Sales woman from hell

I have been reading and re-reading this HPD forum for a few months struggling with my situation. I needed your help, I have learned a lot here and I am now ready to share my experiences with you.

I am a man of 44, quite happily married with a wonderful woman and I have a lovely daughter of 7. I am partner in a small biotechnology company, responsible for business development.

For last 6 months I have been in a “relationship” with a woman of 33. When I met her she was in the process of a divorce, after having been married for 7 years, with two sons, 6 and 4. I met her on a Sunday morning in the departure terminal of a mayor airport where she worked weekends in credit card sales.

We looked at each other from a distance before I walked over to talk to her, and was lost. Within 1 minute of meeting her she told me about “her husband being a judge, that he was beating her up, swearing at her, insulting her continuously, telling her how useless and incapable she was in front of her sons” . She also told me that “he does not want me to work here”. Although I did not want a credit card from her company she asked for my phone number. She called me after a week, asked what I was doing and we talked on the phone. One week later on a Sunday I called her to invite her to go to a playground with my daughter and her two sons. I thought this could be the start of a wonderful friendship, because she has this enormous charisma: she came across as extremely intelligent, caring, open, funny and enthusiastic.

That evening I was in her house for the first time and I felt upon entry how “soulless” it was, it was a scary feeling. I thought it was due to the domestic violence in that house, but could there be another explanation? The house was also dirty (stains, dirty plates and cups and dust everywhere), with a lot of damage to the walls, doors and furniture. Although it was clear people were living there it looked somehow ‘deserted’. I remember wondering how this could be the house of a judge’s family. During later visits I could see that also upstairs it was a big mess with dirty clothes piled up on the floors. When I asked about it she’d say that because of the bad marriage (being in the process of divorce already) she was not in the mood to do something in the house...Meanwhile she has moved to another house without her ex-husband, but the new house is in exactly the same mess….

That week we met each other 4 times, on our third meeting she asked me to go to a sauna (mixed in my country) where we had ‘sex’ in the steam room and restaurant first time. It was not the first time she had been there with another man. I felt that she was completely shameless, which turned me on enormously. For several weeks after that we would mostly hug and kiss, meeting in restaurants or on parking lots. This being an affair we had limited possibilities to meet in private.

In that week she also asked me on the phone to look up some emails for her on her hotmail account. I was online and she gave me her password and asked me to open messages; I was confused because there were many personal messages and I felt I was intruding, on her invitation but still. Some messages had the subject "free porn" and were not spam but sent by a 'friend'. She asked me to open them and acted outraged at the mails but somehow it did not make sense to me. Later she did this more often: making me an involuntary witness to all kinds of intimacies, later would sometimes angrily tell her to shut up and stop mind-raping me.

3 weeks into our “relationship” she told me that she had won a prize on a radioshow, to go to with a girlfriend to a film festival in the Caribbean for a week. When she came back she was extremely upset, almost hysterical, I was on a business trip abroad, she called me to say that she had a big row with her girlfriend at the festival and in the airplane back home. They had met some guys, they were “gays”, had been going for dinner, her friend had accused her of being a slut and had been telling every stranger who wanted to listen that she is a whore, she claimed out of “jealousy” for the attention she had been getting, everything that had happened had been very “innocent”, yes, she had slept one night in another room but it was nothing…. Anyway, the girlfriend had told her husband and he was extremely angry, so she said.

One of the guys she met there at the festival was a VP at a bank in London. She claimed he was just a friend, just helping her, with getting auditions to be a model, and she started talking to him on the phone frequently. She started going to London in the weekends, for auditions. She’d be quiet for the days she was there, not answering text messages, not calling, until she was back. I felt something was going on and asked her to be honest with me like I had been honest with her about my marriage. No, she said, they were just good friends, she was just happy to spend the weekends in London since I was not available for her in the weekends (being married, I had no right to complain)
She is quite attractive, wants to be a model, is registered with some agencies, does auditions, sometimes works as an extra for TV commercials. She has groups on the internet with members who can view her pictures.

3 weeks into our "relationship" she suddenly “disappeared” for a few days. I was worried and called some of her friends but nobody new. When she finally called me she said she had been in jail. She had fought with her husband who had called the police on her who had put her in jail pending investigation. She told me it was not the first time she had been in touch with the police for violence, she told me that one time earlier she had fought with a suspected mistress of her husband. Later that week I received a call from the local police asking me if I knew her and warning me to stay away from her. I was astonished (and angry with them for interfering with my personal affairs) at the time but perhaps I should have listened to their advice.

4 weeks into our “relationship”, on a morning in her house, with her kids playing in the living room, she asked me: come upstairs with me, I want to show you something, which I did, we went to her bedroom and she lifted her skirt, she spread her legs, she wasn’t wearing any underwear and asked me if I liked what I saw… We had sex that morning with her kids playing downstairs. They could and may have heard everything… Later she said that “evidence of her not being a slut was that she had delayed having sex with me” I reminded her of what happened that day in the sauna and she denied it.

Very soon after I met her I also observed how everything on and around her is somehow broken or damaged (her nails, her clothes, her bags..) If she has something new it only takes a week for it to be damaged, lost or dirty. She continuously loses things like: bank cards, house keys, car keys and so on. I realised there was a pattern to it and tried to talk to her about it but she denied it or blamed it on the divorce leaving her without energy to take care of herself.

Her weekend sales job at the airport was important to her. She would brag about how she talked with this "big" man or that "famous" man: actors, soccer players and so on. She would leave stacks of business cards on her kitchen table, as if trophies. She also talked about getting phone numbers of pilots, imagining to have sex with them. She recently got fired from this job because she was always many hours late (starting 10 instead of 8 in the morning) and was messing up the paperwork of her sales. She would basically use the sales meetings to flirt and get contact details of guys she met. She was very successful in her work, because she is very outgoing, attractive and shameless, and she dressed to seduce at work.

In the process of her divorce, she has to report to the Child Protection Agency because neighbours have anonymously complained about her treatment of her children. She showed me one report saying that she may have a (unspecified) “personality disorder”. At the time I did not realise how true that statement probably is. She was really angry about this. Later she went to her General Practitioner specifically to ask him to write a letter saying that nothing is wrong with her. Afterwards, she showed me a paper from her GP stating that she is “not diagnosed with a personality disorder” which she claimed was evidence that nothing is wrong with her.


I started noticing many odd things about her:

• She has only recent friends, i.e. less than 6 months,
• The large majority of her friends are male, doing all kinds of things for her. With several of her friends she has, in my presence, ambiguous and sexually coloured conversations with on the phone, when meeting she gives them backrubs, but that is as far as she claims she will go because she says “ I am a flirt but not a slut”
• Very often I’d feel manipulated by her.
• She'd always be late when we had appointments, sometimes an hour, sometimes she'd cancel the appointment after having me wait half an hour.
• I started feeling very strongly that she says A, does B and feels C.
• She would never talk about her feelings or look back on things that have happened and talk about her motives.
• She is not interested in my work, friends, background and when I start telling her something she would immediately interrupt and talk about herself or something trivial.
• She'd wear skirts (long and short), no underwear, when meeting me in public with no one around she'd pull up her skirt as a means of saying "hi" to me. She'd love to show me her breasts for no special reason. She was clearly very exhibitionistic, but would deny it whenever I pointed it out to her.
• She spends recklessly, on clothes, toys (she seems to feel guilty towards her children), food, whatever catches her fancy.

She continued to see her VP friend in the weekends and was on the phone with him often. She became slowly but surely more and more open about the nature of that relationship while still denying that something sexual was going on until I forced her to admit it. In this period she once took a phone call from her VP friend while we were having sex and said, with me in her: "sorry baby, if I sound distracted it is because I am just a bit tired”.

After that she would call him often, in my presence, for sometimes 20 minutes and say to him not much more than: "oh baby, I miss you, I love you (too), have a good day tomorrow, I think of you all the time...", finally hanging up, and sigh "..pfff..." That is the man that paid for the decoration of her new house and takes care of her financially. She says “he has no friends, does not trust people easily, has 10,000 locks on his doors”. He checks up on her all the time, will not call on her mobile but only on her fixed line house phone, he shows up in her house unexpectedly, even though he has to take an hour plane ride to get there. She even said she “suspected him of eavesdropping and spying on her, having hidden some microphone or camera in the house..” He called me several times to tell me to stay away from her or else….

As our “relationship” progressed I had (frequent) periods when I told her off, sick of her lies and selfishness, and refused to take her phone calls. She would have all kind of people (friends, strangers in the street, her mother, her 6 year old son) calling me and leaving their voicemail messages on her behalf, telling me that she misses me and wants me to get in touch.

When I finally, and quite suddenly, a few weeks ago, after one lie too many, broke off all contact and changed my phone number, she occasionally tries to talk to me on the street (we live in the same town and our kids go to the same school after she moved into her new house) but I ignore her. She has my email address but apart from one e-mail one week after I broke off “I am not doing well, please call me” she has not sent me an email, asking about me, talking about herself or telling about her feelings for me….nothing, no reflection, no introspection. Nevertheless she keeps sending text messages to my old mobile phone number, which I continue to monitor for business messages. The text messages are as follows:

Day 1
• My dear..
• Love you
Day 2
• My dear..I love you.. do not want to hurt you..please be and stay my soulmate
Day 3
• Say something
• You do not have to be angry with me..as long as you do not know what you want..I do not have to explain anything.. for your information.. did I not make a mistake and is lying no option?..it is an act to expect one thing after the other from me.. I love you, that does not change
• Still love you darling
Day 4
• Darling
• Darling, I am yours, or not? Your second one…don’t act like this
Day 5
• Allright, this is my last text message..I will not…nothing..you understand?..you are a sweet man , sweet for me and my kids.. for me you are a star and the moon…and my light in the darkness..of the world…in my world there is no place for nasty control freaks..as you now appear to be….it makes me so nervous…..be realistic and stay happy… Always a place in my heart. A kiss for my sweetie. My dear love.
Day 6
• Say something…curse or shout.. don’t step out of my life like that.
Day 7
• Darling?
• ,
• Dear
Day 8
• Will we have a drink?

Day 12
• I can no longer have you
Day 16
• I love you
Day 22
• Just want to be at least your friend..that is why I still love you..! So will we be Friends?
• Baby?

Day 24
• My dearest, I can only ask you: why, why, why? (she sent me back a text message I sent her a few months back)
Day 27
• Lost my best friend?
Yesterday
• …..
Today
• Hi, miss you



With all I have learned here it was and is easier to recognise the red flags. I know that I should have listened to my instincts: I even told her the second time we met, for no apparent reason, that “I hope that what I really love about you is not going to make me really hate you”. What a premonition that was!

Reading your posts here also helps me to deal with this situation emotionally. Thanks!

id say she most definatly has some sort of personatilty disorder. your playing with fire!.

can i just say...and i dont want to sound condisending and the fact that i am an ex wife who was cheated upon by her husband, well i dont want to be biased but... if you have a "quite happy marriage" and you have a wonderful wife..then why the hell are you playing around with this woman?. what is she giving you other than sex?...you must be crazey.

my daughter is 17...she remembers the heartache and the pain of her parents divorcing...and she told me that when he father cheated on me..he also cheated her out of a happy future!!!...please think upon this.

i dont understand exactly why youve posted?...was it for confirmation that this woman has a personality disorder?...that she most obviously has lied to u and made a fool of u?.

im sorry but please please look at what your throwing away..and also the reason why this woman wants u in her life.shes a disgrace!

I appreciate your comments Jocasey and I agree with you that I have been playing with fire and I know that I have risked a good marriage. My wife knows about the situation for quite a while, we have had a hard time but it has not been fatal to our relationship; anyway, I did not want to talk about my marriage in this forum but I also did not want to deny the fact that I am married.

Why did I cheat on my wife with this woman? Well, as I tried to describe, she had an effect on me that I had never experienced before, she broke effortless right through my defences, if I had any against her charms to begin with, which I doubt. I don't think it was 'normal' seduction, I think it has something to with her personality disorder, which is why I am posting my story here; otherwise I would have posted it in the "Unfaithful Husbands Forum" . Meeting her I had the sensation that she could "see" right through me, "see" all my thoughts and emotions, even the ones I may have tried to hide for myself and others. It was as if she said to me: don't worry, don't feel shy, admit your desires, I accept all of them, I am without shame and without taboo, you can be too. I am not religious but it is as if i was seduced "by the devil himself". I spoke with her mother who told me that she (her daughter) "can get anything from anyone".


I posted my story here because I wanted to share it with the other forum members and visitors. Perhaps I also hope to get your opinions on her behaviour and my behaviour. My story is far from complete, because I did not mention the fact that she smokes marihuana every day, is deep in debt, "steals" in shops and so on. I left them out because I am not sure they are relevant to what happened to me. Key in my story is being defenseless, as if being hit by a new virus to which the body has no defense. Many things about her I would have rejected in other people, but I could reject her only after much pain and humiliations and not without summoning all my courage and strength.

pop

Perhaps I also hope to get your opinions on her behaviour and my behaviour. My story is far from complete, because I did not mention the fact that she smokes marihuana every day, is deep in debt, "steals" in shops and so on. I left them out because I am not sure they are relevant to what happened to me. Key in my story is being defenseless, as if being hit by a new virus to which the body has no defense. Many things about her I would have rejected in other people, but I could reject her only after much pain and humiliations and not without summoning all my courage and strength.

she sounds like hpd/bpd.

the same "infection" happened to me with my exhpdgf ... i was defenseless to her hot physical appearance, her very open or better shameless approach to physical "intimacy" (which was not an interpersonal intimacy) and her, although she was a 38-year old woman, child-like neediness, which triggered my instincts to help and protect her and take her burden. now i know that falling for her neediness wasn´t really love, it was what everybody would do for a weak person, either a child or an adult.

from the beginning the relationsship was one-way, she was like a badly behaved child, not capable for closeness or commitment. of course i recognized these red flags after a couple of dates, but i was always thinking that caring for her and making her feel secure will change the situation over time. and finally she was a grown up, so where should be a problem to have a normal relationship after some acute problems in her life (my initial perception) were solved? but it turned out that normality was not going to happen with her .

so you get sucked into the black hole defenseless, because like in physics common rules are nullified after passing the event horizon.

rodolfo, i would have rejected almost everything she did in other people too.

Why did I cheat on my wife with this woman? Well, as I tried to describe, she had an effect on me that I had never experienced before, she broke effortless right through my defences, if I had any against her charms to begin with, which I doubt. I don't think it was 'normal' seduction, I think it has something to with her personality disorder, which is why I am posting my story here; otherwise I would have posted it in the "Unfaithful Husbands Forum" . Meeting her I had the sensation that she could "see" right through me, "see" all my thoughts and emotions, even the ones I may have tried to hide for myself and others. It was as if she said to me: don't worry, don't feel shy, admit your desires, I accept all of them, I am without shame and without taboo, you can be too. I am not religious but it is as if i was seduced "by the devil himself". I spoke with her mother who told me that she (her daughter) "can get anything from anyone".

this is the most accurate description i have read on this forum so far. thanks. i feel like we are describing the same woman. but, of course, we are not. severe hpd's are all wired the same. they all produce the same affect on others. it is not a normal seduction it is the feeling one gets when one is targeted by a severe hpd (a female sociopath). i only have one friend i can talk to about my experiences with this woman and all i can say to him in hindsight is that she brought out an evil side of me i did not even know existed (no! i didn't act on it..it was just a feeling deep inside that she was somehow raping my soul and opening me up to the dark side) and that she herself is evil. dealing with her was like dealing with another force. not a normal woman, at all. it was like selling my soul to the devil. she can walk into any place, anywhere, anytime and manipulate and control anyone that comes into her sphere. the insane thing about it is, and i guess this is how they get away with their behaviour, is the people that are only casually acquanited with the severe hpd see only the surface charm which more or less attempts to cover it up by acting abnormally harmless and innocent. this is a successful cover. most people never see the true colors of these individuals.

as martha stout says, author of the sociopath next door: --> they are completely free of internal restraints, and their unhampered liberty to do just as they please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world. they can do anything at all, and still have a strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences, so they most likely remain undiscovered.

ALSO...

Other researchers and clinicians point to additional documented characteristics of sociopaths as a group. One of the more frequently observed of these traits is a glib and superficial charm that allows the true sociopath to seduce other people, figuratively or literally--a kind of glow or charisma that, initially, can make the sociopath seem more charming or more interesting than most of the normal people around him. He or she is more spontaneous, or more intense, or somehow more “complex,” or sexier, or more entertaining than everyone else.

at: http://groups.msn.com/PSYCHOPATH/charac ... opath.msnw
you will find-->

an accurate description of a severe hpd/sociopath/psychopath:

The Female Psychopath: Using her false mask of sanity, this charming "Southern Belle" schemer appears helpless or needy, pitiful, inept or emotionally unable to cope. Even total strangers give her things she gratefully accepts. Falsely claiming to be the victim, this passive parasite lures and abuses the normal protector/provider instincts in her male target. When her mask comes off she is cunning, ruthless, predatory, and loveless.

Defense Strategy: This 'damsel in distress' will try to hook and reel you in. Take the hook out of your lip. Don't make her emotional neediness your problem. This black hole of need can never be filled. Understand the mask of helplessness is not the "real her". If she won't give reasonable answers to reasonable questions turn and run. Beware and remember "...deadlier than the male." Realize she uses sexuality as a lure. Avoid financial or emotional involvement.

in an interview with the author of the famous book 'the emptied soul 'the author says this-->

low neuroticism is the prime RED FLAG/combined with 'extreme-odd' manipulative charisma masked by a harmless exterior:

Guggenbuhl-Craig: The Psychopath is much more successful than you and I because he is not hemmed in by all sorts of impediments or worries.

Hillman: But we fail to recognise it…. So it would perhaps be more useful in our lives if we could spot one when we see one?

Guggenbuhl-Craig: Yes and you can maybe spot one if you know what a psychopath is, if you know that all of a sudden the other man or the other woman is marvelously tuned into you. He's just your kind of guy and he's just what you expect…. Then you can become very suspicious.

Hillman: … and is well, so-to-speak 'related'?

Guggenbuhl-Craig: Well related, you know, and he's a great guy and you would like to have lunch with him and he's really it….then you have to become suspicious. However if he is slightly aggravating and complicated and obstreperous then you actually have more security that he might be reliable.

It is the same in these homes for delinquent girls where most of the managers of these homes always fail when a boy or a girl were very nice and fitted into the general home and everyone said (at the end of 6 months or 10 months), "Well ynow they turned out to be excellent, they have kept the rules, they were nice, they were helpful, they were no trouble…", and they really met with the experience that all these girls or boys caused no troubles in the home for delinquent people, but they were socially -as soon as they were released- hopeless! And the ones who were horrible, y'now who broke the windows, tore up the bedclothes, who attacked the staff, often then turned out to be alright in the end. But that's the problem in the whole prison system, the psychopaths are the ones who can adjust the best to any kind of institution because it doesn't worry them to adapt, they don't care, they can sing the song of the warden or sing the song of whoever so they can come out alright at the moment, which is maybe not so important but that's why you have to watch when somebody gets along very well with you.

Hillman: What you are describing here is what you've written about as the 'successful psychopath'.

Guggenbuhl-Craig: Right, that's a successful psychopath which from my point of view is the problem. The criminal psychopath is not really the problem, he is an exception, he makes the headlines, he kills ten people or something else but he is such an exception that in reality you don't have to worry about him too much. You have to worry about the socially well adjusted psychopath.

Another problem with psychopaths is that we envy them. Even if you feel a little bit that someone is a psychopath that brings you even closer to him. Because we are all so tortured by our neurotic compulsions, and doubt's, and guilts, and inhibitions, and we are unable to do this or that, and you are shy, and you feel too guilty… so we would like to be free like a psychopath just to be free of all-that-stuff. When you have a psychopath in front of you it's lovely, it's great, it's relaxing. Nothing is as relaxing as having dinner with a psychopath because then you feel great and those darned horrible things fall away, especially when having a few drinks with a psychopath it's the greatest thing you can do. Then you feel absolutely at peace.

Hillman: That's part of the charm, it's almost as if they are graced with a kind of charisma.

Guggenbuhl-Craig: Many women fall for male psychopaths and many men fall for psychopathic women and why is that so? That's the same problem. The psychopath has no inhibitions therefore he can play up to achieve his sexual aims without any inhibitions. He will talk to a woman who is interested in poetry about poetry. He doesn't care about poetry but he will quote poets!… and even sexually he will be better because his sexual life is absolutely healthy. Normal sexual life is so complicated, so full of strange ideas and obsessions and desires….it's one of the most complicated things in life and in many ways shows some of the most perverse things. The only sexually normal man or woman is a psychopath, sexuality just functions, and a man psychopath and a woman psychopath -they can make love to anybody, anytime, anyplace, doesn't matter, because it's just going, there is no inhibition of any kind. That's why they are so good at making money -they can make love to an 80 yr old woman, doesn't matter, they can do it, no inhibitions.

Hillman: Well this idea of no complications so-to-speak, a healthy, uncomplicated, always available sexuality without inhibition, without guilt, without worry….

Guggenbuhl-Craig: …Without emotion, without any kind of twist, without any strange desires.

Hillman: …..which is in a way one of the aims of sex therapy, and one of the aims of psychotherapy, is to free the sexuality from all those kinds of inhibitions or complications. The person who comes to psychotherapy and wants that as a result is asking to be transformed partly into a psychopath, if you follow my point here?

Guggenbuhl-Craig: Yes, but psychotherapy is more complicated than that. People come to a psychotherapist because they are suffering so horribly, that life is such a misery, so they are longing for a bit of psychopathic freedom. Suffering -that's the obsessive, neurotic, who can't leave the house because he has to go back again and again to check if he closed the window and it's horrible, it's horrible. People who come to us are living in hell and so they long for a little bit of relief.

Hillman: And the psychopath fantasies offer that?

Guggenbuhl-Craig: Yes, though I don't think most people would recognise it in these terms, as such.

and, what i believe to be true is - when you meet someone who is afflicted with this 'virus' of the soul you just know it. it is unspoken. it reveals itself over time and it is scary. like you said it is like being seduced by the devil.

soulsearch,

excellent post, excellent collection of statements and comments, one of the best posts in the forum regarding description of sociopaths.

after reading this everyone who knows a severe hpd or bpd better has to say:

yes, that´s her/him.

scary.

excellent post, excellent collection of statements and comments, one of the best posts in the forum regarding description of sociopaths.

thanks ewriter. if you have time go back and read all of KontrollerX's posts --> from the beginning. more excellent information.

Thanks for sharing your experiences soulsearch. Very interesting to see our impressions confirmed in the literature.

One thing I remembered recently was that one evening she told me that she is "a princess" and she was not kidding. I'd like to know, is such a fantasy typical for people with HPD?

One thing I remembered recently was that one evening she told me that she is "a princess" and she was not kidding. I'd like to know, is such a fantasy typical for people with HPD?

those with severe hpd act out roles of the princess and/or the victim. it is all pervasive role playing - meaning this role takes over their entire persona and basically is the role that they present to the public. it is more or less subcononscious. they may not even be aware of their role playing/acting. all they know is that when they play these roles things seem to work overwhelmingly in their favor. example: their manipulation works exceedingly well.

in the medical journal 'Sex bias, diagnosis, and DSM-III' it points out that the difference between aspd men and histrionic women. the difference is that aspd males are more or less behaviour orientated. but, severe hpd females and their behaviours are trait dominated. thus, the all pervasive description. meaning: this is WHO they are. the roles are all-encompassing.

the strange thing about it is you could probably ask her details about the last movie she had watched (or what have you) and she wouldn't be able to provide details, most likely. or would seem unsure of her description. but, if you asked if she was a princess. she would answer with an assured yes!

it's sad. people want to love/help/care/accept these women - give them the one thing they want more than anything - love. but, it is always a losing battle with a severe hpd. there are no NORMAL interactions with a severe hpd. no normal relationships. no normal friendships. it is all about conquering or being conquered.