Aren’t you getting sick of hearing about all these politicians and other powerful people who can’t control themselves? Are you wondering if they are all just sociopaths? Are all sex addicts also sociopaths?
In the wake of my own dismay at the sheer number of sex crazed politicians, I wanted to share some thoughts with you.
First of all, one of the psychopathy researchers I respect the most is Dr. Grant Harris. He has written a seminal paper COERCIVE AND PRECOCIOUS SEXUALITY AS A FUNDAMENTAL ASPECT OF PSYCHOPATHY He says that promiscuous, coercive and precocious sex is central to the psychopathy syndrome. However, if you look at the statistics on the PCL-R the most studied method of assessing psychopathy, the two items related to sex have the lowest item correlations with the total score and do not even seem to be related strongly to Factor 2 of that test which is a measure of impulsivity. So there doesn’t seem to be a particularly strong relationship between psychopathy and sex addiction. By that I mean not every sociopath/psychopath is obviously a sex addict.
In his book The Mask of Sanity, Hervey Cleckley commented that “impersonal sex” is part of the syndrome. He also noted though that psychopaths didn’t seem to like sex all that much. Many victims I have interviewed have mentioned that. Sociopaths seem to view sex as a weapon to be used on another person or withheld from another person to hurt them.
As Donna pointed out earlier in the week, there is a strong link between sex motivation and the perception of power; there is also a link between a person’s drive for power and their drive for sex that may be related to testosterone.
When I think about Arnold, Anthony, Elliott and Bill, what I find most striking is their ability to do what I would call dissociate because I can’t think of another word for it. In the moment they are conceiving, tweeting, meeting in the hotel or messing on a dress, thoughts about their families and all of us seem to be completely gone from their minds.
Another great thinker about psychopathy is Robert Reiber, Ph.D. who I had the good fortune to chat with about this very topic in person several years ago. He thinks that this ability to dissociate is what makes a psychopath. When I asked him what he thought about the idea that psychopaths are “without conscience.” He replied, “Of course they have a conscience.” He thinks though they have an uncanny ability to dissociate from their conscience and their memories.
Neither the ideas of Harris nor Reiber bode well for our politicians. But I have learned a lesson from my dogs that might be useful here.
My daughter and I have three Ibizan Hounds, they are sight hounds who also have this uncanny ability to dissociate. When they are hunting small prey they become so focused on the moment they forget we are there and run off. We have been able to prevent this from happening through the use of training collars. We very much wanted them to be able to run free in the woods, so we had to figure out a safe way to get them to come back. They easily learned to come to us to avoid a mild shock that the collars deliver via a remote that has a one mile range. There is also a vibrate button, so after the dogs were trained, the warning vibration is all that is needed. But I have noticed that when they wear the collars they do not become as engrossed in the hunt and they readily come back to my voice. Without the collars, I can be shouting right next to them and they don’t hear me.
So the answer is simple, politicians should wear the collar, and their spouses can keep the remote!
For more discussion about sociopaths and sex see:
abbri:
I get ALL that. My X spath just turned 44 last week and the same way…very sexual…a ton of testosterone. I thought men slowed down even if just a little in their 40s, but I guess not. I can’t even begin to imagine what he must have been like his 20s….YIKES!!! Just like Weiner is in his 40s. Geez.
You are still struggling. I have struggled with thinking about the OW also. I still do it…I have images of them together all the time. You would think I was his wife or something!!! I don’t know why it bothered me so badly. I never felt that way about any other man as far as thinking about them with another woman. It was a mind f*ck that is for sure. Mine also loved to touch and be touched…sigh. It is hard to give up and not think about, but we have to FOCUS on what they REALLY are…no good, spath, soul sucking, not human bastards. No regard for anyone but themselves. It’s very sad. We will be OK, they will NOT.
By the way, I am the former little eb.
louise – as in ‘thelma and…’? 🙂
one/joy:
Not exactly, but good thinking! 🙂
abbri – they are all put together differently i suspect, and i aslo suspect that their are subsets within spathdom.
that said, none of them are having sex to increase their intimacy with anyone. but i do believe that one subset is well aware of the chemical experience of sex and are hyper-sexual because they are after the feel good hormones involved. because really – without REAL connection to anything, they must be pretty devoid of pleasure…oh, except for the pleasure they get from scamming and hurting us.
must get back to work, but have a report to make: the crazy boy upstairs started losing it again yesterday – the upside of that is that he wrote ‘FREAK’ on the apt. door or the db upstairs and was banging on his door at 4 am (db gets up then anyway). Upside is – just maaaaaaybe the crazy boy’s actions will drive the db out of the building before the crazy boy moves out in a couple of weeks. fingers crossed. 🙂 (man, the shit that makes ME happy….)
Louise–
That’s my middle name! (The one it took ex-spath 3 years to remember, even though we were living together, although never married, thank god!)
He was often obviously in physical or emotional discomfort if he didn’t get release whenever it came upon him, at least once a day but usually more. He was in the Marines in his early 20s and I often wonder how he got through basic training, etc.
It IS getting better every day, and it hasn’t been that long for me (3 months since our final breakup–he started seeing her two days later), although we were together for a few different periods of time since then when I screwed up NC (so he’s already cheating on her with me). So in actuality the last time I was with him was only about two weeks ago.
That last time we were together though, was the first time I’d been with him since I fully understood what he is and the ramifications, so I saw him in a different light, and it was much easier this time when he ran back to her. So much easier that I now know I NEVER want him back.
If only I didn’t have to drive by her house… 🙂
abbri:
Thank God you were never married to him or had a child. Whew…you escaped that one. It makes me feel sorry for my X spath’s wife really. They have two children and she has been with him a long time. I can’t imagine what her head is like from dealing with him all these years.
Yeah, you haven’t really been away from him that long; when I think back to where you are now, it was really hard at that point…really hard, but it gets easier, it does! And as you see, there he was cheating on her with you!!! And you with her! They are just sick. What is there to want back? That’s what I tell myself. Even if I could have this man, WHY would I want him? That makes it much easier to deal with!
I wish you didn’t have to drive by her house either. How is it that he hooked up with someone who lives so close to you??? Was there something to that??
The sex thing has bothered me so much (moreso than almost anything else) and left me unable to connect emotions with sex, which always mattered to me. When I met him, I was a virgin, and that seemed to be the most important thing in the world to him. I remember when we first met, he asked if I was a whore (strange question, huh?) and when I told him I was a virgin, he pursued me even more aggressively than before. When he did take my virginity, I was convinced it was the most important thing in the world. After, he said “That was the most meaningful sex I’ve ever had.”
Clearly it wasn’t, since he ended up cheating on me and destroying every bit of confidence I’ve ever had, but I just wonder if he says that to every guy. I wonder if he has some sick obsession with taking peoples’ virginity. I remember when I finally confronted him about all of this (I had leverage and demanded an apology in exchange for something he needed), and even his apology seemed insincere, almost creepy. He said: “There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think about what I took from you.”
That just doesn’t seem normal to me. I also remember back in the beginning of our relationship, he said to me one night: “Good night, sweet prince.”
I didn’t realize this until after the breakup, but that’s a line from Hamlet. It’s what Brutus says right after murdering him. It has absolutely no other meaning
I used to think I was just being paranoid, but ever since I found this site I’ve been wondering if he really is a complete psycho with some messed up ritual.
Abbri-I feel your pain and I’m sorry you’re going through it. Mine was also very sexually active with me for his age too. He was 53 and I was 36. He always wanted it and if we couldn’t, then he would want to cuddle and snuggle. He was very affectionate with me. He also denied ever masturbating. I got him to do it over the phone one night when he was sleeping at the hospital in his room. He called me saying how much he missed me and that he wanted to hold me and make love to me. He knew that it couldn’t happen then and he said that he couldn’t stand not being able to be with me that night. I talked him through it and got him to do it. He taught me what sex was supposed to feel like. I never had an orgasm from someone other than myself and it was far better than what I could do for myself.
Hi, I was successful at divorcing my ex sociopath/narcissist and achieving physical custody. However, he is abusing my 4 year old daughter sexually and emotionally. We have two thorough psych evals done that have recommended supervised visits only and one said he even said it should be done in clinical setting. However, the local DHS has been played by my ex in a large way and I am the one viewed as the trouble maker. I will point out that I was not the one who made the sexual abuse allegations, it was my daughter’s therapist and our home worker. Despite this, DHS will absolutely not listen to anything and are ignoring everyone that says anything bad about the father. I do not get it and I don’t know how to counter the damage he has done with DHS. My daughter sits and prays for her time with him to go really fast and then prays her time at home to go really slow before she has to see him again. As is predictable, my daughter refused to talk anymore about anything to do with him. Anyone out there have this situation and succeeded? I need your help please!