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.
Thank you, Ox Drover. It has been the most horrendous experience of my life. The worst part is that I still have feelings of love, and sometimes think I can feel him. I had a very rude awakening, when I discovered that he already had a very committed relationship, while married to me. I am angry at myself for having those feelings. I’ve looked up how to rid yourself of obsessive thoughts or unwanted thoughts. He does not deserve one moment of my time, and yet he is the man with whom I devoted my life. Just about the time I feel good, I’ll get a long letter from him telling me how miserable he is, but then I know the next letter will be about something he wants. I also know that he is with this sadomasochist and sharing her family with her, while he writes me. It took over a year to divorce him, because he could not give up my insurance. I feel so ripped up inside, and don’t know why I can’t just move past this. I really try. Everyone tells me it will get better when I find someone else, but how do you find someone else when you don’t know if every word or action is misleading or devious? I think it is the loss of a dream? He is treating her like he treated me in the beginning, even using the “exact same lines.” I know that is not what I ended up with, but I can’t understand myself and why I can’t let go…maybe because the divorce was only three weeks ago, and he writes me almost daily? I have not been responding. Perhaps it is because I am in the same home we shared for almost twelve years? I shop at the same stores, etc., etc. It is financially too difficult to move right now, and the house was left with hundreds of expensive repairs. He bought a brand new, huge house in a resort area and left me with all of the repairs and a junkyard full of his mess. I was awarded over forty thousand dollars in the judgement, and the attorney says I’ll never see a dime without it costing as much to get it. He tells everyone that I STOLE five thousand dollars from him, and calls me a con and a thief. It is absolutely untrue, and insane. Wow, thanks for letting me vent. It has all been such craziness. I read one woman’s blog, and I thought I could use all of this in mine, the illegal porn, the sex dating sites, the naked photo of a woman from work that he was masturbating with in the bathroom, and…and… THANK YOU! I REALLY WANT TO HEAL!!! I gave so much of my life to this man, and it is as if I was never alive, except when he needs someone to blame for anything that isn’t quite perfect in his life.
Enjoyed and completely related to the blogs posted earlier. It is as if I am not alone in this insanity. Now I have been reading about BPD and narcissism, and wondering if I have some of the borderline personality traits? Or do we develop them just to cope and make it through another few years with our narcissist? I am thinking about that. If I do, I am probably high-functioning, because I get along with most people, and we western women are taught “to tell it like it is.” If that is too much of a display of an emotion, I don’t know how much that might be cultural. I don’t know…
Hi artheart. Friends are well meaning however they cannot ‘understand’ unless they have been through our emotional turmoil. All I can say is …it takes time and lots of reading on this site to see that you are not alone.
The stuff spaths do is textbook. The lies, porn sites, love bombing others, texts, ignoring the kids, financial mess etc I can relate to as can most of the other people on here.
It’s taken me 2 months of reading and posting to get to the point where I am now. Changed my job, selling my house, moving on.
It’s ok to be angry, it helps you to stay strong and avoid his attempts to suck you back in.
Stay NC and keep venting.
Good luck:)
art.
I’m so sorry you’re going through this. With everything I just read, your man sounds like a spath to me! I’m not in a place to diagnose, but he sure fits the criteria.
I know this is hard to sort through but just some insights into what I read here in your posts.
First of all, all the advice here is incredible and will catapult you through the healing process alot faster if you just keep reading. You will have one lightbulb moment after another. It’s painful, but necesssary to understand what has happened to you.
About this new woman of his. If she meant anything to him, why is he continuing to contact you and tell you how miserable he is? Do you see? He’s LYING, because that’s what they do, they lie, they cheat, they leave you in the dust, they want a reaction about your pain that they have caused…that’s all he wants is simply a reaction to set you up to hurt you again. DON”T give him ANYTHING….good job on NOT responding. Is it possible to block him so you DON”T read any of his garbage? That won’t help you to heal, reading his pathetic, LYING words.
Keep reading the articles here. There are so many good ones, but the ones from M.L. Gallagher seem to resonate with me well, probably because I too, am in the initial stages of complete NC and early recovery.
You can find those articles to left.
Keep posting and venting. We all DO understand what happened to you and what is now. Welcome here!
Art?
Forgot to mention, it’s also not uncommon to ask whether or not its YOU with the personality disorder. It’s clearly NOT. Something I’ve come to understand (which only angers me more,but is necessary too) is that your reponses to him were a NORMAL reaction to an ABNORMAL person!!!
Try to remember that.
Lesson Learned, candy, and Ox Drover: Thank you. I came back to this, because I just engaged with him again. We have to sell a tractor together, and he has some stuff he needs picked up. We ended up going back and forth. He tells me he has confessed to his past sins, and is living in the future. He tells me this story about a woman he went out with twice who kept putting him on a site for sadomasochism, and he has now turned his life around (even though he is with the same woman who is really into this stuff.) I need to practice the NC no matter what. It will be helpful. Thank you so much for your thoughts. Any contact can not be good, and I need to remember that. If he’s nice, he wants something. If not, he’s lying or mean. He called our thirteen years together a “huge misunderstanding.” That’s how he explains his involvement in child pornography and bestiality sites. Unbelievable.
I read much of what you’ve written, and I am sorry for you, too. I am glad for this site, because absolutely no one can really believe the craziness of being married to and then divorcing a sociopath. Thank you, thank you!!!
artheart,
Spaths automatically know how to lead us down the path of craziness. Once I asked my h-spath if he was having an affair with his office worker (when we were still together) to which he replied, “no, she’s not my type.” At the time, I remained quiet, later thinking, shouldn’t the answer have been, “no, I wouldn’t look at another woman” (or something along that line)? I have been through nutty land (no joking either) via this person.
bluejay
It’s amazing how crazy their craziness can be, isn’t it? Mine used those exact same words………about his wife and sex…and as a divorced man, about another woman he was love bombing…so interesting how easily I was sucked into all of that crazy making crap.
Bluejay…..
When I asked the xbf if he ever cheated on me in three years…he said..”I know I didn’t sleep with anyone..”
HUH??? You KNOW?????
LOL!!! Stupid ass!
I have a question…
So, what is being said is these people dont love. Dont they feel ‘something’ in order to ‘be with’ another persopn? I can see very clearly how my boyfriend, particularly in the end, was using me…and he did not LOVE me or CARE about me. THis happened IMMEDIATELY after we began talking about moving in together/moving in together. Why then? What was the change besides physical locations? Ans how did he ‘decide on my way home from work tonight’ that he ‘loves me but Im not in love with you?”