Perhaps the hardest thing to comprehend, and accept, about sociopaths is just how different they are from the rest of us.
I’ve spoken to hundreds of people who have tangled with sociopaths. Even when the mask has not only slipped, but shattered, even when they know the truth about what the sociopath has been doing all along, they still ask,
“But how could he do it?”
“He kept telling me how much he loved me; how could he cheat like that?”
“He said we were soul mates; how can he just up and leave?”
“How can he be so cold and calculating?”
“How can he look me right in the eye and lie?”
(Substitute “she” for “he” as necessary.)
Then, the people I talk to start making statements like the following:
“I would never think of taking someone’s money.”
“I would never intentionally hurt someone.”
“If I said something like that, I couldn’t sleep at night.”
“I would never tell someone that I loved them if I didn’t mean it.”
So here is the most important lesson to learn about sociopaths: You cannot interpret their behavior in the same way you interpret your own behavior.
Sociopaths are fundamentally different from the rest of us. They have a personality disorder, and this disorder reaches to the core of their beings. Here’s what this means:
- Sociopaths cannot feel empathetic connections with other people.
- Sociopaths do not have the ability to love.
- Sociopaths are interested only in power, control and sex.
- Sociopaths’ main motivation is to win.
- Anything that comes out of a sociopath’s mouth could be a lie.
- Sociopaths have no conscience.
You could think of them as aliens. I’m not saying that they literally are aliens (although there are people who believe that). But sociopaths are missing the characteristics, traits and abilities that make us truly human.
For most of us, this realization is a shock to the system. They look just like the rest of us. They appear to be so normal, talented, fun and exciting. They keep proclaiming their love. It’s so hard to believe that they are simply acting. It’s all a charade, a mirage.
What do you do with this information? You accept it. Sociopaths are what they are, and once they are adults, there is nothing you or anyone else can do about it. So far, there is no therapy, no magic pill, that will give them the ability to feel care and concern for others, or internalize a sense of right and wrong.
All we can do is know that they exist, learn the warning signs, and when we see them, run as fast as we can.
Thedoorisclosed, my personal belief with regard to Karma is that it is a Universal Event that has nothing to do with being human, exacting “justice,” or anything else that can be defined in mortal, human terms.
“Karma” is that force/energy that keeps all things in the Universe in “balance.” Sort of like a Black Hole….it sucks in material and spits it out to be reclaimed by the Universe to either reconstruct new stars, planets, or the building blocks of Life.
I have no control over Karma – nobody does. It’s just “A Thing” that we can’t predict. Just my 2 cents…
thedoorisclosed: I’m not sure that “karma” works 100% of the time, at least in this lifetime, although lots of rotten people DO seem to get their just desserts eventually.
For 80 to 90% of these people, they are rotten at managing money, and at hanging onto jobs or careers, so they are often in very bad financial shape by age 50 or so. It just gets harder and harder to explain all the previous job changes, periods of unemployment, etc. to both potential employers and to prospective new girlfriends. At age 30 you can convince others of your tremendous potential, even if you are driving an old car and living in your parents’ basement. At age 60, the boyish good looks are gone, and people just naturally demand a lot more information about why a former Navy Seal with a genius IQ, etc., is needing to borrow money to pay his rent or car payment.
Without the aura of success that a good income provides, they have increasing trouble finding the type of girlfriend that they would like to have. They nearly always have poor to nonexistent relationships with their adult children, so I would say that the Golden Years are generally not so golden for them. They end up with expensive tastes and no money, which is a combination that in and of itself leads to deep discontentment, and S/Ps are the most discontented people on earth to start with.
If you live in a big city and end up in the hospital with serious medical issues, and no one to advocate for you, the staff may put you on an official or unofficial Do Not Resusitate list, and it is common knowledge that even 2nd and 3rd rate nursing homes often take pretty good care of the residents who have relatives who make frequent surprise appearances. So behaving badly to people your whole life CAN have some real world consequences at the end.
I wouldn’t put much energy into trying to keep track of your ex to see if his life is falling apart. It may take a long time for Karma to catch up with him, and it is possible that he will manage to live out a full life of conning others for fun and profit. Some of the craftier ones do seem to find a caring woman with money to take care of them as they start to develop medical issues associated with old age.
I remember reading an interview with an old lady in a retirement community who said that the widowed men in the community would “play the field” with the newly arriving younger and more attractive widows until such time as they started having significant health issues, at which time they would “fall in love” and marry a young, well-to-do, Christian caretaker types living in the community. The old lady said she tried to warn the younger widows moving in to consider enjoying the freedom of widowhood, and not getting involved with the aging bachelors, but that her success had been limited.
When I’ve considered how “lucky” sociopaths are, I’ve also wondered if they ever get their comeuppance. It took me a really long time to figure out an explanation that would satisfy my grieving heart.
Lions are sociopaths–as are other solitary predators. If a child crawls into the lion enclosure at a zoo and is killed, does this mean that God did not love the child or the parents? No. Of course not. Do we destroy all lions because they don’t have empathy? No, we understand their nature and behave respectively and appropriately around them. Nor do we blame Karma, the Universe or God for natural events, disease, tragedy. We are learning to identify and do this with the human ‘lions’ we encounter, aren’t we?
Reasoning further, I’ve decided that sociopaths are part of an evolutionary throw-back of human nature. Civilization works when we have empathy for our children and strangers, honoring rules and behavior that supports the group.
For me, I found it comforting not to look for justice in the way that I think it should be delivered. If they don’t have consciences, how can they be held eternally responsible? Here though, we have laws and social rules. We can at least hold them responsible in this life.
In addition, they’re already in hell. They can’t ever know love, or joy, and some part of them knows it. That makes for a very tormented soul.
Maybe someday, as our culture becomes more aware of this problem, there will be a medical cure, and we will think of it as a birth defect that can be treated. It’s really only been in the last one hundred years that we’ve been codifying this behavior.
Thanks for your well-thought out insights. My ex S lives on the same street as I and since I have made No Contact for months now, God has blessed me without ever seeing him around. It seems as though he fell off the face of the planet. But, no, I don’t “check up on”, so to speak, in the least, of how his life is going. We worked very closely for a year together at the same place, and I don’t keep in contact with any of my old co-workers either. I know no one who knows him. Praise God. After working there for a year I got layed off for the most bogus of reasons, now I understand God’s infinite wisdom. The S was an amazing, helpful co-worker, but when I got to know him after I was layed off, I discovered very, very slowly the monster within. I couldn’t come to terms with the person who I had deep feeling for for a year was a monster inside. I thought the guy was a pure saint while working together as his passion for helping to change others’ lives was something I had never witnessed in my life. I used to call him the “Oprah” of our neighborhood and workplace. It took months of terrible, awful suffering to figure out he was deranged and highly dangerous until I stumbled upon, Thomas Sheridan’s, YouTube videos on S’s. He said that they typically can hide behind the facade of a saint and a mission-oriented individual so they won’t be found out, as this is their worst fear. Thomas Sheridan calls them reptilians, shape shifters, non-humanoids, petrie dishes, a new breed of subhumans termed “homo psychopaths” and that they are purely mad and insane. He said the best way to get your revenge is no contact ever again. they detest being ignored.
Suzie, I disagree that lions are sociopaths simply because they are predatory. Lions show extreme emotional connection with their cubs and a fierce devotion to their prides. Lions hunt to live, reproduce, and feed their offspring. They do not target the weak, sick, or old because it’s a choice – they do it strictly out of necessity. Lions do not “know” the difference between herbivores and carnivores. Theirs is an existence based strictly upon INSTINCTS.
Humans, on the other hand, “hunt” and target people for their own entertainment and cruel purposes, and NOT to survive, reproduce, and feed their offspring. Sociopaths harm people because they CAN – theirs is a CHOICE of behaviors.
There have been sociopaths within the human condition since mankind walked upright and scrawled on cave walls. Sociopaths ARE a part of the human condition. However, there has apparently been an escalation in the number of sociopaths that walk around in everyday life – not serial murderers, but garden-variety predators that use, abuse, and discard other human beings at their whims.
My belief is that our culture and society has BRED this behavior. Everything is tolerated, everything is excused, and the WRONG focus is being given to bad behaviors, such as sports heroes, reality show stars, and other media programming that REWARDS bad behaviors with cash and celebrity.
Truth Speak:
I agree Sociopaths harm because they can and there are more and more S’s in the world now due to all the children they have from various women, a new generation is emerging. Sadly.
And yes, they choose to harm.
thedoorisclosed: You may not be too far off in your comment about there being more P’s and S’s in the world now due to all the children that have come down through the ages, from various women. I do believe a new and different type of society and/or personality is emerging. Although there have been WRETCHES since the beginning of time, I am sure, I think the ugliness of our world is affecting people and making them more and more numb. It’s very sad. Changing of the times.
But what time we do have is OURS and not theirs.
We have to make it that way because we deserve more in this life.
Yes, THEY CHOOSE TO HARM.
Dupey
In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta “might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women.” The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”
”• Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
And what happened to THAT justice system?
Seems like that would be great for ppaths/spaths…
That’s exactly how THEY act…
wait until the huntsmen leave the village and then act like a demon…surely they are somewhat suspicious that their behavior is going to land them in trouble. But, they don’t care. A few days partying is worth the punishment; hm?
THAT is the logic they use.
I have seen it; heard it and tried to reason with it and there is NO REASONING with twisted logic.
I think the Inuits may have been onto something…