SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi all....been dating a gal for the better part of 3 years. My kids are gone away to college, her 4 kids are young with the oldest boy being 13. He is a sociopath. Things have progressed over the last year to a point where I feel I have to terminate my relationship and move on.

He's assaulted my GF, stolen in excess of 2k of cash from her, stole a car and drove 1.5 hours down the main highway here, has no impulse control, chronic liar and shows absolutely no remorse for anything. He's been removed from active sports organizations, etc....etc...etc.

I have recently upped my life insurance as I feel there is a chance he'll progress to the stage where he seriously hurts or kills someone. Hate to say that, but that is how I feel.

I'm so unsettled and not sure what to do.

For your own safety, you probably should end your relationship and tiptoe away.

My question is: how much do you care for your girlfriend? It wouldn't sit well with me at all to leave someone I love in such a dangerous situation. It isn't your responsibility at all to fix this. You didn't cause the sociopathy, after all. But....neither did she.

You have a lot of thinking to do, and hard decisions to make. My heart goes out to all three of you: girlfriend, son and you.

(((((blackfin919)))))

You have every right to walk away. I wouldn't blame you in the least.

That being said, you may want to encourage GF to have her son evaluated by a adolescent psychiatrist that specializes in personality disorders. She needs to know what she is dealing with and how to deal with it. I say that with some experience.

A very good friend of mine has an adopted son that started showing some worrisome signs at a very young age. They tried many different approaches to correct his behavior, but nothing worked. I kept telling her she needed to have him professionally evaluated.

After the bad behavior continued for several years, my friend finally broke down and had her DS evaluated. He was a tween at the time. Some psychiatrists are reluctant to diagnose psychopathy (anti-social personality disorder) in adolescents and it often falls under oppositional/defiant disorder. This is seen as a potential precursor to full blown anti-social PD as an adult. There's a lot of debate about adolescent/adult psychopathy, and whether it can change over time (interesting article about this by Lynam, Charnigo, Moffitt, Raine, Loeber, and Stouthamer-Loeber, 2009, titled The Stability of Psychopathy Across Adolescence).

My friend's DS was formally diagnosed with oppositional/defiant disorder, and the psychiatrist that made the diagnosis told the parents that he expects to see it escalate over time and DS will likely be formally diagnosed with Anti-Social PD (Psychopathy) as an adult. He specifically told them their best hope was to just get him graduated from high school without getting arrested. He then gave them some guidance in dealing with him, at least to the extent possible. This child is a mess, and does some really scary stuff. BUT, at least they know what they are dealing with and can reach out to resources for help and support. At this point (he's 13 now), they are dealing with it a day/issue at a time (and they've got four other children as well).

That's why I say, before you walk away, since you have a 3 year history with her, talk to her to seek help with her son. She is going to need it whether you are in the picture or not.

I'm sorry you (and your GF) are having to deal with this. Watching my friend deal with this for the past ten years I've seen what I consider to be a brutal task in parenting for them.

How does your GF play into this?

I ask because there is a dynamic and apples dont fall far from the tree. I believe my brother to be one. Our father was mentally and physically abusive and my covert mother is codependent. When my father died, she put my golden child brother in the role of son-husband. This is a form of abuse. She enables his bad behavior and lives in fear of him. I grey rocked them both, from fear of own safety....he started to become physical toward me. I once found a poem to his ex (on social media) about how he backed over her cat, as a means to revenge.

I suspect my friends son is one as well...same dynamic, she enables and rewards criminal behaviors. I believe she does this out of fear. I believe there is something abusive in terms of her husband....she will only describe him as "clingy", but I know there is much more to the story. Her son wasn't born this way, I saw red flags from time he was a toddler...rewarding shit behavior and bribing him with toys, food, etc. Hes into drugs and she drops his 16-year-old ass off at booze parties... it's easier to be a "friend" then to parent.

[This message edited by DashboardMadonna at 7:23 PM, November 14th (Thursday)]

Cluster B is highly inheritable--upwards of 40% of cases are genetic. It runs on both sides of my family--hit and miss. On my mother's side, her grandmother was probably ASPD, but my mother's father was not and neither was my mother and her sister. However, it reared its ugly head with my cousin, I and my sister.

On my father's side, his father likely had it, and his oldest sister has it. Neither he nor his other sister do. Then both my sister and I got it--her more severely than I.

It took a life-threatening event to get me diagnosed, and YEARS of medication and therapy. If you don't have it terribly bad, it CAN be treated.

However, the more severe the case, as in my cousin and my sister, the less the ability treat--in my sister's case, it's a game to manipulate the therapist. She knows she has issues, she just does not care.

You have to want to get better, and when you see truly believe the world is to blame, there is no room to accept yourself as the root of your problems.

I had the absolute best parents. They wonder every day what they did for my sister to be this way. Sadly, as the previous poster pointed out, apples do not fall far from the (genetic) tree.

And I still have problems. I have to think about my actions every moment and ignore emotions, because I cannot trust them. But I am a productive member of society, with a long-term stable relationship, so I guess I am doing all right.

As someone who has worked in mental health, has your girlfriend had her son evaluated with a therapist or committed to a mental health institution for evaluation? Step one would be to address the problem. If she is not willing to do so, walk away without any guilt. You can technically walk away no matter what, but you can always remain a friend and advise her to get help for her child. Another option would be to call the state child protection system and ask for a family intervention on that end. Express your concerns with examples. Some parents want to sweep it under the rug and think they are protecting the child when they are actually creating a future entitled convict.

My opinion is going to seem harsh.

But the boy is 13. Unless you want this behavior likely the rest of your lives/relationship, get out now.

I agree with others - he needs help. Who knows if this is sociopathic or undisciplined hormones going unchecked or brattitude or earlier trauma just manifesting itself or all of the above. But he needs help.

I hope his mother gets it for him and protects herself in the process. More than likely she knows he is a trainwreck waiting to happen. If she is choosing to sweep it under the the rug that doesn't bode well on any level.

Im with Chaos. We are on this board didn't choose Infidelity, it chose us. We go thru this crap, we learn, we grow and better ourselves whether or not we want to. We are left with little choices but to pick up the pieces and do better b/c of poor choices by others that have been inflicted upon us.

That crap is plenty Blackfin. I was dating a girl about a yr and half back and she had a daughter that ran the show at the age of 3. Her mother, although I liked her, was just poor at discipline and boundaries. I nexted her b/c of her daughter, and I found someone better, my current GF. I was never going to be that girls father, she had a father. And her mother was just not going to discipline her and ground her the way that I expected. I have young children of my own, although not that young, but still grade school age. I would never have wanted my own kids around her child and seeing her parent the way she did, it concerned me what it would be like 2 yrs, 5 yrs, 10 yrs down the road. I cut bait b/c I knew Id have to endure that crap forever if I stayed, and I wasn't even feeling unsettled or feared for anyones safety.

Life is short man. You've got kids, they will eventually have kids of their own. You want the grandkids around this 13 yr old boy when he turns 21? What if one of her other 3 kids feed off this child and starts acting out as well? I'm not discounting your relationship with your GF, but you already said you feel you should terminate. Do it, and set yourself free.

I have had friends that I have had to ghost because of these types of issues. In my experience, the parents of kids like this rarely take it seriously and take the steps they need to to get help for their kid. Because of fear or ego or whatever, it doesn't matter.

If his mom hasn't gotten to the stage of seriously addressing this crap after everything he's already done to her, she isn't likely to. Hopefully he gets in some non-assault related trouble and the police step in, because GF probably won't.

If I were in your spot? Yeah, I would nope right on outta there.