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.
kim frederick:
Oh and the caretaker part is right on. He has the wife at home taking care of everything while he is at work scamming everyone and doing whatever he wants. He doesn’t want any responsibility whatsoever for the children so he lets her take care of it all. He only does the very little he needs to do with the kids as far as responsibility to keep up appearances. I think he feels like as long as he does “just enough” to appease the wife, she will stay with him and keep doing all the dirty work.
Yeah, Sky. Your Peter Pan quotes are soooo right-on it’s creepy.
It was the adventure, the fun, and the You and me against the world that hooked me. When I wasn’t working, or worrying about the next shoe that was about to drop, and when I wasn’t trying to figure out how to pay the rent or the electric bill, I was having a lovely adventure and having fun. And yeah, I like fun. Someone told me I was in a disfunctional relationship, and to remember the root word of disfunction is fun. LOL.
I was here with the toddlars one day, and they were watching, “Dora the Explorer on TV. I looked up at the TV and saw a cartoon version of a man-made lake in the wilderness that Spath and I visited a couple of times. We brought plastic inflatable mattresses to float around on. We brought a grill and some steaks. I had made potato salad, and bought a can of beans. We had a cooler full of beer, and we brought his dog and a frisbee. It was a great day.
We had a lot of days like that. When I looked up at the TV, that memory flooded back. It didn’t really make me sad, and I didn’t have to remind myself how horrible most days were. (This is really growth.) I was able to just accept the memory for what it was, a memory of a good time.
Eva:
I know he’s doing it…he’s always doing something. I even told him that…I told him I knew that if he wasn’t contacting me, he was contacting someone else. I really called him out. That’s why he really doesn’t want anything to do with me. He realized I figured him out.
skylar:
Hmmmm, Peter Pan Syndrome…I will have to research this. Definitely a perversion of the human spirit…definitely.
kim frederick:
Good for you! Seems like you have come a long way in healing 🙂
eb:
Whatever you say to them is worth nothing for them. So what they say to you is worth nothing either. Words mean nothing for them. The best is neither talk nor listen to them. They’re toxic for the psyche.
Peter pan syndrome is inmaturity in men, nowadays very generalized, but most of them are not psychos, are jerks.
Yep, the dating panorama is bad.
Kim
My life was adventure galore with the spath. always fun, always fear, always drama, always mystery and intrigue.
Then I went to live in an idyllic little cabin in the woods, on an island. There I stayed on fantasy island for so many years. Until the fantasy became a permanent nightmare and the prince charming revealed himself to be a monster.
Remember, even Peter Pan had the nemisis, Captain Hook.
What’s a fantasy without drama?
Eva:
I believe you are right. He even said to me one time when I asked him if he was mad at me…he said, “I don’t get mad.” Makes sense now because he really doesn’t care about anything…doesn’t care enough to get mad. And what he says or what he hears from others…none of it matters to him. I just cannot figure out for the life of me how he holds such a good job. Doesn’t make sense to me.
This Peter Pan thing is really him. Ha, I am going to start referring to his wife as “Wendy.”
Trying to reason with a sociopath is like nailing jello to a tree .
eb:
It has much sense: many people are superficial and don’t care much about feelings. He has a good mask because of his good job and that’s more than enough for the current standards.