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.
Eva,
it’s envy.
They envy that we think well of ourselves, that we hold ourselves in high esteem. We know what we value, we are complete human beings.
The wiki definition of self-esteem is:
Self-esteem is a term used in psychology to reflect a person’s overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth.
They have no esteem because they are like infants. Infants have not yet learned values. They can’t esteem themselves because they don’t know what anything is worth. Nothing is worth anything to them, unless it is valued by someone else first, then they experience envy and they want it.
That’s why they like to steal other peoples’ spouses. Because it belongs to someone else. The bible has specific laws (coveting) against this because it recognizes how evil it is to covet.
They covet your skin, who you are, what you feel about yourself, your reputation, and most especially: the expression on your face, because it’s real and expresses real emotion. Which they can’t do. They can only wear a mask.
They envy our happiness, our self esteem, our independence, and the loath of emotionality, our trust in others and the world… as long as it keeps the emptiness and boredom inside away
My spath next door cannot stand the fact that I have emotions-it totally freaks her out. She is even aware that she doesn’t have anything to talk to me about anymore. The last time I saw her 5 days ago she asked if I’d seen the water by the levee. I wanted to say b***h I walk on the levee everyday when I exercise. All I can say is that I have to get my demons out by going to that counselor and taking care of me and learning to like myself, and she can continue staying inside like a hermit if she wants too. I am “stepping away from the drama”.
2bcop,
You’re right, there’s no question that she envies everything about you. When you wrote about how she approached you while walking arm-in-arm with her mother, I could just picture it. She was BORROWING her mother’s respectability, because she feels none of her own. Her mother makes her look more respectable, than she is on her own. They all borrow from us, using our company and friendship to create a facade and ensnare more victims.
Skylar,
Do you know what was the first surprise i had when i gossiped his FB? The was a pic of a woman sitting on a bed, her back naked. It seemed by back. But her face was turned, profile and it was his face made it a bit affeminated and painted in white and wearing a turban in his head. It was a manipulated pic (it’s his job) but the body seemed mine. I was shocked when i saw it. I found that pic sinister.
A few days later, i don’t know how but i felt he knew somehow i was gossiping his FB and the pic dessapeared.
He left others in his album, but that one dessapeared. Among those in his album there was another sinister one, which was a cheese he wanted me to bring him to switzerland ( 🙂 yes, i know are strange gifts but it was what he wanted that time). Well, the pic was the cheese and a big knife pointing in the middle of it. The pic was sinister, too. It’s his job to prepare images and he’s good at giving them a sinister touch.
cheesy eva – he sounds dangerous – stay away from his FB, stay away from anything you describe as sinister.
Hens, yeah he seemed to me dangerous and so i told it to his son. I got access to the father account by means of adding his son tempting him with the pic of a girly. The son deleted me and is already several months i can’t gossip the psycho fb. And all his information is private. I already saw enough.
i dont have a facebook acct…dont want one…..i saw enuff too, i dont want to antagonize a hornets nest – i am just glad to be done with him, i figure if i leave him alone he will leave me alone…..its worked for 3 years – except for one time i talked to a friend of his about a year ago and sure nuff – here came the hornet mad as a hornet…so i keep my mouth shut cause he is sinister and cheesy…
😀 Yeah, hens. These macho spaths with a little touch of feminity are dangerously cheesy. They eat victims with cheese. We’ll be careful from now on with these sinister spaths that cut bodies and cheeses.
And besides not only they already have sinister eyes they sometimes make them worse. There was a series of pics of himself (must be his inner self: something in between his face and a skull shouting with red eyes, or yellow, or each one of each colour) last year during the football world cup. Those were pretty sinister eh?
Call me cheesy, hens, but i found him sinister 🙂
lol – yea my cheesy weasil had a bad ass boy / fem slut boi double personality – jackel and hide thing going – sinister/sweet – creepy cheapy—oh well thats what i get for pickin trash up out of a bar ditch – literally he was litter – I am not the scavenger i used to be tho ..I am waitin on my prince in aluminum foil~!