By Ox Drover
One of the themes that seems to run throughout the stories of many of, if not most of, the people who have had experiences with psychopaths is that we have either had repeated episodes of being abused by the same psychopath, even after we saw their dishonesty, or had episodes of being sucked into the webs of multiple psychopaths. Or, we have both of these—multiple episodes with multiple psychopaths.
Most of the people I have known who were formerly victims of psychopaths are not stupid. In fact, some of the smartest, most accomplished people I know are former victims, and have been repeatedly victimized by one psychopath after finding out that this person was dishonest and abusive. Somehow, they kept on going back to the relationship, even after multiple attempts to disengage from the abuser. Why? Why does a person who is smart, accomplished, and otherwise successful in life and business keep repeating the same behavior that allows them to be hurt?
There is an often-used quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” It seems by this definition that the victims of psychopaths are “insane,” because we keep on trying to have a relationship with someone who is repeatedly abusive. There must be some reason that otherwise smart and successful people keep repeating the behavior that is unsuccessful in its outcome. There must be some common thread among victims and former victims that makes us susceptible to frequently returning to an unsuccessful and painful relationship.
Here’s a little story that may contain what may be a grain of truth that might point us toward the answer to the question of. “Why?”
The Chief and the Snake
Once upon a time there was a very wise and kind Indian chief. One day as the chief was walking through the forest, he came upon a rattlesnake in the path. He stopped and started to go around the snake, not wanting to hurt it, but not wanting to be bitten either.
As the chief started to pass around the snake, the snake spoke to him (not an unusual thing in those days) and said, “Chief, please have mercy on me, my wife and family are on the other side of yonder river, and I can’t swim, and I can’t get to them. Won’t you please pick me up and carry me across the river?”
The chief looked at the snake and laughed a bit and said, “Why, if I tried to pick you up you would bite me and I would die. I am sad that you have a problem but I must not be bitten, or I would die and my own children would starve because there would be no strong man with a bow to hunt brother deer to provide meat to my little ones. Though my heart feels sad for you, no, I must refuse to pick you up.”
The snake then spoke to the chief saying, “But such a brave man as you should not be afraid of such a small snake as I, and I promise from the bottom of my heart that I would never harm you if you were to help me across yon river. I am so afraid that if I am not able to get across, my wife and children will perish. Please help me in my hour of need.”
The chief looked at the snake and his heart was sad because he knew what it was like to have one’s children without food. His heart took pity on the snake, and he agreed to take the snake across the river, if the snake would agree not to bite him.
The chief reached out to pick up the snake and held him high over his head as he waded the swift and cold waters of the river. About half way across the river when the chief was doing his best to protect the snake from the cold waters, the snake reached down and bit him on the neck, sinking his poison fangs deep into the chief’s blood stream.
The chief was surprised and said to the snake, “Brother Snake, why did you bite me, now I will die and you will drown as well. You promised on your honor not to bite me if I would have mercy on you and help you, now we shall both die and our children starve. You promised me.”
The snake replied, “Ah yes, I promised, but you knew what I was when you picked me up,” as they both sank under the swirling cold water of the river.
What we have in common with the chief
What caused the chief to reach out and pick up a snake that he knew was poisonous, that he knew had the power to harm him, and that if he was wrong in making this decision to pick up the snake, and the snake did bite him, that his own children would suffer because of his decision?
Empathy is what the chief had, empathy for the children of the snake. Because the chief loved his own children, he assumed that the snake must also love its children. Just as the chief would do what was best for his children, he empathized that the snake would also do what was best. Since the chief knew that he would never do anything deliberately to cause consequences for his children, he did not see that the snake would deliberately do something that would cause problems for his own offspring.
Thinking that others have the same motivations that we have can get us into the same problems that the chief got into. The chief wanted to help the snake. He felt pity for the snake. He knew that he would not want someone to refuse to help him if it meant that he would die and his children would go hungry, so it never dawned on him that the snake would be willing to make a decision to do a deed that would insure that the snake-children would go hungry.
The chief’s empathy and his thinking that others had the same empathy, the same motivation for their behavior, and no reason to hurt another, even at the cost of hurting themselves or their near and dear, caused him to want to believe the snake’s promise not to bite.
The snake, however, was right. The chief knew what he was when he picked him up. When we allow ourselves to believe the promises of people who have proven that they are dishonest, we open ourselves to be repeatedly injured or even killed. When someone shows you what they are, believe your eyes. Believe what you see, not what you hear.
No Contact
“No contact” is the commonly accepted “treatment” for any abusive relationship. This means that only contact that is required by law (such as meeting that person in a courtroom due to a law uit) or the minimum amount of contact required by law to co-parent with such a person, is the only interaction between you and your former abuser. No contact allows the injuries to cease, and keeps you safe from new and repeated injuries from the abuser.
“No contact” also includes not stalking the person’s Facebook page or other social media. It means blocking or deleting any text messages, phone calls, e-mails or any other form of communication, including having others tell you what the former abuser is “up to.” Refusing to engage in tale carrying, gossip, or drama involved with the former abuser is also essential. If you must speak about the relationship, do it ONLY with a trusted friend or family member who sees that the relationship was/is abusive, and with assurances that the person will keep your information in absolute confidence. This process can be likened to “not renting them space in your head,” which includes wondering if they have a new relationship, and if they are making this new person happy o,r if they will change for this new person, or wondering if you were wrong about what they are.
You know what they are now, so don’t pick them up. NO CONTACT WORKS.
That could all be, or it could not be. But you don’t want to find out, and by maintaining NC you won’t need to find out 🙂
LL-you are completely and totally right.
Darwinsmom-I don’t care about what the profile lists say. I’m not getting close enough to find out. I guess you can call me a bitch for labeling her based on superficial observations. After all that I’ve been through with these types my entire life, no one gets the benefit of the doubt anymore. My N mother used to tell me how “no one is evil and everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt” BULLSHIT. She would chastize me for “going with my gut” and it’s only because she didn’t want me to realize what SHE really was. That is partly how I grew up without having a VOICE and why I am a 38 yr old female who is just now throwing off and discarding parental control and learning to have a voice. I let them control so much that I feel like I’ve wasted me life.
NO ONE gets the benefit of the doubt anymore. If she is displaying more and more traits of my ex all the time, then she is DANGER and TOXIC and the superficial knowledge is all I need in this case to make that judgment. This knowledge is going to help me survive on the streets as a LEO in my next career. As far as I’m concerned, her mask is slipping!
BTW, her cat’s name is Lolita , so that presents a vibe to me that is just not right. SMDH-the more I think about our dealings so far, it is SO not anyplace that I want to continue going.
I’m sorry that you had such primary teachings in your youth. And you can be very proud of yourself of the process you are going through. What happens in our youth, especially regarding socialisation, handicaps us for years in our adult life. While I had a loving home, I had other socialisation issues in my youth that damaged my self-image on a social level, eventually leading to a relationship that ended with me having an ID-crisis, that got solved but then turned into a sense-of-life crisis and insecurities also involving a very painful break-up. I needed close to a decade to get over all that, find my calling, find my absolute center, only to meet a Psych.
nolarn, it seems my posts do not come across as I intended them, and I fear I’m unwittingly putting you on the defensive. So, I’ll leave the answering to others. I wish you most of all peace of mind.
Darwinsmom-I don’t think you’re putting me on the defensive, I just don’t know you as I do others on here. There is a lot of stuff relating to my situation that you aren’t aware of and most of these people, like Hens, Oxy, and ErinB and others are used to how I am.
I’m just freaked out right now since I came to this realization because she has some serious dirt on me as of the last several weeks and I am starting to feel like she conned it out of me by faking empathy. She was making me think that she was all caring about me but the statements she was making and how she does things was contradicting that. If you want to know more about the situation I’d be happy to explain it.
Yes, I’m all ears. I might learn something from it, as well as you with a helping ear
It all started when I met her and was very physically attracted to her, more so than I’ve been to anyone. That was in December when I moved in. She was very pleased to have another female move in who also happened to be a non smoker, highly responsible. We both thought we would have a lot in common and “gel” together well. She had no idea though that I was attracted to her.
In February I was wrongfully terminated from my job for retaliation and that’s when we started to get a little closer. I was faced with having to bail on this place and move and she let me know that she didn’t want that to happen. She was always giving me ideas to help me find work, although nothing was working. She told me that she was a big worrier and that she had been awake at night thinking about what could be done about my situation and getting me a job so I wouldn’t have to move. I was getting more and more frustrated and freaking out cuz no one hire me since I was fired.
She took me to dinner one night to “give me a peptalk” cuz she knew I’d been crying a lot-the walls are thin. I had a huge crush on her so I was thrilled to spend time with her. I was really trying to treat her like a lady to let her know that I was interested and trying to see if she was-some of her behavior had set off my gaydar about maybe she was. She has so much in common with me. We are both fiercely independent and self reliant and we both spend a lot of time alone. I was getting the interested vibe but then when I tried to get close she would pull away-it felt like tug o war and it reminded me of a N chick that I dated before my ex boyfriend.
She acted like she had so much empathy but would then say things that contradicted that. She told me way back then that she was worried about me having a firearm in the house and wanted me to get rid of it or get it out of the house. I didn’t think that was necessary.
Two weeks ago I had the worst day of my life in a long time and I was so hopeless and fearful about being homeless and losing everything that I had a suicidal ideation-I guess. I am a trauma nurse and was thinking a whole lot about putting bullets in my chest and it TOTALLY FREAKED ME OUT. I had NEVER had those feelings in my life and for the first time, I didn’t want my firearm around me, cuz it scared me. I didn’t have anybody to give it to and I knew she wouldn’t take it cuz she’s afraid of them. I was trying to talk to her about what I was feeling but she was busy with a project for work and totally blew me off and said she couldn’t talk. When the issue of her fear about the firearm first came up, weeks before that, she told me that she lost 2 friends by guns and that if I did something like that, she wouldn’t be able to handle it.
I was afraid that night about my feelings and was only thinking about me and I unloaded my gun and the other magazine, put the rounds in the box and brought the box to her and asked her to keep it. She was upset by that and invited me in and we talked but I still was getting that cold vibe and said that she wasn’t giving the ammo back until she felt I was ready to have it back. Two weeks later I asked for it back since I had to drive far away for an interview and I always take it with me when I drive alone far away. She gave it back after I promised it would be OK.
The day after I gave her the ammo she insisted that I go out and do errands with her all day to spend the day so she could babysit me. She was talking down to me all day and treating me like a child and it was humiliating. She also started giving me advice and was making me feel small for doing so much crying and telling me that I need to be like her-” I don’t let myself feel anything or show any kinds of emotion for anything and I don’t ever cry anymore”. To me, that is dangerous and it spells powderkeg. She made me feel small and weak all that day and then took me to dinner where she continued to do the same thing and also disrespected me by acting totally disinterested in anything I had to say. I was trying to get to know her and she was blowing me off and acting cold. This woman is not the refridgerator, but the entire freezer section.
Ever since then she started treating me like I was less than I was initially-like she’d lost all respect for me and we haven’t seen much of each other. She has this eye contact thing going that when she looks at me I turn into a puddle on the floor. I started avoiding her and then I saw her last night and she looked at me the way she does and I ended up crying last night. I’ve been really freaked out about why I was reacting to her like this and then I started to realize the similarities between her and the ex and they are so strong.
Now when I do apply to go back to my police job next year she will be on the list of people that my background check officer will talk with to get insight on me and my character or references, etc. and she has this info that I gave her my ammo on that one day and that could be it for me.
If she made you feel as if she was hot and cold, and made you feel humiliated, that is indeed a very bad sign. It does seem controlling and dramatically meddlesome. And while practical advice can be helpful, I’ve learned long ago to shy away from people telling me how to feel and be in response to certain situations. People are different in their identities (their chore self) and need to deal differently with their energy. So, what she tells on how she deals with life may be true for her, whatever she is, but she has no right to tell you to be like her. You are you, and have every right to be like you. That she then also tries to make you feel less about yourself is surely a red flag.
I think that you giving the ammo to someone else proves you are being responsible in your gun possession. To me it shows responsibility more than a liability.
Darwinsmom-I agree with your last statement. I even apologized to her because I felt really bad about putting something so heavy on her by giving her the ammo.
She comes off as cold and when someone disagrees with her she attacks. She kept telling me how she was getting this powerful man fired. She “filed a formal complaint” because he had ” harassed” her and was inappropriate with her. That day when she was babysitting me, the truth came out and her mask slipped a little. What actually happened was that they disagreed about something and she attacked like she always does and apparently did it publicly. He publicly went back on her and told her how she was mean and nasty and intimidating and tried to bully people. She got pissed cuz he handed her ass back to her in public. She can dish it out but she can’t take it. She said that her initial reaction was to cry but she immediately stopped herself and said that was not an option. She told me that she thinks she was going to succeed in getting him fired and that “he messed with the wrong woman”. She presented herself to me as the victim that day, like she had been so wronged and she is a big martyr. She has that nailed down. The way she behaves to me know is that she thinks less of me because I cry and that she thinks I’m weak. That’s the vibe I get. I am really curious to see what happens when I step up the no contact and start gray rocking her and she what she does. The fact that see doesn’t allow herself to feel/show emotion does not set well with me and it has the potential for gross instability-like she could blow someday. I initially thought she was spinster cat lady, school marm type who would have less stress, more sleep and lower blood pressure if I treated her like a lady and gave her some really good sex. I was trying to rescue her, as some people said on here. Apparently she doesn’t need that and she seems to strongly depend on her cocktails too. I think she drinks a little bit more than she wants me to think she does. All I know is that I am incapable of rescuing her and that effort is SO WAY over and that she needs to be avoided.