Staying friends with Sociopath ex-boyfriend

Hey all, new to this site.

I realized the guy I was seeing is a sociopath not through any aberrant behavior on his part, but through a creeping feeling I got when I spotted the Sherlock Holmes “I’m not a psychopath, I’m a high-functioning sociopath” image that showed up despite it being completely unrelated to my search on Google. After some research and plenty of mixed feelings, I finally decided he was a sociopath based on his intense stare, his questionable moral standards, his history with BDSM & unstable partners, skill & interest in fighting & weapons, lack of concern for his personal safety, and justification of theft from others. I brought this up to him & he admitted this much to me.

We broke up last week after dating for six months. We had run into a problem only once before because I made a casual mention of moving away for work, and since sociopaths don’t like change, he became irrationally controlling. It hurts to think of it now only because I think how little I really know him, how little I understand him. So this past weekend it happened again and we argued, but not terribly so that I would leave. It was when I decided to go for a short run & he drank a full pint in an hour & then laid down, stumbled across the room when I came back, that it occurred to me I hadn’t been in love with him, but that I was in love with the happiness he made me feel. So I said I wanted it to be over.

He was very kind about the whole thing, cleaned up, took everything with him, gave me space, however I felt was okay.

He wants to stay in contact every day & visit once a week or so, as friends. He says I am his closest friend as of now.

What I do know for sure is that he doesn’t lie about his past, but he does tell silly lies for no reason that seem intended to make you happy, excited, or create attention. Lies that make small events seem larger than life. He has a very strict, militaristic code to his rule-set, in that he would sooner kill a friend than betray them. In the times where he’s admitted to the cruel or immoral things he’s done in the past, I often found myself agreeing with his reasoning, in that he stole either because he’d been stolen from or because he was stealing from a drug dealer. He doesn’t harbor paranoia or intense anger at people or political figures, preferring indifference unless there is money to be made by choosing a side. Although he admits to having cheated on most girlfriends, he seems to typically create a dialogue about it & doesn’t think it’s okay to lie about it. I have trouble understanding this aspect of his character; it seems he enjoys having boundaries and dislikes the complications of cheating, but simultaneously his sexuality could take over his whole mind if he allowed it to. In fact, he typically holds long-term relationships instead of short serial encounters. He also keeps friendships over the long term.

Why list all of these details? I am wondering how well I know him, how much I can trust him. His childhood was unstable & abusive, and so I read somewhere that this could be secondary sociopathy, and therefore he has a retarded sense of morality but he is not incapable of growth as a primary sociopath would be. I do see & understand that even he is not really aware of exactly why certain aspects of his character are bad, but his understanding of himself & also his understanding of how to discuss our relationship rationally, how to conduct himself in our relationship is highly developed so it’s hard for me to see where to draw the line. The line being where I can believe he & I connect intellectually or psychologically, and where I need to understand he has a disorder that prevents him from either revealing or truly understanding his own real character.

I do know that three years ago, he suffered a social rejection that seems to have hit him hard, and perhaps this motivated him, but since that time he has been soul-searching & trying to live a more “normal” or “healthy” existence in relationships. Part of my reason for seeking guidance is that I don’t want to impede his progress with that goal, or distract him from the importance of why he chose to change in the first place. He seems to be using altruism/grandiosity as a vehicle for channeling in a more positive direction. But I am struggling in my lack of knowledge about how much he could be capable of; in reality from what I can tell he really is a pretty nice kid that will stick his neck out for a friend, and does a lot to help any one out as soon as they ask. It’s just hard to reconcile this with the other person that I can tell just by experience is the type of person you can’t trust, even though I’ve already let myself do that.