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.
LL, I understand your rawness. This is all a fresh wound for you and it will take some time to heal, particularly given everything else you’ve gone through. But you have come a long way just in a few days. That’s so encouraging!
To answer your question, if you go to psychopathyawareness.wordpress.com and click on the left hand side where it says “Recent Posts” and “Top Posts” you’ll see the whole articles.
When you say “I so wanted him to love me,” you were asking for the impossible. It’s not even about jealousy, since psychopaths are completely incapable of loving and caring about anyone. Are you still married, or was he the only one married?
If you’re not, then hopefully you’ll heal first, then find a wonderful man who will appreciate and love you. Then you’ll see the BIG difference between sporadic pleasure with a psychopath and real love.
Shabby,
I googled and found his website http://www.miguelruiz.com/
He is a Toltec Shaman, are his teachings anything like the teachings of Don Juan, the character in the Castaneda books? I read some of those when I was young and couldn’t make much sense of them. But my P-brother is an afficianado of Castaneda. He says he “understands” the concepts. If he does, then why is he still a P? I do believe that many P’s understand the concepts taught by religion and gurus and masters and even the concepts about cluster B’s. It just doesn’t seem to be enough for them to understand the concept, they are still stuck. I wonder why.
He has been searching for a religion or concept to make him whole since he was 13 years old. He joined the Hare Krishnas and Scientology and who knows what other cults.
Not that my P-bro has anything to do with Ruiz, just that your post got me ruminating on the subject.
My interest is peaked about the Toltec Shamans but I don’t have the money to spend on books right now. Can you tell me more about what you feel you learned from him?
Claudia,
I’m still legally married, but have been separated for ten years. I haven’t had the money required to get a divorce, although I’ve wanted one. A friend of mine recently divorced her husband (that she now suspects was also a sociopath), but she filed online and is asking to have court fees waved, which is the majority of the expense here if there if it is no contest. I’ve already spoken with exP about this and he’ll sign without hesitation. I asked him for years to do the divorce lol! I knew he would not. I think it would cost me a total of fifty for filing online and ninety for filing fee. The rest can be waved due to low income status.
Last ex is no longer married. His divorce was final last April.
Claudia, I’ve seen happily married people around me. I SEE what it looks like, just have never experienced it. At my age the pickens aren’t great. I want to learn how to be able to live alone and be OKAY if it stays that way. Although I did get a nice compliment the other day from one of my fb friends who is a twenty seven year old male, divorced for over two years now. He thinks I’m funny, intelligent and “hot”.
That’s a bit young for me, but it was a nice boost to a wounded ego. lol! 🙂
If it happens, it happens. If not, I want to be okay with it.
thanks for letting me know how to navigate the blog. Being down with this tooth is time well used for reading here, your blog and some scripture today.
Thanks for your encouragement and support, Claudia. Again, I appreciate it more than you know.
LL
Hey Everyone,
There was a link here on the blog in one of the articles somewhere and I”m frustrated trying to recall which article it was. It was a link to a page that discusses abusers and victims of abuse within the context of biblical scripture. Do any of you recall this link by chance?
LL
LL, From your posts online you seem so youthful. Not immature, but youthful. In pain but full of intelligence, emotion and life. So your ex-husband was a psychopath too, not just the ex-lover? At least in the future you’ll know the red flags and you’ll pick a good man. I think your attitude is just right: if it happens it happens, if not you can live with that too. But I think it will happen, because you have so much to offer. It is even more likely to happen with a good man if you go through your mourning period about your ex and heal most of the wounds. I get the impression though that you’re not missing much your ex-husband, just the ex-lover. Why so?
Claudia,
I read the link on msnbc. That story is a mind boggling cluster-fuck, that’s for sure. There are definitely clusters of P’s and N’s around this case and this girl.
If I had to put my money on the murderer, it would be the brother. The unhealthy relationship he had with his sister was apparent from the first line where he said, “Tom was a protector, Tom always wanted to take the role over his dad; wanted to know who she was seeing what she was doing, taking care of her.” That speaks to me of wanting to take on the mantle of authority. Later, he says he changed the facts of the movie because he wanted to protect his sister’s reputation. “He didn’t want it to seem like his beloved sister had a steady stream of men visiting her trailer.”
But, who would think that? She had an ex-bf and a casual friend. That’s not “a steady stream”. He said, “Keeping her pure for her family”? Were they muslim? Who talks like that? a spath does.
His need to tell the story for a large audience is classic spath and by putting himself in the movie, he gets to play a star role even though, according to him, he wasn’t even there. This man craves drama and attention. I think that placing himself in the story is a “tell”. They all do it because they think that they can get away with it.
His admitted romance with a married woman puts him high in spath traits. And his need to run away and even move far away when that exploded, is a sure fire red flag. All spaths slither away once they’ve set their bombs. Then he lied about it. Well we know that spaths are people of the LIE.
The way his father spoke to him and what he said and then hanging up, when he supposedly called to tell him of the death of his sister, tells me the root cause of the family dysfunction: Dear old dad. More than likely Dad was the first to sexually abuse sister. Then Tom, in memetic desire between rivals, continued the abuse. Little sister was used to the drama and the rivalry. She was re-enacting it by using 2 boyfriends and pitting them against each other. LL, don’t you think? Once you are used to triangulated love, nothing else is quite the same. The fact that the sherrif/deputy has a new suspect, so many years later, is even more suspicious and wtf happened to the missing files? Did they re-appear? This speaks to me of a spath manipulating authority. Loud and Clear -how? I don’t know, but they all do it. My spath spoke badly and critically of the cops in our area, but in truth he was good buddies with them all and spent much time, figuring out how to manipulate them. They were part of the posse that chased me around the island and harrassed me. Spaths do stuff like that.
I am learning more and more about what makes people tick. There is always a pattern and you can find it in the books by Rene Girard (a literature/philosophy professor). I was listening to his audio last night. FASCINATING!
Skylar, Like you, I like Rene Girard and find his theory of the triangulation of desire very fascinating: more applicable to psychopaths though than to people in general.
This Dateline story struck me like an Agatha Christie novel because it was so convoluted, like peeling an onion, layer upon layer of mystery. The main evidence against the brother is found in his own movie: he seems to know details only the murderer would know.
But I wasn’t as sure as you seem to be that the brother did it because the behavior of the ex-cop/detective who did his own movie on him struck me as odd as well. Plus, if you watch the end of the episode, the real detectives investigating the case said there was a rapist and serial killer living right across from the sister’s house. Do you remember that part? In fact, this guy, who is in jail now, is their main suspect. That’s what makes this case such a mystery, just like in Agatha Christie, where so many individuals could have done it, not just one.
Claudia,
You’re very perceptive! While I agree with you on the youthful part, I also see a level of immaturity within. Time to grow up. 🙂
With exP, I’d known him in high school and his sister, as I worked with her. ExP was a rebound relationship from my first lover, who raped me and was extremely emotionally abusive. I was not in love with exP. I tried to tell myself I was, but the truth was that I wasn’t. I was trying to forget first ex bf and the pain I was in over him and the abuse. When I reflect upon that, it’s interesting to me because there are soooo many voids of memory, but some things are very clear. I was running from pain. I was running from taking responsibility for myself. A man to take care of me. Someone to love me. I didn’t believe I could take care of myself. I heard all those voices from childhood telling me I would always fail. I self sabotaged my entire life. I think, over time, I developed a trauma bond with exP because he was abusive as well. I had come to feel that I loved him, but not in the true sense that I felt it with the last ex and the first bf. Perhaps that is the wrong word. The trauma bond wasn’t as strong. ExP was extremely violent. Physically and verbally. Extremely alcholic and drug addicted. After twenty years of that, last ex, with his calm, and what I felt very gentle caring, was a dream come true for me. We had been “friends” for a couple of years prior to my marriage disintegrating and he was there during a very dangerous time that exP was leaving the marriage.
I’ve heard it said that I never mourned my marriage. I think I disagree with that now. I mourned so much within the marriage and when he beat up my son, it was COMPLETELY over for me emotionally. I wanted out.
I fell VERY hard for ex. A completely different feeling than it was with exP, but the same as it was with first lover.
I was completely in love and invested.
I talk to exP now and then about child support issues. He’s soon to go to jail for two months, and with him goes the child support and his job down the drain. He doesn’t care for the children and never has. What he says and what he does are two different things. Always has been. With him, I’m indifferent. There are times where I’m feeling that I”m not. But they pass quickly. He is what he is and I’m solid on that, but I’ve also had the opportunity to see that he will never change, even after the separation. He is as sick, if not more so, and parasitic as he has always been.
LL
LL,
you are slipping back into magical thinking. It’s the need for a pity party. That need is probably coming from you not feeling well. Your immune system is down, that’s what triggered the tooth. People can live with infected teeth for years and it won’t bother them because the immune system keeps it isolated. But when you are stressed, it will flare up.
You need to know FOR A FACT that exPOS told you that story about the saxophone to mess with your head. And it worked. You also need to know that you never knew exPOS. You still don’t know him. You think he is a clever spath with a good reputation who has a “one woman” mode. NO, he doesn’t. He goes to see hookers on the side. probably male hookers and he probably rapes children and snakes. HE IS A SPATH AND THAT IS WHAT THEY DO. THEY HAVE NO LIMITS. WHY WOULD HE LIMIT HIMSELF? If it is nasty, immoral or vulgar, they indulge in it. Do you really think that he would make you privy to the dark disgusting part of himself? NO!
Rewind back to 1984, I’m 18, spath is 29, we live together. I go to work 2 blocks away. spath is unemployed, collecting unemployment. He stays out late at night, but I don’t mind much, he has a band or he has buddies. In the morning he sleeps in, I go to work. At noon, I love to come grab him for lunch and then at 5PM I come home and we go out to dinner. One day, he is sitting outside the apartment porch and I walk up. He is sort of thoughtful looking. He says, “I’m sad. There used to be these 2 cute,little 12-year-old indian girls that would come talk to me. But now they aren’t coming around. I think they’re mad at me.” Skylar’s little brain tries to make sense of that. Does not compute. Skylar’s little brain (SLB for short) makes up something to make it compute: Oh, spath is such a tender hearted man that even 12 year old girls feel comfortable around him. And he is so sincere that he misses them when they don’t come by. PHHHHT!
FAST FORWARD NOVEMBER 2009. I’m 43 and know he is a spath and suspect he is a pedophile. I had left him in May, and in November, I run into his ex-best friend (my BF now), and BF says, “you know he cheated on you right?” Well, I figured it, but had no evidence…then BF says, “did you know about the 2 12-year old indian girls?” Voila! it was a TELL!
LL, you can only know about your spath by knowing what all the spaths do. Not by what you saw him do, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
LL, it’s tough to grow up emotionally when you’ve been involved for so long with two (or three?) psychopaths who, as we all know, cultivate emotional dependency. You’ve got to read How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved, by Sandra L. Brown, if you haven’t read that book already. Because you don’t want to get involved with a personality disordered person ever again. They stole so much of your life already. And it was not an accident you used one psychopath to help you forget about another psychopath. In fact, I’m still confused: there are two ex-husbands who are psychopaths and one ex lover who’s a psychopath? And you loved the ex-lover and the second husband but not the first husband?