Pieter Hintjens - The Psychopath Code - Cracking the Predators That Stalk Us

She never says "please" or "thank you" at home. She says, "do this or else!" Always "or else!" I have to go to the shops for her, do the dishes, do the laundry. She threw a fit when Daddy taught me to cook. She said he was making her poor baby into his slave.

She treats me like a baby, asking "did you go poo-poo? How was it? Soft or hard?" She does this in front of my friends, in public. She tells me I don’t wash, that I smell, that I’m fat. When we’re with family she’s always complaining about me. She keeps saying how she sacrificed her life for her poor baby.

At school they bully me a lot, and don’t know how to stop it. The teachers know and do nothing. Mommy says it’s my fault for not making friends. I once got sick with appendicitis. She complained the whole time I was in hospital. Daddy should have been there to look after me, she said. Then she said how lucky I was that she was there, that if Daddy had looked after me, I would be dead.

I’m sixteen now and want to leave and live with Daddy. Mommy doesn’t want that. I made a friend at school. Mommy spoke to her and told her I am depressed and hysterical. My friend stopped talking to me. I don’t know who I can ask for help.

The worst part is how people tell me, all the time, how amazing she is and how lucky I am. Sometimes I think I’m the crazy one, and Mommy is just trying to save me. Sometimes I want to kill myself, so I don’t hurt other people like she hurt me.

I miss Daddy.

So far I’ve explained the predator model of psychopathy. I’ve used it to draw a picture of Mallory in many different situations. If you have read and practiced the previous chapters, you are now equipped. You understand how Mallory stalks, attacks, captures, and consumes his prey. You understand how Mallory thinks. You can start to predict how Mallory will respond in any given situation.

What if you believe you are that prey? You have poured your life into a relationship based on lies. You are asking yourself, what next? When you live in a permanent fog, even small steps are terrifying.

This chapter is for you then. I’m going to explain how to lift that fog, and rebuild your life. It is not going to be an easy project. If you spent years in a relationship with Mallory, it will take you years to become whole again. My goal with this chapter is to teach you several things:

❂ How to stop Mallory from doing more damage.

❂ How to repair the damage that Mallory has done.

❂ How to become a stronger person than you were before.

❂ How to help others who find themselves in the same place.

It is not enough to remove Mallory from your life. As a victim of abuse, you are vulnerable to future abusers. You must break the cycle and use your experience to become immune to the next psychopath who stalks you.

This advice is above all meant for those entangled with Mallory. If you are reading this and thinking of a friend or relative, please give them this book. Then buy a new copy for yourself.

In the text, Mallory switches from male to female in each section. I’ve no agenda here except to remind you that Mallory works outside gender. She or he will use sex as a casual tool of control. Yet his or her mind operates on its own plane. You can mentally switch Mallory’s gender, if that helps.

Consider a relationship as a paper cup. Most people ask, "is the cup half full, or half empty?" Mallory sees the paper cup as something to knock over. He waits for Alice to place the cup back upright, and fill it a little. Then he knocks it over again, and curses Alice for her clumsiness. She apologizes and starts again to refill it.

Again Mallory knocks the cup over, tearing a hole into it. Alice repairs the hole with tape. Mallory takes a knife and rips more holes into the cup. Alice repairs those too.

It continues like this until the cup is one huge ugly mess of tape. Alice has run out of tape several times. She has put her life savings into repairing that damn cup. And yet every time it seems OK again, Mallory smashes it to the floor.

The worst part is that Alice can’t see Mallory doing this. He seems so innocent, and insistent that it was her fault. It makes her feel terrible and useless. Still as long as the cup holds water, that is what matters.

The cup is by far the most important thing in Alice’s life and she does everything possible to repair it. Her friends and family keep telling her, "leave the cup!" yet she cannot. All that work! The cup is her life, she tells herself as she refills it.

Mallory’s power comes from that cup and the resources Alice pours into it. He always leaves Alice a way to repair things. If she does walk out, he will do and say what he must to get her back. It ends on his terms, never hers.

If Alice does cut Mallory off, reject his apologies, and walk away, she leaves as a victim. She leaves a large part of her identity in that cup. It obsesses her, and she tries to block it from her mind. Any mention of the past brings her to tears. Her friends and family become tired of her moods and depression. She will heal, most often, yet it will take far longer than it should.

The helplessness is itself a prison. Alice never stopped feeling that the cup was important. She had to make the choice between it, and her own sanity. Her failure to make it work becomes her burden. She thinks she is a failure, doomed to be alone.

So now, consider another ending. One day Alice spots Mallory smashing the cup. Or, someone tells her what he is doing. She watches as he creates chaos, and she watches herself trying to fix it. Something clicks in her mind and she decides to change the game.

Mallory throws the cup to the floor and mocks her. She examines him and sees no love, no affection. She leaves the cup on the floor and gets back to her life. Mallory shouts at her to pick it up, and she ignores him. Or maybe, for once, she lets the anger and rage flow through her, and shouts back at him.

His power comes from her obedience. He ramps up, and tries to crush her rebellion. At first she is afraid. He does terrify her. Yet she holds her ground and keeps watching him. It takes months of confrontations, and then she realizes that he is backing down. His threats are violent and rich, yet he does not carry them out.

Little by little he loses his power over her. And she feels her power returning. She looks better. Her hair and skin are healthier. Her friends tell her how she is looking great. She meets a man at work who seems nice. It’s a bit soon, she tells him, and he backs off, and they become friends.

One day, Mallory has gone. Disappeared, without a note or a trace. She isn’t surprised. He’s become silent, and impatient. Lots of phone calls. Other things going on. She tidies up, and whistles a small tune to herself. It’s a nice sunny day outside.

Let’s conduct a virtual experiment. Bob is in a relationship with Mallory. It has lasted some time. He worships her, and cannot see the harm she is doing to him. So one night we send in a commando team. The masked men take Bob by force, bundle him into an unmarked van, and race off. They drive to a new city, open the van door, and set Bob onto the pavement. "You’re free now!" they tell him, and vanish.

What happens to Bob next? Does he thank the stars with gratitude, and find a new place to live? Does he pick up where he was before Mallory came into his life? What if Bob was in a cult compound? What if he was working for a nasty, exploitative business?

We know the answer. Bob immediately returns to where he was. Whatever was keeping him there in the first place pulls him right back.

So, we can fine-tune the experiment. We kidnap Bob again, and this time we "deprogram" him. We give him the time to kick his dependency on Mallory. We have done this experiment in real life many times, with other kinds of addicts. We cut them off from their drug supply, force them to go sober.