Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following from the Lovefraud reader who posts as NewLife43.
I not only read Lovefraud to help me with the backlash from my 8-year relationship with my spath. I also read an interesting blog written by and for sociopaths, answering some of their questions, presenting criteria about what makes a sociopath what s/he is. It’s very enlightening, particularly when I am sorely missing my ex-spath and need to remind myself why we are no longer together. Since it’s on the Internet, the spaths are surprisingly honest. Sometimes, the posts can be very chilling, when they are honestly posting about the way they think, causing a shiver to run down my spine that I escaped from such trauma. It helps me to have gratitude and a sense of good fortune I am no longer caught up in that mess. And I stop missing him, which was the whole point of reading the site.
An interesting question that came up on their board was: Do animals have a sense of morality?
This question was derived from one of the spaths reading an article that was printed in the British online publication, The Telegraph. That article was entitled, Animals can tell right from wrong.
One of the spath responses to the article was that of course, evolution played a HUGE part in our human abilities to be empathetic and moral, citing dolphins, great apes and even elephants as being altruistic and helpful to other members of their flock, pack, herd, etc. with no apparent gain to themselves. They can even be helpful to other species. (For instance, dolphins protecting humans from sharks). But of course, sociopaths missed the boat when it came to empathy.
Another of the respondents said that cats were probably psychopathic. I beg to differ and told them so. Here is my response to the sociopath article:
Over the years, I’ve had several cats. Currently, I have a two-year-old little guy, who I can honestly say is sociopathic, intent only on himself and what I can do for him. He derives great pleasure from me, but shows no emotion or feelings back to me unless it can benefit him in some way. Then he can charm the pants off me. He is a great troublemaker to boot and plagues everyone in the household (animals included) with his actions! Lots of fights are started by this little cat, while he walks away smirking. Very smart, easily bored, destroys household items for the fun of it and targets others. He doesn’t have an altruistic bone in his body. HMMM…sounds sociopathic to me! He gets thrown outside A LOT but never seems to learn from the consequences of his bad behavior. Sigh!
I have another cat, whom I’ve had for 18 years; she wants to know the rules and not only follows them to a “T” but expects all the other cats in the household to follow them also…or she will beat the “carp” out of them. Routines are to be observed at all costs. She has to be let in and out at certain times, food and water have to be fresh and put down on a certain schedule, etc. Although she is very reserved, she can also be very loving on rare occasions (funnily enough, to me only, I suppose as the main caregiver), but it is genuine, as she never wastes time with false emotions. She is honest through and through. Definitely OCD, though, don’t you think? Think “Monk” here.
Finally, I have a very sweet, loving black cat who is 13 years old. His sole purpose in life is to find a way to spend all his time with me. If I sit down, he is in my lap; going to bed, he not only wants to sleep with me but also has to be as close as he can, preferably touching my skin in some way. He always stops and thanks me for his food, before he dives in to eat. Follows me everywhere. And he is incredibly empathetic, always knowing when I am sad and offering comfort to the best of his ability. My friends marvel at this loyal little cat, who pesters them to go home at the end of the evening, so that we can go to bed together! Apparently, he can’t go to bed without me. One friend said he was worse than her husband! No other creature in the world has ever loved me like this, including my kids and two ex-husbands. And I don’t treat him any differently than my other cats, so I don’t know why I deserve so much love. Empath, borderline…I don’t know. I just know he loves me very much and shows it. And he was born that way.
So, no, not all cats are sociopaths. But from my experience, I would have to say, all have different personality disorders/traits, just like humans. Certainly completely different from each other. Since I treat them all the same, I have to conclude that they are the product of their genetics, i.e., they came to me that way, I didn’t make them the way they are. Just like the world is not environmentally responsible for creating sociopaths; you were all born that way, and there is nothing we “NORMALS” can do about it, except to stay as far away from you as possible, for our own sakes. Surely, you spaths can understand self-protection and putting ourselves ahead of you. For once. And if you lack the ability to understand that, well, as my ex-spath was so fond of saying to me, “I DON’T CARE!” 🙂
Babs, I keep a bamboo back scratcher by my chair in the LR and onen night I heard my cat on the counter in the kitchen so I sneaked in there (she KNOWS it is a no no) and nailed her just as she jumped off, HOME RUN….and as far as Ii can tell, she as never done it again. She is no longer sure when I might materialize out of the dark with a bamboo back scratcher to wield like a base ball bat. (she was NOT injured, just scared very badly!) LOL Gotta be smarter than the animal you are trying to train, and with cats that is not always possible, they are sneaky little critters.
NewLife43,
LOVED your article!Also enjoyed the joke about hoping someone neuters the spath!Oh if only that would cure them!Then they should all be neutered,lol!
I’ve had cats in the past;I used to refer to myself as a ‘cat person’.My husband used to fuss & fuss about wanting a puppy…to which I always replied that I didn’t need ANYMORE work!
He FINALLY got a puppy this summer.She’s a chihuahua/pomeranian mix.But the puppy bonded with me!!! Because I was the one caring for her & loving her.My husband saw her as a POSSESSION.He often thought she should be put in her carrier….and he didn’t want her outside!I kept the puppy(my husband said I could keep her) and she is so loyal;one day she thought another puppy might hurt me and she snarled!She is like the black cat of yours;wants constant contact with me-skin contact if possible.She loves sleeping with me,but is getting too heavy to jump easily in & out of the bed.
hohoho very funny title but poor cats. Their way of looking when they see a little prey is very fixed but they’re just little predators, not wicked.
Ox, have you read this? http://www.amazon.com/Women-Wolves-Clarissa-Pinkola-Est%C3%A9s/dp/0345409876
It’s a little wonder (well, not so little because the book is thick, but when started one can’t leave it)) of beauty and wisdom. Very peculiar book mixture of literature and psychology.
In it the term “psychopath” doesn’t appear but they’re inside for sure under the name “predators of the psyche” of something similar (I read a Spanish translation).
this is a good one. my second oldest daughter has been an animal lover all her life. from an early age we knew she had an incredible bond with animals. and to a fault. i can still remember the image of our two or three year old daughter toddling down the sidewalk with a night crawler squirming out of her mouth! wow! now that’s acceptance! she always thought she knew what animals were thinking. and, as a father i naturally tried to convey to her that “no your cats don’t really love you they just want your affection and don’t really return anything.” we watched as she grew up with this self implied whispering notion and witnessed some really incredible stuff. for example, one day there was a weasle or ermin in the yard that ultimately sought refuge under the air conditioner unit on the south side of our house. our then adolescent daughter took it upon herself to “help” the animal by trieing to reach it with her hand and free it. guess what? it bit her. duh, animals don’t have the same kind of emotions and don’t behave the same way we humans do. about fourteen years ago, we had a female cat named alley who was not spayed and sure enough, nature had her way and soon we were blessed with four kittens which we looked for for days and feverishly in the end since poor alley was killed on the highway tragically presumably hunting to nourish her kittens which she had so carefully hidden in the attic insulation in our garage. yes we found them and as they were only days old, we found ourselves bottle feeding them and, hey! did ya all know that very young kittens need their privates stimulated in order to pee????? lmao now, not then!
so we are blessed with four cats from the same litter and one more from years later that was rescued by guess who? our daughter who has since become a very competent vet tech.
ok so ya all know that i have an intimate bond with our cats? even though i never liked cats. i always held a kind of disdain for the “way they are”…. gettin to it here… so in short the thing i wanted to convey here is that i know cats….. well… or so i might think…..
i do have a sort of bond though. and, ironically though the same thing that flags a narcissist or sociopath or pschyco boy is still coming from my gut, i still cut them a break. here’s why.
when i first found out about my wifes involvement with p-boy, i on one dark night was at my brothers house and as i was in an easy chair in bro’s living room, with my insides in a knot, his cat jumps up in my lap, and gets all slobbery up around my neck and i mean this is a cat who never liked me. bro says”see… even the cat knows your hurtin” ever since i have noticed how our cats have swarmed me in our garage. and, always when i am hurting. but something has changed. they now will come and sit by me, but they no longer jump into my lap and slobber over me. I think they may sense that i have an understanding and no longer hurt like i did. i don’t know if they really know. but i don’t anymore. hurt has been replaced by understanding. i understand finally how my dear wife went for p-boy. she needed understanding and even more, acceptance. she found it in the fake image he threw at her of herself. she took one look and fell. and never realized that what she saw was her own beautiful image! how wonderful that must have felt to feel finally accepted by someone who presumably would never be capable of anything but acceptance!
this is weird but i have finally come to accept the things that happened and see the beauty in them as well as emote for her pain as her gut made her get out. and to recognize that not a single thing that i said or did had so much as a tiny effect on her loyalty to him. in the end she would get out. and she would do it without my influence. sure she would tell herself that she was making a sacrifice for her kids or house or whatever. and in time she will forgive herself and see that though i failed to make her feel TOTALLY accepted, i through the years have been the one who has accepted her more than anyone before.
yah,,, ughhh,, well thats gonna be up to her.
my pain is done and over. i realize that under the circumstances, if this woman was gonna love, then she would do it with every fiber of her being! thats how she is. it is who she is. i have seen it with her children. with other peoples children.
I finally realize that she will have to come to know these things on her own, without me, and without the help of the cats! (no i dont think they are narcissistic, just animals. the comparison is good though in the other direction)
I think someday she will come to forgive herself and see that she needs to love herself before she can feel acceptance that is ADEQUATE, not total, and be reasonable about what is enough.
nuff for now. thanks truthy, and oxdrover, and snowy, and all the others on here who want to take themselves back. you taught me how to accept my pain and that though i may be able to lead her to water, she’ll have to drink on her own!
respect and sincerity always
rgc.
Hi rgc,
I’m sorry to hear of what happened to you.
You nailed it when you said “she needed understanding and even more, acceptance. she found it in the fake image he threw at her of herself. she took one look and fell. and never realized that what she saw was her own beautiful image! how wonderful that must have felt to feel finally accepted by someone who presumably would never be capable of anything but acceptance!”
I fell for a psycho because he truly seemed like my “soul mate.” If I ever meet anyone again who I think is my soul mate, I’m gonna run far and fast!
You reminded me of something I read on this blog about a woman who couldn’t love a man who loved her “normally” because of a psychopath:
“Jane was showered with attention”It was the type of attention that her psychologically normal husband was never able to match, but that she measured his love by. Her husband had loved her, but he loved her normally.
Jane came to realize that her first love was probably a psychopath. Shortly thereafter, she considered the possibility that her brush with psychopathy may have ruined her marriage” Nothing normal could ever measure up.”
http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2012/11/29/another-reason-to-discuss-psychopathy-janes-story/
Arianna,
for me when a man desired to control me, it felt like love because that’s how my parents treated me. I honestly believed control = love. It’s sick to realize this. The spath didn’t even need to be my soul mate, he just had to want to own me.
Hi Skylar,
Yes, it seems there are endless vulnerabilities a psychopath can exploit…and they’re able to become whatever we need. Our soul mates, our owners, whatever we want.
One of the last things my ex-psycho said to me was “You were very vulnerable; that’s what enabled me to bond with you so quickly and so deeply.”
Being vulnerable is normal, yet because those exist who will take advantage of it, it’s dangerous. Vulnerability with normal people who truly care for us creates intimacy…but with the psychopath, it creates an opening for victimization and, further down the line, total disrespect and contempt for our “weaknesses.”
Here’s a great piece about vulnerability I found not long ago: http://www.onetaste.us/blog5/tag/women-turned-on/
Happy new year, everyone!
I read janes story and i know what it feels like to be measured by that standard. i was supposed to read her mind. hold her hand when she wanted, stay close when shopping, and all manner of totally unreasonable stuff. i at one point took a course on how to get women to fall in love and it turned out to be a crash course in this mirroring and keep two steps ahead of her crap. yeah i know how to do it but i wont. i’m who i am. period! and i couldnt bear to break her heart by fooling around in her head. i guess thats my conscience.
rgc
actually the course best served me as a bad example! LOL!
In hindsight I realize I volunteered to be his victim, I was ripe for the picken.
arianna said ” and, further down the line, total disrespect and contempt for our weaknesses”
Bingo. You nailed it.