Victims of Psychopaths Community Group
Is he or she a sociopath or psychopath? Think we're only talking about serial killers here? Psychopaths, sociopaths and even narcissists come in every walk of life, every career level, and every socio-economic category.
Just wondering how long your psychopath kept the façade?
I think they all have a varying degree of negative traits ... some are more sadistic than others ... some are violent and some are not ... most are serial cheaters but not all .. and so forth
I think if you look back (in hindsight) on the early stages of your relationship, you will have seen signs of the mask slipping which you maybe didn't consciously acknowledge. I have found from my experience that these people are not good liars ... just because someone tells lies all the time, doesn't make them a good liar.
Me:
o 7 yrs after meeting him I finally realized there were serious problems that he could not seem to fix, but I learned to deal with these problems rather than reject the husband I married "for better or worse, for richer or poorer" and the father of my children because of them. (I also ignored several early warning red flags within days or months of meeting him. I found these odd, but also in some way desirable or entertaining, and did not realize what they meant.)
o 18 yrs to realize I would eventually divorce him because of these problems -- I was waiting because of the kids.
o 22 yrs after I met him to discover and get to realization of strongly suspected NPD. Suddenly all the irrationality made a whole lot more sense. Discovered through research that he also probably met BPD diagnosis.
o 26 yrs to really believe he might also be a psychopath. The one thing I did not believe for so long was low or no empathy. I did not seem to fit, until he gave up the mask after I divorced him. Then I saw the cold, ugly side.
It took family and friends longer than me to really realize what was wrong with them, though many realized far earlier that something definitely was.
Employers:
About 6 months. That's how long it took for him to lose each job due to manipulative, predatory behavior.
People around him:
Now most seem to catch on to some kind of bad problem pretty soon, within months, if not sooner, if they have regular contact. New gf does not seem to have noticed in this time frame though.
I don't know - I just never could understand how they could believe the total fabrications that they make up You can pin them down - point out absolute conflicting statements that they have made - and all my ex used to do was get mad at me for confronting him - "how dare I say he was lying"...... I guess I didn't know how important he was.....
One day I had said to my exS that he says different things all the time ( contradictory things ), I just got a look.
Many days later he was at my home ready to go and he nearly forgot his cell phone on my desk. He came inside again to take it with him and when leaving he said "you`re right, I "do" say a lot of different things".
I thought this was very weird to say, specially days later and because of forgetting the phone. To me it seems like they must know their lies.
They don't mean it - and they will cook up a story as to why they admit to something, at some point point down the road. They don't know how to be honest, imo. They just know how to create a picture that we want to see.
My ex used to apologize for what he did and said - begging me for forgiveness. In a matter of hours he would be back to the same old lies and accusatins. It is SO frustrating.