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If you have children with a psychopath by psychopathyawareness

You may experience the mixed blessing of having children with the psychopath. Bringing a child into this world can be one of the most rewarding and meaningful experiences in human life.  But having a child or children with a psychopath carries with it great risk. Since antisocial traits are partly genetic, your child or children can inherit those negative characteristics. Moreover, as we've seen, a psychopath is incapable of loving anyone. He regards all people, including his children, as tools to get what he wants and as his personal possessions. Like you, they represent objects he will manipulate and control. Like you, they confirm his virility and personal power.  As he got tired of you and of every other woman he played with, he will quickly tire of your child, his newest toy.

No change in circumstances can ever alter a psychopath's underlying bad character for long. He is what he is and that's what he'll remain. Think back to the many second chances  you’ve given him. Think back to all the times he shattered your hopes and abused your trust.  You hoped that he'd change his cheating ways after you got engaged, but he didn't. You then believed that he'd take your commitment more seriously once you married, but he didn't. He just hid his perversions better and mastered the game of deceit. You hoped that a change of job or location would improve him, but it didn't. Instead, your repeated concessions to his will and willingness to swallow increasing doses of mistreatment made him more confident that you'd take whatever abuse he dished out. He turned your life into a game that has no rational or moral rules.

You played along with his arbitrary power games. You played along because you love him and because you want to believe that he loves you as well: in his way, on some level, you feel compelled to qualify. Sure, he left you for other women and he will leave you again. But you interpret the fact that he returns to you time after time as evidence of his love. In other words, you engage in wishful thinking and reject the obvious reality. He doesn't leave you because he loves anyone else more than you. Conversely, he doesn't return to you because he realizes how much he loves you, after all. He comes and goes as he pleases to whoever lets him because he's bored.

Power over others fills his empty days. He's like one of those magicians that spin plates on poles. He wants to see how many women he can spin around at once and for how long he can cultivate for each one the illusion of perpetual motion, or of real love. Each time a plate falls to the ground and shatters, he enjoys it. Each life he destroys represents a personal triumph for him. With you and every other woman in his life he plays this sordid game. There's nothing inside of him that can love you or anybody else.

The same logic applies to having a child or children with him. If he cheated on you and wasn't there to support you meaningfully during the emotional and physical challenges of pregnancy, he’ll remain equally unreliable and unsupportive as you raise your child. If he treated you with disrespect and even contempt before you had a child together, that's how he’ll continue to treat you afterwards. If he shirked his professional and personal duties before, he won’t be able to handle the most important responsibility of all, which is raising a child. And if he abused you, he will abuse your child, at the very least emotionally. The Loser will remain a loserno matter whom he attaches to because his evil actions reflect his true identity. He deliberately hurts others not because they're not right for him, as he claims to shift the blame, but because he's not right for anybody else.

Consequently, if you have a child or children with a psychopath, it's doubly important for you to protect not just yourself from his noxious influence, but also your children. Dr. Liane Leedom wrote a very informative book on this subject, called Just Like His Father. Her message is not purely cautionary, but also one of hope. She emphasizes that there's no chance whatsoever of having a mutually loving and respectful relationship with a psychopath. But there's a lot of hope for raising your child to be a healthy and empathetic individual who is not just like his father.

Claudia Moscovici, psychopathyawareness