peice of s@#$. I was trying to remove the @%&* from my bath by taking a wash cloth in my hand and trying to pick it up so I could flush it. But in the process it was coming all apart and defiling all the water in my bath. A few months after that dream, all hell broke loose in my life, I became clinicley depressed and ended up in therapy. I told my therapist a lot of things that led up to my “break-down”, including my bath-tub dream. She asked me to visualize what “MY water” might look like now, and even though my pain was acute and raw, I was angry and smarting, I saw my water as very cold and clear. It smelled like a pine forest.
    That’s when I knew I was going to be okay. I was out of the fog, the muddy befuddlement of denial, and I was into reality, clarity and healing. You are too. And that’s a good thing.

  4. conomo

    Oddly enough I don’t know the FU song. One would think I did the way I use the word.

    I’ll try and google it.

    Thanks Kim et al. I really need a laugh today.

    I now have to worry about stolen guns the xs stashed somewhere before he was taken away.

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