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.
My spath would manipulate his targets to betray their loved ones.
Men would betray their wives by putting my husband’s interests and friendships first before their wives and divorce would follow. Wives would cheat on their husbands and get divorced to be with my husband only to find that their great passion was over and he never even thought to leave me. Betrayal also meant they’d cut themselves off from their support system so they’d have no allies to help them rebuilt their lives. Another ex: they’d “invest” the family savings in my husband’s projects without others knowledge so that the money wasn’t there when family needed it, such as after a flood, or when someone married and needed assistance to buy a business so they could stay in the area and make a living.
Or he’d talk old people into leaving him a share of their estate, and instead of family getting a little help, they were cut out. In a small town, that inheritance was usually expected, as the person likely received it from a grandparent and the next generation was expected to keep it in the family which helped families maintain their dairies/ranches/small businesses that existed over 150 years. When my husband got the inheritance instead, it broke up family legacies and the fabric of the town was affected.
Oh yes, I want to hear! He has to move to another continent? AWwwww, too bad, so sad! It better not be Costa Rica, cause that’s where I’m planning to move some day.
Katydid
That is horrible.
deleted
I so love hearing these kinds of stories – the justice part anyway. Good for you! That’s part of their invincibility. They think they can just tell people what they did, and it won’t be a big deal. They think that others probably think like they do.
My spath once couldn’t believe that I was still working in my friend’s house I was painting, even when my friend left and went to the store. I said, “He’s paying me by the hour.” The spath said, “Yeah but most people would just goof off if they could.” I think he really believed that everyone was just like him.
Athena
My husband loved to lie too. And then say something to make you doubt the lie. So that he implied he’d never lie and if you thought so, YOU were the twisted one. So which did you believe? The lie that he joked about but was so blantant that you thought it could not possibly be true OR the implication lie of questioning what was wrong with you that you’d WANT to go looking for lies from a person who was the very salt of the earth type like my husband with “his honest face!!”?
Is that the kind of lie your husband loved to tell?
Stargazer
That’s the “Everybody does it’ excuse.
There’s a lot of people who live their lives thinking that others do what they themselves do. It’s like in grade school, so and so skipped school so what’s so bad about skipping school? Only so and so only TALKED about skipping school, they didn’t actually do it.
Cheat others? What not? Everybody does it.
It’s like they missed the childhood lecture about jumping off a cliff.
Lucky me, he wasn’t my husband, Katy.
That is interesting the approach yours took.
No. Mine lied in such obvious ways it was unthinkable.
Not breadcrumbs. A LOAF OF BREAD in your FACE. He’s throw lies in your face. Huge outrageous lies. And you’d be like, WTF, that is so glaring it just can’t be a lie. There must be something else to the story.
But there wasn’t.
He was gleeful, and loved to throw it in your face.
Yes, they are egocentric and it is one of their downfalls. In reality, I think we are all a little egocentric. I would assume that most people *wouldn’t* cheat a friend, because I know I wouldn’t.
My spath would never use that excuse: everybody does it.
He portrayed himself as being above the dirty unwashed masses. He didn’t do what everyone else did.
BUT his minions did. All the spaths that he had brought in to harass me said exactly that: Everybody does it.
These are the ones I call the dumb spaths and that’s one of their red flags. The uber psychopaths are harder to discern because the mask is firmly in place and they portray themselves as holier than thou, better than your average joe and your bestest friend EVER. Yet, in a way, that would also be their downfall because when their mask slips, even just a little, the dichotomy is much greater. That such a flawless human could behave contrary to their portrait, is a red flag. Live and learn.
Sky, your spath was a very special kind of spath – a particularly dark evil spath, the mother of all spaths, it sounds like. Mine was just a dumb run-of-the-mill spath. When he messed with me, he messed with the wrong person. And yet, I’m sure, wherever he is, he is messing with someone else’s head. They don’t change, they just change victims. Long after it was over with my spath, I had a dream about him that he was in a prison cell charming the female prison guards. It wouldn’t surprise me if it were true. I’m not sure if he went to prison, but he very well could have.