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.
MissMellyuk
Let me agree with you. Okay?
You are right. He was fed up with your neediness and constantly seeking reassurance and he just had to finish it. He is dealing with losing his Gramps and was just overwhelmed with your pissing and moaning about wanting him to take you out.
You are such a loser and he saw that in you and finally just shut it down. He is lovely and you are not. He is a success and respectful and honorable and kind and considerate and truthful and you just needed to understand him better.
Now you got someone to agree with your Insisting how your relationship failed b/c of You. Ignoring everyone else, your mom, your friends, other posters, is the right thing for you to do. Now that I’ve agreed with you, It all makes sense and there’s nothing more to say. Right?
No it doesn’t make sense at all. But makes me wish my first ex was here. We grew up here he moved to London after we split. He uses to look after me when I was Ill.
He was ten times the man that my current ex is.
Got to work another night shift tonight then have a week off. Going away on fri with my folks, sis on laws, kids and mate. To a log cabin. Maybe that will do me good.
Thanks for helping me. I feel like a hopeless burden on my friends and family xxx
Miss UK
Glad you are able to discern nonsense. I was a little worried there. Give yourself the grace to be a “burden” on friends and family; b/c they love you, they are okay with the so called burden. Just know you have some work to do to get your head on straight. There will be time in your future to be there for your family and friends, just as they are there for you now.
ps. please don’t wish for any more ex’s. there’s a reason they are ex’s – as your current situation proves.
missmellyuk,
You are not hopeless. You are hurt. It will take time to recover – sociopaths inflict pain, being heartless people, lacking in compassion. Your ex-boyfriend is not a decent person, period. They are trouble-makers, being unable to see or care how their mistreatment of us, causes us to have depression, anxiety, shakiness, poor sleep, etc. My ex-h-spath is the biggest STRESSOR that I’ve ever had in my life (and I am not exaggerating). The less we have to do with these disordered folk, the better it is on ourselves. What you need is to stay free (clear) of this unhealthy man, allowing yourself the chance to have peace, recovering in time from his abusiveness, craziness. In the past, I use to tell myself that if I could make it to the end of the day, I was doing good. Take it day-by-day, moment-by-moment if you have to, but do yourself a favor and keep the ex-boyfriend out of your life. Be good to yourself – that is the key.
I don’t know where to start with this! There is so much information on here and such lovely, kind, caring people. We all seem to have had such a hard time and it seems to go on and on!
Thankfully we can help each other by sharing our stories.
MissMelly I don’t know how old you are but you seem very young. You just need time to let your brain sort through all this sadness – you are going through a grieving process and all the emotions you are feeling are normal for this situation. It will pass!
Bluejay is right the physical illnesses you are experiencing are the result of stress. You are describing things I have felt and experienced over years and years of emotional abuse. I am healing now but sometimes I slip backwards and grieve some more for the life I should have had.
I wonder if Adele has been at the mercy of a spath? Her lyrics seem to hit the spot for a few of us my favourite at the moment is ‘Rolling in the deep’ where she says ‘we should have and it all’ and that strikes a chord for me.
I first came on this site because of a nut job who came into my life after my marriage had broken down. I thought it was fairly simple to move on when I identified him as a sociopath and thought i would get over it. It’s not so simple as it opened a whole new can of worms!
I have suffered from M.E./Chronic fatigue for about 23 yrs and was convinced I had a strange and mysterious illness no one knew anything about. I am a registered general nurse and was completely fooled by it. After reading lots of posts iv noticed a significant number of us suffer similar symptoms – stress – duh! I couldn’t see what was staring me in
the face!
I’ve started to question my whole adult life so far – I thought my husband was just a bast**d but now I’m wondering if iv been spathed
twice and the first one was so good he got away with it!!!! (well nearly).
He was fine till we were married and stopped speaking to me on our honeymoon. I was devastated but felt I couldn’t go home and tell everyone it was over so I stuck it out and tried really hard to make it work.
He could be verbally abusive and/or stop speaking for weeks or even months. All our friends thought he was a great guy (except a few who had him figured) but behind closed doors he was a monster.
Dear Lifegoeson,
Yep, sounds like you jumped from the frying pan into the fire….and that is not unusual…until we realize WHAT hit us, we don’t know how to spot them in the future or to realize that we have been hooked by another one…that is why it is important ot know what they are, then to spot the red flags and to be able to set boundaries for these people…get out of my life!
It is not unusual at all for us to be “P-magnets” and many times because we grew up the children of Ns, Ps, alcoholics, or just dysfunctional people who didn’t value us as individuals or nurture us or teach us our worth….but now we are adults and we have to learn these things for ourselves. KNOWLEDGE=POWER, so learn about them, and learn about yourself. It works. Takes time, effort but is well worth it in the end. Sounds like you are starting to get some “ah ha” moments and that is a great start!
Hmmm, stress…
The new woman wrote me as a reply that she wished me a stress free future.
I kindly replied, thanks and noted it was a peculiar wish, but that I did not worry about stress that much anymore… my stress source was no more 🙂
But I guess PTS might hit. That is why I will be calling a therapist of the long past for a talk with her. Not sure whether she is specialised enough in P’s and Spaths, but the Identity Crisis therapy group I used to follow with her almost 15 years ago, involved many people who had been abused some way or the other. She knows how to help people through the healing of that at the very least.
Darwin’smom,
Stress —high intensity, and/or long term—does a number on our bodies and our minds, even literally physically changing the cells in our brain as well as the chemicals…does all kinds of things to o ur immune systems as well…and takes a long time for the effects to sort of dampen down, I’m not sure if they ever totally go away completely.
Learning to live in a lower stress environment I think is like an alcoholic drying out….while they are drinking a fifth a day the body “adjusts” to that amount of poison so when it is suddenly stopped, the body goes into the DTs—hallucinations etc.–and can even die. So our bodies adjust to the “normal” of the HIGH STRESS HORMONES just like the drunk’s body adjusts to the high alcohol content….and it takes a while for our bodies to re-adjust to REAL NORMAL of low stress. The damage that has been done may remain for a long time or forever, but we can start to improve at least and I think that is what takes a while to accomplish.
A year or so ago I had a sudden encounter with my egg donor at a store and Igot a big shot of HIGH STRESS and I had been livin in low stress, when I got the BIG SHOT or the stress hormones I literally got ill, sick to my stomach and all the “shot at and missed, sheet at and hit” syndrome feelings, and it lasted about 18 hours. I did realize though that I used to feel that way ALL THE TIME—My ability to bounce back from stressful situations now is improving too, to not let something effect me as much as the same thing would have in the past, and to work through the loss/grief in a more healthy and less painful manner.
Learning how to deal with grief is like any other “skill” I think, practice makes perfect.
Someone who has never had to deal with a major loss and the associated grief flounders more I think than someone who has dealt with loss and grief in the past. I see parents who try to protect their kiids from dealing with the loss of say a puppy, by running out immediately and getting the kid a new dog, but I think that deprives the kid of the chance to experience grief and loss and deal with them, so that when the bigger losses come later, they have had some practice dealing with it in my humble opinion.
MissMelly,
I just noticed at the start of your post you said you are in your mid 30’s. You are young, and have lots of time to heal, move forward and have a good life using all the knowledge and advice you are getting here. Be kind to yourself – most of us are not very good at this and it’s a skill worth cultivating. I’m talking to myself as much as you here!
OxDrover,
I thought I had it sorted out but back to square one with the realisation that there have been 2! My 1st one was the most insidious and had me believing that all our problems were my fault. If I was just a better wife, if I was just a nicer person, if I didn’t object to him going out every night, if I didn’t ask him to spend time with the children (this provoked an extreme reaction for some reason!) If I just liked his sister (he didn’t even like her!).
He criticised everything I cooked – too hot, too cold, too spicy, not spicy enough. too salty, not salty enough. too much on plate, not enough on plate, etc. etc. Every time we went out for a meal it was sent back to the kitchen. He just couldn’t be pleased and trying to have a normal family meal with the big toddler at the head of the table, was embarrassing and humiliating.
The second one was a huge big giant screaming mass of red flags from the start. I really don’t know how I didn’t spot that one but after improving slightly, my health nose dived again. I put on about 3 stones (I’ve lost it again since I got rid of him) and was so tired I could hardly get out of bed. My poor dogs were only getting short walks as i could hardly drag myself to the end of the road.
As luck would have it the nut job was very helpful and would walk them at night for me. I found out he was using that time to text and call his other girlfriends – the one’s who were texting pictures of their bare breasts to him (at his request!).