I read the essay outlining Dr. Karen Mitchell’s thesis on Persistent Predatory Personality – PPP – and it stopped me cold. Not because it was new information, but because it named, with clinical precision, the man I was married to for over twenty years. The one who turned our home into a hunting ground while the world saw something close to normal.
Dr. Mitchell says these high-functioning dark personalities – narcissists, psychopaths, coercive controllers – aren’t on a spectrum we can nudge toward better with enough love or counseling. They are categorical. Hardwired for malevolence rather than connection. They hunt kind, empathic people, especially those with status or something worth taking. They enjoy the pursuit. No remorse. They wear convincing faces. They comprise a significant slice of the population, according to her data from FBI profilers, domestic violence specialists, cult deprogrammers, and others who’ve stared at this evil up close.
Her breakdown into four groups of shared attributes and the repeatable tactics they use hit every mark of the unseen domestic abuse I endured from the late 1970s until I finally left in January 2000.
Group One – the drive for control, power, dominance, entitlement, explosive vengefulness when challenged, uncompromising “my way or else.” That was the grand church wedding in the ivory gown my mother pushed for, followed by the strip club honeymoon surprise that made me feel replaced before we even started. The sledgehammer taken to the car my daddy gave me. The stalking, the windows shot out, the beloved bulldog removed from behind a locked gate, the vehicle stolen in the night after I fled the final slugfest. No debate. No negotiation. Just dominance enforced.
Group Two – predatory and exploitative, sadistic cruelty for pleasure or fear, low regard for rules, boundaries (sexual or otherwise), unreasonable expectations. Twenty-plus years of measured, intentional harm behind closed doors. No alcohol, minimal police reports until one of the children ran to the neighbors. The rules he demanded of me never applied to him. Fear was the atmosphere I breathed.
Group Three – the facade of normal, chameleon-like ability to blend in, lies, devious manipulation that draws others into complicity, refusal to accept responsibility, DARVO tactics that make victims doubt their sanity or fear they won’t be believed. This is why, when I finally wrote Bones Beneath the Prairie at age 70 and told the raw truth, two of my adult children called it a lie and blocked me. The predator’s public face held. The truth-teller looked crazy.
Group Four – the emotional deficit. No authentic guilt or remorse. Performative emotions. Callous. Unremorseful. Brazen, especially when they get away with it. That tracks with a man who could terrorize me for decades and escalate after I left, with no apparent conscience.
The tactics Dr. Mitchell lists – intimidation to create fear, false sense of deep connection through mirroring, isolating the target, weaponizing rules or the justice system, pushing victims to the edge then labeling them unstable – read like the script of my first marriage. I returned after early incidents out of attachment and denial. My rational engineer father saw it clearly, hired a detective, and offered to “get rid of him.” I chose to stay longer than I should have. Safety was not oxygen then.
I left for good after the last violent confrontation. Met Ken years later – steady, clear, safe, the opposite of predation. Married 25 years happily retired on the beach in Mexico.
Right now the ex lies in a San Antonio hospital with dementia, waiting for long-term placement after weeks of the system finally seeing the danger it missed for decades. I’m drafting notes on “He Needs a Prison” because the irony is thick. Vindication arrives late and feels lonelier than I imagined. But Dr. Mitchell’s framework helps me see it clearly: this was never going to change. Categorical. Hardwired.
To the women reading – especially those in faith communities where we’re quick to urge endurance and slow to name coercion and domination – trust the pattern when you see it. Safety is not optional.
Truth-telling is not disloyal. The God who met me as a three-year-old in a yellow ruffled nightgown, who never left me through the worst of it, still speaks: “Feel it. Deal with it.” Honest forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending the evil wasn’t real or reconciling with an unrepentant predator. I forgave the man but never stopped hating what he did. He is evil. Vengeance belongs to the Lord.
My memoir Bones Beneath the Prairie and this Substack TEXASOIL: A Tangled Witness exist because I finally refused silence. Dr. Mitchell’s work gives language to what I lived. It validates every survivor who’s been told they’re exaggerating or that “nobody’s perfect.”
If this analysis helps even one woman recognize the hunt before it buries her under twenty years of bones, then sharing my story was worth every cost.
The prairie remembers. So do I. And I will keep telling it true.
Thank you for sharing your story. It is hard to speak about what happened because so many saw him as a good guy. The truth is awful. This article and your post describe my last 18 years and the decent into the abyss of control from a man who dished out neglect and abuse on an ever growing level. The marriage is over. Someday, the divorce will be finalized. I suspect it will take a long time to truly move on from all of the trauma tgat was caused.
I read the essay outlining Dr. Karen Mitchell’s thesis on Persistent Predatory Personality – PPP – and it stopped me cold. Not because it was new information, but because it named, with clinical precision, the man I was married to for over twenty years. The one who turned our home into a hunting ground while the world saw something close to normal.
Dr. Mitchell says these high-functioning dark personalities – narcissists, psychopaths, coercive controllers – aren’t on a spectrum we can nudge toward better with enough love or counseling. They are categorical. Hardwired for malevolence rather than connection. They hunt kind, empathic people, especially those with status or something worth taking. They enjoy the pursuit. No remorse. They wear convincing faces. They comprise a significant slice of the population, according to her data from FBI profilers, domestic violence specialists, cult deprogrammers, and others who’ve stared at this evil up close.
Her breakdown into four groups of shared attributes and the repeatable tactics they use hit every mark of the unseen domestic abuse I endured from the late 1970s until I finally left in January 2000.
Group One – the drive for control, power, dominance, entitlement, explosive vengefulness when challenged, uncompromising “my way or else.” That was the grand church wedding in the ivory gown my mother pushed for, followed by the strip club honeymoon surprise that made me feel replaced before we even started. The sledgehammer taken to the car my daddy gave me. The stalking, the windows shot out, the beloved bulldog removed from behind a locked gate, the vehicle stolen in the night after I fled the final slugfest. No debate. No negotiation. Just dominance enforced.
Group Two – predatory and exploitative, sadistic cruelty for pleasure or fear, low regard for rules, boundaries (sexual or otherwise), unreasonable expectations. Twenty-plus years of measured, intentional harm behind closed doors. No alcohol, minimal police reports until one of the children ran to the neighbors. The rules he demanded of me never applied to him. Fear was the atmosphere I breathed.
Group Three – the facade of normal, chameleon-like ability to blend in, lies, devious manipulation that draws others into complicity, refusal to accept responsibility, DARVO tactics that make victims doubt their sanity or fear they won’t be believed. This is why, when I finally wrote Bones Beneath the Prairie at age 70 and told the raw truth, two of my adult children called it a lie and blocked me. The predator’s public face held. The truth-teller looked crazy.
Group Four – the emotional deficit. No authentic guilt or remorse. Performative emotions. Callous. Unremorseful. Brazen, especially when they get away with it. That tracks with a man who could terrorize me for decades and escalate after I left, with no apparent conscience.
The tactics Dr. Mitchell lists – intimidation to create fear, false sense of deep connection through mirroring, isolating the target, weaponizing rules or the justice system, pushing victims to the edge then labeling them unstable – read like the script of my first marriage. I returned after early incidents out of attachment and denial. My rational engineer father saw it clearly, hired a detective, and offered to “get rid of him.” I chose to stay longer than I should have. Safety was not oxygen then.
I left for good after the last violent confrontation. Met Ken years later – steady, clear, safe, the opposite of predation. Married 25 years happily retired on the beach in Mexico.
Right now the ex lies in a San Antonio hospital with dementia, waiting for long-term placement after weeks of the system finally seeing the danger it missed for decades. I’m drafting notes on “He Needs a Prison” because the irony is thick. Vindication arrives late and feels lonelier than I imagined. But Dr. Mitchell’s framework helps me see it clearly: this was never going to change. Categorical. Hardwired.
To the women reading – especially those in faith communities where we’re quick to urge endurance and slow to name coercion and domination – trust the pattern when you see it. Safety is not optional.
Truth-telling is not disloyal. The God who met me as a three-year-old in a yellow ruffled nightgown, who never left me through the worst of it, still speaks: “Feel it. Deal with it.” Honest forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending the evil wasn’t real or reconciling with an unrepentant predator. I forgave the man but never stopped hating what he did. He is evil. Vengeance belongs to the Lord.
My memoir Bones Beneath the Prairie and this Substack TEXASOIL: A Tangled Witness exist because I finally refused silence. Dr. Mitchell’s work gives language to what I lived. It validates every survivor who’s been told they’re exaggerating or that “nobody’s perfect.”
If this analysis helps even one woman recognize the hunt before it buries her under twenty years of bones, then sharing my story was worth every cost.
The prairie remembers. So do I. And I will keep telling it true.
Thank you for sharing your story. It is hard to speak about what happened because so many saw him as a good guy. The truth is awful. This article and your post describe my last 18 years and the decent into the abyss of control from a man who dished out neglect and abuse on an ever growing level. The marriage is over. Someday, the divorce will be finalized. I suspect it will take a long time to truly move on from all of the trauma tgat was caused.
But you can do it, I believe in you! There are so many great resources here. God is faithful!
Thank you for your words of support!