What Injuries Can Intimate Deceivers Inflict?

Abstract

This chapter draws on lawsuits, first-person accounts, and social science research in exploring the damage that intimate deceivers can inflict on the intimates they target as well as on third parties and even society at large. At the start, it is important to recognize that intimate deception can cause financial and bodily injuries—the sorts of harms that the law is usually most eager to redress. Intimate deception can also create unexpected vulnerability to criminal prosecution and other legal harms. Deceit frequently costs deceived intimates wasted time and lost opportunities. And of course, people often suffer psychologically and emotionally when their intimates deceive them. Indeed, some deceived intimates report that what hurt most was that their trust had been betrayed. Others emphasize that the most damaging aspect of being duped was that the experience undermined their confidence in their ability to judge people.