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.
Tried to talk sense to Petite. Like talking to a Stone wall every time.
And yes, my child suffered b/c of MY choices with my spath. B/c I KNOW myself, if I had the knowledge I would have made a choice that would have changed everything.
S1
I call those kind of dreams “wish dreams”. A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep…
It’s a way your subconscious sets things to rest. So you can let go and move on to better.
Hello all:
How is it that every time I need an answer–there it is. I have been having a terrible time since running into the ex new year’s eve. Haven’t been able to sleep or do much of anything. Have been depressed, which is not my nature, and crying quite a bit. I left my bed to come here for help and what do I find? All of you talking to Petite about the very issue that is disturbing me.
I am questioning my own beliefs—Am I a spath myself? I am going around and around with this. Surely I’m not but I keep telling myself maybe perhaps I jumped to the wrong conclusion about the ex. My gut tells me one thing my heart another and my brain is scrambled eggs. I
He was so freaking unbelievably hansome and kind and I am totally off my rocker. I hate the way this all makes me feel-I hate the fact that I have to be less than myself to anyone. I hate the fact that I still have feelings both good and bad about him. I hate it that he takes up space in my mind–damm it I wish I had never met him. Every nerve ending in my body is jumpy.
I know I won’t go back–if only because the trust is gone–but how I wish it could have been different. The hens have come home to roost.
.
Kind? Really?
Then what happened, if he was so kind?
SeeingClearly,
Same thing happened to me after I saw him months later, I just go with the feelings, they subside, just plow through it, I am glad you came here 😀
Shabby,
My daughter just got her military orders for her new assignment. She leaves 20 Jan. I will never see her again. She does speak to me but she does not love me. In her experience I was never there for her when it mattered, I abandoned her. She does her duty by me b/c I am her mother and nothing more. She does not hate me. SHe feels NO connection to me. And unfortunately b/c of my choices, I am out of time. Oxy might call it a pity party. I call it grief.
Katy Did
Kind yes—-he has never really done anything to me—-I left before any damage took place. It was so different than my marriage of 37 years. (My husband has passed away). This is/was my first romantic interlude since his passing. There were stories and whispers about him that set me on edge–now I ?ing my own judgement.
He has not tried to contact me by phone or email or through friends in the 12 weeks of NC. Just the 3 times at parties we both attended and even then very limited.
When we made contact onNYEve it wasn’t as though I fell back in love with him. Mostly I felt nothing because I willed myself to feel nothing. I need to set up the whole sernario for you and that would take awhile. The short of is when we made eye contact it wasn’t sinister or evil looking it was warm and his smile was genuine. He ask me how I had been and he took me in his arms and danced with me.
I’ve never been the other woman and to be honest, I didn’t think I could understand one in those shoes…
I will say though that I hear the same confusion and so on that I felt/feel…
However, thank you all for sharing your experiences here and thoughts here on lf… there were so many ‘holes’ in my marriage…I ‘knew’… but now I KNOW. I has hurt and I even hated the other women that I had ‘created’ in my mind…
Now I don’t, but I do not struggle with wondering if it was other women or why he did some of the things he did and left at times that he did.
Because of the ‘ow’ posts here… I see and understand so much of went on in this relationshit.
I now realize why he put a wedge between me and his family… I now know that he was taking someone else to holiday meals and events at his family’s places, for years they thought we were separated that we were not. Fighting all the time and him walking out on us every holiday to go without us and to open credit cards and take out loans that I did not know about.
I wondered so much if ow were being treated better, getting what I did not… I’ve cried so much over that thought, for years actually…
I’m sorry that anyone else has went through this but to be honest it is freeing to hear the other woman’s story…without having to look at one that is actually his ow. Thank you.
I feel like I don’t deserve much either…and I’m not the ow… so that wouldn’t change how you feel, had you not been the ow and been the ‘wife’.
WE ARE ALL MISTRESSES OF A S/P, MALE OR FEMALE IT DOESN’T MATTER. WE DO DESERVE LOVE AND EMPATHY ,,, HELP AND SUCH.
I’m so sorry that you feel that way right now LessonLearned.
I told my son recently about some trouble he was having with friends and it went something like this…
“Sometimes when someone is accusing you of something it is because they thing they recognize something in you that they do not like in themselves…and sometimes they do it to get the attention on you so that no one will notice what they are doing…for instance when someone is wrongly accusing one of cheating it is because the observers get busy watching you to see if you are cheating therefore there are no eyes watching while the accuser gets away with cheating.” I’ve seen it many times and had it done to me as well. I see my children do it sometimes and I saw the p do it many times to people including me of course. My son now doesn’t get so defensive when wrongly accused, therefore staying calm and I’ve noticed now that he has an easier time admitting when he is really guilty and trying more to improve his own wrongs. (didn’t really see that coming but I hoped to help him not fall into the trap of argueing and getting so upset) When you realize that, it doesn’t hurt as bad on a personal level. He can now calmly walk away and let them be. In my opionion, anyway.
Petite, I know that you really don’t want it to be true, I didn’t anyway. I did what you are doing to yourself for fifteen years. While people were telling me what I already knew in my heart and I was agreeing, I was secretly hoping and waiting and couldn’t think of anything else but, “please, please, please, let him come back.” It didn’t matter how long he was gone.
Dear God, it hurts so much.
I just recently discovered something. I have cried for years and so when they say that you have to experience the pain before you can move on…I honestly didn’t get that. Have I not been feeling it forever now? Have I not been crying until I’m dry and then starting all over again? When does it begin to work? Well,,, someone said something or I read something (can’t even remember what and it wasn’t that long ago either) but anyway, while taking Henry’s advice that sometimes you have to fight yourself in order to stop the drama, to go and stay no contact…(He was completely right) I have been doing alot of crying and found that I was turning sad tears to angry tears until I was finally done crying for the moment. I decided that I mine as well try dealing with the sad tears before I allowed myself to get angry… I wasn’t getting anywhere and I kinda wanted to deal with the pain, anything to get it out and never feel it again. I started fighting myself on that part too and just refused the anger and embrassed the pain and for the first time in forever, I actually felt better instead of exhauseted. I still cry with all the triggers that I run into in a day but, I don’t cry as often and I feel better and better each time that I allow myself that moment.
I’ve learned alot from re-researching ptsd and researching trauma bonding (thanks to oxy) I didn’t think that I could get through it when I read and realized what I am dealing with and the stumbling blocks that are around me that slow the healing process (from the loved ones in ones life). I knew I had to do this or it was never going to stop, the pain that is.
I’ve came farther in the last month then I have the past year. Not far I guess but wow, there is hope.
Katydid, dido on the child destruction, he knew that would hurt me the most also and I did… because I was trying so hard for something that just wasn’t. I can’t get those years back in my children’s life and neither can they… He won there. I guess it took my boys finally giving up hope that I would let go and me and them would be a happy productive family for my to quit. My oldest is so hurt and ANGRY with me, my youngest is really hurt with me…I don’t know if they will ever be able to forgive me and if so they may never be able to like me/ love me again….
I did ask my oldest though to read about ptsd and trauma bonding, not for me, though it would answer some of their questions about me, but for him. They will learn things that I had not taught them due to my ‘head up the p’s butt’ and they need to know so that they can manage themselves and the pain that one feels when they find themselves provoked and triggered by me and others in their life. I still have a chance to help my youngest to learn, but my oldest is very busy in school (away from me as much as possible) and will be leaving for college after graduation this summer, I don’t have as much opportunity with him, especially since, I’m just now learning myself and he doesn’t want to hear me open my mouth. I think he will look into it though, some he knows but the trauma bonding, that’s a topic he doesn’t know and understand.
I haven’t read all of the above posts, I just saw some that provoked me to post.
Love to you all!
Why will you never see her again?