A couple of months ago I had emergency surgery to remove my gallbladder. I’d been feeling discomfort for some time, but put it down to what I was eating, or simply the fact there was a lot of flu going around. And then, one Saturday morning I awoke to excruciating pain in my abdomen. I’d been having little mini-attacks off and on since Christmas, but they had only lasted a few minutes and once gone, could be ignored and even forgotten. But that last attack simply would not stop. My daughter called an ambulance and once in the hospital they told me I needed to have my gallbladder removed immediately.
After the surgery, I still wasn’t feeling up to par. I was constantly nauseous and tired. I told myself, it’s just the after-effect of the surgery. My body is ridding itself of the anesthesia and the gas they used to aid in the surgery. And then, one week after the surgery, I had another attack, this time, without a gallbladder to cause the pain.
Back in hospital, they told me there were still stones in my digestive track. Through another procedure, they divested me of as many stones as possible, and to ensure any remaining stones left my body without getting stuck in a duct, they inserted two stents at the opening to my pancreas.
I thought I’d feel better immediately, but I still felt lousy. Nauseous. Uncomfortable. Tired. After three weeks, they removed the stents and one day after the surgery, I awoke and it was like magic. I felt energized. Like my old self again!
I mention that process because it was so like what happened to me while I was with the sociopath. At first, I didn’t notice the little anxiety attacks that kept undermining my peace of mind. I didn’t notice the ebbing out of my energy, the sucking away of my calm.
As the relationship progressed from its early beginnings of ”˜perfect love’ into the terror and horror of that imperfect lie in the name of love, I began to feel continuously out of sorts. Constantly tired, and sore. At one point, every muscle in my body ached, every joint pained me. Getting out of bed in the morning was a process of rolling slowly onto my side, easing my aching body over the edge of the bed and onto the floor so that I could slowly, painfully straighten up and begin a careful walk towards the bathroom. When I walked with my dog, my fists were clenched by my sides and no amount of concentration would keep them unclenched. In my chest, there was a constant, knife-like pain that wouldn’t ebb. Breathing deeply was next to impossible, and breathing freely a distant memory long forgotten.
I told myself, it’s just a flu-bug. It’s part of ageing. It’s stress. It’s anything but a reaction to the excruciating horror of living with his evil machinations undermining my well-being.
To cope, to keep myself sane within the context of that relationship, I began to amputate more and more of my emotional self. No matter what feeling I let go of, however, errant wafts of pain would trouble my mind like phantom limbs reminding an amputee of all he’d lost. As I tumbled further and further into hell, I thought my body was rejecting me, not because of the sociopath, but rather, because I was not ‘doing it right’, not ‘being enough’ for him. If only I could be more perfect. Be more flexible. More loving. More caring. Furiously I attempted to amputate everything about me until I had left to cling to was the lie of the ”˜love’ he fed me through every weave and warp of his deceit. Without relief from the constant diet of terror that was my life with him, I began to feel like my entire being was being eaten away, cell by cell, by some mysterious, unknown disease.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t dare go to a doctor. He’d told me any attempt to seek medical help would only make the mess I’d created in his life greater. Hearing only his voice roaring in my head, I lost my ability to discern between what made sense and what was sheer stupidity. I needed help but didn’t dare reach out for it, except through him.
I never once connected my unease to his discord. I never once acknowledged that he was the cancer eating away at my peace of mind. That was a truth that was too terrifying to face and so I turned inward, futilely attempting to cauterize the continuous bleeding away of my life-force by stilling the voice of reason buried deep within my mind.
And then he was removed by the police and I awoke to the devastation of my life.
At first, I didn’t want to look at what had happened to me. I wanted to hide my head in shame and sorrow, to chastise myself for having been so stupid, so blind, so naïve. But heaping self-denigration and blame upon myself would only have continued his abuse. Just as trying to make sense of his nonsense would only have kept his abuse alive in my life, I had to learn to turn up for me in all my wounded parts without judging myself for falling to pieces. I had to begin the process of putting my humpty, dumpty self together again with tender loving care.
I had to face the truth. I had been abused. Duped. Lied to. Deceived. Manipulated. Destroyed by the man who had promised to love me ”˜til death do us part, and who had then proceeded to spin the deadly web of his deceit into my demise.
I had to learn to love myself, exactly as I was. Tto ease my pain and sorrow, woundedness and terror, I had to learn to be at peace with where I was, to accept what I had done, and to forgive myself for having gone so far from where I’d meant to be.
In acknowledging that in loving him I had given up on me, I began to heal. Within two days of his arrest, my joints quit hurting. When I walked, my hands hung comfortably by my sides. The pain in my chest evaporated. In facing the horrible truth of what had happened to me, I began to claim the emotions I had so furiously amputated in my desperate desire to pretend that what he was doing was all about love.
What he did had nothing to do with love. And what I was doing while with him had nothing to do with love either. It had everything to do with abuse.
Since being freed from that relationship almost five years ago, I have learned to turn up for me, no matter where I am, or how I’m feeling. I have learned to love myself, warts and all and to embrace the truth of who I am, even when I feel like hiding from myself.
Today I know the truth and celebrate it every moment of every day. I am a woman of worth. A woman worthy of loving herself for all she’s worth, with all she’s got. In loving myself, no matter my condition, I have given myself the gift I’ve always searched for, unconditional love.
Right now, I am watching my son C (the NON-P one) go through the acknowledgment that his now X-wife (thank you God!) is a P.
They were married almost 8 years. I didn’t realize it because he kept his “cards” close to his chest, but during most of that time she was abusing him at least emotionally and tried to hit him and threw things, etc. but he was determined to “make the best” of the situation and was committed to the relationship to the bitter end “for better or worse.”
After her and her P-BF’s attempt to kill him (they intended to make it look like “self defense” after he had found out about the affair) even though he had told her that he wanted to go to counseling with her and somehow work out the relationship after her affair. She pretended to want this as well, expressed her SINCERE (not!) remorse etc. all the while she was stalling for time until she and her BF could transfer money out of a trust account that my mother had been persuaded to put money in “safe keeping”–and she bought her BF (who was an ex con which she knew) a gun, and herself a gun as well.
After their attempt to kill my son failed (he got through to 911) and she and her BF were arrested, it was months before my son could admit that SHE was personality disordered, not just “influenced” by her lover. That SHE was the one that wanted him dead.
The divorce is final and the only contact that they NEED to have is through my other son D who is talking to her (there is a restraining order to keep her away from me, my son C, and my mom) so that my son C and she can file taxes jointly for 2007 which is advantageous to them both.
The X-DIL-P told my son D the other day that she would like to PUNISH my son C by not filing with him, but since it was advantageous to her, she would go ahead and do it. WTF?
SHE wants to punish HIM? She is the one that had the affair, she is the one that tried to kill him, she is the one that stole money from his grandmother…and SHE wants to punish him for WHAT?!!!??? Soooooo typical P behavior. But I am in a way glad SO GLAD that she is continuing to do this kind of thing because it is helping him to SEE that her “remorse” is FAKE and that her behavior is still DISORDERED, P-behavior right down the line!
IN a way I think the MORE crap they pull, the easier it is for us to ACCEPT that the assessment of them as a P is on target. BUT until we get out of the day-to-day living with them, dealing with them, it seems that NO matter HOW outrageous their behavior is we try to “swallow” it–but a little time and distance and NC makes things so much more clear that we can SEE how pathetic they are, how they try to manuver, to regain the power over us that they had—but after you have taken back your power—their antics are almost pathetic, pitiful, like they are “writhing in pain over the fire of NC” and they cannot stand it. If there is any way to punish them, to make them hurt, to show them “what it feels like” it is take their POWER AWAY. Frustrates them no end. Puts them on the receiving end of the misery, and it is so EASY to do after you first get the “hang of it”—just DON’T RESPOND.
If nothing else, I have the satisfaction of letting them Know that I NOW HAVE MY OWN POWER BACK—there is nothing that they can do to me, say to me, or thinkk about me that will ever again make me hurt. They can’t hurt me any more! They took their best shot and lost, and now I am IN CONTROL of myself again.
OxDrover-
I am sorry for you that have to watch your son be a victim of this insane world that S and P’s run. I am sure that he is a sweet and caring guy if he put up with it for so long, and to fall under it in the first place. I am sure that having you there for support is helpful though. I don’t even know you and I have found your support amazingly helpful throughout this site. Thank you again for that. Its strange how God works putting a victim and a P in the mix of your family, you seem well equipped and informed to deal with both of them though.
I found your second to last paragraph to be just the medicine I needed right now. I have been opening e-mails from him, even though I am NC because I have been nervous about him showing up at my apartment building. He lives a few hours away but he showed up a few weeks ago and I had to hide out at a friends for a while. Earlier in the posts here someone admitted that they still check the phone repeatedly, and I have to say that I am guilty of that.
I can see right through all his manipulation tactics now. I don’t want to be with him anymore, but I still feel like I can’t stop thinking about it. The latest e-mail said “this is not a pattern” employing words I used when I broke things off. “I am sorry I lied but I felt trapped”… you mean CAUGHT. “I didn’t lie about anything else”…HE LIED ABOUT EVERYTHING! It makes me furious! I just want to scream at him… I CAN SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOU!
Reading everyone else’s posts made me feel sane again…. I need that lately.
Rblue, stay strong! you can do this!!
WOW, THE MORE I READ THIS STUFF THE MORE I’M CONVINCED THAT IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE THEN IT IS. MY ADVICE IS RUN DON’T WALK TO THE NEAREST EXIT AND GET AWAY FROM HIM/HER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
I HAD EVERY SYMPTOM THAT HAS BEEN DISCUSSED. PANIC ATTACKS, JOINT PAIN, LACK OF ENERGY, FEELING OF NO PEACE IN MY LIFE. I SUFFERED FOR A YEAR BEFORE I THREW THE BUM OUT. I FELT IMMEDIATE RELIEF AND FINALLY A SENSE OF PEACE IN MY LIFE. THE BAD MAN IS STALKING ME BUT I JUST IGNORE HIM. HE’S EVEN TRIED TO SUE ME. THE NO CONTACT RULE WORKS. I FIGURE SOONER OR LATER HE WILL GIVE UP AND MOVE ON TO SOME OTHER POOR SOUL.
FinallyFree,
Thank you, I am glad that I can help some one else by what I have learned.
yes, it is difficult to see someone you love suffer, and I tend to want to be an “enabler” anyway, and take his pain onto myself, but HE has to go through it, resolve it for himself, it is not something I can put a band aid on and kiss the boo-boo away. He is a man, an adult, and all I can do is be here for support if he needs me and comes to me.
I think too, that seeing his brother FINALLY as a P, and what a P is, is helping him see his X-wife too as a P. Up until now she has denied, denied and apologized etc. and he doesn’t want to believe that he has “wasted” 8 years with a woman who was a fake from the beginning—though there is no doubt of that at all.
I read an article last night on ROMEO BLEEDS (part 5) that talked about a male BDP (but could be either sex or a P either as all thatover laps) about how they get you to PITY THEM, and want to “take care of them” and “help” them, etc. and she did JUST THAT. She had a son in a wheel chair and she needed HELP…my son, good hearted guy that he is, fell for all that pity play. He has grown up with a close friend in a wheel chair so the kid in a wheel chair was not a put off for him when he married her—met her on the inter net BTW.
She was looking for a meal ticket to support her and her 2 kids. She found one. Just like it is difficult for US ALL to realize we have BEEN SO DAMNED STUPID in falling for them, when their ploy was SO OBVIOUS (now, in retrospect) it is difficult to ADMIT to yourself, much less your family, how you were CONNED. No one wants to believe about themselves that someone else could PULL THE WOOL OVER YOUR EYES so easily. I sure didn’t. But you know, until I DID ADMIT that, that I was CONNED, and easily conned at that, I couldn’t start to heal.
The NO contact…no reading letters, e mails, listening to voice messages, or anything else is the only way to get them out of your head. At first, that was SOOOOOOO hard for me. I just wanted to TELL THEM OFF ONE LAST TIME, and then another LAST time, and so on. I had to practically physically restrain myself from contact of any kind.
It took weeks, months, before I realized that it is the ONLY way. Physical no contact is the first part, but the EMOTIONAL NO CONTACT–where you NO LONGER WANT TO hear from them, or wonder about them, or worry about them, or fantasize that you could have done anything differently to have made a difference.
I can think about my P-son, my P-bio-father and my enabling mother (NC as well) now without wanting to tell them what I think of them. It wouldn’t change anything if I told them, just upset me and land on deaf ears with them. I think when I reached that point, it was the TURNING point for me.
When the entire family went NC with my P-son in prison, he wrote everyone begging for letters, pleading for information about what was going on so HE COULD FIX IT—Laugh! He then started writing others to get them to call my mom and find out if “she was okay” (at that time she was willingly NC with him) and when the phone would ring and someone wold identify themselves as a friend of Ps and ask how she was, she would say “I”m fine.” CLICK.
Then P son wrote a 10 page diatribe to a minister friend of ours talking about how we were so UN-Christian that we would not give him UN-conditional love. DUH!
It was so funny, too, because we had the letters he had written to his Trojan-Horse P full of plots, curses, bragging about how bad his crimes were—etc. and the ones that came to us were all about “what would Jesus do?” LOL So it made it easy enough for us to see he was WRITHING over the coals of NC…powerless to do anything because we would not communicate.
Of course after her anger died down, my mother started sending him money again–the poor baby in prison without any funds to make his life better–PUKE! But my other son told her that if she did it he would NC her as well, and since he is the only relative she has outside of prison, she is pretty much compelled to comply and stop sending money to my P son. She did the second time and lied and got caught doing it, so I hope that she won’t pull that crap again, or she will be totally NC to every relative she has in the world.
I actually was surprised that my son was so supportive about me going NC with my mother. (since I am her only child) He is “handling her” and she will listen to him. I occasionally have to talk to her about business as our funds are both tied up in a family trust of which she and I are co-trustees, but I confine it TOTALLY to business, and most things I handle through my son C. If I have to send papers back and forth it is either through the mail or my adopted son D picks them up. She doesn’t consider my adopted son as important to her or as her grandson. (“he’s not blood”)
Finally Free, the “stalking” is illegal and you can file a restraining order if you want to or need to. Keep in mind though if he is violent that it won’t stop bullets. If he isn’t violent it might give him the indication that you are SERIOUS though.
Showbird: Good for you! Sounds like you are in a good place!
OxDrover:
I have seen references to P son, and C and D sons. Is the P son A or B? And then who is missing? How many children do you have? (I’m trying to piece together your story and the characters). :>)
FOR EVERYONE ON THIS SITE HERE ARE SOME FIGHTING WORDS:
After all that you put me through,
You think I’d despise you,
But in the end I wanna thank you,
‘Cause you’ve made me that much stronger
Well I thought I knew you, thinkin’ that you were true
Guess I, I couldnt trust called your bluff time is up
Cause I’ve had enough
You were there by my side, always down for the ride
But your joy ride just came down in flames cause your greed sold me out in shame
After all of the stealing and cheating you probably think that I hold resentment for you
But uh uh, oh no, you’re wrong
Cause if it wasnt for all that you tried to do, I wouldnt know
Just how capable I am to pull through
So I wanna say thank you
Cause it
Makes me that much stonger
Makes me work a little bit harder
It makes me that much wiser
So htanks for making me a fighter
Made me learn a little bit faster
Made mys kin a little bit thicker
Makes me that much smarter
So thanks fo rmakin me a fighter
Never saw it coming, all of your backstgabbing
Just so you could cash in on a good thing before I’d realize your game
I heard you’re goin round play, the victim now
But dont even begin feeling I’m the one to blame
Cause you dug your own grave
After all of the fights and the lies cause you’re wanting to haunt me
But that wont work anymore, no more,
It’s over
Cause if it wanst for all of your torture
I wouldnt know how to be this way now and never back down
So I wanna say thank you
Cause it
(CHORUS)
How could this man I thought I knew
Turn out to be unjust so cruel
Could only see the good inyou
Pretend not to know the truth
You tried to hide your lies, disguise yourself
Through living in denial
But in the end you’ll see
YOU-WONT-STOP-ME
I am a fighter and I
I aint gonna stop
There is no turning back
I’ve had enough
[Chorus]
You thought i would forget
But I remembered
Cause i remembered
I remembered
You thought i would forget
I remembered
Cause i remembered
I remembered
SEEMS THAT ALOT OF WOMEN, EVEN CHRISTINA AGUILERA HAS HAD A BRUSH WITH A BAD MAN.
Thank you Showbird, great lyrics.
Peggy, I have two biological sons from my first marriage, the P-son (whose initial also happens to be P) age 37, in prison since age 17 except for a few months out between three felony convictions. Both of his biological grandfathers were Ps. One very violent, and the other just extremely malicious and controlling.
My oldest son is C (his initial) he was the one married to the P-DIL for 8 yrs. His first marriage her 3rd I think. He is ADHD but has overcome most of the things that plague people with this condition well into adulthood.
I also have an adopted son D, age 30, who lives with and works for me.
My mom is a TOXIC enabler, her brother was a flaming P who should have done life without parole.
My mom married very young to my P-bio father, and divorced him when I was 3 months old (he was in the army hospital with an STD which he tried to convince her he caught off a toilet seat!)
She married my step father when I was 3. He died 6 months after my late husband. Great guy!
I married my late husband in 1986, after knowing him since I was a teenager. We had a great marriage and a great friendship. He died in a plane crash here at our little farm and airport when a student pilot messed up on take off. My adopted son D was also in the crash and was severely burned.
I grew up not really knowing, but knowing quite a bit about my P-bio father. I was close to his father, a great guy, and several of his sibs, also nice people. His first cousins, all, again, great folks, and I are still close and keep in frequent contact. I am glad that I got to know my P-bio father’s family.
I got interested in genealogy when I was a kid following the old folks around and listening to their stories of “great uncle Fred” and did a genealogical search for many years, it was quite fun, and fortunately I was able to get medical histories on many of these people and other details about their lives, not just their names—after I got to studying about Ps, I realized that some of these “life stories’ about these people showed that they too were Ps, or Ns, or some combination of the above. My P father’s mother was obviously an N and most likely a P…she was universally hated by everyone who knew her and that included her husband who said “I offered her half of my assets for a divorce 3 days after I married her. The biggest mistake of my life was staying with her for the sake of the kids.” Though she died before I was born and my grandfather died when I was in high school, I was able to interview several people who knew her and were very forthright with their stories about her. She must have been some piece of work. LOL
I found some other P stuff on my mother’ side going back to before 1840. A court case over custody of a child in which there were 287 pages of hand written “dirt” from the testimony of various witnesses. My ancestor was accused by witnesses of tying a slave woman up by her toes and whipping her, and his passing out drunk on numerous occasions, and puking on a neighbor’s floor etc. Fights with his wife, etc. pretty well give me an idea he wasn’t a nice guy!
All of the men in my line of descent from him have been violent alcoholics and abusers of their wives and family. Including my mother’s brother. There were also some lateral murder-suicides and much alcoholism in most of the branches of this family.
I also started looking at mental illnesses of much significance in both sides of my family tree. Some of them were difficult to diagnose at a distance with only a sketchy history but some were fairly obvious and could be narrowed down to psychosis of some sort, out of touch with reality. Others had a pretty good oral history that went along with them and let me later get a pretty good idea of what was going on.
All very interesting to me, especially since I have worked with animal genetics and training both professionally and as an avocation. Since there is a medical school here in Arkansas which happens to be where I graduated from as a registered nurse practitioner, I have access to some of the research done there and can check books out of the library there. I have also worked professionally in psychiatric settings for some of my career, including an 18 month stint with “conduct disorder” children in an inpatient setting.
It is amazing to me that with the training and knowledge that I had it has taken me this long to get my own “stuff” straight and get my own crap “into one sock.” It wasn’t for lack of knowledge, it was in someways I think willful blindness.
“There is none so blind as he who will not see.”
I think I developed some way the most tenacious system of denial that I can imagine a person having and still be considered “sane.”
Having finally opened my eyes to my own denial and accepted this in myself without beating myself up for it–and boy did I do that—I can accept the fact that though I “wasted” a lot of years coming to this point in my life, they weren’t really “wasted” at all if they eventually taught me to love myself, to care for myself first. Life is a journey, not a destination, and we all learn things as we journey, it just takes some of us (like me) longer to “get it” than it does others.
Reading Dr. Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” about his emotional experiences while in the Nazi concentration camps in WWII has been very therapeutic for me, as well as “Rapid Eye movement” therapy to help me over come the PTSD of the airplane crash, and also of the emotional trauma from my life with my Ps. So, no, all those years were not wasted…Dr. Frankl helped me to see that there is MEANING in suffering, there are lessons in adversity, and that we need to find those in order to grow, to keep from becoming bitter and staying that way. “A good life is the best revenge.” That’s what I want for myself and my two remaining sons.
I realize I can’t have that if I am emotionally bound to m P-son, and my toxic enabling mother. I can’t fix her with logic any more than anyone could have fixed me, except me. We hang on to our delusions as long as the are necessary to keep us from having to face a truth that is too painful for us to accept at that time. There are some truths that are so painful to accept that we hold on to the denial in an effort to force down the pain that we don’t want to face. But in the end, I think facing the pain, no matter how painful it is, is the easier of the choices to accept or to deny.
While I may wish I had faced things earlier in my life so that I could have had more “pain free” years, I realize that I wasn’t ready to do that then, and only when the pain caused by denial itself got so brutal that I had to face it or die, was I willing to take off the rosy glasses and face life with courage.
Everyone on this blog has had some of the same experiences I have had, that you have had, and we can relate to each other, and encourage each other, because we do KNOW that pain of being in denial, the anxiety, the frantic writhing in the pain of accepting reality as it is, not as we want it to be.
I don’t ever want to go back to blindness now that my eyes are open. It is just too dark and scary there. I’d rather know what I am facing, and see it than to wonder what will hit me out of the darkness next.
OxDrover:
Thank you so much for clarifying it for me! I have read bits and pieces of your story on many different blogs, but it was wonderful to have all the puzzle pieces fit together. Wow. Some amazing stuff with your family…you certainly haven’t had a boring life! I am so happy for you, that you have overcome many obstacles and still have a radiant, sweet and shining spirit and are so willing to help others.
OxDrover:
Since you have studied the P/S/N phenomena, have raised a P child, and have a lot of history of P/S/N’s in your family (as well as your background as a Nurse Practitioner), i have two questions:
1. What are the identifying traits/characteristics in CHILDREN who are P/S/N? I have concerns regarding my ex-S’s granddaughter who has exhibited some behaviors that seem unusual to me.
2. Do you believe a child is treatable with medication or counseling (I have read past the age of 15 or 18 they are not ‘fixable’)? In other words, IYHO, is there any hope for a child who’s brain is wired to be a P/S/N? Is it purely genetic, or are there social factors that can mitigate, reduce, or stop it?
I understand that you are not an expert, I am merely asking for your opinion.
Peggy, I wish I was qualified to answer those questions–with anything except “it depends.”
The traits I have seen in children who are labeled “conduct disorder” are pretty much what you would imagine your p might have been as a child. Some of them “act out” and are definant, don’t seem to fear punishment, are highly attention seeking in any manner. Don’t seem to have any empathy.
A person cannot be “officially” labeled a P/S etc until after 18, and they must have had “P-ish” behvior before 18.
As far as ‘treatable”?–again, I think it “depends.” I have not seen any long term benefit to any of the patients I have known who were treated. You could control them for short periods of time, but I am not sure that we didn’t just teach them to be a bit more cunning with their manipulations.Some of these younger kids with conduct disorder seem also to be ADHD, but I h ave also worked with ADHD kids that were not violent, definant, or destructive–I raised one who is a great human being. He was a challenge to raise, but he was never out of control. He never defied me or tried to hurt anything or any one. When he was 6 or 7 he and his brother used to fight some, but no more than the “normal” amount of squabbling that kids do, and when I realized that his P brother was “provoking him” no end, I put a stop to that too, so the fights with his brother topped by 2nd grade.
I did not see that any of them gained any insight into their own behaviors or seemed to care for others any more.
I don’t think anything in personality development is PURELY genetic, I think that environment plays SOME part in all of us. Otherwise identical twins would be totally alike in everything, and that is not the case, BUT they tend to have a very similar personality. I think I remember from somewhere that in identical twins raised apart, that there is something like an 80% correlationship between if one is a P the other is also, but at the same time, is the one that is NOT a P “normal” or just doesn’t go high enough up the scale to officially qualify? So even the statistics aren’t totally a good picture of it.
Other kids, like my P-son were not obviously any problem til they hit adolescence–though looking back I can see one instance of him stealing at age 11 where he DENIED it in the face of totally “being caught” red handed. He was defiant about it afterwards too, and totally ENRAGED at being punished. He ran away from home, and when caught and brought back looked me in the eye and said “you can’t watch me night and day, I will do it again.”
He was right, I couldn’t, but he seemed to get over the rage and become the child I thought I knew again until the hormones hit him and he morphed back to a rage-filled definant lying Psychopath who was determined that NO ONE would control him.
If I had a family genetic history of psychopathic behavior of if the child’s father was a P, I would be concerned about my child just as Liane is. I would do everything I could to give the kid a good chance at leading a good life. I would do my best to teach the child a moral compass, to teach them empathy and compassion—but like all people, no matter how you are raised, you make your own decisions on how you act.
I know people who were violently abused as children who have become fine and caring adults.
Other people who were NOT abused as children and they have become adult monsters.
Neither raising children nor dog training is an EXACT sicience. It depends on the genetics of the particular dog/child, and also upon your skill in giving them what they need to improve their own natural talents aned over come their own natural faults. There are some good guidelines but no “recipie book” and we just do the best we can with what we have to give and hope that some of it sticks.
I cna’t look back at my own parenting and say “well if I had done x instead of Y my son wouldn’t be a P” Who knows, I think he would probably have been a P but he might be a more “successful” one–maybe in the White House instead of the BIG House! But I do think he would have still had some problems with empathy–who knows maybe he would have been Governor of New York. LOL
Read some of Liane’s writings. She is more hopeful than I tend to be about overcoming Genetics with nurture, but I don’t know that she is necessarily wrong and I am right in being more pessimistic. At least she still has HOPE for her child whose father is a P, and I would have hope for mine if I hadn’t seen evidence that that hope was a dream. So far, she hasn’t seen that hope shattered and I pray that she never does. But I think she will know how to deal with it if it does.