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.)
Dancingnancys, yes to all above. Especially the part about telling you what someone said about you. Mine did that all the time. Usually it wasn’t true…So I would ask someone if she said that about me in front of him and she would say no.
It is just another aspect of their spathiness. It is designed to under-mine your sense of security, seperate you from any support you might have, make you doubt your ability to judge charictar, make you feel unlovable, increase your dependancy on him, and just generally hurt you and make you suffer.
He also loved drama. He could walk into a room full of people, say a few words to stir the s–t between a couple of them, get some friction started, and then leave.
He used to accuse me of doing, or wanting to do everybody…his brother, his BIL, all of his friends…but he never said anything to any of them…ever. He’d wait til we were alone and accuse me. What a coward.
Steve – great article . I can’t relate to the jealous raging myself – he only told me “I love you so much – don’t you ever cheat on me .” Gosh – I thought – WOW – he really does love me.
Hmmm- now look who cheated on who.
But I see some not so subtle jealousy in my friends’ new relationship and it concerns me greatly. Very controlling , always showing up at the house without notice , compromising most of her free time – even asking where all the paper towels went – IN HER HOUSE !! Scares me a bunch but she’s ignoring it all to avoid feeling alone.
Somehow – my gut tells me this guy is a boatload of trouble coming down the road and I think it’s all going to escalate as time goes on.
I think I’ll e-mail your articles to her – maybe seeing red flags in writing -especially your writing – will push her into reality.
She even leaves this dude alone with her daughters after only a few months of dating – now that’s where I do tell her she is too trusting . Sorry – if my own experiences have tainted my framework so be it – but I’d rather be cautious than wrong where my kids are concerned.
Great article Steve!
This “jealous raging” doesn’t just have to be used only for sexual jealousy. If we have other friends, the psychopath or the Borderline PD will RAGE at us for giving them attention…rage at us for spending time with friends and family, see conspiracies behind their back at work, accuse us of cheating them in business transactions. I think these “jealousy-induced” rages are part and parcel of the personality disordered M.O. It is part of the “you are worse than I am” accusations if you confront them with their own cheating or bad behavior as well.
seeingclearly said
” It is so difficult for indiviuals to have a paradim shift unless something tragic happens, and sometime not even then, even if it will make their lives better and less toxic. It almost like telling the world that the earth is round but they insist that it is flat. To do otherwise would shatter their whole believe system. Make their lives up to that point NOT REAL hell it’s real for sure but it can change without it being the end of the world as we know it.”
yes. what you said reminds me of the facilitated communication incident a few years back. People claimed that people with profound mental retardation and autism could communicate, they just needed someone to assist them in doing so. This was based on believing there was a high amount of dyspraxia, or difficulty with executive motor movement involved with these conditions ( autism, mental retardation ) , so perhaps if they could somehow assist these individuals, they would be in essence, “helping them to voice their thoughts”.
Everyone was in awe because suddenly these autistic people/ mentally retarded individuals suddenly possessed the ability to write emotive poetry, some remarking on how trapped they’ve felt unable to speak … long passages of prose with impeccable grammar and use of vocabulary beyond their years
Then a situation arose where some of the “facilitated communication assisters” would accuse the parents of the mentally retarded/autistic child, of child/sexual abuse… because “look what he/she wrote”. This stirred up a lot of controversy… but eventually most of the allegations were proven to be false, and none of such could be verified… still this did not convince some staunch supporters of F.C. to stand by their allegations and words.
Facilitated Communication, Image : http://www.operationsunshine.org/assets/images/Eve_with_Margaret_Facilitated_Communication.jpg
There was then a double blind study conducted on facilitated communication. The experimenters would show the autistic/mentally retarded individual one image, and the facilitated communication assister another. They were presented two separate images and neither knew of what image was presented to the other. They then asked the facilitated communicator assister to assist the individual in writing what they saw. The results of the study were shocking… not once did the affected individual ( autistic/mentally retarded) get the words right. In fact, with each test, the only words that were ever written by the many affected individuals in the study were of the image that the facilitated communication assister saw. There was not one exception. It was all a fluke.
( And although it may be hard to believe, there are STILL people today that refuse to acknowledge that F.C. has no merit even with the overwhelming amount of evidence as to it’s lack of validity. )
So you might understand how the results of this study came to affect those who had been harping and preaching about facilitated communication for years… these assisters felt as if they’d been robbed. It’s like telling a child that Santa Claus isn’t real. Their whole world view had been shattered and what had initially fueled their sense of purpose in life, were apparently done in vain. The sexual abuse allegations went quiet and those assisters simply did not carry on their allegations after the study, instead slipping noiselessly into the background. It was they themselves perhaps unconsciously writing all those things this whole time, when they believed they were somehow helping these people… they weren’t.
I suppose most of us are familiar with this complete shattering of our world view in our experiences with the S/N/Ps. Where we once believed that there was good in each person, where we believed that bad people always get caught, that if we always “did the right thing” then nothing bad would come our way… these are all beliefs of which FAILED us.
On a greater scale this would be more difficult to digest. Yes *we* are aware of this because we have the tragic and painful anecdote of having experienced this “reality” first hand. To us, this knowledge is unequivocal. To others, it is more comfortable to believe that the world is a good place, a safe place, and one need not worry about falling prey to an S/N/P as it can be likened more to a greek myth than something you might catch on the 5 o’ clock news. It is that ignorance which leaves people prey to psychopaths, and sadly the clinging to this ignorance which ultimately might be seen as to why psychopathy is not seen as an imminent issue today and why education regarding it is lacking. This is what needs to change.
Dancingnancies,
That is a great example of how some people can actually “believe” things that are NOT true….and I think some of these facilitators actually believed what they were “channeling” from the MR/autistic Patients.
I had totally forgotten about this and had read about the “discovery” of this (pseudo) “communication” and then the debunking of it.
It is sort of like the deal with autism being caused by vaccines. The physician who “proved this” is a (fake) “study” was debunked and lost his license in the US and in the UK–he apparently did this “study” to show the MMR vaccine was no good because he had invented another vaccine and thought he would become rich if the current vaccine were no longer used and his was.
Yet, there are still people who FIGHT hard against the vaccination of children which has been repeatedly proven to save lives! No amount of “truth” will convince these WELL MEANING people that what they believe is false.
I have for decades tried to convince both friends and patients that a flu vaccine SAVES LIVES but so many people think that the flu vaccine can “give you the flu” when it is NOT POSSIBLE for this to happen, but because it isn’t something that you can see or hold in your hand, no amount of “verbal proof” will convince them to get a flu shot.
You are so right when you say (quote) “It is that ignorance which leaves people prey to psychopaths, and sadly the clinging to this ignorance which ultimately might be seen as to why psychopathy is not seen as an imminent issue today and why education regarding it is lacking. This is what needs to change. “
my ex thought I was cheating and had put a ‘spy’ device on my computer. I didn’t realize what he did until after I kicked him out. No wonder when I ‘cleared’ my history it looked weird. He didn’t find anything, but he WAS SPYING ON ME AND USING MY COMPUTER when he was not contributing a Cent to my bills.
The Nerve…bastard.
Jazzy;
Did he install spyware on your computer too?
EB, how is the snow situation in your area, are you really getting 10 ft. of snow? I thought you were kidding til I saw the news and national weather tonight! WOW!!! You need to learn to migrate with the birds, sista!
Remember the story about the bird that decided NOT to migrate? All his friends told him he was a fool and flew off and left him. Sure enough it snowed and he was freezing to death! Then a cow came by and shat upon him—and the warm manure made him warm and he looked around and there were grains of corn in the manure and he ate them and he was WARM AND FILLED with FOOD, so he started to sing, and as he sang a CAT heard him and came by and swiped the cow shiat off him and ate him!
The moral of the story is: 1) Not everyone who shiats on you is your enemy 2) not everyone who takes shiat off you is your friend and 3) IF YOU ARE WARM AND WELL FED, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! LOL ROTFLMAO
Every time it snows here I think about that little birdie and every time it does NOT snow here in the winter time I am GRATEFUL FOR SMALL FAVORS!!!!
Jazzy,
Good to see you here! Enjoy your bite to eat. Once I discovered the mask, I got out of there before I could search for tracking devices. Remember, I was in HIS house. I think he felt too secure to do that, he thought he had me for good. I think he in a paranoid state spent more time covering up his internet porno tracks than he did tracking me… he knew what i stood for and against and didn’t have anything to worry about but his own behavior and covering it up!!! AGGGGG horrible, spaths….. why can’t they just fall off the earth? Look at all the pain and chaos caused by these genetic rejects!
Soimnotthecrazee1!
EB,
Do you need me to send you a snorkle to be able to breathe and get air above the snow?? LOLOL Again, I don’t know how you do it!
I love your ADAMANT article! Thanks again! Did you get his story yet?
Soimnotthecrazee1!