The narcissist's playbook: How smart women are abused by romantic frauds | Australian Story

[Music] he told me that he was divorced he wanted to marry me he told me that he'd once worked for private equity firm that he had a ridiculous amount of money he told me he was an orphan he said he had been in the sas and was awarded the purple heart he said he'd kill people in battle he was such a good polo player he knew race car drivers so many so many things he told me he couldn't imagine his future without me so he turned out to be a barely literate forklift driver who was still with his wife oh he had a record for aggravated assault and theft he was in a relationship with another woman who was pregnant with his child the whole time i know of three women that he had relationships with walt with me everything was a game to him i don't think he had one sincere bone in his body [Music] it's no secret for middle-aged women that it's very hard dating world out there and if you reach 40 and you haven't met someone you're very unlikely to so the only option is to go online my online dating profile would have talked about the fact that i love my work as a journalist and a writer and i was looking for someone who was honest and sincere and decent with some intelligence and wit the man of my story i'm going to call joe his online dating profile presented him as a gentleman farmer who split his time between the city in a house on sydney harbour and a small farm in the country where he was growing an unusual variety of sheep and regenerating native grasses we met and i spent 14 months of my life with him i fell in love with joe but his whole life was a fabrication i mean i knew of con artists in the financial world of course but i'd never heard of romantic fantasists this guy didn't want money from me i don't think he it was for the sex like who does this when i realized the extent of his lies i started to google and the keywords i was googling were pathological liar and boyfriend what came up was narcissistic personality disorder [Music] at that point i thought i needed to talk to some experts i discovered that almost nothing he said about himself was true in fact he'd complain it created this completely false persona what is it about this sort of behaviour there's a number of categories that this could fall into diagnostically so the one that we might most think of would be a narcissistic personality disorder which is all about using other people to prop up one's own sense of important self-importance how much of dating apps contributed to to this problem it's certainly not the only way that this happens but it makes it easier in terms of access in terms of running a variety of relationships in parallel in terms of photoshopping and creating personas you can do that on line very very [Music] easily the relationship with joe ended at the end of 2015 and it was a year and a half before i sat down and started to think about writing for it writing the book really helped me understand what had happened when the book came out in 2019 i got messages from hundreds of people long heartfelt messages pouring out their stories mostly from women mostly about heterosexual relationships for the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder more men are diagnosed with it than than women it doesn't mean that women won't do it but it certainly seems disproportionate that it's going to be the other way [Music] even now nearly two years later i'm still getting messages i decided to reach out to some of the women who had contacted me hello how are you hi stephanie good thank you my primary hope is that by telling this story i can warn as many women as possible about this kind of behaviour so what else did he tell you about himself he came out from the uk that he was a very successful entrepreneur he left behind a mansion sports cars he was in the special forces and he'd actually shot someone i had never known properly what narcissism was i'd heard of it but i didn't actually know the depths of what it meant in context of a relationship what do you think he gets out of it if it's obviously not money adoration i got the impression he loved to be adored it was his oxygen to be adored was his oxygen [Music] women are often asked didn't you realize and why didn't you leave we tend to look to the victim always in society we because the perpetrator is a shock to us we can't even imagine such a person so we turn our attention to the victim instead that these women are not foolish or naive it's not as if they have just blindly stayed they are being played they're very actively being played i couldn't believe how similar the stories were there is such a playbook of behaviour to the point that now when someone starts to tell me their story i can go and then this happened next right there's a period at the beginning where the love is just intense and they call it love bombing [Music] with joe there were dinners out and holding hands across the table and playing with each other's feet under the table and really deep talking like we were really making a connection i thought the heady days of a love affair in its early stages is is is intoxicating [Music] men who are predators have practice it might be picking up the vulnerability the loneliness disappointment in previous relationships they work out their story and they look for someone who fits with that story [Music] when i met john i was not married anymore i hadn't had children and i was unhappy at work and i felt like a failure to be honest i met john in september 2017 i had met him online and he was very quick to want to meet me and and have a drink this is the um online photo from oh he looks quite handsome yeah right like yeah so when i saw him i was like oh he looks quite cheeky um fun you know irish love the irish accent but one of the things that he said to me was are you okay with dating a man with cancer or somebody that has had cancer no i mean what do you say to that i'm a chartered accountant my job is to work with facts anyone who knows me from work knows that you don't get much past me i guess being like an emotional thing is a little different he said he had had brain cancer and then he was in remission but just after he'd moved in with me he just said to me that you know the cancer is back and you know i remember him like yeah crying and just looking down and just not really saying anything i remember thinking all these problems that i have like that's nothing compared to somebody who's sick you know who might not live for another x amount of years who's struggling with their health you know and and i felt that well i'm in a position that i can help he started saying he needed this treatment and that treatment and it just was excessive it was month after month and then one time he asked me for five thousand dollars and i was just like this just does not add up it doesn't make sense he'd take calls fighting with the doctor saying i can't come in i don't have the money and i i just wonder whether he was just talking into the phone he must have been if i had to identify the red flags i'd say that the most screamingly important one is absences a man that has to be away all the time or comes and goes [Music] right from the very beginning uh joe's story was that he had custody arrangements with his ex-wife [Music] so right from the very start he was not going to be available one week in two and i just accepted that and there were always changes in the custody arrangement whereby he had to run off and pick the kids up when his wife couldn't do it or she'd let him down [Music] or there were business meetings or he had to rush off to his farm i wouldn't know when i'd see him again if you have a very time-bound relationship where you meet in small doses that keeps going for a whole lot longer because it's not interfered with by the domestics of life you're not watching someone take the bins out or wearing their daggy track pants what you're seeing all the time is people at their best [Music] when i read stephanie's book i wanted to reach out to her to someone that actually understood what i was going through i was 19 at the time that peter and i met i was still living at home the age gap between us was 19 years he told me that he had just gone through a divorce he had kids so i respected the fact that on those days that he didn't see me he was spending time with his kids we'll do activities together on the weekends but it was always on a time limit and i always craved more attention affection from him because it was so limited i wanted to see him as much as i could we went interstate together we went overseas to bali a few times he told me he wanted to marry me he wanted me to be the mother of his kids he swept me off my feet um he was charming he was kind made me feel safe [Music] we decided to start trying for kids which meant we weren't using contraception anymore he came over one night and told me that he had a urine infection and that he wasn't up for anything i said that's fine we went and had a shower together and when i looked down i saw stitches [Music] as soon as i saw these stitches i thought that he had a vasectomy i did argue with him and said how could you do this to me and he told me that he had got a reversal vasectomy for me that he didn't know how to tell me previously that he had already had one he sent me a picture of the reversal leaflet saying see i promise you it is that it's not a vasectomy it definitely is a reversal when i had a gut feeling if i thought that it was a lie and we had an argument about it he would come up with the best excuse that it just made sense he was an amazing liar [Music] we tried to have kids for two years and i couldn't get pregnant when the woman starts to ask questions there can be a period of gaslighting and that's when the men go you're imagining things you're being stupid you're going to ruin this if you keep on going on like this [Music] he told me all the time that it was all in my head that i had issues that i needed help i thought that i was definitely crazy thank you could you see that he was manipulating her at first no but um a bit after yeah brody kept a journal and brody wouldn't tell me things what was hurting her and things like that that i actually read the journal to get an understanding of what was going on dear diary been feeling down today a little each day to be honest i'm really feeling like no one wants me around anymore he blames me which makes me hate myself more than i already do i feel he doesn't really want to be with me anymore just hating life today really bad do you want to get rude no it did get very bad there was a lot of times i cried because i couldn't help her there's a few times brady tried to hurt herself and tried to kill herself and that was very hard as a mother as well just the the damage that these men do is is breathtaking i don't think either that we expect that people can lie on such a devastating scale in my view it's another arm of domestic abuse coercive control definitely can play a part in these relationships the gaslighting challenging their sense of reality their worth their value ultimately it's about keeping the relationship going and having maximum control i didn't even know what gaslighting was every time it was like i i was crazy i can't tell you how many times you would say it's in your head i was feeling really guilty and to have even have these thoughts you know to think that he might not be telling the truth [Music] well it was big year 2019 i was 40 and so a lot of like friends were 40 as well so i went to mudji on a girls weekend it's lunch i'd had a fair bit to drink like we all had and i guess i just started telling my story and on the left hand side was a lady who happened to work for border control and on the right hand side was a lady who whose mother had been done by a con man and one of them said to me is he even here really like legally because he's irish and that's when the other lady had said to me it just doesn't sound right aaron and so then they decided that they would support me like these are two women i just met and and they just said um i just sorry i'm just forever grateful for it i mean maybe i would have got there on my own but it that was the turning point that that gave me you know the permission at our two-year mark he said let's go and start looking for a house we went through display homes looking at exactly what we wanted and got a quote for how much the house would cost to build then he decided why don't we move into his investment property which he told me was occupied by tenants we spent over ten thousand dollars on furniture and we organized it to be delivered to the house that we're going to live in two days out from being able to start moving and he said i'm having issues with the tenants they're not getting out he said i need to take him to court when he did go to the court he sent me a photo to prove that he was there and he had his name on the board everything on my own looked legit so i didn't ask any further questions now i think a lot of the evidence that he would give me were forged there'll be a point where the story that you're told it just doesn't make any sense anymore and it's important at those points that you start to ask more direct questions [Music] i was with joe for about 14 months and i didn't see his house in that time i asked over and over and over again i said you know it's really a deal breaker i need to see your house and he kept on coming up with reasons why i couldn't see the house they ranged from my mother's staying with me while her floors floorboards are polished the children aren't ready to let anyone else into our little cocoon then the excuse changed to i'm going to renovate the house it's chaos you can't come finally he said come over next wednesday night and we'll have pizza and ice cream with the kids two nights in a row he cancelled me the first night his daughter had forgotten to tell me had she had something at the school that she needed to go to and then the second night it was cancelled because his dog was sick he even sent the picture of the vet medicine and the second night was when i just thought no i can't keep doing this because i was just a mess i was riddled with anxiety i was teary i was barely able to function at work that was when i realized that there was very little true in what he told me about his life i sent an email to him a few days later saying it's over i said i don't know what sort of fraud you are but you're not telling me the truth after that i didn't ever see him again back he was preying on me he had no intention of any of the things that he was saying it was all a game for him it was all completely fun and games and um it was it was so cruel it was so cruel [Music] when i got back from mudgy i was then conscious that i need to find something i need to ask more questions i went through his wallet i found the the card he uses to catch the train everywhere and i registered that and that gave me all the information i needed to know around where he had been at what times i contacted a girlfriend and i just said i think that that he hasn't doesn't have cancer and he's been going somewhere else and he's been doing something else with the money i said but please can you just look at it for me and tell me and i'm not crazy i reached out to his ex-girlfriend i said i've been living with this guy for two and a half years and i think he's he has been lying to me and then she got back to me straight away and said yep i think we should definitely meet uh he is a con man [Music] and she brought along another lady jane and we exchanged our stories and they had gone through the same thing and i said to her i think that i need to go to the police how much money do you think he got from you in terms of cash just for his treatments and that it would have been about 30 grand but you know when you add in um rent uh holidays it could be in excess of 80 thousand dollars i'd say so he was convicted for taking that money by deception um and he chose to plead guilty maybe a month later he was removed from the country back to ireland i got an email maybe three weeks after and he asked me if i had figured out the number what he was referring to was the number of women he'd been with while he was with me it became evident as i heard from other women that almost always there was another woman or multiple other women involved after i dumped joe the first thing i found was the evidence of the other woman it was astonishing as we unfolded and unpicked his lies and worked out when he'd been with her and what he'd told me as an excuse to be away and vice versa i thought what else is there about this man that i didn't know and i discovered that he was bankrupt i did a title deed search which showed me that the house that he said he lived in was owned by his ex-wife i was able to establish through other sources that he had a fraud related criminal conviction in his past i contacted the neighbours where he said his property had been his little sheep farm and they'd never heard of him [Music] deep down i knew that there was something going on you know after being together for four and a half years i just wanted answers something's not right something doesn't sit right with me so that night i didn't tell him i was coming i went to the house i thought was ours and i saw his car and his wife's car there it was about 10 o'clock at night i sat outside his house and i paired his phone from inside his house to my car i called the last couple of numbers that he had spoken to on the phone i spoke to one lady and she goes as far as i'm aware he's still very married so there was never any tenant he actually lived with his wife and kids in the house that we were meant to live in i know now if someone's cancelling on you or disappearing for long stretches of time or if you're becoming a detective in your own relationship these are signs that are not very good and if you're not being treated with respect get out of there [Music] when you're young you're in love and someone follows through with all these excuses and evidence to back up their stories it's very hard to see red flags when i found out everything i felt disgusted i felt disgusting i didn't have any confidence left no self-esteem i was depressed i went to the doctor to get a check to make sure that i hadn't caught anything i made the doctor cry telling him my story while i was there it's taught me if something doesn't feel right trust your gut don't shut your family out don't shut out your friends i just want to raise awareness to other women even men um that this sort of behavior needs to be spoken about that it needs to be called out reflecting on it i wish i'd spent a bit more time on myself and um and with my friends and my family which i i did isolate myself from at that time there's that song it's rihanna kanye west and paul mccartney and one of the lines is all of my kindness uh mistaken for weakness and i just i carry that line with me now because i'm kind i'm not weak it's a huge thing to tell your story publicly and to reveal your vulnerabilities publicly but as i know now story telling your own story sharing your vulnerabilities is one of the most powerful thing things you can do for other people do you think you'll trust again in a relationship yeah i do you know why because i don't want to let some psychotic man rule like the rest of my life that's not going to happen i'll recognize the likes of you 10 miles away next time but i won't be i won't be paranoid i won't be bitter i'm glad you said that because i think i've wondered whether i could ever trust again but i'll hold your what you just said as a mantra you deserve it stephanie ever anyone who's done had the wrong thing done by them it's up to them whether they're going to let that give have power over them or not that's right and you're entitled to to be affected but not forever because you know we're good people we're good people when i finished writing my book i felt stronger than i'd ever felt in my life and i think that the women who've told me their stories will probably feel the same way after this the strength comes from understanding what has happened knowing that you weren't responsible knowing that you're not the only one it's the men who've gone into these relationships with the intent to manipulate and deceive i think men need to be held far more accountable for this sort of behaviour the women haven't done anything wrong they've just wanted to love and be loved so [Music] you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 1,136,292

Keywords: abc news, australian news, abc news indepth, documentaries, long-form journalism, Australian story, Stephanie Wood, Stephanie Wood fake, what is a bnarcissist, traits of a narcissist man, traits of a narcissist, tinder swindler, Online dating, love bombing, gaslighting, what is gaslighting in a relationship

Id: Kn7GImMD1Eg

Length: 31min 15sec (1875 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 14 2022