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.
lko1960… Hi… nice to meet you! This site helps me keep on track too!
Thanks for writing about the song, I’ll have to listen to it!! 🙂
Welcome IKO,
Glad you found your way here and glad you are NC with him, it will help you to heal! Again, welcome!
Hi
I have a massive urge to call him today. Help
missmellyuk – Hi. We have all had these urges. They are natural. We want the ‘dream’ back. Listen to your mum. She ‘gets it’. She may not understand how YOU feel, or you may not want to hear what she has to say (cos it hurts) but she does see him for what he is……a loser.
post here if it helps. ‘Talk’ it out with the people on this site any time you feel the urge to contact him.
Re-read your own post, it’s there in black and white. All of the bad things he did over and over again.
These will be your hardest days. Take it from someone who has been in the position you find yourself in today.
NC NC NC NC NC is the ONLY way forward.
Thanks candy.
I just couldn’t believe it when he dumped me and said it was all bullshit melly. How can someone do that? x
missmellyuk – ok here’s how it goes………lets’s compare our relationship to them eating a bag of crisps (because that is all the value spaths put on anything).
They see the crisps in the shop (you and me) they keep on and on until the bag of crisps are in their hand. Yum yum.
They like the shiny new pack (so much better than the last bag – however they still have that bag in their back pocket just incase they get fed up of the new flavour!)
Eventually they tire of the new crisps (as they tire of us) Then the packet (us) is just thrown away.
No rhyme or reason in it. No remorse, no sorry, no apology, just tossed aside, discarded and we are left wondering WTF happened.
Be thankful he’s out of your life. Read as much as you can. Once your veil is lifted you will see him for what he is. And when you do……..come back here and give advice to the Newbies because only when we have been through, what we have been through, can we explain it to others.
Hello MissMellyUk
I am sorry this messed you up so. I am replying using my husband as an example to explain what your guy did to you. I bet you wonder what part was true.
Truth with these type is very hard to come by but…One thing I learned was that sometimes my husband did say the truth… it happened ONLY when he was negative or hurtful. For instance, one time I found an email he wrote that revealed he felt he ‘settled for less’, which was a reference to me. I confronted him and cried and cried. His explanation was that he just emailed that when he was angry and didn’t mean it. Bet you can guess the truth…
When my husband was nice, that was when he scammed me. But he couldn’t constantly maintain his pretense of caring for me… and those times he was cruel but those were also the times he revealed who he really was. Your guy was the same… only nice to get something but unable to maintain the facade b/c his dysfunction kept popping out and he kept having to explain away his bad self.
I was the dummy who wanted the fairy tale and I was the one who refused to see the truth when it was in my face.
They take a grain of truth… for instance… I agree that when angry we say things we don’t always mean. But the difference is… normal people don’t say the kind of mean things these losers say. For instance when angry, WE normal people might say “this isn’t working out. i want to break up”. BUT we DON’T ever say, “i never wanted you. i just was scamming you. i wanted an easy life.” Yet they do b/c they are unable to control the impulse to say the truth when they are in this type of mode of anger.
You are in shock now. Give yourself time. Get back on the meds that helped you. Get back to that together woman that you were when you found him on fb. You lived in a crazy making relationship. It wasn’t your anxiety that pushed him away. The TRUTH is…as he so cruelly revealed, it was never going to work out b/c he was only in it to take and use and this is the only outcome of being with a loser like that.
He’s not Lovely. He’s a loser (no job, lived with other lowlifes who didn’t grow up and used women they didn’t like either. Wanna know what a guy is really like? Look at his mates. Birds of a feather…)
Hi Katy,
have not heard from you in a while. hope you are doing well. I have been total NC since April 1st and it has been healing and bringing me peace.
when a day passes with peaxce, I begin to realise under what stress I was all the time, when I was invovled with him.
they are all con men. out to scam us.
thanks for your advice at a time when I was in denial.
petite
Yes Petite,
I have been offline for a while. This time I was out of country. I also have a medical condition and sometimes the cure takes its toll…
I am home now and yes, I too was in denial esp when I was in the bargain stage; that stage where I was sure if I made the right choices then all would be resolved. But no matter what I chose, nothing resolved.
Once I stopped my own denial and accepted that my marriage wasn’t failing b/c of ME making mistakes – that I could do/choose Everything correctly but it still wasn’t going to work b/c HE was not capable of living/giving/loving in an emotionally healthy way – that insight plus my going NC …. well it’s amazing how the stress fell away and my common sense and calmness returned. I am once again (mostly!) competent and capable!
HI Katy,
yes, I rememeber, you had mentioned going to UK to spend time with your daughter.
Hope you had a good break and hope your health is doing well.
I have been total NC. how I got fooled, Oxy warned me right from the start and I thought he would be different, he played the role of the kind man so well.
petite