Dr. Jill Ricke, a licensed Psychologist in private practice will discuss “When the psychopath leaves you: what to expect and how to gain your sanity back.”
Dr. Ricke contributed the following:
Often, partners in relationships are not aware of how the other one feels. When you are involved with a psychopath there is a high likelihood that you think things are “just fine” but they are not. Out of the blue the psychopathic individual might tell you that they are “tired of how you have been treating them for all of these years and they want a divorce.” You are stunned and shocked because you feel that you have done everything possible for this person so you do not understand what they are talking about. This is exacerbated when there are young children involved. It is common for the individual that is involved with the psychopath to assume that the psychopath experiences the same emotions, the same emotional connection to the children, and cannot understand how the psychopath can act so cold, cruel and detached. The first assumption is that the psychopath is having an affair, this might or might not be the case but the root of the issue is that the psychopath has a sense of entitlement and it is “always about them.” When you are tending to young children the psychopath is angry, jealous and incensed that they do not “come first” even if it is their own child. When your children are young ( infants, toddlers, preschoolers, early elementary) and need a lot of attention you probably are not aware that your partner is a psychopath so you assume that he puts the children first, and you assume that he is understanding of why you are tired; therefore you are confused about his anger and his temper tantrums.
The psychopathic partner will not be as engaged as you are in the children’s lives or your life but they will still expect you to be fully involved in everything that they are doing. The psychopathic partner will often react with rage to perceived rejection. Over the years this pattern becomes ingrained and the partner of the psychopath learns how to appease the psychopath to reduce these outbursts of rage. You might feel as if you are going “crazy” because the psychopath is very adept at manipulation and lying. They will say what they need to say at the moment to get what they want and later deny ever saying it. The biggest question of the partner of the psychopath is “why are they doing this?” The simplest answer to this is that their needs will always come before anyone else’s needs and when they are not the center of the universe they are unhappy and will do whatever they have to do to become the center of the universe.