Con Man's Ex-Wife Turns Heartache into Educating Others

Donna Andersen wasn't always the happily married woman she is today.

She once married a con man, someone she now says she considers to be a sociopath. (Source: lovefraud.com). He took all her money and left her seriously in debt.

The result of that experience, spawned Lovefraud.com, the website Andersen runs today, educating people about the dangers of sociopaths and how to spot them.

I told Andersen my story about the guy I dated from October to December this past year to see if he was a sociopath or what he was.

The other night, Feb. 25, the guy called me again, and told me his so-called pancreatic tumor was shrinking, that he was going to Boston and Colorado with work, though he doesn't work, just got out of jail two nights before and was in for a week. Funny thing was, someone saw him at a meeting during the time he was supposed to be in jail.

He also told me the attorney general went to bat for him in court and that he had "a kick-ass lawyer," one of the best. He also said he did push-ups in jail but I talked to a friend of mine who has been to jail in the past and she said guards really don't encourage that because it's supposed to be hard time in that particular jail. He also told me he almost beat up two guys in jail, one of whom was a lot bigger than him. Supposedly the guy tried to take his food and my ex-boyfriend threatened to kill him. He said one guy at his AA group was scared of him and he liked that, that the meds the doctor was giving him were helping him gain weight, that a water main line in his backyard broke and he had no water and had to fix it, and that his backyard was flooded.

He also reported that he just sold his house to a lien company, paid off his truck, said I needed to make new friends, that he doesn't have to pay any more child support after sitting in jail for a week, said he'd never been to jail before this, that he and his brother had been juvenile delinquents, and that the only person who came to see him was his roommate.

I told Andersen Feb. 27 about the early days of dating this guy and some of the outlandish things he told me right after we started dating.

"The behavior you're describing is very typical of a sociopath," she said. "The terms con artist and sociopath are interchangeable. The hallmark of a sociopath is that they lie. They are frequently addics and alcoholics. A sociopath has a very low tolerance for boredom and he's always looking for the next thrill so that's one reason why they are drug users or alcohol users a lot of times."

Andersen said that confuses a lot of people because they often think that the sociopath's problem is that they need to stop drinking or drugging and then they get sober and are still mean and nasty.

"The truth means nothing to the sociopath and they don't think there's anything wrong with them," explained Andersen. "It's very hard for the rest of us to comprehend the degree to which these people are different than the rest of us. They feel no empathy for others and they have no conscience. These people literally do not feel any human connection. They are not affected by other people being that they have no conscience or empathy."

When I told Andersen about how my ex-boyfriend said "No more sex" during our relationship, proclaiming that he was "A man of God" all the sudden, Andersen said the religious thing is a control technique.

"It's kind of interesting about sociopaths because on the one hand they are extremely sexual but on the other hand they are such manipulators," revealed Andersen. "After hearing many stories of women who have been married to these people and then the wife finds out they were having sex with a man, I've come to the conclusion that these guys will screw anybody. I don't believe that they're attracted to men or women only."

One of the techniques the sociopath uses, Andersen stated, was frequently accusing the victim of being crazy and paranoid and they actually march into a relationship counselor only to have the therapist prescribe meds to the victim and believe the sociopath.

Unlike alcohol and drugs, there is no "bottom" or realization of the problem for the sociopath and being a sociopath is not a mental illness but a personality disorder.

"It's who they are," Andersen said. "For example, if someone is intelligent you can't tell them to stop being smart. Sociopaths view the world as they are the predator and everyone else is prey. Anyone can be targeted by them."

Certain targets include recently widowed or depressed and lonely women.

"The sociopath is intuitively able to figure out what's going to press someone's buttons and what is going to make the sociopath be able to say the right things to get someone to do what they want," said Andersen.

When I told Andersen about how my ex-boyfriend told me he was a two-time kidney cancer survivor she told me a story about a woman whose husband, who was a sociopath, told his wife he had cancer. So the woman asked who his doctor was and he was speechless.

Lovefraud.com was launched in July 2005 and Andersen said she's gotten many emails from people thanking her for the information.

"Because of the way it's presented it allows people to see themselves and the people they're dealing with," she said. "Some people have said it saved their lives and given them strength to get out of a relationship."

Andersen is working on a book and she has worked on treatments for films and TV. It will be at least a year before the book is out which details the story of what she went through married to a con man.

"The Internet dating thing is the perfect place for a sociopath because, first of all, everyone is pre-screened," said Andersen. "Everyone who is on a dating site is probably lonely and sociopaths target the lonely. A sociopath gets to sit there and have all these interactions with different people until he finds out who will be the juicy target and who's going to bite."

Andersen said they can continue to manipulate other people while looking for other mates at the same time and that with online dating communications include a lot of missing information.

"You can't read their body language, you can't see what they look like, you don't even know if you're talking to a man or woman. So what happens is people start imagining what the other person they're talking with is like so you end up in a fantasy," she said. "And then, if you're doing this in a long-distance relationship you don't have the opportunity to check things out. It's very dangerous."

Andersen did it for awhile and acknowledged that there are some normal people out there but said there's no point in dating someone out of your geographic area because you can't check things out.

"People have to be extremely cautious and understand what the down sides are," she said.

Andersen said the way you trust again after being a victim of love fraud is to process the pain.

"You now know that these people are out there," she said. "That probably is the biggest stumbling block. It's hard to realize just how devastating these relationships are if you haven't been in one. Anyone who has gotten away from a sociopath relatively unscathed, that is to say you didn't marry or have kids with them is lucky."

Andersen said victims need to allow themselves to experience the grief, outrage, and disappointment of what was lost.

"You can't just walk away or think yourself out of it," she advised "Express it in the privacy of your home, pound pillows, cry. You need to get the physical emotions out of your body. There's layers of it. Once you've processed the emotion and realized that these people are out there you have wisdom."

Andersen said what victims really need to do is trust their instincts.

"People instinctively know when they meet a sociopath that something is wrong but they override their intuition," she said. "Usually there is some kind of internal warning but for whatever reason we ignore it, maybe because we want the relationship."

Andersen said sociopaths need to be exposed but unfortunately it is very difficult right now because there are no legal guidelines as to how to do it.

"Unless you're a trained journalist you don't know how to post information on someone without getting sued," she said.

Lovefraud.com has a policy that every single thing they say about someone who has made others their victim is documented.

"You have to cut off all contact with the sociopath," said Andersen. "The solution to getting away from these people is no contact. You're never going to get a sociopath to admit they hurt you unless they're trying to twist it around to get back in with you."

Andersen said what causes a person to become a sociopath is genes and that they are born with a predisposition to this personality type.

"Unless they get serious intervention as a small child they will grow up to be a sociopath," she said. "There are also cases where bad parenting can make someone a sociopath."

Sociopaths are interchanging. There are people who are sociopaths who are serial killers but that is extremely rare and that is one of the problems when dealing with sociopaths and psychopaths because most sociopaths are not killers, according to Andersen.

"Most are cheating husbands, emotionally abusing their wife and kids, and some women are sociopaths, too. And they're even harder to find," she said. "The smarter sociopaths tend to be on the immoral side but know not to cross over the line because they don't want to ruin what they have going on."

Andersen said it took her two years to get healed from her experience.

"People around the victim tend to see that something is wrong before the actual victim sees it and a big reason for that is because sociopaths have focused their attention on the victim and is consciously controlling the information the victim gets," she explained. "But no one wants to throw a wet blanket on the romance and then if they do say something the victim may not believe it."

Andersen also said that plenty of psychiatrists have been fooled by psychopaths and plenty of psychiatrists are psychopaths.

"Love Fraud has been launched to teach people how to recognize and avoid sociopaths," she said. "I think we're doing that. Many people I hear from are smart and don't expect to find these predators in their lives and that's the thing that people need to understand is that sociopaths are in all walks of life. There is no demographic group that is immune to having sociopaths."

Andersen said that there are some things a parent can look for when raising a child to indicate that he may be a sociopath. The first sign that is apparent when the kid is two or three and that is that the child is fearless. Kids who have ADD or who are hyper are genetically related to being a sociopath. So is addiction.

Dr. Robert Hare has developed the only reliable instrument defining who is a sociopath, Andersen said, though his is more stringent. According to Hare, one percent of the population and three percent of corporate executives are psychopaths.

"People try to talk to their friends but unless the friend has been through something similar, they often don't get it and the reason you're looking for that validation is because it's so shocking that someone is so evil that it just blows you away," said Andersen. "It comes as a real shock to the system to learn that everything they said was a lie. The solution is education. Everybody needs to know that these people are out there and at some point in your life you will come across them. Sociopaths get caught in a lie and they don't care. They stir it up and they do that to find out if they still have their hooks into you."

Contrary to some accounts, a sociopath has extremely high self-esteem, concluded Andersen.