I agree with some of the points made about this article. It isn't very well written, it tends to be too blunt and too negative . . . and yet . . . and yet . . .
I recognize the type.
Suffice it to say I have had to deal with an emotional leech who may, in fact, be a full-blown sociopath.
This is in a musical rather than a romantic context. My band-mates and I saw the warning signs early on, but we are compassionate types, willing to give a guy the benefit of the doubt. So, we put up with increasingly bizarre bouts of psychodrama until we couldn't take it any more.
Three of us in the band decided to go on as a trio, without him, in part because of emotional exhaustion from dealing with him, in part because, to be frank, he just isn't that good a musician.
For fifteen months now, he has sought opportunities to take jabs at us, waiting for us to right the terrible wrong we did him, apologize for our manipulation, our betrayal, our scapegoating. He stands on an inflated, almost delusional sense of his own excellence and importance, and does what he can, when he can, to stir up an emotional storm from which, apparently, he can take some satisfaction.
In his case, compassion is a trap, except for a kind of sickened pity . . . from a safe distance.
Needless to say, I've learned something about boundaries, honesty, and heeding warning signs from the whole history of my association with this individual.
A bit of brutal honesty, early on, would have gone a very long way. I might never have allowed him in the band, had I been honest with myself and the others, had I possessed the courage to stand on my own judgment. We could have avoided all this.
People like him are not very common, I think, but, really, life is too short to waste any time trying to help him sort himself out. He needs help of a very different order, and I'm neither inclined nor qualified to give it. So, I walk away and (generally) avoid any communication with or about him, except to commiserate with my current band-mates.
(If I seem like I'm venting, I am. He's recently come back for another round of snarling . . . fifteen months after we parted ways with him.)