Psychopaths do their work on you in various ways – one is to isolate the victim from other people who may support her or alert her to what is going on. This means cutting off family ties where possible. Mr W did this to me by firstly setting up house with me away from my parents. The second stage was to send me to live in France on my own under the pretext that he loved me so much, couldn’t bear to be apart from me, yadda yadda yadda. Mr W would also vet any of my friends or anyone who could become a friend. He would sow doubts in my mind about people who came into my sphere – this one you can’t trust, this one is after your body, this one is out for what he can get, etc etc. When doing that he was of course telegraphing me about HIS qualities!! Psychopaths will project their qualities onto other people so that the others are liars, the others are gold-diggers, the others cannot be trusted when all along they are telling their own life story. When you are out of a relationship with a Psychopath you look back on all the things he said and you recognise that he was telling you a lot about himself but you just didn’t register it at the time.
I was further isolated when Mr W encouraged me to leave my well paid job – the cutting off of my independence was crucial to his overall plan of CONTROL, DOMINANCE and POWER. These are the goals of Psychopaths – control, dominance and power are achieved through 1 status – which also means money; 2 fear – once you are isolated you fear that you will not survive without the Psychopath; 3 emotional manipulation – Mr W would play mind games to unsettle and confuse me, he played on my weaknesses.
If you are ill or need some help you will see another side to Mr Wonderful. This is after the assessment/honeymoon phase so he is feeling pretty sure about you and how you will react. My knee was dislocated by my two dogs running full pelt at me, I managed to pop it back myself and had to hobble home. Mr Wonderful could of course gone to fetch the car but he did not suggest that – RED FLAG #1. When I got back to the house the pain was worse and I had to go to bed. Mr Wonderful sat at the end of the bedroom and complained bitterly that I had spoilt HIS holiday! – RED FLAG #2. After a day or two and I was still bedridden – I could not walk, I had to shuffle about to get to the bathroom and tackling stairs was completely out until I could somehow manoeuvre myself to get down the stairs on my bottom – I had to be pretty ingenious – I asked Mr Wonderful (you know, the man who said he was madly in love with me, why hadn’t he met me 20 years earlier and his life would have been perfect, blah blah blah) to post a bill payment for me. He sat in the chair at the end of the bedroom and proceeded to question me about where the post box was, how far it was, he didn’t have time to go to the post box, why was I being so selfish and asking him to do this, he was doing enough . . . RED FLAG #3. It took just over a year for my knee to fully recover and I had to survive on my own in France all that time. Just a month or so after my accident I was able to limp around but it was still painful for me, I could not walk very far and I am known as a good walker, I could walk for miles before the accident. I went to my daughter’s graduation in Southampton with Mr Wonderful and my parents. I had forgotten something in the car and because of my knee I could not go and get it for myself, Mr Wonderful suddenly threw a tantrum – why should he go and get it, he claimed he was being treated like a servant etc etc. This was supposed to be a family occasion but Mr Wonderful wanted to be the centre of attention and in effect he destroyed the occasion for us - RED FLAG # 4.
All the above had to do with my knee injury – not something I had done on purpose but boy was I paying for it!!!
To be continued . . .
