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.
Claudia,
No, there was my first boyfriend from high school, he was my first lover. Then exP, who was my first and only husband, although we are still legally married, we lived together for twenty years. Then came last ex. I loved my first lover and the last ex.
I’ve read How to Spot a Dangerous man. I have the book in a box somewhere in storage.
I’m not interested in a relationship. I know this is a time to be alone, as difficult as that sometimes is. I don’t know that I ever want to be in another relationship again. I need to get my divorce and to heal my past. Explore getting to know myself.
You’re right, it was no accident that those men were the choices I made, one psychopath to the next. Even if they showed up with different masks.
It was familiar. Just like all the spaths from my childhood.
That doesn’t work for me anymore. And that’s a good thing. It’s a first step. Recognition and awareness.
LL
LL
Claudia,
I was confused too. There is no evidence actually pointing to the brother. As I was reading it I was drawn along first suspecting this guy and then the other. The cop/director seems like a jerk, but we do know that he didn’t kill her. We only suspect him of trying to frame the bro for narcissitic reasons of his own.
When I’m confronted with spaths, I know that the lies will compound until there is no way to know the truth. That is what they do to create misdirection. The only way too know the truth is to STEP AWAY FROM “THE FACTS” and look for the source of DRAMA. Each of the characters has their own way of creating drama. Starting with the dead woman, we see her need for drama in the setting of triangulation. That had to have been leraned as a child. When I see her brother’s behavior toward her and his own bizarre words to describe his need to replace his father. And then his need to “keep her pure”,we get a HUGE RED FLAG CLUE. My exspath would rail ad nauseum about young women gettng tattoos and piercing. He said a young girl should stay pure. All spaths are obsesssed with differentiating between the pure young women and the whores they crave.
Even with all of that obvious setting, I would not be sure that the brother had killed her because a woman who attracts drama would attract the crazy murderous neighbor too. BUT, he had to make the TELL. The movie was a TELL.
He has proved he is a liar and adulterer, so we know he isn’t honest. The girl’s behavior tells us of dysfunction in the family as does his own words and the father’s strange words. If you look past the “facts” and look towards the dysfunction and the tell, it’s clear. It wouldn’t prove in court but it is what I would use to start gathering clues.
Sky, You’d make a great forensic detective! I find your analysis compelling. But don’t forget that there are two potential sources of drama: one was featured in the Dateline episode, and that’s your main suspect (the weird brother). But the show didn’t tell us much about the serial rapist and murderer living across from the sister (maybe because that wouldn’t have made such an interesting TV episode, psychologically, as the articulate yet screwed up brother). And if the brother really did it, then the father was in on the cover-up too, as the ex-cop charges. What a story!
Skylar,
That is the truth. I don’t know much beyond what he told me or what I experienced for myself with him. I never EVER saw him on a porn site, although I suspected, I did not SEE that. I saw him on only ONE dating site because I CAUGHT him on it. I suspected that he picked up women from CL, but had no PROOF of it. I only suspected because he seemed somehow “familiar” with it.
I remember he wanted to watch ONE porn movie with me once. We did. I was bored. Didn’t seem to do much for him either.
He was VERY controlling and isolating of his wife. He liked being there to do just that. From what I know he was almost always at home or with her and the kids. He was VERY big into his church community with her (to which her parents also attended) and looking like the loving husband/father figure. While at home, he spent MANY hours on the computer emailing with me on a daily basis, exception when he was on vacation with her or working on his yard (acreage) or taking his kids here and there, to which he still does when he has them for his week. With all the time he spent controlling his environment, I don’t know where he’d have time to do much else. He saw me during work hours for the most part, on occasion with me briefly on weekends or evenings when he had softball, with the exception of during the last year of his marriage. There were things that rang bells for me, but I never ever had proof of that.
I do think each spath is different and enjoy a mode of control that is different. My exP however, was gone constantly, was on porn sites left and right, was into younger girls, particularly my ex best friends daughter (whom he was living with both) and would make passes at her. She was twelve/thirteen at the time. He wasn’t good at hiding those things. He liked the conquest/control outside the home versus when he was in it, which wasn’t often although he was enormously controlling, abusive when he was at home.
ExP could have cared less about his image. Ex POS did.
Very different. Both of them.
But you ARE right. I don’t know for sure. I’ve read other stories here where a few of the exspaths were known to reel in a woman for good hubby/daddy status, while cheating, one affair after another.
I think exPOS was involved in an affair prior to me as well.
LL
LL, I understand the sequence now. It’s a great pity that none of the men you were with were healthy and loving. I think that your frame of mind is right for where you are right now in the healing process. But you never know, once you go through mourning and come to terms with your own emotional issues, what the future will bring. Maybe when you’re feeling stronger and healthier yourself, you will attract healthier and better men.
Here’s the link to the Dateline episode Sky and I are talking about. This is the most intriguing and convoluted Dateline story I’ve seen so far:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18649992/ns/dateline_nbc-scenes_from_a_murder/#storyContinued
My ex psychopath was a combo of the two men you describe: he was covert about online dating, hooking up with women and girlfriends on the side until we both asked for a divorce and that blew his “perfect husband” to her/”perfect lover” to me dual cover. Before that, despite being busy juggling other women, he’d spend most of his time with his wife, who is extremely dependent on him. He would cultivate that dependency by being by her side as much as possible (given his other affairs) and even driving her to work “to save gas money”. But it wasn’t for that reason. It was to control her. (That’s why I suspect that even your ex that hid the affair so well from his wife and that wasn’t overtly into porn might have a much richer, and more sordid, secret life that you don’t know about. He might just be better at hiding it, like Sky said.)
After we asked our respective spouses for a divorce, however, they came to terms to a very open–wide open–marriage on his side, where he could hook up with as many partners, both male and female, as he wanted. I think that his wife is so strongly trauma bonded to him that there’s no hope of escape for her anymore.
This link about dateline. Where is it? The story sounds intriguing.
LL
Hi skylark, sorry I’ve been gone all day. No, I don’t think his teachings are like Casteneda’s books. Ruiz’s book is more about how we can live a more fulfilling life by following the Four Agreements he explains in his books. If you go to Amazon.com and search for “The Four Agreements” you could probably learn everything there is in the book by reading the comments left by the people who reviewed the book! I feel that I learned not to take things people say to personally and to try to always speak well to myself, instead of the constant putdowns by the little voice in my head. As Stargazer mentioned, one of the agreements is to always try to do your best. It’s just a little gem of a book, not really religious, more of the universal “we are all one” type of thing”
Hi SC,
I’ll check it out.
I think I might have some time in longbeach at the end of the month. are you anywhere in that area?
Claudia,
About your ex’s wife. That is just nothing short of extremely tragic for her. What a bastard, excuse me, but wow…
Yet at the same time, she knows and chooses that way of life. I guess all one could do is pray for her and hope that it would change. Do they have children together? That’s just so sad….
LL
skylar… Hi 😀 Yeah! Long Beach could be a 40 minute drive for me,
or depending on that stupid 405 freeway… it could turn into 2 hours!
I could be there!
Down here we talk time instead of miles.