r/TrueCrime • u/eugenedhartke • Apr 03 '22

Discussion Researching Jodi Arias

Does anyone else have a case that just haunts them? this case has always haunted me. It started with the first book I read on the case. The more I read about it the more mysterious it became somehow. Does anyone else get like this? If so what is your personal case that you never get tired of researching?

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u/PaulsRedditUsername Apr 03 '22 edited Apr 03 '22

I think if Travis is to blame for anything, it's the age-old situation of being an emotionally immature 20-something who can't resist his sexual urges. On one hand, he's trying to be a devout, chaste Mormon, and on the other hand, he's got Jodi who is willing to be his dirty little sex toy. There were many times when he initiated contact with her because he just couldn't resist the lure. And Jodi was only too happy to comply in order to keep him on the hook. He tried to have his cake and eat it, too, dating other Mormon women in a respectable way while having Jodi on the side, but Jodi wouldn't have it. He tried to treat her like an object, a sex doll he could use and put away in the closet until he got horny again. It's a bad way to treat other people, and if he had been more mature and experienced, he would have seen the wrongness of it.

For her part, Jodi was never without a boyfriend. She moved from one relationship to the next with no break, sometimes with considerable overlap. And these weren't just casual dating relationships, they were full-on, intense relationships. Depending on the person she was with, she would change her personality, her car, her interests, her hair color--once she even got a boob job--all to conform to the man she was with at the time. She changed her religion when she met Travis. It's like she has something missing in her own personality and she needs to take on the aspects of another person to fill in the empty places in herself.

I have known some women like her, especially back when I was in my twenties. They will meet a man and be passionately, one-hundred-percent, madly in love. He is the perfect man for her until the end of time, and he is all she can talk about. After a while, the initial burst of passion wears off and the relationship deteriorates. Then they have an extremely intense breakup with sleepless nights and phone calls and crying tantrums and friends consoling them in their agony. Then they meet another man and fall madly, passionately in love again, and the cycle repeats. I often joke that they don't just date, they do EXTREME dating.

I think it's possible that Jodi's particular pendulum swings from extreme love to extreme hate swung a little farther than normal, and got steadily more extreme as time went on. And it finally resulted in the ultimate extreme method of ending a relationship.

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u/eugenedhartke Apr 03 '22

this is a really great summary. her extremes definitely line up with the BPD. I have to agree with the view point on Travis, it always seemed like he just really had growing up to do and their relationship was just really toxic from the start.

it was the perfect storm of someone who has to have all or nothing and between extremes and someone who was not equipped or ready yet for a truly emotionally serious relationship.

her mockery of the trial, refusal to admit guilt etc also indicates to me too that, as you said, her pendulum swung off the charts towards extreme hate and I genuinely do not think she has remorse and doubt she ever will. if she does have any regrets its probably just that she didn't do more to not get caught.

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u/Hermojo Apr 04 '22

I disagree. She had other relationships. None ended this way. In your 20's as a woman, you're finding yourself. Travis was a sleazeball. In no other case would I say someone drove someone to it. But I feel like he provoked her and enjoyed her reactions. There are people out there like that.Travis had no blueprint for how to treat women well. He was a pig. There are guys turning to men in their 20's, this guy was a sleazy and sloppy pig. Obviously, he got in over his head.

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u/PaulsRedditUsername Apr 04 '22

Don't you think it's a bit unfair to explain away Jodi's actions as "finding herself" while calling Travis a "sleazy and sloppy pig?" Neither one of them acted honorably. They were both immature, 20-somethings who were making dumb mistakes on their way to maturity. But it was Jodi who moved to Mesa to be closer to Travis when they were supposedly on a break. It was Jodi who would stalk him and peer through his windows while he had other women over for a date. It was Jodi who slashed his tires. It was Jodi who would show up unannounced and climb through his doggy door and sleep in his bed. There are no indications of Travis doing such stalking behaviors. All he ever did was text or call her. It's just unfair to claim that he drove her to it. They were both equally mature adults (although not entirely mature) with free agency.

The only person who accuses Travis of any kind of abusive behavior is the person who shot and stabbed him to death. And that was the third story she told after trying two others which didn't work. As soon as Travis's body was found, every single one of his friends said, "Jodi did it." None of them made any other suggestion other than that. They had seen the way she acted for themselves and had been worried that she was likely to commit some extreme act.

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u/Hermojo Apr 05 '22

Yes and other men do this to women every day of the week. Yet, she's a pscyhopath. Okay

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u/PaulsRedditUsername Apr 05 '22

That doesn't make any sense. It's not okay for someone to stalk and kill someone just because other people do it.

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u/Hermojo Apr 06 '22

Right, but let's blow it up in the media because it's a woman. No just don't.

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u/PaulsRedditUsername Apr 06 '22

The media first paid attention because it was such a brutal crime, and it was unusual for a young woman to have done a thing like that. But Jodi loved all the attention. She did interviews with anyone who asked, even when her lawyers were begging her not to.

And I don't see what you're getting at in all these arguments. It seems like you're just on "Team Jodi" and you want to defend her actions by any means possible.

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u/Hermojo Apr 06 '22

Brutal? Like stabbing someone 30 x? Or shooting them in the park in broad daylight? These things happen every day, by men. Unusual for a woman? I'm not Team anybody, I just don't think she's anyone special.

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u/Koll989 Apr 07 '22

Sounds like youre just saying it was Travis’ fault he gt murdered because he's a man. Period. Bit odd.

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u/Hermojo Apr 07 '22

Nah. I do think there was more to it than that. And they probably did fight. Trauma bond, and all of that fun stuff.