Claudia Moscovici
Psychopathy and Sex Addiction
Neil Entwistle pretended to be a perfect husband. After marrying Rachel, he posted their wedding and honeymoon pictures on a website dedicated to their relationship. During the same period of time, however, he pursued other women on adult dating websites. Phil Markoff, the “Craigslist killer,” hunted for victims on the Internet. If he is indeed a murderer, his intention wasn’t simply to cheat on his unsuspecting and loving fiancée. It was also to kidnap, sexually assault and kill other women. Dating and personals websites are, quite notoriously, the playground for psychopathic sex addicts. The games they play there are limited only by their perverse desires and imaginations. If you fall into their hands, you risk anything from being merely used to being killed.
Such venues make it very easy to dupe several women at the same time, often behind the wife’s or girlfriend’s back. Psychopathic sex addicts can also broaden the spectrum of their experiences on these websites. They use chat rooms for entertainment. However, those aren’t likely to satisfy them. Psychopaths get most aroused by controlling real, live individuals rather than images and words on a screen. They use adult/sex websites for more casual encounters and dating websites to find partners seeking real relationships. On the adult websites, they can be as explicit and perverted as they wish. After all, that’s the whole point.
By way of contrast, on the dating websites, they can present themselves as normal, decent men. Sometimes a psychopath will post different kinds of ads on the dating websites themselves to get involved with different types of women. In one ad he might state that he’s trapped in a loveless, lackluster marriage and wishes to have a fling with a married woman in similar circumstances. In another, he might imply that he’s a principled, single individual seeking a serious relationship. In those cases, obviously, the psychopath won’t advertise that his real intention is to use women emotionally and sexually for as long as they give them a rush, deceive them, damage their self-respect and then dump them. And that’s only if his victims are lucky: if he’s not into acts of physical violence.
As we’ve seen, psychopaths are masters of manipulation and disguise. They usually write in a very casual, neutral and non-threatening manner. They might say, for instance, that they’re looking for someone to click with, or to share life experiences with. They tend to cast their net wide, leaving the description of what they want and of whom they seek open. This enables them to play it by ear and see what prey they can catch and for what purposes they can use each person. Likewise, they usually give out very little information about themselves at first, to leave themselves enough room to maneuver. They mirror each victim’s tastes and personality traits during the seduction/idealization phase. They also hook several women at a time, leading each one to believe that she’s the only one, or at the very least, the only one that counts. Since they have such a low emotional investment in their partner(s), when they get caught cheating, it’s no big deal. Losing their long-term wife or girlfriend offers them yet another good excuse to hunt for new targets. Not that they need any excuses…
When looking for a partner on dating websites, women in particular have to be extra careful. The chances of ending up with a player or, worse yet, caught in the web of a psychopathic predator are high enough to pose a serious risk. The main difference between a regular player and a psychopath is that the psychopath wants to destroy, not simply enjoy, the women he hooks. His true identity remains disguised and his real intentions covert until he’s ready to leave his victim after having misled, harmed and used her. Moreover, if any romantic relationship with a psychopath is bound to be shallow and short-lived, it’s because so are the emotions behind it (at least on the psychopath’s side) and because the circumstances that make it possible quickly change. A psychopath is excited by conquest, control, novelty, unrealistic mutual idealization, deception and constant sexual stimulation, largely based on variety and transgression. These factors can’t last long and aren’t conducive to a monogamous relationship.
In a popular article, Dr. Gail Saltz responded to a letter from a married man who bragged about his duplicity and manipulation of countless women. He writes:
Dear Dr. Saltz, I can’t get enough of women. I have to look at every woman who walks by. I watch porn, I flirt, I keep in touch with past girlfriends, I make new ones, I browse for women online. I get up to 30 e-mails a day from women. Once I have seduced them online, they are dying to meet me and usually sleep with me on the first date. Then I find the simplest flaw and use that against them to break it off. They are devastated. They feel I have used them sexually, and they are right. The kicker is that I am married. My wife is great, beautiful, intelligent and we have a good sex life. I am 41. We have been together for 25 years. I, however, still have a constant rotation of new women. I just can’t stop seducing other women and having sex with them. Nor do I want to, because I am having the time of my life.
The only thing that bothers this man turns out to be the inconvenience it poses for his job. He claims that he takes three hours a day to write women. He also calls those “higher on the rotation.” He emails women again for three hours at night, after his wife goes to bed. Then he hunts on the Internet for new targets. Needless to say, he doesn’t feel guilty towards his wife or any of the other women he misleads. Nor does he believe that he has a problem or sex addiction. His reasoning is quite impressive: consuming what you enjoy can’t possibly be an addiction. He boasts:
I have slept with an untold number of women. I would not call it an addiction because I like it so much and it makes me happy to meet them, seduce them, sleep with them and, yes, even break up with them. This week I will hit my all-time record of sleeping with 13 different women. They are all beautiful, intelligent and successful, and they all think we will live happily ever after. They have no idea that I am sleeping with so many other women, let alone married. I know hurting them emotionally is bad. I just can’t stop. To me it is all fair game as long as it is consensual.
This man’s definition of addiction is only outdone by his impressive moral reasoning. According to him, lying to, misleading and cheating on women can’t possibly be wrong as long as it’s “consensual.” One wonders how many of those women “consented” to being used and deceived by him. Imagine your boyfriend kissing you, then looking into your eyes and telling you how much he loves you and that you’re the only woman for him. It sounds very nice and fills you with feelings of love and devotion. Then imagine him doing exactly the same thing with another woman an hour before meeting with you and with a third woman an hour afterwards. Somehow, his kisses and vows of love no longer seem quite as meaningful. In fact, once you see the whole picture of the psychopath’s behavior, all the so-called “positive” aspects of the relationship lose meaning.
Unfortunately, women involved with psychopaths don’t usually get to see the whole picture. Like the man in this scenario, their husbands or boyfriends carry on behind their backs and routinely deceive them. Yet, to return to my previous point, wouldn’t “consent” imply knowing all the relevant facts to reach an informed decision? Apparently, not according to this self-professed Don Juan. The only thing that matters him is the fact that he enjoys seducing, deceiving and dumping women. He elaborates:
For me, it is not simply the sex, it is the seduction, and the mental games and pleasure I receive from this. To seduce a women to the point where she really wants to have sex with me is very stimulating to me. It is like I have scored a touchdown in the last few seconds of the Superbowl. I have gotten so good at the aftergame as well that I make only one call or e-mail. You are not what I was looking for, please don’t write me anymore. I never hear from them again. I find myself so manipulative it scares me sometimes. Can you please give me some insight into what is going on?
Dr. Saltz hits the nail on the head when she responds:
I think you are a sex addict and a sociopath. What you describe is sexual addiction. Like any addict, you have a feedback loop that provides you with positive reinforcement every time you make a conquest—hence your comparison to a winning touchdown in the big game… What is so very disturbing is your complete lack of guilt, remorse or empathy for the other parties involved. You know intellectually that this is bad behavior, because you are aware you are betraying your spouse and hurting all the other woman you deal with. Yet it seems that you understand this only on a purely observational level. It sounds as though you have no capacity for emotion. You lack any ability to hold yourself morally accountable for your dishonest and harmful actions. You are easily able to rationalize hurting and mistreating others, whether they are strangers or relatives. In fact, you take pleasure in it. Hence, I also think you are a sociopath, with an utter lack of concern and regard for others.
I’m not sure what or if the psychopath answered her back. I suspect, however, that he couldn’t care less about her diagnosis or anyone else’s assessment of him, at least in so far as it’s negative. Compulsive seducers tend to be extremely narcissistic. They use their conquests as mirrors to reflect back to them an aggrandized image of their own desirability. Steve Becker distinguishes, however, between the motives of narcissists and psychopaths. Of the two, he suggests that psychopaths present a greater danger to others. He explains that all psychopaths are narcissists. But the converse isn’t true. Not all narcissists are psychopathic, in the sense of living for the thrill of duping and harming others. In his essay, “Sociopath versus Narcissist,” Becker argues that both narcissistic and psychopathic seducers share a tendency to treat others as objects. He states, “Welcome to the world of the narcissist and psychopath. Theirs is a mindset of immediate, demanded gratification, with a view of others as expected—indeed existing—to serve their agendas. Frustrate their agendas, and you can expect repercussions, ranging from the disruptive to ruinous.” (powercommunicating.com)
Psychopaths and narcissists, however, have different motivations for why they seduce. Narcissists need an endless supply of validation. The more women they seduce, the more they feel reassured in their sex appeal. By way of contrast, a psychopath does it primarily for the pleasure of playing a game. The women he seduces, whether he’s involved with them for one evening or several years, represent nothing more than pawns, to be used for his personal pleasure and amusement. Becker elaborates:
The psychopath is less obsessed than the narcissist with validation. Indeed, his inner world seems to lack much of anything to validate: it is barren, with nothing in it that would even be responsive to validation. An emotional cipher, the psychopath’s exploitation of others is more predatory than the narcissist’s. For the psychopath, who may be paranoid, the world is something like a gigantic hunt, populated by personified-objects to be mined to his advantage (powercommunicating.com).
Just as they eventually tire of each game piece—be it a long-term girlfriend, casual lover or spouse—psychopaths also tire of each kind of game. Even promiscuous sex gets boring for them. Which is why they often feel the need to engage in acts of physical violence for additional thrills. However, their boredom is only temporarily relieved by each new addiction, transgression and act of depravity. This discussion brings us right back to Cleckley’s The Mask of Sanity, where the author addresses the psychopath’s mind-numbing sense of ennui.
Dangerous Liaisons/Legături Periculoase, Editura Vremea, http://www.edituravremea.ro/leg–turi-periculoase–cum-s–recuno–ti-un-psihopat–i-s–scapi-din-mrejele-lui
