femfree
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Women Who Love Psychopaths - Brown/Leedom
Excerpts from Women Who Love Psychopaths
Inside the Relationships of Inevitable Harm
Authors: Sandra L. Brown, M.A. & Liane J. Leedom, M.D.
Health & Well-Being Publications, LLC
This book can be ordered from:
http://www.womenwholovepsychopaths.com/
We hope that we will help women realize there is no reason to wait for a man to be formally “diagnosed” to make decisions about whether or not they are in a dangerous relationship. If a woman is checking off behaviors on our checklist then she is with someone “psychopathic enough” to be gravely concerned about. The question of differentiating between a man who has psychopathic traits and a man who is “a psychopath” is a distraction, and in reality is only important to psychopathy research. The problem is that women often wait for him to be diagnosed “something” before leaving.
So much of psychopathy flies under the radar of formal diagnosing and therapists who don’t specifically work with this pathology usually miss his signs and symptoms as reported by her. These men are very good at conning therapists and making the therapists believe that it’s the women who have issues. The reason the psychopaths are able to do this is that a positive and “happy” presentation is often part of psychopathy. Therapists are used to treating depressed people and when they see the happy talkative psychopath and the distressed unhappy woman, they believe the woman is the “sick one.”
What’s In a Name?
Experts often disagree about what to call people with the group of personality traits we refer to as psychopathic. Some clinicians call them: Psychopaths, Pathological Narcissists, Sociopaths (those with the diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder.) All of these disorders are similar and result in what we call “Inevitable Harm,” so we have lumped them together for our discussion. We chose to use the term psychopath in the title of this book because so many people appropriately associate that name with harm to others.
It is shameful that judges give children over to incredibly disordered men and yet they are not accountable for these decisions. The government, which literally represents us all, hands children over to psychopaths to be psychologically tormented and molded. We allow psychopaths to ensure their disorder carries over to the next generation. What the genes don’t fully create, the psychopath makes up for in his provision of an unfit environment. Each time this happens, we are all responsible for another life ruined.
Consistent good treatment of a woman in a relationship cannot be understood by a psychopath. The best he can do is fake it in the beginning, until he feels he has her hooked. The psychopath is a very good faker and deceiver. He can sometimes fake it and completely hood-wink her for a year or more. But since part of pathology is inconsistency, he isn’t likely to be able to fake it into eternity. At sometime, the mask slips and she realizes who she thought she got is not who she really got.
Psychopaths are motivated by power, status, and dominance more than any thing else. The purpose of the extraverted psychopath’s whole existence is to find ways to exert his power, status, and dominance. We refer to these as The Central Three. The only way The Central Three are enjoyed by him is through interactions with others. He certainly can’t get a power-kick if he is by himself. That means the psychopath has to be social in order to be recognized, and recognized in order to be dominant. Every one of his actions, decisions, and words are for the purpose of promoting his dominance—not to have a job, a hobby, a mate, or children. Those are but by-products of his pursuit of The Central Three. Everything is motivated by one goal alone: dominance. This makes the psychopath “machine-like” in his drive to achieve dominance.
Additionally, one of the hallmarks of pathology is chronic inconsistency and the inability to sustain certain behaviors, especially positive healthy ones. By now, the psychopath is probably straining the limits of his ability to “keep it together” and only present his positive attributes. By now, he’s tired of mimicking, mirroring, and holding up the mirage. He’s ready to let his guard down and be who he is. This is one of the reasons that the relationship is so fastpaced. He can’t do the faux-functionality forever.
During the luring stage of the relationship, the psychopath totally idealizes her. He indicates he sees her as wonderful, perfect, his soul mate. He notes her amazing abilities, her brilliance, sweetness, and any other personality trait he can hone in on. He did this in order to speed up the sensation of attachment and move the relationship forward quickly. Once the psychopath is assured of her belief that he does in fact idealize her, he exerts The Central Three in the relationship. To do that, he devalues her. In one sentence he may still idealize her. If she displeases him or asserts her self against his dominance he will devalue her—calling her useless, worthless, or compare her negatively to other women he has been with. He may devalue her even if she did not challenge him or he may never idealize her again. Those days of compliments may be gone and she now only experiences his constant devaluing. This leaves her feeling that she needs to do something to get him back to how he felt previously about her. Since she tests very high in relationship investment, she will want to try to make the relationship shift back to its previous dynamics.
Additionally, part of the psychopath’s pathology is his “pathological world view” which includes how he sees himself, others, and the world. His world view also dictates the issues of truth in relationship to other people. His view on truth is skewed and he may believe that truth is what he thinks it is, as opposed to hard fact. In the beginning, the psychopath appeared to be truthful, although he wasn’t. “His interpretation of events was always the truth. I don’t think he knew what was true and what was really false. Because he believed it, it was hard to tell that he wasn’t telling the truth. ” Psychopaths tend to mix it up and combine truth with lies, or truth with distortions. In the beginning when a woman is still bonding with him, her ear is not in tune with his concept of truth “Looking back, there was a lot of fiction mixed in with facts.” “It was always distorted. He thought his truth was above other people because he had this spiritual experience with God.” “He doesn’t like the real world. He makes up his own reality and then asks me to live the lie with him.”
While truth is the bedrock of intimate relationships, a psychopath’s world view of a relationship does not include the concept of truth. He believes, “each person’s truth is how he or she sees it.” He tells the truth only when he is in trouble for lying and forced to. His world view of manipulating others is seen as a twisted form of “opportunity” for him. Conning others out of money or things is in his world view, “salesmanship” and just “convincing them they really wanted to give me that anyway.” Living off of others, in his world view, is “the fortunate opportunity given to others to be around me.” Or, “there are givers and receivers and I’m just a receiver.”
“Our intimacy and high emotions exploded rather than evolved. He seemed to want and need so much from me. But it was a smoke screen—he could also be gone in a flash.” In one sentence he is likely to say how attached and bonded he is and in the next sentence remind her how disposable she is or how he will leave her or the relationship. Some psychopaths don’t say it out right but “hint” or leave clues lying about that they are thinking of leaving, or they become aloof, detached, disinterested, and distant. “He would draw me in and then push me away with various methods. I was constantly perplexed about why it seemed that he wanted a relationship with me on some levels but not on others. He was committed at times but not entirely. I’ve never been so confused about how someone really felt about me.” “The intensity—the changeability—how one minute it could all seem good and normal and I would forget the craziness and then suddenly the tables turned and the monster I was living with re-appeared.”
Psychopaths are highly pleasure motivated and will excessively seek what they enjoy. However, unlike normal people they are not motivated by pain and don’t learn from painful experiences. If you can’t learn from painful experiences, you are going to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. This is why breaking up with the psychopath and going back later to have “taught him what he’ll lose if he does it again,” does absolutely nothing to help the relationship.
Many women wonder why psychopaths are never monogamous. In part their entertainment drive is so high that they are always looking for something new, exciting and different. His entertainment drive will push him for the latest and newest woman.
Why don’t more people pick up on this power-hungry psychopath? Interestingly, the social dominance drive operates largely outside of everyone’s awareness. Lack of awareness about this drive is the main reason psychopaths are able to fool everyone— even trained professionals. Since most people don’t have a reason to become “acutely” aware of the problems of a strong social dominance drive, the psychopath simply looks like a charismatic leader who is loved by many.
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Graphic BBWMisty Fotki.com
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Last edited by femfree, Mar/10/2009, 6:44 pm
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Oct/26/2008, 10:10 am
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femfree
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Re: Women Who Love Psychopaths - Brown/Leedom
Page 2
Women continually ask, “I’m so strong—why would I tolerate this?” Or “How could someone like me end up in a relationship like this?”
Almost every psychopath at some point has accused his woman of being just as sick as he is. He is the Master Projector projecting his own pathology onto others. Nearly every woman indicated he had told her that she is the one who is pathological or mentally ill and since she is so sick, no one else would ever want her.
Out of the 75 women we surveyed, only two seemed to have major personality pathology!
Who has more knowledge of psychopathy than the intimate partners of psychopaths? In this book you will see psychopaths through the eyes of women who love them. You may be shocked to discover that many educated and otherwise well-adjusted women get sucked into relationships with men who lack conscience and empathy, true human aliens. We‘ll explain how that happens and what it is like to be in love with a psychopath. We will also look at what happens to the children who are born into the dark world of these relationships.
A psychopath doesn’t enter a woman’s life announcing he is a power hungry, highly sexual man who is incapable of love! Psychopaths present themselves initially as loving, caring, affectionate men because they have learned that approach is the best way to assure themselves of power and sex. Just “who” are the women who found their soul mates in deceitful psychopaths and why? What makes people “unaware” of psychopaths? Who are the men that these women fell in love with and how do we know we really surveyed women who love psychopaths? To answer these questions we had to find a large group of women to survey. We surveyed women who found us through the web sites www.saferelationships.com, www.womenwholovepsychopaths. com, and other women’s and self-help web sites. More than 75 women who have had a long term relationship with a psychopath have responded so far and the survey is still ongoing (and will continue on as we proceed in researching these types of relationships). I wanted answers to these questions:
1. Do the women who love psychopaths share a common “profile”
2. Are there risk factors in women’s lives that contributed to them having relationships with psychopaths?
3. Are all the relationship dynamics with psychopaths the same?
4. Is there a general and predictable aftermath of symptoms when the relationship ends?
5. Can we use this information to develop Public Psychopathy Education for all people?
So what will this book teach you?
Learn about the role of intense attachments, fear, and sex in relationships with psychopaths. Answer the age-old question—do psychopaths have attachment and bonding? The answer is not what you think! Understand those “crazy-making” relationship dynamics that are only seen in pathological love relationships. Is there really “something” behind how a psychopath lures? And what about that “hypnotic stare” he uses that melts and freezes at the same time? Learn the fascinating truth about how a woman’s personality strengths and weaknesses may be a great match for the strengths and weaknesses of a psychopath. It is our hope that this book will help the psychopath’s victims understand their unique at-risk status and learn how to safeguard themselves from other predators.
Aren’t all psychopaths simply serial killers or criminals? No, there are many ways to harm others without actually killing them. Some psychopaths are con men or white collar swindlers that steal stock pensions and never get caught. There are millions of pathological personalities that destroy people’s lives (with or without breaking the law), but never go to prison. They are successful; the ones most likely to be seen in high ranking CEO positions, politics, and prestigious positions in law, medicine, and the military. How many psychopaths and sociopaths are out there? Those who aren’t in prison are largely overlooked and so go uncounted. They are roaming freely in your city, sitting next to you in class, and working at your company. Three to four percent of the population or possibly 8 million individuals (6 million men and 2 million women) in the U.S. are “sociopathic enough” to deserve the title of sociopath!
So why do women end up with psychopaths? Many began relationships with the psychopath at a time when they are impaired from grief, loss, stress, anxiety, or depression. These risk factors made definite contributions to the women’s susceptibility, however they were not the only factors. Loneliness makes women vulnerable, and predators know this. Many of the personal stories of the women revolved around elevated loneliness at the time they met the psychopath. It can’t be emphasized enough that emotional and social needs are key factors in psychopathic hook-ups.
Many of these women had several starts and stops before successfully disengaging and only then, did the real deepening pain of what they lived through begin to soak in. Despite what they experienced at the psychopath’s hands, women were still highly conflicted about leaving with unanswered questions as to what was wrong with him, what they had experienced, or what really happened.
People who are high in excitement seeking hate monotony. One thing is for sure in the psychopath’s women; just like they do not like a boring life, they do not like boring men.
Attraction is often subconscious and feels almost “driven.” If she is attracted to dominant, excitement seeking, extraverted men, then that’s her “bent.” However, by nature of “who” she is attracted to, she will always be fishing in the “pathology” pond because psychopaths are always dominant, excitement seeking, extraverted who she finds attractive!
Not all dominant men are psychopaths, but ALL psychopaths are dominant. If she likes dominant men, she’ll be more at-risk for hooking up with a psychopath than a woman who does not find dominant men attractive. She needs to understand this as an “attraction risk factor” for her, dating dominant extraverted men, puts her at risk for ending up with a psychopath.
This free spirit part of her that accepts life as it is, also has the capacity for accepting the lack of order and routine that is in a psychopath’s life. These women can easily tolerate the chaos caused by his way of life and the roller coaster of the inevitable ups and downs. It takes them awhile with the psychopath before they tire of the lack of order and the constant chaos.
Competitiveness as a risk factor. As wonderful as competitiveness is in regular life, her competitiveness however, is a downfall in the relationship with the psychopath. This is because as the relationship begins to become pathologically-driven and his crazy-making increases, instead of running for the hills she is likely to stay and battle it out. She’s not afraid to try to make a point and certainly doesn’t want him to “get one over on her.”
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Last edited by femfree, Feb/27/2009, 10:26 pm
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Oct/27/2008, 12:24 pm
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femfree
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Re: Women Who Love Psychopaths - Brown/Leedom
Page 3
Women who are sentimental are high in positive sociability. They are likely to focus on the sweet things of the relationship, remembering the time he brought flowers, was kind to a child or dog, or did something extraordinary on their anniversary. Their ability to hyper-focus on the sentimental aspects of the relationship helps the psychopath camouflage his many blunders.
Women who are not motivated to please others in relationships, and are not high in relationship investment (Don’t we call these women “Princesses?”) wouldn’t last two minutes with a psychopath. He wouldn’t want her! Divas and psychopaths don’t mix. Understanding that the psychopath’s power and dominance needs are largely met through relationship investment dynamics, helps women to understand why this trait is a risk factor in the hands of a psychopath.
Her sensitivity to the needs of others, makes her the tenderhearted person that she is. But in a relationship with a psychopath she is likely to over-sympathize with the psychopath’s sad story of woe.
To say, “he wears me out” is absolutely true. Psychopaths are notorious for their persistence. The more he wears her out emotionally, the less able she is to deal with his confusing and contradictory behaviors. In spite of her exhaustion, she wants to keep the relationship, so she does what he wants, to buy peace at any cost. She has no idea this behavior is costing her everything.
Empathy as a risk factor
Empathy has made her a sensitive partner, a good listener, and a target for psychopaths. She has more empathy than 97% of everyone else, so she can put herself in a psychopath’s shoes with genuine concern. Her empathy is like a drug that the psychopath uses to feed his need for power and dominance. Although she may not realize it, the psychopath doesn’t need her empathy, but uses it to maintain power over her emotions and dominance over the relationship. This could be said for any of her temperament or character traits—they are all tools and weapons in the hand of a psychopath. Just what can too much empathy do in the hands of a psychopath? It can keep her tied to the relationship way past the point of sanity.
The obvious question is, “If she’s empathic why didn’t she know what she was feeling from the psychopath was fake?” As strong as her quality is as a genuine empath, it is no match for the con artist psychopath. The ability to make an empathic feel strongly about his false stories is probably no more shocking than how psychopaths con psychiatrists and other forensic professionals who are supposed to know what psychopathic behavior is all about. Unfortunately, the psychopath is “smarter than we are empathic” and he can abuse absolutely any positive trait that will benefit the con he is involved in.
Along with very high scores in empathy, the women scored high in tolerance. Tolerance is the ability to recognize and respect the beliefs or practices of others. It is also related to the ability to endure hardship or pain.
Universally, we found that women who have ended up in relationships with psychopaths or other pathological-types, are women who have very high degrees of trust. However, we would define the kind of trust the women have as “blind trust.”
Because of her loyalty, intense attachments, and hearty tolerance, the psychopath soon realizes he can count on her devotion to stand with him in the face of great odds. The psychopath realizes even when he is unfaithful, is caught lying, or in other acts of deceit, her loyalty is the consistency he can count on. Her loyalty to a psychopath is treacherous for her own emotional health and is likely to be a contributing factor to the pain she feels today.
When a person has had an experience with pure evil, it is very important to thoughtfully bring goodness back into life. I also exercised daily and occupied my brain doing math and science problems. Exercising the brain to protect it from stress, is just as important as exercising the body.
According to some of the women who were not pre-disposed to other psychopaths (by trauma early in childhood or from parents who were pathological), nothing prepares a woman for a relationship with a psychopathic man, where none of the elements of a healthy relationship are present. Instead, the elements are the opposite of what a woman usually thinks makes a healthy relationship and what she has experienced in the past. Her frame of reference for “what makes a relationship” is largely related to what she has experienced in prior relationships. She then brings those beliefs and thoughts into the relationship with the psychopath only to find that everything she ever believed, according to him, is wrong. She begins to question her own experiences, beliefs, and thoughts.
The more he ingrains the belief that their relationship is normal, not the other ones she has had, the more she begins to think she is “crazy” or of what makes a good relationship. Once he convinces her that their something is wrong with her that she doesn’t understand the basics relationship is normal, then he can start to shift her reality further and further off base. He sets up a double bind where she begins to work harder at the pathological relationship (based on her high relationship investment) while he is telling her she just isn’t measuring up and “no wonder she has had no successful relationships.” The double bind keeps her jumping through his hoops while he sits on the sidelines telling her to jump even higher. The harder she works, the more she fails.
The universe is strangely tilted to the benefit of the psychopaths. For twenty years, Sandra L. Brown, M.A. has watched psychopaths dodge jail, get custody of children, skirt warrants, talk judges into believing them, have women’s attorneys switch sides and represent them, and walk free. Liane J. Leedom, M.D., now realizes that many of the severely depressed women she treated were actually victims of psychopathic men. We have seen women labeled sick, crazy, bad mothers, and overly reactive. Women are violated by the psychopath, violated by the lack of trained professionals to help them, violated by the legal system, and left scarred and numb to wander through life. Unfortunately, at risk children often have a psychopathic father and a scarred mother who is ill equipped to do preventive parenting. The women are then further victimized when their children also grow up to be psychopathic. This is a rather harsh sentence for a woman whose only crime was wanting love and family.
We are greatly indebted to Sandra L. Brown, M.A. & Liane J. Leedom, M.D. for their outstanding assistance to targets of psychopaths and narcissists.
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Last edited by femfree, Feb/27/2009, 10:29 pm
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