By Mary Ann Glynn, LCSW, located in Bernardsville, New Jersey
I recently wrote about how partners of sociopaths tend to take responsibility when things go wrong in the relationship, figuring ways to make it better. We then blame ourselves for overlooking warning signs early on, and for not leaving immediately when we did see them. Sometimes we blame our childhoods for the vulnerabilities that made us caretakers who overlook and tolerate abusive or rejecting partners.
Neuroscientists tell us that our behaviors are about 90% driven by our subconscious minds. That means 90% of what we are taking in from a person on a conscious level is being received by our subconscious minds, not our conscious thoughts and experience. It takes a lot longer for our conscious minds to catch up and integrate what we are experiencing on an unconscious, visceral, or “gut” level. Hopefully, this information will help you to give yourself a break!
Optimism in the face of reality
But, there is even more compelling evidence that goes beyond naivete, beyond whatever childhood we may have had or type of personality we might have, that explains why we didn’t see the signs, overlooked them, and stayed. I watched a documentary on brain science, which described a recent study done at the University College, London. Dr. Tali Sharot wanted to find out, “Why do we remain optimistic in the face of reality?”
Subjects were put in a brain scanner and asked what they thought the probability of them encountering 80 different negative events in their lives, such as cancer, Alzheimers, car accident, burglary, bone fracture, sport related accident, heart failure, drug abuse, household accident, diabetes, alcoholism, and death before 60. Initially, the subjects responded well below the actual probabilities, for example guessing 18% chance of getting cancer vs. the actual probability, which is 30%.
After these questions, the subjects were shown the actual percentages of the negative events happening and the great gap of their beliefs and reality. Normally, when people are given new information on a subject, it will alter their view or beliefs. After being given the new correct information, the subjects were asked the same questions all over again while in a brain scanner. Instead of the new information altering their beliefs about them encountering the negative events in their lives like should happen, it had little effect!
Negative, positive and the brain
Here is what they found in the brain scans that explains this: The part of the brain that contains negative information malfunctions, while the part that contains positive information is much more active. The brain willfully ignores negative things, and sees the world through rose-colored glasses.
The reason our brains are formed this way and trick us is for survival reasons. 1) It reduces stress and anxiety, and 2) We are goal driven from an evolutionary standpoint, to ignore risks involved in exploring the world and universe and discovering something novel to better our world. It keeps us striving for a better future. Risk takers who less concerned with playing it safe are the ones who are not afraid to venture out, and who keep our species going.
When thought about from the brain science perspective, there is good reason that we ignored the negative, which does not in any way point to a personality or moral flaw. It’s just the way we are.
I do need to add one thing that I still do NOT understand and has certainly been the driver all along and still when I get that horrible WHY question stuck in my head.
I do NOT understand why this guy with SO much to lose, so so much to lose, (which he finally did w/great pain and anguish) would hit on me, an older woman, who could have at any second ratted him out. I don’t understand why, months later, after he already was in trouble, he, for the first and only time since I’d known him, asked me to come and spend the day w/him at his place. I just do not get it. He did know my husband was out of town so I know that gave him some comfort but why “nothing” for months, then this excited request for me to come over. Now that I look back, I wonder if he was going to kill me because after that day, he only cared about keeping me on his side as he watched his undoing occur, being fired, etc. I don’t know any of the facts except that he was fired and I believe he is divorced now.
What kept me so tied to him was the notion that he must *really* care about me on a very deep level if he was willing to get in huge trouble should I speak to his boss. Was he really that sick?
It was until he’d been gone for months that I googled his behaviors and came up with pages and pages about socios. To this day, I don’t know if I really believe his is socio. I just do not understand why he made a play for me knowing I could do him and his family so much harm. Was he THAT sick?????
Still, hi, you wrote, ”I do NOT understand why this guy with SO much to lose, so so much to lose, (which he finally did w/great pain and anguish) would hit on me, an older woman, who could have at any second ratted him out. I don’t understand why”
I don’t understand either, why a man whose first son hates him and hasn’t spoken to hiom for 7 years would risk his second marriage and access to his second son – because his secone wife is foreign and the child has dual nationality and she will take the child to her country which does not recognise dual nationality, so she would not have to comply with any court ordered access he sought in his country – WHY would he risk his second son to stalk me who ended my relationship with him back in NOVEMBER and has told him I have reported him to the police. Why? This is why I am questioning whether these people are sane. The literature says yes, they know what they are doing. OK, so they are what, just mindlessly destructive to their own detriment ? I can understand screwing others over but themselves?? Gah I give up
tea, I posted a comment but it went away. Basically I just agreed, “Gah,” yes, it makes no sense at all that anyone would risk something so significant to their lives/existence just to be able to experience the high or thrill or whatever that they get from the game. It must be the 3 yr old emotional maturity thing. If you are indeed that immature, you would be attracted by the immediate want/need and not the future outcome even if that outcome means the worst torture known to man.
I don’t know about your stalker nutcase but I’m pretty darned sure most real paths do not care about anyone, not really, they are unable, so as long as he isn’t hurting the mothers of his sons, he doesn’t really care. He gets no internal benefit from the love of his sons or anyone else. He is 3! Like you said, the first wife can do what she wants so he can’t hurt her. It’s no fun anymore! They don’t live for goodies and love and passion. They live to control, hurt, maim for their immediate gain to feed their hedonism NOW. So you are the perfect target. There is no sense to be made of it other than that. I watched this behavior firsthand and you are watching it now and in the past!!!
I think that I’ve basically answered my own question. I don’t really know a thing about the path in my life but from the way he mopped the floor with my psyche, jumping from open admiration to total and completely dismissive and apathetic to my existence, I’m guessing the 3 yr old theory is correct. There is no emotional connection to anyone. Just an immediate high born of need, want, desire…….*in the moment*. After it passes or is sated (sex, food, screwing someone over, getting the best of them, beating the competition at Candy Land), it’s done.
WE assign them their power over us because they know how to talk, to pretend, to deceive their way into our hearts as well as into powerful positions, which make them seem more credible, but behind it is a baby that just wants what it wants and RIGHT NOW.
TeaLight…..I don’t get it either. They are destructive to others and themselves. Is it just because they just don’t care straight across the board? They don’t respect or care about them selves in any deep or significant way, so therefore they don’t respect or care about anyone else in any deep or significant way. They live in the now….what they want now, what appeals to them now. I don’t know….trying to figure them out is a dead end street in the house of mirrors. Futile
Still reeling, when you are asking yourself why he would pursue you under those circumstances, and why he would do the other things he did…….a really good thing to do is to step back and look at your motives for asking those questions. I don’t know if this is true for you, but when I was trying to recover from the spath, and I asked those questions, I was looking for a spark of hope, that maybe somewhere deep down, he loved me or found me irresistible, being willing to go to great lengths to pursue me. This thought somehow validated me and I needed that validation, to feel I was lovable and irresistible above all others. Because with a spath, you can never really answer those questions. It’s not possible to really understand a spath in any kind of way that would make sense to you. And the reasons don’t really matter. A lot of people on here spend years trying to understand spaths – there are people who make it their life study. It’s good to understand them enough to recognize them, so you can protect yourself in the future. But outside of that, it detracts from the truly important question of “why do you care?” This will lead you to the real healing, which is about you and not about him. Seriously, why do you care what a toxic person thinks about you? Why is it important to know? To me, this is a great question to ask and a good starting point for healing.
Yes, Star…you are right. If you read my earlier post March 26, 2013 at 1:48 pm, Paragraph 7, I’m kind of saying the same thing. I feel that hanging onto this experience is a way for some people to allow themselves to feel miserable and not embrace life. Why? Well, various reasons. For me, right now, it’s because I don’t know which way to go, jobless, older, uncertain, no real hobbies, etc. So jumping into trying to figure out this horrendous situation is basically something to do and allows me to forget my real problems. However, there will be a time, (maybe on my deathbed) when I’ll be SO sorry for having wasted so much precious time thinking about him and trying to figure out why he did what he did/whether or not he was really a path.
Yes, you’re right. There are times when I feel he had to have cared. But in reality, it doesn’t matter because he hasn’t contacted me so, path or not, he does NOT nor did he ever care. For me, the decision has to be to face the world as it is without a hiding place and that is uber difficult for reasons I mentioned above. I don’t know if I need to start a new life on my own, stay in my marriage or what. I feel like a terrible phony and don’t know how I feel about anything. Because I don’t like myself, this guy was perfect for me. Another tramp to lose myself in as I did so many times in my youth, scoffing at nice guys who would treat me with respect.
If this jerk was not a path, he was, as you say, toxic and I couldn’t care less what he thinks of me. I’m not even really attracted to him. I was only attracted to the him I created, a warm, loving, affectionate presence in my life, someone who appreciated me for who I was. But he was not that…he threw crumbs and when I picked them up, they turned into diamonds and he into a prince. I wove songs around him, songs that literally dripped with passion and emotion and angst, Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game, George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness.” He was my muse, my creation. But he was not involved in any of it. There was a little confusing flirtation, one true hit, one seemingly genuine invitation and a few suggestive comments and emails. But inbetween there was always dismissive and uncaring behaviors. I would think, “How can he act like he cares one day and just deny my existence the next.” It was so completely damaging for me because tho I tried to ignore it, of course, I realized he was not really interested.
I love your post, Star, and I will cherish it and read it when the urge hits to go into that very dangerous place and waste time there. That’s all it is – a mind game. Nothing else. What I wanted from him, a friendship based on mutual respect, trust and a real and honest connection, was never to be and I did NOT think for one minute it ever would. He was smarmy the very first time I met him and a throwback to many times past when I allowed myself to make something out of less than nothing.
Thanks again and hope you are doing well. If you living the comment you sent me, you are doing very, very well indeed. Rock on, Star!! Hugs
Still reeling, I don’t think anyone deliberately wants to feel miserable by obsessing – it just seems to be how we deal with pain sometimes. So many of us don’t know what real caring feels like that we hang onto every crumb thrown to us. We don’t recognize when someone doesn’t love us. I know I am like this, and I count on the wisdom of my more objective friends to remind me “That guy doesn’t care for you. That’s not what love looks like. Love is not that difficult. If a man is really into you, you won’t have to guess.” Oh yeah, reality check. I remember after I broke up with the spath (because he had played some sort of discard game with me), I saw him at an expo. He followed me around and stood over me, smelling my hair, at every booth. He was actually stalking me. Would you believe I took this as a sign that he cares about me? I asked a counselor, and she told me it was a power play, to see if he still had me in his control. Fortunately, I believed her and snapped out of it. But getting over him was extremely painful. When I finally surrendered the denial and felt the pain, I cried myself to sleep every night for a few months – the pain was so overwhelming. I had help from a spiritual teacher in releasing some of the energy. Without her help, I was suicidal. This is why we obsess. Because the alternative – facing reality – can be overwhelmingly painful. Sometimes life just sucks.
And yes, it’s extremely painful to let go of the guy I have been obsessing about. I may even have a conversation with him at one point – not sure. At least I can say he’s not a spath, just someone not ready for a relationship. He seems to get his needs met through dancing and flirting, and doesn’t want anything more, at least not with me. He’s actually a great guy in many ways and a step up for me from the guys I usually go for. The other part of this is that I’ve had a really hard time expressing my feelings to him, so I don’t think he really knows the depth of my feelings. I do think he cares, and may even come closer if I could express them. But my overall urge is to protect my heart with him. Again, if he were interested, he’d be coming around.
Star, first of all I finally get it about the salsa dancing. I didn’t realize there was a guy involved. From some of your other posts, I thought you were just obsessed with the dancing! lol. I am a horrible dancer so I stick to fitness routines. That’s the closest I can get to dancing. However, I am a firm believer in dancing for lifting the spirits. It is definitely a mood enhancer just like exercise, without which for me, life is not worth living. It truly keeps me going; I can’t count on people to do that and no one should, not because people are bad but because my expectations are so high and I’m extremely sensitive. I worked on it and got a lot better and was able to realize and accept that it was not all about me, but after my company kicked me to the curb after all the years I busted butt, then path, trust is almost impossible for me. I’m back to square 1, humor gone, interests gone, work was my life and now I feel like I am worthless to anyone. I absolutely knew this was going to happen when I got laid off, knew it because I know myself.
Monster path took away some of the pain and self-doubt I was feeling but I was just bs’ing myself. I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday. I saw all the signs that he was a cheat and a total f-up but didn’t know a thing about paths or think he was anything but a lowlife. I didn’t care. I needed what I thought he was giving me.
I think it’s great you were able to “surrender the denial.” Kudos to you. I have done the same – old habits die hard tho, and I still, out of habit, think about him but I have no interest in him. It’s all smoke, mirrors, obsessiveness, needy crap.
And you are correct, if you don’t know what love looks like, you are apt to make mistakes. You just have to love yourself above all else (not to sound selfish) but if you don’t respect and love yourself, you (and I mean collective “you” as well as you and I), will fall down the same rabbit hole over and over and over, not listening to your gut.
I think it’s great that you heed the warnings of good friends and your therapist when you are feeling uncertain. That is excellent. You are really trying to make life better for yourself and that is exactly where you need to be.
From what you said above about salsa guy, it does sound like he’s not stepping up to the plate. I would be carful unless you feel very resilient these days because even if he is not a path, he can still hurt you, and he doesn’t sound like the type of person you need right now other than to dance and flirt around with. It seems to me that you need someone who is healthy and wants to do more than dance and flirt! For example, if this guy had asked you to go out after dancing or asked for your number, showed *interest* in you as a person. You need someone who cares. If you can just have a good time with this guy, that’s one thing but you state that you have “depthy” feelings for him. That is just not possible as you don’t know him. Don’t mean to overstep my boundaries here but just going by what you’re saying. Your last 2 sentences, please go with that!! You don’t need to be hurting again. Hugs.
Still reeling, he has actually expressed a lot of concern about what is going on in my life, and we have spent some time together off the dance floor. But neither of us have stepped it up, and as the woman, I don’t feel it’s my place to do so. However, I have been sort of game-playing, too, out of defensiveness. I have started with a new counselor today. He’s done a lot of work with PTSD, which is what I’m dealing with in relationships. I seem to have a lot of fear of expressing myself, to the point where I often can’t even identify what I need to say, or my wants and needs. If I could have been more upfront with him in the beginning, I wouldn’t be in this situation. We would either be dating, or I would have moved on. Probably the latter. It’s really hard for me to separate out what are my issues and what are his. Because I know a woman expressing herself directly is very attractive to a man and raises her value in his eyes. And This is what I am struggling with. I went through it with my neighbor for 2 years, too. Everyone tells me, “He is not right for you,” but my hesitation is that I have not been totally open and upfront. For a guy who is shy or lacking in confidence, it really helps for the woman to be very direct.
I hear what you’re saying Star. Glad you’re seeing a new counselor and hopefully he can help you sort things out and increase your confidence about sharing your feelings. I don’t think you should put this all on yourself. These guys, shy or not, can take some responsibility for sharing their feelings as well. There’s always email, right? Being totally open and upfront is fine but I get the feeling you think you have to bear the burden of this with men. Shy or not, mature, healthy adults find a way to let someone they like know it. If they can’t or won’t, I agree, it’s probably not a good match. But I do agree that you need to figure out what your fears are and why you have them. It may be that you are simply choosing the wrong type of men and just aren’t comfortable sharing feelings with them. Pulling for you!