Most people don’t understand what it’s like to have been in a relationship with a psychopath. When the relationship is over people expect the ‘getting over it’ and ‘moving on’ to be the same as it would be for a relationship with anyone else. They express frustration and even boredom when the psychopath and the relationship are continuing topics. They see the victims as dwelling on the relationship rather than fighting to get past it. What they say and how they act toward the victim is based on their understanding of and experience with normal relationships.

Most people hear the word psychopath and associate it with serial killers or Norman Bates. Many people refer to ex-partners or friends as ‘psychos’, so an assumption is made that the victim is using the term psychopath in the same way. Even if a person were to make a study of psychopathy they would have only an intellectual understanding of psychopathy. The same person could study the effects of psychopathy on victims and have an intellectual understanding of those as well. This person could also have empathy and understand the various emotions the victims have and feel for the victim. They can imagine being in a situation with a psychopath and how it feels, but imagination falls short of knowing and understanding. It falls short in the same way imagining the loss of a loved one falls short of experiencing the actual loss.

Normal relationships are built on things that are mutual: love, respect, affection, understanding, trust, goals, companionship, and a long list of other things. A relationship with a psychopath is a relationship built on lies, deception, and manipulation, but the victim will not really know this until after forming an attachment. The attachment, along with continued lies, projections, and other psychopathic methods, will obscure the truth.

The devaluation of the victim begins when the psychopath is secure in the knowledge that the victim’s attachment, and it may be abrupt and immediate or gradual, but it will happen. The victim will try to restore the relationship to what it was (seemed to be) in the beginning. The victim may accept responsibility for the failing relationship because the psychopath doesn’t or because the victim is being blamed. The victim’s life can become full of confusion, fear, guilt, and even denial, especially if the psychopath provides doses of idealization. Discard will eventually follow. It may be a complete discard or the first of many, but it will happen. Discards are always painful and confusing for victims.

The end of a normal relationship brings sadness and a sense of loss, or even a sense of devastation, followed by a period of recovery and moving on. Both parties go their separate ways and can even remain friends, depending on the circumstances. In normal relationships both parties are invested and both will lose something when the relationship is over. Relationships with psychopaths don’t end that way. Psychopaths can be cruel or cold, and they assign blame to the victim. Often the psychopath will move on quickly to another victim, broadcasting their happiness while the last victim is still reeling. Realizing, at any point, that the relationship was nothing but lies and deception can be as devastating as the discard itself. The victim can have denial, self-blame, shame, and feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. Seeing the psychopath feeling nothing but superiority and disdain enhances these feelings in the victims. The end of a relationship with a psychopath is nothing short of traumatic.

The end of a relationship with a psychopath might not look very different on the surface to most people. The psychopath moves on so they expect the same from the victim, completely unaware of the trauma. The chances are that if the victim was abused (physically, emotionally, or otherwise) during the relationship, the victim hid or downplayed it. The psychopath would have already carried out a smear campaign accusing the victim of being abusive, and accusations of abuse by the victim would then be seen as vindictive lies.

Most people will see the psychopath moving on and think that the victim should be moving on as well, not realizing the psychopath wasn’t invested in the relationship like the victim was. They see the psychopath ‘recovering’ from the relationship, making it appear that the victim is ‘dwelling on it’. They don’t take into account how much damage the victim has suffered or how many feelings need to be processed and worked through, because their experience is limited to normal relationships. Most people see the psychopath broadcasting their happiness on social media and don’t realize that it’s really another way to further their torment of the victim. They see the psychopath moving on. If they see the psychopath broadcasting heartache and sadness, they will believe the psychopath is truly suffering, not knowing it’s a pity-play. Meanwhile the victim retreats out of desperation, faced with trying to explain what’s happened to people who can’t truly understand, while still trying to understand it her/himself.

Claudia Moscovici has an excellent article, The Psychopath’s Relationship Cycle, that describes how a psychopath operates. There are three basic steps, idealize, devalue, and discard.

Idealization seems great when it happens, it’s like falling in love, except with a fictional character instead of a real person. That would be because he finds out what you want, or what’s missing from your life, and becomes it. He’s already decided what he wants from you and sets out to win you over to get it. I got a made-to-order boyfriend, all sweetness and lost-puppy. We spent hours and hours together, having fun, working, or just hanging out. His family was so friendly and welcoming and everything seemed wonderful. I took excellent care of my man because his ex-wives hadn’t. We made plans to move in and start a life together. He proposed after almost a year and a half.

During this period there were things that seemed off or odd enough to make me stop and think, at least briefly, that something might be wrong. Most of them I rationalized away, thinking I was being paranoid or too critical. Looking at the whole psychopathic picture after the fact, I waved away too many red flags. Here are some of them:

• The eyes, darting or staring
• Different personas, especially different with his family and people he knew but I didn’t
• His exes treated him badly, especially the mother of his children
• His kids’ mother cheated on him, caused him to be fired from his job, lied constantly, especially in court, used his kids against him, only wanted custody for the child support money, ruined his credit, etc.
• The short time between meeting and when the little hearts started to be inserted in his text messages
• His vague personal history presented without any connection between events and out of order
• His insisting I was somewhere with him at an event when I wasn’t
• Mirroring me, including things I liked, funny voices, pet names, etc.
• His insisting he was not sweet while behaving sweetly
• The pre-engagement ring two weeks before he needed both the down payment and a co-signer for his new car
• Stories that changed as he told them because he incorporated my comments into them
• His claiming that women only cry to manipulate people

He was so devoted to me and so affectionate and caring that I would feel guilty about thinking that there was something wrong with him or with us. I second-guessed my intuition repeatedly because I thought I was being paranoid or too critical or too needy. Why would I try to sabotage my relationship or my happiness?

After idealization, the devaluation begins. This is about the point when the relationship is legitimized and the target is hooked. I didn’t notice the devaluation immediately. I thought in the third year, when things seemed to cool off a little, that it was more like settling into the relationship. What was really happening was devaluation and dosing, which is being strung along with intermittent validation. There would be a disagreement, and he wouldn’t argue, and, because he didn’t want to be around me when I was upset, he would ignore me. When we started talking again, things would go back to normal. I know now that these silent treatments were a form of abuse, and just one of many passive-aggressive behaviors I didn’t recognize.

In the first big disagreement we had he actually argued with me briefly before he stopped speaking all together. I had made it clear on my side of the argument that what I wanted was very important to me. We were in the car and I spent the rest of the ride being ignored. Instead of doing what we’d planned, he drove me home, put the car in park, and waited for me to get out, all without speaking. He ignored me well into the next day or the day after, and when he finally responded to me by text, he said that I should be happy I won, that I should get over it and move on, and the past was the past. He didn’t acknowledge my feelings or that he hurt them, and he expected me to feel guilty for having them.

After that first one, arguments (really non-arguments) were mostly me saying my part and him staring at me, usually followed by the silent treatment for hours or days. A day or two after he started talking to me again he’d be just like he was in the beginning. Almost. Everything would always improve drastically, but it was never back to the same level as it was before each argument. I didn’t notice at the time. I would be distracted from the downward trend by some good thing he did or a big gesture. There were a few times when he actually argued, I think I mentioned before, that he made a big theatrical display of yelling and accusing me of things before storming away.

Throughout idealization and long into devaluation I was the same person and gave at the same level. I helped with gas money and bought things. I cooked, sometimes from scratch, and baked, always from scratch, and I did all the home improvement work that took more than rudimentary skill or any kind of patience. I made him things and praised the good things he did, and told him what I thought about everything else. He started off being my partner in everything, but there was a decline. He started showing up later and later when we were supposed to work on a project, and he started doing less. He started putting less of everything into anything to do with us and expected me to do more. For a long time I kept doing more, because he wouldn’t be happy with the what used to make him happy before. He would flatter me and sweet talk and hint about what he wanted and try to make me feel selfish or guilty for not providing him with whatever it was. He would sulk like a child if he didn’t get what he wanted.

All during the devaluation he was pushing my boundaries and manipulating me into doing more and expecting less. The fourth year was bad for me, and would have been bad without a psychopath. Two big events showed me that the man I loved could not be counted on for any emotional support. The first was my son needing in-patient care for his depression in late winter. He went into the hospital on a Friday night and got out after five days. The whole weekend my psychopath wasn’t interested in anything to do with my son, he was only interested in whether I was going to eat dinner with him and his kids or not. He didn’t want to go to the family meeting with me and the only support I got from him was him looking after the new puppy after work.

At the end of summer my father went into the hospital for more than two months. Just when he seemed to be doing better, the day after he was moved to a rehabilitation facility closer to home, he died. My psychopath had no kind words or expressions of sympathy for me, or even a hug. He actually seemed to think that everything would go back to normal immediately after the funeral, and saw no reason why I would need to spend any more time with my family. That fall I had to help my mother with the yard work and my psychopath would wait impatiently for me to be done so he could come over to Mom’s and have dinner. He wasn’t interested in helping at Mom’s and wouldn’t do half the yardwork at my house, where he had started staying on weekdays because of the puppy.

The point at which my family’s ill opinion of my psychopath was set that Thanksgiving, when he sulked  all day in my dead father’s chair, on my dead father’s birthday, because I didn’t make him his own special food. It was a barely a month after my father died and our first holiday without him, and my psychopath thought he was being treated badly. I was supposed to feel guilty, and sorry for him.

The devaluation continued into the fifth and last year, which was really a cycle of devaluation and partial discards, meaning he would disappear during the silent treatments and come back again. I’d had a rough year the year before, and I didn’t work on my house very much during that time. My psychopath, once he was established as a part-time resident, had no real interest in doing any work, and only a passing interest in what I did. In the spring, going into the fifth year, he decided to take his favorite son to little league, becoming less available to do anything. He then hurt his knee showing off for the kids, which began months of pity-seeking and inability to do anything unrelated to physical therapy or little league. In the fall, with his knee completely healed, he signed his son up for more baseball and had no extra time.

By that last year I was tired of just about everything. For three years he had complained about not having enough money but turned down overtime when it was offered. He slacked off at work and was angry when he didn’t get a raise. Nothing I did made him happy and he was not interested in whether I was happy or not. I started enforcing the boundaries that I had let slip and cut back on all the things I was doing for him, although I was still doing plenty. I started being more emphatic in pointing out my psychopath’s faults and poor behaviors. Some of the things I brought to his attention were his playing favorites between his children, criticism of my family, nonpayment of his debts including what he owed me, his lack of contribution toward anything but food, doing specifically things I said not to, and not doing any work around the house. The only result was that the non-arguments and silent treatments increased dramatically.

During devaluation a psychopath will find a new target, or several new targets to take the place of the victim or victims. Some psychopaths have numerous targets in each phase while others are lazy. The psychopath will start a smear campaign against the victim and portray himself as the victim before discarding the actual victim. The psychopath will often continue the devaluation and smear campain after the discard. Many psychopaths will also start a cycle of devaluation and discard in which they will pretend to have changed, reestablish the relationship, and then devalue and discard the victim again. The victim, hoping they might get what they once had during idealiztion is given a mere glimpse before devaluation and discard.

I can’t pinpoint when my psychopath’s smear campaign started or when he started looking for a new target. I believe they both started in the middle of the fifth year at the latest. By the holidays he was texting other people frequently and claiming it was his brother, although they never usually texted much. I suspected another woman. At this point my psychopath also had plenty of free time away from me due to the frequent silent treatments. He didn’t leave his phone out when I was around and also didn’t leave it out of his reach after getting angry a couple times because I touched it.

The final discard began near the end of February and it was over in about two months. One day I had to pick him up and take him to work because his car caught fire, not his newer one but the older on I had borrowed money to loan him for repairs. I had repeatedly told him to have it checked because I could smell gas when I rode in it with him. I told him he would have to have it towed to someplace other than my house. Thatnight while I was in bed feeling sick, he took my keys out of my purse and moved my car so his could be dropped in the driveway. He thought that ordering out food would make up for disregarding what I said. He had already said he wanted to take it to the scrap yard to get a couple hundred dollars for it, which I said he should not do since he owed me eight hundred still for the repairs. A few days later he wanted to sign the car over to me instead of paying me back, and could not see how I wouldn’t be satisfied getting something he valued so little instead of the money he had promised to pay back the year before. The entire conversation took place woth me talking diectly to him and him talking to the dog instead of me. Once again he refused to argue. By now it had already been several days since he had stopped kissing me hello or goodnight and after this point he started acting like a cold acquaintance. That weekend he purposely didn’t tell me about his nephew’s birthday party until he was on his way to it without me, saying he didn’t think I wanted to go. I started spending more time away from him and didn’t have any interest in him when he was around or have much to say to him.

I soon found out he was getting letters from his knee doctor’s collection agency and was throwing them away (he owed about $2800 according to the letter I found in the trash). He was convinced the national guard would pay for his knee surgery because the same knee had been injured and required surgery that the guard would neither pay for nor allow him back without. When the medical records got to the VA it was the other knee that he had injured, but he maintained that another set of records was missing showing an injury the the knee he hurt at little league. He was sure that he would not only have the surgery paid for but he would also get lots of disability money. He had been bragging about it since the surgery, even to the guys at work.

Meanwhile, his student loan people got his federal income tax return because he had refused to send any payments for years and they couldn’t garnish his wages because his child support put him over the garnishment limit. He agreed to allow them to take a small amount of money out of his checking account to start repaying the rest of the three thousand dollars left. When the tax preparation people called for payment I found out he owed them about two hundred dollars. He had lied three years before saying he didn’t use that company, and then I watched him lying to them about how he was still waiting for his return, when he had shown me the letter saying his return was taken. He had started moving his things out without saying anything to me, but either didn’t think I noticed or, most likely, he didn’t care. I think that started about when I yelled at him on the phone for wanting to sell his car to his sister-in-law’s ex-husband’s friend for four hundred dollars, saying he’d give me that money and and pay me back the rest of the eight hundred dollars later. Four hundred was all it was worth because the guy told him that it needed ‘a lot of work’.

I knew he had requested money from his 401K account due to hardship and had received $4400 which he had also not said anything about. I noticed most of his things were gone and that he had been taking all his clothes with him when he went to his parents’ on the weekends but still hadn’t said anything to me about it. I saw on a Saturday the he had unfriended me on facebook, and when he texted me and wanted to know what I wanted to do that day when little league practice was over, I asked him about it and he denied doing it, saying he hadn’t been on facebook at all. By the time he was done at little league and asked what I wanted to do I was busy changing my locks. I had me meet me at my mom’s for dinner, as usual, and told him I had already bought food. I usually cooked for him and his kids at my mom’s since my kitchen was still not done and the alternative was his parents’ house where he would ignore me for video games or I would get stuck watching whatever his father was watching on TV. The next day I cooked for them at my mom’s again but didn’t bother to mention the locks were changed that day either. Mom was amused because I brought her a new set of keys the day before.

That Monday my psychopath texted me to say he’d be home at 8 after little league practice. I responded that he wasn’t coming in my house until he explained why his things were moved out and what he did with the 401K money. He didn’t respond until Tuesday night with a long childishly written text, saying he moved out his stuff to see what he could give a friend’s friend’s family member who had a house fire, and to copy his CDs onto his computer again. He said the money was enough to pay off the student loan and signature loan, basically everything but his car payment, then he could start so save money and pay me back. I responded saying that didn’t answer why the rest of his things were gone, that I didn’t care about his dishes, and that I better not be missing anything. I also said that since he told me that he’d paid off his sigmature loan already he either lied or had gotten another one, and that if we were supposed to be in a relationship he needed to tell me more.

He didn’t respond to that last text. He came to work every day acting as though nothing had changed and was angry when I didn’t want anything to do with him. He made a few lame attempts to engage me in conversation but I had no reason to talk to him for anything other than work related issues. He drove by my house repeatedly and refused to stop using my mailing address when I told him to. I had to have his boss make him change the address work had for him. My mom started bringing the mail inside for me so I could return-to-sender all his letters. It was nice to see how few letters with big sharpie writing it took for the post office to automatically start returning all his mail. Every Sunday, at least until it was dark too early, I saw him drive by my mom’s on his way to take his kids back to their mother. It’s not on the way. Until he finally quit nine months later he repeatedly harassed me at work with whistling, humming, unnecessary trips in and out of the office, trying to tell me what to do, not performing his assigned janitorial duties, eavesdropping on my conversations, mumbling comments when I told him to leave me alone, kicking pennies under the door instead of paying me back, and trying to convince his boss I was harassing him.

Psychopaths enjoy making their victims suffer and watching them suffer They will also use social media or mutual acquaintances to spread lies or learn how much their victims are suffering. They will broadcast how happy they are with their new targets, using the same media or people, to increase the torment. Psychopaths want power and control over people and the way for the victim to take that power away is to end all contact with the psychopath, direct and indirect.

Having no contact was not an option for me until my psychopath quit his job, because ignoring him only made him try to annoy me more. He would be disappointed to know that finally quitting was the nicest thing he’d done for me in years. He handed me all the remaining power he had over me, and that makes him the loser.