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.
Lesson –
I wish I could hug your pain away, I really do. You have endured so much and none if it was fair or right, regardless of how you might have gotten there. xx. All I can tell you is that I spent about 2 years after my spath dumped me, getting up every day and going to work and coming home and going through the motions and getting down on my hands and knees (because I didn’t have the strength to sit or stand) at night and begging God to take me. I was not “suicidal” per se – I neither wanted to kill myself nor to be dead. It was just that being alive was too hard for me and breathing hurt; it just hurt way too much to stay alive.
Then, when I began to get seriously ill (pneumonia, shingles, Chronic Fatigue, PTSD, Fibromyalgia – all over the past 4 years, one thing after another, often concurrently…), I knew that my prayers had been answered – I WOULD die, but it was to be a slow death by illness. I accepted this without a struggle, quietly and in a daze, as though this was somehow the way that it should be for me – the price I must pay for choosing so badly and holding on so tightly and for such a long time to such an evil man.
Until I found the deep well of ANGER and righteous indignation inside of me and pulled the cap right off that well and let it all spew to the surface, I truly believed that I would die from the pain and that it would be a fitting ending, and in fact a relief.
Believe me, I know what you are going through and I feel your pain through the black and white screen of my computer.
And I am living proof (as are so many others here who have been exactly where you are now), that it will pass. It is not only possible, it is LIKELY. You just need to hold on for a bit longer. One day, not so far away, the sands will shift and you won’t even feel it happen. Hold on sweetheart because it’s coming. xx
Petite –
“so what do I do, he says everything with this poor lamb look on his face…..I am so stressed. He is in my profession, we will be doing meetings together in future, I cannot just treat him like dirt.”
Not like dirt – just like everybody else that you must interact with, yet have no real affinity or special friendship with. There must be plenty of people in your professional circle that this is the case for; just concentrate on how you are with those people and channel all of the same actions and reactions when you have to be around him.
It’s funny that Oxy and others suggested a chaperone – I was about to make the exact same recommendation to you! I would go a step further than paying your maid to stay at the house for the 3 days (although I agree with you that it is also a very good back-up plan) and suggest that you ask another friend or perhaps a colleague who will also be attending the conference, to come and stay with you at this time. Perhaps have them arrive before he does by a day or two so that you can’t be caught out unprepared by him and have them stay beyond the conference by a few days too. As inconvenient as it might be for you to have somebody else in your home, especially when you will be so busy with work, Lessonlearned is so right when she says that bigger things are a stake here – your future happiness, health and stability are worth whatever inconvenience and/or cost you might have to endure for the time being until he goes away after the conference. xx
thanks Aussieg,
good advice. to add one more guest at home now last minute is difficult and I am just about trying to get enough balance with myself to prepare for next week.
how do I deal with the denial that may seep thru the pores. Lesson has a good idea – she said – keep thinking and repeating in your mind all he says, does, behaves, looks, his demeanour – all are for manipulation.
My LF friends have told me the truth, I now know the truth, I have to believe the truth and accept it, even though it is brutal as if not, the acceptance later will bring me to where Lesson is now.
Lesson has tried to save me and I should learn from her and the examples from the others here.
,
Aussie,
You are a blessing. Your post is so resonating with me…
Petite…..just to reiterate, you don’t want to be where I am now. You don’t honey.
My daughter asked me to share this poem she wrote for this blog. She has witnessed the pain that POS has caused, she was victimized too……….through my neglect in serving him…Petite,if you had ever had children, pay attention……….because they do…and it’s more pain to deal with.
Here’s the poem:
Aftermath of a Sociopath
I see dreams become nightmares
I see love turn to hate.
I see people claiming “realness”
when all they are is fake
They poison you with their lies
and their deceiving ways
and in the end
you are the one who pays
So many times, I’ve been told..
Rainbows come after rain..
but it still isn’t enough
to wash away this pain
I watch as light dims to darkness
as my heart goes from warm to cold
I know now,…
what you kept untold
You told me you loved me
so happy you could cry
but every word you spoke
was an untold,coldhearted lie
You fooled me for so long
so much wasted time
But I learned more than I lost
now the future is all mine….
Petite,
I don’t feel strong right now. I can share that here with you.
It’s eleven at night here………and he’s just down the street with her….
Holding fast and true to what I believe is right……was right, knowing whom he is………
The thought of his holding another woman in his arms, just a few short miles from me now, is more than I can bear…….
I may not make it through all of this…..a lifetime full of N/P/S…but you can sweetheart. You’re ALREADY ahead of the game!! YAY!
I’m not even graduated yet from a stupid measly medical program with an associates degree…………one of the things taken from me………..Time Petite. Time.
Given my health issues right now, I may not SEE my dreams come true……….but I can tell you, that if I can help just ONE woman see HER dreams realized, then it’s all worth it. I’m open to how God may use to me and my experiences to help others.
Petite, you’ve worked SO HARD to get where you are!! How wonderful is THAT alone??? What a GREAT accomplishment!
I’m not trying to kiss your ass here, because, in my own personal life, it makes no difference, but we’re talking about YOU right now!!!
You have worked SO HARD!! That is SO GREAT!!! You’re immensely intelligent……..have accomplished so much……….you just need a little boost in emotional intelligence, that’s all LOL! Don’t we all???
Did you read my daughter’s poem to this forum? Painful as it is….this is how those close to you OBSERVE what is happening and are puzzled as to why.
Aussie……………tomorrow is the beginning of tests that need to happen to determine what is “wrong” with me. I’m already chronically ill with Fibro (although I’m a fighter and in some sort of denial because I push when I shoudln’t lol), hypoglycemia, hypothyroid, an STD (genital warts, truly disgusting that will need to be removed surgically and are interfering with my ability to have bowel movements now as they have made a nice warm cozy home in my ANUS), and now a persistent cough that goes beyond what is smokers cough ( Ox, have had this since September, been on every antibiotic known to man, still there!), my red cell count astronomically high, my monocyte count high, shit…can’t remember the other, but also my white cell count off the charts……..yea, something is very wrong………
And all of it brought on from the stress of my relationshit with POS…lovely, isn’t it Petite? Lovely. There is a mind/body connection,despite claims to the opposite and I swear to God have had had more than one doc say that until I got opinion after opinion……….one that saved my life. My gallbladder showed up on an ultrasound in a really scary way to my doc….well THANK GOD for that, because when they did the surgery to remove it, it was close to BURSTING………..go figure….I got the contents of my gallbladder, no stones, just sand……..but close to bursting?
Anyway, we could talk forever about medical issues………
The point I’m making here Petite, is that if you continue in this relationship, you may well be looking at more than a broken heart…….but a broken spirit, the stress of years of lies,pain,manipulation, …through what is constant anxiety to live with a lie….I’m living proof. And I’m sure there are others here who are too…
You cannot trust a man who has proven to be untrustworthy to begin with.
I may not live through this. It’s a possibility that all the stress, has taken an ultimate toll……….
But you’re in the “early” stages of spath. It doesn’t have to chica.
You don’t have to go through this or feel this pain or suffer these consequences. 🙂
If I could be your “study buddy” I’d be there in a heartbeat to tell this guy to FUCK OFF……….but I can’t. It’s your job………
I can’t save you honey. Only you can save yourself…but we can celebrate sometime in the future if you decide to do that…and if not when you decide that you can………
But I can tell you……….you don’t want to be 47 and look and feel like a sixty five year old haggered woman who has lived years of abuse (sorry ox, you don’t mold into that,just makin a damned point here!)…..
Petite…………….fight with all your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your conviction for truth and justice, with all that is left of your MORALITY..for his wife, for his children, for your peace of mind…….to live as long as you can, in peace and love…….
Because I can absolutely one hundred percent guarantee, this man will rip you to shreds
I’m very tired and I have to get up in the morning to have more medical testing done, so I should at least TRY to get some sleep LOL………….
Whatever he says is a lie Petite. Whatever he does is meant to suck you into his world to destroy you, make no mistake. You have community, intelligence and love to share, Petite…..please don’tgive those valuable gifts to a man who sees you as a way to pay his child support or his attorney’s bills, as surely he will have many………..he is so obviously manipulating you, love bombing………….
Step away. Read the poem my daughter wrote again. Read about my health issues now after ten years of lies and stress……..
THe OW DOES pay, Petite……….
As well as does the S/P/N……………and I’m sure this is my projecction, but perhaps not, if you feel badly about what you’re doing, you’re an accomplice in his game. It wasn’t until I was out that I could see that clearly for myself with my ex POS…
You’re the OW, even though he has left his wife. It’s a thankless job and the more he sees you as someone that might be his wife, themore his commitment phobia will kick in once you’re hooked. You deserve better than this Petite. I believe you know that.
Make right choices for yourself Petite.
LL
And having said that, this weary girl is overdue for a vacation. I’m considering blowing some of that loan money to spend a day or two at the Oregon Coast alone. I miss the sites and sounds of the ocean……….
But I don’t know if I could bear even that………because the last time I was there, ………POS showed up unannounced……….what a wonderful evening that was……..
Nite everyone.
Well you all are going to bed too early, I’m west coast and have a bit of insomnia to boot.
Lesson,
Your daughters poem is lovely. It would make great lyrics to music. thanks for sharing that. Give her a hug for me.
There is a mind body connection. That is one thing that faith in God does for us, and that is healing, relaxing, lowering the cortisol levels. not sure you should bother with the oregon coast, try chakra re-alignment, or accupuncture. You are in real pain and need REAL help to detox from that. I’m not sure what that is, I’m looking into it for myself. My parental units are doing a number on me. I’ve purchased a chakra re-alignment therapy, now I need to make an appt. will report on the results for everyone.
here is an inspirational story for everyone. It shows the kind of miracles that can happen for ANYONE. We can expect those kinds of miracles too.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/06/eveningnews/main7220514.shtml?tag=cbsnewsTwoColUpperPromoArea
It’s never going to be the way we expect it, so stop expecting. It’s going to be even better.
Dera LL,
thanks for the long post of concern telling me to fight hard and not give into his crap.
I feel your pain so much, Yes, your lesson learnt, as your name suggests is a leson for all of us here and you will be saving not only me but several distressed women over here.
Your daughter’s poem is very well written, she can become a poet, the words are so touching, it does depict your pain, the child is seeing the mother go thru this agony,
she is such a lovely supportive daughter.
God Bless her and you for coming in my life and helping me with all this advice.
sorry to hear about medical problems, some may be related to drinking and smoking and then there is menopause and all the stress. take it slowly, Lesson, please take care of your health not only, for your sake but also for the sake of your children.
sleep well my dear friend. I will surely come and visit you in Oregon and bring Oxy with me.
Let me come out of my crap and get some balance in my life.
you will make it Lesson, you are such a strong pillar of strength for me, I am sure you will be out of this just like the others here.
focus on your degree.
petite
.
Hi Libelle,
you said “he will smell you fear”,
so if that happens – what do you think he will say or do to suck me in.
I do plan to tell him after the meeting and after he has delivered his plenary lecture, just like Katy said – that I want to step back and need time and if he asks why – i will say, presently I feel I am not ready, not stable, I have to deal with my issues and my fears and need time for myself. and as Skylar said – keep saying – its not about you, it is about me, I am feeling incomplete and do not have the emotions to give to you. I am confused and scared and neeed time
If he says – Can I help you with your issues, I wil say “No – I have to deal with them myself and proces them with time.”
Oxy said this was proper to say to him.
any other thoughts.
petite
Petite:
Escape hatch: You have distance after this conference. You can get out. He doesn’t live within the confines of your community or culture,only business……..
Don’t make him apart of anything more than what is necessary.
You have the escape hatch that I didn’t have.
I was a client of ex POS. I can’t go into detail here, but I was. He almost lost his job over it. But ultimately did not as it was deemed a “moral” indiscretion not having anything to do with his job performance overall ( WTF?? ) He used and exploited me in that situation too. Long story….
This man will ruin everything in your life. Your reputation, your good standing with others, your financial stability, your emotional stability..
Sweetheart, don’t wind up in a heap as I am tonight and will wake up tomorrow. You have SO MUCH to live for……..unlike me………..don’t wake up, with all you’ve done, all the hard work you’ve done, and hand it over to some troubled asshole who is only concerned about not having topay out that child support and someone to support him in his pitly ploy of “my ex wife is a pyscho, out of control freak”.
Whatever.
It’s up to you Petite.
I believe you can do this and make the right decision, for yourself AND his wife and children. can you just imagine how SHE must feel right now? What about the children?
I’m thinking about you so much. I do understand..
Petite, be strong. Stand still Meditate..whenit’s over,let him go.
I’m not sure how I would respond to you if you could not do that just yet. I would support you………and I do…..
Not sure how I feel about this issue right now.
Blessings, Chica!!
I watched the video and I’m so glad for this man to receive a second chance, but then I watched the video of the interview with just his mom. I realized that she is the problem. She cannot say anything positive about him. It’s just rehashing about how he hurt HER. The woman is JUST LIKE MY MOM. Going on about God, but never looking at how SHE created the problem, never taking any responsibility.
My family is just like this. We are all brainwashed to think my mom is a saint. But there is something really sinister about her. Over xmas I was given the opportunity to see my BF’s step mother in action. For over a year, I have thought she wa the victim of her family and he 25-years-younger husband. Last xmas, I saw this 82-year old woman play her N-son and spath daughter in-law like a fine violin (and me too). It’s only because of my research and constant study that I am able to spot the spaths in the wild.
The video of her interview is TRULY WORTH WATCHING for that INSIGHT on what a spath woman looks like. Consider it carefully.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/06/earlyshow/leisure/celebspot/main7218743.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody