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.
Katydid – I personally would not use such a fence, I think it is a lot of work burying a wire around the whole property, plus it is cruel. My son’s boxer was bad about chasing cars so he got a shock collar, it has a remote control box you push the button when the dog goes where he is not suppose to go.. so you mite look into that.
I am new to posting here. Can anyone tell me how these spaths and narcissists can be married for 20 years and have children? The one I was involved with was separated at the time and of course made me believe that he was not going back, but he did. How do they have children and wives? I really don’t get it. I read somewhere else that they really do not even love their own children; the children are just “possessions” to them. Just more people who they can use as pawns or control. What do you all think? Can I please get some opinions? Thank you!
Dear EB92044,
Welcome to Love fraud..
I suggest that you go to the archives on the left of this page and click on the CATEGORIES “Explaining the sociiopath” and read the articles there…then go to the next category and read lthe articles there. There are actually about 700+ articles here and most are killer, right on, nail it to the wall articles…and with so much to read, I’d just read the articles themselves at first, and then on the current articles read them and blog with us, but most of your questions will be answered by the articles themselves.
Knowledge gives us power and at first we have to learn about THEM, what they are,, how they operate and why, then we end up learning about OURSELVES and why we allowed them to con us and for so long…..it is a healing process and over coming the grief of being BETRAYED is more than just an “ordinary break up” and many of your freiends and family will not understand why this is so devastating to you, but believe me when I saw the posters here DO UNDERSTAND because we have been there or are there, and working our way out of the quicksand of the toxic relationships.
Again, welcome and God bless.
You know what I just realized? I think that we are creating a new language here. Trauma Theory assumes that trauma exceeds representation…that it remains unspeakable…but we do speak it, it’s just unintelligible to those who don’t understand it…They don’t speak our language….so we come here and speak it to each-other.
Thanks Ox Drover:
I have already read a ton of blogs and articles and definitely plan on reading all that is here. My question is one subject I have never seen addressed…how they can keep up the facade of a “family.” Aren’t they so bored they want to leave it? Maybe that’s why they wreak havoc on everyone else. And you are so right about friends and family not understanding…believe me, my friends do NOT understand. All I have received (from friends who are not really my “friends”) is judgement and wrath. That’s just another whammy on top of already feeling bad. They just don’t get it because it didn’t happen to them. I had a double whammy because not only was this guy scamming me, so was another woman in my office who he was also seeing. She was lying, lying, lying to me about him and I didn’t see it. I am not going to say I was totally clueless. There would be times when I trusted my intuitions and would pull back from her, but she would always pour on her crap to pull me back in again. Basically it was her telling me that she was not seeing him when she was. Oh, she is a master manipulator…unbelievable. And him…it is just so hard to get over him because I wanted so much for it to be real. I have never felt like this about anyone else in my life…kind of sad at my age…47. I even left my job because of those two…gave up a very good job. But I just could not continue to stay there. It was a mess. I was a mess. And even after I left, he was still doing the push/pull with me, but I don’t know why because it wasn’t for sex. He would not go there with me (since we had broken up) so why was he keeping me on the line??? He wasn’t getting anything from me so I don’t get it. But now I have not heard from him in two months. I think it is finally done. I don’t want it to be; I don’t want to let go of those feelings, but I know I have to and I have not contacted him and I will not. I am not going to be the one chasing him and having no respect for myself. Anyway, thank you for listening. I would accept all advice and comments from anyone…thanks.
How do they have a family and kids? Like everything else, it is a mask that makes them “look good”—-look at Arny Swartznagger and his wife Maria, he had a wife and kids and a mistress in his own household who had his child, it made him look “good” he didn’t care about his wife except as a politically asset…or his kids either, they were just possessions….
They can FAKE a lot of things, but yea, they are bored with the wifie and the kiddies, and anything that ties them down, but they use them to keep up a false front.
You are fortunate if yours doesn’t come back…and I know it is easy to want that FANTASY you had, but remember it is just like the FANTASY of the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, it is NOT real, and no matter how much we would like it to be real, it isn’t, and trying to believe it is fooling ourselves. So focus on the REAL things in your life, the good things in your life, and be good to yourself. (((hugs))))
Kimmie, I think you may have a point here….a unique language.
eb, Well, I think if they get bored, they just cheat. They might like the image of having a wife and a family. Or they might like that they have absolute control over a wife they are abusing. They might like the wifes pay-check, or that she cooks really good meals, or they might like her house-keeping services. Believe me, if they weren’t getting something out of it, THEY WOULD LEAVE.
Also, google trauma bonding and read some articles. If the wife is trauma bonded, she will stay in the marriage indefinately, and that explains a good deal about why some spath’s are able to stay married for decades.
sky posted a very good song about the spath… so sharing it with you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vgQalXaIxs
eb, the lovebombing and sex and being with you so much while being “oh so caring” and telling you all the good stuff in intimate voice is what creates a bond that is tighter than within a normal relationship. Basically all those things release all the good-feel hormones in your brain (the stuff they try to replicate with cocaine and xtc), and so you get addicted to the psycho. Add to that the fact they are naturally talented hypnotizers (you know how that voice sounds and when they say they want to be with you)… whatever your feelings were (cold, anger, etc) before they say it that way it’s gone in a sec. This type of making us zone out, along with hormones, created neural pathways in our brains … imprinted us. Even the little good you have as memories of him in that way has become more important to our brains than all the bad stuff. This is also why you will easily feel the good stuff again, just thinking of them, even if you know the truth.
I counter this by either thinking of a past love that was at least a true love, not a lie, even if it went wrong, or think of memories I have that make me feel good and happy, while I was actually alone. This way I’m trying to re-teach my brain I have been plenty happy before he ever was in my life, and that I don’t need him.
Thanks for the doggie advice. I trained collies when I was a lot younger but was told there was better training now, and it made me doubt myself (okay after spath, it’s easy to doubt myself). I think Oxy has it right, maybe my “old” methods aren’t electric, but they use the dog’s natural talents. For ex: We never rewarded collies with snacks. Instead we always gave them extra attention and praise which make them sooo happy.
eb92044
I ditto Oxy about reading the archives first. Certain things will be aha moments to you. One thing stands clear in your words, you keep trying to ascribe Rational meaning to crazymaking behavior. A GOOD person did not do this too you. A screwed up irrational nonsense body did. Two different animals. That’s key. An spath is a DIFFERENT animal.
My husband kept up the facade of family b/c it got him the goodies in our small community. And the women he messed around with and those who knew, they LOVED being part of the secret, made them feel “special”.
One thing thoough, my spath husband was NOT close to the good people, even though he fooled them b/c he played to an image and they had limited contact with him. Thus Proof he could fool all the people that he wanted to fool SOME of the time, and he could fool SOME people ALL the time (those who were just like him, missing a conscience – and theres a LOT more of those with SELECTIVE consciences than professionals will acknowledge.) For those he couldn’t fool, he dismissed and avoided or he and his cronies sabotaged their credibility.
Why try to keep you on the line? It’s called back burner syndrome… he never knows when he needs to use you again and he was just assessing whether you were permanently cutting him off, or just mad… maybe you took him back before?