The Psychopath: A True Story(54)
‘How was work?’
‘OK, but my boss was in a bad mood.’
‘Oh, did you do something to annoy them?’
This makes the respondent question themselves. The easiest and possibly most subtle way I remember Will Jordan doing this was just to say ‘Really?’ after I had answered a personal question. For example:
‘What’s your favourite movie?’
‘The Shawshank Redemption.’
‘Really?’ He would then pause (to make me feel uncomfortable and judged), followed a few seconds later with a casual warm smile, saying, ‘Well, it is a very popular choice!’
The victim is left feeling like they have somehow made a fool of themselves, yet still feeling that the toxic perpetrator has been kind to them and let them off the hook. It plays heavily on a person’s impostor syndrome and their fear of looking foolish for having poor judgement.
The ‘Intimidator’ usually controls the drama by being aggressive, creating fear directly or indirectly. Will Jordan was never aggressive towards me directly – to be honest, he knew that if he even raised his voice to me in anger I would leave immediately because of my bad experiences with Ross. That’s a ‘deal-breaker’ for me. So he was always calm and never angry around me, but instead created intimidation through external forces. He persuaded me I was in real danger from ‘unsavouries’, people who had discovered his true identity and were threatening me and the children. He covertly controlled the drama through intimidation.
The ‘Aloof’ controls the energy around them by retreating into themselves and shutting down so that people will ask what is wrong and pay attention to them because they seem worried and confused.
Again, Will Jordan did this from the start of our relationship, not only retreating but entirely disappearing. He left me worried as to whether he was alive or not almost daily.
The ‘Poor Me’ tells a sob story of woe that may or may not be true. It grabs the attention by getting people to focus on what is upsetting the controller. Will Jordan did this when I was giving birth to our first child. He told me he was trapped in a war-torn country and damaged his feet intentionally to prove it so that I would focus on his supposed emotional and physical trauma rather than his being absent for the birth of his child.
It is difficult to deal with anyone who is using control dramas. There is no positive way to control other people because we are meant to focus on controlling ourselves rather than manipulating others. Good people do not have to control other people’s emotions.
Psychopaths groom their victims in a very similar way to paedophiles. They slowly hook you in, play on your empathy, manipulate your emotions and then undermine the foundations of your self-belief, self-esteem and self-confidence.
I understand that Will Jordan was clever but I am too. I understand that he was manipulative and callous but it is his total lack of empathy for another person that is so alien and difficult for an empath like me to comprehend.
In 2010, I read a research report called Psychopathic Traits and Perceptions of Victim Vulnerability by Sarah Wheeler which showed that the more psychopathic a person is, the better they are at spotting a potential victim, even just by their body language. This body language is incredibly subtle though; the study showed that psychopathic muggers can look at the way you walk and instinctively pick up on the length of a stride, how high you lift your feet and even how you shift your weight to identify how confident you are, and therefore whether to mug you or not. Psychopaths don’t even have to think about it. They just target vulnerable people who are empathic – kind, understanding, accepting – and use those traits against them. I had thought I was keeping myself safe online by spending time getting to know Will Jordan through our long and intimate emails. The truth was that he was using that time to learn all about me, what motivated me, how accepting I was, and how empathic I was. Then, when he finally met me, he took that a step further by analysing my body language. And being unaware, I walked straight into his trap.
I suspect that younger, more inexperienced psychopaths target socially submissive, not particularly outgoing or worldly victims through body language such as lack of eye contact, fidgeting and avoidance of large gestures when shifting position. This serves a double purpose because the victims themselves are ill-equipped to resist the predator, and are so traumatised afterwards that they won’t even speak out about their experiences. It leaves the predator free to move on to the next victim. More experienced psychopaths would get bored of this pretty quickly though, and target more challenging victims – stronger, more worldly and more confident, people who will push them to their limits and hone their skills even more.
Suddenly I realised that there is a reason that psychopaths seem to be the most charming people, certainly at the beginning of a relationship. They are the ones who sweep us off our feet and seem to know exactly what to say and when to say it. They appear magically and instinctively to know how to get under our skin and make us comfortable, so we relax, let our guards down and let them into our lives.
It is not magic though, nor is it purely instinctive. It’s far simpler than that.
As teenagers and in our early twenties, most of us experiment with flirting and dating. You see a guy or a girl that you like and build up the courage to talk to them. It is nerve-wracking because of the potential humiliation and embarrassment of rejection. Rejection takes its toll on us emotionally, making us wary of approaching others. It may take a few days, weeks, months or even years before we build up the courage to risk putting ourselves ‘out there’ again. As a result, we select those we are attracted to very carefully and guard ourselves against the emotional pain of further rejection.