Favorably Fortunate
Women are often ‘success-struck’ by the psychopath’s true or surface success. This blinds them to his psychopathy. There are millions of pathological personalities who destroy people’s lives—with or without breaking the law. These people unfortunately never go to prison, so their true criminal nature is never unmasked. They are outwardly successful, and can be seen in high-ranking CEO positions, politics, and prestigious positions in law, medicine, and the military. When trusting women expect psychopaths to be criminals, they don’t look for them in the pulpit, the penthouse corner office or on Capitol Hill.
Cleckley noted psychopaths seek out positions with power over others:
- medical doctors
- psychiatrists or other positions within other fields of psychology
- religious leaders
- political leaders
- lawyers, etc.
Pathological power-mongrels seek any place they can have a client, a constituent, a patient, a congregation, or a following. Some career titles such as medicine, psychology, and theology imply empathy. This assumption allows conscience-less psychopaths to hide among truly empathetic professionals. Other popular careers psychopaths use to ‘cloak’ their lack of empathy include politics, law, and criminal justice. The psychopaths blend into human service fields so well they are often ‘missed’—even by their own colleagues.
However, all psychopaths are not successful. Ironically, the women in our survey met up with a slightly different career-type psychopath. I want the reading public to know, however, many psychopaths are very successful. The more successful they are, the better they blend in, and the harder it is for anyone to recognize or believe they are as pathological as the day is long.
Slick But Not Always Violent
Women don’t recognize the psychopath for what he is because they assume people with dangerous disorders are always violent. As many of our clients can attest, there are many ways to harm a loved one without actually beating or killing them. Though he never laid a hand on them, the psychological, spiritual, sexual, financial, or emotional harm he did to them generated long-term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other disorders. Very often the victims describe this harm as bad as death.
Without physical violence in the relationship, many women miss other signs of pathology that could have clued them in. Women blame either the relationship dynamics or themselves, completely missing his psychopathy. She never saw him for what he really was until she was extremely damaged.
Swaggering Swindlers
A woman didn’t suspect his psychopathy because she never expected a man to wipe her out financially. She believes men are there to be mutually supportive including financially, so she didn’t look for a financial rip-off artist. Many psychopaths are con-men or swindlers that confiscate financial resources, help themselves to life savings, steal stock pensions and yet never get caught. One of the signs of pathology is the ‘parasitic’ lifestyle in which they live off others, even if they don’t need the money. This past year, the news has been filled with examples of psychopathic con-men, white collar snakes and swindlers. Almost 90% of the women coming out of relationships with psychopaths have gone from six figure incomes to financial destitution. Many can’t understand why he took their money and ran when he had the ability to earn his own or had his own money. Before you judge them, remember Bernie Madoff and his astounding financial salesmanship.
