Lovefraud receives a lot of e-mail. Usually the people who write the letters are dealing with the trauma of a sociopath, also called a psychopath. They thank Lovefraud for the information we provide, and ask for advice about their personal situations.
Every once in awhile, however, someone writes an e-mail that is less than appreciative, such as this one from a guy named Tim:
I had the misfortune to encounter your website today and must say that after laughing heartily at your story, I find your grasp of mathematics, statistics and psychology to be completely dumbfounding.
Could you please explain how you arrive at the conclusion there are *exactly* 411 psychopaths in the Beverly Hills area? What is it with you and statistics? Reading your assessment of the number of sociopaths, based on the number of internet users in a country is remarkably naive.
Perhaps you should get off the internet and try finding a partner through different routes? I’m sure there are plenty of death row prisoners who would be happy to write to you.
Scope of the problem
First, I’ll respond to the criticism of my statistics. Tim apparently doesn’t like the Lovefraud Risk Calculator. This is a little program that allows you to plug in your zip code (United States only) and get an estimate of how many sociopaths live in your community. It retrieves the population of a community, based on the United States census, and then multiplies the population figure by 1 percent, which Dr. Robert Hare estimates is the number of psychopaths in the general population of North America.
Other experts, such as Dr. Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next Door, believe 4 percent of the population are sociopaths. The discrepancies are due to different criteria for diagnosing the personality disorder.
Anyway, the purpose of the Lovefraud risk calculator is to emphasize that the psychopathic or sociopathic personality disorder is much more widespread than we realize. Most people are shocked when they insert their own zip codes into the text box and see how many con artists may live near them. The same calculation is used in the Internet Threat page of Lovefraud.com to point out how many con artists are trolling the Internet for victims—millions.
I don’t claim that there are exactly 411 psychopaths in zip code 90210. The idea is to point out to the people of Beverly Hills—and every other community—that many of their neighbors may be psychopaths. Again, the calculations were made using the lower estimate—1 percent. The problem may very well be far worse than my figures show.
Lack of awareness
More hurtful, of course, was the fact that Tim found my victimization by a con artist, James Montgomery, to be so funny. It’s not the first time people have questioned my intelligence in falling for the con, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
The reason people like myself get conned is because we are not aware of this dangerous personality disorder. I thought psychopaths looked like Charles Manson or dealt drugs. I didn’t know psychopaths could be smooth and educated. I didn’t know they consciously looked for my vulnerabilities and exploited them. I didn’t think psychopaths proposed marriage. I didn’t know that someone who appeared normal, albeit flawed, could be cruel and deceptive to the core.
I learned the hard way. I also learned that there are far more disordered people out there than I ever imagined (see above). The reason I didn’t know about the problem is because many people, perhaps millions of them, didn’t talk about being conned because they felt stupid.
It was an undertow of silence that was pulling us all down. It needed to be broken, and that’s exactly why I launched Lovefraud and told my story. We need to become aware of these predators. And the only way to increase awareness is for those of us who have experienced them to talk about it—even when we look stupid.
Of course, no one likes to be so heartlessly skewered, myself included. I can only assume that Tim has been lucky enough to avoid a run-in with a sociopath. But for every nasty e-mail I receive, I get about 500 from people who are grateful for the information on Lovefraud. I can deal with a few people calling me stupid when so many are being helped.
Tim obviously has been fortunate not to encounter a sociopath. However, I have had 5 too many in my life. (maybe Tim can’t recognize the traits in himself) None were from the internet. 3 from work, 1 from church and the 5th through a mutual friend. I would like to thank each of the people who regularly write on this blog. It has helped me in many ways and I look forward to each new blog and the comments every week. Keep up the great work. I agree with you…”I can deal with a few people calling me stupid when so many are being helped.”
Thanks for this post, Donna.
I definately felt stupid and shameful when I talked to people about what happened to me. As I explained it, I even felt like I sounded stupid to myself and that was frustrating.
It is difficult to explain the level of manipulation we all went through. I find that the only people that truly understand and don’t judge are the ones who went through it and who can feel what I am talking about in their bones. In fact, there is an essay somewhere in the Blog about how hard it is to explain this to people without sounding like a pathetic abused woman which is something I don’t relate to. I am a smart, loving woman and I didn’t know about Sociopaths. Now, I know.
LoveFraud has been one of the MOST CRITICAL elements of me healing this wound. I think it was in April of this year that I stumbled onto this site and it helped me to turn the corner.
I come to LoveFraud because I feel understood here even if I don’t tell what happened to me.. I just know people would get it. That is important to me.
Keep up the good work. Also, I think you are quite SMART!
When I first read his words, I immediately realized that he sounds like a sociopath himself. I have found, that they are the first to cry: “Hog Wash!”.
Sociopaths are masters at turning insight into something that is, “obviously ridiculous” (since “they” know so much more than their victims would ever hope to know), seems to be his whistle, just as it was my ex-husband’s.
I’m sorry that he fears being exposed.
Donna
You’re being too kind to this guy. He’s ignorant, insensitive and has nothing better to do than poke fun at people’s anguish. He’s a loser. Carry on providing a great service.
There needs to be a Court of manipulation offenses.
Donna,
Tim would not be so critical if he didn’t probably feel he is a psycho himself. He showed this in his email with the lack of sensitivity, knowledge , maturity and most of all he showed ARROGANCE. And we all know what that means.
Beside what was he doing on the site anyway? Sounds fishy to me.
guys
Whilst I feel it’s important to get a grip of sociopaths, I think we must be careful not to patholagise every mean person as being a sociopath. This guy who’s written this rude comment could just be another one of the countless mean people that walk this planet…however, is meanness the same as sociopathy? I know countless unpleasant people that I don’t feel are psychopaths.
I do agree wtih beastflow. We have to be careful not to label everyone a Sociopath. There are mean people and then there are people that are beyond mean.
That being said, I think Tim is just someone that doesn’t know anything about Sociopaths. Lucky for him. Hopefully he will never need to know. He thinks this could never happen to him. I never thought I could be manipulated the way I was either until it happened.
The hardest thing to explain to people is the level of manipulation we have been through. I find that the more I try to explain what happened, the worse I feel and the dumber I sound, even to myself. But the part I can’t seem to put into words is the part that makes this possible under the right circumstances. I can tell people how he lied and manipulated the truth, how he made himself look like a victim of me, so much so that I started to doubt my own perception of reality. Again… that’s something I never thought possible, actually, I never even thought of IT, until it happened.
People don’t get it unless they have been through it. All we can hope for is that the people that need this information will find it. It made a world of difference for me so let Tim laugh. I really don’t care. :o)
Thanks Donna for your honesty and this wonderful site. Your work is appreciated.
I agree this guy Tim does not understand what a sociopath/ psychopathy is. It has been hard for me to get anyone to understand. Even when I explain the behavior and they can see some of it, they still can’t really understand.
That’s why this site is so important. I would never have understood it before it happened to me. Sociopaths were invisible to me before–they were just a bit odd or had high energy or a peculiar stare. Now I get it. Unfortunately…
First, I am one who espouses that sociopathy occurs at an increasingly an alarming rate. Martha Stout’s estimation may be low today. Her book was published in 2005 and most books are written two years before the date of publication. (4-5 years have passed.) Moreover and more importantly, Stout indicated that the rate of sociopathy is increasing and the velocity is indeed disturbing. She noted an increase from approximately 2.5 to 4 out of every 100 persons across a period of 16 years. In my opinion, we are headed for even more sociopathy as our culture deteriorates.
The sad fact is that as we “embrace diversity” and devalue our own culture; we are creating a tremendous amount of “role confusion” which results in increased stress which results in increased mental illness and increased mental aberration. Bundle with this the fact that we are “cultivating criminality.”
(Just look at the illegal alien situation: “the Mexican Problem” and our ever burgeoning prison population. FYI: at the rates of incarceration prevalent in 2005, by the year 2030 one out of every two adults in our country will have spent time in the Big House, the penitentiary. We are fast becoming a country of felons.)
And we can continue to see an increase in sociopathy. Consider that the Japanese suffer from a rate of sociopathy that is several fold less than what we in the United States observe. In my estimation, this is due to the fact that the Japanese culture is homogenous and their culture is relatively intact.
More to the point, it is imperative that we do not equivocate “love fraud” with sociopathy. For one, not all sociopathy is expressed by people committing “love fraud.” “Love fraud” and “Sweetheart Scams” our special subtypes and expressions of sociopathy. Con artists typically are not “novices.” Although they undoubtedly started out as “apprentices,” they must be regarded as “journeymen,” that is, they are highly skilled craftsmen who understand completely the tools of their trade.
By the time one has become an accomplished love fraud con artist, one has most likely been honing their craft for at least 15 years. This means that most of the love fraud con artists began learning their “trade” during their teen years, their adolescent years. This also corresponds to the time when we believe that “personality disorders” are crystallizing.
It is rather advanced in the field of psychology, but we have known for at least 20 years that personality disorders may begin in early childhood and may actually be diagnosed in late childhood and adolescence. While the DSM-IV-TR in general recommends that a personality disorder may not be diagnosed before the age of 18, it does not completely preclude the diagnosing a personality disorders before the age of 18. Only advanced competent psychologists understand this possibility and the possible early treatment and intervention that may be effective in preventing the development of full-blown personality disorders.
Nonetheless, sociopathy may be treatable, but only after we come to conceptualize it and its etiology as being behavioral, that is, learned. This is light-years ahead of the crowd and I don’t think society, much less this particular group is ready to have any compassion for this group of demented people that causes so much harm and so much damage. Moreover, it will be very hard to motivate an accomplished sociopath love fraud con artist to change. In my opinion, it will require hard consequences in which the individual is confronted completely with their game and it is made quite public in a court of law with harsh consequences (incarceration) in order to “motivate” such con artists to change.
Sociopathy must occur upon a continuum much like AD/HD and autism or even bipolar disorders and schizophrenia’s (and even sexuality and sexual orientation). The fact is we don’t have very good data nor do we have very good science. We have only begun dialogs regarding these phenomena and it is extremely difficult for those who have not been victims to understand what has occurred. While I am confident that sociopathic con artist love fraud perpetrators are completely aware of what they are doing, most of us victims never realize what the hell has happened.
I liken it to back pain: as a child when my grandfather told me about how serious back pain was, I had no idea of what he was talking about. It didn’t matter to me and I certainly don’t recall demonstrating any sympathy as a child towards those with chronic low back pain. It was only after rupturing a disk in a motor vehicle accident and then when the disk was finally fragmented on a chiropractic table, that I understood how serious back pain can be.
I’d say Tim’s comments are grossly insensitive and, moreover, his e-mail message tells us more about himself than it does anything else. For one, I think there are probably a minimum of 1600 sociopaths in Beverly Hills and, who knows? Maybe even several fold more than that just based upon the opulence of the place.
Yes, Tim, you are correct in that we remain naive and we certainly were once completely naive. And I’ll bet there are plenty of death row inmates who would love to write any woman on the outside and have any contact with anyone on the outside, but I can’t help but wonder:
How did you find the love fraud website? What did you put in your search engine? And what is it you are after? And to think that you actually laughed at Donna’s story? Who is naive? Get a life!