The connection between love and politics—that was the topic of commentary in yesterday’s paper written by Gregory Rodriguez, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. The article, Love and politics in a cynical age, got me thinking about the consistency of behavior.
Rodriguez summarized how Americans have come to view the private lives and public lives of the people we elect to represent us. He wrote:
The truth is that we don’t generally associate politics or politicians with happy marriages and deep romance, let alone fidelity. The constant revelation of scandals and peccadilloes in the halls of power have trained us to expect the worst of those—particularly the men—we elect to shepherd and protect the interests of society. Somewhere along the line, Americans have even bought into the notion that a politician’s private life, in particular his love life, has little or nothing to do with his efforts on behalf of the public good.
In other words, people seem to think that just because an elected official cheats on his spouse, it doesn’t mean we can’t trust him with our tax dollars.
Not everyone holds this view. Ross Perot, who ran for president in 1992, famously said that at his company, EDS, lying, cheating, stealing and adultery were all grounds for dismissal. If he were elected, he said, the same standard would apply. Perot said:
“If a man’s own wife cannot trust him, how can the American people?”
This, I think, is a legitimate question.
Different behavior
People often ask me if a sociopath will be “different” with a particular person. For example, can a sociopathic man who hates and harasses his ex-wife love his children? Can a sociopathic woman who takes advantage of her family be true to her new boyfriend?
The short answer is no. Exploitative people exploit anyone who has something that they want.
The long answer is that exploitative people may seem to authentically care for particular individuals, but it’s probably just part of an overall scheme of manipulation. The sociopath is just softening up the target, preparing for the right time to strike.
Here is one of the most dangerous thoughts we can ever have: “Well, yes, he (or she) treated that person badly, but he’ll never do that to me!”
Remember: The best indication of future behavior is past behavior. If you know that a person has behaved in a deceitful or exploitative way towards someone else, sooner or later, the person will behave that way towards you.
Compartmentalize
So why do we compartmentalize? Why do people seem to believe that how our elected officials conduct their private lives has nothing to do with how they conduct their public lives? Why is it that when we hear of a powerful person who has a solid marriage, we are surprised?
Maybe we’re beaten down. Maybe we’re totally disillusioned. After all, stories of deceit, betrayal and treachery have been around as long as humans have told stories. Maybe we hear of so many scandals—from cheating spouses to tax dollars wasted—that we simply expect the worst of people.
Perhaps public life has simply gotten too easy in America. It’s not like the Revolutionary War, when men risked their lives and fortunes to stand up to the British. No, politics today is all talk and no consequences. That makes it an excellent career choice for sociopaths—all they have to do is be charming, charismatic and deceitful.
Sociopaths, after all, want power, control and sex. By getting elected, they have access to everything they want.
Liu Xiaobo
That’s why it’s so refreshing to hear about people, in this day and age, fighting the good fight from a foundation of love.
In the article that I quoted in the beginning of this post, the author, Gregory Rodriguez, also wrote about Liu Xiaobo. Liu is the Chinese dissident who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. He, of course, was viewed as a subversive criminal by the Chinese government, and was not allowed to go to Norway and accept the prize. Rodriguez explained how his absence was handled in Oslo:
Actress Liv Ullmann read aloud the statement Liu released last December as he was awaiting trial for “inciting subversion of state power.” At the top, he sermonized against hatred (“enmity can poison a nation’s spirit”), but his ending was an exquisite love letter to his wife, Liu Xia.
“I am sentenced to a visible prison,” he wrote, “while you are waiting in an invisible one. Your love is sunlight that transcends prison walls and bars, stroking every inch of my skin, warming my every cell, letting me maintain my inner calm, magnanimous and bright, so that every minute in prison is full of meaning. But my love for you is full of guilt and regret, sometimes heavy enough to hobble my steps. I am a hard stone in the wilderness, putting up with the pummeling of raging storms, and too cold for anyone to dare touch. But my love is hard, sharp, and can penetrate any obstacles. Even if I am crushed into powder, I will embrace you with the ashes.”
Rodriguez viewed Liu’s words to his wife as a sign of passion and commitment, and the bad behavior in the private lives of elected officials as the opposite. The point, Rodriguez wrote, is that love begins at home.
How people conduct their private lives is absolutely relevant to whether or not they should be elected. People who cannot be trusted by their most intimate loved ones cannot be trusted by anyone. And people who feel genuine love and compassion for their families can extend their love and compassion for the greater good.
dear skylar,
so sorry, sorry, sorry to hear your story. you went thru so much pain, poisoning you with Botox +strychi – it could have caused much irreversible damage. thank God you found out in time.
so he was indulging in gay stuff with your friend Kevin and even Kevin never said a word. – sick, sick,
your P was simply after your money. I am shocked to read your story.
12 year old American Indian girls – you mean native American Indian or Indian girls born in USA. either way sounds like pedophile.
this story is an eye opener for me of the evil they can do.
Skylar – you are a strong cookie, an example and role model for me.
thank you sky for all your adivce.
petite
Lesson learned- when you are free, please tell me your story in brief.
I have a friend in Portland, Oregon, a female doctor, I hope to visit you one day.
petite.
Petite,
Native american girls, is what I meant to say.
Spaths are people who never grew up perhaps because of childhood trauma. In the end, I could see that my spath had been trying to recreate his childhood. When he was around 10 years old, his first sexual encounter was with a 12 year old native american girl. Perhaps he was trying to relive his past.
He did tell me, “I never wanted to grow up”, and “everyone changes, but I’m the same as I have always been” and “I shouldn’t have to work, someone should just give me money so I can play.”
You said you have a doctor friend in portland, OR. Is her name Debra?
Thanks skylar.
my friend’s name is Justine.
petite
Petite,
LOTS of doctors in Portland lol! I’m about twenty miles South of there. We have the WONDERFUL (mixed reviews here from patients), Oregon Health Sciences University here. LOVE that hospital! I hope to work there when I finish my degree. Great docs up there and I had all six of my children there. My first was born at 1 lb. 13 oz 27 years ago and stayed in NICU for three and a half months, then another month in the North side Nursery in the old maternity unit. They did AMAZING things with her that were experimental at the time. Other than ADD and a small scar on her neck, due to a surgery performed when she was 2 1/2 lbs, she has had no lasting issues. LOTS of advancements in medical science since. We were VERY lucky that she survived at all, let alone without any serious deficits!! It was OHSU docs that performed my appendectomy when I was 5 1/2 months pregnant with child two. Amazing midwifery services as well. Can’t say enough about the care we all have had there throughout the years!
My story? hmmm………long, sad one..lol! Summary:
Father was full blown spath, I believe. His mother DEFINITELY full blown N. That woman was an absolute NIGHTMARE and made the family’s life HELL. So did my Spath father. I come from money. My father was a very well hidden Spath, but very good at his job: A highly held position in the Federal Government for 40 years. Once retired, he continued to travel and work for the government on contract. My grandparents were also money. My aunt’s husband became a millionare, my Uncle was a CEO of what is a major corporation now. Aunt has since passed and Uncle has since retired as well. ALL of their children are wealthy as well. We lived in the nicest homes, dad bought a new car every two years. I grew up with a swimming pool in our backyard and, since it’s Oregon, of course, I was the most popular on the block lol! We had the best and newest of everything. yay. My mother was astoundingly physically beautiful. Her background however, was NOT like my father’s at all, insofar as money. Her parents were both extremely alcoholic. I believe her mother was Spath, her father, extremely codependent. My grandfather owned a bar at the coast, then moved it to Portland. They owned it until my Grandfather passed while my mother was six months pregnant with me. He dropped dead of a heart attack on the golf course. It crushed my mother and I don’t think she ever recovered. A year and a half later, my grandmother was dead. She drank herself to death. She hated my mother and resented that she was born at all. My mother was an only child. She said to me over and over how much her mother hated her. She made it clear to my mother that she was an unplanned, UNWANTED pregnancy. The up side to this for my Grandmother is that my mother was a beautiful baby, little girl, teen and adult. She paraded my mother around in public like a doll. There are several pictures of my mother as a child that are astounding to me. Perfectly polished, not a hair out of place. I’m not totally sure my mother was an N. But I do know that she projected her mother’s hatred of her onto me. She hated my sensitivity. She adored my brother, but my sister was the golden child for both my parents. Both my brother and sister are TOTALLY n’s. NO doubt in my mind about that in the slightest!! I was definitely the scapegoat. And it got worse as I got older. My parents divorced and both remarried. My father married a wonderful woman, bright and kind, but was ruinous, abusive and destructive. He cheated endlessly on her, while she was working her ass off to maintain hearth and home. She brought a son into the marriage and my father SEVERELY abused him. Physically, emotionally and physically. We used to hide in our rooms from him. My mother married a man who targeted me from day one. I remember clearly hiding behind a chair when she brought him into the house to meet us. She tried to coax me out from the behind the chair. I HATED the way he looked at me, like a tiger eyeing meat. I was right. She married him quickly and it wasn’t too long after that he began molesting me and did so for four years, often in front of my brother and sister. When I told my mother what was going on, she slapped the shit out of me, called me a liar and forced me, the next day, to repeat what I told her to HIM, while they were both lying in bed laughing at me the next morning before I went to school. It is the single most devastating time in my life. The woman that was to protect me, cut me loose. I called my stepmother from school. They came to get me and I was hidden at my aunt’s in the basement of her house, a few blocks from my mother. Mother and asshole showed up, but they refused to turn me to her. I had no idea that the protection my stepmother was so genuine about providing, would ultimately end in another betrayal because my biological father, molested me too. I was also molested by a neighbor guy around the same time or shortly after my father did. My father got custody of me. He was my Knight in Shining armour. He was going to rescue me. I had no idea that (as if anything could be worse) he was Spath and the sabotaging destruction he would create in my life, on top of the trauma I had already experienced. This set me up for P boyfriend 1 and P husband 1. I was raped by boyfriend 1. Stayed with him anyway. He dumped me, then I got pregnant with rebound P soon to be husband. My parents refused to help or assist me. Because I had no tools to work with emotionally or with skills (I only had a GED at the time, but was working as a CNA) that would earn enough money to survive as well as fear, I married P. We lived with his father and he was severely Spath. P was abused severely by his father, as were his sisters. P was alcoholic since nine and drug addicted since eleven. He was emotionally, physically, sexually abusive to me. Cheated on me incessantly. left me alone with the children constantly. I was in such fear of so many things, didn’t even know who I was, except a huge mess. HUGE. It’s amazing that I was able to love and care for my children throughout that entire twenty year marriage. In some ways, I was dependent upon my children. They were lifesavers for me, the only sane link to my heart and the insanity that I lived my entire life. I had NO healthy tools or examples of how to be a parent. NONE. But I DID know how to love. Given that I grew up completely without love, somehow, I knew how to give it. When I look back on it now, it’s amazing….so anyway….P ultimately beat the tar out of my firstborn son. That was it for me. Trying to get out of the marriage was incredibly dangerous at the time. He wanted me dead, trapped me in my apartment,locked me in and beat the shit out of me for twenty four hours before I could get out. I was not allowed my phone or anything else for access. My children were on their own in the apartment that we were occupying at the time, in transition for a move to the one I was in. And there wasn’t one damned thing I could do about it. Not one thing. He finally ran off with his new distraction, my ex best friend and left me alone….but ex Spath was there….yes Mr. Wonderful to the rescue (NOT!). I was a client of his. That’s how the relationship started. We had been “friends” for ten years prior. He found out the marriage sucked, we began talking and then he started with how horrible his marriage was….that he wanted to be with me,intimate with me, but I had to be off of his client list before we could be. I took myself off. BIG MISTAKE number one!!! He used my vulnerabilities to suck me in big time. LOTS of lies. TONS….and he used it all for his benefit. All of it. I can’t even COUNT the time he was incredibly abusive to me, just a couple of months after P left. It was incredibly devastating after all the abuse I had endured during the marriage. But I bought the lies. bought it all. I was DESPERATE for him and he painted such pretty pictures of life with his wife. That was all calculated too. He implied ALWAYS that I didn’t deserve that with him, because I wasn’t doing this or that……..the love bombing was effectively over. My salvation would ultimately be school as well as my children and people who stuck with me throughout the marriage, as well as with Spath. Pretty amazing. So when Spath divorced, I thought that would be it!! YAY FINALLY!!! But then he started doing to me what he had done to his wife…and I saw the truth and I couldn’t avoid it anymore. Yes, my choices were brilliant, weren’t they?
Now you might understand why I feel so passionate about this. right now, I don’t WANT a relationship. It seems so daunting. No man can fix what’s wrong. Only I can. There is a ton of stuff in between that have been traumatic and I’ve left them out because I’d be here all day. That’s just as summary, Petite.
This is why I have written to you from my heart about this man’s intentions towards you. What he’s doing. And why. Our backgrounds may not be the same, but the Spath is and the lies are and the motives are. 🙂
Blessings.
Does a S path always mind control. My father I think may have been a S path and this may be where my daughter got it from. He was very abusive to my mother. He was also very controlling to a extent but did teach us to make our own choices. He also made us very hard workers. He mentally abused us kids but rarely fiscally abused us kids like he did our mother. He always accused her of things he was doing. One day he lost his temper on my S path daughter and was very verbal with her. She never again talked to him and when he passed away she put his picture on her fridge. Up to the point when he lost it with her they were very close. So if she is A S path why did she put that picture on her fridge after he died. I do not mean to be a pain with you love fraud friends but there is so much I do not understand. I do miss my grand kids but I am sure I made the best choice for them. I think that we will have to move then it will be easier for grandpa as he is very in the middle now and feels torn apart. People judge him for not backing me. When I keep telling him no the boys lost me they need you you keep seeing them we can not completely abandon the boys. What a mess. When we had our meeting with the paths they every time grandpa opened his mouth the male path would cut him off and say we do not have a problem with you taking the boys hunting or fishing. It was like he was saying keep your mouth shut if you want to see these kids. Through the meeting he kept repeating the same thing over and over to me. We are not blaming you but you are the one constant in this problem. Every time the oldest child sees you there is a problem. We want you to be a part of these children’s life but it will be here. We will not be going to your house the children will not leave this house with you. He said we are the parents we have the control over this citation. He would not listen to any pain they have caused me or the children they said it was in the past but went back twenty years with petite things that bothered her.I have helped that girl over and over again and everything I have done for her she has managed to turn into evil. Is there a victim out there that is close to there parent and hurt them badly for there path. I read that S paths try to come between there mates and Family he did do this. Why can I not let go of the fact that one day my daughter will be back with my grandchildren. Why am I in denial. Why can I not believe this is happening to me. Is there something wrong with me? I have never been so hurt and so confused. How long will it take for me to want to get up in the morning again. Look forward to going out side. I just want to run away forget I even have a family and start all over. This would be the easy way. I know I can not do this as I have three foster children still counting on me. In three years from now when these kids have graduated if the pain is not gone then that is what I will do. Thanks for listening
Grandmother,
I don’t recall what the reason was that you called CPS on your daughter. What did you fear was happening?
LessonLearned
I am not going to cry. I’m not. I’m not.
But I can’t help it. It is so stunning, and unfortunately so imaginable how vicious parents can be to that precious wee darling child that you were.
I chose KatyDid as my name b/c I was the family scapegoat. When ever ma asked who the hell did that?! The answer was Katy did. In my marriage, which mirrored much of my childhood abuse (ONLY b/c I told my husband about what was done to me and he did many of the same things), again in true spath style, who was to blame? Katy Did.
I was in a book club and we had to read Ellen Foster, I was the only one not upset. These women were crying and all I could think was “the kid’s life wasn’t that bad”. But yours was and I am so angry they did that to you that I am sobbing.
I AM telling you that while I need to do a better job self caretaking, I am fiercely loyal, like a mother lion. I protected my child. No friend of mine suffers in fear of their abuser. I will NOT stand by and watch any parent abuse their child. I shine the light on it b/c I find most people abuse in secret or b/c they’ve learned no one cares. I’ve had it said that letting abusers know that I can see what they really are just makes it worse for their victims, I SAY: I can’t predict which way it goes for the victims but in my experience letting them know they are NOT alone, that someone else sees and condemns what is done to them, well it gave me something to hold to when things were bad.
I am so very sad and very very angry at what was done to you. When I think of how many childless couples who would have absolutely delighted in you (as I did my wee daughter and sounds like you did yours.) the depravity makes me want to beat the shit out of your abusers, although I now that does no good b/c they can’t feel so they just endure and go back to abusing.
I don’t like knowing someones abuse was worse than mine B/C NO one should know that depth of abuse. I just want to cry and cry. What the hell can be done? No wonder we suffer life sentences, lovable but unloved. This is one time I wish we weren’t anonymous b/c by God, I want to be the one to tell you face to face all the sorrow I have of humanity doing this to you. I’d hug you if you’d let me, but I confess I am not good at it. I learned to hug when I was 20, and I hugged my daughter a lot but sisterly hugs are not easy for me except those times I can can forget myself and think of others.
Don’t you EVER EVER forget you are NOT ALONE. NEVER AGAIN having to wonder what to do, how to help yourself, feeling like no one could possibly understand. B/c I DO, and as you know here on LOVEFRAUD, others do. I reach out my hand to you, and if you will, I hug you in the embrace of a mother’s love and protection which you should have had your whole life through. {{{{{long long hug}}}}}
Dear Grandmother,
I hear your desperate pain, and I think you are clinically depressed Grandmother and I would advise you to see a mental health professional (not just your family doctor) and be evaluated for major depression. There are medications that can help with this and make it easier for you to cope. They don’t “make everything lovely” or loop you out, but they do help your brain cope with the stress hormones and the chemical imbalances. I know many people don’t “like to take a pill” but if you had diabetes you wouldn’t try to treat it by just saying “Oh, I’ll just handle this with my attitude” you would take the medication. Depression is a chemical imbalance just like diabetes is a chemical imbalance.
Some talk therapy might also help you, or a group like “al a non” to learn to cope with dysfunctional situations, even if it isn’t drug or alcohol related, there are still some of the same behaviors going on there in the dysfunction.
I know it hurts, and your pain is deep and total and hard to deal with, and I am glad that you have seen that keeping your husband away from the children to “support” you is not good for the kids or the situation.
I understand the desire to run away from your pain, unfortunately, when we run, we TAKE IT WITH US, there is no way to “out run it.” ((((hugs))) and my prayers for you.
The Children were being both physically and mentally abused. It is a very long story. The bottom line though is I played right into his hands. I gave him the power and control he wanted.He came into my daughters life with 14 cases of pop and put it into the kitchen. The first week the boys could drink all they wanted. The next week they had to earn the pop. then they could not have any pop at all because it was unhealthy. They would drink the pop in front of the kids they would tell the kids that Grandma is causing them to be sick because I gave them a pop. They would leave the boys alone and go out. He would discipline the kids while he was in the shower. He bruised the boys. This is just a bit of the info. I talked to her all that mattered to her was her dreams not the kids. She would and does believe everything that man says. I could not get through to her so after a years of agony I phoned CPS. This is a short of a long storie