How long can a sociopath pretend?
January 24, 2016 3:22 PM Subscribe
How long can a sociopath fake for?
A woman and man got married after 3 years of dating. Shortly after they married, things started to fall apart and, eventually, her husband became extremely abusive. It was kind of gradual and things got weirder and more abusive as time went on.
After they'd been married about 4 years, her husband told her that he was sick of pretending and that he'd faked who he was to get her to marry him. He told her he'd lied about all sorts of things, put on a fake personality, obscured details and so on. He told her that who he is is actually a nasty person who hates people. At other points, he told her he just tells people whatever he thinks they want to hear so that they leave him alone or he can get on to what he wants. He's also told her that he doesn't care about people, that they are not worth getting to know, etc. You can imagine how jolting this would be. She ended up leaving - there were lots of reasons, but that was the icing on the cake. Some of their child's doctors have suggested the dad might have a personality disorder.
But isn't 7 years kind of a huge amount of time to keep up a ruse? Things did start to fall apart just after marriage, but it rapidly went downhill after that. Do people really fake for that long? I thought it was usually only for a few months.
A woman and man got married after 3 years of dating. Shortly after they married, things started to fall apart and, eventually, her husband became extremely abusive. It was kind of gradual and things got weirder and more abusive as time went on.
After they'd been married about 4 years, her husband told her that he was sick of pretending and that he'd faked who he was to get her to marry him. He told her he'd lied about all sorts of things, put on a fake personality, obscured details and so on. He told her that who he is is actually a nasty person who hates people. At other points, he told her he just tells people whatever he thinks they want to hear so that they leave him alone or he can get on to what he wants. He's also told her that he doesn't care about people, that they are not worth getting to know, etc. You can imagine how jolting this would be. She ended up leaving - there were lots of reasons, but that was the icing on the cake. Some of their child's doctors have suggested the dad might have a personality disorder.
But isn't 7 years kind of a huge amount of time to keep up a ruse? Things did start to fall apart just after marriage, but it rapidly went downhill after that. Do people really fake for that long? I thought it was usually only for a few months.
This post was deleted for the following reason: This is kind of a weird mix of a nominal question and an anecdote and so comes off as not super clear what the goal is; if there's a way to reframe this with a more concrete question, that'd probably be okay. -- cortex
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