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.
Star
Beautiful job!!!! I love it!
Hugs to you, you made me laugh today!
Athena
You know what, Star?
Your story made me realize something.
I bet that those of us who “backspathed” our spaths did nothing directly to hurt them. We didn’t lie. We didn’t stab them with a knife. We didn’t steal their money. We didn’t murder. We did nothing of the sort.
It’s just that their SPATHYNESS visible to those who “needed” to know – whether a judge, an employer, a wife, a community, a lover, whomever.
Athena,
It’s like the martial art of aikido. In aikido, you don’t actually do combat with the person when they come at you. You just step out of the way and allow them to fall on their face. You can give them a little help in doing so. Even so, I was amazed at how easy this was. As far as spaths go, this was a very stupid one.
If you want to backspath someone, here are some useful tips:
1. Always have the camera ready! You never know when you will catch them in the act.
2. Always save voice messages. You never know when they will come in handy.
3. If they post on internet forums, save their pictures and posts. They can always delete them later and say they never happened.
4. Make sure the spath meets your friends. You never know when you’ll need them as witnesses.
Star,
Those are good tips.
In my case, #4 didn’t work. He just had sex with my friends and turned them against me. He’s a sex addict and very good at it. Male or female, it doesn’t matter.
His life’s work was to isolate me, so he would slither up to anyone I met and slander me. Of course he would do it in a “nice” way, expressing concern about my drug and alcohol problem.
With some spaths, it’s better if they don’t meet your friends, then you have somewhere to run when you need to.
Wow! He had sex with your friends? Some friends! I meant your REAL friends! A real friend wouldn’t have sex with your partner. Jeez. There is no way my ex could have had sex with my friends because he was never out of my sight with them. It wasn’t intentional – it just happened that way.
There was another attractive woman from our reptile site who lived in his town. After our split, I called her to see if he had targeted her, too. She told me that he had visited her (which he never mentioned to me) and her snakes. But she told me he wore his wedding ring and kept mentioning his “wife”. With me he never wore his ring. And he called his wife his “ex wife”. I always thought it odd that he didn’t try to hit on this other woman. She was a little younger than me and fairly attractive. And also he told her the truth. Logic-defying, these spath behaviors, aren’t they? She was completely destitute and about to live in a homeless shelter, so maybe he figured she had nothing to offer him. Not that I have much more, but he didn’t know that.
And you know what else was spath-defying, sky? He always paid for everything! He always drove, always bought dinner, never let me touch my wallet. The entire time I knew him. He once bought us two tickets to go to a concert. The tickets weren’t cheap – like $80 each. Then (predictably) he had some drama come up with his “ex” wife and couldn’t go. But as if in anticipation of that, he actually drove up to my house the week before and GAVE me the tickets so I could go with someone else. Really unspath-like.
Star,
he had sex with my gay male friend behind my back.
I never knew until after I left him, then I figured out that my gay friend had been dropping hints at me. He was convinced that my spath was a closet gay (like he was) and using me as a beard.
My spath acted SOOO straight that I never would have imagined it.
Your spath was grooming you. Mine paid for everything at first too. He also acted like he didn’t just want to get into my pants. Everything he did and portrayed was 180 degrees the opposite of what he would eventually show himself to be.
Edit:
what I have figured out is that the reason he is soooo good at sex is because he has made it part of his mission. He knows the power of being really really good at sex (with males or females). People crave that experience over and over, so he knew that it would help cement their loyalty if they could remember how great that sexual experience had been.
He’s all about power and he doesn’t care what he has to do to have it. Not the type of power a wealthy or strong person has, but the type of power that a hypnotist or svengali would have. His focus is on the power that emotional experiences provide. He’s consumed with that.
xx
Skylar
My spath also targeted my closest friends, specifically charming them into doubting and then deserting me. They ALL adore him now and think me the worst woman ever. In spite of some of them knowing me from age 12, they decided they didn’t know me at all, that I was hiding who I really was. THis conclusion that I HIDE the real me, in spite of knowing I live my life OPEN and TRANSPARENT.
People say that I was not controlled b/c I could leave (on trips). But my husband controlled where every single dollar went, where I was when I was gone, and of course, he had my daughter whom he knew I would NEVER leave and would stay to protect. My daughter also adored him, that is, until he unmasked to her too. When you live 24/7, it’s extremely difficult to hide your whole persona. When my daughter discovered my husband’s true self, she hated ME only slightly less than she hated him.
To not have any family, and to have your friends charmed to the dark side, to be beholden to someone who holds your child hostage to their good will, to have no place to go and to be too sick to work to care for yourself… how is that defined as “not isolated”. Oh and where our house was, on a dead end road with only his family on all the land surrounding it so geographically no where to run in an emergency… not that any townpeople would have helped since he was original settler and the town prince…
What I learned was that I trusted people who were not trustworthy and time does not make them so. Just b/c we were childhood friends doesn’t make a bond. Bonds break easily. While I am VERY loyal, most are not. Even my best friend, who knows I risked my life for, forgot that part of me when she sided with him.
As I told people, I was never so alone as when I was married.
Now that I am away and have been for three years, I have two, and only two friends that I consider loyal. All the rest are acquaintences and not trustworthy even as I may enjoy them socially. Pretty sad state of negativity on my part, but I haven’t found a solution to the aloneness dilemma yet.
Still looking to Skylar to lead the way 🙂