Many people commenting on this blog have expressed the hope that sociopaths/psychopaths will pay in this lifetime for their evil deeds. Well, I am writing to tell you that if this is your wish, statistics are in your favor. You likely just need to wait it out because psychopathy is associated with life failure, as I will explain.
In a recent study, Psychopathic personality traits and life-success, Dr. Simone Ullrich and colleagues examined relationship success and life success in more than 300 men, they have followed for many years, these men are now 48 years old. In their study, psychopathy was not associated with success in any of life’s domains. When they examined symptoms of psychopathy the interpersonal domain (being charming and manipulative) was not related to ”˜”˜status and wealth” or ”˜”˜successful intimate relationships”. Impulsiveness and antisocial behavior reduced ”˜”˜status and wealth.” The authors state “ It is concluded that psychopathic traits do not contribute to a successful life and that the findings cast doubt on the existence of the successful psychopath.”
You may be asking, What about all the “successful psychopaths” we hear about? First of all, I believe that these are a very tiny minority. Remember that the disorder sociopathy or psychopathy is a group of impairments that I relate to an inability to love, poor impulse control and deficient moral reasoning. Confusion arises because some narcissistic individuals have impaired ability to love accompanied by grandiosity, but their impulse control and moral reasoning are not as impaired. These individuals may achieve some life success (Journal of Personality Disorders, Vol 21(6), Dec 2007. pp. 657-663). So if a person is unable to love and grandiose but not excessively impulsive or immoral, that individual may achieve some career success. But still an inability to love prevents any real relationship success.
So now you can move on. Fate and Karma will get that psychopath/sociopath. You can go about your life working as I do, on trying to love more and live better.
Okay, my last post came out wrong. I didn’t mean that I’m not learning anything HERE. I just mean in general feeling shut down….you guys know what I mean.
Learnedthelesson: I have abandonment issues too, and I understand exactly what you mean. I remember many key moments early on in some of my most destructive relationships where I had a choice to walk. I remember deliberating….should I walk? I always stayed. I never had the strength or determination to walk away. I had a few of those moments very early with the S when the first red flags appeared. I gave him chance after chance. After several weeks of promising to call and then not calling, it just became a way of life. Fortunately, I came to my senses after 2 months. I cannot imagine being with a sociopath for years. I don’t know if I could survive it.
Star: You’re very lucky it was only 2 months. I didn’t have clear signs until right at the end — 18 months of pretty much OK (except for what I DIDN’T know about that was happening behind the scenes) and then a full on slam-dunk shove my reality into the ground.
I didn’t know there were this many levels of hell to be lived while still on this side of the topsoil!
I can’t imagine 18 months of it. I just can’t. 2 months was bad enough. My S was too stupid to pull off the charade for any longer than that. His lies were catching up to him.
Stargazer:
Give yourself bonus points for being able to see what was going on around you and getting out after 2 months. I had maybe 2 months of good behavior from followed by 13 months of escalating hell. In retrospect S’s lies were so obvious early on, but I had my head so far up my ass I couldn’t see them.
Hey Guys – Yes, hats off to Star for getting out after just a few months. I think sometimes about how much I’d like to do a “do-over,” and act like I wasn’t a fool. I’d like to say “Are you kidding me? Do you actually expect me to believe that? Yeah Right! Goodbye, Liar!” to the first ludicrous lie he told that I recognized, but then somehow accepted as “okay.” There are so different instances early on where I wish I said (and felt) “that is unacceptable” and moved on.
I have fantasies of having changed the locks and thrown all of his clothes in puddles outside my home rather than the more civil way I asked him to part. I wish the first time he yelled at me I said “That is totally unacceptable. I don’t tolerate that in my life.”
I guess it is important that I keep the desire to say those things with me so that I DO say them, should the occasion ever prevent itself again.
Matt – you referred to dating on another post. I’ve done some dating – but really was not able to healthfully date anyone seriously. Maybe now. People on this site are very clear that you should wait a year before dating – but its hard. When I started dating too soon (just months after breakup), I kept suspecting people were drug addicts. Incorrectly. One guy had a cold, the other guy had been up late because he was working on a case. I had assumed crystal meth or cocaine for both. I was paranoid.
I think its better to be paranoid than what we were before. It will probably be a little while before you can truly be in a relationship. But dating does get you out, and helps to remind you that you are attractive, after repeated rejection from the ex S. I know, we are supposed to feel attractive from the inside, and not from external feedback. But sometimes its just nice to have a drink with a handsome man and talk about the weather.
Rune – I always keep up with what you write – I really like what you have to say. There are so many folks here that I am delighted to see post. Actually, everyone. A lot of new names – which is great. More survivors!
Why do I go from hope, to tears, to anger, to ambivalence and then repeat the cycle all over again? I wish I’d pick a stage of grief and stick with it. 😐
Sabinne-Why? Don’t know, but it’s what I’ve done and still do…just a lot less as the years go by. Why? Because you’re normal, you care, you hurt…stay here, it helps. It’s never easy.
Thanks Jim. It’s so good not to feel alone.
Dear Sabinne,
I think I have an answer (not THE answer, but AN answer) for your question. Google Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and “the grief process” and you should have your answer.
In the ACUTE stages of the pain, we are in GRIEF, and grief processing has “stages” and we bounce back and forth from the stages one to another, but not in any order, but if we accept what i s happening and know what and why, then we can endure these much better IMHO.
Kubler-Ross is one of the first and I think best researchers in the grief processing. ANY grief, not just the loss of a person by death but the LOSS OF ANYTHING that is IMPORTANT TO US.
A job, a person, divorce, death, whatever…the LOSS reaciton is grief.
It is all perfectly normal to bounce around with different feelings and emotions and then bounce back tothat same emotion again, until we finally come to ACCEPTENCE. We accept that the loss is real and that we CAN live after it.
ONe of the things I think that brings us to our knees over and over with repeated exeriences that wound us is we get over the ACCUTE stage of the grief, then feel pretty good, but the underlying problem that made us vulnerable to the Ps in the first place is NOT ADDRESSED. We think we have ARRIVED at HEALING, when we need to stay on the healing road long enough to find out what our basic vulnerablity is—-in my case I can see this time that I never stayed on the road to healing long enough to get to the BOTTOM of the BASIC problem. My childhood training to “pretend none of this happened” and that I had not been abused when I had been. I was trained to accept abuse from family members and never really rebel against this treatment.
NOW I CAN SEE WHAT TH EPROBLEM WAS, why I continued to let person after person in my family and close relationships abuse me. NOW I AM LEARNING TO SET LIMITS AND BOUNDARIES, and never before was I able to do this because the IMPLANTED “GUILT CHIP” WOULD ALWAYS KICK IN AND I WOULD DROP THE BOUNDARY rather than face the fact that my “mom” and my “son” were ABUSERS. DUH!!! Now, I am STILL on the h ealing road, the road TO healing, and I realize it is a JOURNEY, NOT A DESTINATION. I intend to STAY on this road for the rest of my life.
While I am now in a “comfortable place” I realize I can’t totally get rid of the early programming and that under stress I might “fall off the wagon” as they say in AA, and let someone abuse me again, so I have to come here to LF for “meetings” like someone goes to AA to keep themselves on the road and to help others as well.
I continue to learn more about myself now, and I am no longer focused on THEM but on ME—making myself better, and staying focused on living life to its fullest and in PEACE, CALM AND HARMONY with those people who DO love me.
Hang in there!!!! The road gets smoother and the view gets better, after a while it gets pretty darned nice and there is peace and joy and friendship on the road! (((hugs))))
Hello Sabinne & Jim – I haven’t been posting too much, but I’ve been reading you guys, and I’m so glad you are here – clearly you are valued parts of the community.
Sabinne – I was all over the place for many months. It was so frustrating to hate him, to want him, to be heartbroken, to be enraged…..to feel like my life was very promising to feeling like it was doomed.
It’s just part of the recovery process. It would be so much neater if we moved through stages sequentially, but we don’t. Hang in there.
I am nearly one year out of the relationship – six months NC, and started to feel A LOT better at the 4-5 month mark of NC. NC is critical. For me, the recovery didn’t truly start till NC.
It does get better. I still have bad days, and sad days, but now they are usually angry days, and are actually pretty infrequent. They are more like hours, than days, too.
HANG IN THERE