Like many of you, I am very grateful for a few friends who acted as sounding boards as I processed my experience with a sociopath. The best talks have been with my exercise partner who is also a former Federal agent. About 2 years ago on one of our walks we discussed what it must be like to be inside the skin of a sociopath. Both of us tried to imagine what their inner world is like.
On that walk we both connected with ourselves and each other in a way we hadn’t before. The connection happened as we reflected on what it must be like to live a life without love. I realized that my sense of myself as a continuous person over time is based on the people I love and the values I have a passion for. Everywhere I go I carry with me a sense of duty, love and connection to my children and other loved ones. My dearest ones are always inside me. The fulfilling of duty to them gives life purpose and direction.
According to Dr. Cleckley, the first psychiatrist to really study sociopaths, the disorder produces an incapacity for love that is “complete”. Furthermore Dr. Cleckley states in his book, The Mask of Sanity that even those who have an “incomplete manifestation” of the disorder completely lack the capacity for love.
Without love to give themselves a sense of feeling and purpose, sociopaths are prone to boredom. They have to keep filling their lives with excitement and also abuse substances to fill the gap.
Sociopaths live in the moment because they lack the loving human connections that give everyone else a sense of continuity of person and purpose.
Sociopaths also have no true self because instead of being based on loving connections, their sense of themselves is based on who they can dominate in the moment. If yesterday they had to assume a certain identity to get over on person A, today they may have to assume another identity to get over on person B. This assumption of identities is not a problem for them because the goal is not loving or meaningful connectedness. The goal is the pleasure of the get over. They will become what they must to accomplish that goal.
I’ve been struggling over whether or not to include a section on “identity” in my next book. I am trying not to get too psychologically technical. But it might be helpful for victims and family members to reflect on identity and understand why sociopaths lack a stable sense of self. I am interested in your thoughts about that.
Since some of you indicated you wanted me to tackle an explanation of “borderline personality”. I’ve been reading on the issue of identity. On page 213 of “Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism” psychoanalyst Dr. Otto Kernberg says the following:
The normal integrated self and its related integrated conceptions of others guarantee a sense of continuity throughout time and under varying circumstances. They also guarantee a sense of belonging to a network of human relations that makes life meaningful, and they guarantee the ordinary “self feeling” we take for granted”¦
He also says that absent loving connections:
”¦ pathological subjective experiences of a painful and disturbing nature develop. Among these experiences predominates a sense of emptiness and futility of life, chronic restlessness and boredom..In typical cases, it is as if this emptiness were their basic modality of subjective experience from which they attempt to escape by engagement in many activities or in frantic social interactions, by the ingestion of drugs or alcohol or by attempts to obtain instinctual gratifications through sex, aggression, food or compulsive activities”¦
I hope you will spend what is left of summer reflecting on your own loving connections. As you contemplate the meaning of these connections and their importance to your sense of who you are, consider your own “self-feeling”. Realize that you have yourself to give yourself in intimacy to another either friend, family or lover, while the sociopath you know has nothing to give anyone.
Ninalinda, I read your post about 11:30 (site time and 7:30 am my time) but got sidetracked in responding to Kamalocity. Sorry. Then, when I got back to answering you after putting in a load of clothes that I “should have” done on Saturday, your post was already answered by PInow and Justabouthealed.
I hope their responses answered your question. I don’t have anything else to add, can only echo what both told you.
I’m just writing now to let you know that I did “hear” you — not at 6:50. I was still sleeping at that time! We are all in different time zones. Makes it difficult sometimes to get an answer right away. It’s happened to me, too, so I understand your frustration.
ANewLily, (love your name)
Thank you! I just want to tell you how this website has helped me. I keep telling myself that I need to get help. I’ve tried several couselors but seems like I just waste time, emotion, and money.
But this website has done wonders for me!!! It is so helpful!! I don’t get to go on it a lot, but when I do, it has truly helped me out more than any counselor or psychologist has.
And yes, their responses did answer my question. And I will definitely try it out!!
THANK YOU!!
Ok, I’m only going to type this once. Your wife cheated on you because she didn’t love you. She loved the other guy, or liked. You cant get up and hate people who don believe in the so called love or human connections. they may still be better then most people just because you don’t believe in love doesn’t mean life is over or your bored. life is more then just falling in love. it is just pathetic to say your wife cheating on you makes her a sociopath. Did she do other things making her seem like one? or was it just cheating on you and covering her lies, because that just makes her human.
JUSTABOUTHEALED,
Thank you so much for your post, so many similarities there, I am greatly encouraged!
I need to hear that he (S) is BAD. For that part of me that keeps wanting to think he was and could have been wonderful. The part that had “fun” with this. Lust, yes. Some of his parting words, I will always love you – I have to interpret to mean “I will always want to have sex with you”.
I do think too much about if he is going to try and contact me again. The part of me that wants him too, that tries to deceive me into thinking we could “try” it again, and the part of me that is afraid of it, and thinking he IS gone for good, constantly arguing with each other. I’m trying to convince myself that he knows my husband knows about it, and knows his name (he lives in same town), and knows husband’s family – will be enough to keep him out. And I am thinking he is not a “hardened criminal”, just more of a “petty thief” – that for the cheap thrill he was looking for, I am just too much trouble. I was often catching him at things and questioning him about it, based on the previous relationship with the other S/P. He had to spend a lot of time and effort trying to convince me he was NOT like the other guy.
Integrity – maybe – but my body really keeps me from carrying through with this stuff. Anxiety, and I passed out at work once looking at a picture of his wife on FB. That was the end. I couldn’t pretend that there was something legitimately wrong with me that I’d pass out and just brush that off.
But if he had wanted to keep me on the line, he sure was stupid about it. I passed out, then asked to see him the next day – our first meeting had been three weeks previous to this (he was not at all interested in seeing me more – both meetings were arranged by me) but I was giving him one more chance to try and make this “work”. And he said, will you be there (on IM) for me tonight? I said yes, and then he never showed up online. The next day, he was just – oh, busy night with the family. K – not doing this anymore. I am passing out and you know this, and you ask me to be available, then stand me up, and no apologies, no concern….. Not getting another chance to play with my mind. Stupid! Then I get “it was difficult for me to love you” in an email — stupid! Then I realized he never expressed a feeling unless I expressed it first – and he was a flippin’ parrot at it. me: I love you. Him: I love you too. me: I feel guilty. Him: I feel guilty too. me: I hate this. Him: I hate this too. me: it’s been ruff. Him: Ruff is an understatement. C’mon! Put something in your own words for crying out loud.
Sorry – off on a rant there….
But yes, my husband accepts a huge part of the blame for the situation. He was not hiding any drinking problems or anything, but we did not have any kind of a marriage in the true sense of the word. I just traded places with his mother, and he emotionally had remained at about age 17. He resisted my needs, pulled back – stayed busy with his own “stuff”, work, fishing, firewood. A trip to throw out the trash could take 2 hours depending on who was around to talk to. Any excuse to run an errand like that. I resented, but stopped nagging and just developed my own interests. Poor substitutions, in the end, for what I really needed. So I was cold to him, sex was mechanical, something I just “had” to do, and I was in charge of everything. Huge wall being built up. Nuclear bomb, exactly! But who was I to complain? We are Christians, faithfully attend church, he says he loves me, we have great kids, no obvious issues – so I took the teaching that we need to be “content” to the Nth degree, and stuffed myself with that. Even after Mr. S#1, I mostly blamed myself. So nothing really got changed. Nobody was minding the store. You know when Eve took the forbidden fruit, Adam was standing right there. He never said “STOP”!! The serpent had an easy sell. Adam’s thinking, hmmm, that’s interesting, wonder what’s gonna happen to HER?
We also had a nasty situation develop in our church, Pastor lying, deceitful – he’s got something going on, not sure what – but it ripped my heart apart – right before Mr. S2 turned up. I was so disillusioned with everything.
I was ready to run. I was devastated. I didn’t “have” my husband, church or church friends (in league with Pastor), parents (abusive), and Mr. S#2 was playing with my mind.
Well I could go on but something at work needs my attention.
thanks for listening and sharing!
I am listening and understanding.
The S is BAD.
If your integrity expresses through your body, that is fine! I started getting such bad dizziness, even a panic attack, also vomiting, and I KNEW I couldn’t go on. Stay NC. The man I was involved would do the same thing (as will you be on IM and not show up). And no apology, no concern. YOU DESERVE BETTER.
I realize now I should have addressed the issues in my marriage and either ended it or fixed it, not tried to get my needs met elsewhere while still married. For one thing, any man who will get involved with a married woman is BAD NEWS from the start. And I was certainly abandoning my own intergrity and values too, even though my husband agreed to open our marriage. I should have said “Why??!!! Why don’t we try to work things out instead???” I think we were both afraid it would end and were afraid of trying.
My husband and I made changes in our marriage that I never thought would be possible. We each had to face that we might end up alone and move forward from there. And it was hard to trust HIS motives, since he had lied to me, and hard for him to trust my motives, and so a lot going against us. Plus I after a P, my guard was way up!!!
But despite all that, we made it. I’ve never been more in love with him than I am now. We are solid.
PInow
Did he happen to live in CA or CO? 59 yrs old?
They are ALL so alike! LOL!
akitameg says:
Yes, to answer your question way back:
I believe my ex psychopath had planned it from the day I met him. I.E. that if his plan to defraud the health insurance group went well, then he would kick me out immediately he received it. If it didn’t go well, he would have kept me aroung a bit longer – until one of his other schemes worked out. He smeared me to EVERYONE (behind my back) the whole time I was with him. This was in preparation for his discard and devalue routine that was INEVITABLE at a later date.
I felt the intensity of the smear campaign go up a million volts two weeks before he kicked me to the curb. It didn’t affect me because i have never cared what other people think as i have been surrounded by jealousy and tall poppy syndrome all my life.In Australia, they pride themselves on the “tall poppy syndrome, or “the crab in the bucket” syndrome. I.E. you can safely leave a big bucket of crabs out because as soon as one reaches the top all the others will pull him down and use him to get up themselves. Australians are know for this behaviour. They don’t like people bragging or saying that they are doing well and getting ahead ( especially if they feel that they themselves are not). And they will “bring them down to earth with a big bang”, if they can. ” Are you bignoting?” is a quick question to try to bring you shame for doing well. There’s a saying here : “you’r not a protected species you know, you’r not a f#%kn koala bear”. Its a class thing. Remember we were founded on brutally killing all our Indigenous People and planting convicts as the backbone of our society here in Oz.
My ex psychopath had two daughters and a son. He always did the oscar winning performance “loving connections ” with them.
In fact he emotionally tortured them and still is. The thing is:
He trained them too well, they are all doomed psychopaths and are far more dangerous than he is. He is actually afraid of them now, but would never admit it. Still he has a huge capacity to trigger them all against each other which he still did to perfection when I was a hostage there.
The three adult children worked as a team to get rid of me from the day of my arrival. He knew they would. One of his daughters came into the bedroom (she was not drunk or on drugs) when we were asleep and assaulted me and samashed all my grandmothers heirlooms and swore her head of screaming at me like a lunatic. she is 27. Much later SHE got a Apprehended violence order against ME!! Her sister (older) destroyed all my clothing and threw everything out of my draws. I banned them from the house and the alcoholic son would come in and check I wasn’t home to create havoc with my things and my dogs.
Now they have my dogs and my things and he has a new young Indian victim. But she is a gold digger so hopefuly she will do some damage back to him, but i doubt it.
Oxy:
Miss yu!xo