“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.
Still Reeling: Something I thought about was gaslighting You may be familiar with this tactic. Very dangerous and chilling but effective with the spaths. Also, I found that reading the sociopath next door a very good book. I think you may enjoy and help you understand their motives.
Truthspeak: When did this mess all start to unravel? Sounds like it has been recently.
SurvivorAgain, do you mean my personal mess? To be quite frank, the marriage was “over” the day that I discovered that the exspath had been living a violent and deviant double-life. The subsequent discoveries came one piece at a time. The scope of what he did is so vast that it would require volumes to talk about all of the ramifications.
Yeah, I’m pretty raw and I have no interest in “love,” sex, or even companionship. My feelings about sex are in direct relation to the perversions that the exspath engaged in and they only apply to my specific situation. And, romantic “love” is just a concept to me – not applicable to my life, one iota.
My main interest is in getting through the hoax and healing.
SurvivorAgain:
Thank you so much for your encouraging words.
still reeling:
May I ask…how is your marriage now? Are you just living together like brother and sister or is it a good union?
Trust me…I get what you are saying about how we “hear” what we want to hear when people say things to us, especially if they are spaths.
Wow, that blows me away about them looking like different people…different faces. Very eerie.
Oh, dear…that is soooo weird you said you didn’t have a phone during that time. I did have a phone, BUT…he emailed me all the time and didn’t even ask me for my phone number. Three full weeks went by when it hit me…I started wondering why he hadn’t asked for my cell. One day he finally did and you know what he told me the very first evening we were intimate…”I was afraid to ask for your number because I thought you weren’t going to give it to me.” What was that all about? Just another ploy to make me think he really liked me and was all nervous and scared about me?? Now he doesn’t want to touch me with a ten foot pole and I should be glad about that, but why am I not?? All I ever wanted was his approval and I don’t know why 🙁 So…that was a HUGE blessing you didn’t have a phone because he probably would have been texting you all the time and who knows what could have happened.
Yeah, that English crap is right. Has anyone seen the new Burger King commercial with David Beckham? He opens his mouth and everyone swoons. I can’t even watch that commercial. That is/was my spath…he opens his fucking mouth and everyone melts. UGGHH. Sorry for cursing, but it just makes me sick that he has that much power and the even bigger problem is he knows it.
Thanks, still reeling, for being here for me and thanks to everyone else, too!! YOU ALL mean a lot to me.
Truthspeak: How long has it been since you discovered all of the spath’s deviant behavior?
I know the feelings of “raw” all to well. I survived a lot of deviant behavior from my spath. I, too, would need a storage vault to tell of all of the sick things I learned about over time. I still do not know all of it….. I truly believe it is God’s mercy on me. Keeping me from incidents that would have destroyed me completely. God truly loves us and protects us in all kinds of ways.
Louise: You deserve and you will find. Don’t give up on hope and love. If you are a believer, you may want to read Psalms. Proverbs is wonderful regarding God’s knowledge and His vengence on wicked and evil people. He knows all.
Truly my faith got me though the darkest of dark days. I hoped that someday I could help someone like others helped me. I hope everyone here is learning from each other’s experience and know that you will get through the storm. There is life after the spath.
To this day, I still have to deal with the spath on a very limited basis. He doesn’t upset me like it did before. NO CONTACT is the only way. It works, if you stay strong and do not give in at all. Spaths want any type of attention — negative or other.
Those of you who are new — Welcome. Look at “gaslighting” and see if you too were a victim like I was. I thought I was loosing my mind. We are not crazy either, like they want us to think.
I also want to thank all of you have been so kind to me as wel.
Sleep well all tonight.
Survivor Again, I also appreciate the encouragement and your spirit to go forth as well as your faith.
Thank you including me in your kind and thoughtful well wishes.
Truth, I am not sure I could get through what you have been through. In the early yrs of our marriage, my husband used to run outside every time he heard our pretty and young (I’m 6 yrs older than him) neighbor out there. It killed me (remember I’m jealous). I held it in for a year, then the dam just burst. When I think about what you, Survivor, Louise and others have suffered, I really feel like I shouldn’t even be out here, unless I can be helpful to you.
To live this life for years, I am unable to grasp how it is possible. You are strong, strong, strong. If I’ve ever wished peace, serenity, blessings, miraculous benevolence on anyone, it’s you and the folks on this forum that have had to live this horror and nightmarish existence and its aftermath..I’ve watched a few epi’s of “Who the &(*+^% did I Marry?” and most of the guys (haven’t seen any path women on it) are paths.
I feel kind of badly posting here because my hellish sojourn
was only for 6 months and then 6 more of anguish after he left. You guys were married and sharing a life with these deceitful, sick and sadistic freaks of nature. I hardly feel like I qualify to be here complaining of my experience. He did play with my head and there is no doubt, Survivor, that had he not gotten in trouble, he probably would have tried to gaslight me…he did lie a couple of times, right in my face which I now understand is normal path behavior…denying things he did in my presence like chasing me down the hall one day…I did not get it when he said “I did NOT!” I kept saying, “But Godzilla, remember, it was a Friday, blah, blah, blah (stupid, naive me) and I wondered for a minute, “Am I losing it?” So yes, I think that would have gotten worse had we continued our friendship.
However, the truth of the matter is that I was once more, after 25 yrs of marriage, attracted not at first, but to his flirtations and complimentary comments, ie “In my eyes you can do no wrong.” I asked him once what the hell does that mean, you hardly know me!! His answer, in true path style, was unremarkable. But he did want to know if I felt the same. He was also irritated that I didn’t buy his pronouncement. He kind of half-laughed when he asked me if I understood that I could do no wrong in his eyes, and I said “No, I don’t.” The half-laugh was as if to say, “You dumb bitch, I’m just trying to get a 10-min broom closet date every other Wed if my second stringer doesn’t show up. Get with it, old bag. You’re lucky to get this.”
In subsequent emails and because of that invite to spend the day (I guess – we ended up on the phone and on line all day) with him, I believed there was more to his attention which was more sporadic and for his entertainment when he felt like it. Now that I look back, it was just me making more out of it than there was. I know he played with my head but in no way did I ever believe anything was going to happen with him…he was too obviously screwed up and I wasn’t losing my family for what, a couple of flirtations??
Again, I feel like I shouldn’t even be posting here…I feel rotten that I played along, and even, at the end suggested ways we could be together to play, well, board games. Like I said, I just wanted a warm friendship, some laughs, a warm smile and maybe a hug. I knew his marriage was in trouble and I just so wanted someone to show me a little appreciation and love. I did not want to judge him or myself for the first time in my life and I did not want it to hurt my relationship with my family. I screwed up. Admittedly.
Yes, Louise, my husband and I are like bro and sis. No sex for years…complicated. No touching, no affection. He hates board games, being intimate in any way, and only on holidays gives me cards that say I love you…he never got that kind of thing. But we both went into marriage and produced a kid knowing how needy I was and how unavailable he was. I was told this union would not work by my therapist at the time but I didn’t listen…..I suppose I was doing what I always do, choose inappropriate men.
My husband is a solid guy, a rock and someone I can depend on. If he’s cheated, I don’t know anything about it. I’m sure he’s a good liar…very poker-faced. We do enjoy watching TV together and we do talk and laugh sometimes. But that’s it. When I met monster, I figured I had walked into a gold mine, someone who would be discrete and appreciated me.
Louise, I did see the David B commercial for the first time last night…I can see where that is not watchable for you. I hope to hell you can get to a place of apathy towards this pig. He did so much more than mine to get under your skin. We did email a lot but towards the end, when he was getting in trouble, I guess, I got one-liners just to keep me happy, again, so I wouldn’t turn his a** in. I should have. I don’t think it would make any diff because I played along. I don’t want to bring on anything that could turn around and bite me and I would not put that past him.
You folks have really helped me out and lessened the guilt on my end, knowing that this piece of sh*t did use his wiles on me with the paramoralism (Truth, yes I am very interested in that too, because he was ALL about that) etc.
But I can’t compare my cheating ways with what you all have been through, being married and in relationships with these creatures and all the fallout.
Again, I will keep reading this forum as I really am fond of you all and you are so kind. I would be thrilled to be of help in some way. I don’t belong in the same league with you. And I do really appreciate that you haven’t blasted me for it.
I have only been involved in one other forum a couple of years ago, no experience at all blogging or commenting and the people were scathing and mean. I was afraid it would be like that here….what a great surprise. That was such a horrible experience….it brought out all my insecurities and bad feelings about myself as you weren’t allowed to have opinions – they would blast you for disagreeing with someone even tho this core of bloggers did it all the time….it was awful.
You folks are amazing. Thanks for tolerating my non-story. I’m beginning to believe I truly deserved it and my takeaway is, either break up with your husband and let him find another relationship that is better for him or be committed to whatever it is you have now. Like I said, it is “complicated.”
Have a tolerable day. Huge hug for letting me in and for being so kind. You really have all my respect.
3rd line of my loooooooooooong post, started with “Truth.”
And I was addressing Truthspeak. All the rest of you, too, but wanted to be sure, TS, that you understand how meaningful your thoughtfulness is and how hammered I am by your story…how I can just feel what you feel but cannot fathom how you drug yourself through all that and are doing ok now….
StillReeling, I appreciate your support and encouragment. And, PLEASE, do NOT minimalize your experiences with reference to time-periods. Six months, six years, or six weeks of exposure to a socipath, on ANY level, can shatter our worlds. How I’m getting through this is by sheer force of will.
SurvivorAgain, to answer your question about the discovery of the deviant lifestyle, it’s been a few months since I found the Bag Of Fright – at that moment, I knew that the marriage was over, but I also knew that my options were very limited. Had the exspath NOT relieved me of my assets, I would have had the capacity to simply walk away or kick him out which, I assure you, would have been my decision.
The heinous part of sociopathic partnership is that the victims are typically left with NO MEANS to move on, financially speaking. Nevermind the indescribable emotional carnage – that’s something that really can’t be calculated in terms of “pain and suffering.” Ending a marriage in most States means “equitable division of assets.” Well, what does a victim do when the “assets” have all vanished? Disappeared? Are STOLEN? They do the best that they can with whatever skills they have.
I haven’t been coping with this very well because the masks that the exspath wore were very, very convincing. He’s not the type that walks into a room and all eyes (women AND men) are on him. He’s not that ultra-charming personality that works like a magnet. He presents a quiet, mild-mannered, educated (NOT), and intelligent (book wormish) persona that one would never, ever, EVER peg as being a sexual deviant or a con man.
Brightest blessings, and thank you for the support and encouragement!
Truthspeak, thank you for sharing your truth: that not all spaths are charming, magnetic personalities.
It is true that spaths come in many flavors, so it is very hard to apply “red flags.” Not saying there aren’t red flags… just that because the common thread is deception, it is more likely that people will be deceived, no matter what type of mask the spath wears.