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.
Robx,
Sweetie, you are BABBLING about the things he said.
Repeat after me: NOTHING HE SAID MEANS ANYTHING.
Dr. Bob Hare’s book, “Without Conscience” says that they know the “words” but can’t learn the MUSIC. In other words, they can learn the WORDS that have to do with EMOTION, but they do NOT know the real meaning of them. They learn that saying the WORDS “I love you” gets people to do what they want them to. They learn that saying “I don’t love you” hurts people and punishes them. Yet, they do NOT really know why we react the way we do to WORDS, because words really don’t mean SHIAT to them.
STOP!!!! STOP!!!! going over and over every freaking word the man uttered and wondering “what did he mean by that?”
HE MEANT NOTHING, IT WAS JUST LIKE A PARROT TALKING! Actually my parrot probably knows more of the meaning of words than a psychopath does.
You are not going to figure out what he meant because HE DOESN’T KNOW except that making sounds come out of his mouth made other people react a certain way. (((hugs))))
Babe,
The more time you spent obsessing over what HE did is the less time you spend on YOU now.
What he did/said doesn’t MATTER because none of it makes ANY sense and it never will. Are you reading the articles here?
He was USING YOU from the BEGINNING. HE IS THE LIE. NOTHING HE SAID FROM BEGINNING TO END WAS THE TRUTH and if you continue to try to make sense of what he said/did, you’re going to distract further from your own recovery and will drive yourself MORE crazy!!
LL
LL and Oxy:
Thank you…Im a ‘hard nose’ who can take things straight forward.
LL: Youre right, he said the words, but he doesnt know what he meant! I saw it a million times with other people he tried ‘impressing’. He didnt KNOW how to pay bills or what it meant to do so, but he could read you a litany of how to do so…he didnt know HOW to buy a home and pay a mortgage, but he could stand on his pedistal talkign about interest rates. FUCK HIM!..
Thank you two…<3
roxybabe,
My exspath called me almost every day for a month to tell me he was in love with me. He told me his divorce was coming through “any day” and then he wanted to marry me. The day after he told me his divorce went through, he stood me up for a date with no explanation. Then I saw a picture he’d posted that day with his wedding ring on! Trust me when I say there COULDN’T have been a more convincing show of love and devotion than what I got from this man. And it meant NOTHING! To this day, I have no idea why he did it and I don’t care. Like Oxy says, you will never be able to figure them out. There is never an “aha” moment with a sociopath when you figure out why they romanced you or cheated on you or discarded you or ruined your life. You never get the kind of closure you get with a healthy person. Your closure is to pull back from him and do your own healing work. If you do this, you will find that you will wake up one day, and he will no longer be in your thoughts. (((hugs))) Sadly, I’m a member of this club, and I’ve been there too.
Ro-babe,
Sugar my P son has been in prison since he turned 17 years old all but less than 12 months of his soon to be 40 years. So, he has never lived outside prison much in his ENTIRE LIFE. He has never opened a checking account, or had a loan or rented an apartment for himself (he always lived with relatives and sponged) he has in fact, NEVER BEEN AN ADULT IN THIS WORLD, but he is CONVINCED THAT HE KNOWS ALL ABOUT THE FINANCIAL ASPECTS OF LIFE, and EVEN HOW TO BEAT THE STOCK MARKET!!!!! Yep, he learned that from BEING IN PRISON. LOL ROTFLMAO He has never been anything but a PETTY, SMALL-TIME, MEAN-ASS, VIOLENT-LOSER CRIMINAL, but he thinks he knows everything about everything! He can give you a lecture on how to make money in the stock market with this computer program he and some other convicts dreamed up, and I have letters that the mother of one of them wrote to my P son outlining all the BID DEALS they were going ot do when he got out—and her grammar was so pith poor that I almost wanted to laugh. The woman was ILLITERATE TO SAY THE LEAST, and she was going to pull this big deal, yea BIG DEAL, right! LOL ROTFLMAO she was gonna be the next Ms. Madoff! LOL She didn’t have the brains, education or class to pull of a liquor store robbery much less a big stock scam but he was so sure that she knew so much, because HE KNEW NOTHING. No matter how IQ smart he is, he is DUMB and UNEDUCATED and has absolutely NO CONCEPT OF HOW UNEDUCATED AND CRASS HE IS or his “buddies” either.
The psychopath that targeted you doesn’t sound like he is much above the P I gave birth to. You can’t teach them anything because they are so sure they are the EXPERT on everything.
Trying to understand the why or the wherefore they do what they do is like trying to figure out why flies swarm on cheet! THAT IS JUST WHAT THEY DO. It has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with WHAT THEY ARE!
There are a few who can FAKE “class” or even get an education, but if you listen carefully to them, you will see that they really don’t get it either….they just FAKE it and learn the words, but never the music.
Go to some of the old articles in the arcives about what is a sociopath and read and read. You will see that this is about HIM, and what he is. But once you get that under your belt, then start reading about healing from the sociopath, and it is now about YOU. Finding out why YOU were VULNERABLE and let him in the door. How you can recognize the next one and keep him OUT of the door. We end up stronger and wiser than we were before we encountered them. That’s the plan. So get to work on executing it! (((hugs))))
From hello to goodbye. I have been ruminating on this. One of the last things he said as he was leaving was ‘ i have been miserable ever since i came here’. I knew that. I knew it the whole three years. Hmm and I hung onto his lie’s because there was never any truth. I hoped he would leave and did everything to keep him from doing that. It’s like ‘Ok your the man of my dreams but you must leave and I will suffer for ever knowing you.
…of course he forgot to contextualize it hens….he’s been miserable his whole life.
Hens,
The only way they can get more is if they aren’t happy and then we try more to please and assuage.
But its an empty bucket.
They are not capable of feeling it. Its the nature of it.
Have you ever seen the movie Interview with a Vampire?
The point is: the whole thing wasn’t true. What’s to ruminate on?
We got bit. We were had. And then we figured it out. And it stunned and it hurt and it confused and it angered and it subsided a lot.
But in all the cases, it is the victims who feel.
What frustrates me more than sometimes I can handle is that they go on. And there isn’t much of a damn thing we can do about it. And even if we do, we take risks. Sometimes bad ones.
There is no “they” watching out for us. There is only us.
The disordered move on. And we move on.
We are not the same. Butit isn’t all bad. Its a second chance.
The disordered are the same. They run the same old cons, play the same old games. And then eventually they die. Usually alone. Its a harsh end. And there is nothing we can do about that either.
No matter what he said to you Hens, it was a lie.
Oxy…
Regarding your words… (I quote):
“Repeat after me: NOTHING HE SAID MEANS ANYTHING.”
Oxy, I hear you yelling this!! I laugh, because it is so true. I mean, is this the TRUTH or whaaatt! And Jeezz, have I been needing to remind myself of this, most recently!! I am not in the same place that Robx is, however, I have been so bloody perplexed-mystified-confused about how a person could pull off doing the most incredible job of misrepresentation, and in turn, be so amazing at portraying themselves as the kindest, most loving, nurturing, gentle, caring, concerned gentleman… and doing it in such an incredibly heartfelt way. And then in a matter of a millisecond… BAM… Most hurtful, destructive, cruel, relentless creep of a monster to walk the face of the earth. I am not trying to understand. I understand the concept and the disorder at hand, perfectly. Especially after doing so much bloody research on the subject. But I still find myself feeling so baffled, even with all of it making such sence to me. It has truly been such a MIND altering experience. Christ, this aspect of it needs to be diluted in my head before I go nuts, myself.
And one more question… It’s been over for almost four months, so when is it going to be over in my HEAD!!!!!
Dear Lord!
Peace out,
E
My head is once again COVERED in bumps and irritatingly itchy and I am telling you that this makes sence to me as well, because when you are under so much stress from all of the thinking, and the primary reason for it is because of what I have expressed above, and it is as if your mind is holding asll of this crap and confusion, no wonder the scalp is being affected. All those bloody toxins and all of the crazy negativity. Can anyone else relate to this? MAN… I am telling you.. WOW
E