In my last LoveFraud article I discussed strategies for vetting your new partner for “personality skeletons” lurking in the “apparent” history.
I’d like to focus, here, more specifically (and in more depth) on individuals with a pattern of discarding the people in their lives.
Sociopaths and other seriously disturbed narcissistic personality types will have this history—that is, a history (past and recent) that’s almost certainly littered with friends, family, and anyone who was once useful, whom they’ve cast off ostensibly for one or another reason.
As best as possible we want to glean this history, if it’s applicable and somehow accessible. In such cases, we want to ensure that blinding defenses such as denial, avoidance, idealization and incuriosity (among others) don’t compromise our observational powers.
More than that, we want to be sharply astute to evidence suggestive of such a history.
And why? If for no other reason than that adults with a track record of cutting loose the people in their lives simply do not outgrow this pattern.
In other words, this is a deeply inscribed aspect of their character, from which none of us carries special privileges to immunity or protection.
Yes, we’ve discussed this and other aspects of pathological narcissism before, but it’s always useful, I feel, to take a fresh view of it.
As we know, sociopaths and similarly character-disordered personalities engage in relationships, and in a great many interactions, almost strictly to the extent that they perceive you to be useful to their interests.
I think we can agree that, just as soon as the exploitive personality perceives that your usefulness to him has run its course, it will follow like clockwork that his use for you will correspondingly expend itself.
These personalities measure you against the criterion of your useful shelf-life which, in a sense, puts you in a not so different category from, say, an appliance, or, for that matter, any possession or object whose utility depreciates over time.
From the height of his satisfaction with your optimal utility to him, the sociopath begins a slow, inexorable and, in some cases, disorientingly precipitous, phase of depreciating you. He may, or may not, begin this process by idealizing you. But even if he does, he won’t be idealing you; rather, he’ll be idealizing your utility to him.
I’d like to stress this point again: Sociopaths, and I include all pathological narcissists, never really idealize you; they idealize your present utility to them.
And, of course, from there, it’s all downhill.
When exploiter’s depreciation of you is complete, then it’s time to discard, and replace, you. This constitutes his “moving on.”
If he could list you as a deduction on his tax return, based on your depreciated value to him, he would.
And so his discarding may take a more literal form, like leaving or ending the relationship; or it may take the less literal, but worse, form of his staying (or hanging around) while abdicating, increasingly, any and all sense of accountability in the relationship.
Now that you give him so little of compelling worth, so little to value and use (except, among other conveniences, perhaps a roof over his head), the exploitive “partner” no longer feels he owes you much of anything.
This perspective conveniently enables his conviction of his right to pursue his gratifications elsewhere. Again, this constitutes a form of his “moving on.”
But let’s not mistake what “moving on” means to the sociopath and like-minded personalities: it means finding new victims to exploit.
He may not consciously process his agenda as such (although he might), but we know that this is his agenda.
Many sociopaths, in their warped self-centeredness, subscribe to the philosophy: I want, therefore I deserve. And so the next step follows with dangerous self-justification—taking what they want.
Again, the sociopath may not consciously think, “I deserve to have fun with the credit cards in that guy’s wallet.” But he will want the credit cards with which to have some fun, and whether consciously or not, because he wants them, he’ll feel entitled to seize and use them.
This also explains the prototypical sociopathic telemarketer: he wants the old peoples’ assets, and because he wants them, he feels entitled to take them. Deploying any and every tool in his exploitive toolbox, he then takes all the assets he can from the naive couple.
Once having taken what he can from them, they cease to have use for him, and so he cuts them loose; he discards them. That is, having fleeced them for what he could, he “moves on” in search of more gratification through prospective new victims, who may have what he wants, that he can take.
Very likely he won’t look back, and if he does, it won’t be with empathy, guilt, shame or regret.
(This article is copyrighted © 2010 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of the male gender pronoun is for convenience’s sake, not to suggest that males have a patent on the behaviors discussed.)
Dear Bluebell,
Welcome to LF—I’ve had “friends” who were psychopaths, business partners, bosses, employees, parents, lovers, and a child who is a P. They are from 1 to 4% (supposedly) of the general population. So how many people do you know? How many people have you worked with, been neighbors with? Gone to school with? So you have interacted with MANY of them, some just closer than others, so some hurt you worse than others.
The relationship itself doesn’t really matter, the dynamics are the same, “love bomb” you to get your trust, then start to devalue and invalidate your reality and use you for their own fun and games or for profit.
The learning of the RED FLAGS of how they operate is the thing that lets us keep caution with relationships and let people EARN TRUST rather than give it to them on the basis of this “love bombing.”
If you meet someone (anyone) and they immediately start telling you how wonderful you are RED FLAG. Most normal people don’t IMMEDIATELY start telling someone how wonderful they are upon meeting them. It FEELS GOOD TO US to hear good things about ourseelves, and PSYCHOPATHS DO THIS to “hook” us. We feel good about ourselves so we LIKE people who say good things about us. We trust people we like all out of proportion to what we really KNOW about them.
I suggest that you go back through the archived articles here (over 700) and read all the articles (save the comments for later) and order the books reviewed and set up a course of study about 1) psychopaths and how they behave and 2) how we can heal from the wounds they have dealt us. It starts about learning about THEM and ends about learning about ourselves, but in the end, we come out stronger, smarter, better and MUCH SAFER and WISER people!
Glad you are here! (((hugs))))
Thanks Wini- right now OXY is dealing with me on my low self esteem. It was always low but after he discarded me, it was infinitely worse. I am trying to figure out how to like myself. I have a beautiful face but I am overweight and I am trying to figure out how to like myself. As OXY says, you can’t wait until you lose weight to live and like yourself. That’s what I’m trying to do. I was real freaked out about the spaths wife coming to my job. If I don’t figure this out, she’s gonna BOINK me with that damn cast iron skillet everyday!
Erin1972, one, God created you. If God didn’t want you to exist, you wouldn’t be here. If you are perfect in God’s eyes, then so be it. I say, don’t tamper with God’s perfections. Best thing for you to do is turn off your TV, don’t read the magazines … and stop listening to spin doctors telling you how to be you because they are selling you something.
Smile.
Dear Erin72,
Darling I know it is difficult—try looking into the mirror and seeing your GRANDMOTHER’S FACE! There was a time I was a beautiful young woman (and at the time I didn’t realize it) I did not FEEL beautiful because I felt LESS THAN PERFECT and I had bought into my egg donor’s teaching that I was NOT OKAY.
I look at the photos of me when I was 21 (and I actually did some modeling) but I still didn’t feel OKAY or PRETTY much less beautiful.
How we feel about ourselves has NOTHING TO DO WITH REALITY. OK? NOTHING!!!!!!
And think about this, do you know anyone that is morbidly obese? (I mean REALLY big) Do you like this person in spite of this? I do. A couple of my closest friends are MORBIDLY obese. I don’t look at them and say “disgusting!” I look at the kind of people they are INSIDE, what kind of heart they have, what kind of PERSON they are. I never even think about their obesity, just about having fun with them.
The young man who was burned the worst in the aircraft crash that killed my husband has LOTS OF SCARS over his body head and limbs that are VERY obnvious, but I don’t see the scars when I look at him. I see the teenager who cooked with me the summer he stayed with us, and the wonderful young man he has grown into in the 6 years since then.
Our self esteem has to be from the INSIDE OUT not the other way around. Other wise what kind of “self esteem” would lots of wonderful people have when they are 60-70-80-90?
Look at the women who were famous beauties and how they aged gracefully–Katherine Hepburn for example. And look at others who got tons of plastic surgery to try to maintain the “youthful looks” and now they look like PLASTIC IMITATIONS OF THEMSELVES. Ann Margaret comes to mind. I saw her on an episode of Law and Order where she played an aging actress and she was HORRIBLE SURGERY GONE WRONG. OK, some of them pull it off, Raqchael Welch looks good on camera at 70, but if THAT is ALL she has, what has she got?
The media tell us that to be OK you have to be young, beautiful and dress a certain way or no one will want you, and you won’t be OK. BULL CARP!!!!
We are OK however we are if we are OKAY INSIDE. Young, old, fat, thin, whatever. Work on being and believing you are OK INSIDE no matter what the outside looks like. (((hugs)))) and NO MATTER what any one else says or thinks!
Oxy, I love Kate Hepburn. I used to have Kate’s and Cary Grant’s photos on my bb at work.
Smile.
Oxy, I agree. I would never in a million years have plastic surgery of any type. Meryl Streep is against it too and she is my favorite. I am SO freaked out by the lip injections and botox that people get. According to the docs-I AM morbidly obese because I am 100 lbs overweight-my fat % is around 40-42%. I know that it’s not all about the outside appearance. I am 37 and I am told that I look early 20’s. I have fair skin and wear big time sunblock. I don’t lay out in the sun. I’m active outdoors. The only anti-aging thing I do is sunblock and moisturizer. If I get wrinkles, so what. My grandmother is 90 and she’s beautiful and luckily I take after her.
I just think that there are some things that I can do to make myself feel good. I would feel a little better if I had more than scrubs and sweats to wear-plus NOLA is insanely hot and humid-I can’t cover up my body here. If I have to be overweight right now, cuz it doesn’t come off fast, I want to be like some of the bigger girls that I see, that look cute and aren’t afraid to come out of the house.
Dear Erin72,
How much you weigh is NOT what and who you are!!!! How good or bad your skin is is not WHO you are. I have lots of sun spots and wrinkles I wouldn’t have had if I had NOT baked myself (I didn’t lay out, just was outside in tropical countries etc and no hats and didn’t cover up) but I can’t go back and fix this, just be careful now to not make it worse. But beating myself up about what I did 40 years ago isn’t productive.
You do need to lose the weight in a SENSIBLE manner for your health, but NOT to make you OK, and it sounds like you are doing it with exercise and diet. GOOD FOR YOU!
As far as clothing to enhance your appearance, GOOD too! Hair do! YEA!!!! Appropriate make up! Great! But that is just window dressing, what you ARE is inside!
When I am kicking back here at the farm I dress for COMFORT and usually don’t put on anything but sun screen! When I go to town, even to shop, I put on “town clothes,” fix my hair and put on make up!
Actually I have noticed in the last year or so I am LOOKIING BETTER than I have for a while. In the SUMMER OF CHAOS when I had the Rocky Mountain Spotted fever and was so sick, the doctor put me through $25,000 worth of tests because he THOUGHT I HAD CANCER. My skin had that COLOR that cancer patients have that most health care professionals can recognize a mile away. It was not cancer, they probed every nook and cranny of my body and found NOTHING except the RMSF (that was bad enough!) but lately since I have been living PRETTY MUCH LOW STRESS, I NOTICED my skin is having a healthier look about it, my COLOR is better, the skin doesn’t look like OLD leather any more. LOL
I do know lthat I don’t have the resilience to bounce back from a “stress attack” like I used to have, because I have lived under stress for far too long and damaged my “bounce back” system. Many of us have, but our SELF ESTEEM FEELINGS are part of that stress. When we feel badly about ourselves we are STRESSING ourselves.
WE NEED TO STOP THIS.
When you first came here, E72, you were as stressed out as I have seen anyone here. I can SEE GREAT IMPROVEMENT in your stress levels, but you are still STRESSING yourself with your BAD SELF OPINIONS and depending on SOMETHING outside yourself fixing that. AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN.
Fat or no fat, what job, having this or that is NOT going to make you OK. YOU are OK NOW, you just have to REALIZE and ACCEPT IT!!!!
Probably took me a couple of years of HARD WORK to accomplish “I’m OK like I am” cause when my husband died, I FELL to the pits of “I’m old, fat, wrinkled, and no one will ever love me” and stayed there. I fell for the P BF because he convinced me that HE MADE ME OKAY. So fell back into the PIT when I found out what a fake he was.
Then, had all the CHAOS that distracted me from working on me and healing, but the last couple of years since the arrest of the TH-P I’ve spent working on ME! Healing me. Accepting me. Accepting that even though I am 63 now I am OK by myself, with myself, and I LIKE MYSELF. Sure, I could use some weight off, but if I never lose it I am STILL OKAY. People like me fat or thin. People like me, respect me for who I am not what I look like.
So keep on working on it E72, you will get there! B ut it does take work!
Bluebell,
I think anything you read here applies, if the person you were involved with — whatever form that involvement took — fits the profile or pattern, whatever you want to call it. It can be co-workers, a child, parent, anyone. It’s all about how the relationship plays out, I think. I realize now (actually I realized it during the relationship) that my old neighbor was the same essentially as my exSpath. I think she was an N — I didn’t know her well enough but probably an S. Using her children and husband and getting all the neighbors against us they made our lives hell for 3 years until we said “it’s not worth it” and moved. I felt terrorized, being forced to moved by what essentially amounted to a bully. But, NC with her was the only thing to do as it is for me with my ex.
Anyway, I think your relationship with your “friend” was more than just friends. If you did everything together and he lavished you with all his attention, and had what sounds like a pretty exclusive relationship, for an intents and purposes you were more than friends, whether there was sex or so-called romance involved. I would wonder in fact if neither of you had someone else, if there weren’t some feelings like that involved, just not acted on? I could be totally wrong on that, just speculating.
Oxy — you are so right about the immediately telling you how wonderful you are, that’s exactly what my S did. Also at the same time telling me how the others in my life were just using me but HE saw how wonderful I really was and wanted to have a relationship with me, that he had a moral code blah blah (mind you this is from an admitted sex addict who has seen every bit of porn ever made, and acted plenty of it out himself). But the hook was he made me feel like I mattered, and after my separation that’s what I needed to hear and he honed right in on it and took advantage, which as I said in my first post, he told me he could do no problem. And I truly thought (and said) you could never do that to me, I’m too smart. Jeez what a fool I was. I see that conversation as the moment I was doomed to fall into this disastrous relationship with him, the moment he probably realized how easy it would be.
Anyway, having a tough time with NC today… desperately want to drive by his place but worst part is I know he won’t be there and that’ll drive me even crazier. I don’t get how I dumped him but yet I feel abandoned? I guess it’s that feel that he took advantage, raped my soul then just walked off when I told him to. No apologies, and I know none are ever coming. So even if he is there it would be just be more crazy-making conversation because I don’t want him back. I guess I just want to hear him admit what he did, show some remorse, and I know that’s never coming. Still finding it hard not to go… I feel like venting at him so much… well one day at a time here’s hoping I make it through this day. I know I should stay away because I’m so prone to his guilt trips who knows what I might do, I guess that’s the biggest reason for me to keep to my NC.
I know I should find other stuff to do — it’s not like I don’t have people to see if I want (he’s the one with no one in his life, not me) but yet I’m just so depressed over this I can’t seem to bother. Well I guess it’s only been a week since the break-up so I shouldn’t be surprised I feel this crappy.
Thanks for listening, I hope you are all having a great day. Beautiful weather here, hope it is wherever you all are too.
OXY-all I can say is that I wish that I could be like you. I really do try to tell myself that I am OK like you say but it’s not working. I really did not want to cry today but it’s happening. I don’t know how to stop hating myself and thinking that I’m no good. It’s been going on for so long that I can’t remember when it started and I can’t remember life before it started. I can’t remember liking myself and what made me get like this. I think it was when I moved from New Orleans to St. Louis when I was 10 years old. I NEVER felt like I fit anywhere after that. It was a horrific age for me to move. I was going through puberty-too early that same year. I already had breasts-which made me self conscious cuz no one else my age did. I started my period 5 months later and that sent me over the edge-and on Thanksgiving Day too. I was visiting my grandma in NOLA for the holidays and locked myself in her room and wouldn’t come out all day long and I couldn’t stop crying. I went back to STL after vacation feeling more and more like some kind of alien-what freakin 10 year old had to worry about C-cup bras and tampons. That’s got to be it. I truly believe that’s when I started hating myself-that’s why I don’t know the first thing about how the HELL to stop this!
shellshocked, even if you hear him admit any kind of guilt or remorse it won’t matter to you because you know that everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie!!! It’s like watching a shark talk!!! They hear the NC from us loud and clear, and they don’t like it-because they can’t control us.