Lovefraud has heard from many people who have been romantically involved with sociopaths. They often comment on the “amazing sex.”
Many sociopaths are skilled lovers, and there are reasons for this.
First of all, sociopaths are hard-wired for sex. They have an excessive need for stimulation, excitement and sensation. They also have no fear and no inhibitions. From a sexual perspective, that means a voracious appetite and anything goes.
Secondly, sociopaths get a lot of practice. They usually start young—precocious sexuality is one of the early behavior problems typical of a sociopath. As they get older, sociopaths continue to engage in frequent, casual sex. Sociopaths have plenty of partners, and plenty of opportunities to learn.
Sex but no love
But just because there’s sex—even what appears to be wild, passionate sex—doesn’t mean there’s love. Sociopaths may be technically competent lovers, but there will never be any true intimacy or emotional sharing involved.
Many people who have contacted Lovefraud have been confused by this. Their encounters seemed so caring, so earth-moving, that it was difficult to believe there was no love.
Here are the facts: Sociopaths are not capable of love. Sociopaths are, however, convincing liars, and they know that if they say the words “I love you,” they’ll probably get more sex.
Furthermore, when a sociopath seduces his or her target, it’s a way of establishing control. Along with getting the physical desires of the moment met, the sociopath may also be getting money and a free place to live. All for whispering a few sweet nothings—and to the sociopath, they truly mean nothing.
Diagnosing the disorder
The most accurate tool for diagnosing whether someone is a sociopath (also called a psychopath) is the Psychopathy Check List-Revised (PCL-R), developed by Dr. Robert Hare. The tool, administered by a trained professional, rates the person on 20 items to determine an overall psychopathy score.
One of the items evaluated is “promiscuous sexual behavior.” This is defined as impersonal sexual relationships, frequent one-night stands, cheating, frequent casual sex, several sexual relationships at the same time, deception to convince others to engage in sexual activity, and possible charges for sexual assault. (Believe me, sociopaths are capable of all of it.)
Another item on the check list is “many short-term marital relationships.” This means the person has frequent unstable interpersonal relationships and/or multiple marriages.
Irresponsible and casual sex, therefore, is one of the hallmarks of sociopathic behavior. Some sociopaths are also capable of truly frightening sexual violence—but that’s a topic for another post.
tobe – i think one of the reasons people, in general (not specific to your psychologist) wax on about the evils of online dating, is that it falsely contains all the scary people in one place. It’s the same as, ‘don’t walk down the street at night!’ if we get mugged or raped, ’cause we were on the street at night…well, what could we expect?1
it feels good to finally articulate this, because i have been feeling it and getting grumpy about it, without putting my finger on it. Online IS more risky, but there shouldn’t be a freaking moral judgment attached to it, and there sure is.- We, the abused, are scapegoats for the evil of spaths. Everyone else is safe if it is only ‘us’ who are lied to and conned, safe if only ‘online’ is unsafe.
YET, F***ING AGAIN, SCAPEGOATED!!!
Hi Lessonlearned –
I have brought this thread back up in case you hadn’t seen it yet. I thought it might be helpful for some of the stuff you are going through right now. xx (Hope it helps)
Aussie,
Thank you for bringing this up. It’s so thoughtful of you.
I want to apologize to everyone. I’m so in selfish mode right now. I’m noticing some things about myself that are so distressing. My emotions are somewhat shut off. I feel like I’ve lost alot of my empathy. THAT is tremendously frustrating to me. I read ALL the posts on each blog I encounter. I DO feel the pain of so many here, but when I post, meaning to assist someone, unless it correlates directly to my experience, I’m somewhat shut off, even though I know there is enough empathy still there that I FEEL for them…I just don’t know how to respond. This just brings me to tears. I’ve been obsessing on what happened so much, trying to make sense of it, my brain is scrambled eggs right now.
This brings up more stuff for me and is the MOST excrutiating part for me.
I need to vent my confusion on this subject. POS comes from a fam that lived remotely. A small town. I KNOW his mother is Spath. His ex wife called her “extremely eccentric”. Uh huh. Father was a principal and coach at a high school. I was told he was VERY controlling, and both parents had Masters/Doctorates. The fam was also extremely religious. Ex POS told me that he derived his sex ed from watching animals have sex on their farm as his mother explained what they were doing. Sex was a no no and not until you were married. So POS claims that he lost his virginity, got married at twenty so he could have sex. They were married only four years. She bailed and took her child with her, to another state, as far away from him as she could get. He used this victim thing about her. He used FAKE TEARS about having lost his child (He said that after he talked to his parents, he signed off his parental rights to the child). I know this is the same BS story he told his second wife. ONe day not too long ago, when I had spent the night at his house, I was going through some pictures that his ex wife had collected of their dating and marriage. She didn’t want the pictures. As I went through them, I noticed that early on in their marriage, there was a room set up in their apartment by POS’s second wife, and a child in the picture with her. It was his first daughter. He had lied to me. And I bet you hands down (I have no proof)< that he used his first child, to create the illusion for the second wife about what a great father he is. This confused me given that he said he signed off his parental rights to her and saw her only twice since then. I did not bring up this picture I saw to him.He had also told me his first wife would send him mean letters with threats attached. He said his second wife was allowed to read them and that she wrote her a letter saying what a great guy he was and not to say those things again. POS got GREAT joy out of that. OMG….all the lies…so many, many lies…the pictures also depict this happy couple dating and in their first year of marriage, first few years with the kids. They looked so happy. This confused me too. It was shortly after his second child was born, that our affair had begun. Now the sex stuff.
He told me the sex with wife one was great, but that it dwindled to nothing. He said the same about wife two. He once told me, "seems my relationships last only about three years emotoinally" WTF??? He said wife two would not do in bed what he wished she would, that she was a prude and slept every night in pajamas. Wow. HE"S the one that slept in pajamas lol! Anyway, ..so when we started having a sexual relationship, I spent the first year ONLY giving oral sex. He REFUSED to have sex with me. He kept telling me "I can't, it would cross the line for me emotionally, I can't"….he had no problem getting it up and ejaculating and enjoying what I was doing….this is part of what is so painful to me. That first year, but yet with the wives, he was having intercourse immediately upon marriage because, well, that was okay. WTF??? I literally turned myself into a pretzel. When we did begin having sex, he just laid there. And I'm NOT kidding! No noise NOTHING….then when I orgasmed he looked at me blankly and said, "What's going on down there?" omg. Well, guess what, after that, there was no more of that laying there crap. He was into and wanted it constantly, sometimes two times a day. There were times he would withhold from me, but I did MOST of the work. He only gave me oral sex TWICE during the relationshit. He had NO IDEA, even when I directed his hand there, HOW to touch my clitoris. It was the actual ACT that was the pay off for me. I DID enjoy pleasing him, and I think I got use to not having anything done to me, so the actual act was the big pay off. I rarely had an orgasm with him. It was just enough that he would have intercourse with me..I faked it. I talked myself into thinking that it was okay not to have an orgasm because to enjoy sex didn't mean you HAD to have one. ONe day he said he had a surprise for me. He took me to a hot tub place. I remember EXACTLY what I was feeling. Trapped. My stomach started to hurt and I felt completely anxious. He just started taking his clothes off and hopped in…"Come one babe…" UGH!!! I did it and it was pretty good once I got USE to the idea…but I felt cornered and he never asked me how I felt about this little "surprise".. It was merely a novelty for him. This happened alot during that last year. He wanted to do it outside, so we did. He had the most beautiful property and it seemed so romantic a few times early in, but this last year, I felt merely used. There were a few times he'd do something as a "surprise" and it seemed so cute…one time met me at the door with a glass of wine and nothing on but a shirt ….and even THEN I felt unnerved. I said, "Can't we relax a little bit before we have sex?" HE was disappointed. "Wow, I did all of this for you…"…he always wanted to do it as soon as I walked in the door. MANY times he would do it and that would be it. No affection, no nothing, but then he would ask me to spend the night and he'd spoon me all night (VERY rarely this happened) and tell me how comfortable he was with me,then there were other nights he'd kick me HARD all night long….or other nights we'd be lying there in the dark, cuddled up and he would say something random to me that was incredibly emotoinally abusive like "if you'd not send me all those mean text messages, maybe our relationshit would work better". And I DID do that. I'd be so enraged at him for hurting me or lying to me. Last time he lied to me, was when he was in another state love bombing someone else. THE ENTIRE TIME, he was lying to me. He would respond and say, "you're just imagining things", or "you're hurting me. Stop falsely accusing me". What is ironically funny, but hurtful about that is that while he was on his date with love bomb, she said he kept looking at his text messages. She said it didn't bother her because she was not attracted to him. She already had a boyfriend that she was in love with. That didn't stop him from trying though and lying to me. All the details she gave me were very important, but also very painful because the things he was doing in his love bombing, he was doing as a single, divorced man. Things he never did with me. When he TRIED To take me out "daily", I would make excuses not to go. He would be upset with me,demanding of me. Then when I found out about love bomb, he said, "I tried, I asked you MANY times to go out with me, and you wouldn't go"….well, he's right. One of the things I noticed during the last month, except for the last time we had sex, it was missionary scissor stuff. It wasn't interesting anymore. He no longer was interested in me doing foreplay, which he knew I loved to do. I tried. He pushed me away. Or looked off as if he was bored. So many painful things….I knew there was someone he was love bombing although at the time I had no proof. I was shown I wasn't worth the massive love bombing effort because I was a source of shame for him. He didn't use those other women. He used me. I wasn't worth what they were getting. ANd this is where I'm stuck and where it truly has wounded my spirit, because in so many ways, he's right. I didn't deserve it. I probably deserved everything I got because I was simply the other woman. I was a source of sin and shame. I don't know if he was on porn sites. I suspected, but no proof. I know he was on ONE dating site, that he claimed a neighbor across the street set up for him and paid for. He's not been on that site in over a week. Is it the only one? I don't know. I don't bother to find out. There was never any SOLID proof that there were other women other than his wife and me. The illusion he created for me in that he could be faithful if he just found the RIGHT woman, the messed up sexuality and the push/pull hot/cold stuff…and in the end telling me coldly "let me go. You don't want me to be happy, you don't want me to find what I want"….that absolutely killed me.
He acted like I was what he wanted and he demanded that i be so. It was shocking to me at the time, given everything he said I was to him. Pursuing me and my attention ardently until love bomb in another state.
He was sexually weird and fragmented with me. There were times that it was VERY passionate and/or romantic. He could set a great atmosphere. And he did. But sometimes, his sexual behavior was very infantile, his behavior afterwards was infantile. Like a five year old hiding under the covers. He would withhold love and affection from me out of bed. But it was always something I was doing or not doing right. I was killing myself for him and I deserved it. Simply because I was the other woman.
thanks for letting me share.
Oh and to add to the above, which further complicates my healing and understanding of what happened is that POS was NOT a criminal. He ALMOST lost his job because of his relationshit with me, but got it back. He had a clean record. Never been in jail, ever. Has worked the same job for twenty five years. Has owned his home for over ten now. Great presentation.
shabby, the sociopath i was involved with used meetup.com… as well as a host of other sites ( likely dating ones ).. I’m just saying don’t put your guard down even with “group meet” sites like that.
Dear Lesson learned,
Bernie Madoff didn’t have a criminal record either—but I think the way that he stole money and conned others is pretty good proof he is high on the psychopathic trait list! Michael Vick has never been diagnosed as a psychopath either but I think the behavior he has exhibited with “murdering” dogs by torture is a very psychopathic trait. John Edwards is a successful enough man he ran for president, but his record of lack of fidelity and lying and cover up to me indicates that he is high in psychopathic and narcissistic traits.
They do not have to “qualify” by being CRIMINALLY CONVICTED, but most crimes are NOT prosecuted and they fly under the radar. How many mid to upper level drug dealers are there in the US today? I think those people who do that are very HIGH IN PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS, and violence, but many of them will never be prosecuted though they break the law DAILY. How many people drive stoned or drunk and do NOT get caught? Those people I think are criminals who have NOT been prosecuted, but are none-the-less CRIMINAL for not being prosecuted.
The TRAITS of a “true” psychopath can be found in many just common every day “people” who are jerks or for lack of a better word “assholes.” In fact there is a book published about “assholes” at work. I think it is called the “no asshole rule” or something along that line, and it points out what these assholes cost us in industry, business, and personally, which is WHOPPING BIG!
The traits are the same in an “asshole” that the psychopath uses, and though an “asshole” can change if they wanted to, most never see the need to change significantly, any more than the psychopath does. So recognizing the TRAITS of the psychopath will help us recognize not only the psychopaths we meet, but the assholes as well. They are ALL people we want to avoid.
Ox,
I think this one was more than just an asshole for sure.. sociopath fits him well.
Criminal records, they are very good at hiding this. I did not know that my spath had a record until the ex girlfriend told me. For assault, he’d attacked her 6 times (and she still had him back) WTF.
It also transpired that he had be refused access to his one daughter – abuse. no other details.
Spent time in jail for non payment of council tax. Car theft.
Goodness knows what else, these are the only ones I know about from his ex however I’m sure that there were others.
They are true because he hinted to me that this was the case when he was ‘coming clean’ with me (cos I was throwing him out)
So he’s not that clever, otherwise he would not commit these offences and then get caught.
Dear LL,
Could be, but you know, it doesn’t really matter if the label is psychopath or asshole, he is TOXIC=ABUSER=BULLY=BAD and the ONLY solution for that is to GET AWAY from them.
If we learn the TRAITS of the psychopath, the way they behave, the “tricks” and “cultish behaviors” they use to hook us into a “cult” (even of only 2 people,) we can learn to spot this dysfunctional behavior and to stop it from progressing to our being “hooked into a relationship with them.”
Hello, I am new to the lovefraud website and this is my first post. I know I am staring sort of sideways, here as I still have not posted my initial story. I have been selfishly reading posts made by the incredibly brave and beautiful survivors, here, for the past week, which is the amount of time I have been utilizing the website (I hope you don’t mind). My relationship with the Psychopath lasted 9.5 months. I haven’t seen him in two months and have not spoken to him or had any further contact with him in 4 weeks, and NEVER will again, if I have anything to do with it, but I would like to begin by sharing with you what just happened a few hours ago, via Facebook (which I normally do not engage in, much)… My friend had a (male) friend of hers ask her if she would ask me if I could contact him via Facebook because (as he said) He is looking for a real estate agent (I am one) to use to find property on the Westside of Los Angeles. She told me that in addition to needing an agent, he is exceptionally nice, single (the last thing I am interested in is dating at this point) and that she and her family have known him and his family since she was 15 years old. I asked her how much she trusted him, and she said she trusted him with her life! I thanked her for the referral and then proceeded to look at his profile info on Facebook. I found him to have a few heavy-hitter agent friends in Santa Monica, and his profile says he is an agent and a lender and buys properties for himself as investments. I then wondered, why would an agent and or lender, with additional agent contacts want to use a realtor that they do not know, to work with them??? So I Googled him. HAH!!!! He has a record, has been convicted, prosecuted by the Attorney for the City of Santa Monica for the illegal use of his single family residence, as a HOTEL, for vacationers! Even continued to rent it AFTER the bank took it from him as it went into Foreclosure. He even got a warning from the City, so that he would have the opportunity not to have to be convicted, but he ignored it. (I say Psychopath, Narcissist)Then I looked further… He had his Mortgage Company shut down and all rights taken from him, to operate in business within the State of California, for Tax Evasion, and misrepresentation!!! Scammer Psychopath Fraud!! (Sorry, I am sure you can hear the rageful passion in my voice/words). I blocked him on Facebook immediately. Instead of reffering to it as my “Blocked List”, I reffer to it as my “Psychopath List”. Maybe I will acquire more in time! Ok, now I am probably starting to sound like a crazy person. Please don’t be scared. But bottom line is, for what happened today, and the immediate action I took, based on my instincts and what I have learned from reading your blogs, I am so proud of myself for what I did, and now I know that I can keep myself safe. Yeehaa!!!
Thank you so very much to all of you, for helping me through the intense healing process! I am eternally grateful for each and every one of you amazing people, and for the stories and words of wisdom you share!
Much Love!