With all the uproar over Arnold Schwarzenegger and his “love child,” our friend Ann over at WomenExplode.com just wrote about her own experience of a cheating husband.
Read I can relate with Maria Shriver ”¦ at WomenExplode.com.
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How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists
Bubblewrap,
You are right that the boy is one to feel sorry for…I don’t think he knew who his father was until maybe recently, and I don’t think the housekeeper lived in the family home, but with her “husband” and her children. She was married at the time the boy with Arny was conceived, and when she filled out his birth certificate she put down her husband’s name, but when they divorced she testified they had NO CHILDREN born of the marriage…
Supposedly Arnold didn’t know the kid was his until he was a toddler. But who knows about that?
I feel for all children born in a situation where they are not sure who their parents are, or who grow up with half sibs that don’t claim them, or know about them. It is sad for the boy. To also know that his mother is on the news as the “other woman” and labeled gold digger etc. Even though his photo is blurred out, his neighbors and friends probably know by now. He’s at an age where this could be really problematic emotionally as well. I do feel for the kid for sure.
The fact that there MAY also be other women and/or other children as well I imagine makes Maria feel like such a public fool. So, I feel for her as well. I imagine at some point she felt like Arny loved her and respected her, but now she may feel like she has been played like an out of tune fiddle.
It’s unfortunate that people like to throw in irrelevant facts on something so clear cut as this.
The Ahnuld, Maria, Maid triangulation has been seen about a zillion times here on LF. And we have all agreed each time that the cause is a PD called spath.
Even as we look at the details, they remind us again of spath behavior. The maid envied Maria, borrowed jewelry and clothes, pretended to be her friend while stabbing her in the back. All is classic spath.
But for some bizarre reason, people want to blame Maria, because she “must have known”. BULL SHIT!!
I should have known too! my spath came home at 5AM when he came home at all for years. He came home reaking of sex. He got hundreds of thousands from millionaires. His friend died and left him a helicopter. His window was broken in his car from the inside, as if someone was trying to escape. His story was that he gave a girl a ride and she started attacking him – and I believed him. Call ME stupid before you call Maria Shriver stupid, please. Because I needed to believe that someone that I loved so much was a good man, and I believed it with all my heart. He could do no wrong.
Second thing that offends me is people mentioning her immigrant or impoverished status. WHO THE HELL CARES?
This is a red herring meant to distract from the fact that she behaved like a spath and spaths come from all countries and all walks of life. Rich and poor. male and female.
I feel like that is the problem with the sheeple, they are so easily distracted and next thing you know, you’ll be blaming immigration for break up of marriage in this country!!
Give me a break!
Get your heads out of the sand, because the spaths are laughing at you when you start to point to irrelevant details like that. It creates animosity between genders, races, and classes, the drama continues while the spath slithers away scot free into the brush.
Sky-I CARE BECAUSE IT IS RELEVANT TO ME AND I HAVE A RIGHT TO CARE AND SPEAK MY MIND OK? I am VERY offended by you right now!
If you read my post CAREFULLY you will see that I am NOT blaming immigrants. Go back and read it before you blow your stack. BTW I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE. I get a real healing from LF and NO ONE is scaring me off OK?
AR,
how is her immigrant status relevant to you?
And why did you not mention Arnold’s immigrant status as well?
I’m not trying to scare you off, or anything like that. You are a poster that I get a lot of inspiration from. But this is something that just makes me crazy: the distraction from blaming the spath. It is not about which country they are from. Just because both arnold and hitler were austrians, doesn’t mean all austrians are bad, oh wait… there was that guy who kept his daughter in the basement for decades and had several children by her…he was austrian.
It’s not about her poverty either. There is a correlation, but it’s because spaths cause poverty that so many spaths come from poverty.
I know you qualified all your statements, but I just think that by bringing these issues up, it enables spaths to excuse themselves, blame others and slither away.
Don’t be mad at me AR, I’m not mad at you and I don’t mind disagreeing with you since we agree so often on other things. But if I can get you to see my point, then I’m that much happier. 🙂
I didn’t read most of the earlier posts, but I think spathologic type behaviors can most definitely be born from economic conditions. There is probably an inordinate number of young prostitutes in Costa Rica, and their families approve of them hooking up with old rich white dudes and pirating as much money as they can from these guys. Are they all spaths? It’s a choice many poor people make. I myself was a stripper for two years. It was the only way I knew to get out of a bad relationship and gain my financial independence. In my job, I lied, deceived my clients – I didn’t even use my real name or age – and had many married clients who were hiring me behind their wives’ backs. Does that make me a spath? Are all the young prostitutes in Costa Rica spaths? Are the lecherous old white dudes spaths?
I think it’s impossible to judge behaviors like this unless you’ve been in their shoes. That is not to say you have to accept those behaviors into your life. Being a politician comes with a very high responsibility to fight the constant temptations that normal ordinary people don’t face. They also develop a huge sense of entitlement. I don’t think all politicians who cheat necessarily start out as spaths. I think they just allow power to corrupt them. This happens to ordinary people who are not spaths. There are many phenomena that cause people to behave badly, and some are economic and cultural. Hitler hypnotized most of his countrymen to believe in him. I don’t think these people were necessarily all born with the spath gene. I think there was a psychological phenomenon going on – the same one that Milgrim’s experiment addressed regarding propensity for normally compassionate people to inflict pain on others when given an order by an authority figure.
I know there are many spaths out there, and they reak havoc in all walks of life. But I don’t think labelling every high profile person who cheats as a spath really helps the situation. I think a more useful question to ask is “Do I want a person who lies in government? Can they be trusted with our money and our policies? If they lie in one area, will they lie in another?”
Star,
at the risk of pissing off ANOTHER person that I like and care about, I disagree that we are unable to judge a spath.
It’s not obvious from one transgression, since none of us is perfect. But someone who can carry on for so long with a lie that’s so huge and audacious, that’s a spath.
Sometimes, Star, it’s like you will describe all the traits of a snake, long, skinny, slithery, has scales, lays eggs, sheds skin, has forked tongue and you still won’t commit to calling it a snake. LOL! I think the reason is cognitive dissonance, it happens to me too.
I think that because you FEEL tender emotions or you did feel them at one time for someone, that this automatically makes them NOT spath in your view. Star, if anything, that makes them MORE likely to BE spath. Spaths elicit ALOT of emotion from us. It’s their Modus Operandi and it’s the KEY to getting what they want. Our emotions are our most powerful motivators.
I read in a book, I think it was, “the myth of irrationality”, that there was a man who had a head injury. His mom came to see him at the hospital. The man refused to believe it WAS his mom. He was ADAMANT that this woman was a duplicate and an imposter of his mom. The reason, it turns out, is because his head injury damaged the part of his brain that processed emotions and he no longer felt any emotion upon seeing his mother. Based on that, he concluded that it wasn’t his mom at all. He wasn’t aware of how he came to this conclusion, it was later revealed. In the end, he understood because it was explained to him, but he STILL was not convinced that it was his mom.
Cog Dis is exactly that: when your emotions don’t line up with reality. But we use emotional feed back to tell us what is real.
Ironically, spaths are innately aware of all this. They know us better than we know ourselves. It’s because they have NO emotions that they can see how obviously our behavior is based on emotion.
That’s why I strip everything down to the key elements of spath. Did he or didn’t he do x or y? for how long? and the result was? and his reaction was?
My spath liked to disguise himself as a jerk. He wasn’t, he was a spath.
Sky, I never said that you cannot judge a spath. I just think that everyone who behaves badly in certain situations is not necessarily a spath. Telling one lie – even a huge one – even by Martha Stout’s standards – does not make someone a spath. You have to look for multiple lies and the pity play. Those are the telltale signs. People’s bad behaviors are bad behaviors, no matter what they are. It’s important to judge whether we want someone in our lives (or public office, etc.) on bad behaviors.
If you go looking to pin the spath label on everyone who behaves badly, you will end up with a whole world so full of spaths that you should live in constant fear of bumping into one of them. I think there’s a middle ground here.
And you didn’t piss me off. 🙂
“eb92044 says:
Wow, he sounds confusing as they all are!! Boys, beer and fooling around”that doesn’t sound very reserved. Just another manipulative ploy to make you believe he was “shy.””
I did not know of this until he told me he wanted to be friends. It was then by accident I came upon his online trail.
Thus, a clear example of this person’s manipulativeness.
Star,
or if you call everyone who MAKES A HABIT OF BEHAVING BADLY, as arnold did, a spath, then you don’t have to live in fear because you know that they can’t fool you.
My understanding is that he had multiple affairs and Maria found out about them but excused him. This one was just too much. It wasn’t one lie, it was a lie, every single day for 13 years. Furthermore, I hear that she had been unhappy for many years – verbal/emotional abuse? likely.
Last but not least, he could never have become governor without her credibilty. This cinched it for me. Spaths like to have a “respectable” wife and many OW’s. They ride the coat tails of the respectable woman, which gives them credibility while simultaneously despising her so much that they want to smear her behind her back. It’s so classic, like a greek myth.
Speaking of myths, did you know that the term for compulsive lying is mythomania? interesting.