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.
Hopeforjoy:
Hmmmm, paranoid. I think the one I know is also VERY paranoid; nervous type. You say he is amusing, glib, charasmatic and intelligent…mine was all those and more. Very playful. Adaptable like a chameleon. Yeah, if someone is that charming, they want something and I am going to get a million miles away from them. Interesting yours didn’t change when he drank either. You say seductive, I say playful and extremely flirty. You bet we will be more careful in the future!!! I will probably be so careful I will never date, but that’s OK, too.
Hi ladies
A update:
Started packing my flat up, was feeling ok but looked at skanks pic on fb. Got upset block this person, my friend come round and was encouraging me to see if he changed his fb password. If he hadn’t she said let’s change all hiis info so he can’t use it, come on it would be dead funny.
I was in a right state so phoned my best friend crying, in front of other friend and my best mate went mental. Put my head right and once her kids were in bed drove ten miles and went mental at other friend.
Anyway, I didnt and reached out to the only person who understands what I’m feeling. My friend with the baby with eye cancer. She said in April 10. “where the fuck is he?? Tell you what Melly, your ace, I know tons of men who would do anything to take you out. I hate to say it, he came up here, clocked your car, flat, art, furniture, life style and thought I’ll have a bit of that. Forced his way up and once he realised you wasn’t going to keep him. You expected him to work and pay, he’s changed”
She wad right, I remember saying but he has commitment issues because his mum left him when he was 12. I’m such a fecking idiot!!!!
Got my puppy Sunday 😀 he is amazing. I love him so much and have been happy. So happy work colleuges have posted on my wall, so nice to see you looking so happy and positive, I think things are starting to go your way. How nice is that?? I was estatic.
Because of my naughty little bundle of fluff, I’ve moved in with mum and dad. Anyway I faced going through the stuff he sent back and my Audi spare key is there. Also is my flat key, phew. However this really upset me but helped me move on, here goes.
When he dumped me in jan 11, we didn’t see eachother for two weeks. He turned up at mine, with my stuff. He was raging, I’ve only seen this once in motorway services over rip off coffee.
He said he kept trying to dump me but I wouldn’t listen. I shouted for the first time at him; ‘fine im listening, but who the f*** do you think you are disrespecting me, slamming stuff around in my stunning home you imbersile, f***ing sad man child. Fine pack your tat and f***off, I’m having a cuppa, you want to calm down and have one. He screamed NO!!!
I made my coffee and sat in my lounge composed, thinking f him. He come in appologised said he didn’t mean it, blah blah blah.
Anyway I gave him his flat key back in the morning and he took my stuff back down to his.
I noticed he didn’t have my flat key on his bunch as normal and asked him where it was because they cost £200 each and you can’t get them cut. He said I left it at yours, I said no, you put it back on your keyfob. He goes oh yeah, I don’t know where it is, I’ve hunted high and low for it.
Well him sending my key back just proves to me, he’s a lying using nutter. He was keeping it incase I wouldn’t let him have his shit back when he planed to dump me after his gramps had passed or he was planning on robbing me. Who knows?
This last 4 nights I having nightmares about him, that I’m back with him and he’s torturing my emotions, saying things like ‘baby thanks for the tea, it was fantasic but I don’t like been looked after. Or if I asked him if he loved me he would pause and look at me for a while and say baby of cause I love you lots and lots and lots!!!!!!
I wake up sweating and scared. Last night I dreamt he was seeing a friend of mine whom I met in Greece 14 yrs ago. She had a thing about my ex and they kissed. She has not answered a call or text from me since we split and I just have a feeling. It’s funny how they both come back into my life after 12 yrs??
These dreams are horrible and I’ve not dreamt in yrs, so maybe my mind is trying to heal or I’m still traumatised. I guess this is going to take a while to heal, it’s a huge wound.
But my life is now positive, 4 wks after splitting my house purchase is dragging, but my puppy, my family and friends are brill. I am also seeing my niece and nephew loads. They are auntie melly and puppy mad and I’ve had them both at some point all week.
I hope you are all doing good and if anyone knows what’s going on with these dreams please enlighten me. I’m getting worried about sleeping.
Thanks
Melly xxx
PS: 4 wks today 😀
(((Melly)))
I’m so happy for you and your little fluff ball. Take good care of him and he’ll take care of you. No such thing as a sociopathic dog. They are LOYAL.
Melly:
I don’t have any insight into the dreams unfortunately. Please keep us updated and take care.
Melly,
While most of the stuff you dream about can be said to be symbolical and sometimes way far removed from reality, what is not symbolical in dreams are the emotions we feel in them. Studies done to the brain in REM sleep (when you dream) show which parts of the brain are “blocked” and which are very active. The evidence highly suggests that dreams serve mostly to deal with our emotional life and world.
As victims of manipulation, we have come to block many feelings during the relationship, in order to deal with the cognitive dissonance. But now that you are on the other side (“everything was a lie”), you are now finally open to the emotions still locked inside of you when he hurt or abused you. We are already dealing with pain in our waking life with regards to our loss of illusion. And it may be too much to deal with the painful memories in our waking life. So, the dreams you are having serve as emotionally working through the mess of the past. It’s hurtful because you are actually triggered back into those moments when he hurt you, but you pushed it aside and locked the hurt away.
But it’s a sign that something healthy is going on. I see my trigger dreams as work accomplished at night at great speed, so I can keep on functioning in the day. I actually sometimes seek sleep and dreams, when I start to feel very emotional, rather than deal with it waking. Just because I know I’ll be resolving the issues faster and instinctively more helpful to me in my dreams and sleep.
BTW, you’ve always had dreams. You just didn’t remember them. in a 7-9 hour sleep we have 7-8 REM sleep phases, and you always dream in that phase. But the short term memory of the brain is blocked during REM sleep. So, if you continue to sleep beyond the REM sleep into the deep NON-REM sleep your brain just did not remember the dream anymore, and so it feels as you have not dreamt at all when you finally wake up. If you happen to wake up during the REM sleep though (whether fully woke up or not does not really matter), short term memory kicks into gear and you have recollections of the dream. This is why scientists wake up subjects close to the end of REM sleep when studying dreams. Also, you can wake easily enough from REM sleep, because this is the phase of light sleep.
I think what you are dreaming about is very normal under the circumstances, as well as actually good for you in the long run. Your dreams are like high gear self therapy
Feel very down about it all today ;-( which is a shame after a good few days. But it’s always like that isnt it.
I’ve had the step mum leaving me messages, she’s just another manipulator, in fact I think the whole family is. Shes going on about this bloody painting. Not once saying how are you or anything. I’m ignoring them; my mum says obviously the whole family knew he was only using you to look after the dying old man. Pisses me off.
Oh well bed time now, my puppy is flying around my room causing havoc. Lol
Tomorrows another day, another challenge.
Thanks for letting me waffle, you’re right about the hurt pain thing. I am remembering a lot of bad stuff. Things he said, things he did, he was/is vile.
Its funny I look back on my other two serious relationships and I smile, remembering them fondly. When I look back on this one a dark cloud elopes me and I feel sick about it all.
Thanks again xxx
Melly:
Peace to you. SWEET dreams, not bad ones.
Hey Melly… maybe you can use those memories of the other relationships to push away any warmer feelings you may still have for the spath.
I was really pissed off all of a sudden again couple of hours ago, when I suddenly remembered some of his lies the past months. I went for a nap and let the dreams take care of it. I don’t remember what it was that I dreamed exactly, but there was turmoil in it and probably him. I felt better afterwards.
EB and SKYLAR
I think it is very possible that the spaths look younger than others their age (I dunno, it’s not on the list), but my spath never stressed out. His personality and interests constantly changed, he was like a chameleon, he never looked the same….I told him I thought he was emotionally retarded (he changed the subject)……I think it’s because they don’t have a CORE personality their looks morph, they don’t get worry lines, etc.
That’s what I think, anyway. They’re free of stress, they’re child like, infantile, empty, and evil all at once.
SK
SK:
WWWWWOOOOWWW!!! Thank you so much for this post. My spath looks so much younger than his years. I do think it’s because they are like little boys only living for the moment. He did stress; was always kind of nervous, BUT…he was very adaptable. He could just roll with the punches and deal with whatever was dealt to him and that’s one of the things I fell in love with. Work sending him to China with one day’s notice? No problem. Wife kicked him out because she found out about an affair? Oh, well…he just went and lived in a hotel and then got an apartment. Anyway, the big thing about your post is this…I noticed that my spath would actually look like two TOTALLY different people!!! I never said anything to anyone because I thought they would think I was crazy. But I could look at him sometimes and he would look one way and other times he would have his “other” look. Soooo weird. What is that?? Is it because he is truly a demon and not human? I just got a chill through my body. And I am not talking about him changing looks because he was really angry or anything like that. I know people say how crazy people look when they get mad, etc. No, it had nothing to do with that. I never saw him mad to be honest with you. He would literally just look like two different people at times. Has anyone else experienced this????