They provoke their partners on purpose with cruelty and feign innocence, while appearing “calm” in response to their emotional reactions. This is a deliberate attempt to paint their partners as unstable.

Psychopaths are known for their emotional impoverishment and studies show that their brains react differently to fear-related cues and lacks a typical empathic response when envisioning others in pain (in fact, the part of their brains related to reward is activated, indicating they may take pleasure in inflicting pain on others). Conveniently, their brains only show a typical empathic response when they envision themselves in pain. These differences in empathy and a desire to gain stimulation from the emotions of others are evident in their behavior in romantic relationships. For example, psychopathic partners may verbally abuse a romantic partner, only to gaslight them as “crazy” when they react. Or, they may say something heinous but covert to their partners in a calm voice, so their victims react in a public setting – this is also known as a “dog whistle,” references that only the psychopathic person and their partner would understand. They might taunt and insult their partners behind closed doors right before an event with mutual friends and family so the victim appears to be the emotionally distraught one around others they know. They pathologize the emotions of others, but these are emotions they go out of their way to provoke. In reality, psychopaths themselves lack emotional mastery, but are emotionally shallow and aggressive enough to violate others and treat them cruelly without guilt or remorse. They take pride in pretending they are superior because they can poke and prod at their victims, taunting and bullying others with abhorrent cruelty and smugly taking inventory of their reactions while seeming nonreactive themselves due to their emotional shallowness.

They frequently create love triangles and manufacture chaos in your life to create emotional whiplash and uncertainty.

Research reveals that both psychopathic and narcissistic partners orchestrate scenarios where they can wield power and control over others. One of these situations is the case of jealousy induction, where they provoke jealousy on purpose to test the relationship, gain control over their partners, or exact revenge. In cases of the more impulsive psychopathic subtype, they may also do so to compensate for insecurity. This is why, in a relationship with a psychopathic or narcissistic individual, you may be constantly inundated with reminders of their exes, people they express interest in, or the “threat” of other love interests frequently introduced into the dynamic of the relationship. This is the type of person who may flaunt flirting with others in front of you, brings up exes on romantic dates with you or talks about attractive friends or co-workers without shame or guilt on a daily basis, all while feeding off your reactions. They may also engage in emotional cheating and drop subtle hints over time of what they’re doing and gaslight you to keep you off-edge and off-kilter about what they’re really up to. They can also manufacture chaos in other ways by staging “break-ups” to keep you feeling uncertain about the state of the relationship, or by sabotaging special events, vacations, holidays, birthdays, and friendships to keep you isolated from deriving emotional fulfillment from sources outside of them. This keeps you dependent on them. Normal, healthy, empathic people do not weaponize such tactics, but in a relationship with a psychopath, you will be continually bombarded with attempts to devalue you and make you “compete” for their attention and approval. 

They project their own vindictiveness and egotism onto their partners, creating distortions of who they are.

Partners of psychopaths note that they were often accused of having the qualities and traits the psychopathic person possessed – for example, they may have been accused of being manipulative, disloyal, egotistical, or hostile when these were actually the personality traits of the psychopath. These types of malignant projections are used to create a distortion of the victim so they cannot identify the manipulation that is occurring and feel emotionally invalidated in their suffering. The motive of this tactic is to instill self-blame and escape accountability. A psychopath’s aggressiveness, which is often unprovoked (if they meet the “primary” subtype of psychopathy rather than the more violent, impulsive “secondary” subtype) are often based on inaccuracies and projections that veer on a delusional depiction of their victims. They may paint their victims as the unstable and vindictive ones, but reality reveals quite a different picture: psychopaths are hardly zen masters, but rather, sadistic, egotistical, deliberate, and vengeful, becoming quite thin-skinned when they perceive a threat to their sense of entitlement and exhibiting extreme hostility or underhanded ploys to violate people to maintain power and control. Some psychopaths even escalate into reactive violence, while others continue to engage in instrumental aggression, harming others for profit, pleasure, or another personal agenda. When victims of psychopathic aggression and manipulation do not give them the emotional reactions they expected or remain calm themselves, psychopaths will still maintain the illusion that their partners are “out of control” and “unhinged,” by projecting their own lack of control onto others and engaging in smear campaigns or gossip to slander and isolate the victim. 

They treat their partners with contempt and devalue them on a whim.

You can usually find a psychopath’s own emotional habits revealed in the horrific ways they talk about their partners and the contrast between the way they treat their partners in the beginning of the relationship as opposed to the end of it. They speak about their ex-partners with unwarranted contempt and spite, or, if they are clever enough to hide their tracks, a “concerned” tone of voice stating they fear for the mental health of their victims after spending months or years deliberately trying to disorient and destabilize their partners. They also lack emotional permanence and a sense of relational constancy, which means they are able to devalue their partners without compassion or regard to the bonds they created with them, in pursuit of novelty and a brand new target, despite heavily love bombing their partners in the beginning and showering them with constant attention and affection. If you were targeted by a psychopath, it was not your fault, and you did not deserve their cruelty. You deserve to be free and to heal from toxic people.