H.G. Beverly's Blog

Hello,

I’m so pleased that you’ve found my blog and sincerely hope that you find the answers and healing you need for a healthy recovery.

You can find my writing here and on Lovefraud.com, where you’ll also find a community of support.

I won’t be publishing posts for some time because I’m intently focused on two things:

Providing for my young family as a single mom—financially, emotionally, and in every other way I can. This takes nearly all my time.
Writing, writing, writing my next book. I write in the cracks of life, and I write all the time.

If I blog, I don’t work on my bigger writing projects. If I work on my bigger projects, I don’t blog. Or do social media. I’ve tried multiple times to do both or all of the above, and it just doesn’t happen. I can’t and won’t let my family down, so other things fall.

Please watch for a bigger piece to come out sometime in the near future. That being said, if I publish under another name I will regrettably not be able to share that here. Again, my first priority is my family—and our safety and well-being.

But check back once in a while if you find value in my writing. There may be more. And you’re always welcome to contact me directly.

In the meantime, read on. There’s a lot here to consider, and even more on sites like Lovefraud.com and Psychopathfree.com.

Best wishes always,

Helen

Everyone talks about “gut instinct,” but what is it? Is it really something you feel in your gut? In your heart? In your head? Does everyone have it? Are some people better than others at listening to their gut?

I’ve never talked to anyone who doesn’t believe that’s the case. People seem to believe that we all have a “gut instinct” about things, and that some people are better at recognizing it than others.

When we were dating, Wyatt and I used to walk along the railroad tracks next to his house for hours. They were abandoned tracks, but they still smelled of creosote and oil and tar. The gravel was pierced by only a few weeds with the strongest tap roots, weeds that looked like dandelions to me but that never produced flowers. They speckled the gravel bed like green stars.

The tracks took us places that cars couldn’t reach anymore. If they ever did. One of those places was an old cabin that was falling in. It was made of square, hand hewn log, and it had been perfectly symmetrical before one corner of the upstairs loft collapsed and blocked one of the four matching square windows—two on each side.

We’d creep inside and poke around. It was only about ten feet by twelve, so it wouldn’t have taken long to explore except there were layers of newspapers all over the inside walls that they’d used for insulation. Somehow they’d survived the weather. I guess the sidewalls had stayed strong and the roof was still there. Hardwoods last for centuries. I wondered why the one corner of the loft had collapsed, and I wished whoever owned it would come fix it.

The newspapers were bewitching. I’d stand in one spot and read the first layer. It was news from maybe 1868. I can’t even remember the exact dates now, but it seems like I read the news from a span of twenty or thirty years. And it was similar to the news today. A couple had recently wed. Someone had been recently robbed. Politicians were fighting. And so on.

The language was more formal; the situations described were more proper—at least in the retelling. I’d get lost in the stories, and I can remember Wyatt coming to stand behind me and wrap his arms around me and nuzzle his chin in between my neck and my shoulder. My “gut instinct” fluttered. He whispered in my ear.

“I love the way you get lost in these stories.”

He squeezed me for a moment and stood still, seeming to cherish the love.

“You’re a different kind of person, Helen. So passionate.” He wrapped his hands around my hip bones. “I love everything about you.”

I turned to meet his eyes and held his gaze with the kind of warmth that felt like uninhibited love.

I believed that’s what it was.

Was my “gut instinct” wrong about Wyatt? I’ve asked myself that question a million times since. When someone seduces you and only later belittles you—or wraps his hands around your neck rather than your hips—it’s easy to wonder about “gut instinct” and personal failures. Should I have been looking for red flags? Maybe. But the issue when you’re dealing with a psychopath is that the red flags you might expect are most often not what you get.

I come back to this point again and again because when we overestimate our ability to “get” people through our “gut instinct,” we are more vulnerable to charming, high-functioning psychopaths. Because they can make us feel so good, so loved, and so understood. The red flags we expect—like little signs of a deceitful nature or callousness or flakiness, or even what we call love-bombing—these red flags are not always going to be there right away. Just as there are master criminals who never get caught and sloppy criminals who do, there are also psychopaths who never expose themselves and psychopaths who do. Your chances of “getting” a masterful psychopath through your “gut instinct” aren’t great. These people are called “disarming” for a reason. Because they disarm you.

If you marry a high-functioning, masterful psychopath, you will eventually see their other side. You’ll come to understand, painfully, the inner workings of someone who doesn’t care about anyone but who thrills over manipulating anyone and everyone. But don’t expect the world to see or believe your experiences. Because people on the outside are still standing in the glowing light of your partner’s psychopathic charm. And believing that their “gut instinct” would alert them to any issues.

 

Follow these links to previous chapters and a community of support on Lovefraud.com:

Chapter One: Everyone’s Ex is a Psychopath

Chapter Two: Labels and Lists Might Not Help

Chapter Three: There Are Degrees of Conscience and Empathy

Chapter Four: Richard Parker is Not Your Friend

Chapter Five: Who is a Potential Victim?

Chapter Six: I Wouldn’t Let That Happen

Chapter Seven: If I Explain It Right, He’ll Care

Or you can find The Other Side of Charm: Your Memoir at major booksellers.

In most of our daily arguments with people we love, both sides are right. It can be mind boggling to look across the table at your partner and realize that they feel just as certain in their position as you do in yours. Some of us withdraw at the point where two “right” sides meet because we hate conflict. Some of us love that spot and try to live as much of life as possible in the state of an exciting debate. Some of us always feel we’re even more right than the other and are compelled to explain why, whether anyone else wants to hear it or not.

But regardless of our natural tendencies, the bottom line is this: our ability to work through daily conflicts and debates strongly influences the quality of our relationships.

When I know I can be in conflict with my partner and that we’ll be able to get through it without damaging each other (because we have lots of times before), then my trust grows, my love grows, and my confidence grows. Intimacy is partly about how well a couple can handle conflicts.

Think about it. If there’s one person on earth who you know you can get through disagreements with better than any other, then you can feel closer to that person and safer with that person than anyone else.

This is part of building an intimate relationship.

And even though we’re all flawed humans and most of us don’t know how to work through arguments or disagreements very well, we can learn. We can learn to look at our partner and realize that they feel right, too, and that we both want similar things. We most often want to feel our perspective is recognized, cared about, and respected. The issues are just the issues. The level of care and respect we give each other is paramount. Are we willing to care about the hurts of our partner before feeling heard ourselves?

When a small child comes to you with scraped knees in tears, does the child want you to explain how he or she messed up along with how to do better, or does the child want to be held, rocked, patted, and told that it’s ok? Which option is most calming? Most healing in that moment? The child is looking for comfort—for the feeling of being understood, respected, and cared about. It’s the opposite of being scolded or re-educated in a moment when a connection is needed most.

Then after that moment—or after the argument, in the adult world—we might talk through what happened and whether next time maybe we’d do anything different. We ideally learn from each other in positive ways in conversations that are not held during times of conflict or pain. In moments of hurt, it’s time to care.

What happens when both people are hurt at the same time? Then it’s up to each of us to care. They say it takes a bigger person to put their complaints to side momentarily for the sake of loving another. I agree. I think the most evolved people on our planet have mastered this skill. Like Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama. They live as they believe. They exude empathy. We respect them, we know their values, we admire their strength.

And there are billions of people on the planet who are trying each and every day to be more like these beautiful souls. We want to be better partners to each other. We don’t want to hurt people, especially the ones closest to us. We agonize over our past mistakes and vow to try harder. We work to overcome our childhoods and to become better parents. We catch ourselves getting angry and try to learn new ways of handling ourselves in life’s toughest spots.

Enter the psychopath.

If you’re with a psychopath, you will never get to lay your head on his shoulder and cry it out and get any genuine care. You might be a prop if cameras are flashing and people are watching your “heroic” psychopath save you, but in life’s private moments, a psychopath is more likely to make you cry and then tell you to stop crying because you’re so ugly and crazy.

That’s not a very evolved way of being in a relationship, now is it.

I can tell your this. If you are in a relationship with a psychopath, sociopath, or narcissist, you are never, ever going to build the kind of intimate relationship in which you know you’re safe and will get through disagreements together. You won’t have a shoulder to cry on, and no one will stroke your hair while you soak in their warmth.

People in relationship with psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists are perhaps the loneliest people on earth.

 

Wyatt and I were busily trying to get our three small kiddos into the car for a trip to the zoo. Or should I say, I was busy. I rushed down the steps with our daughter on my hip and breezed through the living room into the kitchen, hollering the entire way.

“Boys! Time to get your shoes on! Please come down and get your shoes on! We’re going to go see the monkeys!”

I stepped past Wyatt and grabbed the diaper bag off the counter. It was empty.

“Wyatt, can you run up and get some diapers? I thought there were some down here.” I held open the empty bag so he could see.

He was leaning back against the counter, steaming coffee mug in hand.

He didn’t acknowledge that I’d said anything—or even blink.

“Wyatt, can you please grab some diapers? I need to get the snacks packed and stuff.” I slid open the pantry doors and pulled out some fruit leathers with my free hand.

He still didn’t blink; just stood gazing out the window and apparently enjoying his coffee.

“Hello? Can you at least acknowledge that I am speaking to you? Wyatt!”

I watched him turn to leave the room, fruit leathers still in hand, arm hanging limp by my side. My daughter, Abby, was still on my hip. She grabbed my cheek and pulled my face toward hers and then pointed at the fruit leathers.

“Ok, Abby. You can have this in the car,” I hoped Wyatt was at least getting the diapers. “We’re going to the zoo today! Are you going to see the monkeys?”

I was excited to go to the zoo as a family. Wyatt had never gone with us before. I stuffed snacks and sippie cups in the diaper bag and handed Abby a fruit leather to hold as we headed for the car, and I breezed back through the house toward the garage door.

“Are you ready boys? Did everyone go potty?”

As I passed Wyatt’s office, I could see he was at his desk, trimming his fingernails neatly over the trash can. My brain exploded.

“Wyatt, did you get the diapers?”

He didn’t acknowledge me.

“Wyatt, are you kidding? Let’s go! We have to get going or it’s going to mess up nap time!”

Still nothing.

I marched into his office and put my hand on his forehead and pushed back gently so he would look up at me.

“What are you doing?”

He jerked back away from me, and his face instantly turned scarlet.

“What the hell is your problem, Helen?! Don’t touch me like that! Don’t even touch me!”

I started backing away from him.

“My God, Helen, I swear you are unbelievable. Unbelievable. Can you just be a normal person for five seconds? Do you have to go off and act like a psycho about everything? Everything?”

Abby’s eyes were wide, and she was gripping the fruit leather in a white knuckled fist. I kept backing out of the office.

“No, Wyatt! We just need to leave! You know I hate it when you won’t acknowledge I’m speaking.”

“Helen, not everything is about you. I swear, you are crazy. Not everything in the world is about Helen talking or about what spoiled Helen wants to do. I swear you are the most spoiled rotten princess I ever met. I mean, what’s the big deal. I need to trim my nails. Why do you have to act like a crazy psycho over that? Not getting your way? I’m just trimming my nails. You have to march in here and smack me in the face for trimming my nails?”

I started to feel ashamed. Then angry, because I knew somewhere inside that he was wrong. That I wasn’t being crazy and that I didn’t smack him at all. I knew it was normal to want to be acknowledged. But then maybe I was being too demanding. Did I need to chill? How could I resolve this so we could have a good day?

The bottom line is that I could never resolve it. Wyatt wanted to stir up the day because he derived satisfaction from sucking my energy dry in every big moment. After another hour of trying to calm him, trying to care for his feelings, trying to inspire him to care for mine, I ended up walking around the zoo that day feeling like a hollow shell of myself.

You know what he did? He laughed and skipped and raved over the monkeys with our children. He threw them up in the air and openly scolded me for not being more playful.

“We’re having fun, aren’t we guys,” he said to our boys at a picnic table while they licked ice cream cones. They nodded. I was changing Abby’s diaper in the stroller. “Too bad mommy doesn’t like to have fun like we do. Come on, mommy. Try to be fun. Like us. We’re the fun ones, aren’t we guys.”

“Yeah, Daddy. Daddy’s fun!”

I wanted to cry. Later, when I tried to explain to him how much it hurt me when he didn’t acknowledge me when I spoke to him, he rolled his eyes and groaned about why I was never happy. I thought if I explained it in just the right way, with just the right words and with just the right amount of beautiful sentiment (and no sign of craziness), then a light bulb would go off over his head and he would embrace me and say, “I’m sorry, babe. I don’t want to make you feel like that. I guess I didn’t realize what I was doing. But I see what you’re saying. And I love you. Come here.” And then he’d squeeze me tighter, and we would be a family that could last forever.

But we weren’t. I projected my values on him. The truth was and still is that he enjoyed upsetting me, he thrilled over any opportunity to make our children see me through a negative lens, and he experienced no remorse and no empathy. My value system is not and never was his value system. He faked it for a while, so I was confused. And I thought he’d respond the way I’d respond to someone I love who’s hurting—the way billions of people would respond. With the capacity for caring. We may be flawed humans who fail each other all the time, but most of us can care.

But that’s how we get caught—when we imagine that everyone can. I wasted a good part of my life trying to inspire someone to care who simply can’t and won’t ever. If you catch yourself projecting your values or your capacity for caring on someone who never steps up with any real empathy or love, it might be time to save your own life.

 

Follow these links to previous chapters and a community of support on Lovefraud.com:

Chapter One: Everyone’s Ex is a Psychopath

Chapter Two: Labels and Lists Might Not Help

Chapter Three: There Are Degrees of Conscience and Empathy

Chapter Four: Richard Parker is Not Your Friend

Chapter Five: Who is a Potential Victim?

Chapter Six: I Wouldn’t Let That Happen

Or you can find The Other Side of Charm: Your Memoir at major booksellers.

It’s your fault for letting yourself get hurt.

Just reading that sentence probably makes you agitated. But people say that about each other all the time. We blame victims for letting themselves get hurt. Now maybe you want to say, “NO I DON’T.” It’s offensive, right? We all want to be the kind of person who shows up with band-aids and soup and enough time to really listen and care about what happened. That’s because we’re decent people, and we do care.

But think for a moment about how we respond differently to the kind of hurt that takes a band-aid and that we can see maybe happening to us and the kind of hurt that we never, ever want to touch our lives. We know we’re all going to scrape our knees, be rejected by a crush, get the flu, and lose loved ones. We do what we can to avoid these painful experiences, and we learn as we grow up how to deal with the hurt and how to rely on each other for support.

Then there’s the kind of stuff that we never want to experience and will naturally do anything we can to keep out of our lives. Within this range of experiences, there are some that we understand are uncontrolled, and some that we feel we might be able to control and therefore protect ourselves from. The more we can lump in under our “I can prevent that” category, the safer we feel in the world. So we mentally push as many human traumas into the “I can prevent that” category as possible.

So when something unspeakable happens to someone else, our response to their hurt comes out of this whole internal mix of self-protection combined with our history, our personality, and our natural capacity for empathy. I’m not trying to say that we’re all exactly the same in our responses, because we clearly aren’t.

There are some interesting patterns though. Let’s talk about these patterns in relation to how we respond to unspeakable trauma that we feel absolutely cannot be controlled. For example, a tragic, no-fault car accident. Or when young people are diagnosed with terminal illness. Or natural disasters, like a tornado sweeping through a village at night. These experiences generally bring out our most empathetic responses. We moan, we wring our hands, and we give our money, our time, our furniture, our homes to others. We will give anything needed to help victims of uncontrolled and unpredictable trauma. These are the times when we forget how we used to complain about our neighbors and instead show up at their door with warm, meaningful hugs and enough clean laundry to get them through the week.

Then there’s the way we respond to terrible trauma that we feel could be predicted, avoided, or controlled.

And remember, it’s human nature to convince ourselves that all kinds of bad experiences (if not most) fit in the “preventable” category, because we want to imagine that we can protect ourselves if we’re following the rules.

“Just follow the rules, and no one gets hurt.”

These sets of rules vary by person and place. They serve to make us feel safe in the world. Because we all want to feel like we can create our own safety, right? At least mostly? Maybe barring the tornados, but otherwise yes?

Yes. And so when someone gets hurt, we run it through our mental checklist about whether it could happen to us and make some maybe even unconscious decisions accordingly. We revise our list of personal rules to make sure we’re protected from whatever just happened to them. Who are they? They are the victims of terrible, even unspeakable trauma that the world imagines could’ve been prevented.

And remember, there are always those people who see right through all of this and don’t have grand illusions about our safety in the world, and these people have often been through unspeakable trauma themselves. They are the ones who rush in to help, who don’t judge, and who truly understand. They are the saviors of the truly needy. They are the world’s rock stars, in my opinion.

But then there’s the more common response. The response that comes from a lack of understanding. The kind of response that sounds like this: “Well, she shouldn’t have been on that street after dark.”

Or this: “I’m telling you, she had on a skirt up to here and a shirt down to here! Any girl dressed like that is asking for it.”

Or this: “A man is a man. And you know that little girl is a total flirt.”

Or this: “What gay guy struts around like that in this kind of town. He was begging to get smacked. I mean, they did take it too far. But come on.”

The experience of writing these comments is sickening. I despise the act of tapping them out on my keyboard, and reading them actually does make me feel sick to my stomach. But they’re things people say all the time. I’ve heard this stuff before about myself.

Because everyone wants to imagine that they would never be raped as long as they follow their personal safety rules. Whatever that list is. Don’t go on that street. Don’t go out past 2am. Don’t walk alone at night. These may be good practices—I’m not judging that here. I’m simply saying that you can be following the strictest list of safety rules in the world and still get raped. It’s not entirely controllable. Maybe you can reduce the likelihood, but there will always still be an element of chance.

And that is scary as hell.

There’s also always a chance that our children could be harmed by people who claim to love them. That’s even scarier. And what’s weird about this one is that most of the safety rules we follow to protect our children aren’t the best ones. Anna Salter has a book called Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, And Other Sex Offenders that I highly, highly recommend if you want to add “rules” to your safety list that actually work. Like teaching your children about more than just “stranger danger,” which isn’t statistically where they’re most likely to get hurt. Instead, you can teach your children to be conscious of people who are in their close proximity, to have an open relationship with you, and more.

But there I go getting caught up in trying to help you build a list of safety rules. It’s natural, right? It’s not bad that we want to do that. There are ways to keep ourselves more safe. It’s just that there aren’t really ways to keep ourselves 100% safe from everything no matter how big our lists are.

There’s a chance you could do everything right and still get victimized.

I know because it happened to me.

And I got blamed for it, because if people can make it my fault, then they can imagine that they’re safe because they’re not like me.

This has happened several different times.

The first one I can think of is when my one of my very best friends from sixth grade through college suddenly tried to rape me one night when we were out with a big group of friends.

I’ll never forget the shock of seeing him come toward me naked. I had never seen him naked; we had never even kissed each other on the cheek. I started screaming as I realized that he wasn’t going to listen to me and go away, and then I beat on him and smashed his fingers over and over.

I was lucky that he eventually quit and left. He was an athlete—incredibly big and strong. I was lucky, but what he tried to do broke my heart. I walked around for days in a fog, sobbing off and on uncontrollably. I hated him. I wondered why. I tried to talk to our friends about it. And you know what? No one wanted to talk. No one wanted to believe me, and no one wanted to see me cry. Not a single friend in our tight knit little group was able to open up to it.

And then one friend made the statement I’ll never forget:

“You shouldn’t have stayed with him in the first place.”

That just shook me to the core. Maybe it’s true. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe it’s not true. Maybe we should be able to trust our lifelong friends to defend us instead of trying to take us. Maybe some lifelong friends out there actually do stick up for each other. My mistake was that I believed in him. But if you can’t believe in your lifelong friends, who can you?

And whose fault is that? Mine or his?

I think it’s his fault, for violating everything. For making that terrible choice and for being that kind of person, in secret.

But ultimately, others blamed me for “letting” it happen. And this is because people want to imagine that if you don’t stay overnight with anyone, then you won’t be violated. They want to imagine that so they can follow that rule and then pretend that it will guarantee their safety.

It won’t.

There are no guarantees.

But then there’s the fact that I married a psychopath. I’m too darn trusting, right? I must be an absolute FOOL to imagine that a lifelong friend wouldn’t try to rape me or to be seduced by a psychopath.

Because that would never happen to someone who’s not a fool, right?

Funny, because I still watch my ex seducing high-profile, high-functioning, capable and confident people every single day. He has big people wrapped around every single one of his fingers, and so why not me?

Do we really believe we’re better than that? Do we have to pretend that we couldn’t be seduced? What is the benefit in that?

The benefit, again, is our own sense of safety. The idea that if I follow my rules and don’t let a man with clear attachment issues and piercing eyes take me to his personal sex dungeon (wait, isn’t that a popular fairy tale romance right now?), then I won’t get assaulted, or seduced by a psychopath, or anything like that.

And even though I’m strong, and even though I broke free from my psychopathic ex, and even though I’ve managed to raise my three children to be—so far—stable, loving, mostly secure individuals who have hopes and plans and positive dreams—even though I’ve done all that and feel proud of it, I still get the “victim” label far too often, and I still get blamed.

For example, my ex engages in every tactic of parental alienation. He has been inspiring my children to feel negativity toward me for the past decade.

Any time I’ve asked for help, I’ve been blamed. At least initially. The gut response I get from every professional is this:

“If you were a good mom, your kids would never feel bad about you.”

Or this:

“If you were a good mom, you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

These comments NEVER come from anyone who knows me, my family, or our history. They are the instant remarks that come from a natural response—to blame victims.

But I fight back. I’m not going to be blamed for what’s not my responsibility. I’m not carrying that suitcase around through life. Also, I feel like it’s my duty to educate these people so they can help other families like mine. Because once these professionals get to know me and understand my family and our dynamics, they don’t blame me anymore. Their eyes are opened to parental alienation, and they will do whatever they can to help my children maintain their relationship with me.

Once they know me, they say I’m one of the most amazing moms they ever met.

And that’s quite a drastic swing. It’s just too bad that I have to waste so much time and energy fighting against the most common first impulse, which is to blame the victim.

Why do we blame victims? Because we don’t want it to happen to us. Parental alienation is one of the most devastating things a parent can experience. I know there’s a big list of devastating things. I’m just saying it’s on it. And so no one wants to believe that it could happen to them—everyone wants to believe instead that if you’re a good parent, you will never risk being alienated from your children. It’s on the list we imagine to be “preventable” along with sexual assault and being seduced by a psychopath.

The problem is that none of these things are entirely controllable, and when we imagine that “that could never happen to me,” we fail to understand victims. We leave them isolated, stranded, and even re-traumatized by all the blame.

We tell ourselves stories about victims to make sure that they aren’t like us. We create a psychological distance. You might be doing it now, simply because I’ve listed three ways I’ve been hurt in my life—ways I’ve been a victim—so you might find yourself saying, “Well that woman sure has a pattern of being victimized. So maybe she’s asking for it. I’m glad I’m not like her.”

And writing that makes me smile, actually. Because yes, I’ve been a victim in my life. But that’s not my whole story. I could make this chapter about leadership and talk about three big leadership moments of my life and how people reacted to me in those moments, and then you’d wrap up reading it thinking, “Wow, that woman is a real leader. I want to be more like her.”

My point is that I’m lots of things. Yes, I’m a leader. I’m also a good mother, a writer, a psychotherapist, a daughter, a friend. I’m an athlete and a gardener and an artist. I’m a traveler and an avid hiker and a push-over when it comes to getting another pet. But you know what else I am? A victim. I’ve been traumatized by experiences I didn’t know how to prevent, that I couldn’t control, that tore my heart, and that I ultimately recovered from and recover from still. Like everyone on this planet, I’m a lot of things.

So I’d ask you not to get locked in on the times when I’ve been victimized. Don’t let your mind make that all I am.

I’d also ask you something even more challenging. To take this chapter with you through life. And when you hear about terrible things happening to people, take care of the victims.

And keep blame where it belongs—with the perpetrator. With the one who thought the thought, made the choice, and committed the act.

 

Follow these links to previous chapters and a community of support on Lovefraud.com:

Chapter One: Everyone’s Ex is a Psychopath

Chapter Two: Labels and Lists Might Not Help

Chapter Three: There Are Degrees of Conscience and Empathy

Chapter Four: Richard Parker is Not Your Friend

Chapter Five: Who is a Potential Victim?

Or you can find The Other Side of Charm: Your Memoir at major booksellers.

Chapter Six I Wouldn’t Let That Happen It’s your fault for letting yourself get hurt. Just reading that sentence probably makes you agitated. But people...

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If you’ve checked out 18 Strategies of a Woman in Love and are interested but still not sure if it’s for you, here’s a press...

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Pamela Meyer wrote Liespotting to help us tell when someone’s lying. A reader just shared her TED talk with me today, and I think it’s fascinating. Here’s...

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Chapter 5 Who is a potential victim? Everyone is a potential victim of a psychopath. There are two basic reasons why, and my goal in...

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FREE TODAY. I’ve been writing a lot about dealing with people who have personality disorders from multiple perspectives and across genders. (#psychopaths, #sociopaths, #narcissists) So...

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Here and on Lovefraud.com, I’ve published chapters of a new book that shares my healing journey after leaving a sociopath/psychopath. I talk about things like co-parenting , failed support systems, and how I ultimately recovered peace and happiness despite all obstacles.

Here’s Chapter 5: Who is a Potential Victim?

Everyone is a potential victim of a psychopath. There are two basic reasons why, and my goal in this chapter is to make them clear for you. Why? Because too many people think they can’t be fooled or that they’re too strong to be a victim, and those beliefs put us in danger of being swept away and devastated by a psychopath.

Here are my two points, up front. First, psychopaths handle deception differently, and it catches us off guard. Almost anyone can be fooled, even professionals. Second, the most masterful unincarcerated psychopaths can give a very warm impression and/or they talk incessantly about their values. We are not brought up to anticipate warmth and what seems like patriotism and/or family values from a psychopath. We are not prepared to detect their lies. And that makes us all susceptible.

So let’s talk about deception. How can you tell if someone’s lying to you? Most commonly, people say that they look for shifty eyes or fidgeting. We think that someone will feel agitated while lying and that even if they’re really good at hiding their symptoms, that they will still feel internal agitation in a way that can be measured by instruments attached to the body. Like a polygraph.

Here’s the thing. A psychopath does not feel agitated while lying. So there are no symptoms. No shifty eyes, nothing that can be measured internally… nothing. What a psychopath may feel is elation. There may be a sense of joy in duping you, in getting away with a lie. To a psychopath, that is a WIN, which means power, which means fun! It’s fun to toy with people and watch them twist and turn like little puppets. We (neurotypical people) are looked down upon as stupid, funny fools.

So the reason I say everyone can be a victim of a psychopath is because there’s no way to tell if a psychopath is lying. And most of us are over-confident in our ability to detect lies, anyway. In general, most people overestimate their gut sense of lie detection, and that makes us even more vulnerable.

My family was on vacation in Albuquerque. Wyatt was staying in an amazing resort all week for a conference, and I was staying with extended family who lived out there. We were supposed to have access to his room all week so the kids could enjoy the walk-in gradient pool, water slides, lazy river, and so on. It was an outstanding facility. The problem was that he never called us to say it was ok, and he wouldn’t answer my calls. I was afraid to show up over there because I didn’t want to make anyone in his company angry.

Finally, though, on the morning of the last day, my aunt said, “We’re going,” and basically got a key from the front desk and let us all into his room. She opened the door and walked right through it to the back door, which opened on the pool area. She threw open the shades and the beautiful light of New Mexico streamed across the room as I spotted a woman’s bracelet next to Wyatt’s wallet, cigar, and keys on the table in the front hall. Wow. I gasped a little. Another bracelet. This was the third.

My kids were pulling on my hands, wanting to change.

“Let’s go to the pool! This place is awesome!”

They bounced beside me, and I turned my back on the bracelet. It was gaudy. I took them into the bathroom and started helping them undress.

Wyatt must’ve gotten word that we’d arrived. I could hear him come in the door and give my aunt and uncle loving hugs with lots of happy explanations. They were tense because he hadn’t returned our calls all week, but like so many of us, they were polite. But I only heard their voices for a moment before he was bursting through the bathroom door, bracelet in hand.

“See what I found for you? Look what I found on the golf cart yesterday. I kept it for you. I thought you’d like it.” He held it up to my face and smiled. “See, look what I found for you.”

I blinked at the ugly thing.

“Ok. Interesting that you found yet another bracelet for me.”

The boys were struggling into their shorts at my feet.

“Crazy, right?” He grabbed me for a big hug and then bent over to tickle the boys.

“I’m so glad to see you guys—so glad to see you guys! I’ve been missing you so much! Missing you all week!”

What’s weird about this? Not much, I guess. Unless you remember that he hadn’t answered our calls or texts all week, asking to come play in the fancy resort pool. Unless you can zoom ahead in time and watch him just as confidently telling me a different story about how he found that bracelet.

He was lying.

He was happy.

The second reason we’re so susceptible to psychopaths is easy to explain if you look at images of psychopaths online. From movies to book covers to general images, what you’ll find will tell you a lot about what our general public believes about psychopaths. They are scary.

They have ice-cold eyes. There’s often blood and murder involved. A psychopath might look madly insane and be wielding a butcher knife. A cleaned-up psychopath might look like a slick con-artist with scary eyes. If you cross a psychopath like this, they’ll either give you the worst chills of your lifetime or they’ll kill you.

This is what we expect from psychopaths as a society. That’s why we’re all potential victims.

Just so you know, Wyatt tells me regularly—at least once a month still—that he is a really good person. That I might not believe it, but he is a really good person. He reminds me that he serves on the board of the most highly regarded charitable organization in his county. He reminds me that parents come to him all the time to thank him for setting such a positive example for their children. He tells me how much he loves America and how much better he is at parenting than I am. He tells me to calm down. To smile more. To maybe consider meeting with a minister or counselor to work on becoming a better person. Someone God would deem worthy.

So an unincarcerated psychopath may or may not look like a cheesy, fake, power hungry politician. Some are better at loud proclamations of their family values, while others will play the sweet choir director who is just there to serve. The roles they fill will depend on their goals—which group of people they want to hurt and/or exploit. Now if a scary-looking strange man dressed all in black with greasy hair and an ice-cold gaze walks into a church and asked to spend time with the children there, people worry. But if a quiet natured, baby-faced young minister enters and asks time to spend with the children because he’s led four other youth groups and just loves spending time with families (and hopes to have one someday of his own), people will not worry as much.

Which one is the psychopath?

My point is that you can’t tell. And since unincarcerated psychopaths who are clever enough to avoid detection will not have a record, background checks really won’t help.

That’s why anyone can be a victim. So if you’ve been a victim of a psychopath, there’s no shame in that. And if you haven’t been, count your blessings—but don’t give yourself too many pats on the back for avoiding it. The scary fact is that we’re all susceptible. The more you accept that vulnerability, the more you can actually wake up and protect yourself.

Follow these links to previous chapters on Lovefraud.com:

Chapter One: Everyone’s Ex is a Psychopath

Chapter Two: Labels and Lists Might Not Help

Chapter Three: There Are Degrees of Conscience and Empathy

Chapter Four: Richard Parker is Not Your Friend

Or you can find The Other Side of Charm: Your Memoir at major booksellers.