Scroll down to the comments to read what survey respondents are reporting
Lovefraud has been hearing some distressing stories about sociopaths and the coronavirus — some are using pandemic as an opportunity to create new kinds of havoc. So we’re wondering — how much of this is going on? What types of games are sociopaths playing?
If you’re dealing with someone who you believe has a personality disorder during the pandemic, tell us what you’ve seen by completing the Lovefraud Coronavirus Survey. The individual could be your:
- Romantic partner or spouse
- Parent
- Child (age 18 or older)
- Work colleague or business associate
- Family member
- Friend
The Lovefraud Coronavirus Survey asks whether the individual you are describing complied with social distancing orders, if the individual was abusive during the lockdown, how the individual parented or co-parented minor children, whether he or she used the emergency to illicitly make money, and more.
The survey also asks you questions about the individual’s personality traits. If you complete the survey, it’s important to answer these questions. Your answers are necessary in order to establish a link between personality traits and behavior.
Of course, your personal safety is paramount. The coronavirus survey is anonymous; we do not collect any identifying information, such as your name, birthdate or IP address. If you live with the individual, we recommend that you do not complete the survey while the person is home or on a device that he or she monitors.
Read more: Scientific research by the Lovefraud team
The research team includes Donna Andersen, author of Lovefraud.com, Dr. Liane Leedom, of the University of Bridgeport, and Dr. Martin Sellbom, of the University of Otago. Results may be published in a scientific paper, on Lovefraud.com and elsewhere.
Video: Dr. Liane Leedom on codependency and traumatic bonding
Here’s what one woman reported in the Lovefraud Coronavirus Survey:
Her husband dates multiple other women during the lockdown
Please describe the individual’s behavior regarding compliance with government mandates, such as social distancing, and protecting you or others.
He continued to physically date multiple women per week. He continued to meet, use, sleep with, and then proceed to dump new women online almost daily. He ignored all guidelines. On multiple occasions, he bragged to his daughter, age 12, how he was, “getting it tonight!” much to her horror. Our children were angry that he continued to act as if nothing were different. He left them to fear he would bring the Coronavirus home to them, two of which are severely immunocompromised.
Please describe the individual’s treatment of you during the lockdown.
He continued to file false police reports, refused to follow court orders, and failed to show up to custody exchanges to pick up our children. He has not paid support since October and has stopped all efforts for enforcement of the payments through the courts again. He has called individuals to gather information on me and called my home despite orders not to communicate except by a court-ordered website.
Please describe the individual’s parenting during the lockdown.
Total abuse.Physical, mental, emotional, and psychological abuse. He has refused to let them do their school work. He has failed to provide food, clothing, and necessities. He had my young pre-teen son unnecessarily placed on heavy drugs, Zoloft, and then stopped it cold turkey, sending him into horrible withdrawal. He has left them unsupervised for extended time periods to go on dates with someone he just hooked up with on his multiple dating apps.
Please describe the individual’s behavior regarding government programs related to COVID-19.
He has been caught blatantly lying to his children telling them he didn’t get the stimulus check and then the complete opposite, that he did receive the check. They do not know what to believe. This is normal for them after witnessing years of his pathological lying.
If you would like to provide additional information about the behavior of this individual during the pandemic, please do so below.
His behavior was not unexpected. He will use anything he can to his advantage. Due to No Contact Orders he was able to spread lies concerning custody and file false Police Reports. He has perfected lying so the courts continue to believe him despite facts being presented in black and white.
Here’s what a man reports in the survey about his ex-wife:
Ex-wife claimed she had a fever for three weeks and kept kids from seeing father
Please describe the individual’s behavior regarding compliance with government mandates, such as social distancing, and protecting you or others.
Ex-spouse put our children and my wife at risk by not telling any of us about her exposure to COVID where she works, and how she became sick with an unknown illness.
Please describe the individual’s parenting during the lockdown.
She is a helicopter, engulfing parent and she is absolutely rabid about the danger of the virus and will not let the kids play more than 50 feet away from the home.
Please describe how the individual tried to use the coronavirus emergency to illicitly make money or take advantage of people.
She tried to say she could have had it. She claimed she had a fever for 3 weeks and kept our kids from seeing me.
If you would like to provide additional information about the behavior of this individual during the pandemic, please do so below.
She used the COVID quarantine as a vehicle to keep our children from seeing and interacting with me and my wife. She also wanted to call attention to herself by saying she was “sick” with a fever, and here she was out and about. I called where she works and spoke to administration to tell them that she put our children in harm’s way-she claims she was tested and it was negative, but we can’t trust anything she says.
Here’s what a woman co-parenting with her ex husband says:
Ex-husband uses corona virus as excuse to not take care of kids
Please describe the individual’s behavior regarding compliance with government mandates, such as social distancing, and protecting you or others.
I had the children (joint custody) over the school spring break holiday. The Sunday before he was supposed to get the kids he texted me to say that he had been quarantined because he’d been around someone with covid-19 and would not be able to take the kids for the next two weeks. The Monday after the two weeks, when he was supposed to take the kids that night, he texted me to say that he was having gastrointestinal issues and asked if I wanted him to pick the kids up. I told him that if the health department hadn’t commented on it (because in quarantine they would have been contacting him daily about temp checks and possible symptoms) then that i wasn’t overly concerned. Then one week later, on a Monday that he was supposed to take the kids that night, he texted me a link to his confirmed covid-19 testing session. I texted him back asking him to let me know if he’s experiencing symptoms, if so, when they started, and that we should let the daycare providers know. He responded that his only question is if i wanted him to pick the kids up that night or not. I texted him that i couldn’t answer that without additional information and he texted that he wasn’t going to tell me anything about his health. So, the courts had given us some guidance on a covid-19 situation with joint custody and all it said was that if one parent had a positive covid-19 test that the children should stay with that parent for a two week period. So, since he didn’t have any test result yet, I told him that he should pick the kids up. I let the daycare know because I didn’t want them to be exposed and they said that they wouldn’t let our children back at the daycare until they received confirmation of a negative test. When he was pressed about it, he laughed in their faces. A few days later, he texted me that it was a joke. I had been frantic, crying, scared that I was sending my kids to his house and that they would all (we have three kids) be exposed to this virus and that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
I have a neighbor who what showing signs of narcissistic behavior when I met him. He wasn’t obeying 6 feet distance. He totally ignored the travel ban, traveling to Los Angeles of all places to see his kids because “his daughter needed him” then brought her back to his place two counties away. I noticed that she was wearing a mask and he wasn’t.
Here’s another woman describing her ex-husband:
“He is immortal apparently”
Please describe the individual’s behavior regarding compliance with government mandates, such as social distancing, and protecting you or others.
My ex husband, who now lives in another town nearby, would drive over several times a week and get angry and “depressed” if I did not go meet him somewhere to “talk”. When told that we were under a strict enforcement and could be fined if out, he told me to say that I was an essential worker (and I am not). He also did not care that I would be leaving children at home if I did go see him (which I did not). His job included being around multiple people (injured or sick) and he did not care that he was exposing me or small children to that. He refused to wear a mask and/or gloves. Because I did not go see him, he has been blowing up my phone and talking to people (again) about all of the wonderful things he has done for me and that I would not do the same for him because I am selfish, mean and “there must be someone else”.
Please describe the individual’s behavior regarding him/her personally contracting COVID-19 or a similar respiratory illness.
He is immortal apparently. It “wont happen to him because his immune system is perfect”
Here’s what a woman says about her brother, who is in his 60s:
Claims Covid is a government hoax
Please describe the individual’s treatment of you during the lockdown.
Degrading and dismissive comments. Scapgoating , blaming and shaming behaviors.
Please describe the individual’s parenting during the lockdown:
His son is engaging in hateful and abusive comments online and my brother is goading him on.
Please describe the individual’s behavior regarding him/her personally contracting COVID-19 or a similar respiratory illness.
Claims it is fake and he’s not taking any precautions. Says those who are taking precautions are losers and “sheeple”
Here’s what a woman wrote about her romantic partner:
Man makes conspiracy theory videos
Please describe the individual’s behavior regarding compliance with government mandates, such as social distancing, and protecting you or others.
Previously apolitical (white male; “The key to happiness is not caring about politics”), he became extremely political and enraged about the pandemic. For weeks, he’d repeat the same angry speech about the government stealing our freedom, trying to turn us all communists, the “shamdemic”/“hoax,” and the “Chinese” virus to anyone he spoke with—even clients who’d call for the first time for business info.
Always bookended with, “Trust me; I have a sixth sense for these things.”
He has anger management issues, and any talk of the virus or the pandemic at first would send him into a fit. He’d yell at me and even more violently at his mother over the phone like a child throwing a tantrum. Only he knows the truth because he’s “psychic,” and hearing opinions that differ from his own—especially about the pandemic—is like setting off a rage bomb. Anyone who disagrees with him on this is a blind idiot and a brainwashed sheep. No other way to look at him.
He always does videos talking about his psychic abilities and about many conspiracies (he believes them all adamantly: chem trails, flat earth, human tracking chips, vaccines to turn us all into robots or something, etc.), but the pandemic really set him off. Now he makes these videos constantly, and he is getting more views and interactions (often negative) than ever. He lives on social media; and posts everything in his life, everything we experience “together,” as Instagram stories, and can’t live without the messages and responses that come in through IG and FB.
At the beginning of the pandemic, he preached that nobody cared about anyone so people trying to steal our liberties by telling us to stay home are lying about doing it for the benefit of others. Also preached (to anyone he’d talk to) that no one should be asked to sacrifice anything for anyone (mind you, all he’s being asked to do is wear a mask and not party for a while; true entitlement) because people are going to die anyway (“same amount of people die every year with the flu, should we shut down our lives every winter then?”). The amount of deaths are not as high as they say, he thinks, and anyway people shouldn’t be made to sacrifice their freedoms just to save a few others’ lives.
His parents are in their late 70s and he said that if this virus killed them, he’d be sad but basically that’s life.
He’s loving the attention on social media (negative and positive), and at the height of it would cry out about how people are attacking him and calling him names for spreading these selfish, dumb, insensitive ideas as if he’s some kind of enlightened martyr. Unable to see beyond his own nose (and believing everyone and everything is out to get him because taking responsibility for anything in his life is much harder and boring), he 1) took the pandemic as a personal attack to his freedom (again, entitlement; being asked to wear a mask is a good reason for a violent revolution) and 2) used it as a way to get loads of that attention, external validation, etc. he craves on social media, to feel like someone with a voice over others (he is obsessed with being rich and famous with the least amount of effort on his part; everything that requires effort—working, relationships—is “below” him).
Here’s a man writing about his female romantic partner
Woman goes crazy over Covid-19, gets her partner locked up in jail
Please describe the individual’s behavior regarding compliance with government mandates, such as social distancing, and protecting you or others.
When it was first announced back in March of this year up until just recently she didn’t believe this COVID 19 was real. She said she didn’t know anyone who had it. And that all her friends on social media and their friends and their friends friends…..not one person knew anyone who had it.
Her daily routine was not inconvenienced at all.
She still went to town, went to starbucks, got her nails done, kept her waxing appt. And went for fast food. This virus was not going to disrupt her regular routine. It wasn’t until the stay in place orders were announced that she became annoyed….. When businesses were shutting down, people became frantic over T.P. And cleaning supplies, did she start to realize that the nail salon was closing, major supply stores were closing, fast food joints were closing, and she HAD to stay home.
That’s when she glued herself to every media channel she could, believing every word and then throwing it all out there with veracity to all her socialites….. And then it hit her…… how was she going to get the pills ( pain) she so desperately needs if her street connection stays indoors…… This reality check & the fact that the nail salons were NOT opened……. Started to sink in, and she wasn’t going to go without either one.
So she devised a plan ….. She bought ALL the nail supplies she could online (until they deemed it (non-essenial) and as much as she tried her street connection for her pain pills was out of commission until further notice.
This was the turning point in our relationship…
She became much more aggressive with all of us living in the house ( myself, her daughter, and her daughter’s friend). She became more irritated each day about the littlest things. Became very argumentative with the neighbors, her family members, and social media groups…..
The girls & I started to get into some kind of new daily regiment, there were still the ‘normal things’ that needed done (laundry, preparing meals, caring for the animals, upkeep of our home ) we also decided to try and do something new. I always wanted to learn to draw, so I took to you tube, bought some sketch paper, graphite pencils, lots of erasers, a few ink pens, and BAMM……I Started drawing! My stepdaughter decided to get into ALL THINGS COLLEGE!! She just graduated high school and wanted to do as much research on colleges; where was the best, closest, smallest, least expensive, dorm living, cost of living , etc.
To make the right choice. Her girlfriend, well she really took to the idea. … By starting a new online business( a few of them actually) selling bath bombs, jewelry, hosting game show night for prizes, a bingo club. Just trying to find her niche’ in this shelter in place environment.
We all had our own new interest, except her…..
She just got more & more fixated on. Covid19
It was all she could talk about , debate about, think about, that it completely took her over. Between. The conspiracy theorys, CNN, social media, and any other gossip enthusiasts, she became a time bomb waiting to go off!! Couldn’t do anything but force her opinion on every innocent person that passed by her, refusing to decompress from so much viral destruction.
That it eventually wound her up in the hospital with bleeding ulcers, sleep depravation, severe / chronic pain to various body parts, elevated blood pressure, and overall declining health issues….. Oh as for me a free trip to the local jail, charged with felony domestic violence for feeling her no when she demanded the money I received for the selling of my car. Which she took from me once I was in custody, with a black eye, and cut lip, the police dept. Concluded that I must have said “something to her , to set her off, for her to physically assult you”!