I just want to write a piece about what happened to me when I had a relationship with someone who I suspect is a sociopath, so that I get help get it out of my system, and so that I can educate anyone else surfing these pages if they have concerns about a relationship they have which doesn’t feel right.

I was going to tell the Whole Story, but I think actually the most important thing to communicate is that if you suspect someone is playing you, as long as you don’t have that perception of all the other people in your life, then they probably are.

The mistakes I made were:

She was an inveterate liar, and I assumed that the lies she told me were due to low self-esteem. Therefore, I never held her to account because I really pitied her.

I spent so much time being conscientious about my own motives and feelings towards her, for a great part of the relationship I felt that I was a bad, paranoid person, and that I was behaving unduly toward her.

She used to say very offensive or disturbing things (i.e. if I say think of a pink elephant, you think of a pink elephant right?), but always qualified it by saying that someone else had told her that and that she “really didn’t want to hear that kind of thing”, and that hearing about that kind of thing made her feel “awful”. People who don’t want to hear about disgusting things don’t talk about disgusting things. Words and actions should roughly match.

There were elements of stalking behaviour. She went out of her way to take the same train as me, even though it made no sense for her to get that train, and at first I was greatly flattered by this, until it became disturbing and I would dread seeing her. It is not normal behaviour if someone is radically changing their routine so that they can be “with you”. The question you have to ask yourself is this: Would you do that so that you could spend more time with someone?

She would never answer a question with a direct answer. Even on the most simple of topics, she would be evasive and elusive (e.g. do you want to have something to eat?).

She would imply that she thought I was liar whenever I said something that hadn’t matched up with what I had said previously (she had an excellent memory, and would often recall conversations we had had that I had nearly forgotten).

She would feign that she was extremely forgetful, but this was palpably not the case (see above). Also, she would often pretend not to understand very simple things (“what does that word mean?”) but at other times she would boast about how well educated she was.

Prior to getting together there was a huge amount of texting between us, after we got together hours would go by before she would answer a text. Also, at that time, she was given a very important deadline, which meant she had no idea when she would be available, whereas previously we had been seeing each other up to four times per week. Obviously it would be really nasty for me to put pressure on her whilst she had such an important deadline.

She had absolutely zero interest in me and my life, once she had got me.

I told her stuff about my childhood, which was used against me during the first confrontation that we had.

Do you (perhaps privately) dread seeing this person? When you socialise with other people, do you often feel a lot happier and at ease with yourself? Do you often wonder if this person really likes you? Are you, at some level, scared of this person, even though they have never been physically violent towards you, and has never called you any names? I would say if you can say yes to two or more of those questions, then you probably have a parasitic relationship, which you need to get out of.

For me personally, despite having several wobbly moments mentally-speaking before, during and after knowing this person, I now feel much, much happier. Nothing is worth a bad relationship.

pepperpot:

There is a subsection within this site about abusive/controlling relationships.

See [www.culteducation.com]