On the news, they announce that “romance scams” have increased drastically over the years and that it is recidivists that are the villains. The concept of psychopathy, a word that the listeners should hear once in a while, is conspicuous as it is not clearly apparent. Of course, there are other several diagnoses that might be the explanation for the behaviour, such as narcissism and borderline, but my point here is that people are deceived all over again because they don’t know about the warning signs. They don’t know what it’s about. They lack knowledge concerning how to protect themselves. Maybe psychopathy are still only about serial killers? We need to get rid of that image. People need to know that this is a common scenario when personality-disordered individuals are nearby. We must not think that we just were unlucky to meet a bad man or woman. We must get the chance to at least begin to understand, to be able to act long-term.
There is a woman on the news this day, telling her story:
“He seemed to be a very nice, normal and charming man. He seemed kind, and he was good-looking too (…). When I talk about this afterwards, it feels obvious that something must have been wrong, but when he explained and talked about it, it sounded so genuine.”
The news also reports that the police at the time received a lot of reports every day concerning romance frauds, and the man in question had cheated women of millions. That is exactly what often happens with a personality disordered person in the equation. They seem so fantastic or present themselves as people in need, as victims of unfortunate circumstances, and exploit the partner’s finances. The money in the bank account is spent first, and then it continues with “saving the situation” with loans from different banks.
Only when payment is required, there are no possibilities left to lend more money, and the partner is gone; he or she understands what happened. Or not. Perhaps one just had bad luck meeting a bad person…
Remember: Psychopathic traits do exist in both men and women.
decreasedisorders.com 