Recently Lovefraud heard from a woman whom we’ll call Trina. Trina was involved with a sociopath for five years, who abandoned her eight months ago, after wrecking her financially and emotionally. Still, she continued to be in shock, denial and disbelief—until the guy sent her the following poem:
Catch and Release
Before I pull your hair and leave you for dead
I will ravish you
not physically, but with words sensuous and firm
with sibilance rolling off my chameleon tongue
and metaphors byzantine and allusive pitched
to that intimate space between your ears.
I will watch you wriggle with denial,
claw with anger, bargain for release,
splash like a drowning animal in hopelessness.
And when I observe the contour of your acceptance,
the precise moment your will bends pliantly to mine
I will release you.
Game over.
Trina was horrified, and when she communicated this to the guy, he denied that the poem was at all autobiographical. He said she needed to “lighten up;” she was too “up tight;” he’d just taken a line from a TV show and embellished it. Here’s how he explained it to Trina:
“I thought that was a great opening line and I twisted it a bit, threw in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief as I played on the word ‘dead’ and created a poem, role playing the braggart and using a line that fishermen do when they fish for fun and not food.”
“This man knows he drove me to the point of near suicide,” Trina says, “and rather than feeling badly for it, he actually taunts me, to this day.”
When there is no reason
Many sociopaths are parasites, manipulating people into giving them money, food, sex, a place to live—whatever. But some sociopaths, who may actually hold down a job and have their own resources, manipulate people, even torment them, just for the fun of it.
There are sociopaths who break women’s hearts just to watch them fall apart. There are sociopaths who commit crimes just to prove they can get away with it. There are sociopaths who disrupt workplaces for their own amusement. These people simply want to be puppet masters, pulling strings and watching everyone else jump.
This is probably the most difficult type of sociopathic behavior to comprehend. Many of us have spent hours, days, weeks, even years trying to figure out why a sociopath acted the way he or she did. Sometimes there is no reason other than the sociopath found the situation he or she created to be entertaining.
So how do we come to grips with this? How do normal people, who try to be considerate and cooperative, understand this behavior?
We can’t. These sociopaths are totally twisted. It’s just the way they are.
Dear LF Family,
It took me awhile to find the post I’ve been thinking about and to say what I wanted to say — but here it is:
Oxy wrote to me on Thursday at 9:44 p.m. “…you are TOO kind and TOO good, and TOO sweet an d TOO giving! That’s why I love you my dear dear friend.”
Yes, I appreciate the affirmation and was gratified to read Chapter 5 of “Women Who Love Psychopaths” to finally accpet the truth of that affirmation.
However, I wanted to add that the affirmation fits EVERYONE of us on this site also — both male and female. That’s why I love all of you, too, even though I have never met you face to face.
Those TOO good traits would have been perfectly normal in a normal relationship but with a disordered personality guy or gal they were our Achilles Heel. Doesn’t it just make your blood boil? It does mine!!
Rosa, from what I know of gaslighting I’d alter your definition, “Gaslighting is the systematic attempt by one person to erode another’s reality while asserting their own.” to read, “Gaslighting is the systemic attempt by one person to erode another’s reality for the purpose of driving them crazy so they can put you in an insane assylum and take all your treasures.” (from the movie, Gaslighting”)
Heavy gaslighting went on the last few months of my living with the “thing” BUT always in front of our adult children! Luckily by that time I knew about the gaslighting tactic and recognized it but was powerless against it anyway. Except that I didn’t get driven insane (much to the chagrin of “empty suit”) so he switched to trying to kill me “by accident” and then, by an actual final battering. (Later, I realized that he must have sensed by then I’d had enough and I was on my way “out.”)
Nevertheless, much to my true surprise, he continued to brainwash our children thoroughly, using some of the gaslighting examples as his “proof.” In my case, it was similar to gaslighting but consisted of calm, quiet assertions about me, ALL LIES to suit his own purposes.
Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!
ANewLily:
About the good traits…..
We have to keep those! We can’t close them off……we must remember they are good traits…..what we must alter is the awareness and education about opening ourselves up for exploitation of those traits…..
We can add awareness to those traits and make out much better in the long run….
There really are good people in the world…..the world is not all evil…..
The LF community is a very good representation of the world of good people…..we have members from around the world here coming together, sharing common experiences in life, encourageing each other and offering strength.
We need to take this thought into the world and remain open and not shut ourselves off to the possibilities of good comiing our way!
We all fell off the horse…..doesn’t mean we can’t just get right back up on another one!!!! (we just need not pick the bucking bronco next time!)
RIDEMCOWBOYS!!!!
XXOO
I started feeling crazy (Really seriously upset and I was trembling….) For me in discovering what a liar he was meant soon I would be abandoned…and that’s what breaks my heart…. that’s how you know you are being gaslighted….I remember finding it hard to look at him, and standing there perplexed…scratching my head most of the time.. I began to write down what he said and then had proof he was lying…but every time you win out over a lie it means abandonment will follow and the death of a very precious illusion….that’s why others would prefer to go crazy and do every day. It’s like I will continue to love you if you genuinely do not see the lies but if you insist on catching me out I will abandon you without blinking…that’s a terribly cruel vice…tightening it every day not a bother to him… until I gained the strength to lose the illusion that he loved me and cared about me. Had similar dynamic in my family where mixed messages were flung around like it was normal…so I got used to sacrificing the truth for a sense of belonging…never again!!!
Thankyou everyone (((ROSA!))) for your awesome definitions of gaslighting. I have never heard that word over here.
When I just turned five years old I witnessed my father break my mothers neck. (Back then, She was in hospital for years and then a trolly bed for years and then a wheelchair. She is a paraplegic).Then for the next ten years I was told that “You made that up, that is not what happened, why do you lie?”. So that i believed (totally) that i did not have the capacity to see what is real and what is not.
On top of that my mother told me for the rest of my life that “you did this to me. It is your fault entirely that I am a paraplegic”.
My father called me “good for nothing useless bastard” ( that was my name).
My brother just continued to physically break my arms and ankles and destroy and steal my property and hang my dolls by the neck from trees with tomato sauce all over them.
My parents and brother reinforced this basic premise over my entire life in horrific ways. It was my core belief.
I guess that is “gaslighting” then.
My mother set fire to the kitchen once (when I was 9 years old) and told everyone that it was me. The fire man came and my father thrashed me to oblivion. I guess that is gaslighting, too.
Oxy:
Your mother did exactly what my mother did with the, ” no I did not say that!” and the whole way you always describe her she sounds like my psychopath mother only with out the physical violence.
My mother and father has always given my alcoholic pothead brother EVERYTHING and still do to this day. They both lie in an unbelievable way – about his whole life. Just like your mum does about your p son. Its not denial its PSYCHOPATH!
Dear Tilly, I hurt your “little Tilly” that her parents were so horrible to her, and I know that hurt little girl is still bleeding inside that grown up YOU. But I am here to validate that WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER. My egg donor only physically abused me once when I was in that mouthy teenaged stage and provoked her into a rage with foam coming out of her mouth as she hit me. What was worse, I was definiant enough I didn’t flinch and cry (which is what she wanted me to do) I sat on a foot stool with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands and COUNTED the licks as she hit me with a belt buckle end of a belt. Of course that infurniated her more and eventually my step father pulled her off of me. I “won” that round. No one ever spoke of that night again. Like it didn’t happen.
A year or so ago I mentioned that night when I was talking to her, and a look of utter rage came on her face and she said “but you lied to me” intimating that was JUSTIFICATION. No, actually I did NOT lie to her, I “sass’ed her.” (smart mouth) The look on her face when she justified the beating was the same as the night of the beating.
That was the night I last tried to “talk to” her, and the night that she looked at me and said “You hate me don’tyou?” and I truthfully replied (finally admitting it to myself) “Yes, Ma’m, right this minute I DO.”
I’m not sure she would clinically suit the definiton in th ePCL-R of a psychopath, but she sure meets the definition in “Snakes in suits” however, she confines her real abuse to ME and me alone. With anyone else, she does NOT let them see her mask drop, but for me she can take off the mask and let me see the rage and fury behind her “sweet christian little old lady” mask.
What really infuriates her is when she is caught out by me and others both. She doesn’t give a flip really what I think as long as she can control me, but she does care what others think.
Maybe she is a psychopath, maybe just with psychopathic traits, who knows, and at this point what her clinical diagnosis would be is a moot point. She is an UNtrustworthy and TOXIC person who is choosing to do things that put me in danger to eanble my P-son. I’ll stop it if I can, but I will never trust or care for her again.
I know she continues to put me in danger by giving (and/or willing after her death) funds to my Poffspring so if I can stop that I will and I am working on a plan now that might come off next week. It is STRESSFULL even thinking about it and yesterday I was somewhat “antsy” and felt the stress along my back muscles and “didn’t know why”—talking about it now makes me realize WHY as I DREAD even making my plot come true. It will require seeing her and pretending I care at least a bit. I’ve thought about various plans in the past, and this is the only one I think might actually have a chance of success because it would OUT her behavior to someone she wants to impress. I know she will smear me to try to justify herself etc. and I dread that, but as bad as I hate to pony up to this task I think it is an opportunity I should not lose to get one of HER dupes/friends in my corner that she might cooperate with, if she does NOT cooperate with him, she will be outed to her entire Christian community—that she is a a liar and a fake!
Hi Oxy,
I hope you succeed with your plan Oxy. And I am sorry that this continued support your egg-donor supplies P-son just seems to go on and on, and can be a source of anxiety and distress for you.
Good luck. But more than luck, I have come to see what a smart and incredibly capable person you are. I have a pretty strong sense that if there were a way, you would be the kind of person to find it.
Do let us know…..meantime I will be holding you in my thoughts.