Welcome to the forum lisejade,

I don't recall in the last 14 years having a victim checking in at the forum to let us know that she recovered what had been taken.. I would assume he took your money over time?

psychopath's take they don't give, they have no empathy for how this is making your life be.

Years ago someone not a psychopath owed me 10K, One of my good friends was an attorney so I asked him what to do. He said unless you need to prove you are the hottest person in the world there is no merit in a lawsuit for that amount. It would probably cost you that much in legal fees not to mention your time. I think in the end you would more than likely get a judgment for your money. Huge difference between a judgment and the cash in your hands.

You would be drawing the psychopath back your way and who knows what would happen if he gets ticked off? Think about him as being a rattlesnake, if you see it slithering away would you go up and poke it to draw attention your way and for sure get bitten? Running in the opposite direction will help you get the support you need to get through this horrible time.

You did nothing wrong and you can learn a great deal from this experience.

We can help and validate you here and get the kind words of members who have walked in your shoes. Writing tings down does a great job for clarifying things, stop by and tell us what you are thinking and let us help you work through this horrible experience.

Please be kind to yourself.

If you are up to it I think both you and the many readers may learn something about how your situation unfolded, when you saw the red flags, etc. What were you thinking and how did he get you to do these things.


Di

Thank-you so much Dianne. It is great being able to express myself here. I know I am sounding like a bit of a broken record to a few friends now... but my 1 year 'anniversary' is coming up since the ultimate accomplishment for him, which was getting me to marry him. He started trying within weeks, even days of meeting me in 09, spring.

There were red flags. He had claimed a spiritual 'transformation', and that explained all the bad in his past. He was very consistent with his stories... short on the detail, but I assumed it was hard to go over and painful for him; his consistency tho, was a strength for him, where I was concerned. M.'s mom I would say is a psychopath. too, and together, they had determined i was 'the One' for M. Whenever I had difficulty with something, the forces were brought to bear in the form of mom and she backed him up thoroughly - yet they both were clear that the bad stuff had happened, and M. was responsible. Such a twist of honesty and lies, it was believable because of the mix. M. was quick to say he was sorry and acted the part perfectly.

I feel so sad. I agree with you and everyone really I've run the scenario by. 10 grand is not worth IT. Being, any form of re-attachment. He caught me at a hard time of life, my mom had been sick through all of '08, passed away in the Fall and I met him a few short months later. He was so interesting and entertaining and attractive to me, he was the apparent perfect anticdote.... I have had many tough years, and he was the cherry on the icing of the cake of the bulk of my adult life. I feel so completely drained, coming into my 50's... hard to think of revving up something else again and 'starting over'. I feel tired to my marrow bones.

If I can, I'd like to write more over time. I'm best here and there. People really don't get this psychopath thing! They are so different than the average bear.

I think him sticking to just the headlines about his life and not any more would be easier for him to do. A slick move on his part, easier to keep the lies on track. His way of using a spiritual awakening sounds like inmates find religion probably to brush things off, sounds like he was pretty good in the lack of truth business. They all are liars,that is their strongest "talent", it is their calling card to just lie even when faced with the truth they can turn it around and become the victim.

10K is a big lump to swallow and this is only my opinion the choice will be up to you but I see pain and no return of your money in the end. Also there is no way to predict how he might react, they are big on revenge. He would for sure put the blame on you so it is a lose;lose for you to stay in his radar range. Focus on a miracle without any strings or specific requests, just ask for a miracle and it will happen and you will be a whole person again and regain your life and be even better than you ever thought you could be. Escaping and repairing a life after the horror of a psychopath is like building a new house brick by brick.

As a suggestion people just don't get it and it takes away the time for you to heal by trying to convince them. In all these years only a few people here at the forum and I stress "few" people had someone in their life who does get it. I think if more people had others close to them who did get it we would have very few members.

I very rarely tell people I know or encounter about the forum, I suspect their first reaction would be that I had lost a few screws along the way....

Di

Thank-you again, so much. 10 k is alot for me to swallow - my lawyer is my dear friend, (his wife) and they have had dealings 2x with psychopaths in business. Lost multiple thousands. And he is a lawyer. He walked away from it - now they live in a townhouse, things are doing well now, but took them years to recoup... his advice from day 1, walk and don't look back. He was my side of a very tight, highly favored in my side, prenup agreement. Thank God. My first clear red flag, post marriage (within weeks mind you), was M. trying to talk me into putting his name on my mortgage! He was sly and methodical, put alot of thought into how to bring it up, it was a clear to me then as a red beaming light. THAT was why he had no problem signing whatev, he was confident in his ability to manipulate me! It told me a couple of important things. 1) I've probably made the worse mis-step in my life by marrying him 2) He was confident for a reason - unbeknownst to me, he had already been successful in deceiving me, hence the confidence in his influence on me going forward.

It all came to head within weeks, no more than 2 months after this. (my response? I laughed at him (it was over the phone so I felt safe). I knew I had to lay my gauntlet clearly. His response was to insist I become highy life-insured. Mine was to raise another red flag. U don't know where the bottom lies for someone with no discernible conscience and no remorse.)

There are no insurance policies out on my life, it never happened.

lisajade,

The fact that he "insisted" that you get an insurance policy is really scary. I suppose you will think, this is easy for me to say since I'm not you, but $10k is NOTHING compared to your life and the peace you will get from having NO CONTACT with him. Please stay safe.
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Diane,
You mentioned the statement below:

"As a suggestion people just don't get it and it takes away the time for you to heal by trying to convince them. In all these years only a few people here at the forum and I stress "few" people had someone in their life who does get it. I think if more people had others close to them who did get it we would have very few members."

I agree with what you said, especially the futility in trying to convince anyone. With that said, I'd like to talk about our situation. I'm trying to think of a way to keep this brief, but there's SO MUCH to say.

Anyway, our daughter got involved with a Psychopath 2 years ago. She was pretty young, but from the time we first heard about him red flags were going up for us ("Us" is me, my x husband, our two other daughters, son and my best friend). Of course, the only experience any of us had knowing about a Psychopath at that point was in the movies. (Unknown to us at the time is that we actually had another close one in the family, just hadn't put the pieces together yet.)

So, our life had been turned upside down because red flags, then sirens were going off, and our daughter was completely oblivious to them. One day my son came home from work with an article in the paper. Someone had written into an advice column describing someone that sounded exactly like our daughter's "finance"! And the answer this person received in the column was that she should get out, that she was involved with a psychopath. Well, that was quite a blow to us, but we started searching the Internet and reading up on Psychopath, finding Dr Hare's checklist and articles. One of our two daughters was in this roller coaster with us, and accepted also what we had found. (Her husband is still on the fence though - thinks we might be over-reacting). We tried all the more desperately to help our daughter get out of this situation. But, we did it all wrong (especially me - I admit, I freaked out over this). We took her to a counselor, who took us aside and told us, "She will marry him and he will destroy her." I'll never forget those words. I have never cried, screamed, begged, pleaded as much before. I would drive by myself to a parking lot and sob, cry, scream, pound on the stearing wheel for hours. My x husband would have to get me out of the house and drive the streets while I screamed and cried. (I told you I freaked out). I had to finally go on anti-anxiety medicine. And yes, all the while, watch her marry him and watch him destroy her.

It was then that we realized that another family member had been involved with a Psychopath. Now we had a name for it. And we wondered, how did they get her away? I called and talked to that family member's parents, hoping for an answer. But they had none - they didn't exactly know what they did right or wrong, but they did know what we were dealing with and were praying for us.

Then, last year we found out another close family member is involved with a Psychopath. The Psychopath is a part of our family (a second cousin), and we didn't realize what had been going on with them - they had been keeping it to themselves for 10 years. Finally, my close family member was with the previous one I've mentioned, and said, "If I just had a diagnosis, maybe it would help us to deal with it". And the other FM said, go on the Internet and google Psychopath. And my close family member told us this, along with all the things they have been suffering with, and the light bulb came on.

I say all of this to say that my daughter has a lot of people close to her that know what she is dealing with. A LOT. And, I think that somewhere in her she knows too. She would be able to get so much support for leaving him, but she won't.

Thanks for listening.

Hi concerned. I heard that expression from a long time friend who is a therapist, he said if people had someone to talk to he wouldn't have any business if people could just talk to each other. I don't think our society really know what a friend is, a friend is not someone you met on facebook or has been texting you and they bond to true friends. Never taking a second to put down the cell phone and stop texting and think about life, these are the things that are considered friends, the electronic gadgets they probably feel they couldn't live without, most of their contact is going to facebook with strangers, people seem happy to go talk to strangers I think because if you keep yourself with strangers via those items they will never have a model of what a friend is.

Personally I see it all erode every time I am any place and the person behind me is just chatting. Is it no longer possible for people to go to the store without chit chat with "friends". I turn my phone off when I go across town to concentrate since I am new to snow and icy roads. I turn it back on to check when I leave the store. I don't want my life to be a wave of constant chatter. I can't think of anything that would happen in that hour or so that would require me to chat on my phone. There isn't even any form of thought about others may not want to have them blabbing when they are behind you in line. I see all of this as a disconnect of relationships. Also a huge erosion of any boundaries.

These things form distant kind of relationships, in your daughters case he can text her to not bother to call so he can control what is being transmitted.

When people are on their computer they can get very ugly nothing like how they would behave around family and friends. Very odd and I would venture to guess about 80% of them lie about their status, age and a whole list of things. lIt is very strange how contact is evolving. Does your daughters husband text more than he calls or the same?

How are you are hollow words now. People really don't want to know how you are, I guess it is habit that they still ask. Only you can walk in your own shoes and do the best you can to unleash your daughter from this monster. If you are lucky and your daughter isn't able to fulfill his financial dreams he could be "hooking" up with his next victim. Money will always draw them in another direction. Most of the victims that have been here talking over the years get taken for a financial ride. If your daughter can't fulfill his right to have money and what he wants, trust me, he will take a hike. He probably does have a computer but if not I would encourage you to give him one for an outlet to go away. They like the chase to land the victim and in most all cases are tired of them after a few months. I don't know why he would be any different. Many victims say they hang in there to have that wonderful feeling from the first few months return but the evil doesn't turn back to the nice attentive guy he played before the evil comes out. Hold back on giving them hand outs of cash, if they need food invite them to dinner, your goal is to not let them starve and just handing over money brews conflict and enables him. I would make the invitation very gracious. He wants the cash and he will only ever think of himself. Without hand outs bills will get harder to pay. He won't stick around because he feels he deserves better. Then they have a choice to act like human beings and accept your invitation to dinner or take a hike to the food bank, they are everywhere, it would do him good to stand in line, all of that will repel him and keep him moving in a direction that leads out of your lives. So I suggest strongly to cut off any cash. I have no idea if you do help them out with money but if you do I would stop.

He will hate every minute having dinner with you and your husband, he can't text his friends, I would drag out the dinner. nice appetizer, the meal, some desert. Pin him in any way you can. This would also meet your goal to understand him vs. trying to convince the world he is a Psychopath and no one will listen and you will suffer more.

I am sure any meal you would prepare would be a lot better than what they buy with the money they beg for.

What do you think about that idea? Do you give them much money to help with their crisis of bills being due etc? I am quite sure that he probably wouldn't pay the bills but use the money for his wishes. He can get away with it if they have a cash source.

If the utilities get cut off, offer a room for your daughter and have him go to his family.

Di

Hi Concerned,

Thanks for the comment re. life insurance. I realize there is no comparison between the loss of 10k vs. my life. I don't believe M. has murdered before, I think it's a line he hasn't crossed, but the direction he is headed, I would not b surprised if he one day crossed over. I will be waaaaay back in his rear-view mirror by then. And prayer does absolutely help, in my experience.

It must be incredibly difficult to have to watch a daughter experience anything like this. Really prayer is your best antidote, because all adults are free to choose.... I believe God can get in there and reveal truth and bring circumstances to bear that will see her free and protected, sooner than later hopefully.

I am certain, in my case, that God intervened for me in answer to my direct prayer that He reveal truth to me, no matter what that may be, that I didn't not want to waste or passively destroy the second half of my life to evil. I have 2 kids to deeply consider as well. We were actually married under 3 mos. before everything unraveled and the door, literally, slammed shut, never to re-open. He was gone, and he has had no choice but to stay out. I do give God the credit here, I did NOT have the strength for it, I just could not help seeing what He faithfully unraveled right before my incredulous eyes.