When individuals are jealous-fueled, what is happening? One thing that’s happening is that they are often looking for rage, looking to rage, in all the wrong places.
So this is important to establish up-front: The jealous-laden individual is using his jealousy as a basis to unleash his stewing rage. He is using jealousy as a means to feel rage; to feel outrage; to feel, somehow, self-righteously betrayed; and finally, to justify (through his jealousy) his pursuit of these feelings.
Thus, he is looking, contriving, convincing himself that the basis of his fury is legitimately, suspiciously, here”¦or there!!”¦or there!!”¦or here!!”¦or over there!!
Regardless, he will find the basis for his suspicions whenever it suits him—whenever, that is, he seeks a rage catharsis through his jealousy. From his suspicions, he will immediately rationalize the rapid escalation, and release, of his righteous indignation, which he will almost instantly transmute into expressions of jealous rage.
In his rage, you (his target) will naturally be declared guilty even without his having informed you of the accusations against you. It’s almost as if, in his arrogant grandiosity and sense of entitlement, you barely deserve to know the accusations he’s leveling.
After all, you should know them without his having to inform you, because you are guilty of them!! Who are you kidding?! Who are you trying to dupe, playing the innocent?!!
In such fashion he ratchets up, equally rapidly, his paranoia, convincing himself that you are weaving a real deception, really making a joke of him, the thought of which further primes his paranoia and escalates his self-justified fury.
To be sure, you are guilty of something treacherous. He knows it, he’s convinced himself of it. He believes that you too, of course, know it, but just don’t want him to know it. So he assumes a kind of paranoid omniscience. He is soooo smart, way toooo smart to be had; thus, you must be patronizing him with your innocent, shellshocked reaction.
As if he is going to fall for the pretense of your bewilderment? To the contrary: it will merely makes him legitimately more incensed.
And so the jealous rager, consciously or subconsciously, in conformity with his aim, puts you in a lose lose position: admit what he accuses you of (that is, falsely confess), and even more hell will break loose! Tell the truth, of your actual innocence, and more hell will break loose!
You are like the suspect in the interrogation room on whom he, the interrogator, in his smug conviction, believes he has all the evidence; like the suspect with whom he is toying as he watches you (from his warped perspective), and derives a perverse pleasure in watching you, try to squirm your way out of the guilty, damned status he has arrogantly, smugly stamped you with.
The jealous rager, in this fashion, will enjoy, perversely, the process of (from his warped perspective) watching you dig yourself deeper and deeper in a hole that he has made for you, that he set you up to fall into, and then assured that it will have all the escapability of a quicksand pit.
Rather, it is a pit into which, from his warped perspective, he watches you sink little by little, lie by lie, evasion by evasion, omission by omission, inconsistency by inconsistency, into his “doghouse,” or really his “hell-house,” inside of which he will slam the door shut, bar your escape, and menacingly confront you, seething with the self-righteous fury of the betrayed, entitling himself to “payback” for the treachery of which you, of course, innocent, in the abusive forms he chooses.
This sheds some light, perhaps, into the mind of the jealous rager.
(This article is copyrighted © 2010 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns is for convenience’s sake and not to suggest that females aren’t capable of the attitudes and behaviors discussed.)
Shabby,
God Bless you for sharing that with me. Taking the time too…it does hurt a lot. But you’re right it is MUCH MORE peaceful without him in my life. It bothers me that he’s trolling. I do know the truth, fully, and I could not go back knowing it.
I”m encouraged by you sharing that yours is slowly drifting out of your mind. It’s gives me encouragement when I feel discouraged. I”m still trying to wrap my brain around the transition of knowing who he is and the fantasy of what he was….that’s very tough right now. I feel very angry about it too! It’s interesting that everything I’ve read about the spath, describes him to a tee. I’m so grateful for the support here and I hope it’s okay to continue to vent here when I feel this way or have questions. I really don’t want to go back again…it helps to get a reality check here in not doing so! Thank you Shabby!
Ox, I’m workin on it…..I think it’s also the time of year too. Thank you so much!!
Right now? turkey making time with my chef son!! YAY, then grandbabies and daughter coming later!! I’m so looking forward to seeing my grandchildren! Can’t wait to see my granddaughters face light up with joy when she unwraps her presents!!
Ox, I have a question for you. Is a sociopath really ever “happy”? Is all the rage, jealousy and victim playing just fake, yet they’re really happy? This confuses me most. Mine used the pity play alot, raged at me a ton. Blamed me for everying wrong in his life….I knew that wasn’t true, but he made it a point to let me know that if it weren’t for me, and without me,he’s happier.
Do they have emotions? Or is that a cognitive defect? When they are raging or blaming, whatever, whetherit’s directed at me or not, (he bitched and moaned about others ALL the time), is it not real? He was love bombing another woman, and I had to find out the hard way, when I blew him off for the last time. He was telling me how awful his life was, while having a blast love bombing…so ….I don’t get it?
So every emotion is faked? Do you know what I’m trying to say?
Turkey is a callin!
Merry Christmas and lots of hugs!!
lesson learned…I think we miss them (spaths) because life seems empty without them. They filled our minds all the time trying to keep up with the rubbish they were feeding us.
Letting go for me was explained to me like this……..you know when you leave your child at nursery for the first time they usually cry, cling on, want to come home and so on. Now if we walk away within a few minutes the child is playing with the other kids and has forgotten us (temporarily).
Now if we keep popping our heads in the nursery door and checking, the child sees us and the crying starts over again. The only solution is to walk away.
We go home thinking about the child, maybe crying ourselves, fretful all day until we go to collect the child. The child has been fine, not missed us until we show up again.
Before we know it the child is settled at nursery and we go home, do all our chores and over the next few weeks our anxieties lessen.
Spath’s a bit like this. Keep checking him and he will keep hanging on, ignore him, and eventually over the coming weeks/months, you will think about him less and less and your pain will ease.
Is any of this making sense?! Hope the turkey lunch went ok.
One practical thing I did was to play games on my pute, learned how to do sudoku and crosswords. Like Ox says it helps to occupy your mind.
Oh YES, just vent away whenever you feel like it! Lord knows I’ve vented over and over about the same stuff a zillion times!! …and I still do! Peeps here really prop me up. Thank God, they picked me up off the floor. I think our minds start healing and our hearts catch up later, if that makes any sense 😀
The holidays are always the toughest part of the year for me, but you know what? I was home alone last night… and I was OK. For me, that’s a Christmas Miracle!
Candy that is a GREAT analogy!! I use to drop my children when they were off at Nursery while I was going to school. It’s a GREAT analogy and SO TRUE! I worried more for them, then they did for me….that is until they saw me LOL!! SO TRUE!
That helps ALOT. Yes, I play FB games. I have lots of friends that I talk to a lot too that are supportive. There are just certain holidays, even times of the day where it’s hardest for me. It’s going to take awhile to walk through the pain…I know this…..just helps alot to vent. I hope your Christmas is going well Candy or has…depending upon where you are, I guess! Thank you!
Shabby!
Thanks a bunch!! It really DOES help to vent!! It doesn’t take away the pain, but it’s so critical for me to stay pegged in reality..
Good for you on being alone Christmas night! I almost wish I couldhave been to watch movies…but I have kids all over the place lol! They were very excited, even though they’re older now, about this morning. 🙂
WOW, you know you’ve progressed along nicely when you can be alone and be okay.
Thanks a bunch!
lesson learned – glad my post was of some help. Keep venting – it helps to get it out.
Christmas went well, back home now, feet up infront of the fire, surrounded by shed loads of snow brrrrrrr.
Dear Lesson Learned,
Your question about “are they every happy?” it is a question of “what is happiness?” By my definition of “happy” no, because they are never satisfied I think with what they have or are, they are always SEEKING something new, some new sensation, some new and exciting thing that will “make them happy.”
I think too that I have done the same thing by thinking “When I get this _____, I will be happy” fill in the blank with whatever—“get out of school” “get my debts paid” or “new car” or whatever.
In fact, I have learned to be happy TODAY with what I have in the situation I am in and to appreciate the blessings I have, not anticipate a new one in the future. If that makes any sense.
The psychopaths I think are NEVER SATISFIED, and to me satisfaction is happiness.
The Apostle Paul wrote to some of his Christian friends that they should be “content in whatever state they are in.” He even talked about some of them that were physically SLAVES and told them that if they could find a way to buy themselves out of slavery that was wonderful, but if they could not, that EVEN AS SLAVES they should be content in the situation that they could not change, and work as a slave and be content, and not fret about the thing that they couldn’t change.
I think there is a lot of wisdom there. Sometimes there are situations in life we cannot change—whether it is bad health or a disease or disorder, financial situations we can’t over come, etc. and if we let those things (even serious things) take our happiness our satisfactions and our contentment away, then we are lost.
My “fondest dream” was for the “success” of my children—-and I predicated my happiness on that happening, and when it didn’t, because one of my sons is a criminal psychopath, my world fell apart. I was unhappy about something I had NO CONTROL OVER and couldn’t fix. I couldn’t change it, so I had two choices 1) I could be UNHAPPY AND MISERABLE forever or 2) I could accept what I could not change and be content with the situation I was in.
I chose #2 because I got tired of being unhappy and miserable and letting something outside my control control me.
When my husband died, a big chunk of my life with with him, but again my choice was to accept what was the fact, and realize I couldn’t bring him back now matter what I did and either choose to accept it or to be miserable forever. I made the sad mistake of thinking that a new relationship would solve my “problem” of missing my husband, but it didn’t, and unfortunately I hooked up with a psychopath who saw my vulnerability and took advantage of that. But now, I realize that I am perfectly okay, content, and happy by myself. A relationship might be nice, but I dont’ have to wait until I find one in order to be happy. I can be happy, content and satisfied TODAY just the way I am, just where I am, and that’s a good feeling. Took me a while to get here, but it was well worth the work and the time invested in getting here.
Paul was right, being content in whatever state you find yourself is the key to real happiness. Psychopaths will never find that key or in my opinion, real happiness.
Ox,
Wow. What an unbelievable post! Beautifully articulated…and ya know what, Ox? That’s just what I want….to be content, happy in the here and now, no matter the situation. That’s VERY hard for me but there IS wisdom in how you described Paul’s teachings. I love when things like this are put into biblical terms. My faith is very important to me and I feel a little lost spiritually right now. It’s very helpful to me to read this. If you can do this, if so many on here can, I can do it too. It’s filtering through all the years of mess, Ox, on top of adapting to life without Spath, that is really challenging right now. you’ve been through an awful lot. I would love your input as to how you achieved a level of peace in your current circumstance. Was it just time? Working through your stuff? I don’t want to go through this again. I don’t want to choose someone else like this in my life again. I don’t want to be that vulnerable again.
I guess what’s kinda scary too, Ox, is that this relationship defined me for a long time. WIthout it,I don’t know what to do…I’m going to school, getting through that….but I don’t have faith in myself or my intelligence or ability to get through…
Is that common after having experienced all of this?
I do want so much to be happy. And I see how that affects the world around me too and the people that love me. THey’ve had enough hurt and pain…I need to be better, not just for me, Ox, but for them too.
Thanks for your post…
Dear Lesson learned,
I think what we lose isn’t so much faith in others as it is FAITH IN OURSELVES to keep us safe in this world.
We sort of seem to say “WOW! I let myself down and didn’t protect myself and I got hurt, I cant’ be trusted to make good decisions.”
Well, yeaaaaa, I did let myself down. I did fail to listen to my gut and instincts. I did try to please others when they were the ones who were abusing me. I was more afraid of “hurting their feelings” than anything—even when I caught red handed them doing something really nasty (like stealing from me, lying to me etc.) I was afraid to confront them because I might hurt their feelings. THEIR FEELINGS???? DUH!!! What about MY feelings?
Looking back I realized it was a life-long pattern of putting others feelings before my own. That I had no respect for myself. Others didn’t have to devalue me, I devalued myself.
It was a lot of work, and took time. I read books and read here, and blogged here. I learned from others, and I learned from myself, And I started to see a pattern in my behavior. To realize I had no boundaries, though I THOUGHT I did, but I was in DENIAL. There are many books reviewed on here, and one of the best ones I think is “IF You Had controlling parents” can’t remember the author right this minute but you can look it up on line. The other one is by Patrick Carnes and it is the “Betrayal Bond” about abuse victims becoming bonded to their abusers and sometimes if they get away from abuser #1 they will go to abuser #2 or #3 etc.
Another great book is “Stalking the Soul, emotional abuse and the erosion of Identity” by Marie France Hirigoyen, it is out of print but you can find used copies on the internet for a reasonable price, usually 10-15$ (it is in higher demand than most used books so costs a bit more but don’t buy the ones listed for $50+ Just wait there will be a cheaper one come up.) A friend of mine has ordered 7 copies of this book for her family members. (she has a load of psychopaths in her family as well as victims)
Yes, Lesson learned, it is scary to heal, to face the real truth about ourselves. The healing starts out about learning about them, and ends up being about ourselves and our need to do away with the dysfunctional things in our own lives and minds. It is worth it thought.
My egg donor had pretended to be a Christian but her beliefs are twisted and mean spirited, but fortunately, I have not let her problems with her mean, nasty ugly god that only she has the connection to, come between me and my own spiritual walk with a loving father God. It took a long time but I’m getting there. I hope you will too. I’m reading the old Bible stories with NEW EYES now, and seeing messages that I’ve never seen there before. Messages on how to live a good and healthy life in this world and the one afterward. How NOT to allow the wolves in sheep’s clothing to come between me and that life.
I suggest that you not even think about another “romantic relationship” until you get the relationship with YOURSELF where you want it. At that point, you won’t be so vulnerable to the next psychopath who is looking for another victim.