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.
Good for you NOLA2bCop,
Josh Groban is one of my cd’s I use to connect to my humanity. When with my spath, I found myself becoming emotinally numb, just surviving the day. Big bonus if I took a shower or brushed my hair. His voice is so beautiful that like you, I am carried away. His music soothes my hurting soul. I love that you had the time with him.
Keep us posted about flooding issues. I do worry for NO.
Katy, over the state line in Texas
EVA, EB, OXY, KIM, OMG ROTFLMAO..you guys are too funny. EB yeah dropping the kids off at the pool….dropping a deuce LOL! The crazy things I learn from my boys here at my “frat” house!! 🙂 Oxy HUGE belly laugh from that post.
Eva, a few more to the repertoire won’t hurt. thanks!!
So good to laugh…
I somewhat speak Spanish because I am Latina (and Native American). I grew up in a Spanish speaking home but I was taught English first so I don’t write in Spanish very well. Speak and read it better. I am a product of the Spanish Conquistadors mixing with the Native women. Very common here where I live.
Nola I LOVE JOSH GROBAN!!!
I chose my handle after my BFF Adam. I secretly wish I was his rib 🙂 He is very happily married but I have known him since we were children and I should have married him! I love his wife too-she’s awesome. Anyhow Josh Groban’s song “You Lift Me Up’ is the song I sing for my best friend Adam. We cry together over that song.
Adam renews my hope and trust in men. He is the kind we need to clone! 🙂 He’s my role model…
Well, the guy was never convicted of touching a kid, just of buying kiddie porn….he got caught in an FBI sting with a BIG batch of porn.
I had known the guy from the living history group for 5-6 years before he was arrested in 2002…he seemed like a “Mr. Peepers” type guy, bald, small stature, kind of oldish looking for his age (52 at the time) but never anyone you would have “figured” as a pedophile…polite and nice…just no red flags that I saw at all. I did know he and his wife had both been married to someone else and had had an affair, gotten divorced and then married each other. That was the ONLY thing I knew negative about him or them at all.
Then I heard he got arrested…he disappeared off our radar until after he got out I picked up the newsletter one day and there was a photo of him on the front page doing demos with kids at the Museum….so that was when I went to the board and our N/P president for life arse-hole made the statement about him “having paid his debt to society” and I went bonzo about it and got the public information sentencing report, called his parole officer, called his boss at the Museum, got elected to the board of directors and made life unhappy for the Prez for a couple of years….he is the one too who would not back me when the guy in our group pointed a muzzle loader at me at an event—and I had the man prosecuted for terroristic threatening…the prez supported him and said I was a biatch, also he pointed a muzzle loader at some members of the public that he thought were homosexuals in a park, was witnessed by many people doing so, and he was really homo-phobic (I was not there to witness that but it was testified to by other witnesses at the court hearing) ….but anyway, a couple of years later the guy who pointed the muzzle loader at me as a “joke” —yea, I’m a biatch and can’t take a joke—was the caregiver of his mother, and she died…but he did not report the death and was living in the house with her corpse….and the NEIGHBORS SMELLED HER over the incense he was burning to try to cover up the smell. He also had stolen money and items from our group, and they were never able to get a Real cause of death on his mother…just unable to determine exactly how she died except in bed. Makes me wonder though. He did get prosecuted for some minor crime like not reporting a death or abuse of a corpse or something along that line though.
At least I was somewhat vindicated with some of the other stuff he pulled and several of the members of our group who are law enforcement and/or game rangers, or parks personnel backed me so the Prez of our group had to sit there and be roundly embarrassed at the “hearing” board meeting we had because he had not backed me. I also brought out the fact that the guy had a criminal record for assault and for drugs previous to his pointing the muzzle loader at me.
Now our group has some hard and fast rules about demonstrations of period fire arms, safety and so on….as well as people who have been convicted of any kind of sexually related crime are not allowed to participate as members.
But you know, I never was very good at taking a “joke” like that….I get really bent out of shape over that kind of “joke”—just no sense of humor I guess….but I did tell the guy that while the gun he pointed at me (he said) “wasn’t loaded” that the one I pointed back next time WOULD BE.
Adamsrib-did you tell me you were a Libra? And you’re Latino? My neighbor lady is half Latino, fluent Spanish speaking and a Libra. Do you have any insights in dealing with her?
Nola yeah I’m a Latina Libra. It is said Libra women are very fetching. It is said Latina women are very hot. So if you believe in generalizations then watch out! 🙂
Of course in reality each person is an individual. I have my moments of hotness but I am usually the “girl next door”. Not like your gnd, the other kind. Think Valerie Bertinelli. Some men think I am boring-not enough drama. But we know who they are don’t we?
Latina women are misjudged in popular culture just as Native American women are. Think the “squaw” which is like using the N word. Very offensive. All women of color really. We are sexualized in the mind set of society. Where I come from, my Hispanic culture and generation tend to be very Catholic and modest. Not the Shakira image that is for sure. Our role model is the Virgin Mary. Funny, the men don’t have to be Jesus. 🙂
Libra women have a rep for being very charming. I have that side of me but I don’t misuse it. It has to do with how your lady next door was raised and what her life’s experiences have etched in her.
I am very peace loving but a former supervisor of mine who is also a Libra, is Bi Polar and is a she devil creating havoc where ever she goes. Apples and oranges tho we are both Libra.
I would say your best bet with the lady next door is to get as far away from her as possible. Just a gut feeling based on the effect she has on you. I know. I have been there and smelling that rose is just not worth getting the thorn.
Adamsrib-thanks for the response and I think you’re right. She really infuriates me. She was raised super Catholic-being born in NOLA with a Honduran father and an American NOLA mother. One minute she is all over wanting to talk to me and then she turns into cold frigid bitch with a wall ten feet thick. She drives me insane and it’s super frustrating.
“She drives me insane and it’s super frustrating”.
Nola, take a deep breath and keep repeating: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of what? =insanity!!
You can do it… Stay strong!! GIVE HER THE FINGER!!
got to go to work. Good luck gurl!!
adamsrib,
once a very elegant lady told me, why give them just one finger. why not the whole bouquet? so i knew her secret, that wave when she wiggles all her fingers? it was her lady way of flippin the bird. that her enemies didn’t get it was THEIR problem!
Katy-I like that a lot. My father will hold up 3 fingers-the middle, and one on each side and say “read between the lines”. All I can say is that there are not enough middle fingers in the world to express how I feel about dealing with this woman. I am having to practice ignoring her and gray rocking is NOT easy. I have to listen to Josh Groban and tune her out cuz he makes me happy. I am SO thankful to my friend for taking me to see him last night. She thought it would be just what I needed and she was right. He is one of the people to make sure and see once in your life.