“How did he really feel?” and “What did he want from me?” are two questions that often haunt victims of sociopaths. The reason we are haunted by these questions varies but often stems from the habit of over-focusing on the sociopath instead of ourselves. That being said, victims also have a healthy ”˜need to know’ that can help with recovery and healing.
I struggled with these questions in my own healing. I remain baffled by my observations of enjoyment of affection on the part of sociopaths. Early on, I told my own therapist that I had come to the conclusion that sociopaths exploit those close to them to the point of death, then, cry at the funeral. At the moment the tears are shed, I believe they do represent a grief of sorts. The feelings of loss experienced by sociopaths are however, short lived. Victims also have to beware because, although sociopaths are said to be incapable of feelings for those in their lives, they do become obsessed with them. Psychologists have not yet explained this obsession. If they don’t attach, why are they obsessed? Those who have read my other entries know that I believe that sociopaths do attach. It is what they do with attachments that is disordered.
How did he really feel?
In response to the picture of a sociopath crying at his victim’s funeral, my therapist said, “He feels what he tells himself he feels.” To help you understand what my therapist meant, I will explain what is known about how people usually experience feelings.
There are two components to feelings. The first is a physical sensation. When we experience a feeling we feel something in our bodies in relationship to that feeling. Think about loving someone close to you and sense how your body feels. Is it warmth in your heart? That is usually what people report.
There is much evidence that these physical sensations are disordered in sociopaths. Sociopaths do not generally experience the physical and hormonal changes that go along with feeling emotion. If they do experience them, it is to a lesser degree. Physical responses are blunted.
The second component of feelings is called attribution. Attribution is a cognitive process. When I feel that warmth in my heart as I see my children, I attribute the sensation to my love for them. Thus the physical sensation alone does not make emotion. Emotion is physical sensations and our interpretations of these sensations. There is also evidence that the parts of the brain responsible for attribution do not function properly in sociopaths.
There is one emotion that many sociopaths experience in a not so disordered way. This emotion is anger. Sociopaths do have blunted physical responses to anger. Despite this blunted responsiveness, they seem aware of angry feelings and make correct attributions about what makes them angry. Again, science has not even addressed, much less explained this observation.
Since the physical sensations and attributions that allow for the experience of emotion are disordered in sociopaths, their inner world is very different. They are left to make sense of themselves and others without the tools most of us use. Other parts of the brain fill in the missing processes. The person who is credited with first describing sociopathy in depth is Hervey Cleckley. He proposed that sociopaths are at least of average if not above average verbal intelligence. This makes sense because they have to use their verbal intelligence to make up for their lack of emotions. They do indeed feel what they tell themselves they feel. Scientists say they mimic other people’s emotions, yet again there is no real proof of this.
What did he want from me?
This question is easy to answer intellectually, but very hard for victims to accept emotionally. There are three pleasures we get from our love relationships. The first is pleasure in affection. The second is sexual pleasure. The third is pleasure associated with dominance and control. Sociopaths experience sex and dominance as enormously more pleasurable than affection. Therefore, they are in relationships to get sex and power, pure and simple.
If you love deeply and feel affection for others, you cannot fathom the inner world of an emotionally disordered person whose primary pleasures are sex and power. To understand another’s world you have to imagine yourself experiencing what the other experiences. You can’t do this with a sociopath.
Louise Gallagher said in her post The six steps of healing from a psychopath that the first step is acceptance. We have to accept that we can only know in part how sociopaths really feel and what they want from us. We can understand intellectually, but never emotionally.
o.k., I was informed recently, by e-mail, not to post (repeat) the same blog on other links on this web site, and was instructed, in that e-mail, not to do so, by e-mail from the LF administrator. Yet, I need for ONE posting, at least, to stay on this site, if no others after this, and this particular blog spot was the first one I posted to today, so I will post it (and ONLY to it) again, and for the ONLY time I post it (read: I’ll not post it again on any other link on this site; but this was the specific site to which I initially posted my blog, and I think it needs to remain posted, to warn other women. Thank you.) After informed, by e-mail, that I should not post same message to different LF blogs, I understood, but was not, since, informed if my message stayed on any one blog spot on LF, therefore, I post this message to this specific blog, and ONLY to this specific blog (not to any other LF blog on this site.)
I think all Spaths are destructive, thought, I also think that not as many women have had the misfortune to have a DOWN-LOW Spath ruin their lives. Therefore, my blog lines, below:
I was directed to this web site, LF, years ago, when someone posted a comment to my DDHG profile about my ex, who I think was another Spath. I’ve only today decided to post to the LF blog, for the first time up here, and responding specifically to OxDrover’s message to Hen, “Henry, those little turds just think they’re cute—they will just go on to be the next generation of ’Mikes’ and ’Jodies’ and can’t remember what Matt’s X was called—FAKE is a good enough term. Doesn’t matter if they are straight or gay or in between they are TRASH!”
Also agree to one_step_at_a_time’s message, “hens ”“ hi sweetie. young queens are f***ing turds. always have been. always will be. narcissistic little turds.”
My ex, a Spath with whom I lived for nearly a decade, was on the DL. One of his wives prior to me confirmed it for me, ..said that during her relationship with him, her gay male friends (more than one) told her they’d had sex with him. She also told me that he wanted to sex role switch with her, which in long, painful hindsight, I now suspect was what he was trying to have me do, as well.
It has been almost 10 years since ending our relationship. He left without reimbursing me half the security deposit (I paid the whole first extra month of rent, when we rented the house; we both signed the lease), so he left me holding the bag, hanging on to a house, not long after my last unemployment check ran out, he left after I’d helped mentor (if not raise) his daughter for that long, and left not long after she was no longer a minor. I was unable to have children of my own.
He drained me emotionally and financially for years..wasn’t like the ordinary break up (hey, I’d handled those in my 20s and 30s quite well..was able to move on like water off a duck’s back, and I always knew when to break it off with someone, early on, when I knew they were not right for me.) Profiles I’ve posted about him show him wearing the expensive clothes that I bought for him. He “fed” off my family’s good graces for years, attending my father’s 80th B-day celeb, at the beach, where I’d also invited his daughter (she ate well, too, that night!), taking advantage of my father’s V-day present to us as a couple: a weekend resort, with a hot tub, breakfasts served; dinners my father paid for my own B-day celebs, at fine restaurants, where he was also invited..for years.
He denied everything to the bitter end, said there was no other woman, etc. There WAS another woman, a woman who had, for a couple of years, pretended to be my friend. She was married, for the second time, when she met us, through mutual friends of hers and mine. So he USED me and my networks to meet and seduce his Ms. Next, his next victim.
Less than one year after he bolted, I was crime victimized. So..first I was sexually/emotionally/psychologically abused by one Spath, for years, then I was physically assaulted, by another Spath, a felon, at my place of work. Healing was slower, with two “crimes” happening back to back, from two different Spaths, one “crime” from who I THOUGHT I knew, another from a stranger and felon. The combination of the two things left me feeling as though I’d been raped.
Recovery has been slow, but I’m determined to “out” the Spath with whom I lived for so long, once and for all.
On one web site, I posted photos of him from his teens through his 50s, asking any gay guys or guy who’s sexed him to please come forward to say when or where that happened to please comment under any profiles on him. He had two failed marriages before living with me, and I suspect is working on a third that will probably fail (he interfered with her 2nd marriage, and seduced her away from her husband, meanwhile he’d advertised himself as bi on a swingers site.)
It wasn’t his first time trying to destroy someone else’s marriage. His first wife told me he (and by his own admission to her) had seduced their neighbor’s wife. He himself admitted to me, when we began dating, that he’d come on to a married woman while married to his 2nd wife, but she told him she didn’t want his problems to become hers. Wish I had done the same thing. That was my RED FLAG and I ignored it. Took a long time for me to forgive myself for having anything to do with the Spath.
Sometimes, the only relief I get from the residual grief (though much less than it was 9 years ago, and certainly minimal, since it didn’t take me long to meet my next partner, with whom I still live, and who I deeply love) is to try to help other women on those profiling sites. But when I post my standard paragraph, I also keep hoping that those gay guys will respond”“you know”“the gay guys who his first wife said had sexed him while he and she were married.
Is this “normal” to want this kind of final closure, or “obsessive”? I just think the next woman is putting herself at HUGE risk of possibly contracting AIDS. I care not for HER (female with whom he had an affair while living with me and who he left me for) feelings or HER safety anymore, but care about OTHER women who he might con, after her.
I think he also keeps stalking me by directing SPAM e-mail to my addy, and also suspect that it was he who has vandalized my car four times, within the last 9 years. But I refuse to be intimidated to take down my profiles about him on the net, that warn other women.
My car was, again, vandalized, when parked in front of my home, about week ago, and I suspect, again, that it was him doing it. And that SPAM email? Well, that continues, too. Got one just last night. Sent at 9 P.M. (His current “squeeze” should pay attention to what he does on his computer, at that hour, but she refused to listen to the warnings of her former husband’s former girlfriend who remained his friend, who was the sister-in-law of my ex’s first wife.) I ignore the emails. I just delete them. My neighbors and their teen children (who study into the morning hours) are on heightened Neighborhood Watch, because of the vandalism to my car. I REFUSE to be intimidated to remove my posts on DDHG or anywhere else, because of him or his actions. Somehow, I just know that his family members, or at least several of them, KNOW he’s a Spath, but they’ve managed, I think, to enable him and his behavior.
So, yes, I think the vindictiveness of Spaths, described in LF’s page about Spath characteristics, is right on the mark.
I think you LF bloggers might, by now, know who I am, or at least who my Spath was, especially if you read womansavers.com or DDHG profiles, as I do daily (like others read the daily obits in their newspapers.) I come to this blog, finally, because, what the Spath did to me was diminish my friendship circles (he FED ON THEM, to find his next victim!), to leave me feeling very isolated, and it has been a long haul for me, out of the hole of depression.
I’m not a homophobe (as he accused me of being in his last, vulgar e-mail to me.) In fact, I am trusting and putting my faith in my Higher Power, that some KIND gay guy (or guys), that is, who HAVE A CONCSCIENCE or consciences, come forward to help expose him for the DL Spath/fraud he was, is, or has been for years, ..hope that the gay community (at least those gays who believe in monogamy) will help me finally..to expose him, so I can have complete closure.
He refused to get an AIDS/HIV test, when I asked him to, after he decided it was “over.” Though I am cleared (had to wait six months between each test), I am very concerned about other victims of his, after the fact. He had a huge hemorrhoid in his anal area, which very well could be a HUGE red flag, that he might be a “bottom” (or a “versatile”, someone who is both a top and bottom.) He had a gay male porn addiction while living with me.)
Spaths on the DOWN-LOW are the worst! This message, I hope, will remain up here. I won’t post it to any other LF blog URLs.
Has anyone, on this LS blog, experienced cognitive and emotional “blunting” or deadness of feeling, from the symptoms of Battered Woman’s Syndrome, as I have, subsequent to her years spent living with a Spath, to not know, consequently, where to specifically, and to whom, specifically, to tell their true story? Or, has anyone else experienced disability discrimination, from having Battered Women’s Syndrome or PTSD, as an aftermath of a long-term relationship with a Spath? I think I CANNOT be the only one up here, who has met that unfortunate end, so want to know more and hear more from others up here.
Dear Zimzoomit,
I think if you will go back through the archives of the articles here EVERY ONE of your questions will be answered 100 Xs over.
There is a great deal of information on this site already and I suggest that you READ READ READ. It is okay for you to post on other threads, you just don’t have to cut and past the same comment on each one.
You are welcome here, this is where people who have been wounded come to heal. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER so read and educate yourself to take back your power. God bless.
zizzoomit:
I agree with OxDrover that the answers to your questions have been answered 100 times over.
However, I do have two thoughts.
First, if you believe that your S-ex has HIV/AIDS many jurisdictions have passed laws which make a carrier who knowingly has sex with people and doesn’t tell them that he/she is infected can be criminally prosecuted. Actual medical evidence is called for her. Going all out to out somebody isn’t the way to do it.
Second, I think you need to ask yourself how your continued efforts to bring down S-ex may impact your current relationship. My partner is a great guy. But, other than briefly telling him about my S-ex, I have learned to put it all in the background. I don’t want the past to slop over into the present and future. He doesn’t need to hear about that relationship, and, as supportive as he is, I don’t want him to hear about it. I have learned that if you stay engaged with your S-ex, even if it is indirectly via trying to out him on websites, you may as well invite a third person into your current relationship. And we all know where that leads to.
Just something to think about.
Yes, I know all about not letting things “slop over” into the next relationship, that’s why I suspect that others “compartmentalize” their thoughts and expressions, about their prior relationships, especially ones with with their Spaths, but I also think it is not for our next partner not to tell us to limit, or limit, our grief over this situation (would you expect your partner not to let you grieve over the death of a parent or child?) I’ve read many good profiles on DDHG, from women who’ve outed their Spaths. Several even admitted to having posted about more than one former Spath from their past, on the internet, meanwhile exclaiming JOY that they’d finally met their true soul mates since dumping the Spaths, and had enjoyed and intended to enjoy, their relationships with their Healer (partners) with whom they’ve since lived with for years or married, so, I’m not going to be “guilt tripped” into having residual feelings of grief, over my past situation, now and then. I’ve learned not to care what anyone else thinks, because of the Spath. My partner knows I profiled the Spath. I have told him that my reading the profiles on DDHG and other sites is just another way that I know to appreciate him, to know that he is NOT one of “those” guys.
edited for seemingly harshness…Maybe it’s just me, but I would prefer to show him how much I believe in him in more subtle ways.
Zimzoom.
I agree with Matts post. Very wise.
I don’t believe he was offering any sort of guilt trip.
Hey…if it ‘works’ for you…..don’t change a thing!
I’m not changing a thing, and I honor the space that my partner and I give each other, as well as respect him, and allow him to express his feelings..encourage him to. He’s definitely not a “rebound”, either, but a keeper. The difference is night and day, between my wonderful partner and my ex (the Spath). I truly believe that the “three P’s”, PROTECT, PROVIDE, PROFESS, are what make the true “man” and what make decent relationships, built on integrity (not on subterfuging someone else’s relationship or marriage..something my ex, the Spath did, or tried to do, more than once..he had an history of it..he seemed to thrive on it, and on pitting breeders against non breeders), work, that the three P’s (not faked) are the ONLY way a relationship can work. I had the fake “professing” part of it from the Spath, but certainly not the Protect and Provide (at least not without whining or complaining) parts. o.k., I’ll go back to my studying now, off line for the night. I’d still like to get, from Henry (who I surmise must be gay) what he thinks of how to out a guy on the DL, among the gay community, or see if he feels the same way about guys who lie to both sexes about their alternate lifestyles. I’ll becha most gay guys hate men on the down-low, that they’d rather have a gay guy out than closeted, and bet that they get just as hurt as a female, by a DL Spath’s betrayal. Nighty night everyone.
ZIMZOOM:
I’m not a gay man….but I have referred to myself as a celebate lesbian once or twice on LF and beyond…..
A sociopath is a sociopath whether gay or straight, male or female….and any info will be received the same.
If he’s into men AND women….and he’s HIV pos. then it’s a problem for all. If you only suspect he’s HIV+ then i’d be careful what you write or say. It must be documented and you must have it in YOUR hands. Medical records are protected.
Unless you have photos of him with men….it’s HIS secret, or you have men who will ‘speak’, again it’s his secret and only to beleived by those who CHOOSE to believe you.
I have pics of my spath on his knees with two naked men on a couch I found on CL.
It gives me what I need to ‘speak’ about his bisexuality.
I think anyone….gay, straight, bi or whatever hate anyone on the DL. It’s manipulation and deceat.
I urge you to read further on LF…..as you were advised by Oxy….and it applies to these questions too…..it’s all been talked about on LF. Search the archives and you will find all the info you need.
There are and have been many posters here with much experience of which you ask about…..seek and you will find.
Good luck in your research.
Returning with one last comment for the night (hey..we’re allowed to change our minds, yes?) If he’d wanted to “convert” me to lesbianism by trying to get me to watch films about lesbians, he might’ve been more classy about his choices, like, perhaps to choose films with excellent story lines and cinematography, like “Tipping The Velvet”..sort of a “period” flick, with women wearing Victorian era costumes (much like “The Red Violin”, which was one he picked out, about a womanizing musician, which my ex was; he also chose “Blood Oranges”, “Eyes Wide Shut”, about other sick sociopaths, and one of the only movies he took me to in an actual theatre, when we first dated, was “The Crying Game”. That should have nipped it in the bud for me. I should have seen the Red Flags then. I’ll bet his gay male cousin showed him gay porn when he was a minor, so he wanted to “purge” the experience by doing a similar thing to me..to degrade me, trying to confuse my sexual identity. I just thought he was being “artsy”, and married/intelligent friends of his, who I respected, had recommended “The Crying Game,” so I went to see it with him.) No, instead, he bought and rented hard core, nasty porn, involving gay themes (men on men, women on women, fisting, anal effing, and everything under the sun) that I caught him jacking off to. He should’ve known that I would NEVER..COULD NEVER..be a lesbian..even if he had picked “Tipping The Velvet”, to see. He even asked me once if I thought the woman (who he left me for) was “attractive”..almost as if he was asking if I’d consider having a threesome with her. A very sick man. One trick of a pimp, when he turns out a young innocent girl to prostitution, is to show her porn. I learned that from reading Dworkin’s chapter, “Sister, Can You Spare A Dime, from Andrea Dworkin’s book, Heartbreak. He was such a hypocrite because he’d named his variety band after the Robert Cray tune, “Night Patrol”, which is, I think, a spiritual message about how men shouldn’t destroy the spirits of women, but my Spath did just the opposite! Whenever confronted with, “What’s with all these gay male themes in the movies you bought? Are you gay or bi?”..he would always deny, as if he enjoyed torturing me. And whether or not the woman after me wants to admit she made a mistake, he DID admit to me, after calling it quits, that, when he was a younger man, he’d met gay guys for casual sex in theatres, bookstores, public baths, and the like. Talk about a shock to one’s system. That would be an understatement. I wrote a book about these topics, that took me three years of research and writing, and that I intend to publish as an e-book, for read-by-chapter viewing and payment, when I can manage to get the web site up for it.I believe you when you say a person does both men and women, but I disagree with the term “bisexual”..believe that those who use that word to describe themselves use it to “feed-forward” to society and the world that it’s okay to sex both men and women, when, in actuality, I’ll bet that most of those who call themselves “bi” are SEXUALLY CONFUSED from having been raped as children, and they want to “re-live” their sexual abuse (“purge” if you will) their experience onto their adult female partners. I think this was the case with my ex of many years. He hid his “other side” from me until the very end, and it was SICK, DEMENTED, ABUSIVE behavior. No. I believe the only TRUE “bisexuals” are hermaphrodites..those born with BOTH sets of sex organs, and think that others who try to “promote” the THEORY of bisexuality want to make it SEEM like their SICK, SEXUAL IDENTITY CONFUSION is “normal”. It’s NOT normal. My ex was a “bottom”, too, I would discover, after he joined a swingers’ site, advertising himself as BI seeking BI. His first wife and I had a conversation, finally. She told me he wanted her to “reverse” sex roles with her..for her to be the GUY, and wear a STRAP-ON. Of course, she didn’t comply. One time, he donned one of my wigs and underwear. THAT should have been my BIG PINK FLAG to get out. I just thought he was being silly at the time. He also told me that when he was age 12, his gay male cousin, at age 15, had oral sex with him; that would be enough to mess anyone up in the head, for the rest of his/her life. He cheated on BOTH wives, and both OTHER women, besides them, with whom he lived. After all was said and done, he even tried to project that I was lesbian (I’m not), and I believe he just wanted me as SEXUALLY CONFUSED as he is/was. I am thoroughly SICK of these DOWN-LOW males..won’t call them “men—just SICK freaks. According to what I’ve read up here, most men on the DL are GIGOLOS, too.