Sociopaths

[GerardWay]

I have every reason to believe that one of my InLaws is a sociopath. What I don't understand is why when they are caught out in their lies they manage to charm everyone round to thinking they (ie us) got it wrong. Even the adult children continue to fall for it everytime. I (and my DH who still falls for it all and DC's) have cut all contact with the person but worry about the damage he is doing to the rest of the family.

I am off to bed now. Check in again in the morning x

Thanks AF. I really appreciate wht you said. Reading the other stories on here has helped. So glad GerardWay started this thread.

I just feel like everything he does is taken in isolation by people, who as you say, keep viewing him through the normal emotion thing and he just keeps charming his way through it.
The first time he broke the non mol the judge said that if he did it again he wouldn't even get bail...the same judge, when he'd done it for the third time said if he 'keeps' doing things like this he'll lose his parental rights... but nothing else and trust me the non mol stuff is nothing compared with everything else.

I read the other day that the act they put on is so perfect.. too perfect in fact. Like a pretend peach compared to a real one. This is so true.

If I ask people to reconcile this act with what he's actually been doing, they just shrug their shoulders and look blank :(

I totally relate to Gerard saying she had so much proof, solicitors letters etc, yet his family still chose to believe him... they just have that effect and its so scary when you're on the end of it..

Morning, baby

We must have signed in at the same time

Ohhh, a pretend peach ...that is a good analogy

Morning :)

I feel so awful for the rest of you. At least I have been able to cut all contact and my DC's (and DH to a certain degree) want nothing to do with BIL having seen and heard everything. My DH finds it so hard as he had hoped his brother had changed only to find out everything was lies after lies.

This all sounds very familiar. I used to have a friend with a lot of these traits and had to distance myself in the end; some of the things she said and did were so ridiculous I was amazed I had believed her to start with and was even more so when others continued to buy into her stories. She would never ever admit she had lied either, would flatly deny it even in the face of evidence. Was most peculiar. What types of things do they do, generally?

just scored ex with a 31, and thats only cos i dont know much about his early life!
I have nothing whatsoever to do with him. He only has supervised contact with DD with my mum supervising. Luckily he still tries to impress her so DD isnt exposed to anything unpleasant apart from his overinflated ego and BS, which she doesnt seem to believe. dd luckily seems wise for her age - she has identified his issues quite well, and also gets annoyed that everything is always about him, he even changes the conversation round to himself if she is trying to tell him something about what she has done, which she finds pretty rude. She doesnt want more contact, and certainly none on her own, so I am quite confident that there is damage limitation going on as best as we can do it

i've been trying to explain to a few close friends who've been with me through the whole relationship and witnessed his behaviour that i think he's a sociopath... but they all just say 'oh, putting these labels on him is allowing him to get away with his behaviour!'

i don't think they quite get it... they still think he's a normal person who is just horrible and corrupt. they don't see the emptiness, the initial 'perfect peach' (love that! he was so perfect, but now i see he was just lying to turn himself into my ideal) phase followed by the lies, abuse and betrayal. the gap where real remorse would be. instead he's just imitating what he feels the correct response should be at certain points. he's even parroted my own words back to me as apologies... but i can see it now. finally i know what he's doing.

i think you're right shineonyoucrazydiamond about not telling people in real life your suspicions. it just makes you look like the nutter, the one who's jumping to conclusions she's not qualified to make. but i've been with this man for five years now, and i'm finally starting to understand.

That does make sense, thanks for explaining.

A lot does ring true, she owns a successful business and is very, very driven but I always thought it stemmed from low self esteem which wouldn't be the case in a true sociopath, would it? She wouldn't give that impression.

She has quite a respectable public persona and is very charming and popular but it's all very superficial, she has very few real friends but most people can't see through it although I can (we have been friends for ten years plus) and used to worry that it made me look jealous to notice discrepancies so I stopped pointing them out.

She also lies constantly, almost as if just for something to talk about. An example is that she told me and countless other people that another of our friends was pregnant, which she wasn't. Wasn't trying to conceive, no plans to, no mention of a pregnancy at all, she must have plucked it out of thin air.

Obviously, she knew I would speak to the friend and find out she wasn't pregnant at all, so why would she make up something like that? She told EVERYONE this, friends, clients, even people my other friend didn't know and she was batting off comments from left right and centre. It was so strange! And people believed her without question because why would someone say something like that if it wasn't true?

too late shine, i told him while we were still speaking! he told me to stop using this buzzword i'd just picked up, that i was pathetic to do so. then i later discovered he'd been using said descriptor at work to excuse his behaviour (remember he deceived all these workmates, had them to parties at my house and convinced one of them she was his true love girlfriend). i had one of his work colleagues last night chatting to me on facebook saying that he was saying he was a sociopath and that he seemed to think it was kind of 'cool' to be one. wtf? i haven't heard from him since sunday and i'm really hoping he's just going to fade out of our lives. would rather deal with the children saying 'mummy, what was daddy like' than them actually getting to experience it for themselves.

i really really hope he's just a twat and a cock. please let that be the case!

Its a combination of all the factors on the list and its more than a lack of empathy too, they simply have no conscience. They lie for sport and they seem to be able to tap into whatever it is that you are looking for.

No contact is definately the only way to go if can do it that is.

Most people just don't get it and they immediately think of hannible lector, not realising the same mentality is there. Honestly they come into your life and systematically try to destroy it.

Shineon's sounds like a white collar psychopath, mine is a borderline criminal one who prides himself on not getting caught..

warmleatherette have you looked at the checklist?

babe, i have, and he scores very highly - like nettletea, i can't comment on his early life because i don't know about it, but the rest it's yes, yes, yes.

shine, he's just turned 28. i genuinely don't think... i mean, i do think 'cock muncher' but it's much more than that. a few of the lies i've been told include:

lies about torturing people for the russian mafia, lies about his best mate killing himself because DH fucked his mum, leaving a note just saying 'ASK DH', lies about making porn films in russia, lies about being homeless and a rent boy between 16-18, lies about getting flown out to china and texas on his ex-girlfriend's private jet (while his passport was still in the drawer - according to him you don't need a passport if you go via private jet), lies about doing work experience at nike and getting sacked for fucking someone on the photocopier and taking a shit on the CEO's desk, lies that he was in china to save his best friend's mother (the one he fucked) who was dying of cancer, caused by being poisoned by chinese gangsters...

um, when we met he claimed to be 16, then when i told him he needed to stop this stupid lie, claimed to have been on a schizophrenic break and showed me some pills he was allegedly taking for his schizophrenia. not to mention his own son being his godson and the mother being a drug addict who was always trying to get money out of him...

plus just the more commonplace douchebag lies such 'as i'm coming home now, i'm on the bus now, oh, i fell asleep on the DLR etc etc', and the whole 'my wife is actually my flatmate' thing - lies to faciliate his double life.

add in the emotional abuse (telling me i was stupid, a loser, a fucking bitch etc, acting like i'd murdered his mother if i packed the dishwasher wrongly or left my handbag in the kitchen) and the massive lack of remorse, and the continual lying even when faced with incontrivertable (sp?) evidence (love-letters, a diary, photos) - he claimed it was an 'affair package' she'd helped him concoct so he could leave his marriage, then set up a fake email account for her and showed me screengrabs of a fake email he'd written declaring his love for me).... oh, so many more lies even after the deception was uncovered.

anyway, this is way TMI and he's almost certainly reading it (HI DH! PLEASE FUCK OFF FOREVER). maybe it does just sound like a normal douchebag bastard instead of a sociopath but there's something more there... or, in fact, less... that makes me sure that he is not like most people.

you betcha he ain't like most people

< waves to the pathetic liar >

warmleatherette its not good is it :( I think you're right I'm afraid. It also sounds slightly psychotic if my understanding of the word is right x

Morning! I have a couple of questions you could maybe help me with, people?

1. If you could go back to the time when you first separated from your children's father, and could choose for him not to be involved at all, would you choose that?

2. Do you worry that your children may turn out to be, y'know... like him? Do you actively try to parent in a way that might discourage future sociopathic tendencies, especially in boys?

Opinion among my friends and family is divided on whether or not he should be involved - I mean, whether or not I should try to encourage his involvement. Some say 'get him the hell away from all of you after what he did'. Others say 'Children deserve to know their father and make up their own minds about him.' I know these are general questions after any break-up involving children, but when the father is someone you suspect of having sociopathic tendencies, surely things are a little different?

1. Yes without any doubt at all. He's a seriously nasty piece of work and violent. I think he would hurt DS to hurt me without any doubt. I would do anything to be able to get us away from him :(. In any normal circumstances I think children should be given every opportunity to know both their parents, but with a parent like this who will be so damaging, then no

2. No not at all. I believe in nuture more than nature and I really believe in attachment parenting, although I know the psychopathic gene is supposed to be partly hereditary. DS is so empathetic though and loving, so I'm hoping that any external influence his father has on him will not take that away.