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How Do I Know I’m Dating a Sociopath?

If you’re Googling for answers.
…and confused or uneasy
about someone you’re dating,
…if you’ve started wondering what’s wrong
it’s likely you’re dating a sociopath…dating a narcissist.

I’m going to get right into it here. There are very specific traits every sociopath shares. If you call this person a “narcissist” and see these traits, maybe pull back a bit on what you feel you know, and plug in a stricter view of them with parameters that fit a sociopath… I know that’s a big and scary word. Paradoxically, it can make things simpler. So, how do we know if we’re dating a sociopath?

First of all, most of us – let’s admit – begin a new romantic possibility, by looking online for things about this person we just met. That’s good, but not enough to detect a sociopath.

Here’s why: when we’re dating someone who is a pathologically narcissistic person – a sociopath – we see the good things. Believe it or not, the bad things about them don’t show up or aren’t seen as bad.

Tune in to yourself in this search. If there’s a tugging in your gut – that gut feeling that something is wrong – this means there’s something wrong. If you’re looking up things that brought you to this article, yes – that person you’re dating or maybe now not dating is one of these creatures.

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Humans Want Proof

But most of us won’t end a romance at this point. We usually want to know more, that’s just human. It’s not necessarily a bad human quality, it is after all, born of the same human inquisitiveness that got us to the moon and discovered penicillin. And at the end of this dating fest – if it goes badly enough, it’s the same natural human quality that will eventually activate our escape from this person.

What Do Sociopaths Do in Relationships?

In the beginning it seems magic. There’s an unexpected, unhinged kind of compatibility.

They want to see us often or text or talk once a day or more
We find them interesting and are impressed with what they do or talk about
It seems they have a good job, are respected, maybe have a-lotta money
Or they drop things that lead us to assume they do
They make a lot of promises
Make a sense of “us” and “we” almost immediately
They offer us something we want: a job, love, a new life – from day one, or three
Start sexual activity

Call It Like It Is: Truth is Where the Freedom Is

The reality is, most times when someone is talking about dating a “narcissist”, the person they’re facing is a sociopath. That’s fine. However, the information out there about a “narcissist” mixes together accurate ideas about a non-pathologically narcissistic person, and extremely inaccurate ideas about this very scary pathological one. This leads to problems when that person is actually pathologically narcissistic…a sociopath.

When dating a sociopath or when wanting to know if you’re dating a person who’s much more than “just a narcissist”, the best way to make this determination is to think of them as a being a sociopath…to look at them through this lens in order to see them clearly.

Dating a Sociopath (a Pathological Narcissist) Goes…

The person who promised so much breaks those promises
They say something really strange like, you only think you love me, or I’m not average
Super confusing and heartbreaking… they’re strange or get weird about sex
They tell us we can’t be a part of some part of their life
They have days they’re grumpy for no reason
Their mood changes up to down, nice to mean, or active to flat on the couch
And something feels off, uneasy, unsettled and unsettling
Somewhere in your mind, you wonder if they’re lying

Sociopath / Narcissist, Po-tay-to / Po-tah-to

Dating a sociopath… dating a narcissist. You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to. Why does it matter? Why do I talk about this much? Because being unclear in this can prolong the “relationship”, which prolongs the pain, and inhibits recovery. It can interfere with safety of you and any children that are part of the picture.

Here’s one example: If you think of them as a “narcissist’ and read all about that, then you might believe they have a narcissistic wound. – This will lead you down a garden path of empathy for the “narcissist” who is in fact a sociopath, who has no wound, but has an abnormal brain – and would sooner watch you bleed out on the floor while they eat their lunch than give you money to take care of your child.

People have fallen into calling them “narcissists” for lots of reasons. One reason is that the word “antisocial” as in “antisocial psychopath” the technical name for a sociopath, trips them up. So, read here to find the answer to why sociopaths are called antisocial.

And of course, the other reason for shying away from the much bigger words sociopath or psychopath is because it’s hard to believe this infinite evil exits. I’m so sorry for this. This is the hardest part to take in. The first moment this reality came to me, is one I’ll never forget.

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Sociopaths Think Differently: They Have a Different Brian

As things progress:

They don’t talk to you, they ignore your texts, or get mad at you for contacting them
They disappear for days
The pathological user will tell us everything is our fault
To shut up your questions, they tell you to just trust them or call you fat
We feel they’re mad at us and try to explain ourselves
We find out they’re seeing other people
Dating a sociopath or narcissist can turn violent
And now, you feel deceived though you still might have no “proof”
If questioned, they act as if nothing happened and like we’re still chill
You feel fear
You think maybe they’re mentally unstable
Something very wrong is going on, but you can’t put our finger on it

Dating a Sociopath (a Pathologically Narcissistic Person) is Fixable: They Are Not

By the way, did you know that it’s against mental health professional guidelines to diagnose someone underage – someone 18 or younger – as a sociopath aka a psychopath? That’s how serious it is. It’s the last thing a therapist or psychiatrist wants to officially diagnose anyone with.

This diagnosis, this condition of this abnormal and under-functioning brain of the sociopath is permanent. It’s a very strong statement for a therapist or psyche professional to make. This diagnosis is one that many licensed mental health professionals are not willing to make.

I’ve known of cases where they feel the person in question is a sociopath, but not be willing to give testimony to this in court in abuse cases that could save a child from visitations or a spouse from sharing custody. – There are of reasons for this. The point is you need to know.

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Dating a Sociopath, Dating a “Narcissist” is a Life of Hell

Sociopaths are very different than we are. They actually have a different brain – they process human relations completely differently than we do. They look at other people as objects. People are merely utility devices to use and to take things from or to use to get their kicks from…in a really bad way.

Sociopaths don’t ever change. They cannot. And they wouldn’t want to if they could, they like being sociopaths and know what they are.

Sometimes they’ll tell us they’re a sociopath. They don’t mind if you know this. They care what you do because fo this knowledge. And most times this sickening intimate uttering does not send people running away, its isn’t usually what snaps the spell, but becomes a part of the coagulating weirdness.

Know the truth. Know how amazing you are.

Dating a Sociopath Only Has One Outcome

Things can only go from bad to worse to much, much worse. They’re nice, then harsh then not as nice, then harsher. Call you names and some pull out the violence. They take anyone they can get their hooks into through five stages of true love scam…always and only.

Why? Why can’t they just be normal? – Connectors between segments in their brains are missing so that they can’t feel or process emotions as we do. Sociopaths – psychopaths – don’t feel the emotions we feel. They have a very limited set of emotions, none of which are comparable to ours. They don’t understand our emotions and never will.

There are lots of differences in our brains and in how they see the world compared to hoe we see the world because of this missing but. They’re missing care and connection, and so they’re missing a conscience. We have a conscience because we care. They have other differences, for example, in dating a sociopath or dating a what you’ve been calling a narcissist, you might notice that they don’t process the meanings of words the way we do. They even lie when they don’t need to.

Here’s a very detailed YouTube video with Dr. Hare, a leader
in research and studies on the antisocial psychopath.

We End the Damage They Can Bring to Our Lives

If you’re on this website wondering if you’re dating a sociopath, please don’t wait looking for proof from them…you’re here because you already know. Trust your gut.

Your suspicion, your fear, confusion, and self-doubt is proof. We already know. Please, embrace your own life. Protect yourself. Find out how to leave them. Go no contact.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Your unique guided recovery coaching

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

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As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

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Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.

© 2014 – 2024 All Rights Reserved True Love Scam Recovery www.truelovescam.com

2016_10_10 2022_10_12

We’re Not In Denial

6 Replies

We’re not in denial.
As my dad would say, that’s a river in Egypt.
But seriously.
No one deliberately stays here.
We don’t remain in the clutches
of a slimy sociopath on purpose.
Our goodness caught their attention,
our goodness sets us free.

Denial is a word that’s tossed around to represent a state of mind we’re supposedly in. And that explains how this nightmare went on for so long, or started in the first place. There are those who would say we were in denial and so the surreal, horror show continued to run through our lives as if we allowed it. These people who say this could not be more wrong.

We’re not in denial. No. In short, what happened is: we were deceived and bamboozled. This means we did not have full information.

There isn’t an even playing field. Firstly, none of us had full information that these creatures even existed. Secondly, we were lied too. Thirdly, normal people aren’t looking for a lie. We automatically trust; that’s one of the beautiful things about us all. And fourth, and most significant of all, we’re under the spell of the pathological predator.

Truth Scarier Than Fiction: We Heal From Truth, Not Lies

We were scammed pure and simple by a serial liar, user, taker, abuser life thief. The chasm between our intention and the pathological narcissistic user’s true intention only becomes clear over time.

It’s revealed by bits-and-pieces. We didn’t deny anything… except them and what they wanted, once we did see through it and take in the full horror of their true black heart.

Knowing the real deal truth is how we recover.

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Denial is Not in the House: a Monster Is

When we’re ensnared by a sociopath, there‘s a clashing of two worlds a great collide of two different brains, the mind of a sociopath (you might be calling them a narcissist) and the mind of a regular, normal, iambic brained person: you or me.

The pathological predator and users do their best to let us believe rather than a clash, that together we’re the best match on the planet. The best fit that any two people could ever be.

This is how they survive. The ability to bring this influence upon others is wired into their DNA. I call it the sociopath effect.

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It Takes as Long as it Takes

Mostly the whole mess is analyzed and judged and pronounced upon by those who have not been through it and interpret the phenomenon as if the sociopath – the perpetrator – has the determining view. This is nothing more than a type of mansplaining, victim blaming and just plain wrong.

We see this match made in heaven situation isn’t quite the case, as soon as is humanly possible. In no way do we leap to the conclusion that this person is a psychopath the first time they don’t call us back or are unreachable.

Not only can people not see something they don’t know is in existence such as users who are pure evil, these exist in the movies, not real life.

Our human body and physiology are amazing. It’s designed to keep us safe. In trauma, our bodies and minds protect us, and so let the truth be seen in bite-sized pieces so that we don’t lose our sanity.

After true love scam our eyes are wider open than most. And we know more than most; certainly more than people who tell us we allowed it and we’re in denial. Let your body do its thing.

The very, very courageous take on recovering, healing, seeing what the real-deal is in pieces. Take it in in bits that you can take… It takes as long as it takes. Tell those blamers and shame-ers to step off.

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PTSD is Normal After a Narcissistic Sociopath

We’re not permanent victims scarred for life. We’re not to blame for being snagged and conned by a lying sociopath who gives us every excuse in the book for why they do this. These are not the only two options. — Though – sometimes — it seems to be as we try to find our way out of the maze.

There are piles of mainstream answers to this hideous crime. Including that we, as targets invited it through our past abuse issues or our relationship issues and that we stayed because we were in denial.

How about we look at it from another direction? From our eyes. Let’s stop letting people outside the experience define what happened. Let’s look at it from the eyes of the prey of a sociopath.

This perspective takes a whole different set of words to define it. – Not for the sake of frivolous semantics, but because of a very real variance in meaning.

We Are Not in Denial: We’re Amazing

You see, definitely more fanciful descriptors – these come from the influence of watching many Johnathan Strange and Dr. Norell episodes on late-night Netflix binges that stopped my anxious brain from thinking in the early days of recovery and rocked me to sleep, and still reflect the real-deal of being in one of these hellish circuses of a true love scam… the day-time-wide-awake, hall-of-mirrors-nightmare of living hijacked by a sociopath.

Unless someone’s been dragged by their heart and soul through this, they have no idea. None. None of us “in it” are in denial, or willfully resisting seeing what they are.

To think that anyone could imagine or imply that we’re willfully and knowingly, in the mess we’re in and choosing to ignore it means they have no clue. We’re each in something we can’t possibly recognize: who knew what a sociopath was before all this?

No One Can See Something We Don’t Know Exists

For anyone who’s not been hijacked by a sociopath, these descriptors might sound absurd. It may be what inspires, ohhhh… hmmm, yes. She’s in denial. – And other wholly off the mark, and utterly compassionless, and just plain rude remarks from onlookers and others, who we might think would know better.

To those under the spell, these are quite accurate descriptions that bring about our freedom. With this look at things, we feel less crazy. We might let out a sob of relief, Oh, my god! That’s it! That’s exactly what it is!! – And a little slip of hope eeks through the fog of the sociopath-madness we’re trapped in.

There’s a Mesmerizing that Leads People to Drink the Kool-Aid

I realize what I’m about to say here isn’t popular to say… It’s a contemporary popular belief that humans make choices about well, everything. Here’s a hard fact: none of us are with a sociopath by direct or informed or conscious choice.

We do get away from them by choice. And this’s an important part of this circumstance. Somehow most of the world focuses on wondering how we stumbled into it, why we stayed, ie: How could we have been so stupid?

therapy ptsd narcissistic abuse recovery Jennifer Smith

Decide Your Understanding of This Event

Let’s be real here, let’s not base our understanding of what we’re experiencing – the how’s and why’s of it, in the ideas and perceptions from something else: namely the ideas and perceptions of those who’ve not experienced it.

This is nothing more than a type of mansplaining, victim-blaming and just plain wrong. – And, come one now… Most of our judge-ie acquaintances, coworkers, neighbors, friends or family didn’t know this existed until we walked into it. So, come on now… They aren’t suddenly experts.

The Traits That Attract a Sociopath To Us: Save Us

The very same goodness of heart that makes us attractive to a sociopath is what we then flip – and bring to life exponentially – to get safely and completely away. There, there is the real thing.

It takes a colossal effort. Courage, wisdom, persistence, patience, bravery to break from a kind of bondage; from an entrapment so immense it can’t be understood unless it’s been experienced.

Know This: If someone says it’s your fault, let them know they’re out of step; that evolution of humankind has progressed. Victim blaming is over. No, we’re not in denial. We’re believers in love. We believed that this involved love – until we didn’t. And now that we don’t – watch out. When we see it for the crime it is, there’s no place for the scamming-scum to run.

You Have to Live Through It to Understand It

The break-away from a sociopath is intense and so life-shattering it can never be understood unless you too are an escapee. – And that my friends, does not signify a weak victim, a codependent-door-mat, a denial or any such nonsense.

It signifies some of the hugest power, determination, and strength on the planet. We are awesome. We’re superheroes. We’re our own angels.

You Can’t Deny Something You Don’t Know Exists

Nope. We’re not in denial. If you don’t know this phenomenon exists, you can’t see it. And fortunatley when in it and after, our glorious bodies innately know a human can’t handle the monumental stress that comprehending this entails all one go. So – yes – clarity is meted out in doses only a beatific human of great empathy and love could handle.

Even tiny doses of what we went through would break anyone else. No, denial is nothing more than a river in Africa. A raging, pernicious river that every life stealing, narcissistic con man needs to be thrown into without a life jacket.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

Your unique guided recovery coaching

Time to Thrive!

Join the podcast!

Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

SD Voyager interview

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so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
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Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.

True Love Scam on Tumblr.
Tweet to @truelovescam.

Affiliate links are in every True Love Scam Recovery article. Clicks on these links provide minor compensation to keep the site running. www.truelovescam.com and its agents are not licensed as attorneys, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. See the entire and full True Love Scam Recovery Privacy Policy and Legal Agreement and Disclaimer here. Thank you.

© 2014 – 2024 All Rights Reserved True Love Scam Recovery www.truelovescam.com

2016_09_16 2022_10_12

Sociopaths Hate Us: So Does the “Narcissist”

4 Replies

Sociopaths hate us and at the same time
need us so desperately.
As any parasite, they can’t live without a “host”.

Narcissistic users know in their “heart-of-hearts” (so to speak) that we are the ones with the real power. We’re resilient, mentally flexible, and have nuance emotionally.

We have the advantage of being fully-real people who can love and feel, with our souls rooted in compassion. With an unseen bond with one another. This is a potent elixir for the ills and sorrows of life and the stuff human kindness is made of.

This gorgeous human magnificence is exactly the stuff absent from the brain, heart, mind, and soul of the most narcissistic predator of all predators: the sociopath or psychopath, no matter how they got here.

The psychopath’s and the sociopath’s abnormal brain renders them loveless
and without conscience.

Time for answers. Discover the real deal.

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The Narcissistic User Knows We Have the Power

Something a bit tough to take in is that sociopaths fear us even as they use us. They know that we can ruin them with exposure. And – they never, ever can understand our world. They’re flying blind. The results of their actions are uncertain and unknown to them.

When they sense that we know what they are, their constant fear – normally tucked away under the obtuse, criminal boldness born of their abnormal brains, turns to rage. It’s then their rage that exposes them further as they operate in frenzied improvisational reaction moment to moment.

Everything about the sociopath is a duality, a contradiction, and plays out in an endless tightening cycle of ruin. Their very own limited brains and closed circuit of self is the very thing that gives them away. So, sociopaths hate us, and sociopaths need us.

Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control
by Jennifer Smith

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Our Great Goodness is Our Saving Grace

The very qualities within us they hijack and make use of for their (temporary) personal gain, are the same qualities about us that lead us to see through them, to leave them, and to heal and recover, stronger, wiser, and more humane than before.

This makes sociopaths hate us even more. They simply have no capacity to comprehend our world or our emotions. We, on the other hand, can understand theirs and so, by understanding how their minds work, render them ineffective in their scams and harm.

Discover what’s really behind gaslighting.

Sociopaths Hate Us from Day One

So, sociopaths hate us. Even the day we met. Once we see through them the hate is let out of the cage. And so, all along and finally more so in the end, sociopaths are their own undoing.

There’s no way under the sun that they don’t give themselves away. The same limitations in their brain biology that makes them want what they want, and do what they do lead to giving themselves away.

Sociopaths Hate Us and Fear Us: The Sociopath’s Weakness

The thing they can’t get around is the constant fear of being unmasked. This and their limited minds make them predictable. They need to appear nice and upstanding to combat their fear of being caught, yet in the heat of discovery unplanned, improvised things they say and do bring them down.

Their predictability, mental limitations, transparent lies, and ranting leave gaps and leverage for our escape from these monsters. Sociopaths hate us for being what we are – human – and paradoxically hijack our humanity for their survival.

There are moments when no matter the
position of the body the soul is on its knees.
~ Victor Hugo

Climbing Up Out of The Abyss of the Sociopath’s Hatred

Ten months after marrying the man of my dreams the winding, hairpin turn, dead-drop roller coaster ride of disengaging my life from his ruination jerked into motion.

I felt every grueling, gut-punch, every head snap. Fear never left me. Grief slept and woke up with me each morning. Grief and loss are part of PTSD after a sociopath. – My grief wasn’t over lost love, but the loss of something I had thought was real. – Yours will be too.

Using our normal human point of view will take us on and on in misery, living in hurt, mistrust, and confusion under a false understanding of what happened and why and of how amazing we are.

Any care or concern for him vanished in one heartbeat. Seeing the truth behind his pretty face, I held no illusions or mistaken feelings that even a tiny breath of my life with him had been real. There had been no mutual moment of anything. He did his best to make me believe a deep vein of true love ran between us even during the ten days it took him to move out.

Those hideous moments flipped on a dime to his blatant contempt for me. As harsh as the hatred for me was – it was the truth. His fake sugar-candy sweetness, softness, and humility no longer soothed me; his false kindness was evil in disguise and held more danger than his open plots and insults.

A turn of the lens and the answers fall into place.

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Narcissistic Abuse Unwound

We Decide What Winning Is

We can find value in this hell. Scrape this burning trip through pain for all the wisdom we can. Promise yourself you’ll win rather than be pulled under or scarred. Sociopaths need us to hold up their house-of-cards lives. We don’t need them.

Our brain has a center that lights up like a Christmas tree when we feel love or concern. Sociopaths’ brains do not register these feelings. They ain’t got no Christmas tree. We genuinely light up in love, joy, kindness as well as sorrow and grief. They think our emotions are ridiculous, a waste of time. Useless. They use our emotions to get what they need – so they falsely think they are in charge.

They don’t care what we think, how we feel, what we want, or need – unless it places them in a position of being exposed or loosing things they’ve taken.

Sociopaths are classified as “antisocial psychopaths”, and the last thing we want to be doing is dating one, or marrying one. They’re sometimes now referred to as having an “antisocial personality disorder,” which is not a fixable disorder. Some people call them narcissists, as borrowed from another medical, mental health classification: a malignant narcissist.

The description of a malignant, covert, or overt narcissist is, in essence, describing a sociopath. For our purposes, consider a malignant narcissist a sociopath. We aren’t doctors, insurance companies, and social services; that’s who those definitions in the DSM were written for. Base your escape and recovery on your experience, not a medical manual.

Puzzle pieces fall from the sky.

Antisocial Psychopaths Do Their Best to Seem Normal

Sociopaths mimic our emotions as best they can – which is truly not very well or we wouldn’t be reading these pages. They steal the contents of our hearts and our wallets, they borrow and hijack our lives and remain bereft of compassion and love as a desert is of water.

When it comes down to it – their only power is that we didn’t know what they were. When we see them behind the mask, they know it’s time to go. And they know when we’re seeing through long before we could imagine they do.

Pathological predators want (need) to look like the good and respectable “victim,” take our money and anything else they can, have a kid here or there, feel like they are King or Queen… and move on before being caught. Or before their boredom overwhelms them.

We Win When We Accept That They Exist

By understanding their primal, reptilian brain we can make that “going” cleaner and easier for ourselves, there are “break-up musts” when it comes to escaping a sociopath – even if you call them a narcissist.

That said: do not tempt a sociopath’s rage. It’s easy to ignite their erratic defense mechanisms. Do not underestimate the danger that a sociopath is. Without internal, self-inspired stops or controls of any kind on what they do, or say.

Entanglements of Darkness

The dark places they can take their rage is a places we never want to see. Their rage is born of the fear that they’ll be caught or have things they’ve taken, taken away. They never want to lose prey or the things they take.

It’s really important that we not argue with them, challenge them, or threaten them. This leads only to more pain and risk for ourselves.

They don’t care what we think, how we feel, what we want, or need – unless it places them in a position of being exposed or losing things they’ve taken. When you see what they are, do this: zip it. Stay silent. Get them out. Or go yourself. Hold onto what we are as gorgeous, glorious humane humans.

We Are Awesome and Our Own Angels

Use the sociopaths’ weaknesses to leverage them out of our lives and minimize the damage. Find real freedom, heal from the crime it was – there was no relationship. All the incredible innate and natural traits we possess as normal humans that render us their prey are also our saving grace.

Without our emotions we can’t build a life, love our children, or care for the real people in our lives: husbands, wives, moms and dads, our kids, or even see the beauty of a sunset. Since we’re full of complex emotional capacity, we can use intense difficulties or suffering to create depth and value.

Stand up! See the sociopath for what he or she is! The way to heal from what really went on is to reframe the entire debacle from the viewpoint of a sociopath’s mind.

Using our normal human point of view will take us on and on in misery, living in hurt, mistrust, and confusion under a false understanding of what happened and why and how amazing we are.

Find real answers… Let’s talk.