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.
Oh, Wini, the S/P was “the most spiritual man I’ve ever met!” as said by the next victim after me. He was great at doing the church-going, Promise Keeper, AA, Boy Scouts persona going, and he was equally good at pulling out his ceremonial pipe with sacred tobacco and doing the whole Native American thing. All props. Every bit of it.
I don’t think he thought of God as a “fairy tale.” I think he thought of HIMSELF as God.
Rune: My Ex too c/would quote scriptures, took me to church, was a BS.
What they do or act has absolutely nothing to do with being “HUMBLE”. How God wants us to live.
They can read the Bible all they want, it is only words to them or anyone, unless you go humble …. so you can see and be what God wants us to be.
That goes for everyone when doing anything in life. Go humble (meaning erase all your thoughts), give it up to God. Then watch what happens.
Peace.
Rune: I think the easiest way for anyone to understand the virtue of being humble is to put the word “humble or humility” in your search engines and read for yourself.
Jesus said “the meek shall inherit the earth”. Jesus lived a life of humility.
Confucius said “humility is the solid foundation of all virtues”. Confucius lived a life of humility.
The world’s religions value humility above all other qualities.
Peace.
Welp, in my findings, is isn’t so much lies as manipulations that make these people so awful. Sorry, too if someone already said this. I notice that a lot of the P’s sentences aren’t totally lies, just well used facts. I once told him “You collect information like it’s clay. Then when you need a story to hold water, you just fashion yourself up a cute little pot, and there you have it–believable story.”
Also of interest was the comment someone made about how they could have so quickly and effortlessly done things the easy way and been far better off, but these psychopaths simply would not. The hard way, and self destruction were the roads they determined upon instead. I’ve seen this so many times of varying degrees, and shook my head every time. The ole P would HAPPILY catch a ride to jail in the back seat of a cop car, rather than just get in his truck and drive away from me. And then, as I’ve so devastatingly found in the past, he would have simply loved to torture me with this “unforgivable crime” I had committed, because what good upstanding wife would call the police on her own husband? Never mind that I was bruised up. TWO SOLID YEARS he supposedly struggled to forgive me for sending him to jail. The idea that a man with any dignity and self respect wouldn’t make his wife bruised and broken was completely out of the question, and NEVER open for discussion.
In lighter examples, my daughter willingly drags a sinkful of dishes out for hours and hours on end, when she could have finished in fifteen minutes and run off to play or watch a movie or something. Oh no. The conflict, the mope, the satisfaction of seeing her parents flabbergasted that she is STILL washing one little sinkful of dishes has to be more rewarding to her than any of what I consider “freetime”, or else she would not do it. At least that’s how I figure.
ISee…
As for your daughter dragging the dishes along, mine used to do the same. She is now 25 years old, and expresses that she loved doing the dishes, but we would get caught up in her drama, so she used it. Ignore what isn’t necessary to make an issue of out of…
“faked adoration”… I have been reading this thread and that stood out.. the incredible amount of attention that he gave me. That is what I miss.. ‘normal’ people do not act as he did.. even in the first rush of attraction..I have never experinced what he did with me.. phone calles, texts, flowers, touching and it was creepy in that it was too much.. but he conditioned me to this..
So after it is gone.. who can compete? I have been dating some and normal men don’t act this way and when one does began calling and texting too much.. I feel alarm.. that it is a rush and I pull back and I am correct.
Real things, don’t need to happen so fast. Real is slow, constant and enduring. It is respectful of my time as well as his.. and this man was not respectful of my time. He just wanted to capture me as fast as he could and he didn’t care how he interrupted my life. It was all about him and his needs. I was there to fulfill his needs. His need for a partner, love, to attach to someone. GeeZ! These awarenesses just keep coming at differnt levels.. I guess until they are totally released.
ISEETRUE Yes, the manipulation is far worse than the lies. Great examples you gave!
My P daughter made dam sure I never asked her to do the dishes again, her method was to throw my crystal glasses in the sink along with the pots and pans. She broke all the stems of my “Crystal Darque” glasses. She never rinsed anythng properly, either. My other P daughter would do the ironing, but only if I paid her. As I was teaching full time, I did pay her, but as she was living rent free, I shouldnt have had to !! She was a hard, conniving, calculating, manipulative little b–h at 16, and still is at 43. gem.XX
geminigirl.
LOL, I poured bleach in my P’s laundry so I never had to do it again.
Or maybe that’s just the reason he gave. He never had me do his laundry. Only he could do it. That was fine with me.
Good for you, Skylar! Pity you didnt pour it down his throat!
Love,gem.XX