Name changed for this. Some years ago, I knew someone toxic. I've always wondered whether he had some recognisable traits or condition or whether he was simply best described as an arsehole. No way on God's earth am I going to revisit this IRL so I wondered if you might like to do some armchair psychology.
When I met him, I was happy in my work and my long-term relationship. I met this man and thought we were becoming friends but it quickly turned weird. I suppose it was like an emotional affair but much more miserable. I suffered limerance, spiralled into depression, lost my job and left my partner. It was shit.
This man had a few normal friends and a huge number of female friends who appeared to be infatuated with him to a greater or lesser degree. He was very personable and made women feel special, at first, like lovebombing but without the love. He was obsessed with flirting and sex and relationships and how people relate to each other. He socialised incessantly, flitting between dates and other social engagements and avoiding going home. He was constantly engaged in deep conversations with women by text.
He had issues, which he would openly discuss with his female friends, trying to draw them into the ongoing drama. Some of them tried to mother him. He claimed to have low self-esteem, but he had a huge ego.
Women opened up to him and confided in him. He knew every detail of his female friends' innermost thoughts. He would do things that he knew would encourage women to fall for him, but refused relationships with them all. He liked to introduce his infatuated female friends ambiguously to his normal friends so they would assume it was his new girlfriend and then he would laugh and correct them. He introduced his infatuated female friends to each other and they would hug like long lost soulmates.
Sometimes the women he messed with saw sense and went NC, sometimes they went mad and divorced their husbands. Some clung on, hoping he would have a relationship with them. Eventually, he would go cold on the women he had been close to and start on some new victims. He was always scanning the room, presumably checking for discarded women he was trying to avoid.
One day, he admitted he liked to poke around inside women's heads to see what happened. That's when I finally understood what he was doing was deliberate and that he was an arsehole.
Can anyone be a bit more specific?