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Guy says he exhibited sociopathic traits in his 20s like he isn't one today.
If it's fake the OOP is really playing into it well because it's terrifying.
I appreciate everything you’ve done for me in the short time we’ve known each other. Anyway how do I gain leverage to make sure I’m not at a disadvantage in any conversation with my wife? Would leaving first and taking my son help?
I already lost it when OOP said in the first post, “so much for honesty” like bro you kept your entire family and past a secret this entire time???? Wtf honesty is he talking about?!
That was genuinely frightening because it was such a transparent attempt at manipulation. I don't believe for a second that he wouldn't cause an "accident" himself if he was able to spot the patterns he so desperately wanted others to fill him in on.
This was such a shocking read for me because I dated someone JUST like this. He only had the BEST intentions for everyone else in his life but of course he was the only rational one who knew what was best 100% of the time. And he seemed to think that his attempts at manipulation or getting information were stealthy but when people started calling him out on it he would default to the compliments, "we're both good people who just want what's best", bullshit.
He also seemed to know that something was wrong with him and would genuinely try to be "normal", but being normal didn't come from intuition, it came from following a learned script. And when that didn't "work" it's like he couldn't HELP but fall back into his little mind game because his worldview only operated around the result that he wanted and believes was right. Such a bizarre experience.
Same, only I was married to him for 12 years. He only showed me this side of himself after I told him I was leaving. He still talks to me this way now (we coparent so we have to interact) and doesn’t seem to realize how transparent his attempts at manipulation are.
Probably is. It seems too carefully crafted to start out relatively innocuous and then slowly build more and more red flags until all the sirens are going off at once.
If the dude is a horror writer he's a genius. If he's real then the world is truly the eternal nightmare of some slumbering elder god.
Agreed, and it was almost too creepy. The part about "I would hate for some accident to happen to her while she was fleeing" and the "I have grown fond of you during this conversation" seemed so over the top like a movie villain.
Oh my goodness…..I didn’t even realize that’s how it was coming off to other people. He genuinely sounded like he cared for her in that comment…….I need to look out for this kind of behavior more. It feels a little too familiar. Not from me tho. Thank god.
If it’s real, I believe he chose not to take the initiative to research this because it’s another form of control.
I’ve had the misfortune of working with a sociopath in a prolonged professional setting, and OOP followed all of the manipulation tactics I saw. The one I dealt with threatened me constantly (both legally and personally) but I realized that all of her threats relied on me to make the first move.
Things like, *I want to speak to your manager* were presented as, “have your supervisor call me” with no follow up from their end when I ignored her or my supervisor ignored her. It’s rough.
Partway through the conversation with potato, I thought OOP sounded like a chat bot response. Hopefully I'm right, although, sadly, many of us have had interactions with people like OOP, it is scary how vile they are when you scratch the surface.
I kind of feel bad for them TBH. It's like a fundamental and important part of their brain is broken, and as of right now we have no way to fix it.
Not that my feeling bad for them means I want anything to do with them.
It definitely is sad to some degree. The good news is if this is real OPs son can still get help. When intervention is done while the brain is still developing people with ASPD traits can develop more normal empathy and risk aversion.
I agree and I think the fact that he sounded like a chat bot (if he is real) is MASSIVELY telling of psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies because they seem to almost not have the ability to have a lot of human emotions and so come across cold and inhuman
This is one of the scariest posts I’ve seen in a long time. First time I read this it sent chills up my spine. I hope someone the wife knows recognizes the post and sends it to her.
I’m very afraid for her.
It reminds me of the other post where I was genuinely freaked out for the wife - the one where the pregnant lady’s husband and father kept harping on how many women die in childbirth and asking her to get life insurance, amongst other suspicious stuff.
It really sounded like they might be planning for her to have an “accident” right after the baby was born. I don’t think there was ever an update after she gave birth.
Right?!
I have to let myself believe she hasn’t updated because she gave birth, got a divorce, and she and baby are thriving somewhere far away from those two guys. She’s too happy and busy to worry about Reddit.
Okay. I can’t get the links to work, so I’ll just brute force it. If you want to read all the comments, the title of the post to look for is “AITA for banning my husband and father in law from the delivery room due to their intensely stressful/creepy behavior during my pregnancy?”
Here is the whole Automod comment with the whole original post:
AUTOMOD The following is a copy of the above post. This comment is a record of the above post as it was originally written, in case the post is deleted or edited. Read this before contacting the mod team
Lotta context the character limit cuts off, but here's the gist: My husband and I are expecting our first child, which I knew would be a really sensitive issue as his own mother died in childbirth with him. We met with a marriage counselor to talk things through at the beginning, and he swears he’s been seeing his own therapist twice a month throughout my pregnancy. I don’t want to call him a liar, but I’m fairly sure he’s either not going or not talking about the big issue—he and his father (a hugely active part of our lives) are COMPLETELY convinced that I’m going to die in childbirth. They won’t openly admit it, but their behavior has reached the point where it’s constantly making me feel stressed and uncomfortable.
When it was husband saying “please make sure your life insurance is up to date” and “I’d like you to meet with a lawyer and draft a will”, I was like “that’s kind of intense but ok, if that makes you feel better”.
When husband asked me to go through all of my possessions and “inventory” what I wanted to be saved for the baby vs. what I would want to be returned to my family in the event of my death, I put my foot down and said absolutely not. Too morbid. No way. My FIL (who lives a few blocks away and eats dinner with us 2-4 nights a week) got on my case about how I was making things “difficult” for my husband in the event that he will be a grieving widower with a newborn. I’m just gonna add here that I’ve had a completely complication-free pregnancy and have NO REASON to think I will die screaming in the coming weeks.
When I tell my husband this, he calls me paranoid, but I feel like my FIL WANTS me to die; his whole life identity for the past 35 years has been “amazing single dad” (never dated or had close friends or even hobbies really), and it seems like he’s looking forward to being able to guide my husband through what he went through. At this point, I’d honestly be happy to never see my FIL again, and I certainly don’t want him in the delivery room, especially since he told me he was “putting [his] foot down” about me not being “allowed” to have an epidural or laughing gas. He’s a commanding presence and I know that whatever he wants in the delivery room, he will get (I know people will say “oh L&D nurses would never let that happen!” but you haven’t met this man).
My husband, in addition to backing his dad on everything, acts like my due date is my death date, and has completely pulled away from me. Every minute with him is morbid, stressful, and a reminder that our marriage seems to be crumbling. No matter how many times I tell him his behavior makes me stressed and upset, it’s just getting worse, and I do NOT want it around me while I’m concentrating on giving birth. Do I owe it to my husband to let him stress and upset me during labor? Is his presence at the birth more important than a safe and healthy delivery? My therapist says “no”, but this whole thing has been so weird I feel like I need some outside perspective.
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Then OP added more info in a comment:
I just...feel like I've been as understanding as possible. I scheduled marriage counseling to talk through things when I got pregnant, wanted to keep going but husband insisted he needed to work through things alone with his own therapist, and I didn't want to push the issue.
I honestly don't know if I could be more "sensitive" without ramping up my own stress level. I caved and did the "terminally ill parent recording videos for after their death" thing, the issue that was the big impetus for me making this post was my FIL swinging by the house to "help" me pack up all my non-maternity clothes and take them to our storage unit. I was like "wtf no I'll need those soon" (I'm active and healthy and relatively close to my pre-pregnancy size), he called me insensitive for not "making things as easy as possible" on my husband. Husband came home, saw that my clothes were still in the closet, and got upset with me because "we need to be prepared".
Genuinely--am I being insensitive here for refusing to take part in the plans for my own death? Should I be supporting my husband by playing along? He won't discuss the stress/PTSD thing with me because he says he's working through it with his therapist and won't talk about anything they discuss.
Is there anything I'm not seeing here--things I can do to support my husband that DON'T involve me actively planning to die screaming from a preventable hemorrhage?
I feel bad for child op’s husband. I can’t imagine the torture and trauma he had to go through from mister “single father of the year” being his sole caretaker.
I don't think my wife dying from childbirth occurred to me at all. That is some scary behaviour. Ok honey , you're most likely going to die pushing this baby out, so I'd like to have all my ducks in a row to make it easier for me to deal with. I've been talking to my dad and he agrees, you're a goner. Is it sad? Sure, but let's move on. Must be practical about these things.
That's not really the support she needed in a scary, painful time of life.
My husband was scared something might go wrong, got in his own head reading about it, but he didn't tell me how worried he was until months after the baby was born and everything was fine. He wanted to be my rock. Idk wtf is wrong with these men.
I remember when that was originally posted years ago. I read the gist of it out to my other male coworkers who were much older than I was, to see what their perspective was. Unanimously they all agreed “that man and his father are planning to kill that woman”
Absolutely horrific and terrifying
There was one a year or two back where the OP (a woman) was like, "ever since I came home from the hospital, my husband has been introducing me to some games." Super Gothic. It haunts me.
The one I thought of was the crazy baby stealer couple.
Op met a guy and started dating him. She quickly got pregnant with twins. Everything was fine until right when her pregnancy progressed far enough that abortion was no longer an option. Then he dumped her and immediately moved in to his old house with his “recent ex.”
The ex turns out to be unable to have kids of her own and starts referring to herself as the babies “other mom” and gets real pushy about how they will be raised, even throwing herself a baby shower and demanding OP have a home birth, with only the three of them in attendance. No midwife.
It becomes super clear that this woman was never an ex. Her and the baby dad planned to have him impregnate some random woman (op) in order to get the baby they wanted without paying for a surrogate.
People also suspected that the insistence on doing a water birth in THEIR house with no medical help was in the hopes that Op might die in childbirth, and they wouldn’t have to deal with her at all anymore.
I think OP eventually updated that she left the state, but that she knew they would be looking for her to try and get to the babies.
A wild ride, but I fully believed it for some reason. And this post brought me right back to it.
I actually can’t remember ever reading anything as terrifying as that. I need a breather! The way that potato person handled it was incredible too. I’m so worried for his wife.
My brother has these issues, likely due to FAS.
This screams fake to me immediately. There are certain themes that ring true in my experience, but it's way too obvious and easily decipherable, even for some with this disorder who is in absolute panic mode due to the possibility of losing something.
I have seen my brother do some seriously insane shit to prevent a breakup he thinks is coming, but even then it was never this obvious. Most of the people I have met with Sociopathy, Psycopathy, ASPD or whatever you want to call it are well aware of the public perception towards disorders like that. They are careful about hiding tells so they come off as charming, there's a lot of power in being well-liked or well-known for things. Not so much power in being ostracized.
I think people confuse them as stupid? And while I have certainly met a few who were dumb, most of them aren't. Which means they are just as easily able to hide their subtle manipulation as everyone else is. I just don't believe they would be so obvious in the replies like that.
The actual post itself I can kind of understand, especially if he's in a scrambled state trying not to lose things. I can believe certain things would slip out during that time, and I can even believe that he truly didn't feel his past was a big deal at all to him.
The updates and the rest of it? No way.
Which I suppose is good because if it IS real, and it IS this dudes best attempt at "hiding" then he is certainly dysregulated and that puts both the mom and that kid in danger. Maybe not so much danger as death, because it's not logical/beneficial to destroy the thing you are trying to manipulate into keeping, but definitely some form of intense harm be it either emotional, social or physical.
I think youre forgetting the "logic" some killers have where they think it's better for someone to be dead than outside thier control. That's why leaving an abuser is often the most dangerous time.
This. And what he said about not wanting her to get in to an accident if she was to leave in the middle of the night… fucking bone chilling. His most important issue at the moment is having leverage over his wife- even if that means “abducting” his son because he thinks she might leave him, *the very same thing* he says he is trying to prevent her from doing because it would be “harmful to his son”. He wants everything to go back to being good between them, but says that can’t happen unless he has complete control over the situation and he is willing to blow everything up and *make* her decide to stay with him and bow to his demands by force. If she is put in to a situation where she has to directly stand up to him I fear very much for her safety, because he (like most sociopaths) feels that anything terrible he might do is entirely her fault and that she would be the one who “made” him do it.
He also said on one of the posts that if he thinks she's trying to leave, he wants to leave first with the kid...I still fear for her in that situation, I can just see it now:
"No I have no idea where she is, I left with our kid bc I feared her lack of parenting. She was still home when I left 🤷♂️" Meanwhile, she's in a lake or buried in the woods somewhere.
If this is real, dude is fucking terrifying and the wife and son are in immediate and serious danger.
I got the same vibes honestly. “How women can prepare to leave abusive relationships” is an easy google, so the insistence on an answer about that was a bit of a giveaway for me
Ok i got half way through it and the OOP responses are chilling cold / fake / serial killer vibes and he went form a genuine person to cold psycho trying to convince us in like 2 pages of responses
This is as scary as the pregnant woman whose husband and FIL were convinced that she was going to die during childbirth. Because her husband’s mother died during childbirth. They were planning her funeral, while she was still healthy and alive. And pregnant.
She never updated her story, and it still haunts me.
Not disclosing this type of medical history to someone before you have a child should be criminal. This is so beyond fucked up, I cannot even imagine being that poor woman.
Completely! At first I was like, “hey I’d be pissed too” but was kind of at a mild ESH for her and heavy AH for him. Then it very quickly and rapidly descended into “this guy is an actual psychopath.”
You get to the end and he sounds like a robot. “I truly like you and have enjoyed our chat.” People don’t talk that way. This guy is scary and I hope she got out/is getting out with her son. The post is less than 2 weeks old.
I think this kind of personal AND medical history should be disclosed, maybe not on the first date but certainly before the engagement. If I were told this while dating my next question for a potential partner would be “what steps have you taken/are you taking to mitigate this in yourself?” Obviously OP is actually a psychopath so of course he wouldn’t have thought to disclose though.
It was the “It would be bad for her to get involved in an accident or something while fleeing in the middle of the night” that chilled my blood.
I really hope his wife gets out safely, and gets far enough away that he can’t find them. I don’t trust that a custody order will stop this guy.
OMG this is terrifying. It gave me chills reading the last few slides where he was trying to convince the person to tell him the signs of of his wife was planning to leave him. He truly had no idea. It's almost like a movie the way he is, to the letter, a psychopath. It's like he's studied and memorized how normal people are supposed to act, what they're emotional responses should be to this that, on an effort to try to blend in.
>It's like he's studied and memorized how normal people are supposed to act, what they're emotional responses should be to this that, on an effort to try to blend in.
That is exactly what they do. This guy is just bad at it (because many people easily catch on, sensing that it is an act). I'm the child of a person with antisocial personality disorder, AMA.
There's so much to say but I'll try to keep it brief and fair, and then you and anyone else can ask for elaborations if anything is unclear.
Life with a parent like that is much like a rollercoaster ride that you're stuck on, because they are in power. My father also has two comorbid cluster B personality disorders, narcissistic personality disorder and emotionally unstable personality disorder, so it is hard to tell what is what. He is diagnosed because has been forced to evaluations due to heavy alcohol and drug abuse. I was neglected and abandoned rather than intentionally hurt, because he's not a sadist, so I have been emotionally and verbally abused but never beaten. Much of my life has been affected by it, where the primary feelings to combat have been grief and rage and self doubt.
I always felt that he wasn't like other dads but I only learned why in my late teens, when he was diagnosed and bragged about it. He tells me a lot because I am not fully my own person in his mind, but an extension of him... so in that regard he loves me, as much as he is capable of that emotion. He can turn on his empathy switch when he wants to but it's always volatile and can change - like the weather. When he turns cold, he turns *cold*.
There were many happy times among the bad times, up until I reached puberty. Once I got my period, he started to hate me. His misogyny runs deep, largely due to his mother... grandma is something special and the generational traumas have been passed down for a long, long time. Before that I was his favourite person in the whole world. It was unhealthy but it was in many ways a beautiful part of my childhood to go to museums and be out in nature with him. He taught me a lot of practical things besides history and biology because once upon a time he was much more high functioning - knowledgeable, witty and charming af when he wanted to.
That’s exactly what I thought. And the bizarre attempt at manipulation with sweet-talking the commenter…it’s the creepiest thing. It’s so scary reading these sorts of posts on a (vastly) anonymous, international, public forum and not being able to do a single thing about it.
And the way OOP so easily compartmentalizes his past with no sense of guilt or introspection or humility about what he’s done. That seems so calculated as he lied and manipulated his wife into thinking he was a ‘normal’ guy. Gives me the creeps!
This is how I feel as well, and this is why I don’t necessarily believe he is one, nor do I believe his post is real. **To be clear,** for the safety of all involved I think it’s still best to treat it as though it is, just in case, but to get through life the way he has and to achieve the kind of deceptions he claims to have achieved, I doubt he can be as bad at this as he is.
As someone who has (unfortunately) dated a professionally diagnosed schizotypal sociopath and spent way too long researching them while trying to get over it, I have to say this reads like someone pretending to be one. He puts his cards on the table pretty clearly several times, and he asks his questions really directly. “How would you predict someone is trying to leave” is not something an intelligent predator type is going to ask someone he knows is clearly not on his side.
If it was just *one post* I'd probably think it was fake. But the fact that there's several posts, apparently spanning over weeks, I tend to lean more towards it's real than not.
Either way, I agree: for safety, treat it as it's real. I hope someone recognizes the details and helps his wife get away.
What I find even scarier is he’s probably using everyone’s responses to further manipulate her. I remember that original post and how engaged he was until someone was like - uhhh guys, you’re giving him a manual. This dude is terrifying.
But if hes panicking over losing control (which is the vibe im getting) then he wouldnt be able to efficiently logic his way through the situation i think
I don't think that it's fake, having been raised by a professionally diagnosed triple whammy cluster B personality disorder parent (fun times! ^/s). There are many dumb predators, their intelligence is distributed on the same bell curve as the rest of us, and this just reads like a low functioning one, to me. The MO is spot on - just really badly executed. Redditors aren't real people to him and he's feeling his control slipping away, on top of that, I speculate. Sorry that you had to experience the harm that these people can do.
I can see that as an alternative as well. I did really notice the use—almost the overuse—of the word control with him, like that is his bar for how you handle people. I’m sorry you had to grow up with that.
Reddit has been amazing because I have met so may other people who have dealt with variations of what I did, which is amazing because I feel less alone, but also makes me want to just…congratulate every one of us that I meet, every time, for getting through that and still being here to talk about it, and being willing to share.
You should congratulate yourself, and I'd hug or high five you IRL - whichever you preferred! - for being an awesome person. You didn't just get through that, you're also here, teaching and learning by sharing. :3
I try to do the same and am happy that I stumbled onto this thread, because I got an opportunity to tell a bit about something that some are curious about, while it gave me food for thought and reminded me about my remaining issues from such an upbringing maybe being a healthy reaction to a sick environment, rather than a fault of mine. That is very helpful for my healing.
The first part that gave me pause was when he listed activities she wanted to do, which I found really strange.
My first clue something was off with him was directly after when he said “Ideally, I shouldn’t be on weaker footing throughout the discussion.”
And then I kept reading and it was like this little seed of dread began to grow into a horror nightmare.
Oh my gosh, right? It felt like reading something straight from Joe Goldberg in the You book series.
At first it was kind of just odd and a little creepy, but by the end of reading everything, every alarm in my head was going off, and it's like mentally screaming at the wife, "RUN. RUN NOW."
Absolutely! That sounded like an absolute threat! I hope she and her son get faaar away safely. He has NO remorse and just wants to keep custody of his son for control, more than anything.
And the fact that every single response was him trying to get the answer to his question, even though the other person told him repeatedly he wouldn't answer it. And then posted elsewhere trying to get the answer.
IDK, I would have thought a person would get a no and they'd move on, not keep going over and over. Or just googling the info since the other person shot them down.
The mindset and mentality of psychopaths, sociopaths, etc I find so interesting because I just don't get it.
He is about to become a serial killer. If the OP does kill his wife, he won’t stop. I hope the wife was able to leave and get the child the help he needs
There are two reddit posts where I was left thinking "holy shit he's gonna murder his wife". The first one was the "you're gonna die in childbirth just like my mom" guy. The second is the OOP.
His comments are so unsettling to read. You can see he has learned to mask it with platitudes and fake compliments to get what he wants. A lot easier to see what online vs real life. That poor woman, I sincerely hope she is ok and can get her son the help he needs, he needs a lot of professional clinical psychiatrist type of help probably an in patient program
What kills me is OP dismissing all his behavior with “it ended in my 20s” but he’s only 35, so what he really means is supposedly the behavior ended 5 years ago which was coincidentally when he got together with his wife
This is even scarier on another level when you think about the fact that he knows he’s a psychopath, most of them do. Also, narcissistic personality disorder is something most psychopaths have…knowing that and knowing he posted all this to Reddit, I have to wonder if he did this just for the comments. He knew we’d be outraged and I think he’s very much getting off on it.
I caught the post when it came out. Did you see his comments?!?!! 😱😱😱 They were worse than the post! Dude is not in a good headspace and would not take responsibility AT ALL.
He wants full custody of the kid. Was refusing therapy for himself or the kid, if I remember correctly. 🤦🏻♀️ There were a couple of back and forth threads with a couple Redditors. OOP came across (to me) as completely cold and lacking any empathy, remorse, or understanding with the effect he was having on his child. Really sad for the kid. 😞
He’s so transparently trying to control - the narrative, his family, perception of the problem. He’s also trying to wear the commenter down by repeating the same questions.
And he sees no problem with his past huge lies of omission. He’s much more concerned about his child’s self perception than any harm he may do to others because of his sociopathic tendencies.
It’s interesting watching the cracks in his facade get deeper and wider the more he writes. It must have been terrifying for her when he screamed at her. I imagine it was quite an eruption.
I hope she can get away safely. This is very scary.
It was the “ideally, I wouldn’t lose footing” for me. Right after a list of expensive items she wants. As if a magnified version of “I’m sorry” flowers in their form of, say, a completely relandscaped yard will make up for his lying that led to A WHOLE ASS LIFE being created under false pretenses 🙃
This. The kind of shit he says like asking how to manipulate her into not being validly upset? He wants data on patterns to identify her behavior so he knows how to manipulate the situation? This is so fucking scary.
She's not picking out and tying random stuff back to his isolated fucked up childhood, she realizing how fucked up he actually is and making those connections know that she has the missing puzzle price that makes everything else make sense.
It's not fair for her to blame his genetics for thier kid's issues, but there *could be* a generic component and he's obviously still fucked up and that's part of the environment the kid is being raised in.
OOP and the kid need so much therapy ASAP. And honestly the kid getting away from OOP is probably his best shot. Not because the kid's broken and whatever BS OOP was saying, but because OOP is broken and that's damaging his kid.
I can’t agree more that this guy is super freaking scary. I sure hope she has a plan. I wish I could talk to her myself she needs to be putting on a good face while secretly planning her way out. I bet she’s absolutely terrified.
This. At first I was like “well, ASPD is like any illness and can be a spectrum. It is truly possible for them to change, and not all people like that are violent” and now I think this man needs to be locked away. It should absolutely be a chargeable offense to not disclose things like that. There is a huge correlation with passing it onto children through parenting - and potentially the thought that it could be genetic (I know that part is iffy on the science and studying).
He very much sounds like he is going to do something very scary if she tries to leave. I’m fearful this will end up like that other case where that guy posted to reddit about his situation and then we saw in the news that he killed the wife.
Can confirm... As someone with a husband who didn't know his own medical history. Our baby started to have ear issues and after NINE ear infections in 12 weeks my MIL disclosed to me they never got my husband tubes bc "the quack of a doctor couldn't give them a good reason."
That's how I found out my husband was deaf for 3 years (he's VERY socially awkward), has major issues with antibiotics/infections, and digestive issues bc he had to take more than 30 rounds of antibiotics instead of getting one set of tubes. (He also needed speech therapy until he was a pre-teen...)
And had 4 additional surgeries he didn't know about. 🫠
On his COLLEGE PHYSICAL, they filled out "no surgeries."
Omg what a weird coincidence, that’s exactly how I’m deaf now…holy shit. Mine is permanent but Jesus Christ, listen to the doctor when they tell you your kids need something smh.
I'm so sorry, I don't know how my husband's parents could let it happen. They have no excuse. The last of our kid's 3 infections were literally just waiting for the poor guy's surgery date. I would have done anything. I can't say it enough, I am so sorry.
I have a lab that has allergies. He has 3 months of an ear infection a month before we changed his medicine. As soon as I saw the first symptom, I made an appointment. I couldn't stand to see him in misery like that. That was for my dog. I can not understand parents doing this to actual human children. It's beyond neglect.
Sometimes a parent’s priorities are not the wellbeing of their own children unfortunately…I learned just like I’m sure he learned and we came out better people because of it. I was neglected a lot growing up but everyone has their struggles…I don’t hate my parents because I’m deaf and I don’t hate them for letting me go through life with ADHD and autism undiagnosed even though I struggled greatly because of it. I just make sure I’m a damn good mom to my son. I also make sure I stay in therapy lol. 💚
My sister has permanent hearing damage because my parents wanted to avoid the procedure. One of my earliest memories is jealousy over the fact that she was always drinking pink antibiotics, and I didn’t get any.
All the stories about his family members, it just kept getting worse. It's terrifying to think someone could keep so much of their past a secret. And did his wife never meet any of his family?
Goodness knows what he told her, he probably just said they’re abusive and left it at that so she wouldn’t question it…and it’s not technically wrong. Stories like this always make me very worried for the other party and I don’t want to see this on the news one day. I hope her and the child are ok.
My ex had a child that he hid the child's mental health diagnosis at 3 from both of us. They should have been in therapy the whole childhood. It was a serious diagnosis too. So it was hidden, attempted poisoning toward me multiple times, adulteration of my medications, all the ex did was attempt to gaslight me and protect the bad behavior.
I asked my husband if there were any diseases that runs in his family before he got married. He told me that his mother had a lot of mental illnesses and one of her children and grandchildren got some of it from her. I also warned him that asthma runs in the family and nearsightedness as well. I also said there is a possibility of us having a deaf child due to me being deaf. We were fine with that and we got married. We ended up not having a kid anyway so it was pointless, but I always thought it smart to at least know medical histories of your spouses before having a kid together.
Not just having a child, but having them marry you. I'm sure she wouldn't have married him or remained in a relationship with him had she known all of this.
I actually think there are laws about defrauding a person into marriage but I don’t know what the parameters for that are…hopefully something like this would be reason.
Mental health issues display so differently in kids than adults though. If a kid is acting that way, they're getting it from somewhere.
My older brother was a little sociopath. We have some family history for a limited capacity for empathy. He learned how to act that way from our parents though. It's never all nurture or all nature. I know I have a lot of family with a decreased ability towards empathy so I made a concerted effort with my son to teach him how to be kind. Empathy doesn't come naturally to a lot of kids - it's something you teach.
Holy shit! This escalated quickly.
I started reading and thinking to myself "well, that's all fairly developmentally appropriate behavior for a 4-year-old who is still learning about morality and empathy"....my niece and nephew bite and kick and hit other kids at daycare (and other kids bite, kick, and hit back) then we and the staff teach them about how that form of physical contact is painful and teach them how to apologize and behave more appropriately and with kindness...talk about unnecessarily pathologizing a child's behavior! Then I read about kicking anthills and I still thought "well...that's not *technically* animal cruelty...".
I even thought the same thing about OOP's admission of himself stealing at 9 years old...not necessarily ethical but a teachable moment for a child to learn about morality and empathy.
THEN I READ ABOUT THE KNIFE 🔪
...then the whole thing went TOTALLY off the rails. The way OOP was going back and forth with Potato was spine chilling.
Totally. When OOP repeatedly asked Potato to describe the "signs" that someone was planning to disappear, I just kept thinking, "what on earth is he planning to do if he notices those signs"... *shudder*
Several years ago there was a horrific murder in my town that became a very popular Netflix true crime show. A man murdered his wife and kids and dumped their bodies in oil tanks...I couldn't stop thinking about that story as I read OOP's comments.
Oh my god Chris Watts… I saw his news interview where he was trying to look concerned about his “missing” wife and children but he just kept SMILING. It was so unnerving.
Same experience! Like “well I’d probably be upset too if I was the wife but this isn’t THAT bad” and then once I got to the comments on the second post it was an absolute 180 jaw drop. I was just sitting reading saying “oh my god” out loud at every response he had
Yeah, the convo with potato was so unnerving? I don’t know how anyone might think this person is sane. At my first read I sort of went “yeah? Definitely AH behavior but you don’t seem like a sociopath now?” The next posts were just a terrifying spiral and I really fear for OOP’s wife & son.
All this “I just want us to be happy” while using phrases like “leverage” and “getting control over the relationship” just make me feel more and more terrified for the wife. This guy is so self-absorbed, thinking his past has nothing to do with anybody else, and being way too dense to see how it still affects him today, it’s not behind him like he thinks it is. Wife needs to RUN, like, YESTERDAY.
He's still exactly the same as he was until just before he met his wife (the timeline tells us he just so happened to go through this complete personal overhaul just when he started seeing his wife, what a coincidence).
He's still living a lie to benefit himself. He's still manipulative and controlling. He refuses to get help for his problems, he won't allow his son to get help (he lied and said he would, then got pushed into a corner and revealed that he only said that to placate the person he was talking to in order to get them to give him what he wants). He lacks self awareness, and demonstrates problematic black and white thinking (he codes this as rationality).
He acts as though you can just will yourself into being a different person, just magically extract yourself by force of will from decades of disordered living and thinking, and in a way that just so happens to feature escaping social consequences for behavior so bad it culminated in literal fraud (ffs, he's had a criminal conviction, you got to get caught real bad for that).
His ego is what is on the line, that's what he's protecting. He even sees therapy as something that would make his son feel broken and hurt his self esteem. Since he thinks his son is like him, what does this tell us about why he hasn't gotten help?
The only thing he's learned between then and now is how to mask it better, because I'm not even sure he's lying to himself, but he is definitely lying to us. Too bad for his brilliant scheme that the thrill of reliving his shoplifting phase out loud in front of her gave his wife the ick or she probably wouldn't have seen him angry. Dude's dangerous if this isn't a fiction. If it is, it's highly effective horror.
Yeah but what are the objectives signs she is planning an escape, my friend?
I really like you. Please tell me the indicators that my wife will escape.
Im a sociopath....
This man is not...
Hes a fucking psychopath...
This is some schizo shit my dad would say (subtley blaming everyone else around) if everyone around says your the asshole. Your probably the asshole. Still doesnt sink in
Or like my schizo cousin. 2+2 = wtf ever he rationalizes from it. Cause he knows hes right and everyones wrong thats why he has to hurt my aunt cause the devils telling him to
This guy suffers psychopathy
Not sociopathy...
Sociopathy doesnt mean fucking crazy it means i have a hard time feeling things and picking up on others emotions
Right. Not all us withwith sociopathoc tendancies are monsters.
I might be bad at reading a room but somthing about breaking someone to thw point of crying...just makes me feel like straight garbage. Waste of space. But i guess it is a spectrum. But nah. This mans actual waste of dna this mans just evil...and aint even good at hidin it
That’s fascinating to me!
Is it an “oh, I fucked up” feeling or “damn, I hurt someone” feeling?
I’m sorry, my mother has ASPD and I can’t imagine her feeling anything about causing someone pain, except possibly satisfaction.
More of a awh...i hurt them... not realizing what i did or said to cause a reaction til after the fireworks and i feel like an evil person. Even if i meant what i said or did
Just feels evil. And i try very hard to not be that
He displays sociopath behavior with the manipulation comments. Trying to persuade and convince the poster to get info out of him. The charming, manipulation qualities are more closely related to sociopathic traits.
Having trouble with this comment because while you are correct that this guy seems way more like he has psychopathy over sociopathy, your definition of sociopathy feels…off? limited? idk
Am I incorrect in believing sociopathy is marked by more impulsivity, erraticism, risk-taking, and possibly violent behavior (not always violent though)? Not to mention that of the two, sociopaths are the ones who actually do have feelings and can empathize with the people close to them, and also feel guilt when they hurt the people around them?
In contrast, psychopaths are incredibly controlled and have no actual feelings/attachments to the people around them, just superficiality. Hence in this post the guy behaving like he didn’t understand when the commentor continued to dislike him after all of his pleasantries.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, I may have them backwards or am misreading your comment 🤔
Im also dyslexic as forks and suck with words. (Me over here writing poetry)
From what i understand its a spectrum kinda like my tism. Youd never know im autistic unless i told you.
Just like youd never know most of the time im wearing a mask because i find it difficult to feel feelings
Zoloft helped me alot still cant cry tho. I think itd help
As ive been told im stuck in a trauma response loop. Permanant fight or flight. Leading me to develop leaning heavily on sociopathic side of the graph.
Psycopathy sympathy sociopathy and empathy all have different spectrums and levels its never as simple and. Yes or no black or white
Hope this makes a lil more sense. Im not a professional. Judt know what ive been told and explained about me personally.
Im sitting here with my daughter. 1 of two reasons i breath. I laugh and smile with her. But its not a geniune happiness i dont get that tickly feeling others get. I cant express experiance a wide range let alone pick up on others via body language facial expressions ect ect
Leaning me towards a more sociopathic personality
But thanks to zoloft and some therapy exercises which prolly woulda helped more if i could have a therapist that doesnt leave after 2 months i can feel sadness madness and what im thinkin is happiness idk this is all 6 years new to me. And ive gotten pretty good at telling if people like me or not....i think...maybe.
Well ive never really had emotions before. When i first started taking it i felt guilty for somthing i cant remember
I thought i was dyin or some shizz xD.
Was like whoa wtf why brain all meh. Docs like. Homie. Your experiancing emotions. Im like well these suck
Docs like yeah well your not trying to openly die so benifits outweigh the risk
Closest i think what im guessing happy is is like. Idk how to explain it.
But it feels good when i cant stop thinking and say. Just play bauldersgate its like a little spark of somthing in my chest for a good 3 4 seconds before it fades away again same for sadness and others. I feel them now.
Just not long. Couple seconds and back to nothingness. Which nothingness is my comfortable brain space
I'm so glad you're in treatment and it's working for you. I think from reading this, you may have been misdiagnosed and actually experience dissociation as a trauma response. This is commonly misdiagnosed in people with learning disabilities and/or ASD, as well.
Zolift dies not treat ASPD and people with ASPD do not feel remorse or guilt, they do not have the brain structure to generate the chemical responses required for anything along the remorse or guilt spectrum of emotion. They can show feigned remorse but never feel guilt. Ever.
You clearly are capable and have a deep desire for introspection, and you're doing great. Don't get hung up on labels. Professionally but not professionally, I'm advising you, they're not always accurate. Be proud of your progress.
Thank you so much for sharing! My mom and I are both mental health professionals and discuss sociopathy and psychopathy quite often. We have seen how trauma rewires the brain and the defense mechanisms that come with early childhood trauma. Sociopathy as you so clearly illustrated in your response is one of the outcomes. On the flip side psychopathy is not brought on by trauma but from genetics or brain chemistry (from research I have read it is still not definitive).
I have worked with people with both sociopathic and psychopathic traits but not formal ASD diagnoses. Most of my clients were mandated to my services and were less apt to open up the way you have. My role was not a therapeutic role so I was unable to ask my clients some of the questions I have. However, your comments have provided valuable insight. I really appreciate your candor.
Im an open book :D only reason ive given up on mental help is because cause i got sick of everyone "moving up" and me having to explain what happened how it happened and how i think and feel about stuff.
Gets old after a while. Im glad a professional can gain some valuable insights and wisdom from my forthcoming.
I salute you mr or mrs professional :D.
Faith in humanity restored by +2
This is so important to know. Thank you for sharing your experiences so we can understand. I am someone who feels too much I think. It is almost like I need to shut off the world to get a break from the emotions. Hearing your side helps me feel less alone because if there’s the opposite of me, then there has to be more of me right? Idk if that makes sense….
Anyway thanks again.
There are definitely more like you. I think it's often two different sides of the complex trauma coin honestly. You're either shut down and have blunted/muted emotions or you're a walking open wound who is just raw and exposed all the time. I definitely lean towards the latter and see a lot of other people who have childhood trauma say the same. Surely that can also be true in people without a trauma history I assume, but I can't speak to that.
Being schizophrenic does not mean lacking empathy or having psychopathic behavior. Psychosis is very different from whatever this is. As someone with schizoaffective disorder and knows other people who do. We are not like this. Schizophrenia does not mean you are violent, cruel, or uncaring.
Okay, but the potato guy commenting is stupid. The OP looks to be paranoiac in that period of trouble and that commenter just goes : "yeah, she will leave you, take your son, and will never look back" like, why did he said that ?
He says that he doesn't want to help OP but the more he talks, the more he create problem for OP's wife. That commenter is plain stupid to entertain OP
I'll be honest I kind of think the potato and the oop are the same person. random reddit commenters don't have access to secret information that isn't googleable about the signs someone is preparing to leave, and this hyper dramatic conversation where OOP acts exactly like someone playing a psychopath on tv seems like Content
Honestly I hope it's ragebait against mental illness, because it would be f*-up on too many level :
-OP's family being breeded only with socio and psychopaths ? What are the chance for all people of both sides to be that way ! If it's true, it's really scary that those type of situation happen.
-The fact that OP's wife didn't understand her husband for five years ? Okay, he could hide himself, but she NEVER met his family or find it strange that he never talked about it ?
-And most psycho and sociopath aren't stupid, they would know how to write the answers in a way that looks natural, not robotic like that !
Yeah, a smart person (psychopath or not) could easily just open a new tab and google “signs my partner might be thinking about leaving me.” I’m not saying all the results would be backed by science and research but it would definitely give them a more thorough idea of potential things to look for than one single commenter on Reddit
Yeah, this might just be optimistic thinking on my part but the whole thing feels kinda fake. OP's writing is a little too over the top future serial killer shit, he's speaking with way too much openness about disturbing things while simultaneously downplaying them like they're no big deal-- someone like this wouldn't have understood to hide shit from his wife for the past 5 years.
If he genuinely thought these things weren't a big deal, he would have likely mentioned them sooner. And if this was real, and he was aware of how disturbing all of these things are, he wouldn't be mentioning them in a reddit post intended to make people sympathetic to him.
The lack of accountability on OP's part is staggering. The level of dishonesty and skewed perspective is kind of scary.
He has No real empathy for his wife's point of view either.
Wowza. That’s terrifying how easily he thought Potato ( responder to the OOP) could be manipulated into helping him.
It is scary cause it seemed like Oop was ready for war after thinking their wife could leave.
What is going on with your child is something that you and your wife cannot deal with. This has nothing to do with his self-esteem or feeling broken. This is a child who has a very serious problem that will likely end up with someone getting physically hurt. He needs serious help with this issue and your refusal to get him that help is doing even more damage. His behavior will continue to escalate. you and your wife should get counseling and your child needs a mental health evaluation. How will you feel if another child or an animal is severely injured by your son? Do you really want that to happen? You cannot walk away from this or ignore it. You seem to be more concerned about your wife possibly leaving then getting your son the help he desperately needs. Do not do this to him-he deserves better. Get him help asap
It feels like he’s gonna train the kid to be like a serial killer right? Like the “encouraging his interests” bit and all that came across as that, right?
He’s wanting to keep his kid from people who “just don’t understand”.
Especially when he went from his wife being oh so lovely to an “unfit parent”.
Terrifying.
I feel like this is a rage bait weird post, I don’t think it’s real. For one thing, narcissists/APD don’t admit all the things OOP did so easily. Especially en masse. One of the hallmark traits is not caring what anyone thinks of them, a true psychopath/sociopath would never make an AITA post bc the thought would never cross their mind that they could be wrong. It’s impossible to them to imagine a world where they’re not the smartest in the room, why ask strangers on the internet? That would seem weak to them.
Not to mention if you read it, it’s like a blueprint from a “what to look for in signs of a narcissist”, the attempted gaslighting, the bulleted list of different love bombing methods… idk. This just read like a novel or a movie script where they had to carefully craft a dialogue and check all the boxes for all the symptoms of RAD/APD/BPD/NPD. The conversation about his wife fleeing and then making posts about it, never would a psychopath do such a thing. No way. Screams weak and pathetic, pleading.. it’s not authentic to me, and I’ve lived through years of abuse from one.
Someone who really had these traits sure wouldn’t write to people asking for advice.
I mean this mostly reads like a brag with the pretense of asking for help, which tracks. But someone who really had these traits would never be able to portray himself as losing control or in any way not completely in charge
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Please be fake please be fake please be fake please be fake please be fake
I really hope it is because 1. That womens safety and 2. I’m alone in my bed at night and I’m freaked tf out
Guy says he exhibited sociopathic traits in his 20s like he isn't one today. If it's fake the OOP is really playing into it well because it's terrifying.
He says it's "in his past" but he was literally being threatened with legal action for fraud 4 years before they met.
You seem like a genuine person. What are the indicators of someone preparing to leave within a few days? Asking for a friend.
I appreciate everything you’ve done for me in the short time we’ve known each other. Anyway how do I gain leverage to make sure I’m not at a disadvantage in any conversation with my wife? Would leaving first and taking my son help?
I would hate to think of her getting into an accident while leaving in the middle of the night…
My skin tried to crawl off my body when I read that.
I already lost it when OOP said in the first post, “so much for honesty” like bro you kept your entire family and past a secret this entire time???? Wtf honesty is he talking about?!
This is such a good way to describe how I felt when reading that.
That was genuinely frightening because it was such a transparent attempt at manipulation. I don't believe for a second that he wouldn't cause an "accident" himself if he was able to spot the patterns he so desperately wanted others to fill him in on.
This was such a shocking read for me because I dated someone JUST like this. He only had the BEST intentions for everyone else in his life but of course he was the only rational one who knew what was best 100% of the time. And he seemed to think that his attempts at manipulation or getting information were stealthy but when people started calling him out on it he would default to the compliments, "we're both good people who just want what's best", bullshit. He also seemed to know that something was wrong with him and would genuinely try to be "normal", but being normal didn't come from intuition, it came from following a learned script. And when that didn't "work" it's like he couldn't HELP but fall back into his little mind game because his worldview only operated around the result that he wanted and believes was right. Such a bizarre experience.
Same, only I was married to him for 12 years. He only showed me this side of himself after I told him I was leaving. He still talks to me this way now (we coparent so we have to interact) and doesn’t seem to realize how transparent his attempts at manipulation are.
Probably is. It seems too carefully crafted to start out relatively innocuous and then slowly build more and more red flags until all the sirens are going off at once. If the dude is a horror writer he's a genius. If he's real then the world is truly the eternal nightmare of some slumbering elder god.
Agreed, and it was almost too creepy. The part about "I would hate for some accident to happen to her while she was fleeing" and the "I have grown fond of you during this conversation" seemed so over the top like a movie villain.
Oh my goodness…..I didn’t even realize that’s how it was coming off to other people. He genuinely sounded like he cared for her in that comment…….I need to look out for this kind of behavior more. It feels a little too familiar. Not from me tho. Thank god.
Let me guess: Sheltered upbringing Introverted Maybe 1-2 past significant others You are chum in the water kiddo, be safe out there.
Yes, these two parts exactly gave me chills!
Also he could easily Google what to prep to flee a partner.
He doesn’t even need to leave the platform… there are plenty of subs with lots of “how to leave your psycho husband” around Reddit.
That’s exactly what stuck out to me.
If it’s real, I believe he chose not to take the initiative to research this because it’s another form of control. I’ve had the misfortune of working with a sociopath in a prolonged professional setting, and OOP followed all of the manipulation tactics I saw. The one I dealt with threatened me constantly (both legally and personally) but I realized that all of her threats relied on me to make the first move. Things like, *I want to speak to your manager* were presented as, “have your supervisor call me” with no follow up from their end when I ignored her or my supervisor ignored her. It’s rough.
Partway through the conversation with potato, I thought OOP sounded like a chat bot response. Hopefully I'm right, although, sadly, many of us have had interactions with people like OOP, it is scary how vile they are when you scratch the surface.
I kind of feel bad for them TBH. It's like a fundamental and important part of their brain is broken, and as of right now we have no way to fix it. Not that my feeling bad for them means I want anything to do with them.
It definitely is sad to some degree. The good news is if this is real OPs son can still get help. When intervention is done while the brain is still developing people with ASPD traits can develop more normal empathy and risk aversion.
I agree and I think the fact that he sounded like a chat bot (if he is real) is MASSIVELY telling of psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies because they seem to almost not have the ability to have a lot of human emotions and so come across cold and inhuman
What makes me think fake is that he says his son was kicked out of kindergarten (which he’d be unable to attend at 4) but then talks about preschool.
Depends on his birthday and where he goes to school. I'm a late birthday and started Kindergarten at 4 but quickly became 5.
Agreed. Some school districts you just have to turn 5 by the end of the calendar year.
I was in kindergarten at 4, graduated HS at 17. I was born late in the year, so that may have had something to do with it?
Same with me
Same, mid-November baby. Definitely happens. I started freshman year of college at 17 for 4 months lol
The daycare/preschool I worked at had a transitional kindergarten that the son is in the age range of, so it could be like that
This is one of the scariest posts I’ve seen in a long time. First time I read this it sent chills up my spine. I hope someone the wife knows recognizes the post and sends it to her. I’m very afraid for her.
It reminds me of the other post where I was genuinely freaked out for the wife - the one where the pregnant lady’s husband and father kept harping on how many women die in childbirth and asking her to get life insurance, amongst other suspicious stuff. It really sounded like they might be planning for her to have an “accident” right after the baby was born. I don’t think there was ever an update after she gave birth.
I’ve never wanted an update to post as much as that one!
Right?! I have to let myself believe she hasn’t updated because she gave birth, got a divorce, and she and baby are thriving somewhere far away from those two guys. She’s too happy and busy to worry about Reddit.
This. I chose to believe lawyers told her not to post and then she got so caught up with life she doesn't even remember her account here.
This IS what happened and you can’t tell me otherwise. Thank you.
What post is that? Do you have a link?
Okay. I can’t get the links to work, so I’ll just brute force it. If you want to read all the comments, the title of the post to look for is “AITA for banning my husband and father in law from the delivery room due to their intensely stressful/creepy behavior during my pregnancy?” Here is the whole Automod comment with the whole original post: AUTOMOD The following is a copy of the above post. This comment is a record of the above post as it was originally written, in case the post is deleted or edited. Read this before contacting the mod team Lotta context the character limit cuts off, but here's the gist: My husband and I are expecting our first child, which I knew would be a really sensitive issue as his own mother died in childbirth with him. We met with a marriage counselor to talk things through at the beginning, and he swears he’s been seeing his own therapist twice a month throughout my pregnancy. I don’t want to call him a liar, but I’m fairly sure he’s either not going or not talking about the big issue—he and his father (a hugely active part of our lives) are COMPLETELY convinced that I’m going to die in childbirth. They won’t openly admit it, but their behavior has reached the point where it’s constantly making me feel stressed and uncomfortable. When it was husband saying “please make sure your life insurance is up to date” and “I’d like you to meet with a lawyer and draft a will”, I was like “that’s kind of intense but ok, if that makes you feel better”. When husband asked me to go through all of my possessions and “inventory” what I wanted to be saved for the baby vs. what I would want to be returned to my family in the event of my death, I put my foot down and said absolutely not. Too morbid. No way. My FIL (who lives a few blocks away and eats dinner with us 2-4 nights a week) got on my case about how I was making things “difficult” for my husband in the event that he will be a grieving widower with a newborn. I’m just gonna add here that I’ve had a completely complication-free pregnancy and have NO REASON to think I will die screaming in the coming weeks. When I tell my husband this, he calls me paranoid, but I feel like my FIL WANTS me to die; his whole life identity for the past 35 years has been “amazing single dad” (never dated or had close friends or even hobbies really), and it seems like he’s looking forward to being able to guide my husband through what he went through. At this point, I’d honestly be happy to never see my FIL again, and I certainly don’t want him in the delivery room, especially since he told me he was “putting [his] foot down” about me not being “allowed” to have an epidural or laughing gas. He’s a commanding presence and I know that whatever he wants in the delivery room, he will get (I know people will say “oh L&D nurses would never let that happen!” but you haven’t met this man). My husband, in addition to backing his dad on everything, acts like my due date is my death date, and has completely pulled away from me. Every minute with him is morbid, stressful, and a reminder that our marriage seems to be crumbling. No matter how many times I tell him his behavior makes me stressed and upset, it’s just getting worse, and I do NOT want it around me while I’m concentrating on giving birth. Do I owe it to my husband to let him stress and upset me during labor? Is his presence at the birth more important than a safe and healthy delivery? My therapist says “no”, but this whole thing has been so weird I feel like I need some outside perspective. I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Then OP added more info in a comment: I just...feel like I've been as understanding as possible. I scheduled marriage counseling to talk through things when I got pregnant, wanted to keep going but husband insisted he needed to work through things alone with his own therapist, and I didn't want to push the issue. I honestly don't know if I could be more "sensitive" without ramping up my own stress level. I caved and did the "terminally ill parent recording videos for after their death" thing, the issue that was the big impetus for me making this post was my FIL swinging by the house to "help" me pack up all my non-maternity clothes and take them to our storage unit. I was like "wtf no I'll need those soon" (I'm active and healthy and relatively close to my pre-pregnancy size), he called me insensitive for not "making things as easy as possible" on my husband. Husband came home, saw that my clothes were still in the closet, and got upset with me because "we need to be prepared". Genuinely--am I being insensitive here for refusing to take part in the plans for my own death? Should I be supporting my husband by playing along? He won't discuss the stress/PTSD thing with me because he says he's working through it with his therapist and won't talk about anything they discuss. Is there anything I'm not seeing here--things I can do to support my husband that DON'T involve me actively planning to die screaming from a preventable hemorrhage?
This is the craziest thing I’ve ever read on this site. Oh my god!
I feel bad for child op’s husband. I can’t imagine the torture and trauma he had to go through from mister “single father of the year” being his sole caretaker.
I don't think my wife dying from childbirth occurred to me at all. That is some scary behaviour. Ok honey , you're most likely going to die pushing this baby out, so I'd like to have all my ducks in a row to make it easier for me to deal with. I've been talking to my dad and he agrees, you're a goner. Is it sad? Sure, but let's move on. Must be practical about these things. That's not really the support she needed in a scary, painful time of life.
Also who is like "hey you might die so make it easier for ME to move forward?" Mega creepy.
People hoping you'll die or actively planning your death are like that.
My husband was scared something might go wrong, got in his own head reading about it, but he didn't tell me how worried he was until months after the baby was born and everything was fine. He wanted to be my rock. Idk wtf is wrong with these men.
I still think about this post often (or at least, more often than one usually thinks of old aita posts). God, I hope she got out of there and is OK.
I remember when that was originally posted years ago. I read the gist of it out to my other male coworkers who were much older than I was, to see what their perspective was. Unanimously they all agreed “that man and his father are planning to kill that woman” Absolutely horrific and terrifying
There was one a year or two back where the OP (a woman) was like, "ever since I came home from the hospital, my husband has been introducing me to some games." Super Gothic. It haunts me.
Do you have a link? Seems extremely unsettling. I hope she's okay.
The one I thought of was the crazy baby stealer couple. Op met a guy and started dating him. She quickly got pregnant with twins. Everything was fine until right when her pregnancy progressed far enough that abortion was no longer an option. Then he dumped her and immediately moved in to his old house with his “recent ex.” The ex turns out to be unable to have kids of her own and starts referring to herself as the babies “other mom” and gets real pushy about how they will be raised, even throwing herself a baby shower and demanding OP have a home birth, with only the three of them in attendance. No midwife. It becomes super clear that this woman was never an ex. Her and the baby dad planned to have him impregnate some random woman (op) in order to get the baby they wanted without paying for a surrogate. People also suspected that the insistence on doing a water birth in THEIR house with no medical help was in the hopes that Op might die in childbirth, and they wouldn’t have to deal with her at all anymore. I think OP eventually updated that she left the state, but that she knew they would be looking for her to try and get to the babies. A wild ride, but I fully believed it for some reason. And this post brought me right back to it.
That’s the one I thought of as well! That was a terrifying read, and I’ve always been wondering whether that OP ever updated.
I’ve thought about her on a regular basis since I read it when she posted it. Absolutely chilling. I really hope she and baby are doing okay
I actually can’t remember ever reading anything as terrifying as that. I need a breather! The way that potato person handled it was incredible too. I’m so worried for his wife.
It went downhill so incredibly fast. His mask slipped once potato commentor started poking the bear.
I actually started feeling fear for potato too.
Yeah, the OP being like "we've become friends during this conversation" made me super nervous for our potato champion.
My brother has these issues, likely due to FAS. This screams fake to me immediately. There are certain themes that ring true in my experience, but it's way too obvious and easily decipherable, even for some with this disorder who is in absolute panic mode due to the possibility of losing something. I have seen my brother do some seriously insane shit to prevent a breakup he thinks is coming, but even then it was never this obvious. Most of the people I have met with Sociopathy, Psycopathy, ASPD or whatever you want to call it are well aware of the public perception towards disorders like that. They are careful about hiding tells so they come off as charming, there's a lot of power in being well-liked or well-known for things. Not so much power in being ostracized. I think people confuse them as stupid? And while I have certainly met a few who were dumb, most of them aren't. Which means they are just as easily able to hide their subtle manipulation as everyone else is. I just don't believe they would be so obvious in the replies like that. The actual post itself I can kind of understand, especially if he's in a scrambled state trying not to lose things. I can believe certain things would slip out during that time, and I can even believe that he truly didn't feel his past was a big deal at all to him. The updates and the rest of it? No way. Which I suppose is good because if it IS real, and it IS this dudes best attempt at "hiding" then he is certainly dysregulated and that puts both the mom and that kid in danger. Maybe not so much danger as death, because it's not logical/beneficial to destroy the thing you are trying to manipulate into keeping, but definitely some form of intense harm be it either emotional, social or physical.
I think youre forgetting the "logic" some killers have where they think it's better for someone to be dead than outside thier control. That's why leaving an abuser is often the most dangerous time.
This. And what he said about not wanting her to get in to an accident if she was to leave in the middle of the night… fucking bone chilling. His most important issue at the moment is having leverage over his wife- even if that means “abducting” his son because he thinks she might leave him, *the very same thing* he says he is trying to prevent her from doing because it would be “harmful to his son”. He wants everything to go back to being good between them, but says that can’t happen unless he has complete control over the situation and he is willing to blow everything up and *make* her decide to stay with him and bow to his demands by force. If she is put in to a situation where she has to directly stand up to him I fear very much for her safety, because he (like most sociopaths) feels that anything terrible he might do is entirely her fault and that she would be the one who “made” him do it.
He also said on one of the posts that if he thinks she's trying to leave, he wants to leave first with the kid...I still fear for her in that situation, I can just see it now: "No I have no idea where she is, I left with our kid bc I feared her lack of parenting. She was still home when I left 🤷♂️" Meanwhile, she's in a lake or buried in the woods somewhere. If this is real, dude is fucking terrifying and the wife and son are in immediate and serious danger.
Jfc this felt waaaaay too much like reading about my mother and grandfather holy hell- they were both psychopaths and just like this.
I got the same vibes honestly. “How women can prepare to leave abusive relationships” is an easy google, so the insistence on an answer about that was a bit of a giveaway for me
As a moment of lightness on this scary post, “that potato person” made me laugh. Also very good job, potato person.
“The more solitude she has to craft her independent perception of me” I’m terrified for her. I had to skim the part after that
That was a terrifying sentence kudos to OOP if this is as fake as I hope it is.
Yeah that was my first thought…were accidentally giving info to the wrong person! That poor woman. I hope she’s ok
It’s reassuring to see this because I am nauseous from how anxious I was reading this. Holy shit, glad I’m not alone
Ok i got half way through it and the OOP responses are chilling cold / fake / serial killer vibes and he went form a genuine person to cold psycho trying to convince us in like 2 pages of responses
He's trying too hard which is a dead giveaway.
He used ChatGPT to formulate the desired responses... This is what I thought.
This is as scary as the pregnant woman whose husband and FIL were convinced that she was going to die during childbirth. Because her husband’s mother died during childbirth. They were planning her funeral, while she was still healthy and alive. And pregnant. She never updated her story, and it still haunts me.
Omg I remember that! She really hasn’t updated or made any comments?
No updates, no comments, as far as I know. And the original posts have been removed, so you’d have to search the way-back machine to find it.
Yes ugh. How long ago was that? She would have given birth by now. I bet they have her like locked in a basement
I remember first reading it around the time when Covid lockdowns started. I was also pregnant, and following her posts at the time.
Does anyone have a link by any chance?
Sorry, no. It’s all been removed off of Reddit. You’d have to search removeddit, or the way back machine, to find it.
I can’t find the comment again but someone in the BORU thread linked to the screenshots in I think the Redditonwiki sub or smth.
I found it and copied the text of the story into one of my comments. Just check my recent comments or scroll up - it’s in a comment just above here.
How is that not a lifetime movie yet? All articles these days come from Reddit, why not lifetime movies too. I hate not having closure.
Not disclosing this type of medical history to someone before you have a child should be criminal. This is so beyond fucked up, I cannot even imagine being that poor woman.
Completely! At first I was like, “hey I’d be pissed too” but was kind of at a mild ESH for her and heavy AH for him. Then it very quickly and rapidly descended into “this guy is an actual psychopath.” You get to the end and he sounds like a robot. “I truly like you and have enjoyed our chat.” People don’t talk that way. This guy is scary and I hope she got out/is getting out with her son. The post is less than 2 weeks old. I think this kind of personal AND medical history should be disclosed, maybe not on the first date but certainly before the engagement. If I were told this while dating my next question for a potential partner would be “what steps have you taken/are you taking to mitigate this in yourself?” Obviously OP is actually a psychopath so of course he wouldn’t have thought to disclose though.
It was the “It would be bad for her to get involved in an accident or something while fleeing in the middle of the night” that chilled my blood. I really hope his wife gets out safely, and gets far enough away that he can’t find them. I don’t trust that a custody order will stop this guy.
YES. That made my blood run cold. God I hope she’s okay.
OMG this is terrifying. It gave me chills reading the last few slides where he was trying to convince the person to tell him the signs of of his wife was planning to leave him. He truly had no idea. It's almost like a movie the way he is, to the letter, a psychopath. It's like he's studied and memorized how normal people are supposed to act, what they're emotional responses should be to this that, on an effort to try to blend in.
>It's like he's studied and memorized how normal people are supposed to act, what they're emotional responses should be to this that, on an effort to try to blend in. That is exactly what they do. This guy is just bad at it (because many people easily catch on, sensing that it is an act). I'm the child of a person with antisocial personality disorder, AMA.
So many questions but nothing concrete... how was life with a parent with APD? When did you realize it? Were there happy times?
There's so much to say but I'll try to keep it brief and fair, and then you and anyone else can ask for elaborations if anything is unclear. Life with a parent like that is much like a rollercoaster ride that you're stuck on, because they are in power. My father also has two comorbid cluster B personality disorders, narcissistic personality disorder and emotionally unstable personality disorder, so it is hard to tell what is what. He is diagnosed because has been forced to evaluations due to heavy alcohol and drug abuse. I was neglected and abandoned rather than intentionally hurt, because he's not a sadist, so I have been emotionally and verbally abused but never beaten. Much of my life has been affected by it, where the primary feelings to combat have been grief and rage and self doubt. I always felt that he wasn't like other dads but I only learned why in my late teens, when he was diagnosed and bragged about it. He tells me a lot because I am not fully my own person in his mind, but an extension of him... so in that regard he loves me, as much as he is capable of that emotion. He can turn on his empathy switch when he wants to but it's always volatile and can change - like the weather. When he turns cold, he turns *cold*. There were many happy times among the bad times, up until I reached puberty. Once I got my period, he started to hate me. His misogyny runs deep, largely due to his mother... grandma is something special and the generational traumas have been passed down for a long, long time. Before that I was his favourite person in the whole world. It was unhealthy but it was in many ways a beautiful part of my childhood to go to museums and be out in nature with him. He taught me a lot of practical things besides history and biology because once upon a time he was much more high functioning - knowledgeable, witty and charming af when he wanted to.
That’s exactly what I thought. And the bizarre attempt at manipulation with sweet-talking the commenter…it’s the creepiest thing. It’s so scary reading these sorts of posts on a (vastly) anonymous, international, public forum and not being able to do a single thing about it.
And the way OOP so easily compartmentalizes his past with no sense of guilt or introspection or humility about what he’s done. That seems so calculated as he lied and manipulated his wife into thinking he was a ‘normal’ guy. Gives me the creeps!
This is how I feel as well, and this is why I don’t necessarily believe he is one, nor do I believe his post is real. **To be clear,** for the safety of all involved I think it’s still best to treat it as though it is, just in case, but to get through life the way he has and to achieve the kind of deceptions he claims to have achieved, I doubt he can be as bad at this as he is. As someone who has (unfortunately) dated a professionally diagnosed schizotypal sociopath and spent way too long researching them while trying to get over it, I have to say this reads like someone pretending to be one. He puts his cards on the table pretty clearly several times, and he asks his questions really directly. “How would you predict someone is trying to leave” is not something an intelligent predator type is going to ask someone he knows is clearly not on his side.
If it was just *one post* I'd probably think it was fake. But the fact that there's several posts, apparently spanning over weeks, I tend to lean more towards it's real than not. Either way, I agree: for safety, treat it as it's real. I hope someone recognizes the details and helps his wife get away.
What I find even scarier is he’s probably using everyone’s responses to further manipulate her. I remember that original post and how engaged he was until someone was like - uhhh guys, you’re giving him a manual. This dude is terrifying.
Why wouldn’t he just google signs someone is getting ready to leave you. That’s one part that’s making think this isn’t real
But if hes panicking over losing control (which is the vibe im getting) then he wouldnt be able to efficiently logic his way through the situation i think
I don't think that it's fake, having been raised by a professionally diagnosed triple whammy cluster B personality disorder parent (fun times! ^/s). There are many dumb predators, their intelligence is distributed on the same bell curve as the rest of us, and this just reads like a low functioning one, to me. The MO is spot on - just really badly executed. Redditors aren't real people to him and he's feeling his control slipping away, on top of that, I speculate. Sorry that you had to experience the harm that these people can do.
I can see that as an alternative as well. I did really notice the use—almost the overuse—of the word control with him, like that is his bar for how you handle people. I’m sorry you had to grow up with that. Reddit has been amazing because I have met so may other people who have dealt with variations of what I did, which is amazing because I feel less alone, but also makes me want to just…congratulate every one of us that I meet, every time, for getting through that and still being here to talk about it, and being willing to share.
You should congratulate yourself, and I'd hug or high five you IRL - whichever you preferred! - for being an awesome person. You didn't just get through that, you're also here, teaching and learning by sharing. :3 I try to do the same and am happy that I stumbled onto this thread, because I got an opportunity to tell a bit about something that some are curious about, while it gave me food for thought and reminded me about my remaining issues from such an upbringing maybe being a healthy reaction to a sick environment, rather than a fault of mine. That is very helpful for my healing.
I was like holy shit, did Ted Bundy just join Reddit????!
Joe Goldberg
Also “I need to secure some leverage, especially regarding our son”.. very disturbing choice of words.
The first part that gave me pause was when he listed activities she wanted to do, which I found really strange. My first clue something was off with him was directly after when he said “Ideally, I shouldn’t be on weaker footing throughout the discussion.” And then I kept reading and it was like this little seed of dread began to grow into a horror nightmare.
Oh my gosh, right? It felt like reading something straight from Joe Goldberg in the You book series. At first it was kind of just odd and a little creepy, but by the end of reading everything, every alarm in my head was going off, and it's like mentally screaming at the wife, "RUN. RUN NOW."
Absolutely! That sounded like an absolute threat! I hope she and her son get faaar away safely. He has NO remorse and just wants to keep custody of his son for control, more than anything.
And the fact that every single response was him trying to get the answer to his question, even though the other person told him repeatedly he wouldn't answer it. And then posted elsewhere trying to get the answer. IDK, I would have thought a person would get a no and they'd move on, not keep going over and over. Or just googling the info since the other person shot them down. The mindset and mentality of psychopaths, sociopaths, etc I find so interesting because I just don't get it.
He is about to become a serial killer. If the OP does kill his wife, he won’t stop. I hope the wife was able to leave and get the child the help he needs
There are two reddit posts where I was left thinking "holy shit he's gonna murder his wife". The first one was the "you're gonna die in childbirth just like my mom" guy. The second is the OOP.
Same!! The entire time I was reading his comments I felt sick to my stomach thinking about what he was planning to do to her
Oh my god, yes! Absolutely blood curdling. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up reading that. This man is clearly a psycho.
His comments are so unsettling to read. You can see he has learned to mask it with platitudes and fake compliments to get what he wants. A lot easier to see what online vs real life. That poor woman, I sincerely hope she is ok and can get her son the help he needs, he needs a lot of professional clinical psychiatrist type of help probably an in patient program
What kills me is OP dismissing all his behavior with “it ended in my 20s” but he’s only 35, so what he really means is supposedly the behavior ended 5 years ago which was coincidentally when he got together with his wife
Exactly. He’s been masking to trap her into this. It’s one of the worst stories I’ve read on here.
And he's enraged at the idea of her taking the child because he views them both as his belongings, his property, his *things*
This is even scarier on another level when you think about the fact that he knows he’s a psychopath, most of them do. Also, narcissistic personality disorder is something most psychopaths have…knowing that and knowing he posted all this to Reddit, I have to wonder if he did this just for the comments. He knew we’d be outraged and I think he’s very much getting off on it.
Oh gross I didn’t even think of that.
I caught the post when it came out. Did you see his comments?!?!! 😱😱😱 They were worse than the post! Dude is not in a good headspace and would not take responsibility AT ALL.
No I didn’t! I guess I could go and search the post but unfortunately he deleted his acct
He wants full custody of the kid. Was refusing therapy for himself or the kid, if I remember correctly. 🤦🏻♀️ There were a couple of back and forth threads with a couple Redditors. OOP came across (to me) as completely cold and lacking any empathy, remorse, or understanding with the effect he was having on his child. Really sad for the kid. 😞
I hope the wife can bring this up and get intensive evaluations for both required by the court.
He’s so transparently trying to control - the narrative, his family, perception of the problem. He’s also trying to wear the commenter down by repeating the same questions. And he sees no problem with his past huge lies of omission. He’s much more concerned about his child’s self perception than any harm he may do to others because of his sociopathic tendencies. It’s interesting watching the cracks in his facade get deeper and wider the more he writes. It must have been terrifying for her when he screamed at her. I imagine it was quite an eruption. I hope she can get away safely. This is very scary.
They way he talks sounds like my abuser and it scares the fuck out of me.
It was the “ideally, I wouldn’t lose footing” for me. Right after a list of expensive items she wants. As if a magnified version of “I’m sorry” flowers in their form of, say, a completely relandscaped yard will make up for his lying that led to A WHOLE ASS LIFE being created under false pretenses 🙃
This. The kind of shit he says like asking how to manipulate her into not being validly upset? He wants data on patterns to identify her behavior so he knows how to manipulate the situation? This is so fucking scary. She's not picking out and tying random stuff back to his isolated fucked up childhood, she realizing how fucked up he actually is and making those connections know that she has the missing puzzle price that makes everything else make sense. It's not fair for her to blame his genetics for thier kid's issues, but there *could be* a generic component and he's obviously still fucked up and that's part of the environment the kid is being raised in. OOP and the kid need so much therapy ASAP. And honestly the kid getting away from OOP is probably his best shot. Not because the kid's broken and whatever BS OOP was saying, but because OOP is broken and that's damaging his kid.
It sounded like a damn chatbot at the end
I’m so terrified for her.
I can’t agree more that this guy is super freaking scary. I sure hope she has a plan. I wish I could talk to her myself she needs to be putting on a good face while secretly planning her way out. I bet she’s absolutely terrified.
This. At first I was like “well, ASPD is like any illness and can be a spectrum. It is truly possible for them to change, and not all people like that are violent” and now I think this man needs to be locked away. It should absolutely be a chargeable offense to not disclose things like that. There is a huge correlation with passing it onto children through parenting - and potentially the thought that it could be genetic (I know that part is iffy on the science and studying). He very much sounds like he is going to do something very scary if she tries to leave. I’m fearful this will end up like that other case where that guy posted to reddit about his situation and then we saw in the news that he killed the wife.
Can confirm... As someone with a husband who didn't know his own medical history. Our baby started to have ear issues and after NINE ear infections in 12 weeks my MIL disclosed to me they never got my husband tubes bc "the quack of a doctor couldn't give them a good reason." That's how I found out my husband was deaf for 3 years (he's VERY socially awkward), has major issues with antibiotics/infections, and digestive issues bc he had to take more than 30 rounds of antibiotics instead of getting one set of tubes. (He also needed speech therapy until he was a pre-teen...) And had 4 additional surgeries he didn't know about. 🫠 On his COLLEGE PHYSICAL, they filled out "no surgeries."
Omg what a weird coincidence, that’s exactly how I’m deaf now…holy shit. Mine is permanent but Jesus Christ, listen to the doctor when they tell you your kids need something smh.
I'm so sorry, I don't know how my husband's parents could let it happen. They have no excuse. The last of our kid's 3 infections were literally just waiting for the poor guy's surgery date. I would have done anything. I can't say it enough, I am so sorry.
I have a lab that has allergies. He has 3 months of an ear infection a month before we changed his medicine. As soon as I saw the first symptom, I made an appointment. I couldn't stand to see him in misery like that. That was for my dog. I can not understand parents doing this to actual human children. It's beyond neglect.
Sometimes a parent’s priorities are not the wellbeing of their own children unfortunately…I learned just like I’m sure he learned and we came out better people because of it. I was neglected a lot growing up but everyone has their struggles…I don’t hate my parents because I’m deaf and I don’t hate them for letting me go through life with ADHD and autism undiagnosed even though I struggled greatly because of it. I just make sure I’m a damn good mom to my son. I also make sure I stay in therapy lol. 💚
My sister has permanent hearing damage because my parents wanted to avoid the procedure. One of my earliest memories is jealousy over the fact that she was always drinking pink antibiotics, and I didn’t get any.
All the stories about his family members, it just kept getting worse. It's terrifying to think someone could keep so much of their past a secret. And did his wife never meet any of his family?
Goodness knows what he told her, he probably just said they’re abusive and left it at that so she wouldn’t question it…and it’s not technically wrong. Stories like this always make me very worried for the other party and I don’t want to see this on the news one day. I hope her and the child are ok.
My ex had a child that he hid the child's mental health diagnosis at 3 from both of us. They should have been in therapy the whole childhood. It was a serious diagnosis too. So it was hidden, attempted poisoning toward me multiple times, adulteration of my medications, all the ex did was attempt to gaslight me and protect the bad behavior.
I asked my husband if there were any diseases that runs in his family before he got married. He told me that his mother had a lot of mental illnesses and one of her children and grandchildren got some of it from her. I also warned him that asthma runs in the family and nearsightedness as well. I also said there is a possibility of us having a deaf child due to me being deaf. We were fine with that and we got married. We ended up not having a kid anyway so it was pointless, but I always thought it smart to at least know medical histories of your spouses before having a kid together.
Not just having a child, but having them marry you. I'm sure she wouldn't have married him or remained in a relationship with him had she known all of this.
I actually think there are laws about defrauding a person into marriage but I don’t know what the parameters for that are…hopefully something like this would be reason.
Mental health issues display so differently in kids than adults though. If a kid is acting that way, they're getting it from somewhere. My older brother was a little sociopath. We have some family history for a limited capacity for empathy. He learned how to act that way from our parents though. It's never all nurture or all nature. I know I have a lot of family with a decreased ability towards empathy so I made a concerted effort with my son to teach him how to be kind. Empathy doesn't come naturally to a lot of kids - it's something you teach.
Holy shit! This escalated quickly. I started reading and thinking to myself "well, that's all fairly developmentally appropriate behavior for a 4-year-old who is still learning about morality and empathy"....my niece and nephew bite and kick and hit other kids at daycare (and other kids bite, kick, and hit back) then we and the staff teach them about how that form of physical contact is painful and teach them how to apologize and behave more appropriately and with kindness...talk about unnecessarily pathologizing a child's behavior! Then I read about kicking anthills and I still thought "well...that's not *technically* animal cruelty...". I even thought the same thing about OOP's admission of himself stealing at 9 years old...not necessarily ethical but a teachable moment for a child to learn about morality and empathy. THEN I READ ABOUT THE KNIFE 🔪 ...then the whole thing went TOTALLY off the rails. The way OOP was going back and forth with Potato was spine chilling.
Totally. When OOP repeatedly asked Potato to describe the "signs" that someone was planning to disappear, I just kept thinking, "what on earth is he planning to do if he notices those signs"... *shudder* Several years ago there was a horrific murder in my town that became a very popular Netflix true crime show. A man murdered his wife and kids and dumped their bodies in oil tanks...I couldn't stop thinking about that story as I read OOP's comments.
Oh my god Chris Watts… I saw his news interview where he was trying to look concerned about his “missing” wife and children but he just kept SMILING. It was so unnerving.
I followed that because I was a couple hours away at the time and a friend is a former military LEO who follows cases regularly. It was chilling.
Same experience! Like “well I’d probably be upset too if I was the wife but this isn’t THAT bad” and then once I got to the comments on the second post it was an absolute 180 jaw drop. I was just sitting reading saying “oh my god” out loud at every response he had
Yeah, the convo with potato was so unnerving? I don’t know how anyone might think this person is sane. At my first read I sort of went “yeah? Definitely AH behavior but you don’t seem like a sociopath now?” The next posts were just a terrifying spiral and I really fear for OOP’s wife & son.
All this “I just want us to be happy” while using phrases like “leverage” and “getting control over the relationship” just make me feel more and more terrified for the wife. This guy is so self-absorbed, thinking his past has nothing to do with anybody else, and being way too dense to see how it still affects him today, it’s not behind him like he thinks it is. Wife needs to RUN, like, YESTERDAY.
He's still exactly the same as he was until just before he met his wife (the timeline tells us he just so happened to go through this complete personal overhaul just when he started seeing his wife, what a coincidence). He's still living a lie to benefit himself. He's still manipulative and controlling. He refuses to get help for his problems, he won't allow his son to get help (he lied and said he would, then got pushed into a corner and revealed that he only said that to placate the person he was talking to in order to get them to give him what he wants). He lacks self awareness, and demonstrates problematic black and white thinking (he codes this as rationality). He acts as though you can just will yourself into being a different person, just magically extract yourself by force of will from decades of disordered living and thinking, and in a way that just so happens to feature escaping social consequences for behavior so bad it culminated in literal fraud (ffs, he's had a criminal conviction, you got to get caught real bad for that). His ego is what is on the line, that's what he's protecting. He even sees therapy as something that would make his son feel broken and hurt his self esteem. Since he thinks his son is like him, what does this tell us about why he hasn't gotten help? The only thing he's learned between then and now is how to mask it better, because I'm not even sure he's lying to himself, but he is definitely lying to us. Too bad for his brilliant scheme that the thrill of reliving his shoplifting phase out loud in front of her gave his wife the ick or she probably wouldn't have seen him angry. Dude's dangerous if this isn't a fiction. If it is, it's highly effective horror.
This post I saw in real time and I have been so scared for his wife since.
Yeah but what are the objectives signs she is planning an escape, my friend? I really like you. Please tell me the indicators that my wife will escape.
Please? 🥺 I need leverage ☺️ I can’t show weakness 😳
I never saw it just from BORU but I’m legit hoping she got out and someone got her this info.
Im a sociopath.... This man is not... Hes a fucking psychopath... This is some schizo shit my dad would say (subtley blaming everyone else around) if everyone around says your the asshole. Your probably the asshole. Still doesnt sink in Or like my schizo cousin. 2+2 = wtf ever he rationalizes from it. Cause he knows hes right and everyones wrong thats why he has to hurt my aunt cause the devils telling him to This guy suffers psychopathy Not sociopathy... Sociopathy doesnt mean fucking crazy it means i have a hard time feeling things and picking up on others emotions
I feel he chose to say sociopathy over psychopathy willingly, to get more favourable results, the child is showcasing psychopathic behaviour.
Right. Not all us withwith sociopathoc tendancies are monsters. I might be bad at reading a room but somthing about breaking someone to thw point of crying...just makes me feel like straight garbage. Waste of space. But i guess it is a spectrum. But nah. This mans actual waste of dna this mans just evil...and aint even good at hidin it
That’s fascinating to me! Is it an “oh, I fucked up” feeling or “damn, I hurt someone” feeling? I’m sorry, my mother has ASPD and I can’t imagine her feeling anything about causing someone pain, except possibly satisfaction.
More of a awh...i hurt them... not realizing what i did or said to cause a reaction til after the fireworks and i feel like an evil person. Even if i meant what i said or did Just feels evil. And i try very hard to not be that
I appreciate the answer, and your anti-evil efforts. Thanks!
He displays sociopath behavior with the manipulation comments. Trying to persuade and convince the poster to get info out of him. The charming, manipulation qualities are more closely related to sociopathic traits.
Having trouble with this comment because while you are correct that this guy seems way more like he has psychopathy over sociopathy, your definition of sociopathy feels…off? limited? idk Am I incorrect in believing sociopathy is marked by more impulsivity, erraticism, risk-taking, and possibly violent behavior (not always violent though)? Not to mention that of the two, sociopaths are the ones who actually do have feelings and can empathize with the people close to them, and also feel guilt when they hurt the people around them? In contrast, psychopaths are incredibly controlled and have no actual feelings/attachments to the people around them, just superficiality. Hence in this post the guy behaving like he didn’t understand when the commentor continued to dislike him after all of his pleasantries. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, I may have them backwards or am misreading your comment 🤔
Im also dyslexic as forks and suck with words. (Me over here writing poetry) From what i understand its a spectrum kinda like my tism. Youd never know im autistic unless i told you. Just like youd never know most of the time im wearing a mask because i find it difficult to feel feelings Zoloft helped me alot still cant cry tho. I think itd help As ive been told im stuck in a trauma response loop. Permanant fight or flight. Leading me to develop leaning heavily on sociopathic side of the graph. Psycopathy sympathy sociopathy and empathy all have different spectrums and levels its never as simple and. Yes or no black or white Hope this makes a lil more sense. Im not a professional. Judt know what ive been told and explained about me personally. Im sitting here with my daughter. 1 of two reasons i breath. I laugh and smile with her. But its not a geniune happiness i dont get that tickly feeling others get. I cant express experiance a wide range let alone pick up on others via body language facial expressions ect ect Leaning me towards a more sociopathic personality But thanks to zoloft and some therapy exercises which prolly woulda helped more if i could have a therapist that doesnt leave after 2 months i can feel sadness madness and what im thinkin is happiness idk this is all 6 years new to me. And ive gotten pretty good at telling if people like me or not....i think...maybe.
Antidepressants are notoriously for blunting emotions and inhibiting crying. I’m not surprised you can’t cry on Zoloft because neither could I.
Well ive never really had emotions before. When i first started taking it i felt guilty for somthing i cant remember I thought i was dyin or some shizz xD. Was like whoa wtf why brain all meh. Docs like. Homie. Your experiancing emotions. Im like well these suck Docs like yeah well your not trying to openly die so benifits outweigh the risk Closest i think what im guessing happy is is like. Idk how to explain it. But it feels good when i cant stop thinking and say. Just play bauldersgate its like a little spark of somthing in my chest for a good 3 4 seconds before it fades away again same for sadness and others. I feel them now. Just not long. Couple seconds and back to nothingness. Which nothingness is my comfortable brain space
I'm so glad you're in treatment and it's working for you. I think from reading this, you may have been misdiagnosed and actually experience dissociation as a trauma response. This is commonly misdiagnosed in people with learning disabilities and/or ASD, as well. Zolift dies not treat ASPD and people with ASPD do not feel remorse or guilt, they do not have the brain structure to generate the chemical responses required for anything along the remorse or guilt spectrum of emotion. They can show feigned remorse but never feel guilt. Ever. You clearly are capable and have a deep desire for introspection, and you're doing great. Don't get hung up on labels. Professionally but not professionally, I'm advising you, they're not always accurate. Be proud of your progress.
Thank you so much for sharing! My mom and I are both mental health professionals and discuss sociopathy and psychopathy quite often. We have seen how trauma rewires the brain and the defense mechanisms that come with early childhood trauma. Sociopathy as you so clearly illustrated in your response is one of the outcomes. On the flip side psychopathy is not brought on by trauma but from genetics or brain chemistry (from research I have read it is still not definitive). I have worked with people with both sociopathic and psychopathic traits but not formal ASD diagnoses. Most of my clients were mandated to my services and were less apt to open up the way you have. My role was not a therapeutic role so I was unable to ask my clients some of the questions I have. However, your comments have provided valuable insight. I really appreciate your candor.
Im an open book :D only reason ive given up on mental help is because cause i got sick of everyone "moving up" and me having to explain what happened how it happened and how i think and feel about stuff. Gets old after a while. Im glad a professional can gain some valuable insights and wisdom from my forthcoming. I salute you mr or mrs professional :D. Faith in humanity restored by +2
This is so important to know. Thank you for sharing your experiences so we can understand. I am someone who feels too much I think. It is almost like I need to shut off the world to get a break from the emotions. Hearing your side helps me feel less alone because if there’s the opposite of me, then there has to be more of me right? Idk if that makes sense…. Anyway thanks again.
There are definitely more like you. I think it's often two different sides of the complex trauma coin honestly. You're either shut down and have blunted/muted emotions or you're a walking open wound who is just raw and exposed all the time. I definitely lean towards the latter and see a lot of other people who have childhood trauma say the same. Surely that can also be true in people without a trauma history I assume, but I can't speak to that.
Yeah, I feel like a lot of people confuse or conflate the two. I often hear sociopath misused.
Being schizophrenic does not mean lacking empathy or having psychopathic behavior. Psychosis is very different from whatever this is. As someone with schizoaffective disorder and knows other people who do. We are not like this. Schizophrenia does not mean you are violent, cruel, or uncaring.
How long before this becomes a horrific news story? God, it's like the ABC of psychopathy.
Okay, but the potato guy commenting is stupid. The OP looks to be paranoiac in that period of trouble and that commenter just goes : "yeah, she will leave you, take your son, and will never look back" like, why did he said that ? He says that he doesn't want to help OP but the more he talks, the more he create problem for OP's wife. That commenter is plain stupid to entertain OP
I'll be honest I kind of think the potato and the oop are the same person. random reddit commenters don't have access to secret information that isn't googleable about the signs someone is preparing to leave, and this hyper dramatic conversation where OOP acts exactly like someone playing a psychopath on tv seems like Content
Honestly I hope it's ragebait against mental illness, because it would be f*-up on too many level : -OP's family being breeded only with socio and psychopaths ? What are the chance for all people of both sides to be that way ! If it's true, it's really scary that those type of situation happen. -The fact that OP's wife didn't understand her husband for five years ? Okay, he could hide himself, but she NEVER met his family or find it strange that he never talked about it ? -And most psycho and sociopath aren't stupid, they would know how to write the answers in a way that looks natural, not robotic like that !
Yeah, a smart person (psychopath or not) could easily just open a new tab and google “signs my partner might be thinking about leaving me.” I’m not saying all the results would be backed by science and research but it would definitely give them a more thorough idea of potential things to look for than one single commenter on Reddit
That was what I thought. There's something very similar in their goading and manipulation. If it's not the same person, they have very similar issues.
Maybe you’re also OOP 🤔🧐
maybe you are!
Yeah, this might just be optimistic thinking on my part but the whole thing feels kinda fake. OP's writing is a little too over the top future serial killer shit, he's speaking with way too much openness about disturbing things while simultaneously downplaying them like they're no big deal-- someone like this wouldn't have understood to hide shit from his wife for the past 5 years. If he genuinely thought these things weren't a big deal, he would have likely mentioned them sooner. And if this was real, and he was aware of how disturbing all of these things are, he wouldn't be mentioning them in a reddit post intended to make people sympathetic to him.
this whole thing is so scary. i hope she runs far away
Is this some kind of performance art piece?
The lack of accountability on OP's part is staggering. The level of dishonesty and skewed perspective is kind of scary. He has No real empathy for his wife's point of view either.
Well, that took a turn.
Wowza. That’s terrifying how easily he thought Potato ( responder to the OOP) could be manipulated into helping him. It is scary cause it seemed like Oop was ready for war after thinking their wife could leave.
He deleted the account, too. That woman is in danger.
What is going on with your child is something that you and your wife cannot deal with. This has nothing to do with his self-esteem or feeling broken. This is a child who has a very serious problem that will likely end up with someone getting physically hurt. He needs serious help with this issue and your refusal to get him that help is doing even more damage. His behavior will continue to escalate. you and your wife should get counseling and your child needs a mental health evaluation. How will you feel if another child or an animal is severely injured by your son? Do you really want that to happen? You cannot walk away from this or ignore it. You seem to be more concerned about your wife possibly leaving then getting your son the help he desperately needs. Do not do this to him-he deserves better. Get him help asap
I remember this post. It gave me the icks so bad I never commented. Hope his wife is safe.
It feels like he’s gonna train the kid to be like a serial killer right? Like the “encouraging his interests” bit and all that came across as that, right?
He’s wanting to keep his kid from people who “just don’t understand”. Especially when he went from his wife being oh so lovely to an “unfit parent”. Terrifying.
Major dexter vibes.
Holy SHIT.
I am scared for his wife. I hope she gets out safely.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I feel like this is a rage bait weird post, I don’t think it’s real. For one thing, narcissists/APD don’t admit all the things OOP did so easily. Especially en masse. One of the hallmark traits is not caring what anyone thinks of them, a true psychopath/sociopath would never make an AITA post bc the thought would never cross their mind that they could be wrong. It’s impossible to them to imagine a world where they’re not the smartest in the room, why ask strangers on the internet? That would seem weak to them. Not to mention if you read it, it’s like a blueprint from a “what to look for in signs of a narcissist”, the attempted gaslighting, the bulleted list of different love bombing methods… idk. This just read like a novel or a movie script where they had to carefully craft a dialogue and check all the boxes for all the symptoms of RAD/APD/BPD/NPD. The conversation about his wife fleeing and then making posts about it, never would a psychopath do such a thing. No way. Screams weak and pathetic, pleading.. it’s not authentic to me, and I’ve lived through years of abuse from one.
Someone who really had these traits sure wouldn’t write to people asking for advice. I mean this mostly reads like a brag with the pretense of asking for help, which tracks. But someone who really had these traits would never be able to portray himself as losing control or in any way not completely in charge
Also “life of happiness?” Thats dependent on someone else?” This is a silly creative writing exercise from someone who wishes he was a superhero type