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.
Just a quick FYI- Women who Love Psychopaths is no longer in print/available through lovefraud or amazon etc. I was quite bummed out to learn that as it sounds like a book I need to read!
And BTW, if anyone has one they’d like to sell I’d be interested. Let me know here or let Donna know as she knows I was trying to locate a copy earlier this summer…
Dear Liz,
the common theme with women who love psychopaths seems to be that they are CARING and GIVING and KIND among other things and let their desire to be “good” and “nice’ overcome their good sense where the psychopaths are concerned. The Ps know how to HOOK into the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) and keep us blind.
You mentioned that you did not want to “ruin everyone’s good time” or something to that theme, but you have a RIGHT to take care of yourself, even if it does “make a bit of a scene.” You are not obligated to let someone use/abuse you to keep from making a scene.
‘
Some one on here today said she told her X “You are dead to me” and when he kept talking she said “the dead don’t talk” and waved him away. THAT WAS GREAT!
Even though he is a loud mouthed creep, just use that phrase. “John, you are dead to me.” and if he continues to talk, use the second line a little louder (but still calm) and then just pretend he is INVISIBLE, like a ghost you can neither see nor hear. If he comes off loud and nasty, just keep on “not seeing” him, and if he becomes threatening, then leave with someone else (so he cannot follow you and get you alone) or CALL THE COPS. Do not let him intimidate you by “causing a scene” JUST KEEP YOUR COOL, EXTERNALLY at least, even if you don’t feel cool inside. What he wants to do is use “social settings” to keep you where you will listen to him rather than “cause a scene.”
Let HIM cause the scene, you continue to be cool and dismissibve of him. YOU CAN DO IT!!!!
“—-if they can’t get to you anymore, they will go away and find someone else to prey on”.
I just realised that the last ex P thought that he “couldn’t get to me anymore” and that is why he thru me to the curb.
In actual fact, he was still getting very much to me, but I was “naming it”. You know, I was saying things to him like… (in an argument)
“don’t worry darling, I would never kill you…you are way to unhappy alive for me to want to put you out of your misery”. At the time I didn’t realise that this type of made him think that I was over him, but in fact I wasn’t.
I am grateful for my beautiful son who loves me
I am grateful for the friends I have on lovefraud.
I am grateful for the rat in the roof over my head, sorry ,the roof over my head,
I am grateful i am not in prison,
I am grateful i am not in the nuthouse or in hospital,
I am grateful I am not a paraplegic or an invalid
I am grateful that my health is ok
I am grateful for the apple in the fridge
I am grateful I can pay the rent
I am grateful that my son is alive and healthy
I am grateful for the bomb car that i bought
I am grateful that i am not freezing cold
I am grateful that i have clean water
I am grateful that I am not in a relationship with a sick unit
I am grateful that I can see and hear
Yep, I wont commit suicide tonight
Thanks God.
i am grateful i am not a drunk on the streets or an addict
Dear Tilly,
You forgot one:
I am grateful that I am not a psychopath who cannot feel love.
Dear Tilly, no matter how desperate our situation is, we are always better off than the Ps. If nothing else, not a one of them I have known has actually ever had a spiritual aspect to them, even if they were “church members” it was simply mouthing something they truly did not believe, or using the Bible as a club with which to condemn others for the very things they were doing.
WE DO have many things to be grateful for even if those things are basic and simple. I spent enough time in the third world contries where there were many people walking the streets who had NONE of the things you mentioned above in your list of what you are grateful for.
I still have a vision in my head of a father carrying a child who had died of what looked like malnutrition in his arms, with a small piece of a sheet in Colombia. He was carrying that small child to be put in the communal grave for those poor people who could not RENT a coffin and a grave. His child would be covered over with dirt that evening with the hundreds of other bodies placed there by their families or picked up like dead dogs off the street by the sanitation crews.
Even when my kids and I were living in the back of my truck with a shell over the bed (not a camper, just a roof) for three months, parking in state parks for safety and water, I was still better off than many people who don’t even have the metal shell over their heads and their only transportation is their feet. Like Brilhancey and the chicken wings for Christmas, I made it an adventure of camping for my kids and they thought we were having “fun.”
I too don’t always count my REAL blessings like I should. Thanks for reminding me! (((hugs))))) and God bless you.
Dear Liz,
Your guy sounds a lot like someone I dated in college. He was 10 years older, which made me soooo sophisticated. But he played endless games and enjoyed messing with me. He tore me down. I couldn’t cal him my boyfriend. I wore my hair wrong – blah, blah, blah. I’d break up with him. He’d start calling and telling me he loved me. He was horrible! Every time I dumped him, he’d turn up again. He’d get me hooked and start in with reminding me what was wrong with me.
We’ve been talking about revenge a bit. Well, after college this guy reconnected with me. He wanted to be friends. I was living with another guy at the time. He took me out to dinner so he could apologize and then gave me a check for $2,000! We sat in the car for about an hour while I made him promise that I’d never have to return the money or do anything in exchange, etc…
Of course, it was no surprise that, gee!, he actually did want something! He wanted me to present myself for a date every 2 weeks. I told him to beat it. He wrote me a nice letter telling me he was embarrassed to admit to his friends that he’d ever known me. I would never amount to anything in life. Then it segued into the idea that he loved me and maybe we could work things out. Somehow, seeing this on paper (and being in love with a normal person) really made things so clear.
I told him to beat it. He asked for his money back. He never got it. I ran into him about 5 years later and he still wanted his money back. I thanked him for the nice gift, turned by back, and walked the other way down the street.
I guess that’s the closest you can get to revenge on someone like that. But, truth be told, it’s not worth seeking revenge. It’s so much more healthy to walk away and find real love.
My husband and I have been married for 20 years. We’ve had our ups and downs, but he’s nice to me and I’m nice to him. We help each other. When my sociopathic mother messes with me, I know I’ll find comfort in my husband’s understanding, sympathetic and loving arms. When he hugs me and dries my tears I know I’m home.
I was thinking about sociopathic chameleons last night. And thought I’d share this thought. It may sound hokey, but we were listening to Harry Potter on CD in the car. J.K. Rowling writes that when Voldemort tried to kill Harry as an infant, Harry was saved by the strength of his parent’s love for him. That got me thinking.
The power of love can change the world. The bond that real love creates between lovers, or a parent and child, is indescribable. People like my mother can fake love, but they don’t have the ability to feel it. I think she sees that we all have something that is beyond her. She wants it for herself. So, like Voldemort, she thinks she can steal it. She thinks she can make us give it to her. She thinks that if she can frighten us enough, we’ll have no will left to fight and that will make us love her.
The irony is that we do, in fact, love her. She’s our mother. We don’t like her. We have as little to do with her as possible. But we love her. Too bad she will never understand that.
When I was about 5 I saw Mom walk up to my 2 year old sister and wallop her. My sister cried, of course. She had no idea what she’d done. Mom let her cry a while, then picked her up and comforted her. My sister clung to her and was so happy to have her mother’s “love.”
As a final thought, I’ll leave you with this. Love is intoxicating. There is no better feeling in the world than that time when you’re first in love and you can’t get enough of each other. It feels so good. (Luckily for me, my husband and I can still recapture that feeling after 20 years). Likewise, there’s no more intense love than the love you have for your child. You know it will never end. I think sociopaths feel that same sense of intoxication. But it’s hate that fills them up.
JK Rowling writes of souls. Do souls come from different places? Do some of us come from light and others from dark? I think so.
Oops, I meant to add after the part about Mom hitting my sister, that it was that feeling of total power and control over my sister that filled my mother up. It wasn’t love. It was hatred and control. She’d like us (my siblings and I) to be zombies – or 2 year-olds who aren’t old enough to know better. When my sister clung to her, Mom didn’t feel loved. She felt powerful.
Dear Runningaway,
Glad you are here posting, those are some powerful insights. I am glad for you that your life turned out better than they would have if you had fallen again for the psychopathic guy.
Thanks! By the way, Psychopathic Guy went on to abuse other women. In one case, he tried to get custody of his girlfriend’s daughter. Not his daughter! Last I heard, he was alone after 6 marriages. Fortunately for me, we dated when “open relationships” were in vogue. I was in college and managed to have lots of fun during the disco era. He was the one dark spot in an otherwise fun time. And I learned my lesson early – only date nice guys.