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.)
erin1972, I have lived a lot of what you are writing, puberty — THE WORST for me, I also had breasts when no one else had them, I was teased… I hated myself my entire life, have had weight problems.
Anyway, if I could say one thing to you that would help you I would be so happy… I now look back at all that time I hated myself (which was all the way up to a couple of years ago) and I weep over the wasted time, I weep over the beautiful woman I was, I look at pictures and see how pretty I was. Please don’t waste another day hating yourself. You can lose weight, of course!! But you can’t get these days back. You need to look in that mirror and say “erin, I love you”… because this is it! This is who we are! Love it baby! You are good enough!!!!!! Don’t believe any of the past LIES that others have said, who the hell are they??? They probably hate themselves!!! Screw them.
shabbychic you are right… because I have heard him say — on very rare occasions — the words “I’m sorry” and I know he only meant in some way or the other, sorry for himself. I noticed early on too that he had a tough time with the words “thank you” other than in superficial situations in public. It’s like if you did something nice for him, there was no need to say thank you since he deserved it. Or as if the pressure of having to “owe” you pissed him off.
I’ve been thinking a lot today about how everyone in his life screwed him over, how it was never his fault, and how clearly I could see almost throughout the relationship how he would have been the one to have antagonized anyone else, still makes me wonder why I stayed with him. I know many on LF had dreams of wonderful futures with their Paths, or were actually married or living with them towards that future (I had my betrayal of that dealt out by my husband before I met my Spath) but oddly while I was with mine I knew I wasn’t going to stay with him. For various reasons there was no reason we were a good match, I remember telling my therapist right from the beginning I knew it was a distraction and I even felt bad because I knew I would “hurt” him (what a JOKE that turned out to be, but still the knowledge was there that I didn’t want him long-term) But still he was able to hold onto me for over 10 months.
That’s what gets me, how I really had him pretty well figured out from the beginning as regards to his projection, lying, manipulations. I think I may have been confused for quite some time about the manipulation, but it was many months ago I figured out he had taken advantage of me the first time we had sex, while I was pretty wiped out on a prescription medication I had taken after we argued. He stated many times after we started going out how he would NEVER take advantage like that, which I knew meant he had in the past for sure, and once I realized he had and was doing the same to me, still I stayed. That is the weirdest feeling, that I was open to it early on and yet still stayed on and for what? The sex was good in some ways but really weird in others, no good looks, too much fighting and attacking to consider him charming, and no money. As my therapist said, that’s one good sociopath. My best explanation for it awhile back (especially for the reason we were still having sex) was “toxic chemistry.”
I’ve been reading all day here on LF, just read the article about the difference between a Narcissist and Psychopath, not sure where to put my ex but I’m realizing that doesn’t matter, the label is meaningless all I need to know is it was toxic and damaging to me as a person, and that I was manipulated at the beginning and strung along since then. I do have a hard time not feeling I bear some of the responsibility of it though, the “I should have known better” thoughts. I can only chalk it up to how much I’ve been hating myself, and the more I wrecked my car and stayed with this guy, the more I hated myself, and it just piled on, on top of all the towering self-hatred beginning in my childhood.
I realized it one day a couple of months ago, it just hit me like a ton of bricks — “I hate myself.” I haven’t been able to do much with it yet as far as moving forward, but I do believe that may have been a turning point for me. I finally identified what has been pulling me down most of my life — self-hatred — but I sure wish I’d have done it sooner before I let this man into my life. Well maybe he helped me get to that realization, if so I suppose I can take that “good” out of the ordeal.
Well it’s almost 6 here I’ve made it through most of another day of NC, and at almost a week straight (other than a falter 2 days ago when I drove by, but thankfully he wasn’t there). I’m very glad I found this site, although tomorrow I hope to actually get myself off the Internet and out of the house, holing up is just fueling my depression, I know.
OXY- what you say about invalidating my reality is on the money. I have bee researching, and somehow, the more I know, the more in control I feel. I have ups and downs- one minute I’m angry, the next I’m in tears, and then sometimes I feel like I’m going to make it. Rollercoaster.
shellshocked- clarification: he is gay. However, since he doesn’t feel love, I don’t know that he distinguishes between romantic interest and friendship other than the sex part…that’s why I use the term object of affection. As far as I go, sex never entered my brain, but I do akin how I felt about him to something like being in love. I honestly felt like when I was “friends” with him that it was like feeling what real, honest love was like, because it was the first time I’d had a relationship of any sort where it seemed like we completely accepted each other for what we were, genuinely thought the WORLD of each other, etc. I now know a lot more why it felt like that, because of, as OXY described it, the “love bombs” and the fact that he made my interests his interests, etc. But, it’s odd how even after knowing what he was, it is so hard to realize the person I came to love wasn’t real. So in regard to my feelings, romantic or not romantic, etc., it just felt like it transcended that, which is why I think it destroyed so much of me when I found out about it.
Shabby-thanks. I googled early puberty and self hatred in females and the the first thing that popped up was borderline personality disorder and I totally freaked out. When my ex spath pulled the rug out from under me and discarded me, he yelled at me and said that I was textbook BPD. It was him trying to gaslight me and take the crazy off him and put it on me. I did read something in the BPD article that brought out this rush of feelings.
At first, I started to wonder if I had been sexually abused and just don’t remember it. I don’t think that’s the case. I started to read about how BPDs become that way because they were invalidated by loved ones early on. That was true in my case. My mother has caused SO much of what’s going on with me-that’s why I cut her out of my life. I feel freedom since I cut her out. She left the Catholic faith when I was real young-maybe second grade. She took up with the tv evangelist type movement to the point where she lost all touch with reality. She was physically abusive to me at times that it seemed she enjoyed hitting me with the switch. Her sisters got her into all this. During summer, the sisters would come over with their kids so the mothers could have their “prayer meetings”. They would lock all the doors and put sandwiches out on the porch and make us pee in the woods and drink out of the hose so we didn’t disturb them.
She started hanging with this hippy chick who was into the religion as well. This woman and her husband always creeped me out when I was a kid. My mother thought the sun rose and set on these people. I later had an incident with them that influenced me greatly.
During this time, she and my dad were having BAD marital problems because he didn’t share her beliefs. My dad left us for a time-to get away from it and went to stay with his mom across the lake. This was just as I was going into the early puberty and started to develop breasts-in the THIRD grade. My mother would force me to take a bath with my little brother to save time and it caused terrible arguments between her and I because I was SO self conscious and humiliated over my developing body. She didn’t care. Dad wasn’t there for me. When he was gone, he sent me a card everyday and sometimes with a little present inside. I kept everything he sent in a box and brought it to school with me. I went from being a fun loving sporty girl who played football with the boys, to sitting down at recess with my box, reading my daddy’s lettters over and over and crying for him. The day he left reminded me of the scene in the movie Hope Floats when the little girl was clinging to her daddy and begging him not to go as he was going out the door. I hated my mother so bad for making him go away. To this day, I can’t watch that movie.
My mother was always preaching about pre-marital sex was evil and to watch out cuz the boys only wanted one thing. She said that masturbation was evil. All the things she used to preach to me, told me that I had to be absolutely perfect. Sometimes she would spank me three or 4 times a day for things that other kids didn’t even get in trouble for.
When my dad came back, they were doing better for awhile and one night, they left me and my two younger siblings with the hippy couple that I mentioned earlier. My little brother wasn’t even a year old. I was still carrying him and he couldn’t walk very well. Mom and Dad had to go to some business dinner for dad’s work. When it was time for bed, this man came walking out of their bedroom completely naked and informed me that we were all going to sleep in the same bed with him and his wife and kids-all naked. I was completely terrorized and traumatized by seeing this man. I was in third or fourth grade at the time and it was the first time I really raised my voice to a grown up. I started screaming at the man and calling him sick. He kept trying to force us in that room and even though I was terrified, I picked up my little brother and got my sister by the hand. I told the man that if he didn’t STOP pushing me that I was going to kill him. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I was going to. We went to the other end of the house to sleep and were finally left alone. When I told my mother what happened, she stuck up for the man and his wife saying that they were good GODLY people and that’s just how they were.
Fastforward to the move to St. Louis. I was not accepted when I moved-the cliques were already formed and I didn’t wear the right clothes and had a strange accent and also was in the 5th grade with a woman’s curvy body and c-cups breasts at age 10. I was teased and bullied unmercifully by the boys and girls. The boys sexually harassed me. I went from a strong, smart sporty girl who was outgoing to someone who was paralyzed with inadequacy and severe self hatred. I begged my parents to send me to Catholic school where it was all girls, everyone wore uniforms. Sure enough-they refused because the said they couldn’t afford to do that for all five kids. I was the only one who wanted it. My mother and father repressed my feelings my whole life and never let me express myself. I am paralyzed with thinking that I have to be PERFECT.
I don’t know what is wrong with me, but I have been crying my eyes out all afternoon.
Somewhere way back when I wrote an article about LOVING YOURSELF ONE PIECE AT A TIME. Basic bottom line is….find something about yourself that is GOOD that you know is good and that you like. “I’m smart” or “I’m kind” and Start to LOVE that one piece of yourself.
Instead of looking at ourselves and saying “I”m fat” or “I’m old and wrinkled” or “I’m not perfect” FOCUS on the small pieces of yourself that are GOOD or GREAT.
Ok, I’m over weight but I have GREAT LEGS! Always have had. I’ve got great tits! I’vbe got great thick lush hair! OKay so my face has LAUGH LINES (read: wrinkles LOL) but I’ve got great hair. I’m smart. I made all As in college, I finished top of my class, I got 100 on Mrs. Barlow’s spelling test in 7th grade. My toe naiils are pretty. My teeth are straight. I’m good with children. I’m good with animals. I’m….whatever.
Focus on all the things that make you YOU. ONE THING at a time.
I am probably one of THE greatest nurses that ever walked the face of the earth! I’m caring. I’m compassionate. I’ve gone to the wall defending patients from “the system”—-I’m courageous! I’m gutsy! When I think I am right I am fearless!
I jumped a full grown man in the street when I was 12 when he was beating a horse that had fallen, and I bit a chunk out of his neck! And I got in trouble and I didn’t care, cause I did the RIGHT thing!
EVERYONE OF US HERE has something that they are great at! Everyone of us has EMPATHY and COMPASSION (that’s how the Ps took advantage of us) Everyone of us can say “I’m a great and loyal friend.”
Subconsciously, I realize now, that by the age of 5-6 I realized my egg donor wouldn’t protect me, didn’t care about me, but I kept on trying to prove to her I was OK. NOW I could give a rats behind what she thinks, cause I KNOW I AM OKAY, I AM GREAT! And I don’t need her TWISTED approval for anything. I can decide for myself what is OK about me, and what if anything I need to change. I realize that I’m a GREAT person. I’m okay! OKay I’m NOT perfect, but I DON’T HAVE TO BE PERFECT. IT IS OKAY NOT TO BE PERFECT. It is okay not to look like Paris Hilton, or to be rich or famous. I am fine I don’t need someone else to make me happy or to say I am OK. I can validate myself. And when someone e4lse says “Gosh, Oxy, You are so nice” I don’t automatically think, ‘BOY HAVE I GOT THEM FOOLED.”
I can say, inside “isn’t that nice,” and say to them “Thank you for that compliment.”
‘
bluebell — I could see how your relationship would seem even more special because of the impossibility of sex — a sort of pureness to it that would make you feel that you were even more soulmates than most people. I mean because with no sexual chemistry to bind you together, still you were as close as any two “romantic” people ever are, so of course the betrayal would hurt as much. We are often hurt by the betrayal of friends and this was certainly a friend beyond most friendships. Seems like everything was there but the sex, and you spent your time investing in the relationship every bit as much as anyone in a more usual relationship would, and he let you, effectively keeping you from finding someone else. Of course you feel as if you were ripped apart and left holding the bag, as much as any of us do who were in sexual relationships.
It reminds me of the story of Freddie Mercury (lead singer rock band Queen) and Mary Austin. Well in later years we all knew clearly that Freddie was gay, but for 7 years during college and after he dated and lived with Mary (who had first been dating a fellow band member). Well that broke up obviously but they remained friends in all the years up until his death, through her having two children by other men, she remained as always his best friend, at all the parties and touring with him and the band. There is an interview where he is asked about relationships and he calls Mary “the love of my life” and this was much later once he was completely out and obviously having relationships with men. And in the end when he died, although he was living with a man at the time, he left essentially 50% of everything to her, his house, royalties (the other 50% split between mom and sister) and only a small amount to his current lover. For some reason I have always considered that a sad but terribly romantic story… I believe that he meant it when he said she was the love of his life, but for other reasons he could not live that life with her as a normal couple. It is agreed by most that he wrote the song “Love of My Life” for her — don’t listen if you don’t want to cry!
Anyway I’m not sure if I need to take from that that maybe Mercury was Mary’s Spath and strung her along… I guess if so, not so romantic. Oh but life and love are complicated!
OxDrover, that is very good advice. At the moment I’m struggling to think of anything for myself, so I’ll start with I’m a good, honest caring person, because you’re right, that’s what allowed me to be hooked in the first place. Boy does that sting.
I know I’m smart, too but I’m struggling with that knowing it didn’t stop me from being taken advantage of.
OXY-I can’t even take a compliment right. I say thanks to the person, and to myself it’s yes-but!
I am a great nurse too-even though I hate every minute of it. Last summer, after I was discarded and left the police academy, I couldn’t get a nursing job because of the economy. I took a travel assignment in Dallas in the ICU. I got fired after two days on the job for fighting with the manager-I was standing up for my patient and his family. They wanted to talk to the boss because they were unhappy with the care and she refused to speak with them and walked away from me. I followed her and told her she was NOT going to walk away from me and that she needed to do HER job and talk with them. I had never been fired in my ENTIRE life and I was working at age 15.
I do have great hair and great skin-classic Irish looks with dark hair, fair complexion with freckles-no blemishes-dark brown eyes.
I also have an amazing singing voice. I had 4 years of classical opera training but I can sing any genre that I want very well. I’m as good as Kelly Clarkson and I can sing anything by Celine Dion and Aretha Franklin. It’s too bad I’m to old for American Idol!
I punched a boy in the face in 5th grade and broke his nose for asking me to have sex with him. I can shoot a glock as good or better than most guys and I can throw a football and a baseball well. I was reading high school and college level literature in the first grade-it was freakish! I know how to knit. I can write a hell of a police report-before the academy even started, the Sargeant was passing my paper around and telling all the recruits that this is what they should aspire to-an excellent report. I also got 100% on my first test.
I have amazing handwriting. I had the neatest and most well written nurses notes in our trauma ICU. I used to sing to my unresponsive patients in the ICU when I gave them their baths. One day I did it to this old lady who was in a coma, and she had tears running down her face. When my spath first told me he loved me, I held his hands, looked him in the eyes and sang him a Norah Jones song and he started crying.
Shellshocked- Well, that very much sounds like our relationship, the Mercury/Mary one, but I think the difference is that while I do believe the straight girl/gay man relationship exists in that way, I don’t think every one of the gay counterparts of that functionally dysfunctional relationship happens to be a 100% Spath. Mine was (yay for me, right?).
By the way, this is a bit off topic, but does anyone have experiences with a spath having a strange habit of NEGLECTING pets? My Spath had several past dogs that seemed to disappear/were “explained away,” but one specific one I found out after the fact– a friend had found the dog at a point locked in a tiny closet-like room where we all worked, emaciated and covered in his own excrement. This mutual friend who found him confronted the spath about it, but the Spath cried crocodile tears and, as usual, turned it around so friend felt bad about even confronting him. Anyway, I just wondered if this was a pattern– I know animal violence is a pattern, but I wasn’t sure about neglect…
Bluebell, the animal neglect comment hit a nerve with me… the 2nd weekend that my S (who I am convinced is a P- he fits all the traits on the list) stood me up, he called on Monday morning to “explain”. He said he had to give his dog away…
He told me he didn’t have the time for her, since he “worked so much”. (In actuality, he was rarely ever home.) Of course, I felt sorry for him and was so kind and understanding. I didn’t understand why he would never take me up on the offer to drop her off here on his way to work, so she could stay with me and my dog.
Perhaps it was just an excuse- and his way of gaining my sympathy while keeping his “distance” from me emotionally as well as physically. I will say that I respected his decision to accept the fact that he could not care for her, and chose to give her away, rather than to continue neglecting her. I always wondered how little attention she got from him.