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.
texting is a spath’s best friend, because they can type the words without the music.
Blue – mobile phones! This will make you laugh. I did not get it straight away – even helped him pay off the grand bill he ran up! Well, he received a bill for £1000. He said that it was a contract phone that he’d cancelled but the company had not recognised his payment (yeah right, stop laughing).
Turns out he’d run up the bill talking to other women! Wondered why the bill came to my house and how the company had ‘found’ him as he left no forwarding address when he came to me.
So I was paying off a bill that HE’D used to phone other women. Someone PLEASE boink me.
Candy;
We believe them because we do not lie.
Candy,
I’d boink you but I’d have to boink myself a thousand times harder, because my spath had me paying for everything while he spent his money on hookers … etc…
Boinking myself that hard would send me to the hospital and I can no longer afford that.
Interesting…..
I remember ONE TIME, my spath allowed me to see his cellphone contacts, because I was busted trying to look.
Sooooooooooooooooooooo many women it was unbelievable.
Unbelievable. If I had asked him to tell me who they were, he’d would had to stand there and lie all day.
And to think that wasn’t his only phone either. He has a home phone number, a landline, but he lists ANOTHER cell as his home phone. It’s just crazy.
It wasn’t worth wasting my time over.
LL
Sky LOL “they can type the words without the music” LOL!
Sooooooooooooooooooooo true!
LL
Oh guys you are soooooooooo funny. Thanks
LL, yep it’s the perfect disguise: a text message. I’ll always be wary of the mega-texters. There’s no need for depth, emotions are optional. Texting, the land of the shallow.
There was something odd about my x-spath regarding Facebook though — virtually no activity in terms of comments. No Happy Birthday, Merry X-mas. Only a handful of comments to friends. None directly to his sister at all, and none from her.
In fact the only reference by her about him was one and only one comment about seeing him for lunch…
Anyone find this unusual?
BBE
Mine has a facebook too. He rarely comments, but I know he watches the comments of OTHERS. It’s predatory behavior completely. He’ll get women or whomever else his ex wife knows, on his friends list simply so he can read everything they post or comment on.
LL