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.
Hens! bravo 🙂 🙂
even though i needed a phone, I was so happy that the cell phone died that the spath had sent me text messages on.
i was out in my little woods tonight and finally saw something i hadn’t seen in there before – and that felt so good. that whole woods is so connected to the spath for me that it’s been extremely hard to break the association. I will also be glad when this computer is no more, for the same reason.
it’s weird, i have thrown things out after break ups, and put things away for months or years – but this is different (well, because it’s NOT a ‘break up…’) i want to eradicate any cue, even the great things that happened during that time bring pain up for me. i have some very nice pics of myself and my garden- and i think i am going to delete them. just remind me of ‘him’. this year my garden feels like mine agian, tho. which is really good.
yep, the tide is turning.
One/Joy
I am just so amazed at the craziness of this. Three years ago, before I met my spath, I would have never imagined THIS, the state I’m in.
There are moments I hurt so bad, I wonder, how is it that he left me and doesn’t think about me AT ALL.
And then there are days like today where I realize he’s completely EMPTY. He’s a body with a head and hair on it. No heart. He never loved me, it was an illusion. Just an empty vessel.
It’s totally nuts.
2becop,
Oxy has some really great advice there. You’ve given me great advice too, so I know you have it in you to use your head. Your emotions may be ruling you right now – I get that – but golly you’re intelligent and you’ve survived a spath – that takes strength and conviction. You got it in you girl.
sk- well it’s all just bloody bonkers, really. It takes sooo long just to get that we have been duped: we have to both get that they are fakes, and let go of the illusion of their love. it is a huge ‘roller coaster’ for a long time. someone used that term the other day and I realized i used to use it all the time – i no longer do, because i am no longer on the roller coaster. it’s been 19 months since the spath exited my life (well, there was a bit of smear campaign post exit, so let’s make that 18 months) and i am no longer on the roller coaster. i am now on the whirl a gig, with small stints in the dunk tank, and some deep forays in to the house of mirrors. it’s ALL better than it was.
much to do still. really, i haven’t started some of the deep work i have to do. but i am much more functional and getting better all the time.
i have feelings that need to be released; at times i my rage at the spath rises and it rises fast – that would be the PTSD, me thinks. and the panic i feel 100 times a day is the PTSD, compounding an underlying anxiety disorder that snapped with all of this.
my spath – what did she want from me? drama, definitely. and one of my lf friends suggests that the spath really did like me in some way – well maybe, in the hollow ‘body with a head’ kinda way.
more and more i think of, am curious about and want to move toward better things. this is still not coming…but there are urges. i have punished myself incessantly. i am getting a grip on that fact.
so, we hang in there. we feel nuts; WHICH IS APPROPRIATE TO THE SITUATION!. we go up and down on the roller coaster and we puke….and then when we ‘get it’, the first of many ‘its’; ‘we’ get better.
onestep you and I have both made progress in ‘finding ourselves’ oh my what a trip….I am sorry you get those triggers in your garden, spathboy planted some dianthus by seed around an oak tree 4 – 5 years ago now, I have mowed em down, sprayed em with round up and they just keep comin back, this spring I let them bloom, didnt bother me to much – my spathflowers I call em – hard to get rid of – but they are a reminder that pretty aint always a good thing…
Hens – 🙂
you could try smothering them…… 🙂
ok 1steprs – lmao
Hiya Ladies
I’m back. Had a few mentally busy days. Purchased my puppy, get him next week and my house sale os going through. Also got a 20 percent share in a new business that’s going to rocket with ME behind it.
Signed upto a interior design degree at uni and you know what. Apart from the odd blip I’ve found myself not giving a toss about him.
3 weeks tomorrow and I bet his life isn’t full of positive stuff he’s achieving. No I bet he’s holed up in his slanky flat smoking weed drinking beer and pulling skanks of the net.
I’d choose my life over his any day.
I’ll return his painting when I’m strong and back to the confident business woman he met. Then I’ll let him see me at the motorway service station and let him have it, big time.
I’m coming back and I’ll have my day over him the total dick head.
Hope you’re all doing well
Melly xxx
Just read a post that said a spath is just a body with a head ect. Totally right, looking back on that relationship makes new cringe.
I can’t believe how these men operate. I defo know now that my spath never loved me. I can’t believe what he has reduced me too, I hate him. But I’m going to fight back, I’ve got to, we all have too.
I personally can’t wait to get back to me, the me I was before he pulled me to pieces. I still don’t understand how I ended up in such a mess/state.
My mum and friends are saying stuff like I never understood what you saw in him. His skin was grease and wrinkled. All stuff I noticed when I first saw him again but I somehow built him up into a Greek god.
Mental!!!
I’m going to start listening to my instincts in the future and think about my feelings and happiness before a mans in the future.
You guys have really helped me get my dignity back.
Thank you xx
xx
Ps: I’m renting my stunning flat out. I never told him I also owned this, told him it was rented.
I’m so lucky, so lucky not to loose everything like some have.
They all need locking up.
Absolutely True!
I realized this very soon into my discovery that my Ex was a sociopath. I then put in my own mind that I had to accept the fact that our entire relationship of 6 1/2 years was a LIE. Every minute, every smile, laugh, tear, promise all of it, was an act for him. I realized he conformed his personality to suite what I needed and wanted and yet at the same time he used those needs and wants to achieve his own agenda.
The next step was to Erase the Lies from my life so that I would not look back on a moment and think “what happened to us?” Nothing happened to us as there never was an US.
I took all memorabilia, pictures, letters all of it and either sent it to him or destroyed it. I even went so far as to put all the pictures on my computer in a folder name it “Idiot” and put an Icon of a Funeral Casket on it so that when I scan through my documents it subliminally puts in my mind that part of my life is Dead, Gone and Over With.
This last part was very difficult due to the fact that I raised his son as my own for the last 5 years and there are a lot of family pics that include my own son and family members. But I realized seeing pics of my step son hurt more than all the other stuff he had done to me and my family.
So close off your heart pack it all away or destroy it and move on with your life.
Do Not let what they did to you destroy the essence of Who and What you are as a Normal Functioning Human Being.