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I have a friend whos ex boyfriend is a complete sociopath.
He recently ditched her and their 3 kids and ran off to texas with another girl. She took him for child support, so he tried to get back with her so she'd drop the child support, proposed to her she accepted. Two weeks later he ran off with another girl- after he'd got a note from his doctor saying he was disabled so he would be exempt from paying child support for a year.
So now shes working as a waitress to support 3 kids with no money from him, with bed bugs in her apartment because she hasnt got the money to move out. and he wont give her any money- but still expects to see the kids and freaked out saying hed kill himself because she went on a date with another man.
He was using his new girl for her car.
not a sociopath. Trust me, I have a graduate degree in psychology and work as a clinical psychologist. Sociopaths have no emotions. At all. No remorse. No love. Sociopaths generally try to lead normal lives, and for the most part succeed at faking genuine emotions that they know they are supposed to feel. Sociopaths sometimes end up as serial killers, because no guilt really exists in their minds to stop them. Most don't, however, because they know there will be consequences. If he were truly a sociopath, he wouldn't have taken this ostentatious course of action. He would likely pretend to be a normal man in love with his normal wife and not cause a scene. But, in the odd scenario where he would run off, it likely wouldn't be with another woman, and he wouldn't care about seeing the kids, because he has no genuine love or attachment to them, or anyone else. He also wouldn't likely threaten to kill himself. People are driven to suicide by negative emotions. A sociopath has no emotions, and therefore no drive to commit suicide.
Probably neither, he is likely a narcissist. Plus, those terms mean the same thing: a person with antisocial personality disorder. Neither of those terms is in the DSM-IV as an official diagnosis.
Y'all seem to not get what a sociopath is. In our office, when we get questions about antisocial personality disorder, we direct our clients to an unlikely source for reference: television, specifically the show Dexter on Showtime. Dexter is about a bloodstain pattern analyst for Miami police who kills serial killers in his spare time. He is a classic case of antisocial personality disorder. Only his father realizes that he has it. His sister does not. His girlfriend does not. And he does not harm them. He plays the part of perfectly nice, normal person perfectly well. His father helps him become a functional human being, and helps him learn how to fake emotion and what he should and shouldn't do. However, Dexter has violent tendencies, and he channels them by killing serial killers who are left unpunished or underpunished by the justice system he works for. Of course, this case would not happen in real life, as Dexter in real life would have probably gotten caught murdering a serial killer, and most sociopaths do not kill or commit other serious crimes. But, the personality of the character Dexter and how he interacts with those close to him is very accurate in its portrayal of a sociopath.
well, i don't remember exactly but i know that they met through friends i guess. she had just came to america and so did he. he really wasn't doing well when he met her cause he said he was homeless, shuffling around down the eastern seaboard for sometime prior to him meeting my mom. i don't know why my mom stayed with him for this long to be honest with you. she said that she was afraid to be a single parent or that she was scared to be alone. something like that.
yes but i wouldn't say that it has affected me to the point where i'm real screwed up. if i'm screwed up, it would have to be unrelated to who i am today even though certain things my parents have passed down to me such as anger issues.
Just from my experience with anger, it is something that can be passed down. The behavior that is learned is poor to no communication and expecting people to know or do better.
Probably neither, he is likely a narcissist. Plus, those terms mean the same thing: a person with antisocial personality disorder. Neither of those terms is in the DSM-IV as an official diagnosis.
I gotcha. I just thought I remembered something about a psychopath being born that way and a sociopath being molded that way by their experiences with society.
I'm a psychologist, and it seems like he may just be an extreme narcissist. most people with antisocial personality disorder ("sociopath" and "psychopath" have fallen out of favor) are much better at hiding this from people than the man you are describing. They are almost without exception very good at faking genuine emotion. I have seen statistics that say that most people probably know a sociopath and don't realize it. Narcissists, however, see the world as revolving around them, and it usually is fairly obvious to people close to them. Try to think back to a time when your father did something wrong, and try to discern if he felt any genuine remorse. Some very extreme narcissists will feel very limited remorse for their own actions, but the most important difference between a narcissist and a sociopath is that sociopaths have no emotions. They are incapable of love, guilt, sadness, and happiness. Narcissists, however, are capable of emotion.
In either case it's no one good to be married to.
But, just some general advice, don't go throwing around terms and diagnoses you found on the internet. Consult a real-life psychologist. WebMD can only help so much. Also, this thread seems a little pointless, no one is going to come on and say "Hey, this is weird, I thought sociopaths were excellent people to be around!"
are you sure he's a narcissist though? there's a lot of things that he does which are just flat out wrong and he seems to not think he did squat wrong.
i'll give you an example. last year, my mom went to some trip by herself to maryland to some program or whatever. the night before it happened. the toilet stopped working. it wouldn't flush. we all wondered what the hell went wrong with the toilet because it was working perfectly fine prior to that night. we were all wondering what happened and my father being who he is and i immediately knew that he must have been behind it because i couldn't see anybody else in my home doing such a thing pretended like he didn't do squat. he even blamed my bro and me behind that mess. next thing you know after getting this snake thing or whatever, we find a damn huge plug that was shoved down the toilet. we all know who was behind it but my father straight up lied to our faces and didn't seem to give a damn that he damaged the toilet. all just to keep my mom home because he didn't want her to leave the house.
then there were the multiple times my father accused my mother of cheating on him and making up all sorts of stories, lies or whatever and at one point was stalking her and following her around. he even called my mom's job and threatened some dude that my mom works with telling him all sorts of whatever. as far as i know, he has always done this stunt every single time my mom makes an effort to better herself such as when she enrolls in school or whatever. he did that to her when i was a baby.
then there's the fact that he seems to want to know about my whereabouts as well as my mom's and my brother's yet he doesn't even have a cell phone and when we gave him one, he let it collect dust. at one point, he straight up told me right to my face that he was happy that he didn't even use the cell phone we brought him. he likes to go about to wonder whereever doing who knows what.
and i don't know about his emotional state. he seems to know how to act really well. there was the time when he left his mother high and dry on her death bed, don't know what the story between them is.. supposedly his mother abandoned him or something like that, and then when he got the news that his mother died. he was running around the house crying then looking at me as if i'm supposed to feel sorry for him when he didn't give a ship about his mom when she was alive. then there's the times when he acts nice to my mom trying to get something from her and then the next second, he makes his motives obvious where he asks to borrow money, he can't pay a bill or whatever.
he lies a lot too. he tells a lot of stories without any factual proof. he likes to change his lifestory a lot. the last time he told me that he was a mechanic back in the country he came from as well as he was some bank manager that owned a lot of banks in the country he came from. he also has a lot of stories that appear to be made up and are straight lies. he just tells them just to tell them and i can sense that he's just insulting me or trying to make a fool out of my intelligence.
then there's times when he looks for attention where he'll be singing songs or laughing out loud or trying to talk to me about a damn tv show that i'm not even watching when i'm focusing on something else.
in all honesty, does that sound like a complete narcissist because to me, it doesn't. i just think dude is really good at doing what he does because he seems to know when to do it and who to do it with.
Last edited by the nation is still angry; 09-03-2011 at 11:19 PM..
it kind of does, why would he crying about his mother is not capable of emotion? this is the most important distinction, if you think that he was having a genuine emotional struggle with the death of his mother, then he cannot be a sociopath. If he was a sociopath, and he was faking the emotion, it probably would not have been as complex a reaction: why would he make his fakery any more complicated than it needed to be? It send to me he has a strong desire for control, which is why he demands to know where throne is all the time and didn't want your mother to go to maryland. This does not make him a sociopath. No doubt he is messed up though. It's hard to diagnose without input and interaction with your dad and other members of your family, as well as more information. But I'm reasonably sure he's not a sociopath.
it kind of does, why would he crying about his mother is not capable of emotion? this is the most important distinction, if you think that he was having a genuine emotional struggle with the death of his mother, then he cannot be a sociopath. If he was a sociopath, and he was faking the emotion, it probably would not have been as complex a reaction: why would he make his fakery any more complicated than it needed to be? It send to me he has a strong desire for control, which is why he demands to know where throne is all the time and didn't want your mother to go to maryland. This does not make him a sociopath. No doubt he is messed up though. It's hard to diagnose without input and interaction with your dad and other members of your family, as well as more information. But I'm reasonably sure he's not a sociopath.
I'm not quite sure how distinguishable the difference between narcissists and sociopaths is as far as faking emotions. Narcissists are pretty good at that, too.
it kind of does, why would he crying about his mother is not capable of emotion? this is the most important distinction, if you think that he was having a genuine emotional struggle with the death of his mother, then he cannot be a sociopath. If he was a sociopath, and he was faking the emotion, it probably would not have been as complex a reaction: why would he make his fakery any more complicated than it needed to be? It send to me he has a strong desire for control, which is why he demands to know where throne is all the time and didn't want your mother to go to maryland. This does not make him a sociopath. No doubt he is messed up though. It's hard to diagnose without input and interaction with your dad and other members of your family, as well as more information. But I'm reasonably sure he's not a sociopath.
this is what i'm trying to say. if he geninuely felt some emotion about his mother, he would have tried to reconnect with her all the times she called him begging to reconcile with him while she was on her death bed. obviously his conscience would bother him either to do so and apparently, it didn't. she would call every week and he refused to have anything to do with her and let her know so. that to me says more than enough. that's why i don't believe all that he did when he got the word that she passed away. it's not like she just reappeared out of nowhere because she's been trying to reestablish a connection with from for like over 10 plus years prior to her death. he was all looking at me too going like with his nose running like i'm supposed to hug him and stuff. i think he was looking for the attention and he was acting it. there was also a time about 3 years ago where he faked a heart attack, called the ambulance, went to the hospital, etc only for them to say he was okay and left my mom to foot the hospital bill. all this because they were arguing over some bills he couldn't pay or her not caring enough about father's day or his birthday or something. i forgot but it was over something that he didn't agree with so he pulled that stunt. my thing is if someone had a conscience, how could they do something like that? either his emotional state is screwed up or he is a real good actor that knows how to scheme in order to get what he wants. i thought a sociopath was defined as someone not having a conscience and knows how to put on an act but it's used to deceive people into whatever.
Last edited by the nation is still angry; 09-04-2011 at 01:34 AM..
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he did when he got the word that she passed away. it's not like she just reappeared out of nowhere because she's been trying to reestablish a connection with from for like over 10 plus years prior to her death. he was all looking at me too going like 
