Could I have loved a psychopath?

DX'd - Other
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I am only partly joking when I call her a psychopath. She doesn’t quite fit the criteria but there are some things that have always jumped out at me when reading up on psychopathy. We met when we were 14. She was a bright and bubbly uniquely self confident girl. We were a couple for about two years. I put up with her emotional abuse throughout our entire relationship and that nearly killed me.

This isn’t however why I half jokingly have always thought of her as a psychopath. It wasn’t even her bullying of other girls which can be normal at that age. It was that she even self admittedly couldn’t empathize with anyone. She was always quite the opportunist who would take advantage of anything if it got her ahead somehow. Our first real jobs were at a water park in the summer of 97. I worked in a small burger joint there while she worked the cotton candy tent. Over the course of the summer she managed to steal well over $2,500 from our employers. She didn’t think anything of doing this. Didn’t see it as wrong if it benefited her.

At the end of the summer when they were going over the accounts she was caught but talked her way out of it (which she was also very good at) and was only fired rather than taken to court. That’s not even why I think of her as a psychopath.

The reason I think of her as a bit of a psychopath was that after our break up she got a job screening customers and keeping accounts for a network of human trafficers. I say this only because the network was eventually brought down and she was absolved of any guilt after cooperating with the investigation. But my thoughts were always with the poor girls who were being virtually sold behind the facade of this operation. Everyone knew that this is what was going on here but the authorities were only eventually able to prove it. My ex girlfriend was the one screening the customers and at the very least enabling a network that took advantage of countless underage girls.

To this day, though having “found Jesus” and all that she still obliviously says of this job “It was a pretty good gig until the bust” A pretty good gig. Absolutely no guilt of having…worked for human traffickers! None! Oblivious to the misfortune and manipulation of others.

Again, I don’t believe she was literally a psychopath but I see a lot of psychopathy’s traits in her character. Even the psychologist who my family sent us to told me after meeting her that I should be lucky to have such a girlfriend. Always pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes that young woman was.

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I don’t know about psychopath but maybe kleptomaniac and without empathy… and it is strange if she found Jesus that she would call the human trafficking a good gig till the bust…she should have totally renounced it and confessed it as sin. She might mean a good gig as in she made money at it which tells me she would do anything for money and sees no remorse in it. I don’t think the real Jesus got through to her.

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She told me why she thought it was a good gig it was in her words because she got to “smoke joints out back and get her homework done while making all the perverts feel nervous”

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Some people are just not nice. Some people are just mean, uncaring, and like you said, opportunists. I admit, I get that way too as a defense mechanism. There’s plenty of people who see a middle age man, maybe a little unaware and confused and see it as an opportunity to take advantage. Not all the time but everybody is guilty of it a little. I figure that the deck is stacked against me and I’m playing catch-up and that I need every advantage I can get. I must know something because it sure seems that people are bent towards taking something away from me.

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It is very possible. Psychopathy/Sociopathic traits etc… are more common than many people think.
My ex wife was a borderline with psychopathic traits - I do think that my brother is pretty defective - personality wise and so is my sister in law

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Yeah…who knows what made her the way she was. That’s why I say I ‘half jokingly’ thought of her as a psychopath. I know that while she always said she couldn’t empathize with others she does to this day look back on her time with me very fondly. In fact when we reconnected online after a decade of not speaking I learned that she still listens to the albums she took from me, has kept her box of memorabilia from our time together and goes to bed every night in one of my old t-shirts…

I’ve heard it said that the same traits that can make one a ruthless criminal can be the same traits that make one in other circumstances a business tycoon. She however has chosen and is happy with her role of housewife and mom. Perhaps in motherhood she has found an ability to empathize?

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I’m wondering if it’s also how some kids are being raised… Some Saturdays I hang out and wait for my sis to finish teaching her swim lessons… I watch my sis teach her lessons and there are parents who are always on her to “give their child special treatment” above others.

One Mom got mad at my sis for setting her darling child out… the child punched another child. The Mom of the punching child was mad at my Sis for giving her darling daughter a time out because

  1. Girls have been oppressed in the past so she’s just reclaiming her right to anger
  2. the other child wasn’t even hurt from the punch so no harm done, what’s the big deal.

The manager got called in… my sis had to write up an incident report, the parent was really getting disruptive…

My sis has had to deal with this Mom hovering and telling her that her daughter deserves special treatment and saying please and thank you is oppressive and if a girl wants something she should just take it because girls have been oppressed in the world.

I can only imagine how this child will turn out as she grows up.

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The defining trait of a high-functioning sociopath, and this crowd makes up 4% of the population. We only make up 1% of the population. Don’t feel bad - they are master manipulators and very good at hiding their dark side from people until they become too entangled to leave easily.

While I generally am hesitant to write people off as unsalvageable, this is one group that simply needs to be given a needle and put down for the sake of the rest of humanity. They offer nothing of value, only suffering.

10-96

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You know when I think of her family, having grown up with three older sisters, they are all or in one case were very different from one another. She stood out among her sisters as very unique, very different. The only special treatment I can think of was that she had been told all her life that she was gifted and was destined for the degree from Yale that her father was never able to complete as he had to drop out to support a family. This is the only special treatment I believe she ever got from her family as they were busy raising three other daughters. She while bright was not academically gifted but continued believing this well after it was apparent to everyone else.

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pixel,

your post reminds me of a criminal justice major from Texas I dated off and on in my 20’s. She told me once that she didn’t understand why we couldn’t just test people for the presence of criminal traits and put them away before they committed a crime. Yikes! I may be a bit of a liberal from a libertarian minded state and this could explain my shock and horror at this proposal of hers…but I don’t know I like to believe despite even my tending towards the value of civil liberty that…I don’t know…that post just made me roll my eyes but hey to each their own right?

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Eye for an eye will change anyone.

Even a psychopath, or alot of psychopaths, all of a sudden there wouldn’t be any psychopaths around, it’s crazy.

Gotta give em every little bit to, every single tiny little bit, down to the atom actually. And then like magic poof! No more psychopaths.

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@mussel Bad enough that I’ve been victimized by these monsters, but I’ve had to sit by helplessly while they used their dishonestly gained power and influence to hurt my wife and child. And these people just move on and find new victims. One tires of it.

10-96

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Woman will probably be mentally unstable due to part-time psychosis, she likely follows orders from the voices. A female getting involved in the sex abuse business leaves some psychotic some of the time and sometimes these end up hurting friends/family who choose to keep them.

Some of the older women with this situation do outgrow the bragging about illegal stuff & put on the domestic goddess thing somewhat, or she will be a man-eater. If she went through counseling & maybe substance abuse training & dresses like a church lady now, maybe?

I guess you can try if you want & just be casual about things if possible…But I bet her habit of using people will run you back to broke & therapy crying it out…

If you discuss these kind of people (especially if your psychosis started around the time you met this person or your symptoms flair up after a meetup with this one), you may have some symptoms relief if you quit talking about it, do not return any contact attempts and just let it go…Her abuse could be your problem or girl could be a psychopath…You need to forget it all.

I met a wealthy woman who was introducing around her sexual abuser to new women, scare the women to nervous breakdown sometimes and let him lose on them to let him get whatever the girl would do…the women who lived alone developed PTSD if they did not retell the woman’s terrible stories/threats, so when all the memories came back at once a nervous breakdown would happen. Then, woman demand the friends return to her and start to follow her orders to lure in new people if they wanted to be okay…I’m still hearing the voices 10 years after the nervous breakdown, woman followed through on a lot of her threats toward me with her abuser stalking me too & local cops ignore this group of wealthies. Other victims have been tormented for 30 years…Psychopathic women happen…Some of the mental care call these situations ‘false memories’ and send the victim back to the cause of the memory loss from PTSD (memory loss only on one topic, victim has full function and able to work at 100% at demanding jobs even). People who followed this suggestion from the mental care were usually hurt and had no recourse as the mental care discredited victim so police charges were not possible. Victim got to remain in the same community listening to the bragging, jokes & tortured…I would change mental care if your provider uses this term as some of the other care tactics are very detrimental to your functioning in this kind of situation…At the least, keep your mouth shut about old stuff and refrain from complaining much about social problems/functioning issues or things get much worse for you to ruin what matters most…

If you discover you have some buried PTSD from this relationship, which could happen, the mental care would almost always refuse to discuss it and even call a lot of it delusional which is policy regardless…google Gang stalking/cause stalking/thought broadcasting, see all the complaints and understand mental care calls this delusional and refuses assistance. You can have all the memories return - where the story was told, what was said, what time period and even what you were thinking. If you lived alone some of the time after you met this girl, you may have the PTSD…Do understand, sometimes these kind will look you up later or stalk you…It is best to act like you don’t recognize her and let her walk on by…

Or, deal with it. Your friend could even be a multiple personality due to some abuse that caused her to want to work for a sex trafficking ring, I would RUN away from this one, HONEY. You don’t want any…

Or, just go hang out at the local topless bar and the US women will be much tamer/safer if you have a wallet. Otherwise, some of the places hire guy bartenders or bouncers so you could meet people for free…