Undercover

This is an account of a woman involved in eco-terroris groups taht falls in love with and marries a man who is an undercover policement sent to spy on her organizations, with hilarious parallels to empath/sociopath relationships in which the sociopath is "undercover":

[I]n June 1999, after a night in another pub, that Laura says she began to have a meaningful relationship with Boyling. "For the most part while he was undercover we had a blissfully in-love relationship," she says. "In the beginning I nearly broke it off because it almost felt too strong; he was a perfect blueprint for something I didn't even know I was looking for."

Jim the Van was also known as "Grumpy Jim", and Laura says her boyfriend also raised eyebrows by a seeming reluctance to get involved in a sustainable activist culture, once refusing to help pick up rubbish at a campsite. "He was interested in disrupting, not building, it surprised me but I put down to immaturity." Despite a slight sense that he did not fit in, Laura never suspected her boyfriend was a police informant - except for on one occasion.

"It's such a cliche - but it was the way he was cleaning his walking boots," she said. "I suddenly thought, 'Who is this intruder?' - and then I came to and suddenly he was Jim again. It was such a brief moment and it made such little sense that I blanked it."

She also says he encouraged her to cut ties with the activist community and wanted to "train" her in the art of deception. "He said the trick was to have a whole and detailed story but not tell too much of it," she says.

Boyling, however, may have struggled to balance his two lives.

"He said he missed that [activist] life - he said it was great because it was like being God. He knew everyone's secrets on both sides and got to decide what to tell who and decide upon people's fate."

"Jim complained one day that his superiors said there was to be no more sexual relations with activists anymore - the implicit suggestion was that they were fully aware of this before and that it hadn't been restricted in the past," Laura says.

"He was scoffing at it saying that it was impossible not to expect people to have sexual relations. He said people going in had 'needs' and I felt really insulted. He also claimed it was a necessary tool in maintaining cover."

Origin: art-of-pickup.blogspot.com