Most of the people who will be bad for us are not sociopaths, and so we want our radar to be sharp, not specifically for sociopaths, but for wrong, bad people of every stripe.
True, sociopaths will be terrible people with whom to enter relationships; in the end, though, they will represent a small fraction of a much greater majority of very wrong people for us.
As I suggested in a prior post, there are two keys to protecting ourselves from Mr. or Mrs. WRONG: The first is developing intelligent radar; the second is acting wisely on that radar.
After all, good radar, no less than good CIA intelligence, is useless if it’s ignored or devalued.
Now, are there cases of sociopaths (and the lot of devious personalities) so slick as to be undetectable until after they’ve wreaked their havoc? Of course there are; to suggest otherwise would insult anyone unlucky enough to have crossed paths with such destructive individuals.
Nevertheless, in most cases, the wrong person—sociopath or not—will and does leave clues much sooner than most of us want to admit (until much later).
WRONG, by the way, for whom? The answer, of course, is, YOU!
It is tempting and, at some point, I suggest, unfruitful to get stuck on the suspected psychopathology of a partner (present, or ex). Because when you get right down to it, there are only two diagnoses that really matter: Is this person, for me, RIGHT, and GOOD? Or WRONG, and BAD?
Only we can make this assessment, and it’s our responsibility, of course, to make it as soundly as possible. By soundly I mean being as honest with ourselves as possible, and keeping our best long-term interests uppermost in mind.
What, then, is the first—and, for that matter, second—telltale sign that someone is wrong, and really bad, for you, sociopath or not? (And speaking honestly, should we really need more than a sign or two?)
The answer is, ANY EXPRESSED BEHAVIOR or ATTITUDE that leaves you feeling disarmed or disoriented by its inappropriateness, selfishness and/or insensitivity.
Take great heed of such an experience, because almost always, it is a sign that more are sure to follow. In other words, preparing to bail at this point is a wise consideration.
Specifically, what behaviors and attitudes am I referring to? For starters, how about the first, surprising flash of rage, contempt, arrogance, selfishness, coldness, presumptuousness, dishonesty, indifference, ungratefulness, even denseness; shocking acts of abuse, verbal or physical; and startling failures of empathy, or compassion.
It is really less the behavior or attitude, per se, that screams ALARMING”¦prepare to BAIL!, than the experience of it as, “Where did that come from?”
I stress: It is our job, first, to register these signs; and then immediately to register them as alarmingly ominous.
The question is, Will you be willing to see what you’ve seen? Will you be willing to acknowledge the sobering portent of the display? Or instead, for any of a hundred conveniences, will you find ways to pretend you didn’t see it, and/or minimize the ramifications of what you’ve seen?
It is perfectly fine to ask, What, in a new relationship, should I be watchful for? What are the signs that my new interest may be someone different than advertised? I hope I’ve addressed these questions.
Then again, such questions tend, I think, to promote a view of the world as waiting to unleash upon us ruinous new bogeymen and predators, instead of encouraging us to examine what can be harder, but perhaps more honest, useful, retrospective questions, like, What did I miss? Why did I miss it? And if I registered it, why did I choose to ignore or minimize it?
Insight into, and resolution of, these latter questions can confer the best insurance against future exploitation.
In most (certainly not all) cases, it may be less important to be wary of the next nightmare disguised as Mr. or Mrs. SENSITIVE, than more careful of our always lurking capacity for defenses like denial, rationalization and minimization to blind us to what we don’t want to see, and do.
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2008 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Oops. Senior moment. Sorry I mixed you two up, pb and HH. It’s probably a sign that I spend too much time on the internet. I am just dropping in to wish everyone a peaceful and P-free Xmas.
Hugs,
StarG
Justabouthealed:
My S was married too, though he had all kinds of stories about how they were living separately but couldn’t file the divorce papers until his medical discharge came through, which would be any day…..blah blah blah (they were all lies). This is the main reason I felt I couldn’t do more to expose him and couldn’t sue him for emotional distress, because technically I knew he was married. I never dated a married man, but he seemed so honest and on-the-level that I thought in this case it would be okay because it was temporary. Naturally, the divorce never happened (though he lied and said it was filed). I had to forgive myself for this. I learned my lesson about married men. I hope you can forgive yourself too. Again, when you think a person is good and honest, you rationalize all kinds of things to fit that scenario. I have always been rigid about the not married rule. I thought perhaps at my age I was being too rigid and could make an exception for extenuating circumstances. But nope. No more exceptions. No married men, separated men, newly divorced men, attached men…..you get the picture. In his case, his wife most likely knew about his affairs. She had apparently divorced him once due to his pathological lying, then remarried him again. It is very possible that she is part of his fraud to con the army. In that case, I don’t feel sorry for her. She knows about me and has had every opportunity to call me.
Stargazer: You have nothing to forgive yourself for. I’ve seen some harsh judgements on this blog about women who get involved with married men, but you truly thought he was about to be divorced. Just as men can con women out of money, married men can com women into thinking that it is okay to be involved with them for one of a 100 reasons. They con us about all kinds of things!!! It is part of the fog. In my case, he convinced me it would HELP his marriage….and mine. My husband gave me permission, said just don’t tell me if you actually do it. Stupid agreement. (He makes it clear now that I don’t have that permission, and our marriage is wonderful now.) But while I couldn’t have done it (I hope) without his permission, the P convinced me it was okay that he did NOT have permission, through pity plays. HOWEVER, had my integrity been stronger, this whole mess would have never happened.
Ironically, my marriage DID improve. the P knocked the controlling tendencies *I* had right out of me. He indireclty motivated me to exercise and that motivated my husband to do the same and he’s lost 70+ pounds and is so much healthier and stronger. The P held me at night. I realized how hungry I was for that, and demanded that my husband either start sleeping with me in the same room, the same bed and hold me, or move out. He did, and loved it. So did I. The P also made me realize it was not good that my husband and I had not had a vacation in 35+ years. Again, I insisted, and he planned (and we took) several vacations last year for the first time. Those are some of the good changes. My husband changed dramatically in many ways . It is like when one piece in our marriage shifted, lots of other positive changes started happening too. We are truly in love and in it for the long haul. And yet memories of the P can still hurt, still shame me, still make me cry when my husband is so loving toward me.
And if I could, I would still turn back the clock and not have ever communicated with the P. What he did to me almost killed me psychologically. I don’t know how I pulled myself together but I did. It has taken one and a half years to recover, should have started NC sooner. Whatever I gained inadvertantly was not worth the cost. And it was totally against my values and ethics.
I meant my husband did start sleeping with me at night. He didn’t move out. Thank god. He had some problems and has made huge progress on them, none of them are a personality disorder!
My story is not as complex as yours, justabouthealed (and I would like to hear more some time). But I share your sentiment about the positive changes not being worth the pain. I have gotten much better at setting boundaries since the P. Still, I would prefer never to have met him. They are such a pure destructive force that even with our highest intent, they can still cause so much damage in our lives. This is something no one could ever understand unless they’ve been through it. I still feel some abandonment pain over my ex S, but I view him in my mind’s eye as a symbol of others who have abandoned me in the past. The healing I’m still going through doesn’t seem to be about him any more.
duped
“I’m surprised you still think she might be a good person”
I guess I just want to believe she is a good person. I mean out of all the emails and phone conversations we had before it look and felt that way. Before my experience with my ex I always believed there is good in all of us and Duped I want that belief back but am not sure how realistic that is now that we know about N/P and S. I am still trying to look for that in each person I meet. I just hope I find it and then maybe someday I can get that way of feeling and thinking back.
Is this realistic? Maybe not. Is this possible? I hope so…
James, the person who said that “being nice” (polite etc) is not the same as being ethical (good) and even the Ps can sometimes be “nice”—look at that Bernie Madoff, how “nice” everyone thought he was while he SWINDLED them out of their life savings.
I realize that ethics on what is “right and wrong” differ from person to person somewhat and from culture to culture, but it is summed up in our western culture pretty well in the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” rule. Of course the Ps “write their own rules” and also others have the “do unto others BEFORE THEY DO UNTO YOU” and that is not my way of thinging things are ethical. LOL
I don’t want to be paranoid about everyone I meet, but to use GOOD SENSE and be CAUTIOUS before I give someone my unearned trust. As Jesus told his disciples “be as cunning (wise) as a serpent and as innocent as a dove.” We need to USE GOOD SENSE. Use caution.
There are several references in the Bible, from Jesus and also from Paul about how to handle “fellow Christians” who are abusing you…and basic number one is to try to talk to them, then have someone else talk to them with you, and then if necessary, take it to the church, and if they don’t show signs of repenting, NC. We (Christians) are also cautioned about the kind of things we need to avoid in people of all faiths…basicly people who are USERS of others, people who are immoral, hateful.
This isn’t just a “religious” principle, but a GOOD SENSE principle, like the advice in Proverbs is GOOD SENSE on how to live at peace with others and AVOID trouble in interpersonal relationships. There is so much just GOOD PLAIN ADVICE in the Bible, that even if someone isn’t a believer, the advice is still GOOD. Some people take the “turn the other cheek” advice out of context and try to make it mean “be a door mat, don’t stand up for yourself” but I think it simply means if someone loses their head an slaps you, don’t immediately respond back with the same, cause then “the fight is on.” It does NOT, I think, mean stand and don’t defend yourself if you are attacked, unless the attack is specifically for BEING a Christian, but even St. Paul, sneaked out of town to avoid being stoned when he was being persued for being a Christian, so I don’t think anyone gains anything by being a purposeful marytar.
Several people here have said (and my son was one of them) that they were committed to the marriage “til death do us part, and for better or worse.” I was also committed to my marriage, but there comes a time when enough is enough, and even if you don’t believe in remarriage after divorce, staying with an abuser is “too much sugar for a nickle” as my grandmother would have said.
I believe people have CHOICES to act for good or evil, but not everyone choses good, and none of us are 100% “Good.” Even the most evil person in the world isn’t doing evil 100% of the time. It was like someone said “He’s a nice guy, he just robs banks ONCE IN A WHILE.” LOL So even a bank robber isn’t robbing banks every day or all day, they may go home and help their neighbor mow his grass, or take a pie to a shut in, but never-the-less, I wouldn’t say they were a “good person” or that there was “a little bit of good” in them. If that makes any sense.
I’m not trying to “down” your hope for finding good in most people by any means, but I think that we need to look at the whole picture on what we think of as “good” in ourselves and also in others. There are some flaws that I think can be overlooked and some that would overcome any amount of compensating “good” in them even if they only did it “once in a while.” My son is a murderer, but he’s only done it once (that I know about) but since he has not repented of it, and would do it again if he could, that ONE FLAW is enough to say he is an EVIL person (at least in my mind). Does that make sense?
My other son took money out of my purse when he was a kid, but he hasn’t done that in 30+ years and has repented of doing it, knows it is wrong and would never do it again, so that theft when he was 8 or 9 doens’t make him “evil” it just means he was a kid and did something that h e knew was wrong even at that age. But he hasn’t continued to be a “thief.”
Sitting here reflecting tonight on the mistakes of the past couple of years. There is NO question I got run over by a bad man, who had first done his damage on me when I was 15, and after me saying “no” for forty years, and even telling employers to deny me to him, he finally hit me at a low point and I said yes. He had really perfected his cover in 40 years!
But AT THE SAME TIME my husband and I picked some dumb ways of dealing with the problems we were having. Looking back, I am amazed at the rationalizations we used! We were both depressed and I think actually not thinking clearly! Like many on here, we had faced a series of heartbreaks before one of us (me) was hit on by a P.
More and more it seems to me that a big part of a successful life is having very strong ethics and strong boundaries, that you keep in place, even when the going gets tough. And for those who were raised in abuse, like me, there is this automatic response to want to please the abuser, placate them, sooth them…and your ethics and boundaries fall by the way side!!!! but I think because I’m finally seeing that so clearly, I can stop! I still have to deal with my family for a bit more, so I get plenty of practice. Today was quite a workout, the worst Christmas of my life.
The only high point was one family member said one of those “where did that come from !!!!” things as Dr. Steve mentioned….and my husband literally said “Where is that coming from?!!!” Later, I reminded him of what Dr. Steve’s article had said, because we had discussed it before……and he said you certainly nailed the feeling!
justabouthealed: You experienced what Tolle calls the “pain body” and it’s alive and well at family gathering … especially around the holidays.
If you haven’t read Tolle’s book “A New Earth” it explains the “pain body” and how everyone has one.
Peace.
James,
I want to believe in the good in people again, too, especially with potential dates. The part I’m having a hard time with is the flattery. When a guy starts telling me what a good soul I am or that he can tell I’m a very loving person (this is usually on the internet), I run as fast as I can. I just cannot deal with any form of flattery right now. That is what the S used on me to get his hooks in. It didn’t work at first. I thought it was creepy. I guess all the lavish attention grew on me.