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.
TTS……….
You are a blessed part of my journey. thank you for your kindness right now.
I understand about addictions. Alcohol was introduced to me by ex POS. It was his way of introducing destruction, unhibitidness to what he wanted to do to me…a spiral into his hell………….
But the addiction to HIM is worse. I am aware of it.
I have not contacted. But he plays a mean game. He is EXTREMELY patient! Even when there is another chica…it never bothered him before….the man has no boundaries….
A friend of mine who hates POS (She’s not alone) Shared with me,……..”why do you keep telling me he WON”T contact you, LL?” If you don’t, HE WILL eventually……..he did while he was married to his wife………..you see he LIKES triangulated situations…so when he has this new woman hooked,he’ll be back feeling you out, it doesn’t matter that you said to him that he was evil and sociopathic. SO WHAT, you’ve said worse and he’s always ALWAYS come back, even with all your resolve”…
I think I want him to try. So I can say no. So I can tell him what a prick he is. SO I can REJECT him the way he rejected me……..not that he’d care, because this is a game for him…
But all of those realities are coming up. All the lies. All the motives. My blinders are off and I find myself reaching for shreds of what’s left of myself and my faith………..
When I feel there is nothing left.
I feel he stole all of me.
Thank you TT. You’re a blessing, as is S1 right now.
I’m hearing. Just in so much pain,it’s hard to “listen”….If it’s my fault, it seems so much easier………
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVyAMvx4PdQ
Beautiful song lessonlearned, thanks. I love the lyrics… Kutless is great.. I love the song “More Than It Seems” by them..
LL,
What a beautiful song!! Thank you so much!!!! I saved it in my fav’s so I can hear it again and again. You did a great job posting the site!!! So now,,, you can do it again!!! YEP!!!
TTS.
You are so correct that we will start laughing somewhere and feel ourself back………and I said.. OMG… where did that come from? AFV gives me the laughter! and so does some of the stand up comics. Good for you giving up chocolate,, migranes are not fun. I have a friend that gets them often, they are not fun. My xspath would claim to get one when I backed him in the corner taking off his mask. I didn’t believe it for one minute! He was such the fake!
Hi Lesson,
read all your posts and feel your pain.
we both are feeling the grief and heartache of “why is he not what I thought he was”.
I read this on the site and incase you may have not seen it, I think this is a good reminder for all of us –
We were betrayed. Not because of anything we did. Not because of who we were, or how we looked or behaved, but simply because the psychopath was who he or she was. We were betrayed not because we deserved it, but simply because we lost track of what we truly deserve when he betrayed our truth, our faith, our hope in love. We were betrayed because he chose to betray us and we were not expecting betrayal. We were expecting the love we gave in such breathless wonder to be returned with equal honesty. We were expecting to be cherished as we cherished him. But we didn’t know that upon that first sweet hello, we were targeted for betrayal. And betrayal is hard to grieve.
I grieve for the woman who was abused
When the psychopath was arrested and I was set free, I wanted to mourn the relationship that was too good to be true. I wanted to grieve the man with whom I’d fallen in love. But he did not exist.
How could I mourn a dream? How could I grieve a figment of my imagination? Where was the substance to the chimera of his being in my life?
When first I was set free, I tried to mourn the man I thought he was and have ended up grieving for the woman who was betrayed. Me.
I grieve for the woman who believed in Prince Charming and awoke to her worst nightmare raging in the night. I grieve for the woman who believed no one could willingly, knowingly, consciously create such evil and who had to awaken to the truth. Someone could and that someone was once a man I loved. A man who was untrue.
I grieve the woman whose hungry heart led her into his unholy arms. I grieve the woman who had to give up on believing in herself in order to keep believing in him. And I grieve the woman who almost lost her life because she could not believe she deserved to live. I grieve that woman who was me who was so wounded, battered and bruised upon the road of life she thought she had no choice but to follow her magical thinking into the nightmare of his lies. She was betrayed and lost her way.
I grieve the past. I grieve the woman-child who believed she deserved to be abused.
In my prayers, I let him go
I do not grieve for him.
I pray for him. I pray for him a miracle, for only a miracle will set him free. And in my prayers, I let him go.
And focus on me.
When first I stumbled off that road to hell I could not feel my heart within me, could not feel the warmth of the sun upon my face. I could not feel. In grieving, I have shifted my focus from memories of him to memories of me. My life, my joy, my sorrow, my pain, my elation. In grieving, I mourn what happened to me and rejoice in the wonder, the beauty, the joy of being alive today. In living, I create my poem of love that says, this is my one and only life. And I am the one and only me that I can be.
Becoming all that I am meant to be
In letting go of him, I catch hold of me and wrap myself up in my loving arms. For I am the wondrous, incredible, miraculous being who has been given this gift of her life to live it in freedom. In freedom, I know that whatever lies I believed, from childhood through to this moment, there is only one lie that could hurt me now ”“ to believe that I am not worthy of love.
He was my worst nightmare. But in his passing, I have been given the gift of truth that has saved my life ”“ I am an awesome human being, worthy of love.
In love with me and my life, I accept all of me. Beauty and the beast. Joy and sorrow. Tears and laughter. Pain and ecstasy. Perfectly human in all my imperfections.
I am not less than, greater than, other than. I am me. And as me, I have the gift of embracing all that I am meant to be when I accept, without equivocation, my truth. I deserve to live my beautiful life without fear of being anyone other than who I am meant to be
will post on the weekend. study hard dear Lesson, you are one strong cookie.
petitie
Petite.
Great post!! Are you part of our “lesson” here?
HI SC,
thanks. I found this in the Archives, along with a nice article on the Psychopath’s cat and mouse game. will post that later.
As Lesson was so upset last night, I thought this will calm her a bit today.
you said – are you part of our “lesson’ here.
cannot understand, please explain.
petite
P,
We are all learning a lesson here!!! Self awareness !! Are you part of it?
yes SC,
without doubt. I have been feeling that way since the past week, that looking at me, myself, why i was so vulnerable to allow someone to distort my reality, etc etc.
thanks for being on the journey with me
petite
soimnotthecrazee1 –
“Can you make any sense out of this”… I had a very pleasant dream(nightmare) with the xspath in it. He was so pleasant and such my caring friend”. I freaked when i woke up. WTF was that? Now that I am trying to leave it behind and all the anger that goes with it”. I’m going to start haveing pleasant dreams of him?? I’d rather stay angry!!! ”
The scientific explanation of dreams is that our brains get busy while we are sleeping and they “file” away all of the unprocessed information that is still buzzing around up there. On this basis, your dream could simply mean that he is no longer a source of anxiety to you – you have learned about him, processed the knowledge you needed to process, dealt with the situation, resolved your future path (WITHOUT HIM!!!) – and all that was left was for your brain to “file” him away in a non-dangerous place. Maybe your brain knows that he has no power over you now; that he can’t hurt you any more; that he poses no threat; maybe that’s why he did not appear to be aggressive or scarey or mean. I really don’t know any of this for sure Notcrazee, but it wouldn’t be a bad way to think about it. xx
SeeingClearly –
“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.”
Two things here honey: thing number 1, spaths do not question themselves because they believe that they are all powerful and always in the right and always entitled to do what they are doing. By definition, no matter how scrambled your brain presently feels, you just CAN’T be a spath; thing number 2, the whole heart and brain disagreement thing is just the leftovers from the gaslighting and the crazy-making. It will pass. (I only know this because I’ve been there, and done that)
“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…”
Please define “kind”. “Kind” is not a one-off act (as in “an act of kindness”) but an overall personality trait. When we speak about somebody as a kind person, we mean that it is an all-pervading trait of theirs. Has this been your consistent experience of this person? No. An “act of kindness” or a “kindly” conversation, does NOT a kind person make. Isn’t that how con-artists make their living? By exhibiting apparent “acts of kindness” or by smooth-talking their victims? Don’t confuse the few “kind” words of a smooth-talking con-artist for an overall personality trait.
“I have seen enough evil to last me the rest of my life.”
Was this in relation to the same man or have I missed some of your story?
“I’m beginnigng to believe I got scared of my own joy. Crazy right?” Hmmmm – probably not. What were the red flags? Have you revisited threads that outline and list the usual red flags that most of us have encountered? Did the cap fit?
“Even if he is not a S I know something isn’t right ….” So – there WERE red flags? Clever you for spotting them. x
petite –
“I will be in Australia in Mar 2011 for a conference. maybe we can meet. (Smile)”
Petite, even if you are serious, Australia is a very big country!! Which part are you visiting? If it was near me (which is unlikely because of where I live) and if you were given the “Ox Drover Certificate of Authentication”, then I would love to meet you!
(BTW – the “certificate” thing was a joke…)
Silvermoon –
“I remember how much it meant in the fresh realization of what had happened to me to have a place to go to connect to people who could understand how awful the experience was without judging me for having it.”
On this note and in view of the posts on this thread over the past couple of days, I would just like to add the following opinions – on a forum of this nature (LF) I think that we really do just need to accept that each poster (other than the obvious “trolls” who occasionally lurk) is genuine; in both their situation and in their NEED to be here. We are so many and we are from so many different places, cultures, countries, backgrounds, genders, orientations and belief systems. For instance, some of us are homosexual while others of us hold strong (often cultural and religious) views against homosexuality. Some of us are the “wronged spouse” while others of us are the “other woman/man”, and still others are or have been in both positions. Some of us are stringent vegetarians or vegans while others eat meat, and still others (not targeting you in particular Oxy, but you DID leap to mind! 🙂 ) kill their own animals for food.
The bottom line for every single one of us is our commonality.
We have each experienced horrific and traumatic toxic relationships with someone (or as seems to more often be the case, with multiple “someones”) who has betrayed us and left us gasping for breath and dizzy with confusion and disbelief. Sometimes this has been a spouse, sometimes a parent or a child, sometimes a “friend” or work mate – and often, it has been a mixed bag of several or of lots of these altogether.
Some of us quickly “get it” and our recovery is obvious.
Others need more time and convincing; all sorts of factors will play into the reasons why this might be so; including familiarity with the language and phrases we use here, which may not be familiar to someone, or may not be in their mother tongue.
I would like to think that the other commonality we have here (apart from the bad stuff that happened/is happening to us) is our capacity for patience, understanding, empathy and tolerance.
Lesson –
“It hurts to think that someone else is getting that sexual connection with him now. ” Sweetie – don’t do this to yourself. He has no such “connection” with any of them. You know this. I have also twisted myself into pretzels; it’s NOT US; IT’S THEM. We could be Mother Theresa with Carmen Electra’s body and a career-whore’s bag of tricks up our sleeves – it would make no difference at all. The defects and the deficiencies are not ours, but theirs.
“missymud says: Lesson, I have gone no contact several times. Then when enough time had passed, I thought I could handle friendly emails- or texts. Or just try to be friends. WRONG. ” We have a TV ad here in Oz about giving up smoking. The slogan is “EVERY cigarette is harming your body”. The only thing that has been known to work with alcoholism is abstinence – not “a wee nip or two every few weeks”. NO CONTACT means just that.
“You’re speaking to my pain—”I want him SO BAD, I’m willing to go just friends. ” No such thing. Define the word “friend”. Then explain to us how it is that he could possibly fit that description? And about the pain – any serious injury or painful surgery results in pain for a time. The pain is what tells us that our body is repairing itself. As skin that has been torn draws itself together to make a new bonding point, it turns red and purple; it gets itchy and you want to scratch it; it scabs over and goes crusty and is a constant annoyance; and it HURTS. How does it get better? By our LEAVING IT ALONE to do its work. We might feel driven nuts while we are waiting – but then, one day, it doesn’t hurt anymore. The new skin grows. Eventually the scars even fade. Leave it alone, Lesson. xx
“He stole my laughter. To the point where I can’t spread the joy of what was so natural to me and made others feel light and happy—It’s all gone…….I’ve lost myself…”
No darling, you have not. I thought this too, for the longest time. It’s not lost or gone – it’s just tucked away for safe-keeping until you can use it properly again. Right now, you need all of your energy for the grieving and the healing. Then, one day, it won’t feel so bad. Your new (stronger) laugh will grow. The hurt will fade. You will look in the mirror and think, “There I am!”
“Some of us can live through this. I admire all the strength I see here. It’s inspiring and it teaches…….But I don’t know that I can make it through this one.”
If any one of us here had thought that we would be able to make it through our own stuff, we would not have come here looking for answers and support. NONE of us thought that we would. All of us are; and you are one of us, so that means that you will too.
“There is something about admitting that submission, that creates peace….I’m not sure I can make it through this….I just don’t know.”
The “peace” is exhaustion and grief. It will pass. I’ve been there – numb and in a daze for months on end, running like a machine and waiting to die from the grief. Time. xx
“WHEN do you stop crying?” Eventually. When it is your time to stop. It is on its way – you just can’t see it yet. xxx
“I think I want him to try. So I can say no. So I can tell him what a prick he is. SO I can REJECT him the way he rejected me—..not that he’d care, because this is a game for him””
NO contact is just that. The best way to reject a spath is to remove their supply. He feeds off your emotions; even a “rejection” delivered with disdain is evidence to him of your hurt. Complete disinterest is what will gut him the most effectively.
I think this was Katy? or it may have been LL? (Please forgive me, it is late at night and I am tired…) –
“Is throwing myself into school a healthy thing? Or just a distraction? What constitutes a distraction vs. something healthy?” Ever heard of a “healthy distraction”? The two things are not mutually exclusive. No learning is ever wasted, even if all it does is to keep your brain ticking over. A ticking over brain is a good thing to have!
Just my thoughts, rambling and verbose, as usual….