The question was, “When can you trust your man?”
A reporter who was writing an article on the topic for a major women’s magazine asked the question. It showed up in my e-mail because I subscribe to a service that distributes questions from reporters to experts all around the world who may be able to answer them.
I knew what the reporter was looking for. She wanted succinct little tips like:
- “You can trust your man if he always shows up when he says he will, or at least calls to tell you he’ll be late.”
- “You can trust your man if he introduces you to his mother.”
- “You can trust your man if he shows you his income tax return.”
But, after being married to a sociopath, and hearing the stories of so many Lovefraud readers, I knew that these external signs may not be accurate.
The luring stage
In the beginning of a relationship, the luring stage, sociopaths can be reliable and punctual. They may seem proud to introduce you to their families. They may appear to be financially solvent.
Sociopathic individuals can appear to be deserving of respect, love and trust as long as it suits their purpose. These predators know what they are supposed to do to win over a lover. And they are capable of actually doing it—at least until they feel like they no longer need to.
Once they have their hooks set in you, they may be late—or even disappear for days or weeks with no explanation. Their families may trip over themselves to be good to you—probably because they want you to take the parasite off their hands. And they may flash cash and financial documents—cash taken from the previous partner, and documents that are forged.
So how do you know when to trust your man—or woman? Here’s my answer: You can trust your partner when you can trust yourself.
Trusting yourself
When it comes to romantic relationships, there are two dimensions to trusting yourself.
The first is your own sense of self. You know who you are, what you want, and where your boundaries are. You know that you deserve to be loved simply for being yourself. You understand that a relationship involves giving and taking by both parties, not one person doing all the giving and the other all the taking. You will not jeopardize your well-being in order to have companionship.
The second dimension is trusting your intuition. Your gut, your body, your sixth sense, will tell you when something is wrong. You must have to have enough faith in yourself that you can hear or feel the intuitive messages, and pay attention to them. We get in trouble when we allow ourselves to be talked out of what our intuition is telling us. When a person or suggestion makes us feel uncomfortable, that’s our early warning system, and we must trust ourselves enough to listen.
I responded to the magazine reporter’s inquiry. I told her than the time to trust a man is when we trust ourselves. She didn’t reply. I assume that my answer wasn’t what she wanted.
Dear Donna,
I first saw the reporters list and my soon to be ex didn’t fit any of those criteria. When I looked further and read how you would use your instincts and trusting yourself, this made total sense to me.
As we know, they are so good at pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes that some of the things we would look for in a “normal” relationship don’t apply to a relationship with a sociopath. There are not the quantitative measures we can apply from our past experiences.
Their charm supercedes all of our worries about their character. I would look for a possible lie but they give nothing away. They don’t look down and to the left when they lie, they look straight in your eyes and say “Sweetie, I would never lie to you, I love you more than anything.” It’s hard to see through that stuff.
I met the family and he is always punctual. Didn’t see the tax returns. His family believes anything he tells them and he doesn’t like to be late because he needs to be in control of all situations.
After your eyes are opened, you feel so gullible, so naive, but they are so good at what they do, sometimes I think there is no sure was to tell the depths of their disorder. It was the charm and seduction that got his hooks into me. He even made it seem that he thought my daughter was a benefit to his life, until we were married and he ignored and mocked her except for the crumbs he tossed out to keep us hooked.
Dear Donna,
Did you see the article on Shine? This is in Yahoo’s home page, then you go to Shine then love and sex. The title of the article is “Is Your New Sweetheart a Sociopath?”
Yipee!!!!! Someone else wrote the article but highlighted Donna and her book. There were the 10 things to look for if your dating a sociopath. Gosh, it’s so good that the message is getting out there.
Thank you for keeping the public aware of these preditors.
When they tell you a story that makes them tear up, does it make you tear up too? If you have no emotion to their story, then assuming you are not a sociopath, then they probably are. It is reliant on trusting and listening to your internal reaction to their sob stories; not just on listening to their sob story and believing it. I figure if someone can make me cry based on their experience, they are not a sociopath; they have empathy and can illicit it from others.
Based on my experience, when the sociopath was telling me sob stories and crying, I always felt a little weird like why is he crying? I never joined in with him because I didn’t feel it. If you ever wonder why someone is crying over what they are telling you, then the answer is because they are manipulating you. I didn’t know it was a warning then, but I do now.
bird,
WOW, that is SO insightful! I remember early on, after first intimate moment with exPOS, I got the big crocodile tears about how he hadn’t “experienced that kind of passion with my wife in a long time”………wow. I was so sucked in by that, BUT, I DID NOT react by feeling like CRYING!!! I just felt SORRY for him.
That is a VERY interesting perspective and VERY true. I was being manipulated. GOD he was GOOD!
LL
Donna,
This is such an important and very good post!
Thanks for writing it!
I’m so grateful this site is here!!
LL
“The second dimension is trusting your intuition. Your gut, your body, your sixth sense, will tell you when something is wrong.”
I knew after one week my x-spath was hiding something. I simply dismissed all the red flags.
I was in a relationship with my x-spath for 3 1/2 years. From the moment that we met, he lied about everything from being molested when he was 12 years old to faking a suicide attempt when I found out he was cheating on me.
On our first date, he told me that he was going through a divorce and that he had twin boys. He was paying his soon to be ex-wife $5,500 a month in alimony. Early on in the relationship, he showed me a copy of the the ante-nup which included the language about the alimony.
He also said he had earned a BA in accounting and a masters in finance. Again, he showed me copies of his diplomas.
By our third date, he came clean about an embezzlement conviction. He was very nervous about telling me. He told me that the company was suffering financially, and worried he would lose his investment, he started paying himself back. He was very humbled by his experience in prison, had become a Christian while he was incarcerated, and had every intention of satisfying the judgment against him when he was back on his feet.
Less than a month after meeting him, he called me on Father’s Day, crying. He said his divorce lawyer had contacted him to let him know they received the results of the paternity test that was ordered, and his twin boys were not his. He was devastated.
All of this was told to me in just a few weeks of knowing him. I would find out much later that he lied about having twin boys and that there was no paternity test ever ordered in the divorce. The twins were from his ex-wife’s first marriage.
In the 3 1/2 years we were together, he never wrote a single alimony check to his ex-wife. I also got a hold of a state copy of the ante-nup. It stated they were to go their separate ways in case of a divorce. The copy that was shown to me, my x-spath had simply changed the language in Word.
The money he embezzled where “he was paying himself back”, was not his own money that he put into the company. The money he was investing into the company was money he was stealing from the company.
And the diplomas that he earned… There is no record of him attending either university.
From the moment my x-spath met me, he played on my sympathy, my Christian faith, and my strong family values. He recognized what was important to me and spent the next 3+ years exploiting it. It was one lie after another. By the end the relationship, I was so far in debt from believing his lies and supporting his lifestyle, that my son and I had to move in with my parents so I could avoid filing for bankruptcy. Not to mention, the very deep and personal blow to my emotions. I believed in him. Believed he had made some mistakes, but deep down there was a good person who was just misguided. He told me I was that person that would help turn his troubled past around. All lies… And I bought into all of them.
Dear BackOnMyFeet.
I’m happy to see that you ARE back on your feet, after what THAT bastard did to you!
There needs to be a law against lies.
Peace Sister
backonmyfeet
Fake suicide, diplomas, crying, money fraud, lies, faith, financial ruin and belief that we could ‘help’ him.
After reading your post I have to say – we were taken in by a trickster. A bit like a game where YOU can NEVER win no matter how hard you try.
You are not alone……
Dear Bird, So glad to see you back, darlin’! How is the Baby Birdie? He must be a big boy by now and talking and walking all over the place. Give him a big hug from his auntie Oxy!!!!!
I think the TRUSTING YOURSELF IS IMPORTANT, BUT can also be one of those things that sets us up for the next psychopath…..
Back decades ago when I finally escaped from the clutches of my Sperm DNA donor I was one wounded teenager, and looking back, I have no doubt I had PTSD, but I healed after a sort, and started to trust myself again—bang, right back into another relationship with a disordered person, then again. I finally married into a family of a disordered man who was mentally ill, though he functioned very well in society and in his career. After two kids and a divorce that left me a “basket case” (and most likely with my second episode of PTSD) I had NOT ‘LEARNED’ what I had run into, or what train or mac truck had hit me head on. I trusted myself to avoid dangerous people, to avoid people who were dangerous to me, but since my KNOWLEDGE of what made a person trustworthy was SADLY LACKING, I fell again and again for the “love bombs” of THE PERSONALITY DISORDERED PEOPLE who saw me as a victim, both inside and outside of my family.
My ability to trust myself was not based on LOGIC or GOOD SENSE but on the “emotional blindness” that had been programmed into me from childhood. An emotional blindness that made me want to be a “people pleaser” and to not be able to set appropriate boundaries with “friends” and “family.”
I could set a boundary with a customer/client/patient in a most professional way. I could even teach my staff to do likewise. I could set reasonable boundaries with unreasonable shop keepers, neighbors, teachers at my kids’ schools, and this ability gave me a FALSE CONFIDENCE that I could with the people who were my “friends” and “family.”
Well, the psychopath always starts the relationship with a LOVE BOMB, and becomes “friends” or “family” quickly into the relationship, so they skirted around any BOUNDARIES I had established by getting into the BOUNDARY-FREE ZONE inside my circle of trust.
It wasn’t the WILD Indians circling the fort shooting arrows at me that I had to worry about, it was the FRIENDLY INDIANS inside the fort that I had INVITED IN. The ones that were eating me out of house and home, chopping holes in the walls, stabbing me in the back, robbing me, emotionally abusing me—because I was so afraid to “upset” these “friendly Indians” that I did anything to placate them.
Now I am realizing that not everyone who “wants to be my friend” is deserving of that honor.
Just because someone starts to “love bomb” me does not mean I should allow them to become my “friend” or that I should bestow on them total trust JUST BECAUSE THEY WANT IT, and haven’t done anything UP TIL NOW, to hurt me. The psychopaths didn’t hurt me either, AT FIRST. Not until they had gotten my trust, then they tested it, and when that was successful, then they started severely abusing it. By then I was hooked.
I STARTED TO SEE A PATTERN.
GIVING OUT MY TRUST TO OTHERS TOO EASILY WAS A RISKY THING TO DO.
I had to learn to set boundaries, not only for new people who came into my life, but for those who were already within my “circle of trust”—this was a very anxiety ridden time for me, and it took some trial and error, because when you set a boundary you must be prepared for the relationship- to end if the other person does not respect that boundary.
Here is a simple example of what I am talking about, lets say you are very allergic to cigarette smoke and your “friend” smokes, and when they come over to your house they light one up in your living room, and you ask them to “Please do not smoke in MY HOUSE, Susie, I am highly allergic, but you may go outside on my patio and smoke if you need a cigarette while you are visiting.”
I think that is a very REASONABLE boundary. It is your house, and YOU set the rules, you showed you had consideration for her by providing an ALTERNATE place she could smoke, etc.
So the NEXT TIME SHE COMES TO VISIT—SHE LIGHTS UP IN YOUR LIVING ROOM. You again repeat the boundary, and for a time or two she visits and does not light up, but she does grouse about how inconvenient it is for her to go outside in the heat/cold to smoke and how it inconveniences HER.
Well, obviously, most of us would I think ENFORCE the boundary, but though this was NOT the specific problems I had with “friends” it was just about as bad—AND I WAS THE ONE WHO FELT GUILTY–NOT THEM. I felt bad for trying to enforce the boundaries I set for them like “thou shalt not steal from me.” Or “thou shalt not talk to me like a yard dog that just tore up your trash”
Now, though, by learning to SET reasonable (by my estimation) boundaries and ENFORCING them EVEN if it means the LOSS OF THAT RELATIONSHIP ENTIRELY, so be it. I am no longer “crying” over the “friend” that stole from me, I am no longer “crying over” the “friend” who chose to speak to me like I was some stray dog they hated, and I no longer feel compelled to “make peace” with the people who have DESTROYED the peace. MY PEACE. I have learned to trust my self to protect myself from abusive people by small “baby steps” of ACTUALLY PROTECTING MYSELF. I found out that the world didn’t blow up if I protected myself from someone who CLAIMED to be my “friend” but actually was using/abusing me. As I saw that I was CAPABLE of protecting myself, I grew more trusting of myself, just as I would over a period of time grow more trusting of someone else, I grew over a period of time to TRUST ME by BEING TRUSTWORTHY.
Sure, I made some slips here and there, and had some melt downs when people I loved demonstrated that the LOVE WAS NOT MUTUAL, that the RESPECT was not there. I just recently had a big eye opener with someone I have called one of my “best friends” for over 30 years, but after examining the relationship with my NEW KNOWLEDGE, I realize that this person has some SERIOUS issues that I cannot deal with, and cannot tolerate and they have crossed the boundaries of treating me the way I expect to be treated. It is somewhat painful to realize that after 30 years I am going to have to let go of this relationship which is no longer a healthy one (if it ever really was a healthy one) but that is the way life is. People come into our lives and people depart from our lives after some period of time, whether it is a bus ride or a life time, in the end, we are all on the path by ourselves, almost no one is with us from our birth to our death. So the relationships, however long they are, whether it is just chatting with your seat mate on a plane or a bus, up to a decades long companionship or spouse, should be enjoyed for what it is, when it is, and for as long as it is pleasant and agreeable and healthy, but if the relationship turns abusive or unhealthy, we must be prepared to let it go, to release it, to free ourselves from it and move on.
I’m learning that now, and learning to trust myself much more than I did in the past, and because I trust myself more, feel more confident, I am more careful and watchful of trusting others and don’t “give” trust away, it is EARNED by others by those that MERIT trust. No one is ENTITLED to it.