I was going about the morning as usual, working on my next book, with CNN on in the background, when I heard what has to be the sociopathic quote of the year, “Nothing says I love you like a Glock.” I have not shared much about my own experience with a sociopath, but one of the things I am most ashamed of is that I did not react more strongly to my former husband’s preoccupation with guns. He did not personally own any gun, but he talked about them a great deal, and he was very persistent about the idea that I should learn how to shoot. He also wanted me to own a hand gun. I did take the NRA gun safety course and I learned how to shoot. I have to say, target practice was fun and I was good at it. I had and still have, an aversion to guns, and so never applied for permission to own one of my own. I felt like a fuddy-dud though, after all our Constitution does give us the right to arm bears, or is it bare arms? I don’t know…
What I do know is that the presence of a hand gun in the home is statistically associated with completed suicide. Access to weapons means a greater likelihood of using them on one’s self or others on impulse. A good thing did come from my training in fire arms, that was I became a more comfortable asking my patients if they owned weapons. All psychiatric/psychological evaluations should include this question.
The sociopathic quote of the year belongs to Drew Peterson, a man who the entire country believes may be responsible for the disappearance of his wife. To read the story visit The Chicago Tribune Website.
Although many people who own guns and use guns are not sociopaths, nearly all sociopaths are in love with guns. This is not discussed at all in the scientific literature but, in my conversations with other victims, they have verified the obsession. Sociopaths are in love with guns because they are the ultimate symbol of power and sociopaths are preoccupied with power. Sociopaths enjoy not only real guns, they also enjoy toy guns and violent videogames. Many studies have shown that sociopaths enjoy violent entertainment more that the average person.
If someone you suspect is a sociopath, wants you to have a gun, please get away from that person immediately. I strongly believe that many sociopaths who do not kill their partners, get their partners to kill themselves. Obviously, a person can also be murdered in such a way that it looks like a suicide. Please notice that Mr. Peterson bought his wife a gun as a Valentine’s day present. How telling is that? How sick is that?
and another thing….
I had told him that I was adopted. He said, “I know everything there is to know about adoption. My brother inlaw is adopted.”
I told him he had NO IDEA what adoption can do to a person or where I was coming from and kept interupting me! He knew everyting– he had heard al the stories. What!
He did not even ask–“Well what happened with your adoption or what do you mean.”
To say you know everything about adoption when you are not adopted–is absolutely SHALLOW, COLD and plain stupid!
Not to mention– mine was no “typical adoption” as my birthparents hired a private investigator and found me when I was a teen and I have never, ever been the same. Nor has my family. My adoptive– “real” family. It broke their hearts to see me suddenly let my birthparents into my world.
Can you imagine? “I know everything about being adopted b/c my broinlaw is adopted.”
I have friends with cancer-so I guess I know how they feel!
Dear Meg,
Darling you are starting to SOUND SO SANE!!!! TOWANDA!!!
You are absolutely right, his HAS TO BE THE EXPERT ON EVERYTHING! LOL That is so P-ish for sure. I can laugh about it now but my XBF-P was exactly that way, even in areas in which he KNEW NOTHING he had to be the expert.
My late husband who was SOOOOO bright and expert in several fields actually, he and I used to love to teach and learn from each other, discuss things, figure things out together. Not the BF, he had to KNOW IT ALL! LOL
Once he made some comment about something medical that was 100% WRONG and so I said, “let me get the medical manual out and show you,” and I did and HE WAS FURIOUS that I “thought you are smarter than me.” I said “Look you are an electrician, I know zip about electrical things, so teach me about electricity and I’ll teach you about medicine etc…you can’t expect me to know as much as you do about electricity, and how can you expect yourself to know as much about my field as I do?
NOPE! Wasn’t good enough, he had to be the expert in everything even if he couldn’t SPELL IT! LOL
What you said about him not needing anyone else, that is one of those SECRET TRUTHS that they tell us if we happen to pick up on them when they say them.
thank you Oxy
Dear Lesson learned,
I respond to you on your remarks on the O-Umbrella-thread that became way too long to handle.
First I am concerned about your health problem but the same time I am relieved that it is getting taken care off in due speed me thinks. And I would suggest that you concentrate on NOW and not dwell in the past, as hard it may be. The past will pop up anyway, you do not have to search for it.
And I do not think that there is any God making up such things as cancer or other horrible scenarios (as S/N/P!) showing us our learning points in life or the like. This would be very spathy per se and I would immediately switch to another less spathy religion or would prefer NC with all of them, i.e. become atheist!
I rather have it with Kathleen Hawk who said that in Bhuddism there is a saying: when the pupil is ready, the teacher arrives. (you can read tons of books about reparenting the inner child, but if you have not felt it, you think it is psychobabble-nonsense!). Goethe the German writer stated: “if you cannot feel it, you cannot chase for it” .
To Petite: no my boss was not the one I fell in love with (I had a crush on him 10 years ago when I was resident and he was my chief resident, but backed off as he told me that he had a partner for 15 years, and I try not to have any love relationship at work!). He later became my boss, and he dumped said friend after a long distance flight four years ago, and wanted later on his new girlfriend to have my position; hence he took part in the mobbing and even encouraged the others. First I thought he would help me dealing with the mobbing colleagues, but then I found out about his plans with his lover. We went along very well at first.
The Spath Lover: I met him on the Internet on a respectable dating site, although he lived in my old hometown and he even knew some of my old high school buddies (he did even ask them about my character, and what he heard was satisfying him, so he told me ; I passed one of his tests!). As I knew that my old school friends did like him, it was comforting me as well!
The driving took place in a long holiday I took in Sweden; Switzerland, Swasiland and Sweden get mixed up quite often 😉 And the forests in Switzerland are not THAT big to drive for hours not meeting anybody, so it was a complete new experience for me.
Dear Libelle,
I had to laugh when you said “I met him on the Internet on a RESPECTABLE dating site”
That’s the thing I think that is so funny –what is “respectable” about a computer or a dating site of any kind? Internet dating sites are I think all SEWERS where psychopathic pieces of feces can hide behind fake profiles and wait to be caught by some poor victim dipping their line in what they think is a “respectable” on-line dating site. The computer screen hides the stink! LOL
Objection, your honor! I did the best I could, and there are also sites for quick sex or cheating!
But after having wised up, I must admit that the “respectable dating site” must be the same as back then when my father once gave my mother a pearl necklace for Christmas he specially bought in Japan that came with a certificate “Real Mikimoto pearls”, and my mother told him that they were “Real artificial crap pearls”. THAT was a Christmas to remember, and I doubt ANY certificate since then! LOL 😉 !
And I specially doubt if something HAS TO HAVE A CERTIFICATE THAT STATES THAT SOMETHING IS TRUE, REAL, TRUSTWORTHY OR RESPECTABLE!!!
Oxy – Have you even been on a dating site, or is your opinion based solely on observation?
Dear Onesey,
Yep, and it is also my observation. I have also known several people who met and married off “respectable” dating sites.
1) My son C’s P-X-wife he met on a dating site and married her, she tried to kill him.
2) a friend of mine from college married one, bought her a new vehicle and after the wedding, she decided she “wouldn’t move into your house until you get the remodeling done, but I WILL take the new vehicle back to Texas while I wait.” He did NOT give her the vehicle, and he DID divorce her (she left after 3 days of “honeymoon”) and she DID open dozens of credit accounts in his name and SS# and run up big charges on them.
3) another guy I know married one whose visa was about to run out and she didn’t want to go back to X country apparently. He actually felt sorry enough for her that even though she quit sleeping with him after a week or two, he didn’t divorce her til she could get her permanent resident.
4) and I could go on, and on and on. I do not know of a single “okay” match off the internet where it turned out to be happy long term. The only one I have even HEARD ABOUT is Matt’s relationship, and that one was NOT a long-distance one as well.
The thing I think is that any situation that is “long distance” where you can’t really get to know each other under a lot of different circumstances, people can “hide” behind the computer screen and as YOU well know, can PRETEND TO BE ANYONE OR ANY THING they want to be.
That gal who got “scammed” by the Nigerians pretending to be a US service man is a perfect example I think (although an extreme example) of what can happen when you accept someone 100% at face value over the internet.
Long distance, even if you met in person, is difficult to get to KNOW someone too. You don’t get to SEE them in their “element”, and I think it is like try to study the “mating behavior of tigers” and only having caged tigers to study. They are NOT going to act the same way that ones in the wild in their NATURAL ENVIRONMENT WILL. So how can you KNOW what they are really like “in the wild?”
Not to say that people we meet in every day life can’t be dangerous or psychopathic. I met my x BF in real life, and actually CASUALLY “knew” him for about 10 years before we started dating.
BUT, I realize that because he lived 3 hours from me I really didn’t KNOW much about him. I was fortunate though that we had mutual “friends” who DID know what a creep he was….and I eventually got that information, and his cousin that he introduced me to was the one who ratted him out to me about him having the skank at the deer camp.
You know, you can meet psychopaths on the Internet or at a church social, or anywhere in between, but I think that the “dating sites” are PERFECT HIDING PLACES for psychopaths to troll for new victims. Not that there are not “good guys” there too, but I think too many people use them to troll. I think there are some stats that say 40% of people there are actually married and looking to cheat. So that figure alone is just a start!
Yea, Libelle, we do get a bit “wiser” after we have had an encounter with a psychopath or two, don’t we! 🙂 Really smart psychopaths know how to appear “respectable” to get respectable victims.
And the respectabler the victim, the better! It is no fun if it is too easy! My father once had a divorce case against a pastor, and he LOVED to invent new “scripture” to puzzle the pastor (who was a creep who milked his wife out of her inheritage, when I remember correctly the kitchen table talk back then).
Therefore respectable Dr Petite is not given up yet I think!
A propos dating sites: my sister was on one too, and prior to me, and was telling about the fun dates she had (not a good example as she is a N 😉 ), but our head nurse was on one prior to me as well, and she really found her love of her life. And then I started asking myself whom I meet in real life: doctors (a no go!), male nurses (you know them Oxy, rather Dances with Wiener’s cup of tea), or patients (whom I am not allowed to date by unwritten laws as it is unfair towards the patient. I know everything from him in the first ten minutes including the STD, the grandma’s shoesize, and he barely knows my name and so forth).
So I started the dating game, and after some deceptions I met HIM! And the rest is history. After that experience, after two years or so, I went back on the site to see if I am still THAT jaded, and YES I am, so I quit.
It was very difficult to quit because the dating site was behind my money, and the guy from the credit card company who knew them had to show me a trick that finally worked.
I am now ready to getting old alone and unkissed, and I like it! 🙂 (specially if the kisses come with a huge prize tag!!)