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.
My grandmother used to tell me “don’t wish your life away” when I would tell her that “Oh, I WILL BE SO HAPPY WHEN…________” (fill in the blank)
I think now that she was absolutely RIGHT. Today is the day to be happy, and to be happy WHERE YOU ARE. Getting XYZ isn’t going to make us happy, WE have to make us happy.
I know people who buy this or that or do this or that thinking it will make them “HAPPY”—but happy is from inside no matter what is going on outside—that’s the hardest thing for me to learn and to CONTINUALLY PRACTICE—because I want to think I can DO happy or BUY happy, etc.
I THOUGHT I was “happy” when I had the P-BF–boy did I think I was “Happy” even people who barely knew me commented on how I GLOWED with happiness. And all my friends were “happy for me” even my kids were glad he was in my life, UNTIL they saw the tears replace the smiles. I was SAD because I had DEPENDED ON HIM FOR MY HAPPINESS.
My short-lived “happiness” was 100% dependent on him “loving me” like I thought he did on HAVING SOMEONE ELSE MAKE ME HAPPY—WRONG! That is where I went wrong totally and completely.
My husband hadn’t “made me” happy, he had SHARED my happiness…and no one else can “make me happy” they can only SHARE my happiness—I have had to “get real” and find MY HAPPINESS, and my happiness doesn’t DEPEND on what or who I own or have in my life. That is a 180 degree turn from what most people seem to “believe”—“Oh, I’ll be so happy when____ I get out of college and get a job, or when I find the love of my life, or ______fill in the blank.
The only day we can count on is today, the only happiness we can have we must generate from inside. Doesn’t mean we can’t have goals, but if our “happiness” depends on meeting those goals, we may never be happy and may just “wish our lives away” waiting for “happiness to drop into our laps”
The Apostle Paul wrote to Christians advising them to “be content” (happy) no matter what their status was, even if they were slaves they should be content in their lives and make the best of them whatever their status was. If they could get “free”–great—but not to be UNHAPPY AND DISCONTENT if that did not happen. I think that is pretty good and sound advice.
We can make ourselves “unhappy” by wanting something we don’t have and may NEVER have, and yes, I’d love to have a great soul mate man in my life, but I am NOT GOING TO LET the lack of achieving that desire make me unhappy and lonely and miserable for the rest of my years.
I chose to be happy and content where I am. I did “grieve” some over the acceptance of the fact that I may never have this again (after I kicked the P to the curb) but quickly (several months) came to ACCEPTENCE of REALITY—I’m 61, there aren’t that many men out there that I would have and I sure don’t want a ROTTEN APPLE or a “fix’er up’er” and won’t settle for anything less than the “Brass ring”–anyone can “get married” if you set your sights low enough! LOL I could go down to the local Union Rescue Mission and pick me out a homeless wino and bring him home if I just wanted a “warm body”—but I am worth more than that. LOL
I am working each day to be the best that I can be, and to be happy just like I am–wrinkles, a bit over weight, and somewhat less than perfect but now when I look in the mirror I like the person I see there–wrinkles and all. I’m a pretty special lady–not many women can get in front of 4,000 pounds of oxen with not even a rope, just her voice and a small switch to control them, and head off down the road.
I am ONE and one is a WHOLE number—a good number—and I don’t give a flip what anyone else thinks about me as long as I can answer to my conscience and to my God—what the neighbors think is not important to me any more.
I now that I will have some days “better” than others, but when I have a down day I will pick myself up, knock the dust off my pants and set off on the journey again! Only I can make myself happy or unhappy by what I THINK ABOUT MYSELF.
There is no spiritual practice and no self help pep talk that replaces the natural instinct in a woman to want to have a family and someone to share her life with. Do I think these things will make my life.. no. Do I want these things in my cells.. yes. It is instintual.
I have gone down all those self help roads… and I have realized, I don’t need to come up with some catchy phrase that will make me feel better about all of it.
Having a family.. WITH a husband.. no, I do not want a sperm donation… is all I ever wanted. I know I am not the only woman to miss out on this but it is still very painful.
I am sorry I expressed anything on this subject. I wold prefer to drop it. I have heard all the things you have all said before. None of these things cancel out these desires for woman like me. It just makes us feel bad for wanting the thing that is so natural to want… and it makes us feel like we are supposed to be so thankful for everything. Like if you have children, you get to be thankful for that and I don’t, I have to be thankful for having two legs or something.
It’s not the same. If you are on the other side of the fence, you have no idea what it is like to have missed the boat. Sometimes, it is nice just to have someone say, “I understand that you really wanted that and it hurts to have missed out.”… instead of some kind of lecture about how it won’t make me happy or whatever.
Aloah,
I am so sorry if I offended you in any way. I KNOW it is natural and normal to WANT a family and children, our hormones and everything else pushes us (women) this way.
And believe it or not, even at my advanced age I have a strong desire to have a man in my life, to have someone to love me besides my 2 of 3 “good kids”—I DO know what you are talking about–and your feelings are not abnormal in any sense of the word. Neither are mine. I may not have missed the “having children boat” but I have missed some other boats completely in my life that were probably just as important to me as your “boat”–but you are not out of the water yet by any means and still may not miss your “boat.” Mine have long ago sailed without me. I’m on dry land without any hope of catching that boat.
What I was talking about was the feelings you had expressed about your sister’s wedding and the things that you mentioned that others might be SAYING. What difference does it make WHAT others say about you not being married? Or that there might be something wrong with you because you aren’t?
I personally think that you are a remarkable woman, bright and obviously a survivor—and I don’t want “other’s opinons” to negatively impact your feelings for yourself. Believe me, I HAVE SPENT MOST OF MY LIFE CARING TOO MUCH ABOUT OTHER’S OPINIONS. WE all (HUMANS) I think have that tendency to want others to respect us, to think we are “great” and “successful” but you ARE a successful person as far as I am concerned—hang what those other people at your sister’s wedding think…if they are that petty–F’em!
I’m in no way thinking that is it bad or abnormal for you to VERY much want a husband and children—but at the same time, I think that we can make ourselves happy even if our grandest and most wonderful wishes never come true.
I pray for the BEST for you in every way Aloha, and especially I pray for your contentment and happiness. Peace.
i do understand, aloha – was in a terrible marriage (abusive — how not shocking, in hindsight) and from the moment I got out, my life’s goal WAS to find a good man. Didn’t even want more kids, or anything. Just knew that a real partner was out there for me and that is what I wanted most.
To me, it’s not about being complete, or Noah’s Ark or anything lie that. I am complete alone. My life is filled with creative inspiration, things I enjoy on all levels, and I appreciate myself fully.
But what I most really want in life is a real partner: someone who’s in life with me 100 percent, whose life I’m in 100 percent, whose opinions and words I rely on and someone who relies on mine, someone to share the good and bad of life’s journey.
They say you don’t get from the Universe what you don’t ask for and openly admit you desire. For years, I tried to hide the desire to have a fully-committed, lifelong love partner, worried I would appear somehow weak or “less than” or it would scare-off potential men.
But, now I’m honest about it. I believe it’s everyone’s right in life to seek and hopefully find a relationship that mutually sustains and enhances, that it’s still my biggest personal priority and that it’s fine to feel this way.
OxDover,
Don’t worry about. It’s a sensitive subject. I am not really concerned about what people think. I am just afraid of anyone giving me the pity look when I am trying to hold myself together. (That’s what I was really saying but I didn’t spell it out that way.) I want to stay focused on my sister’s day but believe me… I will be VERY raw. I FEEL like a loser because this did not happen for me. Family knows better at this point to not ask, “So when are you getting married.” But there is always some well meaning Grandma or distant Auntie that asks those kinds of questions… I am going to wear spike heels so i can dig them into my foot in case I have a moment where I am going to lose it.
Right now, most days, I don’t think about what my life isn’t. I don’t have time for that. I am in robot mode, fixing my life after my trainwreck. I have little joy in my days because I work crazy hours. Social life is non-existenet because I am totally OBSESSED with paying off the debt that represents a trainwreck of the past. I am OBSESSED with being in the black, financially and going forward. So many things were messed up at first that I was paralyzed.
My career was trainwrecked, I was financially drowning and emotionally and psychologically, I was totally friend. I am sure plenty of people can relate to this. When it rains it pours. I needed to fix everything in my life and I didn’t know where to begin. It has taken me a long time to get things rolling forward. I still owe $9000.00 but I have a plan… a plan that involved not seeing the light of the sun for several months but I am willing to bear down and get through this because I want to finish this chapter once and for all. Believe me, my pennies are screaming right now. Why do you think I have so much time for LoveFraud? Because it FREE! And, of course, I do really love learning from others and helping others in any way I can. It gives meaning to our suffering and it helps us to heal.
Most of the time, I am okay. I am dating… barely. My “date” rarely has time to do things.. just like me but I told him, “This is like watching a movie, 5 minutes at a time, once a week.” A slow pace is good but there is such a thing as too slow. I can’t tell if the “movie” is any good this way. I think he got it because he has been calling more often to “check in.”
Anyway, I am going to let this topic go. I hope I wasn’t too harsh on you. I just wanted you to know I have done plenty of searching for answers and attitude adjusting but nothing cancels out the desires of the heart. I just feel like I am going to go nuts when people tell me all that stuff.
I guess one blessing is that I was not stuck in a bad marriage with someone and with children. I would hate to have children and then put them through a nightmare like the Bad Man.
I don’t even know if I want a child anymore… I mean I do but I can do the math. I still need my parents now… and they are barely there for me. If I had a child now, I would be parenting when I am 60. And my “date” has already done the whole thing with two teen daughters. I doubt he would want to start over again.
I wish I could go back in time and make about 50 different decisions. Don’t we all? And please, no one give me advice about regrets. I have regrets. I am keeping them no matter what you say.
I wish all of you the best. Sorry if I am cantankerous. I do have a new hobby though. We have a quilting program at the Children’s Shelter where I work and I love to dig through the piles and piles of squares and chose pieces to lay out. It’s very soothing and ZEN for me… and soon, I will start sailing once a week… my sanity sail. I love it. I need it.
Aloha… E.
You saying that
QUOTE: “I guess one blessing is that I was not stuck in a bad marriage with someone and with children”
makes me think that no matter HOW bad our situation is/was we can all look around and see someone in a position that we feel is/was worse off than we were. LOL (the old “I cried because I had no shoes, til I saw a man without feet” story)
I can’t even imagine how horrible it would be to have a child with someone like this and then have to deal with the P with “shared custody”–to me that would be the worst thing I can imagine.
Other people look at me and think that my situation must be more difficult than theirs, because one of my P’s was a well-loved son, “you can always find another man, but you can’t find another kid.”
The trainwreck they all leave behind, in whatever form, emotional, physical, financial, etc etc leaves us all with a job of “clean up” sort of like Hurricaine Katrina, and many times we have to clean it up with little or no help and the job seems overwhelming to the max. I salute you for working hard, paying off your debts and getting back to dating, even in 5 minute increments. LOL
God bless.
ox dover; thanks for your reply but with all due respect you have not walked in my shoes i am 40 i had two misscarriages to my ex husb s path. and as you know i ahave had a relationship with another s path. A. you have children and B. our dreams and wants are our own and not the same. i have since i can remember wanted to be a wife and mother it s me i am nurturing and it s what i want. i am not going to deny my self that i want this and i know that i want this. i know my self very well and i am in touch with myself and know what makes me happy. i am thank full for what i have and not someone who always wants more. but like aloha said for some of us its natural to want these things. also i should not have put in my blog that i am worried about what other s think say. i have experienced too much to worry about that its more about wha t i want really. so say ing to me that i should not worry what other people think is wrong i dont. but it does rub salt into the wound . i too like aloha work very hard to make my life better and just get by in fact since s path. i just know what will make me happy like we all do . as woman lets just understand that ok we have been with a spath but we do all have different wants and needs too and its different for all of us. lets not judge not here. society makes it hard enough for single woman without children anyway. i will never give up on my dreams till the day i die . and i count my blessings. i think it is only human to be disapointed when you want something so much all your life and it doesnt happen so lets just let our self be human. aloha; i understand 100 percent i am in the exact same place as you i am also dating and taking it slow. but i know how you feel . think if i was younger i wouldnt be so hurt about not havin g a man or a child but not having a child is very hard at this stage of life. i am like you too trying not focus on it and trying to be positive to the future. who knows what it holds i also agree not sure who said it here but if you dont openly ask for something you will not get it. lets just support each other not judge. this is a sensitive subject for me too.thanks.
Everyone walks a different walk – but OxD is just offering up the most positive way to try and view life. By all means, yes, maybe its unattainable for now, but that doesnt make it wrong to wish someone to be able to be happy in their situation.
I read self help books like crazy. Just finished A Year by the Sea… and now reading Soul Stories… my goal is to live my days by the words in the book, but each day comes with much lonliness, lost opportunities, disappointments but that doesnt mean I dont set the bar high for myself and try to achieve peace of mind wherever I can in my head. Anne Lamott is a fabulous author too.. and she compares it to a radio station playing in our head 24/7 and we are in charge of the dial. We can play whatever station we want and yes there are days, we play the sad love songs. Other days, the uplifting music. Some days we do want to cry.
Thank you OxD for the reminders of the what radio station I want to play in my head – thinking positive, being happy within myself, dispite lost dreams, I still want to feel that I am a whole person all by myself. And I do know at the same time, life deals out very mismatched and unfair hands – its tough many days to know how to accept its shortcomings.
Jules, I think you and Aloha missed my point entirely. I am not saying and was not saying that your DREAMS were wrong in any way at all…I would hope that we ALL have DREAMS and GOALS my point was that sometimes those dreams and goals do not come true. Not because we dont’wish for them, it is just “stuff happens”
Having dreams and goals is GOOD. If those dreams and goals do not come true, however, it isn’t I don’t think, good to let the failure of that dream or goal ruin the entirety of the rest of your life.
Your dream or goal might be to say be an “Opera Singer,” and that is the thing you want most in this world the VERY MOST IMPORTANT thing, and you work very hard at it. But let’s say that something happens and you don’t make it–you get a nodule on your vocal cords —are you going to be miserable the rest of your life about everything because that ONE dream didn’t come true?
Here in Arkansas about 3 1/2 years ago we had a man commit suicide because he didn’t make the Olympic team that he had trained for his entire life. He was a medical student at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Arkansas, I can’t remember the exact date but it was shortly after my husband’s death in July of 04.
Before he died, He stabbed his wife, a resident physician that was a friend’s physician, 45 times, then hurled himself out the window.
I realize that this is an EXTREME case of letting your “dream’s failure” push you off the edge and this guy obviously had many other issues, but the point I am trying to make by giving such a horrible example, is that this man HAD EVERYTHING in life, he was smart, a medical school student, married to a very talented woman who was also a physician, and the two of them seemingly had the world by the tail! But because of only ONE SHATTERED DREAM, he destroyed their lives.
My dream of having another wonderful man to love me is just as important to me as that man’s dream of going to the Olympics, but if it never becomes a reality, I am not going to jump out of a window and kill myself, or let the failure of that dream cause me to not appreciate the other things I DO have, or to enjoy what blessings I do have just because I don’t have that one dream come true.
Like findingmyselfagain said, and that is a good analogy about the radio station, I have to KEEP CHANGING THE DIAL because it seems to slip into other stations that I really don’t want to listen to…but as long as I am IN CHARGE of the dial, I can change the station.
At my age, 61, I realize I don’t likely have as many years of good health and independence ahead of me as you younger women and men have. I want to make the MOST of what years and health I have left, to be content with what I have NOW rather than let myself be side tracked by what I DON’T have (and believe me there are many things I would like that I don’t have) I will never again be “pretty” by the standards of the world and media, I show every year of my age, I will never be rich or famous, and I can’t go back and re-do all the mistakes I made ( a bunch) or recover the “wasted years” of my youth.
The only opportunities I have today are WHERE I AM NOW, and I want to maximize those, rather than beat myself up over dreams I lost out on, or my current dream of having another man to love me. What got me involved with the P-BF in the first place was my GRIEF over being “alone” and “unwanted” and “not okay” because I was alone and lonely.
I’m still alone, there is no line of men out side my door and not likely to be, I’m still “old” and “overweight” and “wrinkled” but I am not “lonely” any more—the only thing that has changed is MY ATTITUDE about it. The dream is still there of this “magical man” but even IF it never comes true…I am still OK.
I would never put down anyone’s DREAMS, they are good for us, I would only say, IF they don’t materialize, you are still OK, and there are other things in this world besides ONE dream that can make us happy—and (thanks Findingmyself again) WE ARE in control of the “radio dial”—(((hugs))) to you all, and especially Jules and Aloha, I think we all (survivors) know how it feels to lose a “dream”—we all had the fantasy “dreams” that the Ps would make us happy, and they didn’t come true, so we can all relate to losing a DREAM. But just like our P-dreams failing shouldn’t end our world I don’t think other dreams should end our world either.
I didn’t feel judged at all.
Sometimes, when people express something that hurts them, they don’t want to hear… “but look at the bright side.” They want to be heard. Like this.
This hurts me.
Oh, I see that hurts you. It must be painful
Yes, it is painful and I am sad about.
I see.
It’s like that fixing thing that men always do instead of just listening and being with you.
Anyway, I am sorry I brought up this subject. One of the things we have for eachother is to “hear” what people have to say about Sociopath’s and having dreams shattered by them. And because we share this experience, we are able to hear eachother on the subject at hand. We don’t tell eachother to look at the bright side when we talk about our Sociopathic experience… and also, I have never seen anyone write the following words.. “You think that is bad? Well, mine did blah blah such and so!” I am glad we haven’t seen that because it isn’t helpful to anyone and it would invalidate a person who was struggling.
Sociopath’s are definately not a contest to win. I have seen stories here that are definately WAY WORSE that what I went through but I still feel for them and I figure, whatever I am feeling about it, they may be feeling times 10.
So I think my original comment was off track and off subject but I can bring it back to this forum. I think that one of the reason I was so vulnerable to the Bad Man was that I was feeling like my time was running out and my chances were running out. I literally moved to Hawaii as a way of finding fulfillment in another way…. rather than having a family and a traditional life with a husband and white picket fence. Instead, I was going to swing in a hammock and spend my days snorkeling and diving and learning to Hula dance and maybe even speak Hawaiian. I have always loved islands and Polynesian cultures and so I thought this life would be distracting enough and fun enough that wouldn’t spend all my days thinking about that baby that I wanted. And I did love it… the smell of the breeze, the warmth of that air.
I felt that staying put in my hometown would play out like this… day after day… going to work… trying to pay my bills.. living a very ordinary life where it would be in my face, FOREVER… that the man I loved married someone else… and I used to have visions of myself running into him when he was dropping off his child at Kindergarten. The town is small and I didn’t want to watch my dreams lived out before my eyes and I become a cat lady. :o( Watching my friends lives hit all the milestones.. weddings, 1st house, babies… I couldn’t stand it anymore. I am the only single lady at the BBQ’s and one woman would ALWAYS come up to me and lament how sad it was that the Good Man hurt me so bad… and after years, I finally had to tell her that she didn’t have to bring this man up anymore when she say me because there is no “E & D” anymore. D is gone. I would always leave these BBQ’s bawling.
So I let go of all that and went to Maui to have a different life. Then I met the Bad Man… a most unlikely alternative because right away he told me he would consider getting a reversal of his vasectomy and then later.. like a few days later, he acted like I was crazy and that he never said that. It was just another hook in the beginning.
Oh well… Bad Man was a big fisherman and I was a little fish in a new Ocean. I was definately out of my element and ripe for the picking.
So, I hope that brings our conversation back to Sociopath’s and all their juicy bad deeds.
I promise not to post if I have a melt down after my sisters wedding. I know it will be hard but my goal is to NOT CRY FOR ME ON HER DAY.