This might drive someone so paranoid to the point where he'd not eat anything that his spouse cooks for him, it's not even funny. Psychopath's I believe have an average intelligence and can look up for some perfect poison that there is no test for and probably never will.

This reminded me of a case in our distant family where an uncle of mine has married a women (that has killed her husband) by poisoning his coffee, she got away though. Everybody knows he was poisoned.

Mine didn't cook for me. She didn't do much of anything domestic. And when she baked, she would make tons of treats to take to others and leave none for me, the idea being to give people the impression she was a great wife who baked treats and such and, poor her, she had spent hours in the kitchen and her mean ol' husband didn't appreciate it. Meanwhile, I would look for some cookies or pastries and find nothing in the house but the lingering aroma of sugary delights. I would call her, and she'd say, "Oh, I didn't know you wanted any."

Right.

So, no, she was too lazy to poison me but I wouldn't put it past her if she had been smart enough to think of it. When the marriage was crumbling, suddenly she wanted to cook for me, etc. I said no thanks and continued handling my own meals. With fresh food. Wasn't going to give her the chance. I am quite sure others like her have done it and gotten away with it, though. In our society, women get away with more as long as it isn't overtly illegal.

A good example is when a female teacher sleeps with a student, the student will get secret high-fives from his peers and maybe even a private pat on the back from Dad for scoring with her. She will lose her job and get a slap on the wrist. If a male teacher does the same thing, he is branded a rapist and a predator. The female student will be a victim and will be coddled. Might even get a movie deal from Lifetime. He will not only lose his job, he will serve a lot of hard time and be sensationalized in the news as a monster. The flip side to it is that the female student may have been the true predator all along. Not excusing it, responsible adults should never do these things, just an observation about the different way our society handles men and women.

It was really smart of you to get rid of her when you still could. A lot of people here, me included didn't leave before they got seriously physically and/or psychologically damaged.
I also never had a good opinion about my Psychopath, I used to tell him even that he is a coward, has a stone heart, has no feelings and is a selfish a..hole. I really did, sometimes as a joke, sometimes telling him of for one or the other behaviour. He always only smirked and never denied it - he sometimes even behaved like this was something to be proud of. I knew he was a piece of work but I never suspected there is really nothing there, nothing that can ever improve and change.

Very true and with the bad statistics out there people think, well less than zero of 1% of all Psychopaths are women and don't they usually wield hatchets, so my oh my couldn't be that little woman. I have a friend whose son is clearly married to a disturbed woman, they are very young, and she whacks him around, and he has no where to go because who would believe a big guy getting beaten by his wife.

Through history if you have ever seen some famous old cases, women can and do some horrific things. We just don't accept that as women they can do these things. The head juror in the Jodie Arias trial that just went on here said when he looked at her he couldn't imagine she would do any harm. That in a nutshell is what people think of women. The same way we (not me but people here in the US) think about race, a white kid walking through a neighborhood doesn't get a second look but a black kid and pull out the guns and shoot him because he "looks suspicious".

It is those very same perceptions that get people in deep trouble.

I can imagine as a male it must be very difficult for people to see your side in the beginning.

So if she didn't cook did you suspect she had anything to do with your heart issues?

Di

I suspect she had a lot to do with my heart issue (which was a non issue. My heart is perfectly healthy). It was more due to stress than poison. I'll elaborate later. Because her personality is so grating and her behavior so odd and inappropriate, people refer to her as "The Devil" behind her back. Terms like "compulsive liar," "conniving," "trouble-maker," these were common. She only had one person who knew both of us stick by her and that person is still friendly with me. Refused to take sides. Her stories are so unbelievable to anyone who has spent any time around me that people pass them off as her being immature and don't believe them. She grew up in a very small town and has poor social skills. She always had an issue with saying and doing socially unacceptable things around my friends, etc. Her mother is also disordered, which I suspected, so I chalked it up to poor home training but as time went on she never seemed to mature in that regard, no surprise now that I know what she is. Come to think of it one of the red flags should've been that she had no friends when we met. No childhood friends. She attaches to people and claims to be best friends after hanging out with them once. She then attention bombs them. most disappeared after about six months to a year and then she would say terrible things about them if I asked how that person was doing. Anyone else see that with theirs? Anyway, that is how she is perceived - that there is something wrong with her. I'll explain later today how people have told me I am perceived (I learned a lot about my very skewed self-image in the aftermath of this; I'd largely bought into her negative, gas-lighting image of myself) and why I didn't have the trouble you'd think being male in all of this because of it.

And yes, croc, I am lucky I did get rid of her and didn't waste more time. But I thought I could do better than that miserable relationship even before I found out she was a psychopath. I deserve to be treated better. I had no problem telling her this. guess she thought I wouldn't break it off. I'd never broken up with someone before her. always was the one getting dumped. I have strong personal feelings about divorce but sometimes you suck it up and do what you must. Wasn't going to settle for what I know now is the real person. I want a partner, not a dependent, and only stayed in it as long as I did because she 'd built up four and a half years of good will beforehand and I felt she'd earned a chance to screw up and that she could and would redeem herself. Silly me. Like many have reported with men she would show flashes of the love bomber after I got fed up, long enough to get me to back down, then she would go back to being negligent.

The rebounds of "good times" are typical, mine also did it and that was at the time when he was already telling everyone how horrible I am.

I never said I wasn't damaged :-) I have grown extremely distrustful of women I don't know, especially cute women I think are being too nice. I know they think I am checking them out but what I am really doing is a threat-level assessment: what is her angle? What does she want from me? How will she attempt to manipulate me to get it? Check her eyes, watch how she watches, check out her social prowess, how she moves - is she one of them? Even as I do it I know it's not cool. I am generally considered to be an attractive man, which isn't something I think about a lot - I have ugly duckling syndrome which is what my psychopath preyed upon - but enough people have told me this that I am aware there is truth to it, if that makes sense. After the break up I hurried into dating (big mistake) in an attempt to validate this, that I was a desirable man, and women would react to me the way I wanted but then... I would kind of freak out and excuse myself to get away at the point she made it obvious she was interested in me romantically. I did online dating too but never made it past three or four dates with anyone. I would break it off when I saw any little thing that might be a red flag. Sex? Out of the question. I am not a one night stand kind of guy. I am interested only in meaningful relationships. I knew I had a problem, though. Hard to get into a meaningful relationship when you're that unstable. I knew it was me and not them and I needed to get mentally healthy so that one day I could be part of one.

What I have done is pursue friendships with women as well as men. Very helpful. Over the last six months I have not dated (the right move was to focus on healing) and made some great female friends. They have restored my faith in sugar, spice, and everything nice. I can call text or chat or go have drinks and there is no pressure. I just state my intentions as clearly as possible with the women and make sure I mean what I say - that I just want to be friends. Any more than that, I am not ready, and I am finally okay with admitting that.

And I haven't forgotten there are bad ones out there. I still look for them when I meet new women but I am no longer thinking "evil!" unless they give me a reason to. And I am also now watchful for sociopathic men as well. Friends can screw you over, too. A person's actions will show who they really are regardless of gender. So I look at consistency in that as the benchmark by which they should be measured as a threat. I still do the initial assessment with women, though. I try hard not to look for clues like that but I so far can't help it. I do not want to repeat this experience. The next one could be smarter and more vindictive. I don't trust myself to choose a good woman right now. A little damaged, yes.

Hi Darth, I think that it is very wise to take some time to heal, it would be hard or impossible after any encounter with a Psychopath, yet alone the length that you were with her. Have you had a chance to read the information here about PTSD? It is something that seems to go hand in hand with the aftermath of being involved with a Psychopath. During the exposure with a Psychopath people suffer from PTSD and grow accustomed to some degree, it can seem to feel normal, but after the Psychopath is gone it is really something to think about dealing with.

Don't trust the statistics, there are way more out there than the 1 - 3% you see listed, that study is way old and based on the prison population. It is good, imo to keep a sharp eye out for both men and women like you are doing.

After all, it is very realistic that any people both men or women have to earn a place on the list of what can be called a friend. I think in this society people use the term friend too loosely, a friend is someone to me who is there for you when life turns upside down and when things are going great and don't judge you in between. Working on good boundaries and understanding that PTSD could also be a factor.



Personally I think that you are being very healthy, nothing wrong as I see it for keeping a look out for clues. I think it is important to see how people behave in different situations. There is a line between being too suspicious and a healthy dose, in time it will all work out. There is actually a lot to learn from adversity.

I understand very well the ugly duckling syndrome, I have that issue with my weight in particular and looks, have never had a weight problem but I can sometimes see myself as bigger when in reality it isn't true. I recognize it is an issue so I can at least deal with it. Image was a very important factor with my family so it is something that was always there.

Di

Thanks, Di. Me, too. According to my female friends in college I was rated "okay" by the girls in the group until summer before my junior year. When I came back women looked at me differently, including my friends. I asked my best girl/friend what the deal was - I thought they were gawking at pimples or something. Even now I still get more than my share of those - but she said I got cute, grew into my face. Dating picked up a bunch then.

But I sometimes still see myself as the awkward kid who never made it to a homecoming dance, who couldn't get a date to save his life. My ex was very good at playing on that string.

This is the kind of damage that I think everyone experiences after a relationship with a Psychopath. Mine is just half a year over and I cannot even imagine getting in a relationship. I think I'd beat a poor guy with a stick over the head if he even tried to pick me up. I am supposedly also attractive but was never in a relationship before the Psychopath, at least not in one that would last more than a month. I sometimes think that I'll never be able to get involved with someone "normal" and the Psychopath I don't want to even see.