By Sarah Strudwick
Sarah Strudwick, based in the UK, is author of Dark Souls—Healing and recovering from toxic relationships.
First of all I want to thank everyone who commented on the posts that I’ve written over the last couple of years. Recently I did a post on How to speed date a sociopath. Whilst I make every effort to move on with my life after the psychopath, occasionally something will come up that causes me to think “Why do they do that?”
So the topic of this post is whether or not any of you have experienced the following:
In my book Dark Souls, I wrote about an occasion where my ex moved my cash card. A week later I found it hidden behind a bottle of sauce on the top of a very tall cupboard in the kitchen. At the time it went missing, I asked my ex if he may have picked it up by mistake, because he used the same. He commented that I was forgetful, and asked me whether I’d left it in the freezer.
This was a very strange comment. Later, I found a book written by a psychopath about how to manipulate people, putting the victim off guard so they question their own sanity. One of the suggestion was to ask victims if they left something that went missing in a freezer!
Being a complete idiot at the time, I looked in there, just to check I wasn’t losing the plot or going mad.
More items not returned
I also lent my ex some books and a heart-shaped crystal. At the time he was leaving his wife. He promised to keep it safe. When I asked for it to be returned, I got the excuse that he had let his children play with it, and one of his small children managed to drop it out of a two-story building and broke it. The story was preposterous—why would he let his kids play with something he didn’t want his wife to see?
I was also in a relationship with a man call Dan. I was doing acupuncture, and he as asked me if he could borrow my acupuncture books and also a book on Taoism. He also borrowed a cassette of a local radio interview I’d done when I was 19 about backpacking in India. When the relationship ended, I asked Dan to send me back the books and the interview cassette. He still has them to this day, and refused to give a reason for keeping them. Looking back, I think it was his way of keeping a little trophy of me.
Happening again
I was prompted to write this is because straight after I ended the speed date, I noticed something strange. Every day I wear a necklace, which I made myself out of resin and crystals. You could call it my “security blanket,” because I always feel happy when I am wearing it. When I bathe or shower I take it off and leave it in the bathroom as the string is made of leather. Lurch commented on the jewelry I make as he saw the resin and paraphernalia on the worktops in my kitchen.
A day or so after getting my head of the washing machine with all the mind games he played, I suddenly realised I wasn’t wearing the necklace. I searched the flat everywhere but couldn’t find it. I soon realised that a photograph of me was missing as well. It was an old photograph of me when I was about 16, dressed in fancy dress and looking reasonably young, fit and attractive. My son had seen it a few days before and commented on how young I looked. The photograph had been next to the computer, but was gone.
I like to think of myself as a rational person and don’t jump to conclusions before pointing the finger. In fact, I searched multiple times only to find nothing. Whilst I cannot prove that anyone took it, these were not items of value like money. But they had a lot of sentimental value, much like the cassette and the specialist acupuncture books, which, incidentally are irreplaceable.
Trophies
I’ve read before that the psychopath likes to closet their victims, and I’ve heard stories about serial killers keeping “bits” of them as trophies. Whilst we expect the sociopath to steal our hearts, money and valuable possessions, the difference is that all these items are irreplaceable. Which begs the question that they will intentionally go out of their way to take such things, because they know how upset we will be.
I am still searching for these items, just in case I haven’t lost my marbles. Whilst it’s easy to let them go because they have no real value, the whole experience points to the potentially sick and twisted nature of their personalities and has “creeped” me out. Even with such a good understanding of psychopaths/ sociopaths, it’s still beyond all my capacity to understand what motivates someone to do something like this.
It’s for this reason that I shared this experience. I wonder if anyone else had experience the same kind of “creepy” behaviour.
Moon, I don’t have spare tissues, or I’d pass them on over.
As a strict aside, I told my son the joke that you typed and he just stared at me like I was an asparagus. LMAO!!!!!
Glad you’re feeling better
Fixerupper…..um, dunno what you’re thanking me for, but whatever it is that you understand, GREAT!!!! 😀
Brightest blessings
Fixer, you mean about reasons for breaking nc I think? No problem thanks for the trophy post it was spot on x
Moon Dancer, gah, sinus pain. Glad you are a little better and thank you for the beautiful image of the deer, peace and love to you as you come to terms with your loss x
MD that is a baaaaad joke! LOL ROTFLMAO 🙂
On disordered personalities at work from today’s telegraph.co.uk
If you feel your colleagues are out to get you, it turns out you could be right.
A study of office politics suggests that workplaces are a jungle of awkward personalities vying for domination.
Oliver James, the psychologist and broadcaster, identified three types of dysfunctional personalities among white collar workers: psychopath, Machiavellian, and narcissist.
These are the colleagues who have no compunction about trampling over others, or like nothing more than to plot and scheme, or who drone on endlessly about themselves.
Most terrifyingly, the author concluded that there was fourth dysfunctional type: a “triadic person” who is a combination of all three. Such staff, James warns, have a dangerous, yet effective mix of a lack of empathy, self-centredness, deviousness and self-regard which can propel them to the top of the organisations.
Among the examples of these “triadics” he gives are Gordon Gecko, the trader played by Michael Douglas in
Wall Street, the fictional Mafia boss Tony Soprano, and Stalin.
Research has suggested that there has been an increase in the “triadic” conditions over the past 30 years because of changes in Western society and especially the rise of workplaces where there are no objective criteria for success or failure.
In a book, Office Politics, James warns how people who do not suffer from the disorders can lose out in the world of work and damage their emotional health unless they learn how to survive among such personalities.
TeaLight,
I am one of those people who have lost out in the world of work and have damaged emotional health because of the spaths in the world, at work and everywhere else…really I am. I make a living, I support myself ,but dont have the greedy ambitions of so many folks I know. I mean how much money is enuff anyway..? Greed, power, money,,I just dont get it…
Moon,
I’m the same. I just don’t have the money bug.
For spaths, it isn’t really about the money though. They only use money as a method for keeping score. That’s why they like money so much. The thing that drives them, really, is the game. They love games, any kind of games as long as there is a competition, a winner (them) and a loser (us).
I think that these people are purposeless. They have nothing in life that motivates them, and then one day, they realize that they feel pretty excited when they focus on a game. From then on, that becomes their purpose: to play more games, all the time. It keeps their adrenalin flowing, it keeps them from being bored, it keeps them from dwelling on their meaningless lives.
I think greed for material things motivates lots of spaths and spath behaviors. Like the article implies, there are different varieties of them.
Yeah. It was never about money for me either.
skylar:
Your last paragraph in the post above is my spath’s life exactly…exactly. Thank you for that.