By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
How we define words and concepts helps us to see human behavior in a realistic way. When people make bad choices, and do bad things, things they know are wrong, they ARE still CHOICES, not accidents or mistakes, even though the consequences were unforeseen when they are caught and punished.
I’ve frequently heard people refer to what I consider to be deliberate and knowing “choices” as “mistakes.” In the sentence, “he made a mistake and robbed a liquor store,” my inclination is to scream, “NO, he did NOT make a ”˜mistake,’ he made a deliberate choice to rob a liquor store.” The mistake was he didn’t figure he would get caught, and he was wrong. He got caught and went to prison. The mistake, if any, was in thinking he would not get caught.
Wikipedia defines mistake: “A mistake is an error caused by a fault: the fault being misjudgment, carelessness, or forgetfulness. Now, say that I run a stop sign because I was in a hurry, and wasn’t concentrating, that is a mistake.”
Wikipeida also defines choice: “Choice consists of the mental process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them. While a choice can be made between imagined options (“what would I do if …?”), often a choice is made between real options, and followed by the corresponding action.”
Every living human starts making choices the moment we awaken each day. Do I get up, or do I stay in bed? Do I brush my teeth first or start the coffee? Sometimes our choices lead to unforeseen consequences that we do not want, but the mistake was in figuring out what the consequences of our actions would be, not in the choice we made, unwise though it may have been. The choice was a deliberate one.
Dickey Ray Chance
According to the public records held in the Marion County, Arkansas, Circuit Clerk’s Office concerning the investigation and arrest of Dickey Ray Chance for child pornography and Internet stalking of a child on July 19th, Chance is quoted as saying, “I realize what I have done is wrong and I am really sorry for the wrong I have committed. A terrible mistake on my behalf and (I) wish that it had never happened.”
Chance’s behavior over a one-year period to carry on a sexually explicit Internet conversation with a person identified as a 14-year-old girl was a choice. The mistake was in judging the consequences of his behavior, and finding out that the “girl” was a Marion County sheriff’s deputy. He immediately lost his job, his benefits, his home, his wife and family, as well as his status in the community and his ability to make a living.
The unintended consequence (being arrested) of his behavioral choice was a mistake, but what he did was a choice.
Making excuses
Many times the people we think have a high level of psychopathic traits will excuse their choices as “mistakes” in an effort to shift the blame for those choices off themselves. There is no doubt that Chance knew it was both legally wrong and morally wrong for him to carry on a sexual discussion over the Internet, or any other way, with a 14-year-old girl, yet he chose to do this action multiple times over a one-year period. This was no error in judgment; it was a deliberate choice. His error in judgment was in thinking he could get away with this behavioral choice without having any legal consequences, and without being exposed as a pedophile.
My psychopathic son, Patrick, knew it was “wrong” to steal, he knew it was “wrong” to kill, yet he made the choices to do both. The mistake he made, however, was in thinking that he would not get caught, even without making much, if any, effort to disguise who had committed those crimes. In fact, he actually bragged about his intention to kill his victim before he did so, and afterwards as well. The choice to kill her was just that, a choice, but the biggest mistake in his life was in not realizing that some other people, even among his petty-criminal associates who, while they may have been dishonest, were not full-fledged psychopaths, and would not view his choices as admirable and macho.
People high in psychopathic traits frequently make choices that harm other people, thinking they can get away unscathed by consequences for these choices. The man who decides to cheat on his wife, but when he gets caught, cries about what a “mistake” it was and how “sorry he is for having hurt her.” The person who steals something, then when caught cries about how they “made a mistake,” hoping the victim of their choice will give them unearned trust again and forgiveness for their “mistake.” The criminal bank robber or rapist wants the public to view his/her behavior as a “mistake,” almost an “accident,” that happened rather than as a deliberate evil choice to do wrong.
The word “mistake” even indicates to me an “accidental” nature of an event, rather than a consequence of a deliberate choice. When we choose to give unearned trust to a repeat offender of bad choices, the same way a parole board lets a bank robber out of prison early when he pleads “I’ve learned my lesson, it was just a big mistake,” we are also making a choice, and we will have to deal with those consequences of our choices. In dealing with a psychopath, I can almost guarantee it will be a mistake with consequences we won’t like.
Panther,
That last paragraph you wrote is word for word what i had to experience with my ex. he would do this to me everytime i had something to say. or he would start a conversation with me just so he could do that to me when i had to respond back to what he was telling me. he did this to me for hours and hours non stop with not even any let up of only a minute or two. he was trying to drive me crazy and usually i would come to a point that my mind was so jumbled up i couldn’t even litterally form a single word from my mouth to be able to speak. then that is usually when i would have to sit and curl myself up and start to rock myself like you rock a childand then my mind would start to shut everything out. my hands are shaking as i type this. it’s hard to explain what my mind would do, i guess you would call it shutting down. i think back on that and it really is a miracle i still have any sanity.
panther,
sorry, i’m talking about the paragraph you talked about him interupting you and confusing you.
Marcy! Yes, I understand EXACTLY what you mean!!!! I would do the same thing, even the rocking! I’d be on the floor with my head in my hands and wanting to scream. Not being able to form a single word from your mouth YES this is it! I totally understand!!!!!
To top it off, when I’d shut down, he’d go apesh*t and start screaming, telling me that I was now playing the “silent treatment” but really I couldn’t speak if I even wanted to!
Your hands are trembling as you type that….I really know where you are coming from….the thought of this makes my heart pound again and I remember so many times thinking I was the evil one because when he’d start screaming at me and accusing me of playing the silent treatment, I’d get the overwhelming desire to start punching him until he shut up. Or stopped breathing. I didn’t care. I just wanted him to stop. Then I felt so much shame for these thoughts. I don’t know if you read above, but he threatened to hurt my cat once because I was in that state of silence that you describe.
To this day….I still have those thoughts….and since he actually DID do something to my cat, I am always reminding myself that it won’t help anything for me to go back there and find him.
Deep breath. Okay, we are breathing. We are out. We are healing. One day at a time. I guess we need to release this energy though, and LF is the best place for it.
Actually worse even than his screaming sometimes was when his voice got really low and dramatic….this icy cold dead tone as he’d threaten to do something horrible.
Hey Panther, 2 weeks is good! What is wrong with you? ROFL JK!!! My last one, would say how wonderful he was because he “was good all week.” What was wrong with me for not being able to see how truly wonderful he was? Umm…His week consisted of 5 days, because the weekends didn’t count. I am not sure why as he refused to work and had to mooch his beer and drugs off of his “friends”.
He also got insanely disillusional while drinking sometimes. He became very paranoid and thought every one hated him/ was out to get him. His excuse for not getting me a V-day present (note- he never once got me any present for anything so why he had to make this up idk), he was drunk two nights before Vday and.. get this lmao! I “kicked him in the throat with my steal toed boots!” Then it turned into I “kicked him in the throat, jaw, and chest with these same steal toed boots”. I asked him why he was still alive if I did such a thing, and why he had not one mark. I am a strong woman, and I have worked in the construction industry all my life. Now, if I had kicked him, he would have been in pain. If I kicked him in the jaw, he would be wired back together. If it had been the throat, he would have died.
You want to know what I really did?! I told him to take his drunken ass out of my damn house and never come back. He had woken me up in the middle of the night, and it took me a few minutes to realize I had just let the drunk loser into my home. He also woke up my kids.
Yup, I think a lot of spaths do have rocks for brains, at this point. My ex with his “I don’t know” really had me fooled. I really just thought he had some sort of brain damage and was an idiot. That idiot sure has scammed a lot of people though.
Ah you did it again! I am cracking up!
Actually, they are retards. I have decided this. My mother had an in-home daycare my whole childhood, so I grew up around a lot of kids. I know how they reason and argue, and I can say for sure that I have argued with 5-year-olds about who gets the blue cup and seen more rationality displayed than most of the arguments I had with him. Even a 5-year-old can grasp that just because they WANT the blue cup, doesn’t make them entitled to it. All you have to do is explain that someone else wants it too, and they immediately realize that they are not the only person on the planet. Sure, they will still try to reason with you, but at this point it’s from the position of realizing that other people exist and have a right to have the blue cup as well, so they want to negotiate with you and hope to get it. SOME even drop their claim and agree that the other kid can have it today if they get it tomorrow. Try that with an spath. Just try it. There will be little pieces of blue cup ALL OVER THE PLACE by the time you’re done, because if HE ain’t getting that blue cup, ain’t NOBODY getting that blue cup!
This is retardation. It’s got to be.
Or how about this logic. He would say in the same breath something along the lines of, “I have lied to you for our entire relationship, I know. And I’m sorry. But you are emotionally abusing me by subjecting me to all these questions now and expecting me to have to prove all these stories I told you about things I did 15 years ago. You are very controlling and have unrealistic expectations of me. This is abusive!” That is not word-for-word but it’s close. What was I asking him to do? Well, he claimed to have an award from the United Nations, Yale, and Oxford, plus the highest SAT score in his whole country, in addition to a Kickboxing Championship and Bastetball MVP award. He also claimed to have modeled for Calvin Klein. When I asked, “Where are these awards? Can I see them? And where are your photos?” He told me I had unrealistic expectations of him and was torturing him with my unreasonable demands.
Panther,
it is a form of retardation, but only in the emotional aspects of their brains. 5 year olds are way beyond some of these spaths, who are emotionally arrested closer to the age of 1, if that. They are so determined to be placed on a pedastal of admiration and to be served and loved unconditionally. Just as you would an infant. I’m surprised they don’t ask us to chew their food for them.
But what is even more amazing is their envy. If you had a million dollars and gave 999,999 to them, they would envy the one you kept. And kill you for it.
Example:
My spath said he hurt his back and it wasn’t getting any better. He laid around moaning and expecting servitude. Then he would see a “back machine” gizmo on TV and demand that I buy it for him. I still didn’t know what he was, but I had figured out how to derail him. I told him, “you don’t need that back machine gizmo, I’ll BE your back machine for you.” So I positioned myself with my back to him and his calves on my shoulders, similar to the way the back machine would have functioned. Then I did little abdominal crunches, which lifted his butt off the couch. I asked, “how does that feel?”
He replied, “that feels good, it’s helping.”
Then I said, “perfect. Now your back will get better and I’ll get abdominal exercises and a washboard stomach by the time, you’re better.”
There was silence, for a minute. Then he said, “I’m better now. You don’t have to do it anymore.”
LOL! My servitude displeased him if there was any chance of my gaining anything from it. They are SO SO SO SO PREDICATABLE.
Anyway, he stopped whining, he stopped demanding I spend money on the back machine. And was all better the next day.
Envy is the core component of their personality.
Hi Panther,
I didn’t have time to respond to you the other day (and I’m a bit rushed now), but let me give you my quick “two cents” on a few things.
First of all, don’t tell anyone about being spathed – at least no “new” people. Don’t lie about it, but don’t feel obligated to bring it up either. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no need to “define” yourself by what you went through with this guy. You’re probably not ready for a new relationship at this point, but even when you are, it will just muddy the water if you give the new guy too many details. If it were me, I might just say, “He was a jerk, it didn’t work out” – or something like that. Some people will probably disagree with this, but I never even bring up what happened to me as far as “new girlfriends” are concerned. I don’t know why exactly, but it just seems to work better that way.
Next, don’t worry about being a “Salem Witch Hunter” for the time being. In fact, for about a year or two, you should imagine yourself as the “Grand Inquisitress of Spaths,” who is going to auto de fe anyone who so much as looks at you funny! Of course, it isn’t healthy to ALWAYS be like this, but I think the danger now lies rather in undershooting the mark than in overshooting it. (Again, many will disagree with this, so take that for what it’s worth.)
Finally, the real $64,000 question from my perspective, is how in the hell you ever came to think of this guy as your “soulmate”? In other words, you list the disgusting things he said to you as well as his repulsive behaviors – and I’m constantly shaking my head, thinking, “Okay, so where’s the soulmate in all of that?” Indeed, my very strong impression is that this built-up image of him was entirely the coinage of your own brain. In short, projection and more projection!
At any rate, perhaps it would be wise to go into your next relationship with more modest expectations (i.e., especially in light of your apparent tendency to over-idealize and “poeticize”unworthy people, etc. – something I used to be guilty of as well). I’ve said this before, but I think the whole “soulmate” notion is very dangerous, as it creates an exaggerated idea of what other people can do for us. In the end, we don’t find “salvation” or happiness through other people – we find these things in ourselves. And whether we happen to meet another like-minded person on our journey of self-discovery, well, that is more of an afterthought than anything else.
Okay, gotta run. Just wanted to give you a bit more “food for thought!”
Panther
I am so sorry spath actually went as far as hurting your cat. That is the lowest of the low. I..would want to kill spath if that were me. I admire your stoicism. Stay strong. xx
Skylar, you are funny today too. The one dollar envy example is disturbingly accurate. I don’t know how it’s possible that I spent more of my own money on him than I did myself. I didn’t even have enough money to meet my basic needs, and he was throwing temper tantrums when I didn’t buy his unemployed butt an iPod. I would rather live with a toddler in his/her terrible 2s for the rest of my life than an spath.
I am also surprised they don’t ask us to chew their food for them. It’s really unfortunate that we are able to relate on this. I wish this were a room full of crochet enthusiast chatting about needles and thread. Instead we are all….just so many people….who all dated the same man….I am convinced this one guy is like Santa Claus and just was able to date us all somehow. He is about as real as Santa too. At least Santa leaves presents. Sociopaths just eat the cookies and then set the house on fire.