Why Female Psychopaths Flirt With Your Partner (The Psychology of Mate Poaching)
Did they flirt with your romantic partner? They might have psychopathic traits.
Photo by Naveen Raj Dhanapal
Written by Shahida Arabi, MA, trauma and psychopathology expert
We’ve all heard the phrase, “A real man (or woman) can never be stolen.” While that may be true, that doesn’t mean partner poachers with a serial pattern of going after partnered people won’t try regardless.
Mate poaching, or partner poaching, is when someone deliberately and knowingly pursues those who are already in a committed romantic relationship. It is associated with darker personality traits, according to research.
Imagine this: you and your boyfriend are out on a night in town. A woman is blatantly watching you two dancing together for a few minutes, and when you are distracted, she approaches your boyfriend in an attempt to flirt with him. Your boyfriend, if he is loyal, will likely wrap his arms closer around you, pull you closer, and attempt to thwart this attempt.
What just happened? This was a failed attempt at what researchers call “mate poaching” or partner poaching. This partner poacher in this scenario knew for certain the man she was approaching had a girlfriend he was clearly invested in, yet still possessed the bizarre audacity to “make a move.”
This is distinct from a male manipulator who lies or deceives a person about their relationship status, or flirts with others to try to get them into engaging in an affair, or a male narcissist who manufactures jealousy on purpose - this is a scenario where a toxic person saw a target she wanted, knew he was partnered, and went after him despite knowing he was partnered, in public no less and in front of their partner.
What would motivate someone to do such a thing, especially in public? Many victims of female psychopathic friends (and male psychopathic partners) tell me that patterns of mate poaching are common. They have had even close friends or family members, as well as colleagues or acquaintances, “make a move” on their partners, some who were receptive (pointing to their partner’s toxic traits as well), while others were not. When their partners are loyal, of course, nothing occurs. But if the poacher succeeds, both the cheater and the poacher are now demonstrating morally dubious behavior — the partner even moreso, although the betraying poacher “friend” does as well.
What studies are showing is that mate poaching can be predicted by dark triad traits such as psychopathy — and that these traits may even be better predicted by dark triad traits in women specifically, and be part of a harmful pattern of “serial” mate poaching — deliberate attempts to chronically go after partnered people.
Here are the specific reasons why they do it - and what traits also make a partner more receptive to being poached.
What is Mate Poaching?
Mate poaching or partner poaching is when someone deliberately and knowingly pursues those who are already in a committed romantic relationship. Although it was long thought that men were more likely to be mate poachers than women, some studies suggest that it is actually single women who are more likely to increase their efforts toward pursuing a partnered man rather than a single man.
Yet it is evident that female narcissists and psychopaths who are already in relationships can also ardently pursue the partners of others as a way to try to “one-up” women they are envious of. It’s also clear that both men and women can engage in this unsavory behavior to some extent and can have dark personality traits, especially if they are receptive to being poached.
While the various motives for this behavior have been discussed, listing everything from seeing a partnered man as more “relationship material” to low self-esteem and trauma, research reveals darker reasons that may be at play for mate poaching.
One of those reasons? Psychopathic traits - and mate poaching can be a serial pattern of theirs.
Mate Poaching is Related to Psychopathy for Both Men and Women, Studies Find
A study by Kardum and fellow researchers (2015) used a sample of 819 university students to investigate whether Big Five or Dark Triad traits (narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism) predicted mate poaching behaviors. It discovered that Dark Triad traits predicted mate poaching behaviors, especially mate poaching in women and poaching success in men.
In another 2022 study conducted by Kardum and colleagues of 187 heterosexual couples, it was revealed that men who engage in poaching the mates of other men tend to do so due to low conscientiousness and high Machiavellianism, goal-directed behavior related to being manipulative, insincere, callous, and self-centered. Women who poached mates successfully tended to be more extroverted, psychopathic, and exhibited openness.
Men who were successful at poaching…