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.
My ex certainly used the tactic of keeping everything off balance and making me question my sanity. One example of making me question my sanity is…
We were arguing and I kicked him out of the house. I thought he was gone since his car was. I was expecting my Mother and thought I heard her truck, I opened my front door only to see a cotton mouth snake ripped in half on my welcome mat. I screamed and slammed the door. I re opened it literally seconds later and it was GONE. I could not even think straight at this point. He eventually owned up to everything , claiming he had caught the snake with his bare hands and cut it in half with his car key.
Interesting part is one night, right in front of me he was joking about it with his friends telling the story just as I did, and he added in ” I wanted that bitch to think she was going crazy!”
Welcome breezesmother,
Yep, sounds like you ad a good one, just be glad he didn’t put the live snake in your bed and tell God you died.
“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.”
Could you please tell me the name of the book? Forewarned is forearmed!! Thanks!! 🙂
I moved in with my ex after about a year – we lived overseas. In the first month – away from home, friends and family – 2 of my rings I always wore went missing. At that point we didn’t have a lot of stuff – there were not many places they could be. I also had not quite cottoned on to the true nature of the man I was living with. I hunted for those rings for days. Turned everything inside out but knew in my heart I left them where I always did – in the bathroom. He was very nonchalant about them going missing – said it was probably the maid. It was not their monetary value – it was their sentimental value. I never found them and it was only later – after the chaos – someone suggested he took them just so I would feel vulnerable.
He moved things around when I wasn’t about. One time I came in he had swapped all the books from one bookcase to another. I realised only when I went to get a book I knew was on a certain shelf only to find it gone and none of the books that were usually there had also gone. They were all in a bookcase upstairs!
He swapped pictures round.
He moved ornaments round – I would stand for ages mulling over the fact I could have sworn that picture wasn’t there before. He would never admit doing it and I did feel like I was going mad.
His favourite book – he used to tell me – was the art of war. I took a look at that book and there was a whole section on how to undermine your opponent with these sort of tactics – keep them confused and on a back foot.
Looking back – creepy and scary. The little mind games day in day out were so clever as you couldn’t see what was going on – just thought you were going nuts.
My kook after trophy story:
I had recently moved into a new place. I had unpacked some little figurines and displayed them where they could be enjoyed.
They were not valuable, but they were obvious…three wise men type figures.
After I had been at work one day, I came home and looked where they stood. Only two were there. I asked kook about it. He denied taking it and denied having anyone come around while I was out.
I had a lot of mana in those pieces. They had traveled with me through some strange times. They were like a team and now the team had been upset by a kook.
I knew he had had some unknown people come by (his toadys), which he denied very vociferously. He could really shone in the obnoxious department, and so he did regarding this event.
I stayed calm. I knew he was doing the gaslighting thing, even though I had never heard of it then. I know he was pulling crazy making.
Time passed. A year or more. I told him to tell his toady friend to bring back my figurine or they would have bad mana. The toady is his ex-almost wife who thinks she’s some kind of wiccan cretin..but she’s just another kook. (Puppetmaster type, in this case.)
The energy worked it’s way through the ethers… And within a few days, the figurine was returned to it’s position and the kook knew that the bad mana was about to get rolling his way, big time…and so it has…
I had many many episodes of gaslighting, but about 5- yrs ago, it was finally revealed to me that my kids were wrapped up in the lies and stories. Unfortunately, it would be many yrs later that I learned that spath was sexually abusing at least 2 of them (oldest son – his and youngest daughter – mine) including raping and sodomizing and torturing them (waterboarding, cutting with knives and blaming it on farm living etc).
So 1n 1987 met a married a nice guy and bought new house and furnishing. including an Ethan Allen pine table with big turned legs and 4 Queen Anne style chairs in pine. Fast forward many years, married to spath and have 2 kids of my own pls his one son so I start hunting for matching chairs. The table expanded out to seat 10. Went on ebay and actually found 6 identical chairs. Brought them home, refinished them and set them around my table. A year goes by and I arrive home one day and notice a chair missing. I ask the child that was present where the 10th chair went – he says “What chair?”. I ask each child in turn and each says same thing. Then Spath arrives and tells me I never had 10 only 9. You can imagine my total confusion. I even go back to look at pictures of the chairs I took while restoring them. Had plenty of pics but none of all the chairs in one photo. I knew in my heart that I had 10 but couldn’t for the life of me understand why the entire family would lie. I joked that one day at Thanksgiving years from now they will tell me the truth and we will all laugh about it.
Fast forward a few more yrs, when it all comes out about the rapes and the torture and I ask my daughter who is the only child that still speaks to me (boys have very hard time dealing with sexual abuse) and she tells me that during a fight older brother smashed it on the back of younger one then the all took pieces to furnace to burn outside. The reason – the were afraid for their lives. They were so convinced that I WAS CRAZY that they thought I would harm them if I knew. At least that’s what spath had convinced them of, and as they knew what he was capable of and he was the “SANE” one, they feared what I could do to them.
I am a smoker (yea, I know) and I used to keep my cigarettes on top of the refrigerator. One day I began noticing that I seemed to be going through cartons of cigarettes faster and faster. A carton used to last me about two weeks, now I was going through a carton in about 4, or 5 days.
(similar odd things were going on at the same time)
One morning while getting dressed, I could not find any socks (they had been disappearing as well) so I looked in the ex-spath’s sock drawer and found a lifetime supply of cigarettes.
When I asked her about it she replied that she had been saving them for me in case I ever ran out. – How sweet of her.
BTW: When I caught her cheating on me, she said “but it made me love you more”.
Yes, my ex kept creepy trophies as well. They were the little reminders of the pain he inflicted on people. The worst creepy trophy that I discovered was also the ONLY piece of correspondence he ever saved from his youngest sister. I discovered it on his computer, it was a Facebook message that said, “You destroyed the innocence of your younger siblings (three girls and a boy) and don’t think that any of us have ever forgotten it, _____”. That one really floored me and I worry about what he may have done to my kids!
My x also keeps trophies. He has kept a box marked “sentimental”. All it contained was pictures of me as a little girl and some notebooks of poems I wrote in my teens. He has also refused to return my negligees. He uses these thing to try to control me. He threatens me with them.
This is great.
Before I realized that the boy I was in love with was, in fact, a sociopath, I stuck a post it on his cubicle. It was just a little doodle of my zodiac sign with part of Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Hope” written on it.
As I witnessed his behavior changing, I became extremely perplexed. While he was giving me the old silent treatment, the sticky-note remained. For months! In fact, he had to subsequently tether it with a pin; a pin on which he hung his oft used headset. Again, perplexed.
It began to bother me so I asked a girlfriend, “Why is that goddamned sticky-note still there?”
“Ya know, Dee, serial killers keep trophies…”
And thus began my research regarding psychopaths. In my findings, I discovered that the boy’s behavior was typically antisocial. He was, is a sociopath.
That damn note stayed there until I took it down and had a friend video me tearing it into tiny pieces.
About a year later, when neither of us worked at that particular job, and yes, I was still spellbound, I asked him about it. His reply was, of course, rather cryptic, “How am I supposed to remember a sticky-note? I had lots of sticky-notes on my cubicle.”
Here’s my conclusion, and you’ll love this. He had secretly knocked up another coworker of ours. Her desk was next to his. I really believe he kept it there, in her plain veiw, to mess with her. A poem, a zodiac sign not hers. It had to have driven her crazy. Poor gal. I still pray for her, and their daughter.
Nevertheless, that trophy is what led me to understanding him.
Crazy!