Lovefraud receives many letters from people who want a sign. Readers ask, “How do I know whether or not someone is a sociopath?” There is one behavior that every sociopath engages in to extreme excess. If I were only allowed one criteria for the diagnosis I would choose this behavior. If someone does not do this thing to extreme excess he/she is certainly not a sociopath. Those of you who have been involved with a sociopath know too well what this one thing is. It is lying.
I enjoy reading old religious texts because I believe there is truly nothing new under the sun. It is comforting to get reassurance of that fact. I mentioned some time ago that female sociopaths are described in the Bible. The cardinal symptom of sociopathy is described best in the Babylonian Talmud! One source I found dated this document to the 6th century.
The Babylonian Talmud describes something called geneivat da’at (literally, theft of one’s mind, thoughts, wisdom, or knowledge), i.e., fooling someone and thereby causing him or her to have a mistaken assumption, belief, and/or impression. The sages believed that there are seven types of thieves and, of these, the most egregious is the one who “steals the minds” of people.
Anyone who has been in contact with a sociopath has had his/her mind stolen. Sociopaths do not interact with anyone without stealing a mind.
Although sociopaths are very proud of their ability to steal minds, this behavior does not make them unique, talented or special. Sociopaths are just the worst species of thief!
Many are baffled by the lying sociopaths engage in. A reader who wrote me recently commented that they lie even when the truth sounds better. Sociopaths continue to lie even after their lies are discovered. This often makes them look silly.
Sociopaths lie in order to steal the minds of others. They do this because of an unrestrained drive for power and control. This drive is present in all of their dealings with others.
The best thing to do if your mind has been stolen by a sociopath is Take it Back! Don’t have any more interactions with that person. Accept that you can never deal with a sociopath without experiencing the theft of your mind.
“My” conman even made a big thing of pretending to think that always telling the truth was very important! He said this time and time again.
He was attempting to make sure *I* always told the truth (thereby giving him more information to help him to steal from me and otherwsie control me, and to help him blackmail me in the future if need be) while he continued to lie his head off.
It’s been pretty chilling to be able to reanalyse my memories in terms of what I now know. After more than a year, I still occasionally have a shattering new insight occur to me out of the blue about a particular action or utterance of his.
My sociopath also claimed to take the higher moral ground… funny now isn’t it?……… I also have new insights from my life with her from time to time.. her actions and what she dropped out of her mouth… and each time I remember those things, it reaffirms just what kind of evil person she is, but it also makes me think about how fooled I was, and why didn’t I fit all of those clues together at the time. She was smooth, and a expert at deception.
The conman I was involved with even lied about his lies. Sometimes he couldn’t make up his mind which lie to tell me and he would even lie about things he didn’t need to lie about. It’s like he is addicted to lying or it is the only way he knows how to communicate – if you can call it communication. He is a Master liar. After he told me that he did not have cancer, he would say that he just told me that because he wanted me to hate him that he really did have cancer. He would lie, sometimes tell the truth but then lie about it again. I don’t think I can say the word I want to say here but you can fill in the blank. It was a total “mind —-” being with him but for some reason I stuck it out for three years.
I was vulnerable when I met him. I was coming out of a bad relationship of about two years with another conman/pathalogical liar. So you think I would have learned my lesson. D.M. blindsided me with his cancer act. I wanted to help him, little did I know that I was helping him to use me.
I didn’t know what I was dealing with. I had read books, been to therapists, groups, doctors… all of that. Nothing helped.
This website has been a tremendous help to me. I now know what I was dealing with and nothing I could have done would have made things better. I think if I was to give the number 2 sign of a sociopath it would be that your love is never enough. They always want more from you and they don’t reciprocate any of it.
I often felt like he was a liar and a thief for stealing the truth from me. You put it so well. Thank you.
I thought I was done posting comments and reading but I’m not. Last night I had to tell a very nice man that I wasn’t ready to date. I hated when he asked me questions about my goals and dreams. I was abrupt and bitchy to him. I see why. Because the sociopath I was involved with asked the very same questions when we first me. And I answered them freely. He feigned interest in my life, but really he was gathering forensic data about me to construct a false dream and parade it in front of me..”look I made your dreams come true…now you are my prisoner.” I tried to explain to this date what had happened to me. But I just sounded like a bitter, disappointed woman who “got burned.” I tried to explain that no, this was different, I didn’t get burned, I got conned. But not so much conned as much as having my dreams mocked and falsely made true just to torture me. That I was in a relationship with a lie, with a carefully crafted lie.
The point is, there are no words. We can’t explain to anyone. I don’t know what is happening to me each day in this healing process of nearly a year. I am able to feel alive now. But I still I cry. I often isolate. I am angry and short tempered. I am tired and exhausted when I used to be so energentic. I have no deisre to achieve goals. I have no friends. It’s not depression, I know what that is. I am in recovery and not from a normal breakup. This feels like a fight for my life and I am fighting to become the woman I was before I met him. He never hit me. He gave me beautiful gifts and compliments. If I had to write on paper what he actually did to make me feel so bad, the paper would be blank. It was done to my soul and my psyche and it’s beyond comprehension, even to myself.
I lost faith in myself and my own dreams yet hear a voice sometimes telling me not to let him win. Not to give him what is left of my self, not to sink into past memory and wistfulness of the good days when I believed all his lies. When I believed he was the dream come true.
Maybe some woman reading this will save herself from retroactive pain. If you catch him being slick and able to talk his way smoothly, unflinchingly and convincingly out of anything…If he is able to take your hard wired woman’s intuition and twist it around so you begin to doubt yourself and everything you have ever trusted about your own take on the world…If you can’t understand why sometimes you feel invisible around him or cry without reason or the anger brews and you don’t know where it comes from. If you are giddy and believe a prince has finally galloped into your life to save you from trying to go it all alone….
Then beware. It’s really hard to live with or love with a vampire. Run while you can. They will drain your light, your blood, your soul and you won’t even realize how weakened you are, until after they are gone. You will believe the lies because every word is a lie. And when there is no truth you have no choice. That’s the problem with being with a sociopath or narcissist. You don’t know what you are in for until it’s too late. All these women on this blog probably sound so dramatic and messed up, to someone who has not suffered the aftermath. I know I would sound that way to me. None of us saw it coming.
Thank you for letting me write and feel a little better.
Sunny, I can relate to what you are going through. Although the circumstances were different, a lot of the feelings and emotions are the same. I said earlier that number 2 would be that your love would never be enough for a sociopath. I thought better of it and I think that number two would be “no empathy”. The conman that I was involved with seemed to crave empathy, couldn’t get enough sympathy from people, but he never had an ounce to give. He went so far as to pretend he had cancer to get sympathy but he never showed any sympathy. Wow, it really blows me away that I didn’t run for the hills a long time ago. Thing is, I did try to break it off with him soon after I met him. He would threaten me, make me feel bad, do whatever it took until I changed my mind. This happened a lot until I was doing it to myself. I broke off with him many times. I don’t know if it was depression or lonliness or both that would make me take him back into my life. Now I know I can’t do that any longer if I want to keep my life.
Very good article, it should be extremley beneficial to anyone within a relationship wanting to see perhaps who that person is.
With my pyscho, he would flat out deny he said or did something literally after he actually did say or do this particular thing, this trait in itself will be something to look out for in the future.
Although this is helpful information, it is still difficult to know what are the lies and deception. This is where the challenge comes in. I believe one must still do the detective work in order to uncover this.
This answers one lingering quesiton I have had since ending the relationship 7 mos. ago. I have reason to believe he will try and return to me and I always wondered how could that be when he knows I had caught on to him when we broke up? The part about the “lying continues even though the lies were discovered”, it now make sense and yes, it does make them look silly.
I can agree with all of you on one thing. If someone has not had a personal and up close relationship with one of these sociopaths, there is absolutely no explaining to them the feeling you have when if finally hits home, Ã’ve been conned”!
In my situation, We dated for a few months before I put my house up for sale and moved in with him, and we married 14 months later. I knew he has some issues with his ego and was a total control freak, but he seemed so good to me, Like Sunny’s situation, he baught me expensive jewelry, flowers and complimented me all the time. (I paid for the jewelry in the long run, but that was another one of his twists). We would have had our 4th wedding anniversary in 6 days.
I had a feeling he was lying about a lot of things, but no way to really prove it. Every shred of mail he got in it went through the shredder immediately, so I never knew what kind of bank account balances he kept, loans, nothing, that is until I moved out into this apartment. I have found out tons of lies. I have no contact with him. I refuse to answer his calls. I have such a hard time trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I fell in love with someone that doesn’t even exist, and that this man I shared my life, my family and my money with never had one bit of love or affection for me. I know how much I am hurting, and I wonder if he is hurting too, and then I think, no, he doesn’t hurt, because he didn’t love to begin with. Very hard to understand. I talk to my sister and my kids, but I know they don’t understand my hurt really, nor my obsession to find out the truth about him.
I went to a therapist last week, to see if maybe my husband was right after all, if I was losing my mind and needed some help. After 50 minutes of explaining the relationship and the abrupt close to the relationship, she assured me that I was not crazy, but very hurt and bruised from a very abusive relationship. I just wish he would leave my mind. Unfortunately, I am going to have to withstand mediations in September and at least 2 court dates before my divorce may be final in February, and until then I just feel stuck.
I don’t even try to explain this relationship with just anyone I meet. As said earlier, I think we just come off as bitter about the ex. And if you tell someone, “My ex is a psychopath” they are like “Yea, mine too”. But I don’t try to explain.
I think the important thing is getting out the information about these people. I wish so badly there was someway to put out an Internet dating black list or something.
Coukno, the thing is about “he knows I had caught on to him” I don’t think they care. The therapist told me they feel no shame, guilt, remorse, embarrasment, no love , no hate. Just anger when they dont get their way, like a spoiled child. My ex stays in touch with his wives, (the ones that are still alive), even the second wife that divorced him in 1985.
I love this site. It is such a great place to come and read about such chillingly similar stories to mine. I am so glad I can come here when I am feeling isolated and feel that somehow there is a connection. I hope others will be able to stumble on this site as I did.
A sociopath look silly?? Heavens, didn’t yours tell you he was perfect in every way? Genetically impossible for them to look silly!! (In Jest)
My kids were telling me “Mom, be careful”. I should have listened to my kids!
Hi Summerthyme,
Mine worked up a cancer story at the end too! In an effort to extract more money from me. But right at this point my real intellect was (just) beginning to re-emerge out from under the brainwashed state I later realised I had been brought to. The story did not “work” for him financially – I had just enough self-determination at that point to say no. I later came to realise there really was no cancer.
We have stories on our site of predators/ sociopaths literally profiling and learning the life stories of their victims and then INCORPORATING them as their own! and using them on new victims.
Sometimes they even co-opt their victim’s illnesses for sympathy.
It is shocking to see the similarites in patterns of behavior with these guys. And they never ever admit what they’ve done. Ever.
It’s like someone reaching down your throat and pulling out your soul.
Great post Dr. Leedom
Hi amr,
Fighter is right, it is shocking to see the similarities with these guys. A good book that I read is Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft. He counseled abusive men. His insights are very good also. But even after I read that book and the Betrayal Bond, I still kept seeing Donnie. I think it’s like a disease you have to overcome when you are in a relationship like that. You’ll either get out and get better or you will totally lose yourself and be destroyed. My girls liked him at first. They felt sorry for him too, believed his lies about cancer and even after the truth about that came out they were still forgiving and gracious with him but after a while it was apparent that this was his MO. Eventually they hated him for what he was doing to me. They tried to make me see what a jerk he was a long time ago. I knew they were right, but it was difficult to leave it. like an addiction.
I was just another lie in his life of lies. He lived a double life (or more).
I don’t answer his calls but I can’t believe he even tries to call me. In his eyes he must think that he’s done nothing wrong. He justifies everything he does.
looserchooser, there is a site called Don’t date him girl, or something like that. I love this site too and I think it’s helped me stay on track this time of “No Contact” because that is the only way to deal with him.