You always have to be careful while dating because you never know how people will change. Unfortunately, these people didn't realize their charming sweetheart was actually a conniving sociopath. At least] they were able to live to tell the tale...
His Methods Didn’t Measure Up To The Madness
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“He was at a party hosted by a friend and he decided that he never wanted to go back home because his parents were too strict. He decided to steal the host’s truck after he fell asleep. The keys were on a table in his friend’s room, but he was worried he’d wake up. So instead, he went to the kitchen, got a long butchers knife, and stabbed his sleeping friend through the heart (but luckily had poor aim). He was so startled that his friend awoke that he ran away without even taking the truck.
He told everyone except me that he was on 15 different illegal substances and there was a fight and he doesn’t remember anything else. But truthfully, he remembers everything. It was all premeditated and he thinks it’s rather a funny story.
After he got out of prison he soon broke his parole. He didn’t want to go to jail again so as they walked him up an outdoor flight of stairs he hurled himself off the second platform onto his skull. It did just enough brain damage to get all charges dismissed and be remanded to the custody of his mother.
He thinks it’s a pretty funny story, too.”
After What He Did To Her Best Friend She Was Absolutely Done With Him
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“In my early 20’s, I dated a guy that was ridiculously charming. He was a veteran and a college graduate. I thought I had found someone extraordinary. However, once we started dating there were cracks in his facade.
He would get angry over the smallest things. He started saying awful things to me thinking that I could relate to this terrible sense of humor. He thought he no longer needed to work because I would happily support him.
It slowly turned into a nightmare. He started drinking heavily and would take absolutely anything to achieve an altered state. He hated where I was from so we moved out west. He stopped working all together and was wasted 90 percent of the time.
He would hit on girls in front of me. Blatantly. He became physically abusive. I was stranded with him and we were living in a crappy motel. Every day was a nightmare. We finally found jobs up north. He decided he couldn’t hack it and needed drinks and illegal substances.
The night he left me he slept with a good friend of mine. She was passed out and he basically violated her. My skin crawls thinking about him and all of the shameless lies he told. I was happily single for four years afterward.
He used to say he was the only one that would date me because I have OCD. He was such a psycho. He’d throw temper tantrums when I refused him drinking money. A lot of warning signs I missed because I was working so much. I’ve been with an incredible guy for five years and have had to change my number and block my Facebook. This guy still thinks he has some bizarre power over me.”
He Couldn’t Believe What She Did As A Kid
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“I was friends with benefits with a sociopath a few years ago.
She was fun to talk to and really vibrant. We had bumped uglies really early on into me knowing her so I just thought she was a bit wild. The only real warning signs I saw in her was her tendency to lash out at people and say really awful stuff to people who ticked her off but I thought, oh that’s just her.
Things started to get weird when I found out just how much she lied, and about little things too. She’d pit friends against each other if she thought that the ‘dynamic’ was changing. She was always a bit controlling but the way she explained why she did things was a bit concerning. It was apparent she just liked being in charge of her friend group and would once again lash out if things didn’t go her way.
I didn’t really find out she was actually a sociopath or had a narcissistic personality disorder until I had a conversation with her mom. Get this, she actually cut off her cats tail when she was in middle school and MICROWAVED a hamster. She’s been in therapy nearly all her life and had severe behavioral issues throughout school. Apparently, around the time we met, she was a lot more mellow than she used to be.
We ended up going our separate ways after a big fight. She had started trying to make it seem as if a friend of mine was cheating on his girlfriend and when she got called out for it she was just laughing it off. I don’t know, she was interesting and way crazy in bed but unfortunately, she was pretty crazy in the day-to-day.”
She Is Afraid Her Son Will Be Just Like Him
“I dated a sociopath for three months before I saw any signs of him being a sociopath. Yes, he was absolutely charming, and sweet, and funny, and witty, and my friends all adored him.
Six months later, I was on the brink of losing my job, had lost almost all of my friends, lost my apartment, and was contemplating suicide. My family was devastated. They tried everything to try and get me to stop seeing him.
The crazy thing is that I had seen so many warning signs that I should run early on, but I chose to ignore them because I really liked him. His own mother had tried to warn me about him, even his ex-girlfriend tried to warn me about him. I just really thought he would be different with me, because I thought I was like no other girl he had dated. I thought I could somehow change him.
Ultimately, I realized it didn’t matter what type of girl he dated because he was the problem. Unfortunately, it took me two incidents of domestic violence, being homeless living out of my car, getting pregnant with his child, and many other countless dark experiences before I was finally able to get out of it.
Now, 12 years later, I am happily married and have full legal and sole custody of our son. The only legitimate fear I have now in raising my son is just how strong his father’s genes are.”
He Tried To Be A Superhero When He Was Actually The Villain
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“I dated a guy who I am 90 percent sure was a sociopath (not diagnosed but had all the signs).
He would find vulnerable girls like myself (who were struggling with depression at the time) and charm them and make them feel special. In my case, I had rejected him multiple times and he just kept asking me out so finally, I said yes. He would constantly tell me I was special and made me very dependent on him. He spoke very well to others – almost too well. He was perfectly mannered like he was out of a textbook.
After six months or so we started fighting. He would say or do things that upset me and when I tried to confront him he would turn it all around on me and blame me for it all and tell me I was just starting drama and deny he ever did anything. He made me question my idea of reality because I was sure these things had been said and done but he denied doing them intensely.
He also tried to delude me into thinking I was too good for people – he told me I was too good for my family and that they were abusive and that he could save me from them. His power revolved around the idea of him ‘saving’ me – and looking back I wasn’t the first girl he had done this to.
At one stage he told me that I should be thankful he saved me from my depression because he had also apparently cured addicts as well. He used to withhold affection from me and wouldn’t talk to me until I apologized for whatever he did and he would threaten to leave me if I didn’t apologize. He believed he was too good for people and things and would often tell me I had done very well to be with him.
He also used the power he had managed to give himself to manipulate people. He manipulated me into fooling around after we broke up with promises of love and then when I finally gave into his multiples requests to get back together, he told me he did not love me anymore, never would again, and neither would anyone else.
He treated me like a child and made all my decisions for me including how I dressed – he would treat me differently when I was dressed nicely than when I wasn’t. I began to notice something was wrong when he wouldn’t be happy for my achievements and instead would expect me to be happy for things he did. However, if I did something good he would downplay it and tell me it was nothing.
An early warning sign should have been that he interfered in and broke up my previous relationship so he could be with me – he believed if he couldn’t have me no one could. He also constantly lied about his life and achievements and still does now.”
She Has To Watch Her Back Every Second Now Because…
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“I currently have a sociopath creeping around me.
We both live in the same college dorm, which is not a very large dorm either. He met me, told me about the ‘funny story’ of his first failed suicide attempt while laughing the entire time.
He once tried to hang himself, but the rope broke and he broke his leg. Afterward, he ran away to Japan. He was observed by the Division of Youth and Family Services and deemed to be a genius but also to be legally insane. He also told me about the tons of fooling around he was doing, including with his ex-girlfriend’s stepmom.
He wanted to ask me out for Valentine’s Day, but my roommate intercepted and told him I was out of it (I wasn’t) but he came back at 4 am I was still awake, using the bathroom, when my roommate burst in yelling, ‘YOU CAN NOT GO OUT INTO THE HALLWAY. HE IS PACING IN FRONT OF OUR DOOR!’
Aaaaaaand that’s where I drew the line. She told him I was sleeping and he should skedaddle, so I made a break for it once he walked away.
His speech and mannerisms are, well, I can only explain it as, ‘serial killer-like.’
He’s just a very…strange…person.”
She Definitely Had The Last Word In This Psychotic Relationship
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“I met him through a mutual acquaintance, years ago. He was really charming and attentive at first, almost suffocating. Looking back, that should have been my first red flag. Wish I had known better.
Then came the sulking, every time I didn’t act/talk/dress/contact him the way he expected me to. Seems he had an imaginary relationship with someone who looked just like me, but with a personality more according to his own tastes.
Honestly, there were so many things. He was also a master of manipulation and blame for every little argument we had. He also kind of blamed me for not being like him, when he knew we came from very different backgrounds.
Anyway, the last straw was whenever he confessed to me that he had killed and tortured small animals in the past to ‘help him deal with his inner pain.’
Last time I heard about him through common acquaintances, he was telling them we will marry soon. Just for the record, I moved abroad and have been married to someone else for quite some time (even have kids), so he should be calling off ‘our’ wedding.”
His Wife’s Friend Was Trying To Take Their Friendship To A Whole New Level
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“My wife was best friends with one while we were dating. The girl was very hands-on with my wife on many occasions and I think she was in infatuated with my wife. I understand why.
There were two incidents where this girl chased us with a knife only to later claim she was just playing. That’s just part of who she was.
The girl’s name was Genna. Genna’s mom was afraid of her, and we didn’t understand why.
Initially, Genna was amazing. She was charming, beautiful, made you feel special like you were the most important person in the universe, and suddenly things just went wrong in your life. She literally looked just like Regina George in Mean Girls, but thinner.
A few times when we were hanging out we, would sit near the same people over and over. Looking back, she was stalking people but she acted like they were stalking her. We totally believed her.
She made herself my best friend as much as my wife’s after she was convinced I wouldn’t go away. When we (wife and I) wanted alone time away from this friend, the girl seemed impatient, and always called in the middle of our outings with an emergency.
At some point, I finally told her we wouldn’t answer during certain hours. Genna didn’t get mean then, she started getting nicer to me. She told me how strong I was. She told me how cool I was. Heck, she tried to seduce me, and even tried to take my hands and put them on her body.
I just didn’t want to be the guy that cheated, so I turned her down. Thank god my brain was louder than my pants area.
She started telling my wife I did these totally believable but horrible things. The thing was, my wife was starting to realize how warped things were. She never had a single friend longer than a week besides this girl, and I was her first boyfriend. I had tons of friends and nobody had a problem with me hanging out with other people.
The second anyone took my wife’s time from her, Genna would accuse these people of doing or saying horrible things.
My wife was so afraid to end the friendship she had me do it. Genna’s last words to me were, ‘Well fine, I guess I should be locked up then,’ and she slammed the phone down, disconnecting.
Years later these strange girls approached me at college to tell me how I ruined this girl’s life. Baffled, I asked who I had hurt. It was my wife’s ex-best friend. The story was that I made her cut herself and she had a nervous breakdown after I stalked her, and she was institutionalized over it.
I finished school and moved. I never had much of an online profile, so I haven’t seen or heard from her in over a decade, but I did run into her mom. Genna was institutionalized, but it had nothing to do with me. She was also anorexic and needed treatment for that plus ‘other stuff.’ Her mom said that she was getting married. Poor guy.”
“She’d Talk Her Way Out Of Anything”
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“I think that if my ex-girlfriend wasn’t a sociopath, she was definitely on her way there. She was very fun, sparking and mischievous, and very exciting to be around before we got together and in the first months of our relationship. We really clicked and had all kinds of fun adventures.
But I realized after a while that we were only doing things that she wanted to do. And that was ok, initially. I was a really laid back kind of girl back then but over time I noticed that we only did what she wanted to do. In the event we didn’t do what she wanted to do, whatever it was, then she had a whole arsenal of wheedling, whining, and persuading to roll out.
When that stopped working she turned to belittling, degrading, and emotional manipulation. She ground me down. She’d keep me up late at nights when I had an early start and then scream and shout at me if I woke her to leave for work (she didn’t have to get up for hours after me).
Everything became about controlling me. She stopped caring about whether or not I liked her or thought well of her and just began to indulge in pushing me around. She’d begun to keep tabs on my interactions with my few remaining friends and banned me from keeping a blog. She would even read through my phone and wanted access to my emails.
She flew into a jealous rage when I had any social interaction that wasn’t with her and had a great knack of making everything my fault. I began to find that she’d just straight up lied about a lot of things at the start of our relationship to get me interested.
I wasn’t permitted to do anything without her and we had to go everywhere together. I had to be present at all times so she could make sure I wasn’t ‘talking about her’ to people. We’d go out with her friends (never with mine anymore) and she’d keep me off in a corner and pretend that I wasn’t her girlfriend so that she could flirt with other people and would scream and shout at me about how selfish and petty I was being if I asked her not to.
Her ego was massive and completely out of control; I can’t even begin to cover some of the totally mental things that she did just to keep me doing what she told me to do. And the more she controlled me, the less she respected me and the more she felt excused in abusing me.
She was manipulative to the point that I still struggle to believe that anyone could be that incredibly unkind and self-involved, but that was how she did things. After a year and a half, I’d been reduced to a shell of my former self. I was the first person who’d ever dumped her and I’m still a little bit proud of that.
She went off to medical school and I cut her out of my life completely as soon as I could. She was nothing but a poison and probably the most devastatingly narcissistic person I’ve ever met. It took me years to recover from the abuse and, even a decade later, I still catch myself in one of her little mind-traps.
She was only 23 years old back then. I dread to think what she’s become now.”
His Two-Timing Days Were Over
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“After two months, I accidentally introduced myself to his other girlfriend, who had no idea I existed.
Backstory: S started talking to me on OKCupid. His profile indicated that he was single and he perpetuated that story the entire time we dated. Once we met in real life, we got close quickly. At first, things went great, though he came with a lot of baggage. Each week seemed like a new bombshell: he was a dad (but didn’t have a relationship with the mother or child, per the mother’s request); he had previously been an adult entertainer but he was no longer doing that work, just on and on.
I could handle all this because I felt like he was being honest with me. I also understand that people have a past.
S would always tell me how grateful he was to have me in his life when it seemed like so many others had abandoned him. Even the one friend he had (an ex-girlfriend, T) was starting to be crazy and he was thinking of cutting her out of his life.
Then S started getting flaky. I’d invite him out and he’d flake last minute. Always an excuse – his phone would die, someone was sick, this or that. I started getting the sense that something was up, but couldn’t put my finger on what, exactly. I had given S several opportunities to end things, but he always insisted that I was so important to him and that he was happy to have me in his life.
I decided to get some perspective on what I should do by talking to the one friend of his that I had any real info about, his ex T. I had never met her, but I had figured out which bar she worked at, so I went in to talk to her. When I introduced myself to T, she had never heard of me, and it turned out she was S’s girlfriend, too.
Both of us were pretty shocked. Later that same night, she called him up and confronted him, with me right there. One of the most awkward situations of my life. He refused to acknowledge I’d been dating him. Worse, he had lied to me about his relations, including not wearing protection while fooling around other people including ladies of the night. Thank God I always wore protection when fooling around with him. UGH.”
“In The Beginning, He Was Kind” But Then…
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“I met him when I was 14 years old and he was 19 years old.
In the beginning, he was kind. He made me smile and I got excited whenever he talked to me. He complimented me and he made me feel special. He would draw me in by telling me things he never told anyone else and by being someone I could rely on.
I was vulnerable and stupid. I believed him when he told me he was a popular model with lots of money. He used to talk to himself a lot. I could hear everyone he talked to, but sometimes he would talk to people and I couldn’t hear anyone no matter how hard I listened. The scary part is that he actually claimed people were there, and they weren’t.
A month in, he started to change. He would say things to me and if I brought up what he said, even in the midst of a delightful conversation, he would scream at me and call me a liar. His entire mood would change at the slightest off-key breath.
He tried to leave me under the excuse that I changed. He told me I didn’t answer things the same way and that I didn’t do things the same way. He hung up on me multiple times because of this and would ignore me for hours and days, then he would magically answer and act like nothing happened and then repeat the process.
It gradually got worse and worse. He stopped letting me go out, at first by being passive-aggressive. He would nicely ask me to stay home and made me feel guilty if I didn’t by saying he wasn’t going to answer his phone when I got home. Then later, he caused me to miss my friend’s graduation party because apparently, I wasn’t invited. I was personally invited, but he yelled at me and told me nobody would care if I didn’t go and that my friend didn’t even want me there.
He would constantly berate me when I went out against his wishes. Between not being dressed appropriately and apparently flirting with boys, he decided that I had to be supervised. He started having people stalk me. I found out when he brought up the fact when I made a new friend at school and that I hadn’t told him. He said he knew it was a boy. He knew what he looked like and his friends. Cue paranoia. I’m still under the impression that he has people watching me.
He kept me because I was lonely. I thought I loved him and I was willing to sacrifice my life for him, and he played that to his advantage. I attempted to overdose, and when I told him, he called me a liar. I had trouble telling him during the conversation and he saw that as me making up a lie.
He threatened to call the cops on me and have them put me in a psych ward because only a crazy girl would lie about overdosing. It resulted in me leaving my phone at home while a few acquaintances came and picked me up to get me away from him. He called me the next day and acted like nothing happened. I never told him about any further attempts after that.
Later on, he would have me send him money. I thought it would be worth it and I liked the gratitude. I sent him well into hundreds of dollars that went into him buying cat food for his cat girlfriend. No kidding. He had an obsession with his cat. He called her the love of his life and he would have laid himself in front of a train for her. And he spent every dollar on her. I liked the cat, too, she was cute, but he would get angry if I showed her to anyone. Unreasonably angry. It was his cat and nobody was allowed to look at her or touch her unless he said so.
I sent him everything dear to me. Old toys, my Nintendo DS, everything. And I hate myself for it. I will never get those things back. Ever. All of my memories are in a strange house with an abusive psychopath and his cat and I’ll never cherish them again.
About a year before I left him, my self-esteem was so low that I felt obligated by nature to stick around. I never Left my apartment. I sat in my room for an entire summer only getting up to shower, eat, and doing what he wanted of me.
I left him the following summer after I finally realized I was done wasting my time and I’ve never looked back.”
She Just Didn’t Know What She Wanted, So She Did A 180
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“We were friends way back in college. It turned out she had several friends with benefits situations going on at the same time so I ended it (for my own health). After that, she flipped 180 degrees and started telling people she was in love with me and that I rejected her because of that.
I found it rather strange and foolishly believed her lies that she had feelings for me but I still wasn’t planning on being with her. We went separate ways but stayed in touch.
Two years out of college, we hung out once and she brought me back to her place. Cue one month of torture. She told me about her physically abusive ex-boyfriend and literally cried about him for several hours per day. She then told me that dating me was unfair to him and we had to break it off.
After dealing with her bull, I was gone. She went around saying that I was abusive and jealous.
She’s an expert manipulator with impulse control and anyone who tells her what she’s doing is wrong is ‘trying to control her.’
I’ve seen her cry in front of her friends then when they leave she starts spewing the venom they never see. I’m apparently ‘bitter’ for cutting off all communication with her but I’m happy I’m free.”
If Only Parents Listened To Their Children…
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“My dad was in a serious relationship with one when I was a teenager. She was very sweet at first and got along with me pretty well. A few months into their relationship, my dad got into a tough spot and the only solution was moving in with her.
The first couple months of us all living together were pretty okay. There were some new expectations I hadn’t had before, but I figured that was to be expected. After a while though, she would start to snap. It would only happen when my dad was working and it was just her and I at home. She would ask me to do something, I would say something to the effect of, ‘sure thing, I’ll get right on that,’ and then suddenly it would be like a bomb just went off. She would explode into an absolute rage that I was being disrespectful, that she shouldn’t have to ask me to do things, I should just do them. I’d be reduced to tears and hide in my room until my dad came home. When he did, she would immediately run to him and tell him all about how disrespectful I’d been to her. By the time she was finished, he’d be so angry that I’d never be able to get a word in to defend myself. This would happen about once every two weeks.
Once, she became consumed with the idea that someone had her diet soda. I don’t know where this came from, since the soda was still in the fridge, untouched. That didn’t stop her from screaming at me the entire 25-minute drive to school that I was stupid, fat, and worthless. By the time I got out of the car, I was so upset that I was sent straight to the office before I even got to homeroom. The guidance counselor suggested I write a letter to her and my dad, in order to show that I ‘don’t appreciate’ being screamed at that I’m stupid, fat, and worthless. I wrote the letter and showed it to my dad, who talked to his girlfriend, who of course denied everything.”