Couldn't even get a meeting with a pastor overseeing it. He simply told the preacher we were both moving on. The preacher bought it lock, stock, barrel. If I even talk to the pastor, my attorney receives a letter threatening "degradation of character." I believe this is often what keeps victims from telling future victims the truth. Generally, when anyone says anything about what the victim has volunteered in information, the sociopath acts totally surprised, then calls the victim "crazy," because the "followers" are still unaware, and the victim cannot defend themselves, nor have access to explain anything to the "followers." Jaxon637, can you tell me how to start one of these conversations?

Yes, my XH, whom I left 14 years ago, was a psychopath also. In our last year together, I was writing a book about my 30-year marriage with him. I was identifying the manipulative techniques of P's in my writing. Throughout that process, I had conversations with my H in which he both acknowledged, and expanded upon his use of the techniques. He also told me things I did not bring up first--for example, that our relationship had always been a competition to him. His desire was always to conquer all my strengths and leave me a pile of rubble. He experienced any request I made of him as my trying to control him. Therefore, he could not contribute anything ever to our partnership because doing so meant I was controlling him. Even if I didn't express a wish for him to do something. If he did something to benefit me--for example-washing a few dishes, even babysitting his own children, to his POV, I was controlling him. Therefore, the few times I left our babies with him, I came home to filled diapers, spit-up dribbled down their sleepers and dried in their hair. I never understood why he couldn't properly care fo a baby, until decades later when he explained why he simply could not do anything "for" me.

He did not talk of previous victims.

I have told my recent P also I know he is a P. We have discussed his specific behaviors and manipulations

Kinda. After mine was arrested and I knew where he was, and about 3 months of the total discard where he literally ran from the law only with the clothes on his back, I sent a letter to him in jail. It said everything in it that I wanted to say. It called him out on his behavior and I told him everything that I knew about him including that he was a psychopath and he hid no more with specifics to his disorder. I wanted him to know that he fooled me no more and that I was smarter than him. I sent everyone we knew including his family the evidence. He was promptly discarded himself. He tried the smear campaign but I had a couple months head start on him and the evidence to prove myself so it did not work. This was 2 years ago. A few months ago I was contacted by the next woman he was involved with. She informed me that he has been stalking me online and that is how she got my information. She reached out because he pulled the same stuff with her, again getting into trouble, and discarding. She needed some answers. In the course of speaking with her, I learned that he did in fact admit that something was wrong with him. BUT.....he did this to elicit sympathy and empathy. It was only part of his game. He used my letter and mental health "evaluation" to further his game. So yes he did admit it but he found a way to weave it into a gain for himself! Hahahaha! Used his mental illness to keep his next victim feeling empathetic and excusing his behaviors. I have never faced him or spoken with him since the day he ran from the police leaving me in tatters and I will never again face or speak to him if I can help it. He will try and use any communication with me to further his agenda, he is very, very good at what he does. I will never allow that. I mean look at what he did with me revealing what I knew about him?! He is a dangerous man and while he will now admit that he is not normal....it is with internal pride that he reveals it.

Live, Interesting you mentioned the "internal pride." I know this is going to sound weird to people, as it is generally assumed about psychopaths, since they hide behind a mask, that they would be embarrassed for anyone to know who they really are. They are not the least bit embarrassed about being psychopaths. They only hide so that they can succeed in their manipulations. Aarcissists are embarrassed. Psychopaths have no shame.

MY XH was GLOWING with pride and excitement to learn the name of his disorder--psychopath. His dx (by me) was later confirmed by former FBI psychopath profiler, Roy Hazelwood who read my unpublished book. (Just to make clear I was not mistaken.) When I communicated with my then-H about the traits of the disorder and how he fit them, he pounded the table with joy and excitement to learn he was such a rare and different creature from the masses.

My last psychopath admitted one time that he was a psychopath and evil. I had only dated him 6 weeks before he raped me. In that brief 6 week period, I talked a lot about psychopathy, having spent years studying it by that point. I would talk a lot about psychopaths and psychopathic behavior traits. All along, unknowingly, I was describing him, as he was all of those things but was conning me with a completely falsified life story, alias, fraudulent documentation, etc. So after a few weeks of hearing me so clearly (and unknowingly) describe him, he one day told me that he believed he was a psychopath and that he was evil. I thought he was just saying it because he felt guilty about something. Or because it's not uncommon to believe you have a disorder when you first hear about it. So I brushed off his confession. A few weeks later I was raped by him, discovered his true identity, criminal record, previous victims etc. He had conned the previous woman into marrying him based on a fraudulent alias of being a millionaire doctor. She found out, shortly after the marriage, learned about psychopathy at that point, sent him a list of psychopathic behaviors, telling him he was a psychopath, and annulled the marriage. So the entire time I was explaining psychopathy to him, he already knew, he had already heard it all from a prior victim. But he never went into a detailed confession or anything.

My ex was very subtle in most ways. It was all like a magic show, very difficult to tell what was really happening 'smoke and mirrors' (ironically he accused me of 'smoke and mirrors' in his smear campaign = projection)

There were occasions over the years he would come out with things that were said flippantly or jokingly but which really were what was happening. Once I told him to find someone else if he wasn't happy with me, he turned to me and said 'I'd destroy another woman in a week', 'you're a challenge', when we once talked about his terrible childhood which was full of abuse and trauma I sympathetically told him I felt for him. He said in a low tone and in a half joking way 'I don't know, I think it made me a bit of a psychopath'. He used to joke about keeping me in the fridge (oh how I laugh when I think of that 'joke' now looking back - not) .

Once after an argument we had made up and were talking casually, he had his back to me. I think I was talking about a friend of mine and the P said to me 'some people enjoy hurting other people, it's like pulling wings off flies'. That sort of thing just wouldn't have popped into my head but it felt like he was telling me about himself. It was often hard to tell if he was serious or joking, he was flippant in the way he spoke.

Those 'jokes' continued with him making some weird comments about hurting our baby when she was born. Again, everything disguised as sarcasm /jokes. Strange, weird, subtle behaviour. The sort of behaviour that would drive an intelligent person crazy - it nearly did in my case. He only picked intelligent women, he needed their minds as he enjoyed taking that from them I think.

I'm going off track here but yes I think he knew he was a P, he told me three years (he was talking more to himself that me I think) 'but will you still love me when you know who I really am'. Looking back, I think he had been consciously keeping his mask on, conditioning me to his abuse over a long period of time but wanted to reveal the inner monster. I don't ever think he was ashamed of who he was although he pretended to be as evoked sympathy from women by saying in shame 'I'm a monster' at times as if he was contrite for previous bad behaviour. But he repeated that behaviour all the time so he couldn't have been ashamed. I honestly think everything he did was about manipulation. Hard to understand the mindset of someone so warped !

Mine ex SP told me he was a SP early on....in passing and I didn't believe it. Pity ploy. Later during discard he would tell me how he will only hurt me etc.

Oh and I didn't tell him directly I know he was a SP but when his gf reached out to me I told her in detail that he was SP and providing all the examples etc. They are together again so I'm 100% sure he knows I know. That might be why he's never contacted me again.

As I look back at my sociopath's victims, I realize he lied about them through our entire relationship. The last died nearly seven years after he left her in ruins. I hope she found happiness. I'll never know. Her new husband died less than ten days after her. I wish we could have been friends, but it's hard to get anyone to witness or defend the victim, because none of the past victims want to relive their lives during that time. It just brings back a rush of nightmares. Can't get the cooperation of financial victims of the sociopath, as well, for the same reason. I actually had the nerve to try to save the next victim before she made a monumental mistake. Didn't matter. She made the monumental mistake anyway. I'm sure we'll have the nice "I told you so" talk someday.

My dad never let down his guard, not even when I was caring for him like a baby in his final years. The only cracks I ever found in the facade of this moral, upstanding image he projected were the little things...like when he admitted that a lot of the tools and supplies he used for his hobbies and home repairs were actually stolen from his workplace. I doubt if he ever spent a dime on anything he could get for free.

And I did enjoy as a kid finding out that straight-arrow Dad would go sleep in his car or on the roof whenever he had the night shift...LOL. But still he always wore his mask of self-righteousness. And he always played the martyr when he had to do all those night shifts...more likely he asked for those shifts so he could snooze on the company's dime.

In my opinion, only some of them know the label - sociopath .. but all of them at some point must notice little differences between us and them. They don't have any other mindset to compare themselves with so they don't know any different to what they are. I doubt they neither care nor give it much thought, the lack of conscience means they don't have to question their own behaviour themselves.

Telling them what they are doesn't really benefit the situation either ... my psycho ex told my mother that I called him a sociopath, she replied by saying to me 'you can't go around calling people things like that!' .. she was totally taken in by his bullshit! He used it as a pity play to get my mother onside ... never underestimate the lengths these creatures will go to to exercise some control over your life, even by association with other people.

I'm going to start carrying a file around with me. If I ever run into someone who knew both of us that I thought I could trust, I will share articles and hard copy exhibits that absolutely show his lies. You can't do this to four women and expect to get away with it the rest of your life.

My father is a diagnosed sociopath and narcissist, and sees a therapist weekly so that he can stay on in his career. He's actually got a crap government appointed therapist who he manipulates (he even counseled her through her divorce). He knows what he is and he uses it as an excuse. Its a dangerous line to walk when they know what they are because, at least in my case, he makes it out like he can't help himself, and he doesn't know better. Some people in our family even go so far as to pity him. He's even used it to confess horrible things about the abuse he put my mother through nonchalantly such as, "I never loved her, and I only married her because we had you." Its all bullshit. He's never loved anyone but himself. Most of them are incapable or literally have no way of conceptualizing what love is.

Once, I confronted him about how he body-shamed me on a daily basis. He invited me to his house to swim in his pool with my younger half sister, and I told him frankly that I would not parade around in a bathing suit with him and her around just so he could shame me in front of her. He asked why I had never told him it bothered me, and I responded, "I have. It goes in this ear and comes out this one" (I pointed to them on his head), "Its a fault of your character". I was fired from the family business less than a week later and that began my limited contact regime. I'm better for it now. My advice, save yourself the drama and trauma, and don't delve into that disturbed mind unless you are really at your strongest. Either way, its not going to make you understand them more, and really it will not help you move one. Focus on developing your own healthy self, and growing your own life's garden from love, understanding, trust, and tenacity.

I told my ex N/P H that I thought he had NPD. This was before I suspected the BPD, psychopath, and Dark Triad. He was not interested in exploring that, and refused to get help, even at the cost of our lengthy marriage with children still at home. His parents had wondered what was wrong with him for a long time, and I told his mother, but she did not really want to hear it, and went NC with me for a few years. Now, we are interacting again. I think she has seen it for herself, and understands better now. Though she still has no idea because I did not tell her most of the worst of it.

I dated someone for a few months casually who eventually told me that he was tested and came out a mild psychopath on the Hare scale. This was done very officially as part of a research study. He was candid about many troubling things he did, but did not really discuss his felt experience. Fortunately for him, he had a lot of supportive experiences in his upbringing, so he was conscientious, mostly empathic, etc. But he was self-admittedly trouble, even if charmingly so. Interesting that he accepted it. He even told the testers that they should fear him then, right? Not sure what he meant by that.

I decided the fun wasn't worth it, and backed off, so I don't know what happened later in his life.

YES, HE TOLD ME THAT IF I TOLD ANYONE WHAT HE HAS DONE TO ME OR CAN DO, THEY WILL THINK I AM INSANE! AND HE LAUGHS TO ENTERTAIN HIS NEW VICTIMS IN A MODEST WAY OF VICTIMIZING HIS PAST VICTIMS...28 PLUS YEARS OF HIS PAPERTRAIL. I'VE STARTED A GOGGLE SITE. LOUNITA IHRIG...BIT CONFUSION, ALOT OF HIS PAPERTRAIL TO SORT AND COMPARE ALL IS LIES...I HAVE HIS PYS. EVAL WHICH MAKES IT ALL HAPPEN TO BE TRUTHFUL