When you’re dealing with sociopaths, figuring out what they really want is nearly impossible. Why? Because they keep changing what they want.
When my ex-husband, James Montgomery, moved into my house, I agreed to convert my basement, which I used as a small gym, into an office for him. I put away my gym equipment. I hired builders to install more electric outlets to run his array of computers, televisions and business equipment, which required enclosing the lower part of the walls. Making the improvements, and installing a small bathroom downstairs, cost me $6,000. (He promised to pay me back, but of course he never did.
When Montgomery first moved into the office, he was delighted.
When we had an argument, he complained about being forced to work out of a dark, dank cellar.
Then, when he was trying to butter me up, he was pleased that “Nuffles” (one of his pet names for me) made such a nice office for him.
Later, as our marriage was falling apart, he again bitterly complained about his deplorable working conditions.
Did Montgomery like the office, or not? I have no idea. The whole issue illustrates how sociopaths will say anything, even directly contradicting themselves, depending on their agenda at the moment.
Moving the goal posts
Many Lovefraud readers have described another, more insidious manifestation of changing sociopathic demands the phenomenon of continuously “moving the goal posts.” Here’s how this works:
Sociopaths tell you what they want, which we’ll call “A.” You give them “A” except now they want “B.” You give them “B,” but now they want “C.” This can continue for “D,” “E” and “F.” In fact, it can continue through the entire alphabet, and then through the entire Greek alphabet. Each time, sociopaths insist that this will make them happy.
One target of a sociopath used a different metaphor to describe this behavior “moving the line in the sand.” This person said:
Moving the line in the sand is a red flag. It serves many purposes. It damages the target. But it also grooms, tests and weakens the target. Plus, the target commits and gets deeper and deeper to recoup the loss (remember we talked about recouping the loss.)  Because it is used to test the target, I think it is an important red flag to look out for.
The target finds himself/herself tolerating more and more and doing more and more and the spath does less and less and needs/wants /implicitly demands/expects more and more. Sometimes its from an overt agreement, sometimes its from implicit agreements that the line gets moved.
Off balance
What happens to you as they keep changing the rules? You are totally off balance. You can’t figure out how to treat them, or how to be around them, because you keep getting mixed signals.
Sociopaths then make matters worse by demeaning you for not doing what they want. You try to explain that you did what they wanted previously, but now they want something different. The sociopaths vociferously deny that they ever told you anything different, and insist that they always wanted what they recently demanded and that you misunderstood them.
Sociopaths are so convincing that you begin to wonder if you did, indeed, misunderstand them, and if you’re losing your mind.
Moving the goal posts is a form of gaslighting. It messes with your sense of reality.
Empty inside
Why do sociopaths do this? Why do they keep moving the goal posts?
I think the main reason is that sociopaths are not fully formed human beings they’re empty shells. They have no core personality, no inner fiber, no guiding purpose. Their desires are not based on stable objectives, but passing fancies. They make demands according to whatever they feel like doing in the moment,
Plus they get bored easily. As soon as they tire of one form of entertainment, they want another.
A key question is, do sociopaths do this intentionally? Given that some sociopaths actively try to crush their targets, I certainly think it’s possible.
What do you think? Did you experience sociopaths who kept moving the goal posts? If so, were they clueless or doing it in purpose?
4light2shine,
Careful with the humor here! It could be misunderstood!
Thanks Blossom. I noticed. It just makes me sad. I’ll try not to step on anyone’s toes. Not at all my intent. Just like a beauty pageant contestant I only want World Peace.
Let’s just leave it to Donna to resolve. Take care both.
4light,
agreed!
Tea,
nitey,nite dearie
Not sure this is along the same lines as your story but I experienced this through my ex telling me what I had said and not said, what I liked/loved and what I did NOT like or love. For instance, we would go to a restaurant of his choosing (always) and if I had the nerve to say, “I don’t really like to eat here (which he likely already knew anyway)”, he might say, “Yes you do”. I would say, “No you KNOW I don’t”. He would say in a much louder voice and say my name with it, “YES YOU DO”. Last time you said such and such. It might be that I had said this dessert is good or one tiny comment about something that wasn’t so bad but he would twist it to his advantage. I got where I thought I was losing my mind, that there was something wrong with ME, that maybe I was misleading him. That is just one example, there are MANY many more time he would tell me what I had said, thought, done that I had never done. I truly started believing that I was the one who was insane.
Hi Linette: Crazy making! Your story about your ex’s behavior reminded me of my father. He is a food addict. Before I found a way to get out of ever going out to eat with my parents, I used to call the drive “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” after a crazy, theme park ride from when we were kids.
He doesn’t eat often enough and is starving by the time he decides it is the “right” time to eat. So he drives like a maniac to get to the restaurant. He is as fidgety as a speed freak at the restaurant, always in a hurry to order and very upset if everyone doesn’t know what they want quickly.
He always decides where they are going. I am not sure if my mother even knows what food she wants or likes any more! And when I say “right” time, I mean he believes that one must eat a certain number of hours after their last meal….not before or after. Normal response to normal hunger mean nothing to him.
This was very hard on skinny kids who needed to eat small meals more often. We are very lucky none of us ended up with total food disorders, but we all do have a lot of anxiety about food. When, we were kids and would go to the fridge for a snack, my father would say, “Are you eating again?” He was overweight, but watching our eating like a hawk while he would binge!
It caused all of us a lot of eating issues where if we were under stress, we had no appetite. It took me a long time to be able to state that I eat to live and I don’t live to eat. This concept was very confusing to him, but got the point across. My sister has celiac and my doctor told me to go gluten free. My Dad actually told us that he would rather be “dead” than have to be on that strict of a diet. He looked as if I had said I had seen a dinosaur in the backyard when I said, “Dad, it is just food.”
As I became an older adult, and he would fidget around and cause anxiety on holidays because he would not eat for several hours “saving” up space to eat too much, I would say, “Please just eat a cracker now. It is just food.” He just looks insane.
My cousin told me a couple of years ago that she can remember coming to visit us and my father making our plates and putting our portions on them. She said she felt sorry for us. I don’t remember being hungrier than what I got, but it affected me. He used to love to go to “all you can eat” and all I could eat has never been much. He would actually make me physically ill from stress beforehand because he would pronounce that I better “eat enough to make it worth the cost.” I would have been much happier staying at home and eating cheese!
There are so many ways to have power and control over people. A lot of people don’t realize how much abuse involves controlling the eating of others. I have experienced it and understand it.
Yes, yes and another resounding yes! My ex spath changed the game plan on a few fronts to keep me interested until I married him. I was in a near sexless marriage for 12 years (bc of known and accepted ED, but nonetheless, I was interested in making up for lost time), and my ex spath gave it to me alot to hook me and to butter me up when he felt me slipping away from his temper tantrums (which were minor compared to after we married. He also tricked me with money and living locations suggesting he was inputting more on the $ front than he was and refused to accept my logic about it (which was correct) telling me I just didnt understand money, and that he would be “open” to my location in discussion when he actually created more fear of my ex in order to get me to want to move further away which happened to be right where he wanted to live… perfect for him. So after we married, I had no sex unless he was having maintenance sex to appear “normal,” was commuting 2-4 hours a day bc of highway construction traffic (anyone know about the express lanes in VA? I commuted in it from Annandale VA to Rockville MD to take kids to school, drive back to Annandale, then leave by 1pm to commute back to Rockville, and then sit in my car and nap or take a walk until kids school ended at 3:30pm. If there was soccer, we had to find something to do without a home to go to until 7pm when we would sit in traffic and be home by 8 or 8:30pm. The construction began 1 week after I moved to VA. Normal traffic is bad enough, but that was a nightmare. I made do with it bc it was the only good part of my day… I never knew what he was going to be when I returned home at night… and my kids were well rested from napping in the car. Then, if we did discuss and “resolve” something, he would change what he wanted and would also never do his part in the resolution… it was so confusing. Fortunately, I had a therapist who had worked with both of us for 3 months and stayed with me when he dropped out through the end and beyond. She was incredibly patient and knowledgeable of his game…
SO glad to be out of the confusion 🙂
Agree with this assessment of sociopathic behavior…My cousin is a sociopath and have watched her destroy or make attempts to take and destroy what she cannot have: normal! In her sixties now, estranged from so many for the hurt she causes, feared by other family members who keep a distance and victims who she robbed, threatened ….always morphing into a facade in order to victimize a stranger! There is no doubt in my mind or other interviewed victims/relatives that it is done purposefully, because “she wants what everyone else has…”! And, for a bipolar sociopath, normal is something she probably does not know. Having a personality disorder does not mean there is no other mental illness!!
Of course Donna! That is IT…their demands keep changing ever so imperceptibly that the stealth of the change itself amounts to gaslighting… because you start feeling stupid for having been busy doing one thing to make him happy when he now appears to be angry about something else entirely… so now you bend over backwards to do this recent thing if earlier you had bent over sideways to do the previous thing…I am still with mine for the sake of our child and it really is hell even though I now know what he is and what to expect… I do like your comment that they are incompletely formed human beings.. just wish they did not come loaded with so much cunning that causes so much damage to the targets..
great posts all, and resonate with my experience of 20 years. when I finally got his diagnosis and started ignoring his tantrums or demands, he did not even bat an eyelid.. just stealthily groomed another target.. a married student 17 years younger than him..and started ignoring ME….
stronger,
How old is your child? I did the same thing;staying with my husband for the sake of the children.But it kinda backfired in my face.The oldest daughter moved out of the home in her Jr yr of HS because it was more than she could stand.The younger daughters started rebelling at the ages of 14 and 16 yrs.Yesterday I saw a section on the news about how divorce affects children and their parents.It’s worst on the very young children,ages 3-5 yrs.
Now,my daughters are grown and living on their own and doing well.
But there’s alot of chaos and pain in our backgrounds that still haunt us.
Something I noticed that’s kinda related to this topic: When you’re dealing with normal people, they acknowledge & respect that it is up to YOU to ‘draw the line’ (‘limits & boundaries’) for what is and isn’t acceptable to YOU… but when you’re dealing with these individuals, it’s altogether different– they believe it’s their place to draw the lines on other people’s lives, and then move those lines when it suits them.
gatitosmommy that is a really good point you make. Seeing that right off the bat even before we are drawn into whatever twisted agenda they have can really help keep us grounded. It’s not that we are being judgemental or overly rigid in doing so. We are being normal, applying healthy, reasonable thinking. Problem is most of us extremely empathic people haven’t given ourselves permission to impose those healthy boundaries you mentioned. Look where that got us.
My ex husband always focused on one special issue at a time. He would say that if I really loved him, I would understand how much “A” meant to him and would agree to it, and that if I wouldn’t agree to “A”, then I obviously didn’t love him enough, and he would have to re-think whether or not the marriage was working for him, etc. This worked pretty well, since my religious beliefs did not support divorce.
Of course, once he had “A” he then started talking about “B.” There was absolutely no limit to what he wanted. He picked out my engagement and wedding rings without consulting me, then insisted on picking out the wedding ring that he was supposed to wear. We were married for 12 years and he picked out every stick of furniture, every house & apartment we bought or rented, every piece of china, every car, every vacation, etc.
He always said that he was a “perfectionist” and this was true, but it was also his built in excuse for having everything his own way ALL of the time.
He had impossibly high standards for everything: cartons of milk and cans/bottles of soda had to be washed with soap and hot water BEFORE they were placed in the refrigerator, wine glasses had to be rinsed THREE times before they were put on a special rack to dry, he chose bedsheets that were fancy and imported but weren’t permanent press, so they had to be ironed every week, special light fixtures were very fragile and difficult to clean. I was working full time outside the home, and he never helped clean and polish all of his perfect stuff. I look back and can’t believe what I did to try to keep the marriage together.
Our children were small when we divorced, and so he kept the divorce and custody fight going for fifteen years. But I’ll never forget that the first emotion that I felt when he told me that he wanted a divorce was just a flood of relief. I no longer had to try to keep the marriage together — I no longer had to try to make Mr. Impossible to Please happy.
I can so identify with the relief that it was over. He had made his plans, came in with a moving van and moved into his girlfirend’s house, turned off the telephone…and I felt only anger that he would do that to his own children and a flood of relief that he was finally gone for good.
Delores and other new people. Keep checking the site out. There are a lot helpful articles in the Archives. If you go to the About link above, you can hit the Archives link.
As the Administrator here says, Sociopaths are everywhere and I plan to try to never forget it.
Divorced,
Your story sounds similar to mine.My husband claimed to have OCD.He HAD to have the house in perfect order ALL THE TIME,even though we had 3 small children at the time.He expected me to never run out of cleaning supplies or groceries,despite a strict budget-because he wouldn’t work.I began to observe others who have OCD and noticed that THEY did their own cleaning,whereas my husband never lifted a finger to help!Neither would he go to counseling sessions to help him cope with OCD!Pretty telling,huh?!
We’re not divorced,but I’ve followed the NC rule and I’ve felt peaceful and happy!