Hi Diane,

Welcome to the group. I am sorry for what you are going through and I hope you can get some respite from it all soon.

My lightbulb moment was after a series of red flags. Things were questionable from the get go, always acted shady. He started going out with a backpack filled with clothes to a fake job! Seemed giddy, as if he was getting away with something. He texted pictures from his "job" he was at (a house he was working on). They were old pictures from an old job. HA! He mixed up his fake job photos, not realizing he sent them to me over 6 weeks prior. He stood by his story, "I'm here right now. It's a new job!" Denied over and over, gaslighted me, made me feel like I did something wrong (almost). Too many red flags ignored, but this put me over my limit. Unacceptable. No contact for over a month now. Now I am just another ex in his cell phone "doll collection" :-/

It took hearing the wife of his childhood friend call him a Psychopath to make all the red flags make sense. She had heard all the storys about him , storys I did not know, I knew enough though, for a year I watched him reveal his then, present life, keeping a harem of women, women who were addicted to him and would not stand up to him, who gave him money and let him take life insurance out on them, he knew he had other women and would wait miserably for their turn. He was so good at telling just enough truth in his lies that your rational mind would beleive what he told you. He once said to me that I was going to learn to love being lied to! ( I thought he was kidding)Smart smart smart guy, what a shame, what a waste, what ever the screwy wiring is about his mind, he could never apply his intelligence in any beneficial way to himself or to anyone else. I heard from him very recently after breaking contact with him five years ago and he seems worse then before but perhaps it is because I listened to him with no romantic feelings and could just see him clearly.

My light bulb went on 4 feet from a loaded gun. He held me down to punish by putting soap in my mouth. He had advanced from wrist slapping... Lots of control issues. He would molest me while I slept then brag about it. CRAZY making experience... It took me 5 months to get out---still scared he will show up at my door. I have his things long story...

Please don't give up even if it means you publish this on the internet!
If it is about the money for the story, you need to think twice. This is about revealing these malignant people.
I also worked in "The Biz" and have put up with these types for years. Now I find them in Academia and Law. It is a contagion we MUST reveal.
I think letting these people run amok and control us is the death of humanity.
They often wrap themselves in the shroud of nobility and selflessness when all they are really doing is deceiving those with a good heart and humanity.
They depend on sound bites to cover their complex corruption and we swallow it. Everyone is too distracted to see the "game"

My light bulb moment regarding my daughter was in 2012. For 38+ years (since she was age 4) I was baffled by her behavior. During her infancy I mistakenly thought that I was "lucky" to have a baby who seemed never afraid of anything - no scary dreams or nightmares, no fear of people or animals or situations.... She rarely cried, except during illness or pain from injuries during accidents.

She is now 42. Since my daughter was age 4, and possibly earlier, (in retrospect) she was a pathological liar. I was perpetually baffled by her behavior - her lies -even when caught in the act with stolen objects in her hands..., her apparent lack of empathy for any human or animal, her obsession with herself as though she were princess of the universe, her inability to play alone or to enjoy anything for its own sake (such as the beauty of nature, animals, or anything that "normal" children would appreciate, her total lack of creativity....), her perpetual manipulations of people and circumstances, her lack of fear, her phony tears, her constant jealousy of others....

Due to decades of misery from this problematic, deceitful, lying, emotionally/psychologically abusive, loveless child/adult daughter of mine who had always blamed me and others for everything wrong with her, in 2012 I started researching her behavior - to conclude that she is a psychopath. Her only emotions seem to be jealousy, anger, rage, and hatred, coupled with her misperceived sense of entitlement. Nothing was ever good enough for her. She had no real friends in her entire life; she always had to buy them with presents and flattery, but most people soon tired of her, and families always kicked her out of their homes because she did not want friendships with their daughters, but rather she wanted to be the darling daughter of their family and to be the center of their attention. She was slovenly and repugnant, but in later years she learned to mimic other people whom she envied.. Her career and lifestyle enabled her to geographically relocate ever 4 years or so, so her victims were left behind.

After discovering that this repugnant daughter of mine is a psychopath, remembrances of situations over the decades came to light - not only regarding her behavior, but also regarding several relatives of mine, including my mother and most of my siblings, and my ex-husband and other "romantic" relationships who in retrospect certainly fit the description of "psychopath"... as well as many of my bosses and coworkers.

In short, there were, and still are, many psychopaths in my life. Memories keep cropping up regarding past experiences with former and present people/situations, and it's horrifying to realize how much danger (both physically and emotionally/psychologically) that I was/am in.

Welcome and I am truly sorry your pain I think after the light bulb moment we begin to see things so differently. For me I seem to be experiencing a lot of anger. that is overwhelming. I think you are describing shock confusion once we begin to understand what we have been dealing with we see it everywhere.

Hello, and thank you.

First, I'm having much technical difficulty with this site; e.g. repeatedly logging on successfully, but then seeing that I'm not logged on when I click to a different comment or subject... Also my first comment disappeared from the subject page (at least on my PC screen), and your comment wasn't showing there either. Finally I found my and your comments under "My Stuff". Perhaps it's my error or my misunderstanding of how to use this site??

Yes, I see it (psychopathy)almost everywhere. The statistics I'd read were that in the U.S. approximately "4%" of people, or 1 in 25, are considered to be psychopaths. While that is merely an average, and the actual numbers can be much higher in a particular area or situation (e.g. work place, family, political & corporate worlds, social network, neighborhood...) the statistic/percentage seems extremely low compared to my own life experiences & observations over the decades; Psychopaths seem to be almost everywhere, and I'd estimate that it is in the 70 percentile or even higher. I'm sure this sounds paranoid, yet I was actually blind to many of these creatures during my life, including my former "best friend" from age 6 into adulthood, and, until recently never truly comprehended just how dangerous & twisted some of them were/are either psychologically/emotionally or physically; it is only in retrospect that I realized what I had survived or escaped. Situations with creatures like this are extremely isolating, especially because they make the victim appear to be crazy, and because you can't trust anyone you know to discuss it with either because they are victims who've been programmed by the Psychopaths, or they are the Psychopaths, or you just don't know what to think of them.

For me, the worst part of dealing with any Psychopath is the perpetual lying and head games. You can never have a genuine, wholesome, or intelligent conversation with them because they are always acting and mimicking, and because lies roll off their tongues so effortlessly, and every conversation with them goes nowhere; and you/I feel like a phony for pretending not to notice the lies & inconsistencies because it does no good to point them out or to argue which would result in more lies, glibness, and inconsistencies... You know they lie all the time, yet you often don't know which is the lie and which isn't, so whenever dealing with them you constantly wonder what is really going on. Worse is the perpetual question of what are they telling other people.

My daughter, e.g., is a master manipulator of people and situations, and at the "divide and conquer" method. It's extremely complicated, and stems way back...

That is enough for today. Thank you for listening.

I saw it in my ex husband but had no clue what was back then. I have seen it in at least two pat relationships. My mother is probably NPD and my sister and brother both have problems . My sister could very well be a psychopath she and my mother live to lie and manipulate. My adult children are very groomed and I am crazy... So I am the bad guy. I always leave a family gathering wanting to spend a week in the Looney bin...Hating myself.

Early on in the relationship, out of nowhere she says while trying to imitate my New York accent...

" I'll have a brand new repertoire by the time this is over"

Knowing what I know now that is a very terrifying and disgusting thing to hear. At the time I had very little knowledge on Psychopathy but it still made the hair on my neck stand up . Looking back now it makes perfect sense to hear such a slip from a person like that as they cant hold the disguise on 24/7 .. Among many light bulb moments that's the one that really freaked me out... She was absorbing my personality and storing it for later use with her next feed...