Psychopath

Mine was very convincing at the start and at that point there was none dead eye look, it was perfect but looking back too perfect. The only way I can describe it was it was me, everything matched. Pretty sure I was love bombed it moved extremely fast.

They played innocent and naive, introverted and heavily relied on my support, we were inseparable.

As time went on some things happened but not major, just a bit out there at times. Little bit high maintenance after, nothing too major. Then our eldest was born and it changed, got a bit more intense at certain periods but not major.

Then our youngest was born and that's where it started to go awol and the abuse really started. A more hateful person emerged in general and it was with everything but especially towards me.

Over the years it got more and more extreme. Things that apparently always stood for were no longer valid, views of the world, people and what they would be capable of or fantasied about doing came out openly in conversation like were talking about the weather. It got to the point I was like their moral compass or conscience.

A lot of things happened to me as well, too many to go into detail but I never thought they were capable of it. In the end they changed completely over night and now they are not the same person, their eyes are dead looking, dark around the eyes sunken almost, haggard with no glint. Totally void with an intimidating stare.

Yet at the same time has created a new version of themselves for public and new friends who don't know them well. In that version they are self sufficient lone parent and always have been. I didn't do anything the entire time and I'm extremely dangerous and my children no longer have a father. They are the victim and I'm the abuser.

Believes these lies as truth, all our past has been changed to suit this narrative. Events we shared and even events family were present didn't happen.

So on one hand is doing everything in power holding me back legally from the children and on the other is making out none of that is happening at all, just carrying on with life like I didn't exist. To those who knew me, they are fed the story but others aren't aware at all...just a nice, poor innocent mother with children all on her own.

I have no idea as I got married over 17 years ago! The affairs and abuse started around the time DD was born. She’s 14. That’s when he changed completely towards me. I’ve been divorced for 7 years now so have very little contact with him, but he’s totally dead behind the eyes now and has been for as long as I can remember. I’m not going to go into everything he’s done to me as it’s horrific but it was a lifetime ago.

So he did show something behind his eyes when you first got together? Or you just didn't notice he didn't and reacted to what he said?

I've name changed for this.

I am probably a psychopath, or at least sit outside of the realms of normal emotional processing.

I can feel empathy for my partner. I am not totally devoid of emotion. Though a lot of my upset and grief in life has been selfish/narcissistic eg I'm unhappy that somebody died because it causes issue for me. I feel sorry only for myself. I cannot stand sick people because of the burden.

I can't stand children. I wouldn't go out of my way to hurt one but the sound of a baby crying makes me immediately think to smother it. I would easily and without guilt be able to take a baby outside to a shed and leave it there knowing it would die, simply because it was noisy or inconvenient. I don't see a point in many people so I feel they are irrelevant and their life, happiness, suffering etc pose no impact to me therefor aren't at all something I concern myself with. I do not experience regret, only again, self pity if perhaps I was caught doing something bad. I do not regret my actions only being caught.

When I was a child I tried to kill another girl. I held a bag over her head until she passed out. I was angry when this happened so I did experience that feeling of rage, again I do not regret it. She didn't die, and being relatively young I did not get in any real trouble.

I have always thought people around me are idiots. I am considered very attractive and I have used this to my advantage a lot. I am very intelligent but I act dumber than I am. I am excellent at masking and people consider me warm and friendly.

I do not have close relationships with any of my family, we rarely speak. I consider them a waste of my time and energy, but not because of anything that's happened.l between us.

The law does prevent me doing bad things, I enjoy comforts as much as anybody else. However if it was guaranteed I would not be caught I I'd probably be much more dangerous. I avoid physical altercations because I'm small and obviously still feel pain, but I know if I killed somebody I'd feel absolutely nothing. I don't feel the need to torture small animals or anything like that but I also don't feel empathy for them. I've killed animals in normal pest control situations. I also shot a pheasant which would crow in my yard daily. But again, they were inconveniencing me.

I have been very successful and I suppose some of that is because I am not risk averse. I can be impulsive but have tempered that as I've aged, and managed to play some of it off as a wild youth. I am happily married and I have softly mentioned some of these things to my partner but he doesn't really believe me, at least not entirely. I think partially he can't compute that inside I'm bad or capable of things he considers abhorrent, and I like him thinking the best in me so I have never pressed it. He is the opposite of me and is very gentle and kind.

I do experience joy, happiness and things can alter my mood. I'm not a robot.

Though my lack of deep caring is not something I can control, and as I said I wouldn't give energy to anything not worth my time, so mindless crime or torture aren't really on my radar but if I was crossed I don't think there is a limit to the actions I would take in retaliation.

Well obviously these people are very good at hiding that at the start! It takes a while before the mask slips. Now I know about love bombing, I understand how it all works. If you met him, you’d think he was charming and charismatic. However the truth is very far from that.

I suppose many serious child abusers fall into this category

What a shocking testimony , are you safe now and have you made a happy life for yourself free from this horrifying man ?
It is unimaginable thinking about the fear you have felt , from the man who should have kept you the safest you could ever have been.

It’s presenting a facade, which is what I mean by manipulation: it is controlling how one appears to onlookers. That isn’t a value judgement, and I’m not assigning malign intent to it.

My point is that a lot of the time the masking is done for the same reason: presenting the face that best fits in, rather than masking in order to best inflict harm.

I think I'm half of one but then I love babies and animals so maybe not? Just grown adults that cry over stupid things or entitlement annoys me?

It's hard to distinguish though because just like everyone masks to some degree, everyone has narcissistic traits in them.

Same as are all abusive people narcissists because their behavior and patterns of abuse are similar to narcissists and narcissistic abuse. I know they are not but sometimes it's hard to judge, are they just abusive or is there something more at play.

Autistic people vary a lot too and in my experience it's more of a case they mask to fit in because they are aware they do not and have never felt they do. Not because they are trying to manipulate or trick people, they want a real connection and feel they have to fit in in order to do so.

Whereas, someone who's a psychopath or a narcissist does the same, masks to fit in but there's more behind that mask and what they are selling or portraying is perhaps something other people wouldn't want to associate with or be aware of the entire friendship.

Obviously not all have bad intent, theres varying levels but in the circumstance where someone is masking to the point their entire personality and life is fabricated to a third party, that's different. Duping that person into a fake friendship with someone who's a fantasy, only to find everything they have said isn't true or real and in reality, they are doing bad things to people in their true life that does exist.

I don't think a clinical diagnosis applies to the majority of people described on the thread.

Some people can be very dangerous for all kinds of reasons, but most aren't, and that also applies to psychopaths. Most aren't Jeffery Dahmer, or even criminals.

What I find interesting is how so many claim to know male psychopaths... but how few women. They seem to hide it better.

There is a forensic psychiatrist called Sohom Das on you time and he talks about psychopathy quite a bit. I think people get confused between that and sociopathy quite often. It's very interesting.

If they have a clinical diagnosis of psychopathy perhaps? Additionally other disorders may also be present.

This thread has potential to downgrade the danger that persists around some psychopaths. They can be deeply dangerous for a reason. Let’s not lose sight of that.

I think you are wrongly assuming psychopaths don't do things to fit in.

And conversely, you could say that wanting to fit in, and being dishonest in order to do so, is itself a kind of manipulation.

But I think many, particularly people with autism, tend to underestimate how common masking is in general. Pretty much everyone does it to some extent, and in some circumstances, like work, many people do it a lot.

I would imagine you can have all kinds of combinations.

But some of the things people are describing sound just like they are deeply sadistic or have other personality disorders, I don't particularly see why they are assuming they are also psychopaths.

A person with autism who 'masks' to fit in is not being manipulative. It is a question of motivation: the word manipulative implies conscious and malign intent.
A lot of the masking that autistic people do is barely consciously done, it becomes so automatic, and it is definitely not malign.

Yes and no. A psychopath will wear a mask for the same reason someone with autism will: to fit in with society/their environments. That in itself is arguably manipulative, but there doesn’t necessarily have to be nefarious reasons beyond that.

Posters have touched on the lying - I just wanted to add to the compulsive lying bit of my mothers narcissism. She will lie about absolutely everything. I mean literally everything. You can't trust a word she says. Even the weather for gods sake. Before we lived in the same village she'd try and make out there'd been torrential rain or tornadoes the night before or whatever and we'd be like ... 🤔really? No one else has mentioned it. And she'll get cross if you call her out. I've heard her have whole conversations on the phone about things i've not said at all! Mundane shite - no need to lie about it. Like what i said about the colour of a car or something. Don't understand it at all.

She used to lie about things my kids had supposedly said to her. Things they'd supposedly asked her. I'd ask them if they'd said to nanny x, y or z and they'd be totally confused. It was to get info. out of me. As teens it was still happening and it became a running joke. we laugh about it now.

Another comparison between autism and psychopathy: the playing of roles and wearing masks.

Psychopaths wear masks to manipulate and get what they want. They are expert at role playing, until the mask slips, and then they quickly put a mask on again.

People with (some types of) autism wear masks to try and fit in. They can become fairly expert at performing roles and gauging what kind of act is expected in any social setting, especially as they accumulate life experience.
Hence if the role is 'reading a poem at a funeral in a suitably clear and solemn manner', then it can be done. The emotion they feel personally is naturally separate from the role they perform for that particular time or task.

The way I see it, psychopaths don't care about rules - they will manipulate rules if it suits them but will otherwise ignore them, right up to the point where they calculate the consequences of getting caught would be too inconvenient.

People with autism do care very much about the rules, they live by rules, and have a strong sense of justice. Sometimes their sense of justice will cause them to ignore or over-ride a (in their eyes) stupid rule - they don't follow rules out of social pressure but because of their inner mental structures.

People with (some types of) autism feel empathy and emotion very deeply, but only if it is 'real' in their lives, such as people and animals they know, or know of, personally.
They don't react to 'fake' emotion such as news stories designed to tug at the heart strings, as they intellectualise it.
e.g. "the news is showing me a young child crying in a migrant boat, but I don't feel anything in particular for this child, because I don't know them, this is an image on a screen, and I do know that factually there are many thousands just like them (who are not on screen right now). Why would I feel more for this one than all the others? I may be concerned and sad about the international political situation and the plight of refugees all over the world, but I am not overly moved by this picture of this child."

I know someone who is probably a sociopath. Very charming, liar, has done nefarious things (been in prison) - can’t really elaborate more but when pushed let’s say you get more than you bargained for & then the denial.

@Trianglesandcircles1 you could very well be onto something there. Both my DC have definitely got ASD traits and I suspect I may not be NT. I'm 47 and ASD simply wasn't on the table when I was a child. I was bright but extremely socially averse. I detested school. I have misophonia and suffer terrible migraines. Who knows?!

This sounds more like autism to me: the rationality about media-induced artificial emotion, the compartmentalizing and rationality, the very strong sense of justice.

@Rudderneck @Remembermynamealways

As far as I was aware psychopaths generally have narcissistic traits and tendencies that overlap with other traits. Narcissist aren't commonly psychopaths but there are narcissist psychopaths, that also exhibit psychopathic traits and would go to further lengths and do worse things than a narcissist would.