Recently a man wrote me saying that his best friend has been more hurtful than helpful when it comes to helping him recover from his relationship with a sociopathic woman. He had the following comment and question. I am sure many of you will relate to this one, especially you guys out there.
I have a best friend who I talked to (of course I desperately needed to get my self-identity back). He instantly tried to help me by seeing my own flaws in the relationship and what I could do better, and stated that I overreacted. Of course, his “help” only contributed to her brainwashing and manipulation because it further fueled my questioning about myself, and further made me believe that I was at fault. This reinforced my guilt and shame in which I can now see that I had no reason to experience.
In this regard, my best friend became my worst enemy because he had no clue. I still believe he meant well, though. Of course, my friend has a good impression of her and have never felt the damaging effect of being in a relationship with a sociopath.
So now I question whether he really is my best friend, since he made matters much, much worse (probably without realizing). How can we get a friend to understand what we have been dealing with, and the damaging effect on our emotional life and our self-esteem / self-respect?
Many of the behaviors and manipulations of sociopaths are entirely beyond the comprehension of the average person”¦or mental health professional for that matter. This past week, someone else told me the story of how he came to realize that his significant other was a sociopath. It turns out that the sociopath faked having cancer. This man told a family member and ask the question, “Who fakes having cancer?” Coincidentally a short time later that family member saw an MSNBC special on con artists where faking cancer was discussed. The person called my friend to say, “Hey I think I found out what’s wrong with ______ she’s a sociopath.” Well the man had never heard of “sociopath” before and had to research it. To his shock his lover met every one of the criteria!
Don’t despair if your friend doesn’t get it. Who would ever guess that there are people who appear normal and even affectionate and yet who are only motivated by power, greed and sex? Although we understand some people have problems with conscience and empathy, we believe that at heart all people want and need the same things we do. Very few understand that sociopaths have different needs and drives.
That gets me to my proposal. I think eventually we will want to go beyond this blog and web site and have a conference or start regional support groups. I think we should consider a conference for victims. I have had the very good fortune to correspond and speak on the phone with some other victims. We can finish each other’s sentences because we know what comes next. The sociopath’s methods are all strikingly similar. Perhaps that is the best evidence there is as to the existence of the syndrome.
I recognize there are many people who do not understand what I went through and who may blame me for my own suffering and the suffering of others at the hands of my former husband. It has been very important to my recovery that I have been able to talk with other victims who know firsthand the mind games and distortions of reality sociopaths are capable of.
Dear Free – I looked at that quote and I must say that I have a quote similar to that from (spelling??) Doetesky which says love a man even in his sin. I had that framed quote in my home and that quote was the single most influencing factor which persuaded me in my mind to go with this man, knowing that he was toxic. I have since learnt, as your quote says, that these kind of writings are very misleading and very dangerous, as I have learnt to my cost.
Aloha,
My first post also got “eaten” by the administrator, so I’ll try again. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I posted a blog and when explaining one incident in my blog, I used the words, little did I know.
The incident was, immediately after a reconciliation initiated entirely by “Him” he told me he was leaving on a previously planned “solo” gambling trip out of state and we IM’d each other while he was on his way until he said he was losing signal. My “logical” mind said why would he lie or cheat after all that. He even emailed me that night at 2 a.m. (of course I was sleeping so there was no time consuming exchange) to say he was done gambling for the night.
Only much later did I learn he hadn’t lost signal, but he’d arrived at another woman’s house he was seeing to spend the weekend with her, escaped her company briefly and lied to both of us.
At the time, I couldn’t fathom that behavior. Now I understand and I also understand completely exactly what you’re saying.
Free, I always post about our souls. Not sure which one it was, though. There’s not a search function, is there? Thanks for the compliment.
Am so passionate about these issues that if it were affordable and doable, I’d return to school and get my degree in psych or social work to help other women and men who’ve lived through dealing with a P or childhood abuse or any kind of abuse.
Maybe because like aloha said I really didn’t KNOW what I didn’t know. No idea I was a magnet for these kinds of people because of a fatal wiring flaw that seems to seek for the good in everyone (still). No idea I had no boundaries. No idea my anger could turn inward into depression or outward into explosion or half-in, half-out into passive aggressive maneuvering that made me want to CRINGE.
The things I did to “retaliate” for the things he said and did make me absolutely sick to my stomach. Even more absurd, I didn’t DO anything…just mirrored him, acting all secretive, hinting at other men, trying to meet men. And to do what? I have no idea, because cheating isn’t my thing and I never have done it. I was absolutely emotionally idiotic at the time, and suffering from PTSD.
I wouldn’t dare use my voice to tell him what I would and wouldn’t put up with because I knew he would leave and some sick part of me couldn’t handle that. And because when I did try to tell him things or ask him things or God Forbid talk about our “relationship” he either blew-up at me or gave me the silent treatment.
It got to the point where anything I’d talk about, whether it was something from when I was a kid or something innocuous, he would start to walk far away. Literally. And I went along with that, not knowing it was controlling and abusive treatment.
Had never even heard of N’s or P’s (except colloquially, you know, scary murderer media stuff) until last year.
The “single white female” woman also liked to brag about how everyone’s guy was after her. She even hooked-up our mutual friend with a man and then later spent months telling the friend how this man was hitting on her — after the friend was living with the man.
I began calling her “the soul sucker” years ago. That is still my term for her all these years later.
Beware soul sucker friends. I suspect they are P women. If not P, then something else bad and harmful to others.
Aloha: ABSOLUTELY I get it and you are so right. They don’t k now what they don’t know. When I was working with the public family clinic and I was doing the health care pro bono for the women and children in the DV shelter, I would actually FEEL SUPERIOR to these women because they kept going back AND GOING BACK AND GOING BACK to these men who beat the crap out of them. I KNEW I would NEVER GO BACK TO A MAN WHO BEAT ME. And, I wouldn’t have. BUT—I ALLOWED MY SON TO ABUSE ME, and he had HIT ME. Used me, stolen from me, lied to me, etc.
There is a passage in the Bible where the Pharisee is standing in the temple praying. These men were “ultra religious” and very careful to obey EVERY tiny little part of the “holy laws” and they felt VERY SUPERIOR to others who were not so “pious and holy”—yet, they were selfish and cunning and within the letter of the law would “skin a gnat for it’s hide and tallow” (essentially hypocrits, appearing holy while living mean) and this Pharisee was praying to God, thanking God that he was not SINFUL like the publican (the most despised of the Jews who were crafty and merciless tax collectors) who was next to him praying. The Publican cast his eyes down, and knelt and prayed “God, help me, a sinner” and the Pharissee despised the “sinner”–while being worse–he had no remorse.
I remember thinking in church when studying this “scene” that I WAS SUPERIOR TO THE PHARISEE—when in fact, I was JUST LIKE HIM, only more arrogant—I was doing just what he was doing. In looking down on those poor women, I was just as ARROGANT or more so than the Pharisee. To my own shame, I realize now of course, but I didn’t then. I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW.
Who knows, maybe this was God’s way of bringing me to KNOW what I didn’t know before. Teaching me the humility that I needed in order to stop the abuse. To me, the SPIRITUAL aspect of the healling–whatever your spiritual direction is–is absolutely necessary to healing.
Aloha, I spent a couple of years in Africa as a wild life photographer when I worked for my bio-father years ago, and was exposed for the first time to many different cultures, different beliefs, etc. I have continued since then to read and to learn about other cultures, beliefs and the human soul, intuition, “sixth senses” (not in a magical way but in a logical way that the western mind can grasp) and I realize that our “western culture” does not have all the wisdom in the world, nor all the “right answers” or even “right thinking”—there is good and wisdom from all cultures and by not exposing ourselves to these things we limit our scopes.
Sometimes western culture/science/medicine catches up, and sometimes now. One tiny example is treating warts. Warts are caused by viruses, but I have “known” from folk medicine that there was a psychological component to treating them and that you could “witch” them gone by any kind of (fake) magic spell. I had seen old women do this since I was a kid. Each one would have her differnt thing the chld had to do to get rid of the wart b ut they all worked.
FINALLY modern medicine came to SEE that there is a psychological component to wart treatment. I actually used it in clinic and AS LONG AS THE PATIENT BELIEVED what you were doing would get rid of the wart, it DID. LOL
The part that I never did understand though, was we had a man in the community that would “witch away” warts on MULES. How could the mule “believe”? in order to make the wart go away with his own immune system, which is how we think it works with people? Still can’t get my head around that one, but it did work. I had a horse when I was a kid that had a big wart right under the saddle and caused the horse pain and injury if you rode him, and this man made it go away in a week. LOL
So, yes, Aloha, there are lots of things we don’t even know we don’t even know. (I like that phrase, can you tell?)
OxD:
Think your story of the Pharisee is why they say pride goeth before a fall. Without going into detail, I think my own arrogance and stubborn refusal to admit being wrong factors in a great deal to my experiences.
I spent a lifetime being right, being told by teachers I was right and always getting the “right” answers. Could never accept I was wrong about a person, whatever I thought of them, good or bad. I was gonna prove myself right, no matter what.
That prejudice has landed me in hot water many times. It brings out the ugly in me, in many situations.
And maybe in many ways that kind of arrogance leads people to self-fulfilling prophecies.
Sorry to be so vague; your post just got me thinking while typing. 🙂
Orphan,
Admitting our own arrogance and self-righteousness is a big step in healing I think, at least it was for me. I tried to keep up my own “sense of worth” by being “in control” and by “being strong” when inside I felt weak and worthless. I felt my worth depending on being strong, right, and competent and other people seeing my “worth” because of what I DID.
I think feeling superior to these “weak” women, these women who didn’t behave “with good sense” elevated my own worth to myself. Of course that was twisted logic, but just like the pharisee, I felt better with someone to “look down on”—now, I am more like the poor remorseful publican, I realize how WRONG I WAS, how POORLY I BEHAVED, and that my worth doesn’t come from pleasing others’ unreasonable demands.
I have turned my focus inward to see what is “wrong” with me, rather than turning the focus outward to what is “wrong” with them. I can’t fix what is wrong with them, NC is the only way to handle that, unless they start allowing us to send them to Devil’s Island. LOL (Isn’t that a great thought!) LOL
I am also looking at what is RIGHT WITH ME as well. Working on my strengths as well as my weaknesses, and making I think a great deal of progress in setting appropriate boundaries and enforcing them without guilt or second guessing myself. I think the “second guessing” we do on ourselves is pretty toxic too. That’s why gaslighting works so well for them. It was a big REVELATION when I realized my own mother was gaslighting me to cover her lies. That she COULD and WOULD blatantly LIE TO ME to cover for the Ps. I had intuitively known she was, but couldn’t force myself to admit it because I knew if I did that it would destroy my (fantasy) relationship with my mother. When she finally looked me in the face with all the rage of “THE LOOK” that the Ps get in their eyes when they are threatened with exposure, I KNEW the truth and knew I couldn’t deny it any longer. It is only since then, since accepting the total truth, that I can start to heal. To get out of the guilt trap that I “owe” my mother or anyone else, because of blood or any other relationship, to allow them to abuse me and then “pretend it didn’t happen.” I CAN forgive them, but that doesn’t mean I have to trust them again, not without any sign of repentance on their part, or changing their ways or attitudes.
I realized that my mother’s “club” which she used to beat me, religion, was not TRUE religion, but a twisted facsimile used to CONTROL me. That was when I started to RE-study the Bible, and to reassess my own beliefs in God, and my own relationship to God, not “through” my mother’s approval or disapproval. It is a “whole ‘nuther ball game” now.
Well, Ox-D, they don’t call them the seven deadly sins because they’re good things, right? 🙂
Thing is, I can be very proud rightfully of my brains and personality, because they belong intrinsically to me and I can share them with whom I wish and avoid the people who have not earned that right. Spending time with anyone is a privilege (so that wasn’t arrogance talking! LOL) — and while it’s taken quite some time, I’ve learned my own worth, not in pie-in-the-sky, false elevated terms, but in real, concrete, tangibles and intangibles, the good and the faults.
Don’t think the P was the catalyst for this learning; discovered it on my own, actually, through a number of life steps, starting with meeting my birthparents, leaving an abusive spouse (not a gaslighter, cheater or emotional abuser, just your garden variety bully) and ending around 2001.
The only reason I returned to the relationship with the P was because he claimed to have changed. I kept my emotions in check and watched. He hadn’t really changed much.
When speaking of arrogance, I was thinking more along the lines of being tripped-up by believing “my press” in the past: that I was so damned smart. And you know, I am pretty smart, but that does not equal infallible, I’ve learned. It also doesn’t mean stubbornly believing that love can change someone else, or fix them, if they don’t want to do the work themselves. My tendency to try and “fix” the underdogs of the world comes from this arrogance, which comes from being told all my life what a good person I am and how smart.
While I am a very good person and very smart, I cannot right all the world’s ills – just mine. And that’s fine with me.
Sorry all for the double post. I kept getting a spam message. tmassar, if you are having trouble posting, email Donna, she will investigate. Thanks again Donna!
Sometimes I think, as far as arrogance goes, being born intellectually gifted is as much a curse as being born to rich and indulgent parents—it can produce such an arrogance in us and such a feeling of “entitlement” to fix everything by our wonderful smarts. PUKE. Been there, done that. LOL Not a good idea. LOL again
While a person with intellectual GIFTS (we don’t earn these things, we only earn what we accomplish with it) or financial GIFTS (or even earned riches) can accomplish a lot for humanity, many times instead of using it for GOOD, we become arrogant about it…the mark of a TRULY GOOD person is that great intellect, great riches, or great fame, will change them a great deal.
While it is good to appreciate the GIFTS and the things we have earned in this life, to become arrogant about them is our (humanity’s) downfall. “Pride does indeed go before a fal”
I know that it contributed to my own fall, but I needed that lesson and I appreciate that I saw it when it came. It does give some meaning to the suffering, in that I think, I HOPE and I PRAY that I am a better person now than I have ever been. That I do have an appreciation for the BLESSINGS and GIFTS I have been given, and even the gift of my own pain.
i described some of the hideous sexual things xN said to a friend of mine and his response was ‘i think you just have to learn to let things roll off of you.’ i had to leave the house i lived in with xN (it was never a home) and go to a shelter. from doing that and from what i learned there i know now that allowing abuse via pretending to let it roll off of me is exactly what i should never do and can never do again. that is what got me into that house to begin with really. and a female friend dismissed him as a bully and she had been through a divorce with a guy who culd be a socio based on her description. she thinks of them generally as abusers.
i have tried to breach the subject at domestic abuse support groups and the response is blank stares. it is no wonder they can have their way with people. i think people think that sociopath = psychopath = hannibal lector/serial killer or despotic tyrant. they figure it is as likely as dying in a plane crash or something so they don’t need to know. i don’t think you can really know unless you experience it first hand and then try to learn about it. otherwise you are just blissfully ignorant or blindly confused.