Smart women and sociopaths: Why?

I have spent the morning reading about Carol Dimaiti Stuart and Rachel Entwistle and what I need right now is a good run because the rage inside me won’t subside any other way. But first this. 

This morning I embarked upon some steps necessary to begin revising my book. I need to flesh out my main characters just a little more. I need to reveal motive more explicitly. The main character, a female, is book smart but people dumb. The main male is a sociopath. And yes, the story is based somewhat on my own life. But only a little bit. It’s mostly fiction.  

Here’s my problem. I’d thought I’d done a decent job establishing the female’s character using back story, thoughts, actions, conversations. But my workshop group wanted more. Many of them couldn’t understand how such a smart woman could end up with such a loser of a guy. And therein lies the problem. It’s something many women, myself included, ask all the time. How could I have married such a jerk? How did I miss the signs? What was I thinking? 

   

When I first started writing my book, I had in mind a main character not that unlike the girl next door sweetie-pie played by Drew Barrymore in The Wedding Singer. She’s a waitress engaged to an ubersuccessful businessman, who is a liar and a slut and only marrying her because he trusts that her intentions are pure: they’d been dating since before he made all his money. I was also kind of thinking of Rosanna Arquette’s naïve housewife character in Desperately Seeking Susan. She’s a quiet mousy thing in a loveless marriage to a dull guy who’s all about appearances. 

Sweet girl, idiot boyfriend

But neither of those characters had the brain power and arrogance of smart-ass Miranda Hobbes, Cynthia Nixon’s Sex and the City character. I mean in the show, not the movie. The movie sucks. My blog. My opinion. Miranda is a Harvard-educated lawyer who, for most of the series, keeps falling for these total idiots: the guy who needed to watch porn while having sex; the verbally abusive litigator whose behavior she kept excusing because he was under a lot of pressure trying to make partner. Just to name a few. Granted, she never falls prey to a sociopath, but she certainly puts up with her share of creeps. 

Smart woman, terrible choices

I draw upon these characters because before I was married, I wasn’t that unlike dear little Drew. While married and miserable, I could see escaping into a fantasy world like Arquette’s character, though my marital problems weren’t anything akin to hers. And as for Miranda Hobbes? Her experiences with the dregs of high society aren’t that far off the mark from reality.  Just look at that Harvard-educated woman who was married to looney toon Clark Rockefeller, the serial liar now being investigated for murder in California.

  

Why do some smart women make such poor choices? That’s where my mind is this morning and what brought me here, to Carol Dimaiti Stuart and Rachel Entwistle, brilliant women who died too young. And I can't help thinking, "There but for the grace of God."

 

Both women graduated from top Jesuit colleges: Carol from Boston College and Rachel from Holy Cross, my alma mater. Carol was an attorney and seven months pregnant in 1989 when her husband murdered her and their unborn child, and tried to pin the crime on an anonymous, non-existent black man. Rachel, a stay at home mom, and her nine month old daughter were murdered in 2006 by her husband, who then bought a ticket to England and scooted back to his parents. He claimed he’d come home from running an errand, found them both dead, and couldn’t handle the horror of it all. Entwistle was in the news again the other day because his appeal for another trial was just turned down. 

I’m guessing, based on what I’ve read about their personalities, and what I know based upon our shared academic and cultural backgrounds, that both women were taught to turn the other cheek, defer to authority, study hard, raise your hand, make a difference, put others first, give people the benefit of the doubt. These are just some of the characteristics that hit me quickly. Give me a half hour and I bet I could come up with another ten pages. I could write an entire  paper on what it means to be a good Catholic  girl, or on the Jesuit dictum “men and women for others.” 

I’m not saying that any of this Jesuit/ Catholic/ cultural stuff is bad. I’m saying that sometimes, smart women end up with horrible men. And I am struggling with why. How did it start? What was the initial attraction? What signs did we miss? What lies did we overlook? Why did we minimize?

I got out of my bad situation. There was some collateral damage, and there was a long road back to health and happiness, and there was of course that shadowy puzzling beginning many years ago that led to the whole avalanche. I’m drawing on that but I need more. 

I need to flesh out my character. I’ll be doing more research here on the net, but also I'd like to hear what you have to say. Think of women you know, smart women who made terrible choices. What was the attraction at the start? What blinded them? I’d appreciate hearing back. Message me privately if you would like, or respond openly. Or not at all. Whatever works for you.

Now I’ve got to get to the gym and take the edge off the anger. It never goes away totally. But that's a story for another day.