Secrets and lies
A smart-looking woman in a sharp, red jacket sat on a witness stand last week and swore to a courtroom that she had no idea that her ex-husband could be a fraudulent sociopath whose name wasn't actually Clark Rockefeller.
"I'm not saying I made a very good choice of husband," said Sandra Boss, who for 12 years was married to the guy who turned out to be Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. "It's pretty obvious that I had a blind spot. All I'm saying is that it's possible that one can be brilliant and amazing in one area of one's life and pretty stupid in another."
Pretty stupid? Don't be so sure.
Since the start of this strange case involving a man with a fake identity, many have asked how this person's ex-wife could have been in the dark for so long. Or as one reader posted on Boston.com: "Ms. Boss is going to go down in history as the dumbest blond that ever lived."
But should Boss have known she had married a fraud?
Maybe not. Apparently if you are married to someone like Gerhartsreiter you probably won't know it - no matter how smart you are, no matter how perceptive you are, no matter how many questions you ask.
"Those people are usually very skillful at manipulating others," said Daniel Harrop, a Providence psychiatrist who's studied patterns of lying. "[Sociopaths] are supremely confident. They can tell a lie without blinking. They don't care about the feelings of others at all."
People often instinctually blame the wives of criminals for not knowing their husband's business, for not seeing what should have been obvious, Harrop said. But in reality, it's not so easy to know. "Bernie Madoff doesn't care what happens to his wife and kids," he said. And, yes, most sociopaths are men who target women, Harrop said. "There are occasional female sociopaths, but . . . I'm having trouble thinking of one. The prisons are filled with men."
It's not as though some women are more susceptible to believing lies. There's no easy target, no type of woman who is more likely to be taken advantage of.
"If you were talking about someone who is abusive, it would be a woman who had her own issues with self-esteem, and there might be financial and social stuff involved," Harrop said. But with a liar who may or may not be a sociopath, Harrop explained, the target is any "ordinary and typical person."
Leonard Saxe, a Brandeis professor who has studied the art of lying, said most people think they're better at detecting lies than they actually are. "Many of the signs of lying, whether it be hesitation, looking downward, are not very reliable cues," he said. " 'Pinocchio' is a children's story. It's not the way interpersonal relationships work."
If someone is a criminal sociopath, "then none of the usual things that we associate with lying are present. A practiced liar - a so-called pathological liar - is not going to exhibit those signs," he said.
In normal relationships we're trained to tell and believe lies, Saxe said. Love is often built on exaggerated compliments - "You haven't aged a bit" or "Dinner was delicious." It's not a bad thing, Saxe said; it just means that we're accustomed to believing what we want to believe to make a relationship last.
In that same vein, if "Rockefeller" told Boss he didn't have any photos from his childhood or that she didn't need to know his Social Security number, she'd be likely to believe him - because she loved him. It would have been more strange if Boss had jumped to the conclusion that her husband had invented an entire past life, Saxe said.
When it comes to criminal deception, Saxe said, "I don't know in that circumstance if there's any way to avoid being taken advantage of."
Of course, the odds of meeting a Gerhartsreiter type are low. Most people tell tiny lies. Most people don't hide identities. Most people, thankfully, are who they say they are.
Meredith Goldstein can be reached at mgoldstein@globe.com. You can read her daily Love Letters dispatch and chat with her every Wednesday at 1 p.m. at www.boston.com/loveletters. 