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.
“Spaths can wobble but they never fall down. (when we are not being predictable it can confuse them momentarily, but they rebalance quickly.)”
Katy, except when they get so frikin old they lose their mojo..but who wants to stick around till then 🙂 ?
All kidding aside, I agree they are tenacious in the coping “skills” they have learned in order to A) get what they want and B) to appear normal.
Thanks Kim. Insecurity, self doubt, all of the above. I really appreciate your kind words.
I often compare myself to John Lennon in that I am very sardonic in my humor and yes it can come across as offensive. It has taken a lot of work to grow in this area. I also live with two young men , 22 and 16 and my house is like a Fraternity house with all the crew coming and going. Too much male energy at times. And as a single mom I have had to wear the dad hat very often so I sometimes come off as too strong.
This is why I want a good relationship with a man. To bring out that feminine side that I know can be totally girly and soft. But I need healing first. I know in time it will happen.
Thanks again.
Katy,
it’s an interesting question whether it would work with a spath, to try to interrupt the rage with a distraction.
I do it with N’s all the time.
But with a spath, since nothing about them is real, you would be interrupting nothing. LOL. I don’t believe their rage is even real. the only reality with a spath is their desire to destroy you, so you might interrupt the “theatrics” and they may switch to another “drama” or put on a new costume, but the underlying intent… how do you interrupt malevolence? How do you distract from a deep seated hate which only desires to destroy. Give them catnip?
“Medical” marijuana works for turd!
Awful that I had to encourage him to smoke or have a glass of wine to calm him down. I never did see him in full on rage though, I wasn’t with him long enough.
First sign of that shit and I probably would have been arrested for elder abuse. If he were younger yes I would take any sign of rage as real and I would book it.
I will not take rage. That is why he is in NC.
Rage – road rage, people rage, tv rage, couldn’t get his own way rage, rage at my driving skills, rage at work colleagues, rage at the dog, rage at his ex, the list is endless. Why the hell did I put up with it?!
I would try to get him to understand but he never ‘got it’. If someone cut him up on the road he curse, swear, do the v sign and I would say maybe that person had only just passed their test or their baby just died, we don’t know. But he never ‘got it’. He always thought people did things deliberately. He was never willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Now when HE cut someone up (it was intentional)…..that was THEIR FAULT too. Even though he would try to ‘get one up’ by beating them at the lights or something like that.
I can spot spaths now on the road, I drive hundreds of miles every week and I see them pushing everyone else out of their way.
They drive like no one else has a right to be on the road. Oh yeah I forgot, of course spaths have the right…….they’re spaths.
Ohh Candy, that reminded me!!!!
I DID interrupt my spath’s rage one time, that I recall most vividly.
He had the habit of raging when we got in the car. Knowing that I was trapped with him, he liked to make me miserable. Sometimes I would be driving, other times he would be driving, it really didn’t matter because I could anticipate his rage would begin at some point.
So, I happened upon these homeopathic stress mints
http://www.amazon.com/Historical-Remedies-Stress-Mints-Chewable/dp/B000BP0VXA
I put a bunch in a dish in the car and started to chomp on them, knowing that my spath is soooo envious that you cannot eat anything without him trying to OUT-EAT you. Once he saw me chewing happily away, he starts to grab them too.
Suddenly he asked, “what are those?”
I said, “mints”.
He asked, “what’s in them? are they supposed to do something to you?”.
I smiled, “yeah, they’re supposed to make you calm. Do you feel something?”
“Yeah,” he answered, “I feel calmer. I don’t like it. I don’t want to feel calm.”
Then he just sat there quietly being crabby for the rest of the ride. But no rage. FUCKER.
LOL!
LOL, that is a funny story 🙂
adam, I never minded the weed much. I drove weekly to the Netherlands for it. I didn’t like smoking myself much, but he didn’t need as much incentive to go looking for excitement then. Again, at the time I thought he may have ADHD and that it helped him in a way.
Sky (((((((((((that’s funny))))))))))) $4 well spent.
Hey ya’ll just home from orientation with a few extra bucks in my pocket. It was a nice long drive there and back. I saw where the opened the spillway so the river can drain out into the marsh. I had never seen it opened before and it was crazy cuz the water is really rough with rapids and everything. You could kayak in it and is some places it looks like you could get on a surfboard. Hopefully it will keep the city from flooding.