By Sarah Strudwick
Sarah Strudwick, based in the UK, is author of Dark Souls—Healing and recovering from toxic relationships.
First of all I want to thank everyone who commented on the posts that I’ve written over the last couple of years. Recently I did a post on How to speed date a sociopath. Whilst I make every effort to move on with my life after the psychopath, occasionally something will come up that causes me to think “Why do they do that?”
So the topic of this post is whether or not any of you have experienced the following:
In my book Dark Souls, I wrote about an occasion where my ex moved my cash card. A week later I found it hidden behind a bottle of sauce on the top of a very tall cupboard in the kitchen. At the time it went missing, I asked my ex if he may have picked it up by mistake, because he used the same. He commented that I was forgetful, and asked me whether I’d left it in the freezer.
This was a very strange comment. Later, I found a book written by a psychopath about how to manipulate people, putting the victim off guard so they question their own sanity. One of the suggestion was to ask victims if they left something that went missing in a freezer!
Being a complete idiot at the time, I looked in there, just to check I wasn’t losing the plot or going mad.
More items not returned
I also lent my ex some books and a heart-shaped crystal. At the time he was leaving his wife. He promised to keep it safe. When I asked for it to be returned, I got the excuse that he had let his children play with it, and one of his small children managed to drop it out of a two-story building and broke it. The story was preposterous—why would he let his kids play with something he didn’t want his wife to see?
I was also in a relationship with a man call Dan. I was doing acupuncture, and he as asked me if he could borrow my acupuncture books and also a book on Taoism. He also borrowed a cassette of a local radio interview I’d done when I was 19 about backpacking in India. When the relationship ended, I asked Dan to send me back the books and the interview cassette. He still has them to this day, and refused to give a reason for keeping them. Looking back, I think it was his way of keeping a little trophy of me.
Happening again
I was prompted to write this is because straight after I ended the speed date, I noticed something strange. Every day I wear a necklace, which I made myself out of resin and crystals. You could call it my “security blanket,” because I always feel happy when I am wearing it. When I bathe or shower I take it off and leave it in the bathroom as the string is made of leather. Lurch commented on the jewelry I make as he saw the resin and paraphernalia on the worktops in my kitchen.
A day or so after getting my head of the washing machine with all the mind games he played, I suddenly realised I wasn’t wearing the necklace. I searched the flat everywhere but couldn’t find it. I soon realised that a photograph of me was missing as well. It was an old photograph of me when I was about 16, dressed in fancy dress and looking reasonably young, fit and attractive. My son had seen it a few days before and commented on how young I looked. The photograph had been next to the computer, but was gone.
I like to think of myself as a rational person and don’t jump to conclusions before pointing the finger. In fact, I searched multiple times only to find nothing. Whilst I cannot prove that anyone took it, these were not items of value like money. But they had a lot of sentimental value, much like the cassette and the specialist acupuncture books, which, incidentally are irreplaceable.
Trophies
I’ve read before that the psychopath likes to closet their victims, and I’ve heard stories about serial killers keeping “bits” of them as trophies. Whilst we expect the sociopath to steal our hearts, money and valuable possessions, the difference is that all these items are irreplaceable. Which begs the question that they will intentionally go out of their way to take such things, because they know how upset we will be.
I am still searching for these items, just in case I haven’t lost my marbles. Whilst it’s easy to let them go because they have no real value, the whole experience points to the potentially sick and twisted nature of their personalities and has “creeped” me out. Even with such a good understanding of psychopaths/ sociopaths, it’s still beyond all my capacity to understand what motivates someone to do something like this.
It’s for this reason that I shared this experience. I wonder if anyone else had experience the same kind of “creepy” behaviour.
I experienced “losing things” briefly. It upset me so much that I finally made a doctor’s appointment. When I told him my “symptoms” he was slightly puzzled, but had me tested for MS. He ordered an MRI, etc.
I simply couldn’t “remember” where I put some of my household items. The one that threw me over the edge, was when I looked for the tub of butter for three days. It did not make it back into the fridge for some reason. Eventually, I found it in the utensil drawer next to my stove. There is NO WAY that I would have ever put it there, so I assumed I was either losing my mind or was very ill. Neither was the answer.
Additionally, I had three candle sticks on the coffee table in my living room. They were three differednt heights. They “moved” constantly. I recall walking past the room, standing and looking at them very perlpexed, knowing that I did not put the shortest one in the back. The arrangements “changed” from timt to time. I truly dismissed it, but did find it weird. When I mentioned it once, I was told that I “needed my head checked” or to consider a “ghost.” Ok then…
Eventually, as things came to pass, things stopped going missing and my candles quit moving. My mind is in tact, just as I suspected.
I say you’re on to something, Sarah!
The sociopath hid things to gaslight me, so that he could be abusive for me “losing” things and being irresponsible. (He also intentionally broke his own things in order to blame me for it, but that’s a whole other story.)
He also kept trophies from various women. Some of the things were already there before I started seeing him but he lied about where they had come from and who they belonged to. Other things came later. It could be something like a cheap bottle of shampoo of a brand that neither he or I used appearing in the shower one morning, a mysterious hairbrush found in a bathroom cabinet, or him giving me a ring that he said he “bought” from some person I never met. I didn’t live with him, only saw him a few times a week, and I had no idea he was lying that these things were there the entire time he and I dated and somehow I just “missed” them.
There were some things of mine that he refused to return after we split. He said I’d get them when he wanted to give them, not because I wanted them. Some of those things he hung onto for a while, then they either appeared one day on my front porch or in my *mother’s* mailbox. The things he kept for good – I imagine they were given to the new woman as a gift, something special he got just for her.
Yes…my experience qualifies as gaslighting, rather than trophies. Something made me share that when I read this.
To the best of my knowledge, I can’t think of a “trophy.” But I don’t think it is unusual I still think you are onto something and that it is more common than most think.
I had some experience with this issue with the ex-gf.
Though this experience may not be from the same perspective as is talked about in the article – maybe it will be helpful to resolving someone’s problems.
To the bitter end, my ex-gf harped on me about violating her personal space and taking control of her belongings by ‘rearranging’ her furniture and other items.
I would often do the dishes. I would scrub pots and skillets in the sink and load and unload the dishwasher. I placed a cookie sheet in a cabinet adjacent to the one where she usually kept it – though I didn’t know it at the time. Also, I did the same with a collander. I never heard the end of it.
What I started doing was leaving items on a countertop if I did not know EXACTLY where they were to be stored.
But I NEVER heard the end of it. Until the very end of our relationship I was accused of taking control of her personal things. It didn’t matter how manytimes I asked to please tell me what I had done wrong or what I had misplaced or even taken!
It was like…REVERSE GASLIGHTING!
Additionally, I was often accused of doing such ‘good deeds’ with an ulterior motive.
According to her, I was making dinner, packing her a lunch, making her a Vitamix drink, etc., all in some bizarre plot to control her and justify my presence. Man, it REALLY hurt to hear those things.
Yet, often she would say that her mates at work would remark and be envious at the wonderful sandwich or omelet that she brought into work – and that how her boyfriend had made it.
I did it because I loved her and thought it would be of help to her.
Sarah, I don’t think this kind of behavior is unusual at all in sociopaths. Whether they’re holding onto trophies for themselves, giving them away to the new woman as a special “gift”, or hiding things to gaslight others, there are common things in it for them: Cheap thrills & Duper’s Delight.
I bet that guy is just thrilled that he walked off with some things of yours without you knowing it right away, and that you’re sitting around wondering what the hell happened to them. I’m only surprised it wasn’t your lingerie.
Mine took photos of me as trophies. I can’t handle that at all.
Is this creepy?
I have many items from my travels. A piece of the Kremlin wall, small cobbles from famous plazas in Europe. Rocks from all over the world. A dried flower from a prom – another from a loved one’s funeral – pressed into albums. I had a relative from the old country that would press flowers onto the pages that she wrote on. I treasure those – like keeping baby boots or a lock of hair.
In a very touching and emotional moment for me my ex-gf took me to the place where she was born and from where her brother died. When we were leaving, I took a sprig of leaf from a pine tree. I kept it for a time on a shelf by my desk. I remember holding it close to my face and smelling the pine scent – and remembering that very special moment when my ex-gf shared some of her memories. I told her about it.
Months later, the last time I saw her, as she was berating me over everything and anything, she told me that the thing about the ‘pine sprig’ was ‘creepy.’
I don’t know if you would consider it trophies but a female “friend” of mine who is a psychopath continually stole things from me. Not of any monetary value, or even things she would use, but things she knew **I valued**
Actually, I am not sure this woman was not a kleptomaniac in the truest sense of the word clinically, I KNOW she was a hoarder on a massive scale, but as far as I can tell, I am the only one se actually stole from consistently. She and her husband had massive amounts of stuff stored in a building I owned and they didn’t come get it all after six months of being told to remove it and son D and I went through it and we found all kinds of things that had belonged to us that were there, a box of his pictures from high school. My favorite ice cream scoop which was easy to identify because it was a “gimmie” from a company my egg donor used to work at and their name was on it, an apron I had made for my living history costume, and many other small things like that….she had also stolen some things of value but mostly things of no value at all.
The moving of things to drive you crazy….I can definitely imagine that would be FUN for the psychopath–especially since under stress and PTSD we lose things enough as it is.
Sarah, I lost a number of things that I had either collected or inherited – small things, but important to me.
The first exspath kept all manner of things that had belonged to me, especially those things that he had given to me as “gifts” because he had paid for them and, therefore, they were “his.”
When I packed up and labeled the boxes containing the list of things that the second exspath “wanted,” I destroyed every photo, letter, clothing item, note, and card that wasn’t on his very short “list.” I also threw out the “organic” collections, as well – he used to give me heart-shaped rocks which I would display around the house.
The second exspath DID engage in the gaslighting in a big way. He would move car keys, ATM cards, and other items from one place to another and claim that I was “forgetful,” or that I was in the beginning stages of dementia. He would say these things using a tone of morbid humor, but it was an intentional gaslighting that he began after he had read one of the many spath books that I had. A few months before the separation, he actually attempted to claim that I was losing my mind. When that didn’t work because I didn’t allow it, he switched gears and tried to imply that HE was suffering bi-polar disorder – again, I didn’t allow that, either.
In my case, thesecond exspath hasn’t kept any “me trophies,” I’m almost certain. He is one of these kinds that is just wiping my existence and the relationshit out as neatly as he erased my portfolio images off of my computer. I simply don’t (and, never DID) exist. His treatment of me during the last 6 years of the marriage were pretty evident of this – I was present as an organism, but I didn’t “exist.” Once he had relieved me of my finances, I had no further value to him.
Fixerupper, do you still have that sprig of pine? If you do, it might be an option to pitch it out the window, along with anything else that has any association with the spath.
Thank you for this post, Sarah – it’s an interesting topic to discuss and consider.
Brightest blessings
OxD, now that is truly creepy…..