Contrary to a prevailing myth, sociopaths are really no smarter than the average individual”¦probably dumber. Sure, a good one can dupe you, but as I’ve written elswhere, this is no great shakes, as most of us can dupe each other if that’s our goal.
That’s because we enter relationships risking trust and faith in each other, which makes the exploitation of our trust and faith really easy. It takes no genius or particularly smart, crafty person to exploit this trust and faith. It’s as easy to do as it’s wrong.
And so, most sociopaths aren’t really that clever, or ingeniously bright. Most make messes not only of others’ lives, but their own too. Many end up in jail, and those who don’t are often finding trouble in other areas, exercising poor judgement all over the map, squandering friendships, family, and all sorts of meaningful opportunities.
By most standards of a successful life, sociopaths live lives of abject failure, accomplishing little more, at the end of the day, than having produced plenty of havoc and pain. None of this indicates that, as a group, sociopaths are smart.
Sometimes the media sensationalizes the sociopath as the dark, brilliantly predatory monster, especially in classic cases of psychopaths like Ted Bundy. But Ted Bundy wasn’t so smart. In the end, he was nothing but a vicious, sadistic murderer who managed to lure young, naïve girls sufficiently into his proximity to then viciously murder them.
How much of an accomplishment was this? To be able to lure naïve girls near enough to his car to then kidnap and kill them? Otherwise, OJ Simpson style, Bundy was ambushing dormitories at night and butchering innocent, sleeping college kids. Not exactly a genius, or courageous guy, at work here. Just a perverse, murderously violent, cowardly man.
Sure, Bundy was reputedly charming and articulate (video of him bears this out). But this didn’t make him “smart.” He was, clearly, adept at “masking” himself. But again, effective maskers aren’t smart; they’re just good maskers. And nonsociopaths routinely are good maskers.
Good masking, good self-disguising is a type of social skill, and not the purview of sociopaths exclusively. Also, many sociopaths are terrible maskers, just as many nonsociopaths are.
My point is that the “mask” is not an indication of “smartness.” It’s merely the case that some sociopaths, and some nonsociopaths, can mask aspects of themselves and their agendas effectively; but bear in mind, just as many do this very poorly.
In the end, sociopaths, as a group, have a poor track record of living effective lives. Rather, they live disruptive, unsatisfying lives”¦fraught with pathological attitudes and empathic deficits that bring misery to others and, correspondingly, much trouble and, at best, empty satisfaction, to themselves.
Sociopaths simply are not successful people. They may (or may not) skate along under the radar for some stretch of time, but this is not a “game” that smart people play, and that smart people get off on.
Only dumb people play this game. Only really dumb people live this way. Only really really dumb people derive satisfaction, for however long they can swing it, from pulling the wool over others’ eyes.
It’s just no great shakes to do this, and it doesn’t make you smart.
Ox Drover
Trues, or in this case, he pretended to have things/attributes, etc. It’s sad to think he lives his life hating himself that much that he pretends to be someone else. Someone amazing. And it couldn’t be further from his true self.
Donna’s work is so important, as is this community of support. I hope to be able to provide that to others as well.
A friend of mine sent me this after I uncovered everything, which was a good resource at the time:
http://articles.lovingyou.com/love/singles-dating/10-signs-you-are-dating-a-sociopath/
Ox Drover~ True, or in this case, he pretended to have things/attributes, etc. It’s sad to think he lives his life hating himself that much that he pretends to be someone else. Someone amazing. And it couldn’t be further from his true self.
Donna’s work is so important, as is this community of support. I hope to be able to provide that to others as well.
A friend of mine sent me this after I uncovered everything, which was a good resource at the time:
http://articles.lovingyou.com/love/singles-dating/10-signs-you-are-dating-a-sociopath/
Dear Ox Drover~ or in his case, pretending to have all sorts of attributes and possessions. It’s a sad existence to have to pretend to be someone completely different.
A friend of mine sent this to me after I discovered the deceit: http://articles.lovingyou.com/love/singles-dating/10-signs-you-are-dating-a-sociopath/
Donna’s work, and this community’s support, is so important and I hope that I can provide some assistance as well.
Ox Drover~ True, or in his case, pretending to have all sorts of attributes and possessions. It’s a sad existence to have to pretend to be someone completely different.
Donna’s work, and this community’s support, is so important and I hope that I can provide some assistance as well.
A friend of mine sent this to me after I discovered the deceit – it was helpful at the time: http://articles.lovingyou.com/love/singles-dating/10-signs-you-are-dating-a-sociopath/
LL, completely agree, or in his case, pretending to have all sorts of attributes and possessions. It’s a sad existence to have to pretend to be someone completely different.
A friend of mine sent this to me after I discovered the deceit – it was helpful at the time: http://articles.lovingyou.com/love/singles-dating/10-signs-you-are-dating-a-sociopath/
Donna’s work, and this community’s support, is so important and I hope that I can provide some assistance as well.
LL, no Matt didn’t mean that if they had that they necessarily were OK just that without an education, a place to live, a vehicle or a job he wasn’t interested…His X POS had NONE of those things and Matt provided them all, plus more! LOL
My X BF P had all of the “tions” too (except he was retired nicely) but he was ALSO DISHONEST and UNKIND….so his financial status and smarts didn’t matter at all.
I think it is important to look at the moral compass in another person BEFORE ANYTHING else…if that doesn’t point in the right direction, WHAT ELSE MATTERS? Nothing that I can think of.
Whatever it is that makes them FLUNK the moral compass test (rule #1 for me) whether it is because they lie, drink too much, do drugs, don’t work and sponge off others–that is a form of stealing I think–or whatever is the problem, then NOTHING ELSE MATTERS when you are looking at someone as an intimate part of your “circle of trust.”
If a person is UNKIND I think it is just as important as if they are dishonest. Some people can be honest as the day is long but just simply UNKIND and mean to others, rude and hateful. so what if they are “honest” with you if they are kicking the dog or the waiter or the person who works for them and can’t answer back? I think though that most of the time when a person is found to be generally UNKIND if you look closely enough you will also find that they are ALSO DISHONEST you just haven’t seen it yet.
In addition to setting boundaries for others about honesty and kindness, I have to set those same standards for myself…and it is always easier to set standards for others than it is to keep to those same standards for yourself. I find myself falling short of my own standards more often than I wish I did, but I no longer expect myself to be perfect…just trying to do what I know is right.
LL,
To answer your question, my story is not nearly as awful as most. Here it is in its entirety:
I met him on the reptile site. He lived about an hour and a half from me on the army base. He came up to visit me and the snakes one day and started love bombing me. It was a little creepy, so I told him I liked him but asked him to back off a little. He did. The next visit, he was such a gentleman and we spent the entire day as friends visiting my friends and doing a lot of fun things. I really really started to like him and my friends loved him. He even took some of them aside and said he thought I was “the one”. It was that visit he told me that technically he was still married but he and his wife had been separated for 8 months. They have shared custody of a small child. They were waiting for his medical discharge to come through so they could get benefits for their daughter. He said at that time it would only take a few weeks for the divorce to go through because they were doing it through the army (I believed him). Since he was technically married, I told him we couldn’t date – we could only be friends. But as the weeks went by, I really fell for him, with all the love bombing and the close connection I felt with him. One day we spent the day helping my friend remodel a rental property. That night things became a little more intimate. I still was not in love with him and I told him so.
He called me several times that week love bombing me. He came up the next weekend for the reptile show but had to cut the visit short because his wife was in a fender bender with the daughter and there was car insurance stuff to take care of. I was really upset – mostly with myself – because I don’t believe in dating married men. He kept telling me that his divorce and discharge were due to come through ANY DAY.
During the following month or two, he called me a lot and came up to visit only a few times. He had bought some concert tickets for us that I was very excited about, but he naturally canceled at the last minute. Fortunately, he’d driven the tickets to me earlier in the week just in case so I went with someone else. I was going through hell falling for a married man who had a lot of drama and was unavailable. That was horrendous enough, but it’s normal stuff.
Here’s where it got weird. He once said he was going to call the next night. He didn’t call or return my calls. The next day I called him. He said he had been in the hospital getting his brain tested for his head injury and couldn’t get to a phone. But he was supposed to come up the next day and spend the day with me. He never showed and never called. He never returned my calls. I was really really upset. I thought maybe he’d been in a car accident.
The next day, I saw him posting on the reptile site as if nothing was wrong!!!!!!! I wrote him and said WTF??? He gave me some lame excuse about how the army kept him overnight to do minor brain surgery to test him on his injury, and his “ex wife” as he called her was there so he couldn’t call. He begged for my forgiveness. He promised it would all be over soon and he would make it up to me. I was pretty upset.
So I went camping by myself for 4 days to clear my head. It seemed a lot of things he told me did not add up, and I was very confused. I needed to make a decision of whether to jump ship or wait for him. I was really really confused, but I was already hooked at that point. When I got back there were about 12 calls on my voice mail from him. He wanted to see me, needed to talk to me, blah blah. So I said he could visit on July 4th. He drove up. During that visit, he told me the medical discharge and the divorce had gone through, and he was a free man! I was SO happy. We slept together and he started talking about buying a townhome where I live so we could be together. Then he went home to stay with his daughter. He made a date with me to bring his daughter up the next day to meet me at the pool. Guess what? He never showed up and never called. But even more bizarre, he was posting on the reptile site!!! The gall! I contacted him, but he only said he had no excuse and he would get back to me in a few days. Then I saw him post some pics with his wedding ring on!
He sent me the most bizarre email of my life. He said, “I’m sorry, I have no excuse. You deserve someone better.” I asked him “why”? I said that was the cruelest way to break up with someone. Then he said (get this). “I wasn’t breaking up with you. I just figured you’d never want to see me again.” W. T. F. ??????? What the hell kind of game was that? He basically discarded me and then made it look like I had done it. I forget to mention that during the time I was “waiting” I found out that he had lied to me about where his wife was living. He finally admitted the army made his wife move back in with him to care for him and this is why he couldn’t return my calls. The whole thing was very upsetting.
He asked in the email if he could still call me. ??? My reply was, “not only do I NEVER want to hear from you again, but if I ever see you, hear from you, or even see you on the reptile site again, I’ll turn you into the army for adultery.”
The next day, there he was posting on the site as if nothing had happened. I STILL was in shock and could not understand what was going on. I had one of my girlfriends call him and 3-way me in. He gave her this whole sob story about how much he cared for me, it wasn’t a wedding ring in the picture, and as soon as this army stuff is over, things will get better. She believed him because he sounded really sad and sincere. Never mind that he lied to her 3 times!!!!! In his next set of pictures he posted, the ring was off, but you could see the lines where it had been.
I was so distraught, I told several people, seeking answers. One of them was my petsitter. Her eyes got very big when I told her the story. She told me to google “seductive sociopath.” I did, and that’s how I found LF.
The spath showed up at the next reptile show in my town and came up behind me at every booth and stood very close. It was very creepy. But I didn’t understand at the time that it was just a power play. I was still in denial and kept thinking maybe he really loved me. But I never contacted him again.
When he wouldn’t leave the reptile site, I called his army commander and told him the story. The commander believed me and asked me if the guy walked with a cane and slurred his speech. That’s when I realized there was no head injury. He can concocted this very elaborate scheme to get out of the army with a full pension. They think his wife was in on it, too. My friends and I over the next 6 months gave sworn statements that eventually got him convicted of fraud and adultery. But I don’t know whatever happened to him. That was in 2008. He did try to come back to the site shortly in 2009, right around the end of his investigation. My friends drove him off. I have not seen or heard from him since.
The end.
Ox Drove, LL~ True, or in his case, pretending to have all sorts of attributes and possessions. It’s a sad existence to have to pretend to be someone completely different.
Donna’s work, and this community’s support, is so important and I hope that I can provide some assistance as well.
A friend of mine sent this to me after I discovered the deceit – it was helpful at the time: http://articles.lovingyou.com/love/singles-dating/10-signs-you-are-dating-a-sociopath/
LL, Ox Drover~ True, or in my ex’s case, pretending to have all sorts of attributes and possessions. It’s a sad existence to have to pretend to be someone completely different.
Donna’s work, and this community’s support, is so important and I hope that I can provide some assistance as well.
A friend of mine sent this to me after I discovered the deceit – it was helpful at the time: http://articles.lovingyou.com/love/singles-dating/10-signs-you-are-dating-a-sociopath/
Ox Drover~ True, or in his case, pretending to have all sorts of attributes and possessions. It’s a sad existence to have to pretend to be someone completely different.
Donna’s work, and this community’s support, is so important and I hope that I can provide some assistance as well.
A friend of mine sent this to me after I discovered the deceit – it was helpful at the time: http://articles.lovingyou.com/love/singles-dating/10-signs-you-are-dating-a-sociopath/