Hi, welcome to our communinity. Will look forward to the rest of your story.

With information you can make the best decision.

Sounds like you have found out in time to rid yourself of this before it is too late.

Di

Thanks! I'm happy to have found a place where people can understand what I've gone through with him ... it's always seemed to go beyond most of my friends' boyfriend problems.
I do feel that I've found out before it's too late ... I am in my early 20s and I realize that I have a lot of life ahead of me. Still, though, I have invested so much time in him and have so much love for him and I still find myself going back to him when I know I shouldn't ... sometimes it feels that I won't rid myself of him before it's too late. Or, that I will and won't really want to. Anytime I've tried to cut him out of my life, I've ended up more miserable than I was with him in it. But it's like the stakes keep being raised - he'll do something nicer or something more than anything he's ever done, then we'll fall out over something worse than he's ever done before. Then we won't talk for a few weeks, I'll get lonely and drunk or he'll get horny and one of us will contact the other and start the cycle over again. I hope that someday I'll be strong enough to be able to happily walk away, but I don't know if I'm there yet.

I, too, am writing a book on my life with a Psychopath. I have published before (non-fiction) but THIS is a story that ]must be told. NO One believes that you (I) was with a Psychopath. Mine grew up in 90201 or about. Perfect family, perfect life.............was I fooled.

Write your book.I will write mine. It is no contest. SOMEONE has to make a best seller or screenplay(Gaslight is outdated, but I was gaslighted, as were we all)

My theripist and attorneys said I should write it. Of course no one would believe it. How do you write about the pain of fraud 23 years of prostitution and financial ruin), lies, physical and mental abuse, child alenation, gut wrenching tears, left with no money and yet EVERYONE BELIEVES HIM? AND HE WON IN COURT MANY TIMES.
The book is really not about him. IT IS ABOUT HOW IT HAPPENED TO ME, a smart cookie who lived in the Apple for years.
I have no one ( hopefully daughter will come back) so I have to write it for US! You write it too.

best wishes to us both.
I am new here but happy (and sad) to find similar.

I wish the writers well and hope they become best sellers. This problem needs light shown on it.

I tried everywhere to get help but people just can't grasp how serious this is an the extent of the damage done in such a relationship and for some reason no one believes you/me. I sat in a Real Estate office just a few weeks ago and the realtor was telling me she knew my SB, and how he trustworthy he is. She was telling me, from my point of view, what is wrong with this picture? It happens all the time, no one ever believes he's capable of anything bad.
I hope in your books you point it out, their ability to con anyone.


Murphy

What if your parent was a psychopath? The damage inflicted on the children of psychopaths is devastating.

Who loves someone who aggressively tries to kill their soul? That's what a psychopath does to their children.

Hi takesanocean, I would encourage you to try and set a no contact, if for no other reason remind yourself you are sleeping with everyone else he is sleeping with and we all know they have many partners. Keep up posted, don't let yourself get trapped by when he comes back extra nice, that is just trick to get what he wants.

Di

Besides, how will you ever attract a healthy partner with someone like this in your life?

Oh my god.. how do children learn to deal with people like this? I can't believe it.

I had one big lightbulb and a series of little ones...

It was the week of my final exams for university. I told him I needed time to work at it. He said he'd be sending me nice 'light' emails that week and encouraging things. I think it was in return for the sleepless nights I had spent consoling him before his exam (which he of course didn't fail to mention he got 99% in. Yes, all that anxiety, eh? and you get 99%?). I didn't really need 'light emails' from him; I just needed time to study for myself. I have had a long history of difficulties with uni because I have an eating disorder. This exam meant a lot to me because I didn't turn up to the exam of the same subject the year before, and it was a way of proving I could do it to myself. Nevertheless, instead of sending me 'light emails', he brought up that I was apparently distancing myself from him, saying it with a pout, a sigh etc. He was also expressing that he was becoming more and more anxious and having more problems. This particular week of my exams his problems escalated. Whereas in the vice versa occurance, I was having problems the week of his exam (and essentially the whole time I knew him) but I never guilt tripped him over not helping me with it, or brought issues up at crucial moments in his week. I'm not perfect, but damn, isn't this how healthy people operate? who continues to lay on their problems to someone in the one week where they need to focus on something for their own self? who says they'll do something but end up doing another? actually undermining them, but prefacing their behaviour as being helpful!?!

I suddenly realised that this was not the first time he offered support but never gave it (it was a recurring theme several times a week), and instead had all my attention and focus on his needs. When he did it at the point of my exam, I suddenly woke up and realised I had to say no to him. His anxiety was inflaming my own anxiety, and I ended up feeling a surge of anger that I couldn't quite explain (i'm not that comfortable with anger). I suddenly shut him out at that point and was distraught. I didn't think it at the time or carefully consider it, but my immediate gut feeling was that I was being guilt tripped and manipulated. My feelings were all over the shop and I ended up only studying the day before, having spent the rest of the week trying to avoid everything and being utterly confused.

I couldn't believe I had again, almost sacrificed my university course and place to which I have struggled tooth and bone to even remain at university, for this one man who I had been attached to for 4 months. And he knew it. And never apologised for it. I was losing myself to him; his erratic moods were contagious because they always flared up when I needed to work on myself. Damn right I felt angry at someone, more than I had ever felt in my entire life. The entire time with him, my eating disorder became worse, I lost interest in studying and I developed worse anxiety. This was during that phase where he was courting me! being "generous" (offering extreme examples of support, but never following through... damn, I only just realised this :\). I mean, I don't have much relationship experience at all, but that doesn't sound healthy to me at all. I felt anxious around him even when he was being 'nice'. I just realise I had four months of generalised anxiety that whole time I was with him... no wonder I couldn't let him in.

imagine if I had stayed around longer! he even hinted at being together in person (which he was subtly pushing for, at about 3 months in. So much happened in these months it didn't seem like too fast a request). I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

I think it really hit home though, in the long month of separating for him. He sent me things in the mail, swapped emails. Even after I told him no more. He assured me he loved me, tried to explain himself (nicely at first), then when that didn't work, he started bringing up his manipulative ex girlfriends, put me on the offensive by neither admitting to manipulating me or not, and saying "lets call this by it's right name" essentially beckoning me to either outright accuse him, or retract my view and accept his innocent claim. Neither of which I did, then he accused me of being unfaithful to him (we weren't even together and he was jealous of made up characters in his mind... red flag), accused me of being decitful, attacked my integrity (things he said he valued in me) and sent me some very bitter poetry that terrified me and then he harrassed me online and isolated me from the online communities I was a part of.

I had to take a few steps back and think- how would a healthy person have handled this situation? and it suddenly dawned on me.... even though I couldn't believe it and tried to justify his actions... that something was very wrong. I could not believe the man I saw in the end; how different it was from the one I knew before, and even took time to observe months prior.

Now that I look back I can see so many red flags... he tested me without me knowing, he said a lot of things online and to me that I naively accepted, that were textbook not healthy.... I ignored all my gut feelings...

Another thing was that when we talked on skype once, he answered the door for his roommates and started a conversation. As I was turning the volume down so I could give him privacy, his room mate made a comment asking "who is she" and then his roomate said "you need to get laid" and I heard a brief snippet of him saying "I know, man". My face burned.

I didn't like the way he looked at me. I couldn't stand talking to him via video chat.

He was very different before he met me... he became very gentle and emotional with me, whereas elsewhere he said he wasn't a touchy feely person, not mushy at all, hated greenpeace, hated philosophy... with me, he became a nervous wreck, pulled on my emotions almost every time I dealt with him, was needy and very "passive" (to not alert my alarm bells).

Actually one of the biggest red flags was how long we spent in conversation (he was very possessive of my time and was happy when I sacrificed family time for him) and how the topic of coversation always ended up on him and his stories. We would have marathon 5 hour conversations, I was drained from and I was the listener for 90% of it. Even when he 'humbly' encouraged me to talk, it always went back to him. I didn't care at the time, the red flag was the enormous energy toll it took on me to be in a conversation with him, even when I was the listener.

I think that one of my earliest lightbulb moments that I rationalised away as soon as it came- was the suspicion of fakeness...

His charm didn't seem real to me.

And secondly, his persona was amazingly fitted to mine. How he ever gracefully changed in my presence... to be everything I could want and need. He made sure to not raise any of my guards, knowing what would drive me away from him... but he did make several comments to test me, each one testing something different. And I went along and accepted him for it... as he knew I would.

This is what I told my OT, how I described it: if my soul is like a room, there is absolutely nothing in the middle of the room. Everything I love is pushed right into the 4 corners of the room. This is so people who come into the room won't be able to trample on 'my things'. I know where 'my things' are and can go into the corners of the room to find them, no problem at all.

I find it difficult to keep the door shut, so people come and go as they please. And they behave as they please in the room. Some people are respectful, some not.