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.)
Yes. I get it. That is the hook….so all I’m saying is this:
And it IS more than symantics….Don’t look for why you are defective. Look for why you Feeeeeel defective. That is the very point of it all, I think….probably for most of us.
🙂
that’s what i am doing kim. 😉
Dear Buttons,
I am glad to let you lay your head in my lap and cry any time! Oh, how I have needed and wanted a lap to crawl into and cry sometimes! I think we all have!
I’m also glad that you have come to a decision. I learned that decisionn VERY PAINFULLY with my son C. He must paddle his own canoe even if in the past he has also allowed himself to be a victim of his brother and his X-wife. In many cases, he was a volunteer in the “posse” to hunt down his “mean old mom” (P-son labeled me “Osama my mama!”–cute huh?)
He just under estimated just how strong and sneaky I could be when pushed into living in a cave. I even named my RV (“cave”) after the cave in which the future King David lived while he was hiding out from King Saul. I drew strength from that story.
You son may indeed have been “victimzed” by his P father and by his P brother, but that doesn’t mean he has not also become a user as well (whether he is a psychopath or just very dysfunctional is beside the point.) BTW my P-son “punished” me by not coming home after he got out of prison the first time for robbery –he had done 2 years—so the “don’t get your hopes up” I think is about the same kind of comments that P-son would have made, like by coming to live with you he was doing you some sort of FAVOR. That would be a RED FLAG to me given my late-gained knowledge of how my P-son thought. He actually believed that though he had not lived in our home for 17 years that he WAS IN CHARGE OF THE FAMILY, that the family happiness REVOLVED AROUND HIM. He I think realizes now that I don’t feel that way, LOL, but he still feels he is ENTITLED to everything we have.
Even if you son has been or still is a victim, YOU can’t save him. He must save himself. I saw that my Son C was not willing to do the hard work that is necessary to heal ourselves after we have been victimized. It IS HARD WORK, and It hurts sometimes to EXAMINE ourselves and see how we have allowed abuse to continue in our lives, and to acknowledge how we have acted in ways that were less than functional. Then, CHANGE ourselves.
Sure I was a repeat Victim. Because I did not learn from the first, second, or third episodes. I THOUGHT I was okay after each victimization, but I wasn’t. I still allowed the victimzers to approach me, and tried to “help” them, or “love them enough” to fix them, and tolerated bad behavior. Sure, I had been trained in my childhood by my enabling mother to tolerate this, but I was an adult now, and whatever had been my upbringing, it was MY responsibilty to find out how to behave and think in a functional way. It was more difficult than someone who had maybe nad the emotional abuse of my childhood, but no one is born with a perfect childhood, and a perfect environment etc. we each are responsible for our own growth as adults.
It took me a long time to get there, having to repeat the basic course “101” several times….but God is good and very patient about that, He keeps giving us the course until we pass it. Unfortunately I wasn’t very good at “patience 101” either, so I got LOTS of chances to overcome my impatience! LOL
Son C isn’t a psychopath like P-son, but he isn’t the kind of man I wish he was. He has many good quallities, he works hard, is loyal to his friends (but not so loyal to his brother D or to me.) However, he lives in a fantasy world in which he doesn’t have to face reality. He is willing to lie to his brother and me in order to maintain that fantasy world, to hide things, etc. just like an alcoholic will lie and cheat and betray his family to maintain his addiction to booze. My son C’s “addiction” (his choice) is video games and everything is subservient to that “supply.” I’m sorry about that, but he is a man, an adult and it is HIS CHOICE. But he is not welcome to make that choice and live in my home, OR TO RETAIN MY TRUST.
I also had a vision of lots of grandkids and my sons all around the Thanksgiving table, Buttons, and it’s not that way, and I no longer grieve over the fantasy/dream I had for that “Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving!”
The Bible says (paraphrased) that “a crust of bread eaten on a house top is better than a feast eaten in chaos and disharmony.” I agree, if it gets to the point it is just me and a turkey pot pie, that’s okay by me! The digestion is so much better. I’ve never lived P-free before and it is really REALLY nice! Only the occasional “blip” on the screen, but generally lots of peace and laughter! (((hugs))))
“He just under estimated just how strong and sneaky I could be when pushed into living in a cave. ”
TOWANDA!
peggywhoever – thanks for posting the youtube link. Hare talks about this disconnect between language and emotion in his book, Beyond Conscience.
all of the things he discusses about ppaths and language are of particular interest to me. and reading aobut how they make little sound bytes of language and the lability with which they move those about really helped me to understand my experience. another group of people who do this (but WITH a conscience) are left handed folks.
this explained a lot to me about how much fun i had palying with words with the ppath – and that it didn’t mean the same thing to her as it did to me. we appear to have some of the same skills and abilities – but are motivated by different things.
me: love, her: manipulation
one step raises her left hand and puts down her pen.
hens said the other day that sexuality is of our core. i agree. and i have come to see that the expression of the ppaths sexuality is control and manipulation. of their core.
Hi. Have not posted here in a while…I have been reading. My ex bf-sociopath put me in such turmoil with his stealing and smear campaign a year and 1/2 ago that I basically curled up into a ball and ‘died’ in extreme fear and hatred for awhile. I just could not fathom that someone that I trusted enough to open my heart and home to would deceive me to the point of it being criminal. I really never experienced ‘hate’ before.
He ‘discarded’ me, and moved on to another ‘girl’ (a friend of his that didn’t learn his tricks until later…yeah, she put a roof over his unemployed ass for a while, too)…but only to try and get back in. He contacted our mutual friends….’I want to start a new relationship if she doesn’t want me back…I’m moving if she doesn’t want me back’.
I had learned NC from this blog already. Told my friends…’tell him to go…stay away from me…tell him not to contact me or I’ll call the cops’. Jerk thought I would be jealous…HA…and want him back!
I am happy to tell you that I have come out of my cocoon. I have a part time job, and have new friends. I miss the ones that believed his lies, but I cannot change the world.
Problem is, a very nice guy is interested in me. I have told him that I am not ready for a relationship, and he seems happy with just being friends for now. I still don’t trust myself, and I feel that I have a long way to go to loving myself again. I’ve always been independent, but very sexual. I’m not a kid…52…I don’t know if I will ever be able to ‘let myself go’ again to enjoy a sexual relationship with a man. A bit embarrassed, but I do ‘take of business’ when I feel the need.
Dear Jazzy, Glad you are here, and doing better after your experience with the jerk! Glad you are NC as well. Making new friends after some of the older ones betrayed you or sided with the P is a good thing, too. Glad you are starting to take care of yourself and recognizing that you still may not trust yourself to keep yourself safe in relationships.
Losing trust in OURSELVES to keep ourself safe is I think one of the bigger hurdles. It is easier for us to trust others I thinkk in some ways than to trust ourselves again when we have “let ourself down.” You WILL learn to trust yourself again, Jazzy, it is just a slow process, and we have to I think take it in baby steps. Having a friendship relationship with this guy for now I think is a very healthy way to learn to trust, not only him, but YOURSELF again!
It looks to me like you are being VERY trustworthy for YOU, and taking care of yourself very well! Kudos to you! TOWANDA!!!!
TOWANDA to you, too! This gentleman is very nice….a biologist and very nice, but I just don’t feel like opening up myself up just yet. I’m a bit of a ‘poindexter’, so it’s refreshing to have a friend who can expound on the zoology of newts and salamanders.
Thanks, Ox…I’ve always felt a bit different anyways.
Dear Jazzy,
Being around smart and/or educated people is stimulating I think, because there is always something new to learn! Even if my short term memory is now like swiss cheese! I like to learn how things work. I’m also fortunate that my son D and his friends that continually hang out here are all bright guys with a variety of knowledge on multiple subjects, they range from medical students to physicians, foresters, biologists and history majors but all bright and informative. All are Eagle Scouts (Eagle Scout is like being a marine or in the Mafia, once you “is one” you “always is”) and the age range is from 16 to 60!
Unfortunately, all the guys close to my age are married and the under 40 crowd aren’t looking for a wife or GF over 60! LOL But I do get to hug’em when they arrive and leave though!
Wanted to add about the sociopath that he wanted me to sell my house so ‘we’ could move to Florida. His son (I did love him, 16 at the time all the shit went down) saw what was going on towards the end…drinking…anger. I decided NOT to sell, because of the economy. That’s when everything hit the fan.
After I kicked him out, the Ahole said that HE ‘put his plans on hold for me!’ What plans? He had no income, no job…nothing. I told him as much, and that’s when the smear campaign started.
‘My plans’….yeah, but with my house and money. Thank you GOD I found LF. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
He may have stolen some of my things, used me for a roof and food, but I still have my home. I am a very, very lucky lady.