Senior sociopaths and dating: Mature partners aren’t always safe partners

Editor’s note: My new book, “Senior Sociopaths — How to Recognize and Escape Lifelong Abusers,” goes on sale May 17. I’m posting a series of articles to preview the book. The first topic: “Senior Sociopaths and Dating.”

If you’re an adult who is looking for a date, know this: Potential partners who appear to be mature can still be extremely dangerous to your emotions, psyche, health and finances. My new book, Senior Sociopaths, thoroughly documents what can happen and offers suggestions on avoiding and escaping predatory relationships.

The book is based on two surveys in which I specifically asked Lovefraud readers about their experiences with over-50 individuals whom they believed were disordered. A total of 2,120 responded to the first survey; 512 of them started dating the problem individual after he or she was already age 50 or older.

Dreams into nightmares

What they thought was a dream come true turned into a nightmare. Here’s what one woman wrote the beginning of her romance:

He made me feel very good about myself. Dinners out all the time, bought me a lot of things very expensive. There were the small red flags of devalue I ignored mixed with positive and amazing sex. I was on cloud 9 in love like never before.

Here’s how she described the end:

He hit me choked me threatened to kill me and my dog shoot me grind me up and eat me if I was to cheat.

Sociopaths do not fall in love — they are incapable of authentic love. But they do pursue romantic partners. Why? They want to use you — for sex, money, a place to live, business connections, or entertainment. As they get older, there may be a new objective — they want someone to take care of them when they are infirm.

As a reminder, here on Lovefraud, I use the word “sociopath” as an umbrella term for people who could be diagnosed as having antisocial, narcissistic, borderline, histrionic or psychopathic personality disorder, or psychopathy.

Let’s take a look at how senior sociopaths hook romantic partners, and what happens to them.

How senior sociopaths find romantic partners (targets)

First, how do senior sociopaths encounter their targets? A total of 497 survey respondents listed where they met their supposedly charming romantic partners who turned out to be disordered.

Top 5 Ways Senior Sociopaths Meet Romantic Partners

1. Internet — 36%
2. Social situation (bar, restaurant, club, party) — 17%
3. Knew him or her from the past — 12%
4. Other (gym, university, volunteer work) — 11%
5. Doing business or working together — 10%

As this list makes clear, the internet is dangerous — that’s where more than a third of survey respondents met the sociopath. There is no such thing as a safe dating app — I’ve heard of people encountering sociopaths on everything from Match.com to eHarmony to Christian Mingle. Facebook and Skype are also filled with predators.

Plenty of survey respondents also said that they knew the individuals from the past and reconnected, particularly on Facebook or at reunions. Many respondents dated them in high school or college, broke up because they were jerks, and assumed that now, perhaps 30 years later, they’d grown up. This turned out to be a terrible mistake.

Sociopathic seduction — senior version

To reel in their targets, senior sociopaths use all the standard seduction strategies that they used when they were younger. But by age 50, after practicing for decades, they know exactly what works.

I asked the survey respondents to list the seduction strategies that they experienced. A total of 506 people answered the question. Here’s what they reported:

Top 7 Senior Sociopath Seduction Strategies

1. It was a whirlwind romance, swept me off my feet — 63%
2. Called me frequently — 63%
3. Sent me a lot of text messages — 59%
4. Said we were “soul mates,” I was the person he or she was waiting for — 58%
5. Asked about my hopes and dreams then promised to make them come true — 45%
6. Sent me frequent emails — 39%
7. Did something extravagant to demonstrate love for me — 38%

Senior Sociopaths is filled quotes and stories by the survey respondents describing their experiences. Here’s what one woman wrote about her new, supposedly mature, romantic partner.

He was the nicest man I had met. So I thought!! Definitely love bombing me, obviously I had no clue what this phrase was at the time. When the mask slipped he was the most vile creature I ever encountered. Temper tantrums, no boundaries, pure evil underdeveloped psycho.

The fallout — financial losses and other abuse

Of the survey respondents who became romantically involved with senior sociopaths, 59% lost money — the amounts ranged from under $5,000 to more than $500,000.

Financial losses were the easiest to quantify, but survey respondents reported plenty of other harm as well: 88% said they became anxious or depressed, 72% said the stress of the involvement made them ill and 66% said they suffered post-traumatic stress disorder.

This is serious. If you’ve been out of the dating market for 20 or 30 years, and now find yourself divorced or widowed and wanting a new relationship, please educate yourself about senior sociopaths and dating. It is certainly possible to find romance later in life, but you need to be careful.

Next week I’ll write about marriage to a senior sociopath.

Learn more: Senior Sociopaths — How to Recognize and Escape Lifelong Abusers