The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us, by Martha Stout, Ph.D., will be the topic of discussion at a New York City Barnes & Noble Book Store on April 22, 2010, at 7 p.m.
The event is sponsored by the Non-Fiction Reading Club at the Barnes & Noble at 86th and Lexington Avenue. All are welcome.
Event announcement provided by a Lovefraud reader.
one step
I relate to what you say:
drugs, sex adddictions, and other self destructive behaviour to diffuse a rage turned inward”
I have one hell of a call for self respect and integrity. I can’t seem to HOLD IT in relationship, let alone relationship with ppath. I lose it.,lost it
I’m researching real love vs addictive love
struggling with nighmares again and beginning to sob, cry feel the tears again. I really want him to appear on my doorstep begging forgiveness and you know even then I would kick him to the curb.
I want to love him back to feeling something….I know that’s the rage I have…that I cannot do anything except hope and pray he has another victim so I can escape. Lovely set of choices.l…there is a sick part of me who craves “changing him into a loving being” it’s addictive and an old pattern started by my parents!!!
I surrender, I am admitting I am powerless over my addiction….tears, sobbing, help me…I was in the hands of a psychopath and I think he is an amateur but with enough frustration he could kill, and I have not a hope in hell of meaning anything to him. That’s the same heartbreak I felt about my mother and my father..(they would never kill ) and it never crossed my mind that people could kill unless they were demented lunatics…not so..there are ppaths who cooly calmly kill, no problem.
Kerisee:
I caught the rundowns on it…..
Keep the family secrets…..dahling…..
Wouldn’t want YOU to be the one to ‘out’ me…..
I’ll deny it to my death……
They are sick, sick, sick !!!!!
bulletproof – get it all out girl…
I don’t remember, have you read the ‘betrayal bond’ and done the exercises? if not, might want to check it out.
love additiocn – we have to learn – if they do us wrong, and there isn’t an immediate change in action, true contrition and apology then it means nothing. even if you could love him into feeling something HE’S STILL DONE YOU BAD!
surrender (and the good news)and you are right, you have no control over him, but in the end you do have it over you. and YOU are worth the effort, YOU can change and learn and grow.
YAY FOR BULLETPROOF!!!!!!
Dear Bulletproof, It may not FEEEEL like it, but you are in a really good place. Surrender IS key, because we keep banging our heads against the wall, wanting to have our way, and we can’t have our way, especially with spaths.
I don’t know if you are aware of this, or if it will help you, but they have on-line LAA meetings and forums. I visited a few times and read some very helpful things there, but already being familiar with the 12-steps, I decided to concentrate my energy here. If you’d like information on LA, it’s the place to go, and it explains the 12 steps, how to use them, and why they work. Best of luck to you, from one love junkie to another.
Let me just caution you, though. I don’t recommend SLAA, that is, sex and love addicts anonomous. Just LAA. I think in the other group your kind of like divided into two types: predator and prey.
hi ox drover –
i totally agree with what you said. i was either living with, pining for, or being actively manipulated by my spath for 20 years. so i do realize they dont have to be related for it to be ‘easier’ to get away from. i guess in the last 2 years i am just so thankful there were no children, or that there was no reason i had to be in contact with him. i am glad he is not my brother, child, father etc. However it really was just as nasty and drawn-out a process to get away from. he had his hooks in very very deep.
to kerisee – i saw that dateline.
it was so clear to me very quickly what that bitch was. and it was heartbreaking to me how she totally fff-ed her daughter up for life! i know the daughter is better now, but i cannot comprehend how she managed to get through the years. i try not to watch those datelines because they are so drama but i could not pass up that one!
Jane– I know! And she said she’s working through it in therapy. She wouldn’t come out and say her mom’s a sociopath, but I could see it in her eyes. When she confessed her part in it, I totally understood what prompted her to say “if you’re going to do it, just do it!” Because when you’re under a spath’s spell, you don’t think rationally, and not only that, but you know that they’re going to do what they’re going to do anyway. I have no doubt that her mom was waiting for her to pull the trigger because she didn’t want the blame. It’s no surprise that she railroaded her daughter. Anybody that could make a child witness something like that, then make them DIG HIM BACK UP and recover him again is a complete manipulating sociopath! That poor child. The sad thing is, and I told my husband this after watching that, is that sociopaths couldn’t care less if they killed somebody on a whim. It doesn’t affect them in the slightest. And I’m so scared that my husband’s ex will get it in her head (once she’s bored with her current man-situation) that I somehow stole her life (what she views as belonging to her) and that she will try to kill me. She didn’t want a divorce from my husband, and tried in every way to stop it (including getting pregnant), and when it was final, she married her second husband. That lasted 6 weeks. Then she slept around for a while and married her third husband. That lasted 7 weeks. She’s been with her current boyfriend on and off for a year, though she had another baby in the meantime, that she swore was his, but it came out African American, and she had to admit that there was a SMALL chance it would’ve been this other guy’s baby. She has since made that guy so mad that he hit her, and she had him arrested. She told the entire story to her 5 year old daughter. She’s been arrested twice by her current boyfriend when they were on the outs, and she’s had him arrested twice. Great enviro for the kids!!! Sheesh.
thanks one step
for tonight all I can say that makes any sense is: I SURRENDER. my heart is broken, I can’t stop crying. End of.
Kim Frederick
tis too shall pass. Yes I am familiar with all the 12 step stuff and co dependency, I am very educated about it all
but to night I FEEL IT and no book stands a chance against the feelings. heartbreak. wishing it were different. surrender. I cannot change the P into a loving human being…and I so wanted to and beleived love was all you need…I am so sad that I couldn’t reach his heart and make a difference. I am so sad he is a psychopath. it hurts so much right now.
Dear Kerisee,
Yea I saw it. Don’t watch much TV but did start watching dateline a while back and yes, most of them are Psychopaths who are being profiled. I SO wish they would say THE WORD! But alas, they seem to show the “serial killer” side of psychopathy and not the “guy next door” emotional abuser. Oh, well, it is done for entertainment not so much real education for people.
Yea, you are right about the environment for the kids, and unfortuantely too many grow up like this. People no longer seem to “judge” behavior as “right or wrong” or “good or bad” but as “relative” to WHAT? Life choices!?! CRAPPOLA! Where is the MORAL COMPASS of our world. Does ANYone have one today? Our leaders don’t seem to have—prostitution, cheating on the wife with someone in South America, telling the little wifie you are GAY while you are governor of a state?
Going off and not paying child support? Driving drung/high and drowning your kids cause you ran down a boat ramp into a lake, killing your 3 year old to get back at your mother then telling police that you left her with a sitter and even when you knew she was dead went out SHOPPING with your BF. Pushing your wife off a cliff and missing the funeral to sign up for your singles group. Killing your preg wife and dumping her body, then going to play golf while everyone else looks for the missing woman? Makes me PUKE! Oh, and Susan Smith, drowning her babies because her BF didn’t like kids, and saying she was carjacked. How about Amy Fisher shooting MaryJo in the head! Sheesh, where does it END! They become celebraties for goodness sakes, and the robbers in Bervely Hills, high school kids for goodness sakes now fetted and on their own “reality show?” COME ON!!!! Famous and admired for being thieves!? Where is the puke emoticon when you need one? Where is the guilt or shame for being a crook, a murderer, a drug dealer, a thief? The only people who seem to me to feel shame are those of us who are or were abused.
OK that’s my RANT for today!
I read most of the posts. I am so thankful for this site. I have been involved w a pp for almost 25 yrs- and have his four children. The book by M Stout was instrumental to my awareness and breaking away- excellent primer for the mass culture. Bullet: wow can I relate! So awful for you, but your expression of true feelings really really helps me, I felt so alone and so stupid and scared for so long- still do, sometimes. and still cry that he is an irreparable pp. my focus is on our youngest who was markedly different almost from birth. so much like his father. then after i went thru the hell-storm w the pp and started researching- i knew that the baby boy is predisposed- sad sad sad but i am determined to re-pattern early and he is in counselling for it!