Like us, Claudia Moscovici had her run-in with a psychopath, one that almost destroyed her marriage. Since then, like many of us, she has thoroughly researched this destructive personality disorder. She started a blog called “Psychopathy Awareness,” and wrote two books: a novel called The Seducer, and an upcoming nonfiction book called Dangerous Liaisons.
In her review of my book, Love Fraud—How marriage to a sociopath fulfilled my spiritual plan, Claudia writes, “I didn’t think I could learn much more about the subject, but Donna’s book proved me wrong.”
Read the entire review on Psychopathy Awareness.
Love Fraud is available in the Lovefraud Store.
Kim, you bring up a really good point. But my main motivation for writing about psychopathy is to make something constructive for me and hopefully others out of a very bad experience, which would have no good sides whatsoever otherwise. And by the way, I started my psychopathy awareness blog only this fall, 2010. Before this I was just absorbing information, reading lovefraud posts, reading books on the subject, going to therapy: for almost three years.
You can tell by the posts on my psychopathy awareness blog. It’s all very new. But the psychopath was still sending me the nasty spam and harassing me way before this blog. He’s been doing it since I left him in December 2007. So for almost three years I was not visible, I did not have a psychopathy blog, but he was still spamming me just as frequently. In fact, I don’t notice any difference in his emails with or without the psychopathy blog.
But, overall, writing the blog and the upcoming book, Dangerous Liaisons, have helped me tremendously because they enable me analyze/understand better this experience and because I really do hope I can pass on to others what I’ve experienced and learned. When I discovered, to my shock, that my “romantic” boyfriend was a psychopath I kept several of the main psychopathy books by my bedside and underlined important passages. I’d reread them over and over, to give me strength and comfort.
These books helped me enormously. I especially liked Women Who Love Psychopaths because it explained our side, not just theirs. So I really hope my upcoming book, Dangerous Liaisons, can help and inform others, since it’s written from the perspective of someone who has studied this subject a lot, but has also experienced it first-hand. That’s also part of why I found Donna’s book so compelling and wrote the review. I think having four sides–the subjective and the so-called objective, the psychopaths and their victims–is very valuable.
As for the psychopath’s spam, since he sent it to me at the same rate before and after my blog, for so many years, unless it’s really menacing and worth showing to the police, I need to learn to ignore it, like many of you do. I’m explaining all this just to share with you my thinking in why I’m using writing as a constructive step in healing from the bad experience. This is the only silver lining I could find in the whole disaster and, for me, it’s a very important one.
Yep, Claudia. Gray rock.
And I love the web-site, by the way. Lots of good stuff.
I just hate to see the on-going abuse.
Kim, me too. It’s part of why I couldn’t heal completely and also what makes me so suspicious sometimes, even without good reason. I have to learn not to jump at his provocations. I noticed I was the only one who jumped to refute the “Sympathy for Sociopaths” post, until I was told “grey rock”. The concept of grey rock is really useful.
Eva, I agree. People who don’t deal with psychopaths directly, if only in therapy if not also personal experience, can’t empathize with what we’ve been through as well as those who do. And most therapists don’t deal with psychopaths because psychopaths think they’re perfect, superior to everyone else. They don’t usually go to therapy, so most therapists aren’t exposed to them.
Dear Claudia,
Understanding why we are vulnerable to the control of the psychopaths is a big subject and I think there are some commonalities but also some differences in the WHYS. The bottom line is though, that they pitch a “sales pitch” that is like a KEY that fits in OUR PARTICULAR LOCK and opens our doors.
Psychopath A might not have a key that would fit YOUR particular lock, but psychopath B might have a perfect fit to open you right up.
I have a BLOCK on my lock for married men, I would never ever even consider dating a married man, or even one with a “pending divorce.” It just so happens that MY individual lock would not accept that particular key.
I have a BLOCK on my lock for a man who would hit me. I would never tolerate a husband who hit me. Even if his key was in my lock, I would remove it and block it if he hit me. But I did NOT have that same BLOCK on my other locks—like my son hitting me.
I did not have a BLOCK on my “Pity me, I’m your son” LOCK, and my psychopathic son had the key to fit and open my heart and my mind and my soul to do his bidding.
The “blocks” we have are called boundaries. We have some boundaries set up that do protect us from others using and abusing us, but obviously NOT enough to keep the psychopaths, ALL psychopaths, out of our lives, just some of them.
Many of us have a “I want to help others” vulnerability that opens us up to the psychopaths, or “feel sorry for me” vulnerability, or “this or that” vulnerability.
Sometimes we feel that we are not valued, and they make us feel valuable, pretty, sexy, loved….and we fall for that, all the time not seeing that they are USING OUR lack of boundary in that area to penetrate our guard and make us trust them.
I have set new boundaries and higher standards now, and thought about these boundaries carefully. My first one is “is it honest”? Or is “s/he honest?” If the answer is NO, then it is not a good idea.
Whether it is about cheating a bit on your taxes, or taking home office supplies from work, or robbing a bank—if it is not 100% honest, then I don’t need it. If someone is dishonest with you or anyone else, then I don’t need to trust that person or have them in my close circle of intimate people as friend, lover, etc., because they are not trustworthy. I admit there are people who will take home office supplies who will not even think about robbing a bank, but where do you draw the line? Only if they steal less than $50 worth of office supplies a year? or a $100? Well, what if they only take $1000 from the bank? Honest is honest. Dishonest is dishonest.
Have I ever stolen anything? Yep, I have. But I will never do it again. Can some people do bad things and repent and change? Yep. The story of King David in the Bible is a great example of a man who was very human and did some pretty bad things including murder and adultery. He also enabled his own psychopathic/narcissistic son Absalom who eventually declared war on his father and tried to take the kingdom. If David had treated Absalom as he deserved and left him in exile, that war would not have happened and tens of thousands of lives would have been saved. So even those who enable or tolerate psychopaths and narcissists help those evil individuals facilitate evil consequences for innocent people.
David had his own issues…he lusted after another man’s wife, then tried to cover up his lust and adultery by tricking the man in to sleeping with his wife so the man wouldn’t know the baby she carried wasn’t his. That didn’t work out because the man was HONORABLE and he wouldn’t sleep with his wife while his men were in the field, so David had the general put the man in the front of the fight and then back off so he would be killed. Yet, in spite of this David did repent, was sincerely sorry for what he had done. Not a psychopath, just a human with very real faults. We all have our own issues, issues that temptation plays on and twists our moral compass out of true…but we can repent, make up our minds and change our courses. I think most of us here are in the process of doing just that. Fixing ourselves so that we will not be “lured” or “tempted” by the dishonest.
It used to be a old maxim that “you can’t cheat an honest man” and it isn’t entirely true, but if someone has a “weak spot” or is a “bit greedy,” it does make it easier to cheat them. Many of the old cons like the “pigeon drop” count on a person’s greed and SLIGHT DISHONESTY to hook them into the con. So if we work at keeping ourselves completely honest, we can circumvent many of the lures and temptations that do get us involved with the psychopaths. Just as if a married man will cheat on her, with me, he will cheat on me with the next victim. You can count on that being true. So if he is married and cheating, he is DIS-honest, and if he is dis-honest, I need him in my life WHY?
So holding others to a high standard of honesty is a good thing, but we must also hold ourselves to the same standard of honesty that we hold others to.
Ox,
We all have our own issues, issues that temptation plays on and twists our moral compass out of true”but we can repent, make up our minds and change our courses. I think most of us here are in the process of doing just that. Fixing ourselves so that we will not be “lured” or “tempted” by the dishonest.
This speaks so well to the personal revelation and insights I’m dealing with from last night.
Thanks Ox.
Oxy, you’re so right. The key to my lock was someone who had an appreciation for art and culture and who wanted “passion”. At that point in my life, craving an artistic person who wanted romantic passion supplanted everything. Of course, the psychopath used that key to lure me, but he gave me no true love, no real passion, and he wasn’t even that creative or artistic (except in a very superficial sense). And as you also state, probably the biggest thing I learned from this dreadful experience is where my boundaries are, or as you put it, what and who I BLOCK after one strike. I don’t think I had a very clear sense of my boundaries before meeting the psychopath. But then again, I had never before encountered someone so dangerous, so pathologically deceitful and with such bad intentions towards the people who loved him. Like many of you, before this I thought psychopaths were serial killers who target strangers, not unscrupulous people who target those closest to them. The issue I’m working on now is just the opposite: not having my defenses up too high, against the wrong people, who deserve trust.
Claudia
The issue I’m working on now is just the opposite: not having my defenses up too high, against the wrong people, who deserve trust.
AMEN TO THAT!!!
Oxy,
that’s an interesting take on the lock and key. Your lock won’t open to a married man or a dishonest man, no matter what other inner hook they can bait you with.
I see the lock as an inner mechanism that we have hidden inside but are unaware of what it is or what it looks like, because it is hidden deep down in our psyches. The socios know how “see” the mechanism by using tests on us, the same way a locksmith would feel around using a lock pick. Familiarity with locks in general helps. In the socio’s case he is familiar with shame and secrets. Most locks have things in common and he knows it. Once he figures out the way the lock works, he makes himself a reverse image of your keyhole and fits like a glove. You think he’s your soulmate.
And the lovebomb is the first step in the trauma bonding requirement for good treatment and high arousal, then bad treatment intermttant reenforcement. Wow. I said a mouthful.