Break up gone bad

[mustlovedogs]

This doesn't relate to me. It just happened in my state and it has me creeped out.

 

Yesterday, two 18 year olds were reported missing. The parents of the girl were worried because they suspected she was with her ex, who she had just dumped.

 

Today, they found him. With a body in his pickup.

 

His Facebook is open so I was looking at it. He looked like a nice, respectable kid. Lots of friends. Has his (ex) girlfriend in his profile picture.

 

I don't know what kind of discussion can ensue from here. It's just crazy to me - how do you know if the one you love(d) is capable of this? How can you protect yourself in a breakup if you need it?

 

it just creeps me out.

[Wiseman2]

Read "The Mask of Sanity" and "The Sociopath Next Door". In The Mask of Sanity, a psychiatrist describes the psychopathic person as outwardly a perfect mimic of a normally functioning person, able to mask or disguise the fundamental lack of internal personality structure, an internal chaos that results in repeatedly purposeful destructive behavior.

[mustlovedogs]

That's what's so crazy to me! A perfect mimic means it would be so hard to know.

[reinventmyself]

That is scary.

I wish I had a great answer to that.

Over the years I have learned to listen to my gut.

 

I'll bet if those kids had a voice they could tell you something, anything about this guy that didn't seem right.

 

Even if you can't articulate it, it's more of a subtle sense that something is amiss.

It's that little voice you need to listen to.

I get a sick sense when someone is telling me something they think I want to hear.

 

My friend is dating someone that every time he talks to me I feel like he is trying to sell me something.

I don't like him. . it's that sick, weird sense I have about him.

 

That and time. Take your time.

Don't trust anyone until they have given you really solid reasons to.

[Hermes]

"Psychopaths, on the other hand, are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature.

 

When committing crimes, psychopaths carefully plan out every detail in advance and often have contingency plans in place. Unlike their sociopathic counterparts, psychopathic criminals are cool, calm, and meticulous. Their crimes, whether violent or non-violent, will be highly organized and generally offer few clues for authorities to pursue. Intelligent psychopaths make excellent white-collar criminals and "con artists" due to their calm and charismatic natures. "

 

From:

 

 

 

" Psychopaths : they know what you’re feeling, but don’t feel it themselves. “This all gives certain psychopaths a great advantage, because they can understand what you’re thinking, it’s just that they don’t care, so they can use you against yourself.” (Chillingly, psychopaths are particularly adept at detecting vulnerability. A 2008 study that asked participants to remember virtual characters found that those who scored highly for psychopathy had a near perfect recognition for sad, unsuccessful females, but impaired memory for other characters.)"

 

"Psychopaths seem to suffer a kind of emotional poverty that limits the range and depth of their feelings. At times they appear to be cold and unemotional while nevertheless being prone to dramatic, shallow, and short-lived displays of feeling. Careful observers are left with the impression they are playacting and little is going on below the surface."

[Itchy]

Don't trust anyone until they have given you really solid reasons to.

 

Never trust anybody fully, even your own parents is my advice to people. The only person any of us can fully trust is ourselves.

[mustlovedogs]

That is scary.

I wish I had a great answer to that.

Over the years I have learned to listen to my gut.

I'll bet if those kids had a voice they could tell you something, anything about this guy that didn't seem right.

Even if you can't articulate it, it's more of a subtle sense that something is amiss.

It's that little voice you need to listen to.

 

That and time. Take your time.

Don't trust anyone until they have given you really solid reasons to.

 

Yes, I agree 100%. I trust my gut usually, even if I can't articulate quite what is wrong.

 

Which brings me to another point. I don't know how to say it delicately, since this online. But I've seen a number of posts of desperate guys doing anything to get their ex back - sometimes fiercely pursuing them against the woman's wishes. The term creepy gets thrown around, and the OP usually gets offended.

 

Stories like this need to be remembered when someone gets called creepy. Even if the situation would never, ever escalate to murder, being creeped out is a gut response...

[greta96]

You just don't know.

Sometimes, there are warning signs, other times, you get a gut feeling and cut ties before something drastic happens, but in a lot of cases you just don't know. Many times, when crimes are committed, you hear those who knew the murderers say "s/he was such a nice, quiet friendly person", " I would have never expected them to do something like this", etc... It's scary to think so many dangerous people go about their lives fooling everyone into thinking they are normal and charming.

This is why it baffles me when I hear so many people who do online dating say how they met someone for the first time and then went home with them and had sex...I mean, they are strangers you know nothing about! Even those you know fairly well can surprise you and kill you in a bout of anger, but strangers?

It's plain frightening.

[Hermes]

Just to point out that only a small number of psychopaths actually commit murder. They are the cases that hit the headlines.

 

So dangerous are the majority who destroy, damage, take advantage of and hurt people who are unfortunate enough to get involved with them. So glib and convincing are these characters that even the smartest people can get conned, although it is more likely that the desperate and the lonely are their preferred target. And they have some kind of instinct where they are able to smell out that kind of "victim" a mile off....

"The surface of the psychopath... shows up as equal to or better than normal and gives no hint at all of a disorder within. Nothing about him suggests oddness, inadequacy, or moral frailty," psychiatrist Hervey M. Cleckley wrote in his 1941 seminal work, The Mask of Sanity. [/i]

[ParisPaulette]

True it's scary BUT the fact is it's not true, that whole "He/she seemed soooo nice." As you go through life you will know when there is something wrong with people, it's just our natural default setting (and I have no idea why this is, really) seems to be open trust of everyone and applying the same standards to everyone that we ourselves have.

 

If you aren't a sociopath or psychopath that pretty much leaves any understanding of these types out of the mix until and unless you have to deal with them.

 

But if you have ever encountered anyone who made the hair stand up on the back of your neck or you thought, "Wait did they really just say that? That can't be right, maybe I misheard..." OR you know someone that you just never feel good around, but you or others shout your common sense down and you keep going out with them anyways.…

 

Yeah, then you have been there before.

 

My guess is the very reasons this guy killed his ex are the exact same reasons she broke up with him to begin with.

 

If you read through the forums here after awhile you'll see some pretty unsettling stuff on here, people making excuses for their partner who is doing criminal things or possibly molesting someone or worse. And yet, they'll just be grasping at straws to explain and defending the person instead of just stating the obvious, "There is something wrong with this person, I know it, but I just don't it to be true and so I am doing my best to rationalize their behavior."

 

And that's really what this all boils down to. You need to be able to see red flags, you need to just let people prove they can be trusted, and if someone for whatever reason makes you uneasy or you think, "I don't know if I should continue..." pay attention. Before you get a year down the line, try to break up with them because now you do know they have serious problems, and yeah.

 

Another great book in addition to the ones Wiseman mentioned is "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker. It's one of the best I've ever seen at pointing out that most people actually have decent intuition, we do usually know if someone is short one fry of a happy meal and pretty quickly, but we then shout our own intuition down and barrel head on into danger anyways.

[j.man]

No way to know. I mean theoretically my girlfriend could grab a knife and stab me in my sleep whenever she felt like it. I have no idea how she hasn't yet, but thankfully she hasn't.

[mustlovedogs]

My questions were generally more rhetorical just to make a point. I agree with Paris - she probably saw something that made her uneasy and she ended it.

 

Do you remember the Aurora theatre shooting? (Batman premier). The guy who committed the crime LOOKED creepy. But this guy - he is just a tall, slightly lanky, blonde, 18 YO white guy. From his Facebook you can see he loved his girlfriend and his truck (like most 18 YOs do). He didn't look creepy.

[ParisPaulette]

He didn't look creepy.

 

Most serial killers and criminals don't. They all just look like regular people, because they are regular people except whatever drives them to do bad things isn't present in the rest of us, I guess. Or they had problems all along or.or.or. There are entire fields devoted to what makes a person do bad things and I'm not sure it's ever going to be fully answered one way or another.

 

Also keep in mind the pics you see of people doing bad things in the media probably often have been kind of cherry-picked to make someone look worse. If you passed that person on the street you would very seldom even notice them. Sort of like when they do those stories about how terrible a celeb is doing and they go for the most unflattering photo possible. Mind you it was probably taken when the celeb was sick with the flue that day, out for a quick walk to clear their head, and they'd been on set for 18 hours straight.

 

I worked 16 years in a women's shelter. The most terrifying people I me there, both men AND women, were often the most innocuous looking ones or even yes the good-looking ones. They got to hide in plain sight of "Well, surely this person isn't capable of having tied their boyfriend to a bed and set it on fire." Or, "Of course he didn't beat wife within an inch of her life, look at them, he always brings her flowers every night. He'd never do that." (These are things I've actually had people say to me during some really horrific cases we were handling at the time.)

 

It isn't how someone looks, looks mean nothing, it's what is on the inside and that often escapes through their mouths or body language that is the red flags to watch for. Most people and mammals do communicate their thoughts and attitudes in a number of nonverbal and verbal ways. That's what one should pay attention to, but most of us just kind of walk around blundering into danger anyways.

 

Seriously, sometimes I think it's a wonder there's any human race left.

[Hermes]

Indeed.

 

"What is most striking about psychopaths, as opposed to other disordered or deranged individuals, is how well they blend into the rest of society, to use, dupe and harm other human beings. Their glibness and charm, as well as their uncanny ability to lie convincingly, makes them the perfect wolves in sheep’s clothing. Cleckley observes, “More often than not, the typical psychopath will seem particularly agreeable and make a distinctly positive impression when he is first encountered. Alert and friendly in his attitude, he is easy to talk with and seems to have a good many genuine interests. There is nothing at all odd or about him, and in every respect he tends to embody the concept of a well-adjusted, happy person. Nor does he, on the other hand, seem to be artificially exerting himself like one who is covering up or who wants to sell you a bill of goods."

 

"Not only do psychopaths tend to be extraordinarily charismatic, but also they can appear to be rational, levelheaded individuals. They usually talk in a way that shows common sense and good judgment. “Very often indications of good sense and sound reasoning will emerge and one is likely to feel soon after meeting him that this normal and pleasant person is also one with high abilities,” Cleckley continues"

 

Very very difficult to detect.