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.
Katy
Sounds like you have that covered. In this case, she “stole” his password to his account during the marriage and that is being used in the divorce to discount the affair she discovered…
Oxy,
Here I am, in a city two thousand miles away, in a little house under some tall trees, where I can’t see the stars and summer is so miserably hot and humid and rivers have alligators so there is NO relief. But in spite of NO paradise, with all this constant traffic noise, crime, and crowds, I was able to heal! Now I just gotta find a way to make an income, one that lets me rest when I need to… And I confess, when people have REASONABLE expectations, I feel anxious and panicky that I won’t be “enough” and they’ll crush me for it. That’s all I need for now, to figure out how to not feel worthless and get over being so dadgumbed tired all the time.
Katy,
It sounds like we are in the same place emotionally. I am very fatigued most of the time. Raising children and as my friend put it…I just keep dog paddlin’..
I love the farm life. Grew up on one and I think the hope of retiring on a farm had been what kept me in the marriage. Our relationship was long over.
And, like you, I dont have the confidence in my work that I had before. I have not worked in 10 years, plus the fatigue I have now takes a toll on my emotional energy and state of mind.
Get plenty of rest, dont feel quilty for relaxing. I think all of our mentall and physical energy must go to healing..
I still dream of having a little house in the big woods and that is going to be my goal. Just trying to get there one day at a time…
While I love the home I’ve made here, I realize that WHERE you are is not who you are. This farm was my grandparents’ place and it was special to me….my husband and I moved back here from our travels and settled down, built our home and he built his little airport and we had everything we would have had if we had had a magic wand to wave….but then he died, and then my step father died, and my egg donor morphed into a supply for my P son, my other son C’s wife (they had a home here on the farm too) that I had never liked because I think I sensed from the get go that she was a gold digger and was using my son C (who is pretty gullible) as a supply to support her and her kids—then all helll broke lose when a Trojan Horse psychopath a former cell mate as it turned out rented a small house I used to have and infiltrated our family. P-son is in prison for murder, but I had finally cut him out of my life, finally realized he was a psychopath and had NO remorse for the murder he did or anything else. My best friend found the Trojan Horse on the internet on a sex offender list (DUH!) and I went from there trying to convince my egg donor that he was a pedophile x convict etc. but neither she nor my son C would believe me, and I relaized finally that the TH-P was going to try to kill me. He was already doing vandalism so I ran—bought an RV and took off secretly in the middle of the night….and stayed gone until after he and my DIL were arrested. After I had “disappeared” and he realized he couldn’t kill me (so that my P son would inherit) he and the DIL who were having an affair, targeted my egg donor and stole from her, but the DIL just couldn’t leave well enough alone so they decided to kill her husband my son C and make it look like “self defense.” That didn’t work, and because the TH-P had a criminal record and a gun, he went back to prison and she went back to prison for furnishing him a gun.
Son C finally saw and so did egg donor (we found letters from my P son to the TH-P telling him how to infiltrate and what lies to tell etc. and that he knew that the TH-P was screwing his brother’s wife and approved of it!) but now egg donor is sending money to Poooooor P-son, pooooooor baby, he ‘s in prison. She is also hiring him an attorney to try to get parole which comes up in January, but I have trumped that ace and hired one to fight his parole. I think he will never get parole until he is too old to be a danger.
But all this did one WONDERFUL THING—it showed me that the things I have and the place I live are NOT THAT IMPORTANT to me any more. I realized that I am not going to die if I have to accept the fact that my “mommie doesn’t love me and never did” or that “my son is a monster.” I can also survive that some of the neighbors think I tried to steal money from my “Mommy” and some think I am “mentally ill.” The egg donor has painted herself as a victim of her mentally ill and evil daughter.
But during the months that i lived over by the lake in my little RV trailer with nothing much except my youngest son and my dogs I realized that the farm is just a piece of dirt. The community is just a bunch of people. It doesn’t matter where I am sitting on what piece of dirt, or who is surrounding me as far as community, what makes me happy or not is what is INSIDE ME.
I used that time to melt down, to read the Bible, to find and post and read on Love Fraud and to start the healing process. I’m still working on that healing process. I got physically ill because the stress of it all melted my immune system down, and I felt like the world was falling on my head one “shoe” at a time. I got counseling, I got medical care, I had friends and one son who were supportive….and inch by inch I crawled back out of the pit I was in, only to fall it seemed back into another hole, or get hit by another falling “shoe.” One of the most uplifting books I read in the whole process was “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Dr. Viktor Frankl, who wrote it after spending years in a Nazi slave labor camp in WWII—and I realized that NOTHING we lose as long as we have our lives and our minds is really all that important if we want to find meaning, and peace, we can do it, no matter where we are or how harsh the conditions are. It is hard work, and I won’t tell anyone it isn’t, and LostNconfused says she wants to be “where you are oxy” but I’m just on a spot on the road to healing and she ‘s on another spot on that road to healing, but we can encourage each other, but I don’t think it is a good idea to rush through it, we need to experience and savor each mile of the road, because that road is LIFE. The hard parts and the easy parts, are all part of our lives. Our journeys. Hitting “fast forward” through the hard parts I think doesn’t let us get the lesson that goes with each mile of our journey. If that makes any sense.
So bloom where ever it is that you are growing, in a city or the country, the mountains or the valleys.
oxy – if you ever wanna send from Canada, let me know. I should be communicating via email next year.
katydid – GOOD JOB! stealth is wealth!
Hi One!
Seen EB or did the “Big Bad Bear” eat her? LOLOL! Maybe she is salmon fishing!!
I’ve always wanted to “visit” Canada, so maybe in the summer time when it is so hot here! LOL hee hee I figured this guy was a “spy” for the P-son, but he just CONFIRMED it for me with his last letter a month or two ago when he told me he was “praying for you” and for all the years I have written him, he has told me how he does NOT believe in God. LOL P-son closes most of his letters to the egg donor with “I’m praying for you.” LOL (head shaking here) I can’t believe she buys that carp!
This guy is being represented by the Houston Innocence project and there is DNA being tested that supposedly will show he is INNOCENT, and he may indeed be innocent of the crime he is doing life for….but…. that does not mean he is any boy scout or choir boy, and I’m not buying that he has loyalty to ME instead of his prison buddy. LOL But as long as they think I am fooled, then it is a great conduit for DIS-information.
After she read the letters P son had written to the Trojan horse (filled with profanity and an obvious awareness that the TH-P was screwing his brother’s wife) she said (and I quote) “His letters sound like they were written by TWO different people.” WELL, yaaaaa!”
Kind of makes me think of the comment she made about the DIL and the TH-P after their arrest and them stealing 24K$ from her, “But they were always so RESPECTFUL to me!” Well, yeaaaaa! The better to steal from you, stoooopid! Gets more flies with honey than vinegar! DUH!!!!
In the discussion a while ago (today) about people being either DUPES or CO-abusers or both, I think the answer to that is that people like my egg donor are BOTH dupes of the psychopath and co-abusers. I made up a name for it and called her a “psychopath by proxy” because the Psychopaths recruit these people who are dysfunctional (at best) and get them to do the dirty work for them and persecute the victim.
There are also relationships where two disordered people victimize each other by turns, playing the victim/abuser/rescurer roles in turn, like musical chairs. The one who is the ultimate loser of course then presents themselves to outsiders as a VICTIM and latches on to a person who is a chronic enabler to “rescue” them and then the game continues with the new rescuer becoming the latest victim.
The “trick” is I think to get out of ALL the CHAIRS, don’t be a VICTIM, or a RESCUER or a PERSECUTOR/ABUSER. It is difficult for me to not fall into the rescuer position, which seems to be my favorite spot. Even though I had convinced myself I didn’t “rescue” others or attempt to, I DID do that, and stopping by setting solid boundaries has been difficult. I think last year when I pulled the rug out from under my son C when he lied to me was the hardest. Fortunately, I’d had some “practice” setting boundaries with my Now-X “friends” that I sent packing as well. Realizing that I was as much a part of the dysfunction as they were was what was pretty difficult.
Sometimes I feel like “trauma” is being held back by this big dike, that has all these cracks and holes in it and just as you get one patched up, there is another place that starts leaking. As soon as I find a weakness in myself I need to correct, then there is another one. Get rid of the Trojan Horse Psychopath, and the P-DIL, then son C lies to me and my heart gets broken. Realize I was enabling him, stop that. Quit smoking. Okay, great! Got that done. Lose weight! Okay, started on that! UH OH, got to quit the excess salt! Then another thing and another thing. There’s no end in sight of what I need to take care of—things I actually do NOT want to do….yet, I know I NEED to do them. Work toward getting the bitterness out of my heart against the people who have disappointed or hurt me. Get it out, but then it CREEEEEEPS back in if I don’t keep on working on it. But though sometimes I get tired of patching the dike, it is holding, it hasn’t broken, it hasn’t given way, and I’m making progress–the leaks are smaller, they are further apart and I’m getting better at mixing concrete! LOL My trowel work is getting more professional and I’m learning as I go. I’ve learned you can’t stop those leaks with mud, or even with clay, it has to be a good quality concrete, and I have to lay it on thick and keep it smooth….keep working it until it dries. Some days when it rains, I can’t pour concrete, I’ve got to wait until the time is right!
There’s just so much to learn, but it is getting easier as I go along. The wounds aren’t so raw, and maybe it is like playing the guitar, my fingers don’t get sore as easily any more.
Oxy,
I love your whole paragraph about patching the dike.
my life is like that too. SO much to do, and i am running around with buckets still, trying to catch the leaking water. but there is progress. i am getting a bit healthier. i am not allowing some less than considerate people into my life, and getting ready to boot another ‘friend’, who is crossing a boundary I set. I am still falling to pieces when i am under a lot of pressure – but i have also risen to the occasion more than a few times in the last couple of months. I am chipping away at the never got organized place i live in – both packing and unpacking (don’t’ know what I am doing in a couple of months, but it doesn’t matter.) My PTSD is getting better, albeit in small increments. My cognitive function is still affected, and my memory is not good enough for my work, but my concentration has improved in the last four months. I feel some pleasure in some simple things ”“ cold air in my lungs, my new corduroy jeans and my fuzzy black leg warmers that are doing a pretty good job faking it as winter boots; the fact that both my hibiscus plants (both are cuttings from a plant over 40 years old) are growing like crazy, and the little one is blooming; and that I finally made a mattress cover (with elastics that fit around the mattress) that won’t slide off the mattress and land all my blankets on the damn floor. I also made myself a traditional tortiere for new years ”“and I can’t wait to get into it.
Dear One,
I think the dike thing is as close as I can come to putting what I am feeling into words or an analogy—-but it still isn’t just what I want it to be. I will keep thinking on it though and it will eventually jell! Mainly the thing is that I have finally FINALLY gotten the idea that healing is not a “get there destination” but a journey, and problems to solve and continual problems to solve, we’ll never run OUT of problems to solve or things to fix to hold back the river or the flood.
Sometimes I feel like I am trying to PUSH A ROPE, it can’t be done, but if you change direction the rope will move with you. Or if you are in a canoe, you can drift with the river effortlessly, but sometimes paddling against the current just isn’t gonna get you there. Like they say when you are in a rip tide, swim side ways not into the current and you will get to shore, but if you swim directly toward the shore you will wear yourself out and drown. I’m mixing it all up, but I think you get the idea.
Wonder if EB got et by da bar yet? I still think she needs to do more than throw rocks at the bar, lead at a nice muzzle velocity is I think a better option! LOL That woman would “fight bear with a switch! and win!”
Oxy, great post. patching and spackling all the time, I feel like Sisyphus rolling the rock up hill. In truth, I was “protected” from reality by my spath for 25 years and I have 25 years of growing up to do. All my brain power is going into that and I’ve become rather dim-witted in every other aspect of my life. Like you said, I don’t know how the women with kids and jobs do it. If my BF wasn’t my boss, I’d have been fired by now.
The worst torment perhaps, was the realization that my parents set me up. What I can’t figure out is whether they were cognizant of what they were doing. No, let me correct that. HOW cognizant were they of what they were doing? Did they just see me as collateral damage in their campaign to win self-esteem for themselves?
It’s ironic. Looking at it objectively and also cynically, I would say that they were putting all their eggs in my spath bro and spath sis (their favorites). I was the weakling, not worth investing in. But by the grace of God, I have always prevailed and their favorites are the biggest losers. The car accident that provided me with a large settlement at age 20, was unimaginable to them. And now, when the worst possible thing happened, they thought I would need them to support me, but I found my BF (who doesn’t love me), but is better to me than anyone has ever been. It’s like no matter how bad things get, I live a charmed life and always benefit. This makes spaths very envious and shocked. They think I’m such a naive and gullible little do-gooder and they can’t figure out why I don’t just die.
Actually, neither can I. It’s all up to God.