It is no accident that narcissistic and sociopathic personalities will seek, and often successfully attract, partners who have their own issue: a tendency to dread the idea of disappointing or displeasing them.
This is admittedly a generality, but it’s a pattern I’ve observed in my clinical experience, and it makes sense. The exploiter, who regards others as existing principally to satisfy his or her wants on a continual basis, must by definition find in a mate someone who is highly motivated—and especially, highly afraid not—to satisfy him or her.
Thus one often finds the pairing of an exploiter complemented by a partner who is prone, perhaps compulsively, to look inward to himself or herself as the cause of the exploiter’s dissatisfaction.
Clinically the goal is to encourage the over-accountable, overresponsible partner to examine this aspect of himself or herself. This is necessary given the fair assumption that sociopaths and narcissists are unlikely to genuinely reform their characteristically manipulative, selfish ways.
I’m often surprised in my work by the tenacious investment exploited partners make in solving the needs and complaints of their self-centered mates. Of course they’ll never succeed, but as long as they continue owning the exploiter’s blame for the latters’ discontent, they can keep trying, keep striving to be a better mate—to become, finally, the good-enough mate the exploiter has claimed to deserve all along.
Let us emphasize the futility of this scenario—the exploiter really doesn’t want a satisfying or, for that matter, even a perfect, partner; rather what he or she wants is a partner who, in his or her insecurity, will continue to accept on some level blame for the exploiter’s unending, habitual exploitation.
The exploiter, in other words, is looking much less for the perfect partner than the perfect scapegoat. For this reason the sociopath and many narcissists will recruit these qualities in a partner—qualities, for instance, of high self-doubt, high guilt, high fear of incurring others’ wrath or displeasure, and a strong tendency to self-blame.
Moreover individuals possessing these qualities will tend to be drawn to individuals who seem to be their counterpart in many ways—for instance confident, self-assured, powerful-seeming, unself-doubting, and perhaps unself-reflective. They may harbor the fantasy that the latters’ seeming strength and confidently entitled attitudes may prove a salutary complement to their self-questioning, self-doubting natures.
And this is certainly possible—this complementarity can theoretically work—in situations uncomplicated by sociopathy or narcissistic personality.
But when the more confident partner is a sociopath, or narcissist, this complementarity of personalities becomes a set-up. The less confident partner, whose tendency is to self-destructively accept the exploiter’s blame for the latter’s rages, discontent, abuse and general misery, becomes the perfect foil, the perfect dupe, for the sociopathic or narcissistic partner, who has it made, so to speak.
Again and again I encounter wonderful, thoughtful, emotionally generous individuals who are trapped less by their exploitative partners than the intolerable idea of themselves as failed mates. The result is their often intensified efforts to be found satisfactory by, and to obtain validation from, the exploiter.
The exploiter is, of course, incapable of appreciating his or her partner’s devotion. But even if not, he or she would intentionally withhold such recognition anyway; his or her object, remember, rather than to uplift his or her partner, is calculatingly the opposite—to engender hopelessness and depression in him or her.
On and on the cycle goes, until the vulnerable partner, just as the exploiter has sought, finally feels so low, incompetent and disempowered that he or she can’t seriously imagine a different future.
By now a form of despair has set in—the despair of expecting to be found just as wanting in future relationships as the present. Dangerous resignation follows this hopelessness—again, exactly the outcome the exploiter wants.
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2008 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Sky ~ I only see my mother about every couple of months too. I am so glad that I live far enough away that I don’t see her more often. I can deal with her for a couple of days when we drive back to my hometown for visits.
I have other family and friends there, so our time in the company of my mother is broken up by visits with others. I couldn’t handle it otherwise. I still love her… but I really don’t LIKE her. She is not someone I would choose as a friend.
Educating the parental units…. I wouldn’t even begin to try with my mother, that’s for sure. It’s just not worth the effort to me. She will always be just the way she is: Controlling, demanding, domineering, etc.
I hope that things go well for you with the hypnotherapist you’ve contacted. (((hugs)))
Time for this gal to get to bed. Nighty-night 🙂
Sky, Good luck with the Hypnosis, baby girl! Dont forget I adopted you online! I think its a WASTE OF TIME trying to change our parents or make ANY spaths love us. They cant love, you know this logically!
Its when we finally relinquish the false hope against hope that things can be any different that we start to heal.
Not easy Im still struggling with it.But YOU ARE LOVED!!
God loves you and so do I, and so do lots of us here on LF!!.
Love,}}
Mama GemXx
thank you (((Mama Gem)))
I know that. but knowing and feeling are two different things. You’ve been there done that, I know too.
You were telling me how you don’t paint anymore because of what your daughter did to your art work and I think that is a terrible shame (on her).
It’s the same kind of thing, I think. You know that you are talented but you have let them influence you. Do what you need to do to get back what they took. Don’t let them change you in any way. I know you had a chakra session, perhaps try hypnotherapy or some aura healing too. Do whatever it takes and don’t let anyone hold you back. We’ve lost too much already to these creatures.
Not only that, Gem, but this is a war for humanity and we need all of our soldiers in tip-top condition to fight for the side of good against evil. Do everything you can to regain your true self so you can fight on our side.
Thank you so much Sky, you are right!
Yes, these creatures I gave birth to HAVE stolen so much from me. From today, I vow to start to reclaim back the ground they have stolen from me! Thanks again!!
Much Love,
Mama GemXX
Sky,
You feel “obligated” to your parents because they are “nice” AND TAKE CARE OF YOUR CATS?….yet, you have talked about how enabling they are of your P-brother and your P-sister, and how they allowed them to abuse you as a child. EXCUSE ME, BUT THAT IS “NICE”?
So which is it? are they NICE to you? Or are they MEAN to you? Or is it both nice sometimes and mean sometimes? Well, heck even Ted Bundy wasn’t murdering and raping 24/7, sometimes he was “nice” to his friend Ann. LOL
I’m not being a smart ass here Sky, I’m trying to make you think about what you really feel and think about how your parents act. It it what they are DOING? Or is it how you are FEELING about what they are doing that is your problem with your parents? I’m hearing some amblivilence in your stories about your parents and how you were treated as a child, how you are treated now, and all the “drama” that went on with your brother getting you arrested for DV and so on. I mean, come on, Sky, when the cops are coming in and hauling people off to jail that is a lot of DRAMA going on in that family “play”
Okay, so they take care of your cats….sort of I guess….if the place stinks of cat pith they aren’t taking very good care of them in my estimation, but that’s just my opinion….I love my little cat but I would NOT have contact with my egg donor if egg donor was giving my cat a place to live because I couldn’t. I would not allow my egg donor or anyone else to hold me “hostage” because of the cat. I’D find some way to re-home the cat or put it to sleep before I would allow egg donor to ruin my life using the cat as a “hostage.” Or I would find a way to take care of the cat MYSELF.
I hear a feeling of “obligation” on your part to do their taxes because they take care of your cats….and you are not fulfilling that obligation because of the stressful feelings you have when you are around these people.
You frequently speak of how your BF “pays you” to do this or that but you actually do little of it because you just are not motivated. Those all sound to me like symptoms of clinical depression and I do strongly suggest that you seek counseling, Sky…with or without hypnosis. Hypnosis can be part of a theraputic venue but it is not “magic” by any means. If it was then everyone would only need 1 or 2 sessions of hypnosis and BINGO all problems would be solved and we’d all over come our trauma bonds and emotional pain in just a couple of sessions of hypnotherapy.
I’ve seen some progress in you Sky, and what happens when we make progress in dealing with one trauma and start to heal from that is that we now become AWARE of the UNDERLYING injury from a previous relationship we had not been acutely aware of before….like peeling the onion we find new layers there.
I know you are right Oxy. Spaths are only nice to us so that we will ALLOW them to treat us like shit later. That’s the intermittent reward crap.
The pain of realizing this is so hard to take. Doing the hard work of letting it go – letting them go – is what I’m trying to do. I do appreciate your reminders to look at the WHOLE picture and see the truth in that way. We will know the tree by the fruit it bears. Pain is all the fruit I’ve picked from those trees. Maybe I should just call my parents “the pain trees.” as a way of reminding myself of what I can expect when I go to pick the lovely looking fruit they offer.
If I forget Oxy, and post without calling them “pain trees”, just boink me with the skillet.
Sky,
I thinnk your analogy of “pain trees” is a VERY GOOD ONE….and One that I think we should apply to every relationship we have….what is the FRUIT of that relationship? Is it sweet good fruit, or is it good looking fruit with a BITTER TASTE? Or is it rotten to the core?
Of course every “tree” will occasionally have a rotten apple fall from it, or a wormy one, but when the MAJORITY OF THE FRUIT IS ROTTEN…we can’t save the tree by pretending it is good.
In one of Jesus’ parables, he talks about the farmer telling the hired hand to cut down a tree whose fruit was bad, and the hired hand said to the farmer, “let me fertilize it and dig around it and give it another chance and if that doesn’t help, then I’ll cut it down.” The farmer agreed to let the tree have another chance….and I think in some cases we can do the same thing, give the “tree” another chance, but NOT FOREVER…..over and over and over.
I have actually cut down fruit trees and pulled out grape vines that had a consistently bad crop. Sometimes it is worms or the plant isn’t the right one for this type of soil, but whatever the “problem” with that tree or vine, IT WASN’T WORKING OUT.
I realize that everyone wants to love their parents and wants to believe that their parents love and approve of them, but you know, the thing is that IT IS NOT ALWAYS THE TRUTH. Facing that our parents do not love us is painful. Facing the truth that there IS NO WAY TO PLEASE THEM AND EARN THEIR LOVE is another painful truth as well.
Sky it isn’t going to be just as simple as getting into t a hypnotic trace and waking up happy and out of pain about your parents. I wish it would, or I would have done it….but you can grieve this “loss” of your life-long fantasy about your parents and this FANTASY relationship that you have had with them….thinking someway some day you would be able to find approval from them. Love from them.
Your family I think is as farked up as mine is—filled with dysfunction and “pretending everything is lovely” and hiding the family dirty laundry under a veil of “nice” and “polite.”
We can OPT OUT OF THESE GAMES SKY! It is as simple as QUIT PLAYING their games. DISTANCE yourself from them—quit accepting “favors” from them and quit DOING “favors” in return for their favors. CUT THE CORD of obligation.
Remember what FOG is? FEAR, OBLIGATION and GUILT.
Get rid of the fog. They can’t hurt you if you don’t let them. NC. If you are not obligated to them you dont have to feel the guilt. Cut any obligations to them off at the knees. Find a new place for your cats to live, or pay someone to take the cats, or take them to a no kill shelter but don’t let the cats be an obligation that you cannot shed that keeps you chained by the neck to the pain trees.
To this day, Sky, I actually think my egg donor is surprised that I was ABLE to pull back from her and go NC and stick to it (essentially) and that is so FRUSTRATING to her because she can’t control me. Also, by me refusing any financial obligation to her (she kept offering me money which I turned down) she realized I would STARVE before I would take a dime from her. It actually pithed her off that I would have that attitude too. LOL
The thing is Sky, we are programmed that when we are obligated to someone we must to some extent be under their control….the psychopaths don’t feel obligations so they USE it against us, but it doesn’t hamper their behavior at all.
Progress on the road toward healing is painful, Sky. Some of us have a LONG HAUL ON THAT ROAD before we get to the point we have gotten out of the ORCHARDS OF ROTTEN FRUIT that have surrounded us most or all of our lives. Sometimes we have failed in ever seeing a piece of fruit that doesn’t have a worm or isn’t rotten at the core….it is like we don’t know what a piece of good fruit should look like, feel like, or taste like. I say it is TIME WE LEARNED how the good fruit tastes! We don’t have to eat the rotten fruit or hang around the trees that produced it! (((hugs)))
As Oxy has often and so rightly said ….it starts out being about them and finishes by being about us.
Thank you Donna for reposting this article. I have done so much soul searching in the last 10 months since I found LF. This is possibly the most pertinent article for me I have come across and I would like to tell you why.
I’m a big girl, a grown woman of almost 50 and yet I havent been able to find out why I am attracted to men who treat me badly. I’ve been exploring my childhood looking for clues and I always wondered if my tendency to be a people pleaser, if you will pardon the label, had something to do with my family dynamic. I’m starting to see a connection between why I have become so accepting of others abuse….particularly men.
There were 4 kids in my family. It was noisy and chaotic a lot of the time. My Mum worked hard and it seems that she “preferred” to work rather than be at home with us. My Sister was given the role of surrogate Mum. She would help my Dad get the evening meal ready, every night.
So what some people might say. This role meant that my sister was accorded certain privileges….my Mom and her were always close. Maybe that was the way I saw it but nevertheless they were close and I was not. I craved closeness with my Mum. It wasn’t forthcoming. Somewhere along the way I learned that if I did chores I would be rewarded with my Mums approval. This I thought was love. I’m not trying to say she did’nt love me or that I had a horrific childhood because I didn’t. I’m starting to see a link between this relationship with my Mother and the subsequent relationships I have had with the men in my life.
You see sometimes she didn’t respond favourably ….I remember a particular day when she had been out in town shopping. I thought I would clean the kitchen. She would be pleased …..She came home. The tiles in the kitchen gleamed. It was sooo tidy…and clean! You know I can remember her reaction like it was yesterday. She was put out. Irritated and not happy one iota that I had done this. Hey, maybe she was tired and cranky and probably didn’t even realise how devastated I was. I was 7.
Anyway, this article is me in so many ways. I learned from a young age that when the person you love is displeased with you, you must try harder.
My ex used to use that phrase a lot. If only you tried harder. If only you loved me better, everything would be great. Oh and how his exes would “bend over backwards for him”
I’m not angry and I don’t want pity. I know there’s a lot worse that could have happened ….it just makes me hug my inner child a bit harder and forgive myself a little more for having given and given and given to that thing….the spath…
Strongawoman,
The family dynamics that create “people pleasers” don’t have to be “abusive” in the common meaning of the word….I also didn’t have a home life where I was beaten or starved…but “love” and approval was not forthcoming unless I ‘Please” my egg donor as well.
The family secrets had to be kept at all costs. It was part of the culture as well as my individual family.
Keeping secrets and trying to please those we are dependent upon (all children are dependent upon pleasing the adults in their lives) can leave us with the feeling that we must “please” others at the EXPENSE of ourselves and we fall into that trap. I know that I did and even today the feeling that I have displeased those I love hurts to the core of my being.
The difference is that I no longer live without boundaries or think or feel (thinking and feeling are NOT the same things) that I have to let someone walk on me, or cross my boundaries. I have learned to set boundaries that are reasonable. Sometimes that means pain when the person is not willing to respect those boundaries and I must eliminate them from my life or at least my inner circle of trusted people.
Also sometimes I must set limits on others that they don’t appreciate but I am learning that those boundaries are for MY good and I must do what I have to do in order to take care of myself. There are still those in my life that love me and respect my boundaries and those people are worth more than gold.
It is no longer about “them” but about ME and that is OKAY! It is better than OKAY in fact! Life is good and when “bad” things happen (Like the roof blowing off my studio or other things like that) it is JUST LIFE, not a betrayal. I can live with an over come LIFE and I don’t have to tolerate betrayals. LIFE IS GOOD.
Hi Ox! It’s good to have you back my friend 😉
I very much identify with what you said about your particular family dynamic….. My Mother is still very secretive to this day. Certain topics were NEVER discussed and even now, in her late 70’s she can still reduce me to utter frustration with her MO of divide and rule of her children. I have “lost” my brother as a result.
I’m trying to re learn how to set boundaries. You are quite right …..some people do not appreciate my “holding them at arms length” but for the first time ever I am saying no. If I don’t want to do something now I’m not looking for an excuse…..I can say I don’t want to do that or go there etc.
Small steps perhaps…….huge steps for me.