This sounds exactly like the description of a narcissist. I learned about this author here at GSC when people were talking about VP and his mysogynistic treatment of women.
I have been lucky in that I have never hooked up with one of those .. Well except for the cult thing. But I say I am lucky because really most everyone can fall for that kind of relationship... Some people just extract themselves quicker. So they have less hurt.
Before the judgmental people jump on their bandwagon of how she should have not been deceived let me ask you--- weren’t you in a cult? Deceived as well?
If she'd been playing with fire and got burned, would it be reasonable to blame the fire for being too hot? I think not.
I'm not going to be too quick to string up my violin for your friend Dot, sorry. So she wasn't getting enough "atta boys" at home so her only alternative was to go out and swap sweat with some sleazeball? Gee, heartbreaking. Did she ever even consider the heartache and pain she was about to inflict on the dumb S.O.B. at home that she supposedly had a commitment with? No, she found somebody new to blow smoke up her azz, and all was right in heaven, wasn't it?
While her boyfriend's actions seem pathological, hers are nothing to be proud of I think. To me it reflects a real lack of character - and one that she's not likely to ever remedy. A zebra doesn't change it's stripes too easily. The "my husband isn't sensitive to my needs" line (sorta the female equivalent of "my wife doesn't understand me") is all she needs to justify betraying her husband and her marriage, huh? I'm not moved much. So the next time she's feeling a little neglected, it'll be that much easier to step out again, won't it?
So she plays her husband for a cuckhold and then she gets jilted? Sorry, no sympathy here...
In the link I posted Shel, it talked about how the person would be setting up the next victim while still with the other person.
Funny, but HE (the guy I was involved with) had some stuff I wanted to hear (he teaches) -- he had to get it back from a woman he loaned it to -- then, I said are you involved with her?
"No, but if there was not an "us" I would be interested."
There was only an "us" for a few weeks.... So, what was he saying? Especially, as he had taken her under his wing for MONTHS prior to me.
Then, when he was backing out of all his promises to me he said, "Hey are you finished with those CD's?"
I knew he was fixated on this other gal he was "mentoring"..... hmmmmm
I said, "You gave them to me."
I was not going to provide them for the next chick -- let him buy them all over again.
On and on and on it went. Took me some time to shake this out and really look at it...
And that poor gal in the story I told... All these years later she still asks "Why?"
What she did was wrong and part of the reason she had a breakdown -- when she saw what she had done.
But, I wanted to focus on the people out there trying to cause these kinds of problems.
Should she have taken the bait --- heck no. She knows that now, she and the hubs have gotten through all of this and the hubs is a great guy and she still quivers in guilt at her "sin"
But the focus is that there are people out there whose goal is to cause this kind of horror in a marriage or a life.
And it behooves me to figure out what motivates them. Did the target do something she regrets -- oh yes. Deeply and horribly.
But it is like being set- up and not understanding the motive. To rob a bank, or do something like that the motive is apparent. But what do these people get out of this? The joy of destroying people?
I do not know. I do not, neither does she argue her guilt and wrongness...
But the focus is that there are people out there whose goal is to cause this kind of horror in a marriage or a life.
And it behooves me to figure out what motivates them.
Yeah, there's bad people out there. Is this some sort of epiphany? Like the people that fall for the "pidgeon drop" scam or maybe the Nigerian Bank Account ruse, I'm dumbfounded that #1, they would be so lax in their personal integrity to consider the scheme to begin with, and #2, that they don't see through the snakeoil pitch from the git-go.
Do women ever think? Gawd, it baffles me how simple it seems to be to pull one over on a women if you can talk smooth enough. Bill Clinton has lived his whole life doing it, and most likely still does. There seems to be no shortage of faithless sluts that are eager to be taken in by a well-oiled line of B.S.
(and yes, as a matter of fact, I am a little bitter about this whole concept, TYVM)
As a person who has seen marriage done wrong via my parents and myself, I can have empathy for a lot of situations. I think more emphasis needs to be made on vulnerability here. If a person is married and not getting their needs met at home, they need to work on that situation and that one only. If that marriage is beyond repairable, well each person will either continue to live in it or move on.
When a person moves on, they HAVE to take everything they've learned from the broken relationship (even if the spouse was psychotic). What attracted them to that person? You should NEVER agree to be part of a relationship just because someone is pursuing you like white on rice. That is a HUGE red flag. Some people are flattered by this, and they really have to sit back and ask WHY to themselves. Just because someone is attracted to you doesn't mean it is meant to be or that you have to take them up on it.
A lot of women are notorious for accepting these types of situations because they want attention. They get what they want and then wonder what happened. Stop thinking what happened. Start thinking why you have been with the men you have. If you don't, you will make the same mistakes over and over. As a famous poster here says: "The lessons are repeated until they are learned." I believe that 100%.
I was in many crappy relationships after my hideous marriage. I started looking at me. Sure a lot of those crappy relationships were in the cult, but I still had unhealthy relationships because I liked the attention.
I decided I would rather be alone even if it meant forever and love myself than to live in another crappy relationship. There were many hard moments to face. I had to admit things about myself that I didn't want to.
If you are a man who has had a wife leave you because she said you weren't giving her any attention, then wise up buddy! You heard the reason, and you refused to accept your responsibility in the problem. Many men in this situation still are clueless. You can't be clueless and expect to keep a woman.
I don't know how many men I met while internet dating who said their wives/girlfriends cheated on them. These were the clueless ones. The cheating was the only point they wanted to remember because it released them from responsibility in their minds. Those men need to ask themselvesl "What made her leave me?" You can't get what you want, and then neglect it after you have it.
There are always patterns and signs in life. We just need to learn to recognize them to keep from making repeated mistakes.
The Five Love Languages is an excellent book to learn what kind of love language your significant other speaks. Then you need to learn to speak their love langugage, and they your's.
If you want a short way to figure out your love language, here's the online test from the book. Answer it honestly even if you think "That's shallow or selfish".
Don't be fooled. There's a female counterpart as well. Their called "gold diggers". They shower men with attention and affection, compliment their good points and offer a feigned sympathy for their misfortunes. All the while they have an ulterior motive of gaining material abundance and financial security for themselves, their children or both. And, unlike women, men are much more reluctant to reveal their naivete to anyone. They feel foolish to have been duped and even more foolish admitting it. Are these women sociopaths? I don't know. Maybe manipulator or opportunist would be a more fitting title. Gold digger seems to describe it well, though.
If you are a man who has had a wife leave you because she said you weren't giving her any attention, then wise up buddy! You heard the reason, and you refused to accept your responsibility in the problem. Many men in this situation still are clueless. You can't be clueless and expect to keep a woman.
Uh, no, a lot of us never heard any reason. We just heard "GOODBYE". No warning, no unhappy years of putting up with each other, no constant bickering, - nothing. Just a normal, generally happy life and then one day you find yourself alone. No real reasons given, no previous indication of any real problem, no effort whatever to work things out, just a onetime condemnation for your worthlessness and a quick exit. Yeah, O.K., so what do I do about accepting my responsiblity now? I never got that chance.
Hell, there was an employee of mine who came home from work one day to - unexpectedly -find all his belongings on the porch, the doors locked, keys changed, and the new boyfriend already moved in! Another guy that works for me woke up one morning to find his girlfriend gone, but her kids left behind (who he ended up raising, btw).
Yeah, I know there's countless worthless a-hole men "out there". But with extra-marital affairs, women seem to be especially nearsighted. The long-range consequences of their faithlessness just doesn't seem to dawn on them until they find themselves in the midst of a sordid mess of their own making...
Oh, and yes, I am practicing up to be a first-rate misogynist.
Yeah, there's bad people out there. Is this some sort of epiphany? Like the people that fall for the "pidgeon drop" scam or maybe the Nigerian Bank Account ruse, I'm dumbfounded that #1, they would be so lax in their personal integrity to consider the scheme to begin with, and #2, that they don't see through the snakeoil pitch from the git-go.
well now geo. what would you say about your involvemetn in the way ?
Well, just for the record, I grew up in a house FULL of women. Three sisters, 2, 5, and 10 years older than me, my mother, and later on, my grandmother, all in the same house, and my father died young. So, growing up, it was just me and all the women. So, yeah, I have a little insight into how women act. It took getting married - and especially divorced - to really complete my education, though.
Yeah, those "signs". Even in retrospect, they're pretty sparse, at least for men. Women DO seem to immediately understand the actions of one of their gender cohorts. Women I think speak fluent "femalese" right from the womb. Men, OTOH, actually need words to comprehend what the hell is going on sometimes. Gee, we're so hard to figure out, huh?
Women don't just pick up and leave for no reason. Men don't cheat for no reason. If the marriage realtionship is fulfilling, it lasts. If a spouse isn't fulfilled, the other should know. There are all kinds of signs. Some are legitimate, and some are not. Some problems are dealbreakers: addiction, abuse, adultery. There are always signs before a major blowout in a relationship.
Will Smith said that life is not a straight line from birth to death. He said it's a circle which leads to rebirth. Those who haven't found rebirth (I'm not talking about being born again) still have a lot to find out. Some of finding out about life is finding out about YOURSELF and not accepting shortcomings as "oh well, that's the way I am."
I had a boyfriend once who was a complete @$$hole. When he was pi$$ed at me, only the worst filth came out of his mouth. I came to a realization that I didn't like him as a friend, so why would I want to even be his girlfriend or potential wife? I told him that. He said "I know; I need to change that about myself." I didn't hang around long enough to find out, but I would bet my life savings that he's still the same biased jack@$$ who sees evil in everyone except himself.
People can make all kinds of excuses about why their relationships didn't work, and those excuses don't show them doing anything wrong. YOU ARE STILL CLUELESS!!! It always takes two to mess up a relationship. My first husband was a drug addict, and it would be very easy to portray him as the only villain in our marriage. He wasn't. I owned up to my faults in that marriage. I also saw signs of drug abuse before I married him. I should have paid attention to the signs.
Of course, there are exceptions to every situation, but not that many in this category of life.
As a former matrimonial lawyer, I'd have to say that so much marriage breakdown comes from the inability of the couple to really communicate.
Take time to make a safe space so that the other can say what he or she wants or needs to say. Take time to learn to express what you want to say. Take time to hear what the other is saying. Forget yourself, for a change. Take time to see how the other is changing over the years, and may have different needs now. Be ready to change, knock your own rough bits off.
Do it early. Do it often.
When a marriage breaks down, it's rarely one person's fault. So one has an affair? Not good, but what did the other party not do, that led the "guilty" party to want to try elsewhere? It's usually lack of appreciation.
And most things can be overcome, with patience, and perhaps external help.
With the "romantic sociopath" - as with any partner/potential partner - take lots of time beforehand. Find out as much as you can. Make haste slowly.
If considering marriage to someone who'd been married before and divorced, it might be helpful know why the previous mariage broke down, and what the potential new partner had learned from that (= would do differently now). If they blamed the other party completely and took no responsibility, it'd red-flag for me that they weren't quite ready for another marriage.
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waysider
The phenomenon is not gender specific, that's for sure.
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coolchef
all i can say is wow
she was wrong of course, but that man is a sicko
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Rejoice
This sounds exactly like the description of a narcissist. I learned about this author here at GSC when people were talking about VP and his mysogynistic treatment of women.
I bought the book and learned so much!
http://www.amazon.com/Malignant-Self-Love-...d/dp/8023833847
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Eyesopen
Oooh I dated one of those for about five weeks back in 97...yes it was memorable. I will never and I do mean never make that mistake ever again!
I couldn't get away fast enough!
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leafytwiglet
I have been lucky in that I have never hooked up with one of those .. Well except for the cult thing. But I say I am lucky because really most everyone can fall for that kind of relationship... Some people just extract themselves quicker. So they have less hurt.
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Shellon
Malignant Self Love is an excellent read. !
Thanks for bringing it up, Dot.
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Oakspear
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Dot Matrix
Gee Oak
I dunno, but in a court of law it would seem she was wrong and got what she deserved, eh?
But I really do not want to go there, Oak kay? (that was cute, huh? Oak kay? :) )
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George Aar
I'll take that job.
If she'd been playing with fire and got burned, would it be reasonable to blame the fire for being too hot? I think not.
I'm not going to be too quick to string up my violin for your friend Dot, sorry. So she wasn't getting enough "atta boys" at home so her only alternative was to go out and swap sweat with some sleazeball? Gee, heartbreaking. Did she ever even consider the heartache and pain she was about to inflict on the dumb S.O.B. at home that she supposedly had a commitment with? No, she found somebody new to blow smoke up her azz, and all was right in heaven, wasn't it?
While her boyfriend's actions seem pathological, hers are nothing to be proud of I think. To me it reflects a real lack of character - and one that she's not likely to ever remedy. A zebra doesn't change it's stripes too easily. The "my husband isn't sensitive to my needs" line (sorta the female equivalent of "my wife doesn't understand me") is all she needs to justify betraying her husband and her marriage, huh? I'm not moved much. So the next time she's feeling a little neglected, it'll be that much easier to step out again, won't it?
So she plays her husband for a cuckhold and then she gets jilted? Sorry, no sympathy here...
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Dot Matrix
In the link I posted Shel, it talked about how the person would be setting up the next victim while still with the other person.
Funny, but HE (the guy I was involved with) had some stuff I wanted to hear (he teaches) -- he had to get it back from a woman he loaned it to -- then, I said are you involved with her?
"No, but if there was not an "us" I would be interested."
There was only an "us" for a few weeks.... So, what was he saying? Especially, as he had taken her under his wing for MONTHS prior to me.
Then, when he was backing out of all his promises to me he said, "Hey are you finished with those CD's?"
I knew he was fixated on this other gal he was "mentoring"..... hmmmmm
I said, "You gave them to me."
I was not going to provide them for the next chick -- let him buy them all over again.
On and on and on it went. Took me some time to shake this out and really look at it...
And that poor gal in the story I told... All these years later she still asks "Why?"
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Dot Matrix
What she did was wrong and part of the reason she had a breakdown -- when she saw what she had done.
But, I wanted to focus on the people out there trying to cause these kinds of problems.
Should she have taken the bait --- heck no. She knows that now, she and the hubs have gotten through all of this and the hubs is a great guy and she still quivers in guilt at her "sin"
But the focus is that there are people out there whose goal is to cause this kind of horror in a marriage or a life.
And it behooves me to figure out what motivates them. Did the target do something she regrets -- oh yes. Deeply and horribly.
But it is like being set- up and not understanding the motive. To rob a bank, or do something like that the motive is apparent. But what do these people get out of this? The joy of destroying people?
I do not know. I do not, neither does she argue her guilt and wrongness...
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George Aar
Yeah, there's bad people out there. Is this some sort of epiphany? Like the people that fall for the "pidgeon drop" scam or maybe the Nigerian Bank Account ruse, I'm dumbfounded that #1, they would be so lax in their personal integrity to consider the scheme to begin with, and #2, that they don't see through the snakeoil pitch from the git-go.
Do women ever think? Gawd, it baffles me how simple it seems to be to pull one over on a women if you can talk smooth enough. Bill Clinton has lived his whole life doing it, and most likely still does. There seems to be no shortage of faithless sluts that are eager to be taken in by a well-oiled line of B.S.
(and yes, as a matter of fact, I am a little bitter about this whole concept, TYVM)
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Dot Matrix
BTW
For the record, I am not a slut and I never had sex with the man I dated.
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Nottawayfer
As a person who has seen marriage done wrong via my parents and myself, I can have empathy for a lot of situations. I think more emphasis needs to be made on vulnerability here. If a person is married and not getting their needs met at home, they need to work on that situation and that one only. If that marriage is beyond repairable, well each person will either continue to live in it or move on.
When a person moves on, they HAVE to take everything they've learned from the broken relationship (even if the spouse was psychotic). What attracted them to that person? You should NEVER agree to be part of a relationship just because someone is pursuing you like white on rice. That is a HUGE red flag. Some people are flattered by this, and they really have to sit back and ask WHY to themselves. Just because someone is attracted to you doesn't mean it is meant to be or that you have to take them up on it.
A lot of women are notorious for accepting these types of situations because they want attention. They get what they want and then wonder what happened. Stop thinking what happened. Start thinking why you have been with the men you have. If you don't, you will make the same mistakes over and over. As a famous poster here says: "The lessons are repeated until they are learned." I believe that 100%.
I was in many crappy relationships after my hideous marriage. I started looking at me. Sure a lot of those crappy relationships were in the cult, but I still had unhealthy relationships because I liked the attention.
I decided I would rather be alone even if it meant forever and love myself than to live in another crappy relationship. There were many hard moments to face. I had to admit things about myself that I didn't want to.
If you are a man who has had a wife leave you because she said you weren't giving her any attention, then wise up buddy! You heard the reason, and you refused to accept your responsibility in the problem. Many men in this situation still are clueless. You can't be clueless and expect to keep a woman.
I don't know how many men I met while internet dating who said their wives/girlfriends cheated on them. These were the clueless ones. The cheating was the only point they wanted to remember because it released them from responsibility in their minds. Those men need to ask themselvesl "What made her leave me?" You can't get what you want, and then neglect it after you have it.
There are always patterns and signs in life. We just need to learn to recognize them to keep from making repeated mistakes.
The Five Love Languages is an excellent book to learn what kind of love language your significant other speaks. Then you need to learn to speak their love langugage, and they your's.
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Nottawayfer
If you want a short way to figure out your love language, here's the online test from the book. Answer it honestly even if you think "That's shallow or selfish".
http://www.afo.net/hftw-lovetest.asp
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waysider
Don't be fooled. There's a female counterpart as well. Their called "gold diggers". They shower men with attention and affection, compliment their good points and offer a feigned sympathy for their misfortunes. All the while they have an ulterior motive of gaining material abundance and financial security for themselves, their children or both. And, unlike women, men are much more reluctant to reveal their naivete to anyone. They feel foolish to have been duped and even more foolish admitting it. Are these women sociopaths? I don't know. Maybe manipulator or opportunist would be a more fitting title. Gold digger seems to describe it well, though.
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George Aar
Uh, no, a lot of us never heard any reason. We just heard "GOODBYE". No warning, no unhappy years of putting up with each other, no constant bickering, - nothing. Just a normal, generally happy life and then one day you find yourself alone. No real reasons given, no previous indication of any real problem, no effort whatever to work things out, just a onetime condemnation for your worthlessness and a quick exit. Yeah, O.K., so what do I do about accepting my responsiblity now? I never got that chance.
Hell, there was an employee of mine who came home from work one day to - unexpectedly -find all his belongings on the porch, the doors locked, keys changed, and the new boyfriend already moved in! Another guy that works for me woke up one morning to find his girlfriend gone, but her kids left behind (who he ended up raising, btw).
Yeah, I know there's countless worthless a-hole men "out there". But with extra-marital affairs, women seem to be especially nearsighted. The long-range consequences of their faithlessness just doesn't seem to dawn on them until they find themselves in the midst of a sordid mess of their own making...
Oh, and yes, I am practicing up to be a first-rate misogynist.
How'm I doin' so far?
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excathedra
well now geo. what would you say about your involvemetn in the way ?
and you know i love you -- i hope you do anyway
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waterbuffalo
No, Geo, I don't think you hate women. I think you'd like to know what went wrong.
At risk of getting rotten tomatoes thrown my way, I could venture to say there were
clues all along. You just weren't reading them. Doesn't make you bad or stupid or any
of those things. Sometimes what women don't say is more revealing than what we do
say. Did you grow up with a sister or sisters? I mean one that lived in the house with
you--not at college when you were getting old enough to have a real sibling relationship. If
you didn't, maybe that plays into why you didn't notice things. I'm sorry. Not trying
to analyse anything or especially you, here. I don't blame you for wanting answers.
I would too.
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excathedra
my whole damn life i've wanted answers. don't see it happening. at least not in a simple way or a black and white way
many hugs to all who've been hurt and that means all of us
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George Aar
WB,
Well, just for the record, I grew up in a house FULL of women. Three sisters, 2, 5, and 10 years older than me, my mother, and later on, my grandmother, all in the same house, and my father died young. So, growing up, it was just me and all the women. So, yeah, I have a little insight into how women act. It took getting married - and especially divorced - to really complete my education, though.
Yeah, those "signs". Even in retrospect, they're pretty sparse, at least for men. Women DO seem to immediately understand the actions of one of their gender cohorts. Women I think speak fluent "femalese" right from the womb. Men, OTOH, actually need words to comprehend what the hell is going on sometimes. Gee, we're so hard to figure out, huh?
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waterbuffalo
WOW! Boy, I was waaaaay off base on that one.
Then, there's the some people just aren't honest component.
Yeah, that musta su**ed.
It happens to women, too, as Excathedra said. Remember when
Tom Cruise divorced Nicole Kidman? She said very little about
it, but I remember she said she still loved him for a long time
afterwards, and then, not long before she married her current
husband, a reporter wanted to dig a little and she said she didn't
know why Tom left her. Of course, people have speculated that
the cult ldr. told him to leave her, but that's another thread.
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Nottawayfer
Women don't just pick up and leave for no reason. Men don't cheat for no reason. If the marriage realtionship is fulfilling, it lasts. If a spouse isn't fulfilled, the other should know. There are all kinds of signs. Some are legitimate, and some are not. Some problems are dealbreakers: addiction, abuse, adultery. There are always signs before a major blowout in a relationship.
Will Smith said that life is not a straight line from birth to death. He said it's a circle which leads to rebirth. Those who haven't found rebirth (I'm not talking about being born again) still have a lot to find out. Some of finding out about life is finding out about YOURSELF and not accepting shortcomings as "oh well, that's the way I am."
I had a boyfriend once who was a complete @$$hole. When he was pi$$ed at me, only the worst filth came out of his mouth. I came to a realization that I didn't like him as a friend, so why would I want to even be his girlfriend or potential wife? I told him that. He said "I know; I need to change that about myself." I didn't hang around long enough to find out, but I would bet my life savings that he's still the same biased jack@$$ who sees evil in everyone except himself.
People can make all kinds of excuses about why their relationships didn't work, and those excuses don't show them doing anything wrong. YOU ARE STILL CLUELESS!!! It always takes two to mess up a relationship. My first husband was a drug addict, and it would be very easy to portray him as the only villain in our marriage. He wasn't. I owned up to my faults in that marriage. I also saw signs of drug abuse before I married him. I should have paid attention to the signs.
Of course, there are exceptions to every situation, but not that many in this category of life.
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Twinky
As a former matrimonial lawyer, I'd have to say that so much marriage breakdown comes from the inability of the couple to really communicate.
Take time to make a safe space so that the other can say what he or she wants or needs to say. Take time to learn to express what you want to say. Take time to hear what the other is saying. Forget yourself, for a change. Take time to see how the other is changing over the years, and may have different needs now. Be ready to change, knock your own rough bits off.
Do it early. Do it often.
When a marriage breaks down, it's rarely one person's fault. So one has an affair? Not good, but what did the other party not do, that led the "guilty" party to want to try elsewhere? It's usually lack of appreciation.
And most things can be overcome, with patience, and perhaps external help.
With the "romantic sociopath" - as with any partner/potential partner - take lots of time beforehand. Find out as much as you can. Make haste slowly.
If considering marriage to someone who'd been married before and divorced, it might be helpful know why the previous mariage broke down, and what the potential new partner had learned from that (= would do differently now). If they blamed the other party completely and took no responsibility, it'd red-flag for me that they weren't quite ready for another marriage.
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