As I’ve mentioned in other posts, sensitive, creative, highly empathic people are a magnet for abusers. While not all abusers have clinically diagnosable disorders, many abusers if they were tested and were honest would score highly for Cluster B personality traits such as narcissism or psychopathy (Collison & Lynam 2021). Throughout this post I’m going to use the term ‘he’ for the person with the Cluster B personality disorder for simplicity, though of course women also have CBPDs (the actual ratio of male:female is not accurately known).

Lisa Bilyeu recently interviewed Lewis Raymond Taylor, a clinically diagnosed psychopath. While we usually only ever hear about psychopaths on the news after they’ve committed some horrendous crime, most are simply living peacefully amongst us. It is estimated that 1 in 10 people have a Cluster B personality disorder and while most of us will be totally unaware, their nearest and dearest often know something isn’t right with them, they just don’t know what.

Lisa’s interview is fascinating. I thought I was now quite well educated in Cluster B personality disorders, but I learned a lot listening to an actual psychopath’s experience of the world. In particular, I realise now that the girl who bullied me for a decade as a child is clearly a psychopath, and I can see the emotional void that he talks about very clearly in my narcissistic ex partners alongside, of course, their classic lack of emotional empathy (though one scored quite highly for the cognitive empathy Lewis explains so well).

It was interesting for me to learn that he is an introvert. Childhood bully aside, my other abusers have had Narcissistic Personality Disorder and have fallen into 2 distinct camps: the overt narcissists have been extroverts and the covert narcissists have been introverts. Overt narcissists are openly grandiose, but covert narcissists wear a ‘mask’ when in public to hide their true selves. However, it’s impossible to keep this pretence up all the time so when they come home the mask comes off. This is why many covert narcissists are only abusive to those closest to them in the privacy of their own home and why they require lots of ‘space’ away from other people as it gives them a breather from wearing their mask.

When Lewis is talking about energy levels and makes the hand gesture to his girlfriend that he needs peace and quiet as his energy has dipped, it sounds like such a reasonable thing to request doesn’t it? But what he’s not saying is that in people unaware of their Cluster B personality disorder this care and compromise will be expected from you but not given to you. If he’s not tired and it’s his girlfriend’s energy that dips it is a problem to him. There will be no empathy for her or putting aside his own desire to be chatty or active in favour of her needs for peace and quiet. He’s absolutely not going to run her a bath or offer to make dinner – instead he’ll do something which benefits him, like going for a run, until she gets over it. The reason Lewis doesn’t do this is because he’s been in therapy for a decade with a therapist who specialises in personalty disorders.

Relationships with people who have CB personalities are one sided. Their partner has to constantly see and meet their needs but this is rarely reciprocated and their partner’s needs are largely unobserved, unimportant and unmet. I remember my Mum constantly shouting at her Husband “it’s always all about you!” and he even made the day she died all about him as he completely ignored her dying wishes. To ignore a person’s dying wish would be anathema to most people but to Cluster B personalities other people’s desires are irrelevant if they don’t benefit them.

As he rightly points out, many women stay with CB personalities because they think they can love him out of his personality disorder (they can’t), ‘fix’ him (they can’t) or that therapy will cure him (it won’t). It becomes more a parent/child relationship than a 50/50 romantic partnership, with the woman constantly having to assert boundaries against his selfish behaviour or being expected to give him unconditional love despite his appalling behaviour, just as you would with a small child. It’s exhausting and leaves the partner feeling lonely, unfulfilled and unseen.

One of my narcissistic exs specifically targetted women who had had traumatic childhoods. Without extensive therapy, trauma in childhood can leave women tolerant of abusive behaviour or abuse can feel ‘safe’ or attractive because it’s familiar. Also, having been trauma bonded as children, women from abusive families are then easy to manipulate into trauma bonds with partners. Having been either physically or emotionally abandoned by one or both parents, women from abused families will often put 110% into a romantic relationship for fear of being abandoned by their partner, a situation Cluster B personalities take full advantage of.

While it’s great to see that Lewis has made progress in managing his psychopathy, he clearly admits that he is an anomaly. Cluster B personality disorders are not curable and in order to become manageable the disordered person has to commit to years of specialist therapy, which most simply are not prepared to do even if they could first admit they have a problem which is incredibly difficult for someone who lacks accountability and has a grandiose sense of self.

I think it’s important for we sensitive and empathic souls to learn about Cluster B personality disorders and to be vigilant when meeting new people. While even Lewis himself says it’s impossible on first impressions to know someone is a narcissist or a psychopath, from my own experience it actually only takes a couple of months for the red flags to begin to show, but we will only spot them if we know what we’re looking for.

In respect to families which contain CBPD members, I personally made the choice to leave and have total no contact, however this isn’t always possible and if it’s not we have to prioritise physical safety and learn about grey rocking and other measures to protect our emotional and mental health.