“He makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up” - warning signs you have observed

[AnyOldPrion]

Thanks to the Relationships board, I now have a better understanding of the red flags that can occur early in a relationship that indicate risk.

But it crossed my mind earlier that sometimes there are men (and possibly women) who set off instincts that make us feel unsafe.

Please don’t mention any names, or specific people, but what signs have you noticed that might consciously or subconsciously have triggered that response?

I’m personally not good at this, but I will try to start with a couple of things. These are things that happen when I’m in the same space as someone, but sometimes I have that reaction to photographs or recordings and I’m not sure why. I’d love to be able to understand what it is I’m picking up on.

Standing a little too close and/or moving towards me when I have moved away.

Being watched/stared at/eyes wandering.

Not backing off when asked.

Thanks in advance to anyone more observant.

. We knew full well we’d get the blame, we’d not be allowed out on our own and it would somehow be our fault, plus my dad probably would have gone looking for him and beat the shit out of him if he’d found him, then he’d have been arrested in a foreign country, then we’d get the blame for ruining the holiday as well.

^

This, right? As a kid we were taught not to moan, not kick up a fuss because it'll all be YOUR fault and you'll RUIN it all.

Fuck. That. Shit.

I'll be teaching DD to create a fuss, tell men to fuck off and not stand for no docile pretty lacy dress shit.

This is the Gavin de Becker example of forced teaming where the woman was raped - terrifying but good to understand the signs - www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1997-06-29-9706240240-story.html

Barbarara

But has anyone else had experience of trying to manage an aggressor by avoiding confrontation, or using politeness to avoid escalation?

Yes, I have. I was chatting to a friend's husband one day, he volunteered in a shelter and was demonstrating various things they'd been shown for de-escalating potentially violent situations. One was leaning back against a wall with your arms behind you. I always remembered that, and a few years later I had a horrible road rage incident with a complete psycho. I knew he was following me, and drove to a male friend's house. When I got there his children were playing in the front garden, and told me he was in bed with flu, so no help there. By that time the road-rage guy was out of his car and screaming at me, he wanted to batter me so badly. I forced myself to act really calmly and adopted the stance Jeppe had shown me. He finally ran out of steam and slammed into his car and drove off. But I knew that if I'd been the slightest bit confrontational he'd have attacked me.

This thread is so helpful, I've managed to figure out what about one of my customers creeps me out:

• forced teaming
• smile doesn't reach the eyes
• body language doesn't match words
• constantly trying to get one over on me in small ways
• and his palms face backwards when he walks

- and his palms face backwards when he walks

I'm going to look out for this, but if it's true I reckon there's a major publication in this discovery!

deydododat It's a reference to gull's earlier observation that violent men carry their hands like this.

It does need research to support it.

Yes I read the earlier comment.
I will look out for it, I can't say I generally look at hands, mostly at facial expressions and overall body language.
It's very specific indicator, which is why I said it would be a major discovery.

As a man gets more and more muscular, his hands will naturally rotate so the palms are facing backward

It happens to obese people as well

And it shows posture issues, especially rounded shoulders

These two things remind me so much of a young boy I worked with-

Not really the massively badly behaved kids, but more the sneaky quietly sneering kids tbh.

*but this child is manipulative in a way that's beyond sly. I can't quite put words to it. And terrifying to think that the older he gets, the more he may hone those behaviours.

I have some kittens and while he wasn't overtly rough with them, he held them ever so slightly 'wrong' each time, despite being explained to several times how best to interact with them. I saw him just tip them slightly backwards or angled sideways enough to get them to struggle just the tiniest bit and I could FEEL his enjoyment from doing it. You could see it in his eyes! *

I worked in a preschool for several years- it was the best job I ever had. But a two year old boy joined, who was aggressive to the other children- he would suddenly bite them or hit them. We had to have one of the staff dedicated to watching him at all times. Over time, he became sneakier, and if we let our guards down even for a moment, a child near him would suddenly start crying. If other children so much as stacked a couple of blocks or lined up some toys on the floor, he was likely to come and scatter it. Especially if it was more than one other child playing together. As he got older, these scary traits became much less obvious, and he could be quite charming at times. He was autistic, as were some other children in the group. One of these other children was prone to frustrated meltdowns, and this boy became very adept at setting him off, and would then watch in fascination. His behavior towards girls (always the ones who were smaller than him) still gives me the creeps to think about now. For example, once a girl was sitting on a chair, and he had a
T Rex dinosaur model that he thrusted between her knees towards her crotch. I only met his parents occasionally and briefly, but they seemed very nice to me.

Sometimes my coworkers commented on how much he had improved, but I have an uneasy feeling we just facilitated him improving his cover. I wonder so much if there’s something that can be done for kids like that at that age to lead them to value and respect others in the way most of us assume to be natural.

I left the preschool some years ago, but recently I met with some mothers and their kids from there. One of them invited that boy’s family to join us. There was also a younger boy who had just turned two in the group, and he treated him like the boy mentioned upthread treated the kittens- he bothered him just enough to make him uncomfortable, but without getting in trouble with the grownups. Testing the boundaries. I mightn’t have noticed if I hadn’t known him from before.

As an experiment, I tried walking with my palms facing outwards...not easy. Found myself checking people walking in front of me. Happy to report this part of NW london seemed free of them as of 1100 am. I have it covered.

ds has mild shoulder instability and rotates his palms, most noticeably when he runs. It’s a compensation to help balance I think. He also has an atypical pattern of eye contact typical of those on the autism spectrum. Maybe he is a predator in the making but I have my doubts, although he is likely to continue to struggle with interpersonal relationships.
I’m wary of trying to pin down specific physical characteristics without robust research.

@Thegullfromhull My brother walks like this - and he is a deeply unpleasant person. He is manipulative, and when we were children he would constantly bully and hurt his siblings. He finds humour in horrible situations and tells deeply offensive "jokes", and has the knack of making you look/feel as though you are the unreasonable one if you don't find it funny. He has no kids (thankfully) but I am sure he beats his dogs into submission. We are very low contact and I feel very unsafe when we are actually in the same room

He also has an atypical pattern of eye contact typical of those on the autism spectrum.

Same for DD. It's not that she can't make eye contact, but it can be all or nothing - intense stares or completely avoiding. She also has an odd gait.
She also, like a child mentioned earlier in the thread, harms animals. Not cruelly, she just squeezes them a bit too hard, out of love. Our cats often squeal when she's cuddling them.
I do hope she doesn't end up a psychopath.

I have some kittens and while he wasn't overtly rough with them, he held them ever so slightly 'wrong' each time, despite being explained to several times how best to interact with them. I saw him just tip them slightly backwards or angled sideways enough to get them to struggle just the tiniest bit and I could FEEL his enjoyment from doing it. You could see it in his eyes!

I don't want to set any hares running but this stood out. Tormenting and eventually moving on to torturing neighbourhood pets is a common early indicator in the childhood years of notorious killers. It's a power and control thing.

Somebody upthread said that before an incident on public transport or confined space there is a show of normality, an exaggeration like sighing, brushing lint off trousers. I have been touched inappropriately on public transport several times over the years, and every time they have put on this show.

I am middle aged and thought this would never happen to me again but somebody tried it recently on a bus early in the morning. He sat next to me on the bus, it was at the start of the journey, all the other seats were empty. Doing the exaggerated sighing, looking at me. I knew what was coming, was primed. Then his hand started to creep towards my leg, which I preempted by standing up. Long story short he would not let me off, told me I was not going anywhere. By that time others had got on and could hear me asking him to move, some promptly got off again (gutless creeps), but eventually somebody told the driver and eventually he allowed me off when the driver said he would call the police if he did not let me off. It was all very unpleasant, weirdly I was not frightened, I was angry. Middle aged and still this crap is happening.

It has however made me even more vigilant for subliminal clues.

I was once the last one at the end of a night out with a colleague. He was flirty but there was nothing between us. He was somebody I had known at arm's length over the years. He was seen as a lovely gentle guy. I walked to the station with him, it was in central London and still people around. We saw a dog tied up outside a shop. I stopped to pat the dog and when I turned around suddenly and looked at colleague, I had caught him unawares. He had a completely different face. Not a hint of his normally gentle passive face, it seemed to change shape, it was hard, knowing, with the shark eyes, looking at me. All pretence stripped away. It was chilling. I know that sounds far fetched but his face looked completely different but quickly changed back to his normal look. I got to the station as fast as I could and gave him a wide berth after that. It was like his normal persona was a front for something different entirely.

It's sobering to think how many men may be walking around with a false face plastered on in whose case you just haven't happened to catch what's underneath yet. That's why I tend to watch what men do when they're interacting with women who they don't have a reason to try to be nice to, to see how differently they treat those women compared to how they treat me. You see some illuminating things sometimes.

I did get this with a politician i met socially who later turned out to have dodged some paedophilia allegations by quitting teaching and taking up politics

However the biggest problem i have had with this is signs getting confused due to my upbringing. For those of us with NPD parent/enabling parents our 'alarm' systems are way out of whack usually until we've had a lot of therapy. And sometimes it's actually decent people who give us the creeps.

And that thing about the 'smile not reaching the eyes' didn't really work for me either because i was always taught smiles that did reach the eyes were 'cheesy' therefore 'fake'. It's taken me a long time to pick all this apart.

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Long story short he would not let me off, told me I was not going anywhere. By that time others had got on and could hear me asking him to move, some promptly got off again (gutless creeps), but eventually somebody told the driver and eventually he allowed me off when the driver said he would call the police if he did not let me off.

Makes one wish for those vicious hatpins women used to wear in Victorian times. I have a vague memory of reading somewhere that they were used as a method of defence by women travelling alone by train - and elsewhere, no doubt. Perhaps hatpins should be a feminist icon.

Wouldn't you love to jab that fucker in the meaty part of his arm!

Bill bryson is on radio 4 reading from his book about the body this week - apparently the smile not reaching the eyes is because we don't have voluntary control over the muscles there. And also any smile held for more than 4 seconds will start to look fake.

Cookie, I know a child like this. I'm friends with this parents, it's really hard as I don't want him anywhere near my kids.

He's always been violent - when very young it was overt biting, gouging, hitting - as he's got older it's done more subtly, but with that horrible smirk. I could catalogue a very long list of his inappropriate, sadistic behaviour to adults, kids and animals. And he's deadeyed. If pulled up for his behaviour, he seems ... curious. Not ever even slightly emotionally affected, just curious.

I know a lot of kids, some of whom are very badly behaved, and none of them make my blood chill like this kid does. I think he's a sociopath and I don't know how on earth one deals with that. Is it treatable? Would his parents even acknowledge it?

No one diagnoses kids as socipathic, but there is a descriptor of "callous and unemotional" that is applied to pre-sociopathic children now. Sociopathy also is quite strongly genetic - so those who argue that it all comes from how the child is treated are incorrect. This is one reason why schools that attempt to exclusively use "restorative justice" rather than traditional approaches to bullying are so wrong. Children who will later fit the diagnosis of one of the manipulative personality disorders will simply use restorative justice as an additional means of tormenting their victims. One in every hundred males will qualify as having sociopathy (antisocial personality disorder), and still more will have some of the traits.

Regarding treatment - antisocial personality disorder is regarded as untreatable. However, some people are trying to work with callous and unemotional children by appealing to their rational side - explaining that cruelty and manipulation won't pay off for them in the end, and rewarding them for better behaviour. But I don't know how well this is working.

Sometimes I wonder, do men just not see it? That something about the eyes that's just wrong. Is it an instinct developed as a result of being in the prey class? Because I feel like most women have it, but only some men do, and the ones who do have almost always been victims. De Becker has it, because he was a victim.

There's a (pretty horrifying tbh, wouldn't recommend it unless you tend to like films that are gory and disturbing) Korean film called I Saw The Devil that has that as the plot, a male cop who only gradually learns to see it after a sociopath brutally rapes and murders his fiance and he then hunts the guy down. There's this scene at the end where he's in a bus or train station and he sees this man fixing that predatory glare on a woman and just stops in his tracks, and then decides to follow and intervene, and you can see what the director was going for, that sort of "once it's seen it can't be unseen" idea, but I was sitting there going, can't all women see it? Because I can't remember a time when I didn't, even when I was a child and nothing particularly terrifying had happened to me yet. But I'm not sure men do, unless something happens to make them see it.