Lovefraud recently received the following email from a reader in Holland whom we’ll call “Anika”:
Today I registered to your love fraud site. Nice that you created it. It is a great help when you are abused by a socio-psychopath whatever you call it. I’ve been divorced from mine almost 30 years. Only 3 years ago I read a book that explained to me why, after my divorce, my life changed from a drama into a hell.
And this blog and sites are very helpful. Knowledge gives power. So I am together with a cousin (who is also divorced her psychopath), working on creating something like this in Holland. In our country it seems to be an unknown subject.
I want to write especially about the troubles the Nps-ers can cause between the children and their mother or fathers. That’s what happened in my case. My ex trained the children in abusive and cruel behavior towards me.
My son doesn’t know the facts of why I divorced his father. His father (who works as a homeopathic doctor) told my kids, when they were in their puberty, that the great drama in their lives was that their mother caused them a lot off harm by having this (so called) depression after the divorce. I only found out years afterward he what did, because he never told me that he was putting this idea in their heads. (And he forgot to mention his messing around with other women and lies about that, which destroyed our marriage.)
When I asked my children if they please can explain to me what happened and how, they most of the times get very angry, start to scream at me, or walk away but cannot give any example. They avoid contact with me most of the times.
I have had no contact with my daughter for several years. One year ago I gave it another try. First by e-mail and then I paid her 2 visits that were 2 very pleasant occasions. I could feel her love, and the atmosphere was very good.
She wrote me this also in a e-mail. And then she started to create distance between her and me.
My son, luckily, has 2 kids and he likes me to be the grandmother. I am very lucky with them that contact is very good, we love each other big time.
Well that’s my story in a nutshell.
Anika’s story is just like many of the 3,600 stories that have been sent to Lovefraud—and that is exactly why I posted it. This story came from Europe. Sociopaths are everywhere—Lovefraud has received stories from all over the world. Sociopaths are in all demographic groups. They are male, female, rich, poor, all races, all religions and live in all communities.
Anika also said that sociopathy “seems to be an unknown subject” in Holland. Well, it’s an unknown subject all around the world. Yes, we’re talking about social predators here on Lovefraud, which is based in the United States, but that certainly doesn’t mean Americans have any more awareness of this personality disorder than anyone else does.
Because Hollywood and the media typically portray sociopaths as deranged serial killers, our “understanding” of them may do us more harm than good. Why? When people believe sociopaths are all deranged killers, it may blind them to the fact that a lying, manipulative, abusive partner or colleague may be a sociopath. Because the individual hasn’t killed anyone, it may be hard to believe that he or she has a serious personality disorder.
The fact that predators live among us is like a giant skeleton in the closet of the human race. It’s a massive problem that no one wants to talk about.
Defining the problem
One reason why this huge problem remains outside of our awareness is that it is poorly defined. Even though people have been talking about evil since biblical times, there is no widely accepted definition of what it is.
In my book, Red Flags of Love Fraud 10 signs you’re dating a sociopath, I suggest that the word “sociopath” be used as a generic umbrella description for social predators—people who live their lives by exploiting others. Within the framework of “sociopathy,” experts (who disagree on what to call this personality disorder and how it should be diagnosed) can define specific diagnoses, such as antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, narcissism and borderline personality disorder.
Massive numbers
Experts estimate that up to 4% of the population have antisocial personality disorder, up to 6% have narcissistic personality disorder, and up to 2% have borderline personality disorder. Add these figures together, and as many as 12% of the people who live among us are social predators.
As of July 2012, the population of the United States was nearly 314 million. If up to 12% are sociopaths, that means as many as 37 million social predators in America.
The world population is almost 7 billion. If 12% are sociopaths, the total is a staggering 837 million. This is a massive problem.
So why are there 837 million disordered people in the world, exploiting almost everyone they meet, and most people don’t know about it? Perhaps the whole concept is just too scary.
Cultural conspiracy
Human beings are social creatures. We live in groups and depend on each other. How do we cope with the idea that some of our own species are predators? They look like us and act like us, but their objective is not to live in community with us—it is to take advantage of us and perhaps destroy us.
Maybe we just don’t want to go there. We are, after all, capable of massive conspiracy. Take Santa Claus. I’ve always been amazed that every adult in every country where Christmas is celebrated knows, in the presence of children, to keep the Santa Claus story going. So maybe we’re living with another massive cultural conspiracy that goes something like this: All people are basically good and want the same thing is life—to love and be loved.
It’s a cultural message that we hear time and time again. Unfortunately, it is not totally true. There are exceptions to this general belief in the goodness and sameness of people. The exceptions are the sociopaths.
We need to open the closet and shed light on the fact that 837 million social predators live among us. They look like us, but they do not live like us. These people do not love. They care only about power, control and dominance.
The first step towards protecting ourselves from sociopaths is knowing that they exist.
Dear Imara, unfortunately, there is a DNA component to psychopathy just like there is in alcoholism. It doesn’t mean they don’t have choice to be like they are, but like a person with the DNA to tend toward alcoholism, they have a choice to drink or not. The psychopath has a choice to do evil or not, then it becomes habitual and they do not want to change iit is set in stone.
I’m sorry your son is like that I do understand what it is like for my child to go to the dark side…it was not because you didn’t nurture him or teach him right from wrong, he just rejected right.
I hadn’t read this article yet, Donna, but it happens that I wrote a story relating to Santa Clause (Sinterklaas in my country and Anika’s) in another thread, and I’ll post it here as well.
Sinterklaas falls in early december. My parents were doubtful about whether to deceive a child into believing some fantasy story about an old saint who came from Spain on his steamboat to ride on his horse on the roofs and have a servant, black from the soot, deliver his gifts. As atheists they wanted to raise me to be critical to belief stories, to mythologies. And while they weren’t against giving me gifts on a special day, they didn’t feel comfortable about allowing me to believe in the myth of Sinterklaas. To them it seemed hypocritical to perpetuate a belief in Sinterklaas, while educating the reasons they did not believe in a god(s).
So, my father did an experiment, a joke, in a way to help me realize the truth when I was 3. I do not remember this story myself (probably denied and blocked what my own eyes saw). My parents told me about it when I was an adult already.
This was the experiment: My father donned on a red curtain over his shoulder and put off his glasses. He didn’t make a false beard (he’s always been clean shaven). He didn’t use a wig (typical accountant haircut, to the side). He appeared to me as my father, with no glasses and a red curtain over his shoulders, as much without disguise as possible, and introduced himself as Sinterklaas to me.
I was extatic. Because Sinterklaas was there, coming to visit me and greet me. My parents were stunned by my reaction. They could not believe I did not recognize my father as my father. My father had been so recognizably my father.
So, my father stepped out of the room, put his glasses back on and put away the red curtain. He entered the room again and I ran to him crying, “Daddy, daddy, You’ve just missed him. Sinterklaas was here! He was here!”
After this experiment, my parents decided to let me believe it, and not go against it. They had seen with their own eyes how I simply refused to recognize what was right before me and how important it was for me at the time to believe the myth. They recognized that in order to force the truth on me by telling me that it was a lie they would do more damage, than allowing me to believe in it. I would eventually grow out of it. SO they did what every parent did: let me prepare my letter to Sinterklaas, set out my shoe with food for his horse, and a coffee for him and Black Pete. They would wait until I was sound asleep and put everything in readiness for me to discover when I’d wake up.
So, I believed in Sinterklaas until I was 5. And then I started to really question the whole thing on my own. The fantasy story went against al that was possible and logical. So, when I revealed my doubts about Sinterklaas still being alive (him being so old and all and being old for a very long time already) and she agreed with my doubts.
But I still couldn’t let go of the magic regarding the story, the beauty of it. I still believed that Sinterklaas must have lived once in Spain and had treated children in Belgium and The Netherlands with toys by going over the rooftops. More, while I assumed Sinterklaas must have been dead, I still believed Black Pete was real and that it was him who wanted to keep the memory of Sinterklaas alive. He was a young man, so he could go on for years still. This half belief soothed the pain of realizing that Sinterklaas did not exist (anymore).
A few months later, I was ready to let it go, and I just asked my mom, “It’s you who’s giving me all the gifts, isn’t it?” And she admitted it immediately. It didn’t hurt me to know it. I actually felt proud of myself to have figured it out all on my own, and I saw it as a type of game. I recognized what efforts my parents must have taken to keep it a secret. They had done well: even sneaking whole size shops, train tables, baby sized cribbs for baby dolls, and a puppet theatre (my dad actually made most of it with his own hands) into my bedroom while I was sleeping. And of course, my parents made me promise not to blab what I knew to other kids who still believed in it.
Though the secret was out, we kept up the ritual until I was 12 or something. We all knew the thruth, but we still all three pretended the story. My parents would still wait for me to be asleep, before laying everything in readiness for me to discover in the morning. (I had no brothers or sisters to keep the pretense game up). And sometimes we still play at it (but now I do it to them as well). “Oh, look! Look what Sinterklaas dropped through the chimney.”
What does this reveal: that we cling to the beliefs that we find beautiful and magical with all our hearts. And even as it unravels against logic, we still try to keep half or part of that belief. Eventually we do let go of it, when we grow past it, and when the amount of evidence goes against every logic. How long it takes, depends on the individual. I figured it out when I was 5, other kids a year longer. I even have an ex who believed it until he was 12 (well he had thought of it before, but his parents kept insisting it was true and then revealed it to him at 12 because he had become too big for it in their eyes… and the ritual stopped altogether for him).
I always felt it was wrong of his parents to insist he’d keep believing it, against his own logic, because his belief was the only reason they’d still do it.
When we compare it to spath entanglements there are several beautiful, magical myths involved:
a) that whie humans are flawed, there is good in everybody and that everyone can grow and change for the better.
b) that there is a soulmate out there who makes us feel special
c) that love conquers all and can motivate and help the other change for the better
And they are incredibly beautiful beliefs. Unfortunately they are as true as Sinterklaas (Santa Claus) and can be truly harmful.
And what do spaths do? They behave like the parents of my ex during my student years. We start to figure things out on our own, question it, but we still wish to at least belief part of it. And they deny our reasonable and logical doubts and insist we keep on believing it. Because we at least wish to believe part of it, we don’t resist it. And then one day, just like this ex’s parents, spaths decide that the charade has gone on for far too long, and they reveal themselves unmasked, give us a very harsh wake up call, and all pretense stops for once and for all. They discard us, just like this ex’s parents stopped doing the Sinterklaas ritual alltogether when he was 12.
Radar_On said,
“It is the outward manifestation, Of the totality of their EVIL. Having no moral compass and no conscience, They are very capable of unspeakable horrors. ”
When you get right down to it, this is the bare truth- the one we must accept if we are to keep ourselves and others safe and sane. The debate as to whether they can be helped or healed- who among us would be willing to take a chance on allowing that kind of pain knowingly and willingly in their lives?
still discovering , but doing so with no contact
(thanks to you)
Lovingthem to answer your question “Just wondering, who was the spath/Other in your life?” He was a stranger.
We had a nurse that cared for my wife and child. they are both autistic. my child is nonverbal and in daipers. she will be 16 this week. So we have a nurse. my wife is unable to care for herself although she has an intelligent mind. she is still socially behind. She can spend hours spinning things or chase cars. she has controlled herself but once in awhile she will still dart after a car. she’s been hit before so a nurse cares for them both.
Our nurse had a daughter. Her only child. Her daughter was dating a man. They came by to visit once. my wife and child’s reaction was terrible. my nurse stated that i myself turned white and stammered.
from there things went downhill. the domestic violence surfaced. if something seemed off before it all derailed with that meeting. My wife nearly biting his hand off when he reached to shake her hand. it all just alarmed everyone. i had held my wife tightly. And when speech came back to me I told him to get out of my house. he asked what was wrong with them, my wife and kid. Only then i stared at him. I gave him a full look into his eyes and answered. ” You are. You are what’s wrong.”
She continued to date him off and on. i researched. But months later she was just another domestic violence news story. Just another statistic. She used to work at Ikea. We still have a toy she bought from there. Our nurse has not recovered from the loss. i doubt she ever will.
Oxy, I think Spath x father was a Spath and possibly a ped. Defeniatly some serious red flags from the info I heard in conversation.
You know ….one BIG red flag that we almost never speak of is an individual’s relationship with their mother. If a person has a conflicted relationship with their mother they will most likely be conflicted in other relationships too!! An absent relationship would be a HUGE red flag for me!! (either that the mom is toxic or that the individual is)
thank you darwinsmom. That post explains volumes. So much that while everyday peoples not be able to recognize the mark of Cain they continue to ignore so many other signs that are right there.
Imara, the Spath x lives with his mother and there is definitely a very sick and twisted dynamic going on there. I always felt like the other woman.
Abelrising, your wife and daughters reactions, VALIDATED, AND CONFIRMED, The evil that was in your presence! They sensed and reacted to Something in the unseen world, That most of us so called normal people have missed! Abelrising, You and your family are very special people! 🙂 They have the inward radar, I wish I had years ago…..and as far as the nurse goes? Losing her only daughter like that, no I don’t think she will ever recover from that…..
Oxy you are absolutely correct…. its all about choices.