"No one wants to be the sucker, so how do we prevent ourselves from becoming close friends or getting into a relationship with a psychopath? It's really almost impossible, say Seto and Willson. Unfortunately, laments Seto, one way is to become more suspicious and less trusting of others."

So how does one recover from being best friends with a sociopath? I never FULLY knew why I didn't trust people until I read this. I mean I knew she was the beginning of my lack of faith in people but I didn't know she was THE reason PERIOD. Kristie was a con artist--a manipulator. She lied pathologically, she cried on cue, she made up stories about her life that never happened and worst of all she did all of this to me. I was her victim. Sociopaths don't see people as humans. They see people as victims to be manipulated. I never realized I was a victim until now. I was a casuality of her mental illness. What hurts me more than her lies is the fact that I can no longer trust people because of her. That great and honest people will never get the chance to know me because I'm scared of being victimized again. "They seem to have an innate ability to find the weakness in people, and are ready to use these weaknesses to their own ends through deceit, manipulation, or intimidation, and gain pleasure from doing so." I know what it's like to be used and abused--my story is just different because it was done to me by my best friend, a girl no less. the sweet church girl and town slut rolled all into one. she had the uncanny ability to be different people at different times. i thought that when i stopped being friends with cristina, i was finally able to have my own identity. i didn't realize until later that i was only taking on parts of kristie's identity. i think that's why i became so obsessed with taking personality tests and finding out who i was. i should have seen it all then but i was blinded by my loyalty to our friendship. the fact that someone viewed me as weak and took advantage of my love and forgiveness makes me FURIOUS. What kind of sick person could do such a thing? The same sick type of person who shot up an elementary school...a sociopath like Kristie. She took pleasure in people's pain. She had a lesbian relationship so she could score new handbags from this girl. she got married so she could force her husband into the miliitary and get her education paid in full and once she graduated, she got a divorce meanwhile she was cheating on him with 5 guys. This is the same girl who not only tried to have sex in front of me and manipulate me into an orgy (which never happened) but also forced me to go with her to gas stations and pretend we ran out of gas so she could collect money from strangers for her shopping sprees. She had the money but clearly it didn't stop her from lying or even stealing (she was caught by the police at macys). She even lied to me about a guy she was "dating" who liked her but she didn't go for him because she felt bad that our mutual friend liked him. my mutual friend whom i trust told me that the guy actually liked her and kristie was crying the entire night in the bathroom because of it. she frequently as in always lied to her parents. "There's no distinction between friend, family and sucker." She was compulsive to the point where she shaved her head because "she felt like it" and her hair was new colors every week previous to that. She would make me come with her to many houses and make me wait while she had sex with strange men. for money...maybe even pleasure i suppose. she tried to give her husband a BJ in the mall in front of a crowd while I was there. She tried to seduce 13 year old boys at our church when she was in college. Needless to say, she was kicked out of the church. She made me feel guilty for going to a church that doesn't accept her so I stopped. If her behavior isn't impulsive enough, she got married a week after knowing a guy without telling her parents and she was 19. clearly now she's divorced and targeting her next victim. if there's anyone i can help with my story i hope they listen. i also hope she doesn't become the next killer we hear about on the news because she has those capabilities but she's not in my life anymore and i don't know where she is but i'm praying. The sad thing is that she can't be helped and certainly can't be stopped. I myself am a therapist and she's even gone to therapy but nothing will help because they lie to their therapists too. I went through the DSM and was able to diagnose her as a sociopath but i'm not her therapist and my expert opinion is irrelevant.

all i know is when i looked at kristie, i was staring the devil in the face

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