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.
New Winter, yes, psychopathyawareness is my blog, and thanks so much for your kind compliment. But I have to admit that my whole learning process began here three years ago, on lovefraud, where I discovered Steve Becker, Liane Leedom, and other experts and first learned about psychopathy. Plus I found a lot of emotional support in the contributors’ posts. I never posted myself back then because I was still shell-shocked from what had happened to me and my family. Coming face to face with pure evil disguised as “true love” is, as you know, a very disconcerting experience. So for a few years I just absorbed information, went to therapy, and afterwards started to process this information by writing about it. This website is the original lifesaver for so many of us.
Claudia,
What an inspirational story! This site certainly does seem to be a starting point for so much healing and knowledge for victims. I found the articles on your blog to be especially interesting, because you really spell everything out and get right into the mind of those whackos (if that’s even possible)! Really well done– I sent the “mirroring” article to some of my friends so they can finally begin to understand why I got so sucked in and why I was so convinced everything was perfect. Because, for a second, it was
Thanks again for such a great resource
New Winter, you’re welcome. Your story is inspirational too, in some respects more so than mine because you’re so young and were able to take a devastating experience and make something creative and constructive out of it. Each of us here has a way of doing that, be it through writing or by reaching out and comforting and helping others who have been traumatized by their experiences with a psychopath.
Thanks so much, that means a lot to me 🙂 By the way, I still gotta send you over some pages from my book! Will do in the morning when I’m on my main computer.
I guess I am proud of the progress I’ve made from such a bad experience, but unfortunately one of the other results seems to be depression. I don’t think a 21-year-old should ever be thinking the things I think, and I know I’m getting past them, but to have such negative and paranoid views of society / people / life, is just sad. Especially at such a young age. I feel like my childhood was just completely robbed from me.
That’s why I want revenge. But then again, that only wastes more of my time on the guy who doesn’t deserve another second of my thoughts.
New Winter, I can relate so well to what you say. I’ve never hated anyone my whole life: except for this psychopath. Even the thought of him makes me blow up, especially since he still harasses me by email. What makes me so angry is that he played not just with my heart, but also with my family–including my two kids, who were then 8 and 10 yrs old–as a conquest game for him. My kids were devastated when they heard my husband and I were about to divorce. Thank God we didn’t.
But even though you think about vengeance against the psychopath, I hope you won’t do it if it’s anything that might boomerang back to hurt you. You’re on a roll with flourishing, and building something beautiful out of what could have been a total disaster. I can’t control my anger and sense of betrayal sometimes either. But the concept of “grey rock” I’ve just learned last week on this site helps. “Grey Rock” means ignore the psychopath, don’t feed into his drama, but it doesn’t mean stay passive. You’re NOT being passive at all. You’re moving on with your life, processing this experience, writing a novel that already promises to be a big success. As they say: the best revenge is living well.
Dear Claudia,
I’m glad that you liked my “pearls of wisdom”—I assume the CHECK IS IN THE MAIL for my millions in royalties! LOL ROTFLMAO 🙂
Seriously I hope that they do someone some good—funny thing is I KNEW ALL THIS I just DID NOT APPLY IT TO MYSELF….that’s the crazy and funny/odd thing about all this is that it wasn’t lack of knowledge so much as it was just NOT SEEING THE LOG IN MY OWN EYE WHILE I TRIED TO PICK THE SPECK OUT OF SOMEONE ELSE’S EYE.
Yea, that “petting the snake” thing…I thought that was a good one too, and I had forgotten about that one, at least not thought about it in a long time. I’m glad it helped you. I wonder sometimes just about how many people read here and do not post and get some “good” out of what we blog but we never even know they are there. I hope it is a huge number—but even if it is only ONE it is worth something. The pain that is inflicted on victims by the abusers is so terrible, I would move heaven and earth if I could just to release one person out of the slavery of pain we weld around our necks like slave collars.
Claudia,
Ahh I completely empathize with you!! It’s so frustrating to actually hate someone. Everything you learn in common wisdom/religion/spirituality says to forgive and be happy. That works for everyone, even the most annoying/horrible people, but NOT sociopaths! They are an exception that just doesn’t fit.
Living well though is definitely the ultimate revenge. It’s also healthier, less stressful, and more peaceful. Still though, I can’t help but want to warn his friends and out him to the world. I know he got terrified when I finally figured him out, and I want everyone to figure him out. He has no control over me anymore. I think I’m one of the strongest people he’s ever targeted, and he’s quickly starting to regret it.
And there’s nothing he could do to boomerang into my life and hurt me. My friends & family all know what he is and have been warned about his tactics. He has nothing on me anymore. And he knows that. He screwed with the wrong guy, and I think he knows now that his only weapons — poisonous words — don’t work on me anymore. So he’s afraid of me, and he hates me. I’m glad.
Still, the flourishing and staying positive will always win! It’s just that little part of me I can’t seem to get rid of, no matter how happy I am. My “Dark Passenger”, as Dexter would call it 😛
Oxy,
I think that only a small fraction of the people who visit and are helped by lovefraud.com are visible, regular contributors. This website helps so many more people than one can see. And–a feature that’s unique about it–it offers online friendship too: since I’ve started posting, I’ve become genuinely fond of my lovefraud friends and love to keep in touch with them. We comfort and support one another. You, in particular, play a special role: you’re the maternal figure here, because you take the time and invest the emotional energy to welcome each of us and support us when we’re down, particularly in an emergency situation. That’s not flattery; it’s a fact.
Speaking of which, here you are (or at least your analogy), in this therapy scene of The Seducer:
“I’m nobody’s puppet,” Ana protested.
“Do you feel that if you had behaved differently at the end, he’d have been good to you?” the therapist pursued, steering the dialogue away from mutual insults.
“That’s what I hoped. I thought that if I treated Michael right, loved him with all my heart and did my best to make him happy, he’d never hurt me.”
“Love can’t solve everything. Especially if it doesn’t exist in the first place,” Dr. Emmert commented. “But the metaphor you used is quite helpful. Just look at Michael as a pet snake. No matter how nice and loving you are to him, he won’t grow fur and become a puppy. Sooner or later, he’ll attack you.” He stole a glance at Rob, who from the very start had intuitively struck him as a decent fellow. “If you became Michael’s partner, you’d have seen the difference between the dominance bond he established with you and real love.”
New Winter, I have that same part too, that wishes the psychopath would continue not wearing his seatbelt (since he never liked to wear one)… Maybe I’m being too vindictive, but, frankly, like you, I don’t wish the psychopath well. We may get our wishes. Usually their mean behavior leads them to self-destruct, sooner or later.
But I also admire the people who are less vengeful than me. And sometimes my fits of anger against the psychopath misfire against the wrong person. For example, I started writing on this website almost two weeks ago, still upset and hypervigilant about my psychopath’s daily email harassment and exploded, all of a sudden, against innocent and sweet Hens, thinking one of his messages was written by my psychopath:). I even reported the incident, along with an Eminem song by another legitimate contributor to this website, to Donna–and Hens’s one of the most cherished, regular and longstanding members of lovefraud! In retrospect, this seems so absurd that it’s almost funny now, but my explosion, aimed at the wrong person, caused quite a stir and offended people I didn’t mean to offend. You can read the thread and see for yourself. I’m just glad that Hens accepted my apology and I wasn’t ousted from this website.
Claudia, your kind words mean more to me than you can imagine. I too have found some wonderful friends here at LF, and I am grateful every day for Donna for making this site possible so that we have a place to come here and heal. I literally believe it saved my sanity if not my life. I will forever be grateful for that!
Claudia, forgiving ourselves for the part(s) we played and stopping the hurt we feel will help us to NOT strike out at others as a result of our own pain. We DO strike out at others when we are hurting. We do things we would never otherwise have considered. Forgiving all around–forgiving them and forgiving ourselves–simply means we ACCEPT what they have done, not approve of it, or validate it, just accept it. Same with forgiving ourselves, we accept it, and move on forward.
http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2008/08/13/forgiveness-and-the-psychopath/#respond
Here is an article I wrote a while back, not sure if you read it or not but when we forgive OURSELVES we are not so raw that we are so prone to strike out in our own pain.
I remember one of the first nights after my husband’s tragic death a family friend drove 7 hours to be here and she was so nervous she kept chattering and chattering. Everyone else had gone to sleep and I NEEDED TO HAVE SOME QUIET TIME TO MYSELF. I asked her to please stop talking and that made her more nervous and she started to chatter more and I really was so RAW I told her if she didn’t shut her mouth, if she made ONE MORE SOUND I WOULD BREAK HER LIPS ON HER TEETH (or words to that effect) I had every intention of doing so too. I NEEDED QUIET and whatever I had to do to get it I felt justified in doing. I said horrible things to her out of my own pain. I verbally struck out VIOLENTLY at her and I’m sure would have actually been physically violent if she had not stopped talking.
We do that when we are in pain, but having to forgive ourselves, and believe me, forgiving myself over hurting her that night has been a very difficult thing…
I think you have made some amazing progress and I am so glad that you and your husband have been able to renew your commitment to each other and to your children. If we miss learning from adversity and failures, we miss a great opportunity for growth! Glad you are here!