Sociopaths rarely go forward with their lives with reliable, sustainable momentum; at best, they may zig-zag for a while with the good (and bad) luck of a gambler; or go sidways for a while, “seeming” to hold it together.
But eventually, the sociopath tends to go backwards. He is much like the person on a high-speed treadmill who, no mattter how hard he or she walks or runs, finds himself, sooner or later, drifting off the end of the machine.
His disordered lack of empathy, detachment from others, detachment from an emotional connection to the world that keeps the rest of us on fairly solid ground, giving us at least a chance to hit solid ground, and hit it running—the sociopath is missing this connection, and thus makes no consistent, sturdy contact with solid ground; his traction, ultimately, is tenuous and illusory.
The sociopath may “look” like he’s making progress (especially if progress is defined as his profiting, in some fashion, from his disrespect or abuse of others’ trust and vulnerability); in the end, however, his progress will be as superficial and unreliable as he is—finally, certainly in the vast majority of cases, he just makes messes of his own and others’ lives.
For this reason I don’t regard sociopaths—even so-called really sharp, predatory sociopaths—as generally very “smart” individuals. Most of them, as I’ve written elsewhere, and stress here again, are just “mess makers.”
Many end up in jail, and those who don’t, when they aren’t sowing havoc, are usually courting disaster and, at some point or other, almost always finding it.
Even the smoothest, most effectively calculating sociopaths, even allowing for those who are never apprehended–even these sociopaths lack the capacities that make for a life worth counting: the capacity, for instance, to love; give from the heart; sacrifice for others; and be counted-on in “crunch time” (which is to say, during times of real personal inconvenience).
The sociopathic individual doesn’t genuinely relish these experiences, although he may, as we know, mimic them superficially (and sometimes convincingly); but he doesn’t derive the pleasure to be experienced from a genuine investment in them.
His view of the world is not unlike the immature child’s who, on halloween night, approaching a bowl of candy left on a stoop, where the code of integrity is implicit (take one or two candy bars), instead grabs a fistful of candy, stuffing his pillow case with it.
The child then feels a bit giddy over his caper, heedless that, in the process of enriching himself, he has selfishly deprived other children of candy and, at the same time, violated the homeowner who risked trusting in his basic sense of fairness and respect.
It’s possible that this child on halloween may make his “grab” in a more impulsive, less calculating, fashion; or, he may have plotted his “grab,” and then executed it from house to house, even before putting his “costume” on at home, prior to hitting the streets.
In either case, take his mentality and now watch it never evolve, even as the boy grows into a man, and there you have it—an adult who thinks, and acts, like a sociopath”¦that is, a sociopath.
The forms of corruption and violation his personality can later express are many, but the underlying mentality is the sociopath’s. And it dooms him, in the end, to a troubled, troubling and unfulfilled life.
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2011 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns is strictly for convenience’s sake and not to suggest that females aren’t capable of the behaviors discussed.)
Great Article, STEVE……as always.
I so appreciate the fact that you know this disorder so very well and always bring us to thinking on a level above where our emotions often take us.
The zig-zag is a great way to express the many directions he goes in without any real progress or resolution. Always another plan, another proposal and yet – nothing is ever genuine or followed through.
Ever plotting, planning my demise – gathering what he thinks he can use against me.
My poor son – he is targeted by his father to support much of his emotional needs. And son is so tender and susceptible. But he is teaching him to lie to avoid consequence, con his way into what he wants – the more time spent with his dad the longer it takes my son to de-program.
This man is a fake, controlling, manipulative – knows how to get what he wants. But there is no core , no soul, no worry about the lawsuits and bill collectors. No concern for what he does not do for our children. I don’t think he truly feels love, or sacrifice or pushing yourself to the brink to do what is good for our kids. Empty, empty soul – I look at him and feel sick – sometimes I still cry . If only the “fake ” were the “real ” man – life , our 3 lives, would not be so compromised.
Karma, karma, KARMA!!! Since leaving her, she’s got nothing out of the divorce(8 month marriage) filed bankruptcy for ~176K (not including her mortgage) and now has a long running foreclosure(since 9/2007) breathing down her neck. As far as I can tell the bank has received the property but her name is still on the property appraiser site. One of these days it won’t be there.
I agree with the posting at the very top…it is kind of sad that my sociopath W is a “lost soul” at the age of 62 he is still messing around with 20 year old “little girls” and going to strip clubs..he has been divorced twice, had three kids with three different other women (all while married) me being one of them…the sad fact is that my 8 year old is the one now who suffers tremedously as well as I do watching what W does to her. My daughter sees all the abuse: alcohol, drugs, swearing and yelling, daily/weekly women, parties, medication not given and recklessness behaviors….W has no connections with any of his children or gf’s or ANYONE for that matter…like we all know…we are all just “objects” in his life to play with..after 9 years of dealing with W I am severely depressed, ridden with anxiety, overweight, alone and have pretty much lost hope…I have lost friends, family, my job and have not had a b/f in four years for fear of bringing any more drama to my child…after all of the daily drama and harrasment….and…after four times of being “sued for custody” (which there was judgements and things W was ordered to do but of course he ignored them) he is after me once again…I had “the nerve” to report him for the back child support of $48K that he owes me and now he is out for blood…of course, I am here unemployed with no money left over to hire an attorney for another time and soooo extremely exhausted…my child is abused by W verbally and is scared of him but for some crazy reason still wants to keep going for weekend vists (probably for the “fancy” million dollar life style) as I sit at home going broke W has not paid taxes, claims he lost all of his millions, claimd bankruptcy and is now living large with no bills or any cares in the world….on paper he shows he is broke so he doesnt have to pay the x-wives or x-g/f so it all works out well for W…but does it? He spends his days probably exhausted after all the lies he told for the day, all the decents he has preformed, empty sex he has has and alcohol to cover up the fact that he is an empty lost soul at the end of the night. Is there any hope for me?
newlife08….i feel the same way about my spath…when he comes to the house to get my daughter I can’t look at him anylonger…he makes me beg for any money that I need for medication, c/s school lunches, etc. knowing that I “need” him for money since I am not working….it is his sick game he plays for control…he is a master manipulator and everyone thinks he is this wonderful father who is supportive and loving..he cried in court to the judge making me look bad, tells lies to people so they think I am a crazy person and the worse part is that he talks bad to my daughter about mom…he says your mom used to be pretty but now she is a fat pig, she belongs in a cow farm, W tells her I am brain washing her..it goes on and one…and the sad fact is that he gets away with all that he does because he has the money and a great attorney…the lies that he is telling has gone way to far and I am so fed up with all this but don’t have a way out…my friends and family don’t want to hear another word of it and NONE of them understand what is really going on…they think I am making up the stories I tell them and can’t believe that someone could actually do those things…and they look at me like I am crazy…I sit here alone scared and wondering what W will do to me next…I don’t sleep, cry alot, I grind my teeth, I ache all over and sometimes think it might be better if I wasn’t around anymore to see the damage this is doing to my daughter…I worry so much if my daughter will be hurt or even removed from the states one day by W…I can;t concentrate, everything is a blur, I have to make a daily log just so I can remember all the incidents or abuse…i read in a blog about the spath and the legal system and it is 100% right on the money…he has won everytime leaving me broke with no options….so I sit, worry and wait to see what he will do to me next…
I feel so sorry for those of you that must endure the custody battles, child support struggles and just general co-parenting spathiness and games.
I have been through a lot, but haven’t had to deal with that! God bless you all.
Thank you Kim F we all need to hear that someone out there has a heart for you and your situation …
It is a heartbreaking, hurtful, no – way out, non-stop process you go through … even if they win in court, they get bored eventuallly and they find a new way to hurt you and your child even worse …
If I knew what I know now about s paths I would have never told W he was the father and moved far far away!!!
Spath is a son of mother spath. She lived with us and is living with him right now. So I had two of them at the house. I called him many times “AM I dealing with an adult or I am dealing with a 10 years old”, oh sorry my 10 years old was more matured.
Anything spath didn’t like or felt he has nothing to response, he would run to his mommy who was downstairs complaining like a young child “mom mom look what is she(I) saying”, and his mother 100% times would come out and start throwing her tanturm at me in his support, and here I am standing dealing with two of them. Many times I didn’t know who is who, becuase he would use her phrases, her body language, one was educated, and other never went to school. They both scream in univoice, and I would just stand there and hear this noise made by them.
Any time if I raise an issue, he would call “you are harrassing me”, and threatened to call the police on me. Again my surprise was am I truly dealign with a same person. I thought may be he is depressive and doesn’t know what to do.
But during this time I had to call 911, because in the middle of night he was yelling his head off at me for nothing. He got scared and went downstairs and pulled his mother out of the bed to deal with the police. It was one amusing scene, I wished I had a video camera to record the whole ordeal. When police came, they both were scraming out of their lungs, and I was sitting quite. Police asked me since I called , what happened, I pointed towards them, and said “this is happening, and I don’t know how to stop this”, police gave them a big warning and left. After that he stopped giving threat of callin 911.
Outside people will never believe that he behaved like this at home.
So far I understood that he was a control freak and son of a another control freak.
Now I understadn they both are spath, she lied for him, on my face. they both lied with name of god in their breath. I always felt puzzeled, why would you need to call god to proof that you are tellign truth, I never do that, because I don’t have need to prove anything.
Yes they were killing my soul, because I knew it was wrong and I felt I am stuck in it, and I would work harder to prove to them I am a good person who loves to take care of poeple, and they were trying harder to break me.
I always use word “they”, because I had two of them. But again I am not there anymore only his mother is with him, his sis inlaw told me, now they fight with wach other daily, because they have so other to bounce at…. My counselor told me, he has married to his mother, no other woman will survive with him and after his mother is gone he will be so broken us, it will be no use to anybody.
I feel we have power to stop all this madness, legal, non-legal, we do….
If we can become sufficient to take care of ourself financially and physically, cut that thread, which gives them power over us…. Work and think properly and see what are the deals spath has with you, and see how can you eliminate that one by one, to have truly NO Contact…..
Dear Losing hope,
Welcome to love fraud, but you are NOT alone, and WE DO BELIEVE YOU. I know that you feel helpless, depressed and witihout hope—-that is what the result of their abuse does, but you are NOT WITHOUT HOPE…you just have to find it.
First find a counselor and get assessed for depression, calla domestic violence shelter for a referral if you have no insurance or money. GET ASSESSED for PTSD….you also may be eligible for social security disability (that takes time but there are attorneys who will work with you on a contengency basis to get you through it) Severe Depression and/or PTSD will many times qualify you for this which will give you medicare insurance and at least a minimal disability income…you may also qualify for medicaide as well to help with medical and medicine and therapy costs.
PUT YOURSELF ON THE FRONT BURNER right now—start taking care of you. Focus on YOU not him. You cannot change him, but you can heal yourself. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LET HIM RUIN YOUR LIFE….knowledge is power, READ HERE AND LEARN–learn about healing. This whole journey starts out about them, but ends up about US–believe it or not, in the end it doesn’t matter what they did or do or what they are, but it matters what WE BECOME! OVER COME. God bless.
myheart…..
I am sorry you have to deal with double s paths! That is horrible.
I agree with the children acting as adults because of what the sociopath’s have exposed them to. My daughter has lost her childhood … she was at the W’s house for Easter and there was no Easter bunny basket, church or dye-ing eggs….nothing at age 8…I kills me that my only child is acting like she is 16 already
The law seems to protect the s path. You can’t record them, it’s hard to catch them to take pictures and on top of that they have convinced everyone that they are the good guy and that YOU are the problem! Even if you have proof no judge has time to look at your pictures, read your logs or go through polilce reports to stop them. The more the s path gets away with the more harm the cause. Watching W commit tax fraud, bankruptcy, running tolls, stealing from stores, hiding money has changed the way I see people…I have a real hard time trusting anyone and because of that I stay home alone in my “safe house” so that I don’t get subjected to another evil s path.
When you wrote “killing my soul” it hit home for me…because it totally feels like that. Everyday my mind in going on circles, I can’t concentrate to get things done and at the end of the day when the house is a mess, my daughter is disrespecting me (coming from visits at dads), no homework is done, and my list of “things to do” is still untouched….I sit there feeling like I have nothing left inside to give to just “do”.
I do wish the court systems would reconize s path’s and have a trained attorney and therapist to testify to put an end to all the cases that s paths win … we need help.
Ox D…..
Thank you so much for all of your kind words, ideas and comments! It is so nice to know that all of you on here are going through the same situations and that I am not “crazy”.
I have tried medication but hated the way it made me feel. I have tried counseling and told them that I am dealing with a sociopath..the response was “how do you know they are a sociopath? Has W ever been diagonosed as one?” MY GOD…so I stopped going after that. I KNOW WHAT I KNOW!! Once you read the definition of a s path…YOU KNOW.
I have been trying to find hope for years now.
What kills me the most is the guilt I have for having a baby with W. I watch my daughter go through the wrath of W and it kills me to my core. He doesn’t know how to care for a child yet the courts feel he is a great dad…I did this to my daughter and she doesn’t deserve this abuse. I can’t protect her. I can’t stop W. I can’t get over the guilt.
I agree with you…I reading the sociopath next door and have learned sooo much on this site…thank you for guidance and strong words 🙂