Can someone please tell me how a person would turn out to be like this?

[MirrorOnTheWall]

This is a really sensitive issue for me, and am really angry/confused/scared. I just want to know what makes an abusive man abusive?

Today it dawned on me that someone very close in relation to me is an abuser. We have always passed him off as "control freak", "split personality", "tough"....."weirdo"...but after reading a few threads on here about abusive men, he fits the bill and it scares me.

He never leaves enough money for his wife even though he is earning thousands a day. He moniters her computer with spyware. He has hacked into her emails/FB/Skype numerous times to see what she is doing. He has beat her (although I wasn't told this until years later). He swears at her to her face and behind her back. He prevents her from talking to his family. He hates her meeting her parents. He told his children once that he may not be coming back home, which as you can imagine, broke their little hearts and I am so angry at this person I want to smack his face. He has also had countless affairs and mistresses, which his wife has found out about but he always cries and makes her forgive him.

This man was loved as a child. His parents put his needs above their other children because he was a preemie who nearly died at birth and so felt he was special. He always got everything he wanted. He always did what he wanted but was also disciplined and scolded the same as his siblings. His father respected his mother and loved her and would never have imagined of raising his hand to her.

With this kind of upbringing, what would make a man turn out like this? Was it in his genetic make-up? I hate him so much for ruining his wife's and childrens lives. His wife is wanting a divorce and he is blaming her for everything that has gone wrong in their marriage. But I know what this woman is like and she worships the ground he walks on. He is the problem.

He sounds like he has narcisstic qualties

Have you looked into this? Feeling special is often a trait of narcisstic types

Self-entitlement and blame. Sounds narcissistic with a dose of paranoia thrown in as well. I'm not sure why you aren't making the link between him being treated as the golden child and his current problems.

I am wondering if he is someone very close to such as your husband, father or brother Mirror?

It is depressing isn't it? I've only ever got as far as working out how to protect myself from a narcissist, never really worked out how it happens. Are they born with it? who knows

Is the wife in your story supported ie by friends, family? has she been in touch with Womens Aid, joined the Freedom Programme? She's going to need a lot of support to get away from him and, as he is so wealthy, I doubt she will ever get free of his clutches entirely tbh. I was in that boat and until the day he died he didn't leave off with endless control and abuse, though I left him decades before. It was hard. The Freedom Programme is an excellent course to help her get her head straight about what she's dealing with, and to help her keep up her resolve.

Womens Aid 0808 2000 247 - they will give her a lot of very practical as well as emotional support. Google The Freedom Programme to get local groups.

The Lundy Bancroft book is good too, a must-read for the wife. I think it's called Why Does He Do That?

You sound like a great friend. I'm a bit worried though. You sound so upset about it. You'll have to detatch a bit in order to help her. It seems trite to say 'good luck' but saying it anyway x

he does sound like a narcissist. there is a subtype of clinical narcissism that incorporates paranoid tendencies.

i've read that some experts think this disorder can be genetic. just like some children are born psychopaths/sociopaths (small proportion, but they exist)... bear in mind that narcissism is on the sociopathy spectrum, it's like sociopathy-lite.

(not sure if the term sociopath is a current one, i think they changed it in the recent past actually)

other theories for how it happens include

• abuse in childhood
• parents doting on child in childhood
• parents not criticising the child in a healthy way (either not at all or too much)

but the fact is you'll probably never know. it's unfair and awful i know.

I strongly believe some people who get to much power in their jobs often start to become this way (either it was always dormant and the power coaxed this behaviour out or a monster was created the more power they got), and as this man is very wealthy I would say this has contributed towards his behaviour.

I say this as this is what happened to my own df

I second Springy's advice to give his wife a copy of Why Does He Do That. Sounds like she'll need it.

Wrt your question, and adding to oiko's reply:

• Prem birth may have meant separation at birth and possible early trauma with pain, surgery and perhaps things like feeling cold or too hot.

• It could also have interfered with parental bonding; the favouritism you note may have been an attempt to make up for failed early attachment.

• Evidence that sociopathy has a genetic component is growing fast. There's also a visible (on PET) difference in brain formation. It's unknown whether the difference is hard-wired from before birth or a consequence of experience.

• Being the golden child carries a heavy emotional toll. This can and does trigger NPD in predisposed individuals.

• If there's also a scapegoat among his siblings, this makes it all the more likely the family dynamic was dysfunctional and damaging. The golden child has a form of survivor guilt, along with other problems of entitlement, mistrust and insecurity.

Understanding why doesn't alter the facts. The only person in any position to use such knowledge for good would be the man himself. I do believe in having compassion for such damaged adults, but it isn't a reason to overlook harmful behaviours.

Starwisher - The sociopaths in my family achieve success because they're self-centred, ruthless manipulators! Business loves a psycho. I hate to admit it, but I was a lot more successful while I was 'acting out'. (Now I'm insignificant, impoverished and wiser )

Interesting Garlic.

You see, my df was a lovley father until he got promoted very high up when I was about 12. Nealry overnight he turned unbearable.

It makes me wonder if he was always narcissitic but the new power he gained unleased it, or if he was "normal" but the power and worship he was receiving was the start of the problems.

I see so many celebrties I think they are very narcisstic, but was it narcissim that drove them to fame or the other way around?

Have a read of The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. Sounds like he fits right in.

Good question! Current psych thinking separates long-term NPD from a 'reactive' form caused by sudden fame & riches. I think the next DSM is relegating Narcissism to an aspect of sociopathy, taking the emphasis away from finer distinctions between one N and another.

In the end, it doesn't really matter that much. Not everyone who finds the world at their feet becomes a twat, so there must have been some predisposition in those who do. I'm sorry that happened to your father. It must have been very hard for you.

Yes it was, but strangely enough since my mother finally left him he has become an excellent father again.

Maybe realising he didnt hold some ultimate power over the whole world and my mother could walk away broke him and made him realise what is important?

He is so humble now. Having said that I always keep him slightly at arms length as the trust will always be broken.

Sorry for hijack op!

Thank You so much for your replies. He is not my husband; thankfully I have a wonderful husband, but he is a close relative.

I just had to look up narcissistic qualities on wiki and he fits the bill. These two points I have had first-hand experience from him:

3.Arrogance: A narcissist who is feeling deflated may reinflate by diminishing, debasing, or degrading somebody else.
4.Envy: A narcissist may secure a sense of superiority in the face of another person's ability by using contempt to minimize the other person.

Since childhood I have been degraded by this person. Things like the way I spoke, walked, ate at the table were picked on when I was a child. Even as adults (we rarely meet) his first line of attack after a conversation will be "you have no brain, you're stupid".
He has often bragged about how much he earns a day infront of my husband too.

starwisher what you say about money and power describes this person to the T. He literally started earning thousands overnight with his first job and although he was always had controlling tendencies, he changed for the worse once he had money. He always refers to his wealth and materialistic things when trying to put other people down.

springydaffs His wife is in another country and he works away and is gone for weeks at a time. She is supported by her own family, but I'm not sure how much she tells them.

garlicbutter That's interesting about the separationg at birth and feeling too hot or too cold. We have often noticed how this man craves love from everywhere...it's like he wants everyone to love him - but it's very hard to love him as a family member with his personality traits and it kind of explains his numerous affairs in my mind.

I have often wondered about this question. Are narcissists/sociopaths born or made? Despite reading so much on the subject, there seems to be nothing definitive. I get the impression, like others, that its seen more as a mixture of nature and nurture. Even read stuff about it being a form of autism...

(Though most normal sociopaths and narcissists would not subject themselves to such study - only probably possible on the ones who end up in prison).

I believe it is very difficult to obtain date about narcissism as a person with npd lacks insight and therefore does not consider anything is wrong with them, rather it is wrong with everyone else.

It is difficult to assess someone else's childhood. We may have their words for it or their family's, but the experience for the child we will never know.

For example, I have a friend with dd same age as mine. She considers that our girls have had almost identical upbringings - one sibling, same pre school, same school, separated parents etc - and she is at a loss to understand why her child has so many unhappy experiences.

For me it is as clear as day - the child is neglected and mine is not. Of course I don't feel I can say this to my friend, it would be devastating to her, and it is only my opinion and not factual. But what appears like good parenting can in fact be v poor parenting, so maybe his childhood was not so great.

Just to correct a point JanelikesJam made - it's probably closer to the truth to say that sociopathic behaviour (and narcissism as a type of this spectrum) are almost the opposite of autistic behaviour. Most of the autistic people I know reasonably well like other people and want to be liked by them, and feel empathy insofar as they get upset once they know that someone else is upset (though it may take them a while to pick up signals that someone else is upset) but lacking a theory of mind (for want of a better shorthand) aren't terribly good at forming social connections. The sociopath, in contrast, has a brilliant theory of mind, but no ability to feel empathy - that's what makes them so good at manipulating people. They know exactly which buttons to push, how to make people react, how to make people upset, but lacking any ability to feel empathy, they don't care about the devastating end results this causes emotionally for the other person (see the person as an object to be manipulated), or even get off on the knowledge that they're causing pain (I know it's tempting to think that this knowledge on their part means they must feel a form of almost "reverse" empathy, but they don't).