By The Front Porch Talker
“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity”¦the soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.” From Billy Budd (Herman Melville).
We all live the lie sometimes: everybody lies. Lying is part of the American social contract; a matter of civility and manners, in some circles. Culturally, we even eschew the truth sometimes, equating it with rudeness. Who wants to hear that they are looking old or that their appearance is less-than-stellar? While our American cultural values appear friendly—albeit naïve—to the world, we are fiercely private and “independent” about our deeper feelings. Nobody wants to seem powerless or out of control.
We all know why we lie: because it is convenient; or, maybe it is easier just to keep the peace—so we believe. Sometimes we lie by saying that everything is just fine when it really isn’t. We tell our friends that we are just fine to signify that our real feelings are private. I do feel a little better now, just saying I’m fine. In turn, they tell us the same lie—it’s quid pro quo social management. Sometimes we lie to protect others from our reality; or, to protect ourselves from our own reality. We tell ourselves that we should be fine and that by saying it aloud we will be fine.
The truth is: not all lies are equal. Some people lie because they can and because it serves them in some way. They don’t live by social rules—or any rules, except as it harms us and benefits them. They are not part of the social contract of civility or convenience. They are “people of the lie,” as Scott Peck calls them in his book of the same name. They are the narcissists and sociopaths who live among us, undetected, and wholly without a conscience. They imitate our emotions to fill the vacancy of their own. They pretend to care, to have feelings of remorse even, if it will serve their own ends.
Sociopaths run the gamut of the danger zone—from the trusted partner or friend who steals your identity and every dime you have, to the person who commits violent acts against innocent people who “trusted the wrong person.” They are the “people of the lie.” They will take everything you ever had, including your dignity, then move on to the next person, leaving us to wonder: what could we have done differently? But even that is part of the manipulation. The truth is: there was nothing you could have done, or that anybody can do, especially if they are well adept at evading the law, which most of them are.
They hurt everybody, and because we would like to believe that they are “just like us—”you know, with morals and a conscience, they continue to offend. I have known more than my share of sociopaths and others who have no discernable conscience. I’ve spent half of my life blaming myself for “letting them” harm me and people I’ve known. I always wondered why sociopaths do what they do—it’s because they can.
I am thinking now of the anniversary of the month that my college student was murdered, back in 1993. Lisa had been moving from one apartment to another, and had solicited the help of a stranger. It had been a violent death: and, it is still unsolved. She was only twenty-two years old at the time.
At a memorial service for Lisa I read the following quote, which I’d written as part of a eulogy for her.
“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity”¦the soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.” From, Billy Budd (Herman Melville).
The truth is: we don’t know exactly where one color in the rainbow ends and the next begins. It seems that I’ve learned a lot about the colors, which I’d like to share with you. From Lisa’s death, I learned that fear is a good thing, unless you run with it. Many of us see a person whom we fear, for whatever reason, and we bypass our intuition to let them in.
For all the violent events that I have witnessed in my life, I will name a color. Yellow is for all the charming sociopaths who made their way into our apartments, and ultimately into our lives, then betrayed us—or worse.
Red is for the raging friend in high school, Barbara, who beat-up another girl, Aileen, in my presence and in the presence of the whole school. Aileen later died of a concussion. Barbara was never charged.
Green is for Tucson, Arizona where I witnessed a murder and a near-murder. For the man who lived next door to me while I was in graduate school—a gun lover. I heard the gun go off, then saw the man dragging a woman across the bare parking lot. I reported this to the police and even showed them a puddle of blood in the parking lot, but nothing was ever done.
The Green near-murder would involve me. While living alone in Tucson in a big house on Speedway Avenue, near the center of town, I was interrupted from my writing one day. My dog never barked. Something just told me to walk through my fenced back yard and look over the gate to the narrow space in the side-yard. A man was attempting to hoist himself up and into my kitchen window. The press had called him “The Prime-Time Rapist.” As my dog and I stood there staring, in shock, he jumped down and stared back. He was maybe twenty feet away. The moment we locked eyes was the pivotal moment. We both ran, in opposite directions. That night, he was gunned-down by the police.
Purple is for the female sociopath who stole my identity and everything I had in my life, then changed her name and found somebody else to steal from. I had been a “trusted friend” for over ten years. I had helped her through her years of disability. I knew her children and her grandchild. But nothing in the world prepared me for what she would do to me. I lost my job, my retirement account, my house, and all the money and credit I had worked so hard to earn, all because I had trusted a sociopath with a very long history of scamming people.
The most difficult part for me is the trail of tears we leave behind with all of this unfinished business and grieving—for what never was. Sociopaths steal our innocence, and perhaps our naiveté too, for no particular reason and with no particular meaning. They leave us unfinished too, at least privately.
Unfinished, but not defeated. We look to some higher power to finish what we cannot. We know that pain is inevitable in life—for all of us. But suffering—that is optional. We love who we love, because we are human and we have a conscience. We love people imperfectly, then when we’ve held too long to the outcome drawn somewhere in our imaginations, we detach with love and let go to a power that some call God. Fly high and free!
In the end, I tell myself this: there are plenty more colors in a rainbow, if you look closely. Some are nuanced or muted; some appear tinted at different angles, with more or less light than when you first had seen it. Some colors form hazy borders about exactly where the colors become “blendingly into the next,” just as “sanity and insanity does.”
Truths are blendingly complex too—a sign of intimacy. Whatever we reveal to others we are also revealing to ourselves, simultaneously. The pain is tacit and unspoken. But paradoxically, we are freed of suffering and that need to control or soften things with our lies. The only truth that we can know for sure borders on solipsism: that we know that our own mind exists; all else is speculation, at best. We can only know our own private and ineffable experiences of what is or isn’t the truth. The rest is beyond us to know for sure.
And, I will repeat the words I began with: we can never really know what is in the hearts of others. We can hope against hope, but never know for sure.
I will never be the same trusting person I once was. Thank God. The muted pinks and blues and greens are becoming clearer, with more defined lines now. I know that it’s time to finish my novel, and get on with the business of living, and to honor those who, for whatever reason, weren’t as lucky as me and didn’t survive.
We may not ever really know what is in another person’s heart, but now—now that we’ve seen that vacant look; and, now that we’ve heard the superficial stories and lies that never did quite add-up, because they didn’t. Now that we are older, and probably wiser, we can cut through the artifice, the faker, the liar and cheat, the approximation of humanity—like butter, and spread it over so many slices of proverbial bread.
My Dear Adamsrib –
How are you doing my friend?! – I hope everything is well with you. As I was saying before, forgive the disjointed nature of my posts, but at the moment I can only get on the Internet at work. (I read your entries to “get up to date” but I’ll have to catch up with the others when I have more time….)
At any rate, I’m glad you like the “Byronic M. M. concept”! – ha ha. As I said before, your story really interests me, so if you can ever find the post where you describe all the details, I’d definitely like to read it. I think I have the major facts, however, so before “dissecting your cold case”, let me review them and you can correct me where I’m wrong.
First of all – as long as we’re making playful literary allusions – the image that keeps coming to mind is the story of “Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester” (Mr. Rochester was, of course, a thoroughly Byronic chap in is way!) For one, your “Mr. Rochester” was older than you by several years, yes? (You described him as your “mentor” and the one who “opened you up”, etc etc..) Next, there is the fact that you were separated not only by time but by geographical space (were you both in Ireland, or are you from England? – I need to know so that I can picture you in your bonnet traveling by ship or by post chaise!) And lastly, there is the ambiguous status of Mr. Rochester’s wife (i.e., was his marriage just a “technicality”? Or was he lying in one way or another about his real relationship with her?)
Very well, let me ask you one more thing. Did you two meet at a younger age (i.e. when he was your “mentor”), separate at some point, and then get back together later on? If so, did he contact you, or did you get in touch with him? In any case, I’m assuming that your relationship had to have begun or “restarted” with a lot of letters/e-mails, phone calls and the like (i.e., since you lived so far apart). Okay, so I’m going to go out on a limb here, and assume that those communications became pretty intense and passionate at some point, yes? After all, there must have been enough “fire” there to bring you together physically. So with all this as background, let’s get on with the dirty business of “dissecting your cold case”….
There are three possible scenarios the way I see it, one very bad, one “kind of bad”, and one good but tragic. Since you are obviously a brave soul, how about we start with the worst and then work our way back to the more agreeable possibilities? First of all, the worst case scenario is that he was actually married and living with his wife the WHOLE TIME you were dating, rather than “legally separated” as he told you. (Been there done that!) Long distance relationships make this far easier that one would think. However, to rule this out, all you have to look at is whether or not you were actually IN his house (and if so, was her “stuff” still there?), or did you always meet on “neutral territory” (hotels, your place, etc.) If it was always the latter, I’d be very very suspicious. Still, that is the only scenario that would IMMEDIATELY indicate full blown sociopathy to me. If you can rule it out, that’s great. But he’s still not off the hook yet.
The second problem with your “Mr. R” lies in the fact that you suspect he might have been “separated but reconciling” with his wife – WHILE YOU WERE TOGETHER (which would have been a profound, unspeakable betrayal of you). And this is the “kind of bad” scenario – which, come to think of it, is almost as bad as his never having left her! What doesn’t add up to me, though, is how he could characterize his wife in such negative terms (as you have described), AND YET STILL GO BACK TO HER! If he was always with her, he might say they were separated simply to play his game with you. But if he WAS separated, I find it curious that he would go back to such a woman. If he were the namby pamby sort, I could see that, by you don’t seem like the type of woman who would fall for a namby pambyish man! (in other words, the kind of man who would allow himself to be pushed around by a chilly and domineering wife.) So I’m as mystified as you are by that fact. (Even the “I”m going back for the kids” doesn’t convince me – if that happens to be what he said.)
The best case scenario, of course, is that you were simply doomed to be separated because of overwhelming outward circumstances (careers in different parts of the world, kids who couldn’t be taken away from their schools, etc.) In that case, there would have been no lies, and you would have parted from Mr. R with tearful but loving farewells (I can almost picture you hugging each other on the darkened, windswept moor!) – but without bitterness or recrimination.
Unfortunately, what makes this seem less probable to me is the words you use to describe your final, long term feelings. “Mindf**k” “PTSD”, “his cloven hoof popping out” and so on. The way I see it, if your Mr. Rochester were entirely the real article, you wouldn’t feel damaged or misused in this fashion. Sad and heartbroken, yes, but not the other stuff.
Another point worth making, AR, is that with the sociopath, there is a staggeringly precipitous change from the “romantic intoxication” peroid to what comes after. With normal people who are passionate and loving, there is always an inevitable plateau and leveling off of the romantic intensity. But it’s not a dizzying fall from one state to another. It is more of a gentle decent into “tender normalcy”. It isn’t painful and an certainly doesn’t leave one with the sense of being “mindf**ked”.
With the sociopath, however, this is quite different. For him, all the poetry and moonlight and dreams of the future don’t matter a fig: they were just part of the game. And when the mask comes off and you start to see the monster behind, the heart still can’t accept what the mind sees clearly. Even years later.
Nevertheless, to figure out if your Mr. R. is a sociopath (rather than the broody moody but ultimately good-hearted character in the novel), I would look for the obvious “red flags” of lying, deception and manipulation. But also, as I’ve been pointing out, how much he really changed from the early “letter writing period” to the “bad times” – and whether or not falsehood and cruelty were a part of it. (We could have a whole other discussion about how this can play out, because it’s far too subtle and complex to analyze in a single paragaraph.)
Okay, AR, my post must be getting pretty long by now, so let me close with a few final thoughts. In my opinion, it’s hard to see how the best case scenario would actually apply. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the worst was true either. However, what strikes me is that “Jane AR’s” Mr. R. seems ON SOME LEVEL to have trifled with your feelings. And in a Rochester/Jane type of relationship, that is especially egregious. (One could likewise write a ten page essay on why this is the case.)
Alas, my dear adamsrib, everything is just too g*ddamed complicated these days! Don’t you wish it were like one of those BBC period dramas (you guys make way better television than we Americans!), where Toby Stephens (Rochester) and Ruth Wilson (a super hot Jane!) just fall in love and live happily ever after? (BTW, Check out that version of J.E. on Youtube, if you’re not already completely wearied of my “Bronte analogies” – it’s utter perfection!)
In the meantime, I hope all is well with you. Keep on the Buddhistic/shamanistic path (very cool that you’re into that, by the way!), and whatever the ultimete verdict on “Mr. R”, let’s hope that the best part of your story is not ten years in the past – but still before you.
Have a great week, young lady!
Your pal, Constantine.
Constantine,
Well, well, the Doctor is In, to use another Peanuts metaphor.
Thanks a bunch for coming back to us here on LF. I can guarantee my peeps here are sittin on the edge of their drawers reading with bated breath!!
I am amazed that you would mention Mr. Rochester from J.E. because it was exactly like that. There’s that synchronicity again. Gabriel Byrne played Mr. R to Emma Thompson’s JE I believe, and be still my heart if I don’t love the bejaysus out of Gabriel Byrne. Saw him in a book shop in Dublin a couple of years ago and just about fainted!! 🙂 But first let me clarify something. Clarity is always a good thing yes?
There are two separate individuals in my story here on LF. First one is who brought me here. The spath. My former high school teacher who is many years older than me. You can do a search to find that post tho now it embarrasses the hell out of me. But what the feck, we all have our human foibles. Search by “young Elvis” that should do it. I met him again ( after 30 some years) last January and spend the past eight or so months getting to know him in a non sexual way. It was only this past few weeks that I got involved with him and then realized he is a narc/spath.
While dealing with my spath here on LF, I was “triggered” concerning an old flame (Byronic Mr. Rochester) whom I met online in the old days of the internet about 12 years ago. And yes it was very much like Mr. R and JE. He is the chap from Ireland. One of my minors for my undergraduate is Celtic Studies and I was involved in a Quaker/Mennonite peace collaborative in Northern Ireland and also doing my internship for my Sociology component (killing two bird with one stone) and was wanting Irish contacts and we started corresponding.
If you search on the LF home page and do so by “Ireland” it’s all there. But I understand you are at work and may not have the time to do so.
So with that said, I do have some sense of certainty that he was not with the wife (let’s give her a name. Let’s call her Gloria- just for fun!). I say this because he called me from his home at all times of the day and night and I called him at home and even spoke to the children on the phone and I met his mother. If you know anything about Irish males you know that if they take you to meet their mam, then you are “in like Flynn” and he would never take me to meet the Virgin Mary if he was still with his wife (of course unless he was a spath). But no I was never in his house as it was in another city than where we were. Odd, in retrospect. Hmmmmm….
You ask why would he go back to such a “horrid” (his description of her) women? Pressure from a religious system which is the hand that feeds him, children, community shame (a biggie in Ireland), he loves her, it was convenient. Who really knows?
The mindf**k comes in to play because of the nature in which he handles the ending of the story. There was no:
“there would have been no lies, and you would have parted from Mr. R with tearful but loving farewells (I can almost picture you hugging each other on the darkened, windswept moor!) ”“ but without bitterness or recrimination.”
As you put it so well. It did start out that way but as I began to realize something was amiss, I began to ask him for answers and he became insistent that he would not give in to my need to “make the invisible, visible”. What a turd IMO.
To understand just how traumatic this was to me (PTSD) you would need to know the ins and outs of our Anam Cara connection. It is mystical in nature and very hard to dissect . You sum it up so beautifully here:
“the heart still can’t accept what the mind sees clearly. Even years later.”
That he could not tell me the new person he met while we were apart was HIS WIFE is what ! cannot fathom. Then he had the gall to accuse me of “dismantling what we had”. Spath alert. Gaslighting to the max!
All in all, Constantine, I have resigned myself to the realization that I will never know what really happened (with Mr. Rochester not the spath) because he will never have the bollocks to come clean. Plain and simple. It is better left in some movie script like my mention of the “Rainmaker” with Kate Hepburn and Burt Lancaster a few days ago. Or “Bridges of Madison County: or other drivel such as that.
In the end, I have beautiful memories of my laddie in all his gorgeousness to draw on when I am finally too old to get a smile out of my postman!! So, in the meantime, I am happy to say that I am concentrating on my spiritual path, not Buddhist anymore but Native American with a touch of Catholicism. And this old broad still has a lot of life left in her. He may have been the love of my life, but my life is not over yet! Ha!
I am happy, at peace, and live a very blessed life. I hope the same for you.
Adamsrib
Ah, Adamsrib,
what a heart breaking script for a great movie!!!! A really good one to go and see on a Sunday afternoon, and come out of the theater with you eyes all misty into the bright sunshine! A story of Anam Cara (pronounced Hara) of love and loss. That sounds like a great script for a “chick flick” (the first of which of course was Love Story with Ali McGraw) and oh, my gosh how romantic they are and how our romantic, empathetic souls do fall for these stories, do hold on to them,k nurture them…..when in reality the beautiful Irish Lad should have had his Irish arse kicked to hell and back by his Sweet Irish Mum, but even then, the Sweet Irish Mum would have in the end forgiven him, as long as the wise was Irish, and Catholic—and the sequel (telling the story from his point of view) would have shown him growing old with the wifie and the 8 kids, but only a few affairs outside the marriage, and every night at the pub for his mates to buy him a pint.
Personally, I think you got the best of the deal in the plot of the films, you did NOT get your hearts desire (at the time) and sometimes God’s best answer to our fervent prayers is “No, dear, that would not be good for you. I know you want it/him but it wouldn’t be good for you so the answer must be no because I love you and don’t want your life ruined, so it will be painful for a little while because you’re disappointed, but dry your eyes sweetie. It will all work out”
BTW, I think you will ALWAYS be able to make the mail man smile!
ahahahhhahhhhahhhhhhhhahahahahahahahhahhahahhh guffawwwhahahhhhahhh!!!LOL, eyes watering, stomach hurting, ahahahahahhh asthma attack laughing so hard ahahahhhhhaaaahhah, peeing my pants now hahahaha 🙂 🙂 🙂
Oxy,
you get the prize for being the only person in 10 FECKING YEARS to get me to let that out!!!!
Best theray session I have ever had. This day will go down in my history book hahahahahha!!!
just between you and I, my postman loves me 🙂 bahahahahahahahahah!!!!!
Dear AR,
Gosh, sweetie, I thought I might make you SMILE but I didn’t mean to send you into cardiac arrest!!!! But you know, when we old broads get sentimental sometimes we let that sentimental trash almost become REAL, so we have to step back and look at it like we would a movie script! Or the sequel to one.
My own late husband was my own Anam Cara, bless his heart, but that was what kept me from killing his sweet arse on more than one occasion (he was also an ENGINEER and you know how unreasonable they can be!) LOL But we LAUGHED AT and WITH each other and it made life worth living! I was addicted to that relationship. I depended to much on it, and when it was gone with his death…I became vulnerable to the attack of the P guy who just happened by needing fresh supply.
Funny thing he had very SPECIFIC criteria too for his GFs. Fairly short, plump, but not morbidly obese, had to be a nurse or in medical profession, had to be outgoing and funny, and he preferred that they not be tooo financially independent (he liked to show off and be the bit snot by buying them “expensive gifts” (or what he thought was expensive) and he actually was offended if you didn’t let him.
About a week after we started dating my 20 yr old clothes dryer died, and I said, “Oh, carp, got to run to town tomorrow and pick up a new one” and he said “Oh, I’ll buy you one, get the top of the line model” (big snot) and I said “Thanks, but no thanks, I don’t have a problem buying a new one” and it was like I’d let the air out of his “big snot” balloon because not only COULD I buy my own appliance, but wanted to do it for myself.
He had grown up “poor” –like a lot of us kids in the 40s, 50s, 60s, but while I had never “felt poor” he had “felt poor” and FELT second or low class BECAUSE he was poor–So now that he had a very middle-class retirement, he FELT RICH and Money or no money to him was the thing that made you OK or NOT OK, so buying “gifts” for others made him feel superior to them. He already felt superior to women.
I bet his mom was short, plump, and Had WANTED to be a nurse, though. Otherwise, why those specific characteristics? His wife of 32 years he cheated on for that entire time was everything but the nurse, she was a teacher. Nice woman actually! We’re both rid of him! And at least one GF is free of him and happy, so the rest of his harem will just have to find their own ways to freedom!
Wow, everyday, because of the material I am reading on LF, I have been probing my brain for all the similarities I can see in the behavior of my ex that so many of you have described about your experiences. EYE OPENING INDEED!
Oxy, mine was also one who liked to buy me things or do me favors financially… it seemed so nice and I did appreciate it, but there was usually a nagging feeling in my gut that if I let him (which I did a few times, not every time), the power in our relationship would keep shifting back to him – which of course it did.
He was always so nonchalant about it and if I protested at all, he would imply that I was foolish not to let him help me out. He would ease my mind about ‘owing’ him anything and tell me just to enjoy what he could offer since his financial position allowed him to or he wouldn’t do it.
He was always generous that way and his attitude about money sounds so like how you described. Offering to buy you a new dryer after only one week dating! wow, that is telling…
I had an ‘importance of no contact experience’ yesterday which I want to share, but I will move over to the NC thread to do so… see you there – lol
peace
Oxy,
I’m goin over to NC too!!
Dear Jupiter,
I learned this lesson from my first husband’s parents. They just LOVED to do things for us, but it wasn’t a GIFT it was a DOWN PAYMENT ON CONTROL!
After my husband’s death my egg donor kept asking me if I “needed money’ and I said, “I’m fine, but thanks.” I was okay, but she looked at me once (before all the chaos started even) and said “YOu wouldn’t take money from me if you needed it would you?” The look in her eye (looking BACK on it in 20/20 hindsight) was fury.
I laughed and said, “You’re right, I don’t take anything from anyone.” I guess it was my instinctive knowlege that when you take from someone you OWE them something if they ask you a favor later on down the road.
It’s a CULTURAL thing too,,,the old scots Irish thing of “don’t be BEHOLDEN to anyone except a CLOSE friend or family member.”
With my people you know you are a FRIEND when they ASK for a favor. They will DO a favor for anyone one, but will NOT ACCEPT a favor unless they trust the person COMPLETELY.
So actually I guess by NOT taking a “gift” from my egg donor, I was telling her I DON’T TRUST YOU ENOUGH TO TAKE MONEY FROM YOU. And really, that is true. If I had NEEDED money that I knew I could NOT pay back, I would have called several of my FRIENDS and told them I needed money I could not count on paying back—I would not have hesitated to ask them. But NOT the egg donor. Any money I have EVER asked her for, I PAID BACK WITH INTEREST. Do not be BEHOLDEN to someone you do not trust. If you feel anxious about a “gift” then refuse it. It may just be a BAITED HOOK to catch you….just remember, the fish who is not willing to take a “free meal” doesn’t get hooked!
Thanks Oxy, i hear what you are saying.
They just LOVED to do things for us, but it wasn’t a GIFT it was a DOWN PAYMENT ON CONTROL! – Yes, I felt it that way a few times.
I was going to post on the NC thread earlier but got sidetracked and it looks like that will have to wait until later tonight. I’ll be back over there to post when I have more time to write.
peace
PS Adamsrib –
How amusing that you should mention MY anam cara – Emma Thompson! – synchronicity indeed. And you’re saying there’s actually a version of J.E. where she plays Jane?! Wow – I really have to see that! Ruth Wilson is sublime, but Emma, well, that has to be pretty outstanding too. (NOTE, most of my friends are unaware of my Austin/Bronte/Gaskell fetish, and consequently think of me as pretty “masculine”. So let’s just keep this between ourselves, Okay?)
Also, thanks for the clarification about “Rochester” vs. your rapidly ageing “Hippy Teacher-Crush”. (From now on I will refer to the latter simply as, “The Grinning Silenus of the Fitness Club.” – ha ha.) Still, those details notwithstanding, it sounds like my “detective work” wasn’t altogether shabby!
Nevertheless, what a shame that people are so miserably inadequate to the roles that we, with all of our dreamy idealism would assign to them. Indeed, the world NEEDS to have Rochesters and Janes and Elizabeth Bennets! (How horrible life would be if it were stripped of all poetry and romance!) At the very least, I think we need to believe that there is still something in the world which isn’t base, common and sordid. And I guess I DO believe that – it just takes a lot more work now to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Peace and best wishes.