Calculated Seduction

Today I watched one of Donna Anderson’s videos on her blog lovefraud.com.  She was talking about how you should be careful if the person you just start dating appears to be your soulmate very early on.  Donna said that sociopaths conduct “calculated seduction” where they pay close attention to what you want, mirror your desires, and basically turn themselves into YOUR version of “prince charming”.  In a nut shell, this is exactly what Luc did.

I have been thinking a lot over the past year about what in the hell attracted me to Luc in the first place.  These thoughts smack me right in the face particularly when I am staring at his balding, lying, troll like ass on the stand in court.  How could I have fallen for someone who is really such a lying sack of shit?

Donna’s term “calculated seduction” made a lot of sense to me.  I was the perfect target for Luc.  Here are some of the things that I think contributed to this shit storm:

1)  Online dating:  I used to think there was nothing wrong with meeting a person in this manner; however, I am now completely against it.  Weird people hide behind their computers.  While there are plenty of normal people who online date, there are an unhealthy number of weirdos who troll for women on the internet.  These people study their targets well before even contacting them.  Once you meet them in person, you have already had that great phone conversation where he seemed to share your interests, enjoy your humor, etc.

2)  I was rebounding horribly:  When I met Luc I was heartbroken.  I was approaching 30 and wondering if I would ever meet my soulmate or even if I had a soulmate at all.  Luc read me like a book from day one.  I was honest about wanting to be in a serious relationship that led to one day having a family.  Luc thought this was great because he was looking for someone to raise his son (notice how I didn’t say help HIM raise his son).

3)  His son was bait:  I love kids.  Period.  Luc came to me with this sob story about how he was raising his son on his own and how the child’s mother had died in an accident.  (Telling me she had been murdered and he was the prime suspect would have been a bit of a buzz kill I imagine.)

4)  I have “dirty dog syndrome”:  This term I created, so don’t be concerned if you have never heard of it before.  If I am honest with myself, Luc looked like a scrappy mess from the day I met him.  His hair was too long, he walked with a limp, he wore his clothes too big…I could go on forever.  All this being said, however, there was a part of me that saw some glimmer of potential and passion.  I was that woman who sees the dirty dog on the street and takes it into my house to give it a bath and feed it (hoping that once its clean it will be cute).  Well, that dirty dog bit me.

5)  Deception was his full time job:  Finally, probably the most important piece of all this is how much time he spent working on seducing me and fooling me into believing he was the person I wanted (my soulmate if you will).  Every morning, I got up to go to work at 5:30am. I wouldn’t get home until the evening.  The entire time I was at work, Luc would think of ways to convince me he was successful, honest, loving, and someone completely different than who he really was.  The man actually got out of bed on a regular basis, put on a suit, and talk about the business meetings he was to attend that day.  Unless you are a paranoid mess, you probably aren’t going to follow your fiance to make sure he is actually going to work.  Turns out, after I left for work, he would get back into sweats and watch television and play video games all day.  He would also spend time thinking of elaborate lies to tell me about his work filled day.  I had a life – there was no way I could compete with that level of deception.

My father always says to me, “if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and acts like a duck – it’s a damn duck!”  Unfortunately, in addition to being a good girl, I have always been stubborn as hell.  Even after all of the above elements of the shit storm began to fade and his story started to fall apart, I really wanted to believe he wasn’t a duck.  The man could have very well been quacking in my face and there was a point when I would have said, “well, you know…he just isn’t feeling well.  He normally doesn’t sound like a duck.”

I beat myself up about not leaving him sooner on a daily basis.  Every time I have to write my sons full legal name down on a document and I see Luc’s last name, I want to scream and slap myself.  Every time I see the pain and stress that this situation continues to put on my family, I want to kick myself for being so damn blind.  I know that Luc is not worth my forgiveness.  There is no point in forgiving someone who will never believe that what he did was wrong.  What I pray for, however, is that I will be able to forgive myself.