Donna Anderson’s important latest post reminds me that one topic which will never be worn out is that of the psychopath’s lies and their impact on others.
This week I want to very briefly introduce yet another take on this inexhaustible topic. Everyone lies, but there’s something else at stake in the case of the psychopath’s lies.
To illustrate: you might say about any regular (non-psychopathic) person, “Things would be better if s/he was to lie less often. Her/his soul or psyche would be healthier as would her relationships.” That’s true. Now try this on for size and notice how wrong it seems: “Things would be better if the psychopath was to lie less often. His soul or psyche would be healthier as would his relationships.”
Weirdly, this is patently not the case. The psychopath will be just as sick/evil no matter how many or how few lies he tells. It’s not a quantitative but a qualitative matter.
It is commonly said that a defining characteristic of psychopaths is that they are pathological liars. This is right if you mean that they are profoundly dishonest and not to be trusted. It does not mean, though, that psychopaths lie a lot. They do lie a lot and those lies cause havoc. But as I hope my illustration above shows, lying less will not make them better people.
So, how does this work? The thing about psychopaths is that even their truths are lies! Or rather, whether or not they happen to be telling the truth or a lie at any particular moment is not what makes them psychopathic. What makes them psychopathic is that they use and destroy people; truth or lies are for them just so many weapons for pursuing their prey.
M.L. Gallagher said a lot when she wrote this:
He is the lie….
From hello to good-bye. I love you to I hate you. You’re beautiful to you’re ugly.
It was all a lie….When friends or my family ask, but what about this, or what about that, I tell them. It was all a lie. There was no truth in him.
If I spend my time trying to figure out fact from fiction, all I am doing is trying to prove I wasn’t so stupid. See, this was true. That’s why I fell in love with him.
Truth is. I fell in love with him because I believed his lie.
When I discovered the truth, I was so enmeshed in his lie, I couldn’t find the truth in me. And so I sank.
yes thats right thye use the lies for whatever they want to achieve. first mine used lies to get me then when he had me he lied about things to impress me, then when i found out something about him that was a bit of a turn off or made him look bad he lied to try and save me from leaving or thinking he was not a good man. then when i found out more, he lied to end it with me. then he lied to stay in touch with me, then he lied to punish me and hurt me and use me becasue the relationship was over and he felt betrayed and didnt get what he wanted. that is pretty much how it went for me. they have set their lifes up so that they nearly cant not lie they always have something to cover up even if they tried to go cold turkey and do the right thing in a new relationship they would end up lying about the past and other relationships. when i broke up wth him he said he was scared and thats why he lied all the time, i was even shocked he told me this. it was like a little boy, mummy i tell lies all the time and i dont know why , he was crying like he was in pain, it made me feel sad for him actually. so on pondering this i think they feel they have to lie to not show the real person because the real person is they think not good enough and nobody would like them. or somehting like that, this is what i worked out with him anyway. but it is very hard for me or any normal person to understand. i have told lies we all have ok but not lies that destroy people or are unforgiveable. what i find funny though is that if you lie to a s pa or maybe an n they will never let youlive it down this happened to me and it flawed me in his eyes forever and he could not forgive me it wasnt an un forgiveable lie by any means but the s p held it against me to this day and has punished me for lying. if you lie to them and get found out or admit to it they will never let you off the hook for it like they want us to do for all the lies they tell. mine lied through the whole relationship and i think told me even more lies after we ended it . very interesting though painful as it is.
“He is the lie”–sometimes the smallest sentences can convey the most information. This is one of them. It applies to all psychopaths, of all times.
The only true things my S said (besides name, rank, and serial #) were, during the end, he said (of himself) “I am a liar” and “I am a piece of s _ _ _”. EVERYTHING else was a lie, he twisted and turned every truth upside down. He said despicable lies about his ex-wife, and others. He is a liar. He is the lie! Never again, one lie and they’re out.
Jules,
The Bad Man did the same thing.. holding my head to the mat about a “lie.” There was a time or two when I did not tell the complete truth upfront about something because I had learned by then that it would get blown out of proportion, be taken out of context… but then, I fessed up. (I am thinking of my scandalous salad date that I mentioned somewhere else in the blogs.)
Sociopaths or disordered folk just want to glom onto anything they can, any small moment where you lost it, or called them a name, or heaven forbid, lied… and they shine a big light on that and won’t let go because most of us don’t give them much to call us on. They have to look really hard to find something REAL to attack about our character. Bad Man was attacking me all the time but most of it was crazy stuff he made up… but now that I think about it… if I did something real like call him a name.. WHOA… that was juicy for him. Never mind that the list of names he called me would roll across the floor like Santa’s list of naughty and nice.
We, of course, are not saints.. but as a group.. there are many loving, honest people here at LoveFraud. We’re kind of nice people, don’t you think? Oh how Sociopaths love and hate that about us!
Jules, Aloha is right…
They have to take things out of context or attack on the slightest statement. Once when he had me livid, the last night we were out, I said “Do I wish you were different…” and was trying to finish with, “Yes, but I accept you for who you are and love you for that” but he interrupted and mocked me, repeatedly, sneering and mimicking me, “Did you hear that — do I wish you were different….do I wish you were different….do I wish you were different…” practically spitting and screaming it at me, all the while with this sneer and fake falsetto-y voice, like it was supposed to be me saying it.
I got tears in my eyes. Kept trying to explain but he wouldn’t listen. He was just looking for anything, for any reason to attack.
What had I done wrong? Proved I was ok without him or anyone else. Showed him that I knew what he was about. Oh, and I dared to ask him to love me and let me love him even though I knew things were seriously wrong with him. I wanted to stay by his side. Wanted to help him. Wanted him to be honest with me and we could find a way through this together.
My transgression? I wanted something real between us, and honest.
And for that, I had to be punished.
Orphan,
It is frustrating to have them talk to us like that, to take what we say out of context, to sneer and ridicule our feelings, to make light of them, to denigrate us to the maximum possible point.
When my mother was “protecting” my P son from my “meanness” she looked at me that way and talked to me that way, and lied to me to my face, and the pain was probably the worst I have ever experienced….but I think even with her (and she isn’t a P, just a P-by proxy) I had to reach a point that I was so beaten, so hurt that I could not stand it any more, I could not stay in the DENIAL.
There were lots of things I didn’t like about the way my mother treated me when I was a kid, but even at 60 years old I TRUSTED her to not be viscious to anyone. When she was willing to lie to me, bald faced, I realized that there was nothing I could do to ever make her really be able to love me in a way a mother should love an adult child.
She was so perverted by her need to protect the Golden Child, the son she never had, from the person who was “persecuting him” and taking away the ONE THING in her life that she wanted, which was for him to get out of prison and come “home” before she died. By denying my own fantasy wish for that, and by doing what I could to see that he would NEVER get out of prison (I made a DVD that will go to the parole board even if I am dead when his next parole hearing is–and I left enough money in my will to hire lawyers to see that it gets to EVERY parole hearing he has until age 75)
She was SO ANGRY at me for doing that that I actually think she wished me dead if it would have taken that DVD out of existence.
This was AFTER she knew he had tried to kill me (and probably would have had her killed too) for the inheritence he thought he was entitled to. Even when the attempt had been made by the Trojan horse P on her other biological grandchild in an attempt to kill him.
What was a mother thinking to be this enraged, to protect a murderer that wished her only child dead? My P-son has her so roped into denial that even when she sees PROOF in his own handwriting that he is after the family assets and wants us dead so he can get them.???
The Ps not only use their own power but the people that they can rope in as “P-s by PROXY”–PEOPLE THAT WILL ALLOW THEMSELVES TO BE SO ENABLING that they will DO anything to further the Ps agenda, to protect the P from “all harm” no matter how justified.
This is a woman who is respected in her community, who is intelligent, gutsy, and who I thought had good sense—but she too is in deep denial, emotionally invested in the P to the exculusion of everyone else in her life. Willing to give up ANYTHING just to “protect” him.
I would never have thought it possible, and when people on another blog told me to go NC with her, I couldn’t even imagine doing it. Now, I can’t imagine renewing any kind of relationship with her, except the few times a year I may have to have a 5 minute conversation with her about business.
I refuse to listen to any of her “NON-apologies” of “let’s just start over and pretend none of this ever happened.” NO I can’t and won’t pretend that none of this ever happened. To do so would be for me to DENY myself, my own worth. It doesn’t matter if the P gave birth to you, or you gave birth to them, or if they are not a “real” P but a P-by-proxy, it is still behavior that no one can endure and not suffer.
For months before the arrest of the Trojan Horse P and my DIL after the attempt on Son C’s life failed, my mother had denigrated me, lied to me, gaslighted me, raged at me, refused to look at documented evidence that validated what I was saying about the Trojan Horse bieng a sexual offender with a LONG CRIMINAL RECORD…etc. Even her narcissistic and arrogant attorney lied to me, sneered at me…
Now, I can look back at all this sort of like reviewing the plot of a movie I saw, but it isn’t like I lived it. Just like I can describe in minute detail the pain I felt in labor when my sons were born, even though I can put WORDS to that pain, I can NO LONGER Feel it like I did then. If that makes any sense.
Sometimes with emotional pain we can not only describe it but RE-FEEL it just like at the time it happened. I am now at a stage where I don’t RE-FEEL it–again if that makes any sense. I knew I DID feel it, but thinking about it no longer makes me flinch or cry or rage. I can look at it more rationally and talk about it or describe it, but in order to use those words I don’t have to relive it all over again.
What I did for months after the NC was to RE-FEEL and RE-live that pain, it will always be a memory like the labor pain, but the FIRE of it is no longer burning. I’m not sure if that was the Rapid Eye Movement therapy for the PTSD but possibly. Whatever it is I am so grateful to be free of the FIRE. And I am cautious around “hot” things, or things I think might be “hot” My P-dar is on 24/7 but I am not paranoid I don’t think about new people I meet unless they raise the RED FLAG, then I am very cautious around them. Since I am not compelled to be around them at work or other places I can move on much more easily. Which is good.
OxDrover:
What/who is the Trojan Horse P? I have seen you references to this several times in the blogs. Thanks.
Peggy, I wrote you a long answer to this question and it disappeared into cyberspace.
Short version. The Trojan Horse Psychopath was an exconvict sexual predator friend of my incarcerated P-son’s. He sent the man to rent a house from me as a way to “infiltrate” the family–who would suspect a renter in my state to be a convict friend of my sons, right?
He ended up becoming a very nice “friend” to the family, then installed himself into my mother’s house as her live in caregiver, had an affair with my daughter in law, and was working toward killing me (his mission) and making it look like suicide…however my son C caught the THP and my DIL more or less in the act, then they decided to kill my son, make it look like self defence and get possession of the money that they had persuaded my mother to put into the CARE of my DIL (to keep it away from me, of course)…complex plan and it might have worked if he hadn’t got caught with my DIL.
I had gotten a private detective when I found he was scamming money from mom and had all the goods on him, but he had my mom so hooked she wouldn’t even listen.
Even after he ended up telling her he was a sex offender and had to register (which is what clued me in–I have a friend in the sheriff’s office) mom wouldn’t listen to a word I said.
After I knew he was associated with my son in prison, I really got scared and figured out what was going on, and fled. After the arrest when he and DIL tried to kill son and leave with $$$ we were able to piece the rest of the story together from the letters my son had written to him giving him directions on how to manage the family! He had stolen our family trust original documents (mom had put them in safekeeping with DIL) and knew the terms of the trust, and if I died before she did, they could have gotten their hands on significant money.
If I out lived her, NADA, ZIP ZILCH, NONE, ZERO—
I have no doubt that if they had offed me, I wouldn’t have been cold in my grave before poor old grandma would have fallen and cracked her skull. Then my son C would have had an accident. Son D is adopted and is not included in the trust so they would just have tossed him off the farm. (but he would not have left empty handed) In any case, it all worked out for the best, and I truly believe that God protected me in this whole crazy plot or they actually might have succeeded.
The first Lie I caught TH-P in should have given me the clue, but I tried to be a “nice guy” and give him another chance. NO SECOND CHANCES FOR ANYONE—never again. Red flag ONE you are out.
Yes, Ox-D, I understand that concept – “re-feel it.” Great way to put it. I “re feel” some of the worse events with him – that night being full of them. He acted in the morning like everything was fine, but the way he treated me and the things he said the night before were vicious.
Weirdest thing…during the course of the evening when I wanted to go home he said, “Let’s go somewhere else, the night is young” or something along those lines, with this little smile on his face.
I felt right then at that moment that I was IN FOR IT that night. Whatever way he intended to D&D me was gonna go down that night according to his plan.
And…it did. He even invited me up to his apartment and I went, even after that sneering conversation in the bar. Lo and behold, he got even worse in the privacy of his house. He also informed me he did not love me — again with this sneering smile, as though enjoying inflicting the pain. Oh, hell….not “as though” — he does enjoy inflicting pain!
The first time he verbally abused me over the phone and was a complete and utter drunken a’hole I should’ve dropped him right then. Didn’t, obviously.
I can’t fathom what it must be like to have gone through what you’ve gone through, though – multiple cast of horrible people out to get you and your son. My mother favored her “golden child” too – my brother (both of us adopted from separate families). She turned her head and let him do whatever he wished…with some very horrible consequences. To this day she has a blind spot when it comes to him and will not acknowledge what kind of monster she created out of him by giving him free reign to terrorize.
God does seem to watch out for us, it seems. Finding this site when I was at the end of my emotional tether…learning what an N was completely by accident, not a week before that…everything fell into place and the scales fell off my eyes forever.
Maybe just coincidence, but it felt at the time like a guiding force was at work, trying to free me from the P’s prison. He’s not diagnosed, far as I know. He doesn’t do illegal things (again, far as I know!). But he is a sadistic, abusive, lying, cheating, gaslighting, manipulative, unethical, immoral, emotionally distant, sexually manipulative (withdraws or turns it on to get what he wants from you) snake in the grass whose actions fit every key note of the profile.
Walks like a duck…
Orphan,
I love your last paragraph “but he is a sadistic, abusive, lying, cheating, gaslighting, manipulative, unethical, immoral, emotionally distant, sexually manipulative snake in the grass…”
I wish you would not HOLD BACK ON YOUR OPINON OF HIM, LOL I think you should open up and tell us what you REALLY think about him. LOL
Yea, they are ALL of that and more…
I’m sorry your mom is that way enabling your brother…it hurts when we try to be “good” daughters and we get the Scape Goat role instead where the “bad boy” gets the Golden Child role.
Since my mom had no son (I’m an only child) she adopted my P-son as the family bad-boy-golden-child to enable since that role didn’t have any other candidate to fill it in our family where the male bad boy is always the golden child, and usallly a P as well.
I’m NC with my mom, because she has become a P-by-proxy. I wonder if there are others here who have family enablers who fill that slot?