Many, many people who were romantically involved with sociopaths have told me that the sex was amazing. Earth-moving. The best they ever had. At least, that’s how it was in the beginning, while the sociopath was still reeling them in.
The targets thought this amazing sex was proof of the real connection between themselves and the sociopath, proof that the two of them were wildly, deeply in love.
The truth is that sociopaths are incapable of love. Oh, they’re capable of feeling attraction. And they’re capable of proclaiming love, very convincingly (especially when they’re looking for sex). But they are not capable of genuine concern for another person’s welfare, which is a key component of real love.
So what do sociopaths really want from romantic relationships? Power, control and sex. Often, power and control are more important than sex.
What’s more, some sociopaths find power and control to be sexually exciting.
I experienced this with my sociopathic ex-husband, although I didn’t realize it until long after our marriage was over. When we disagreed, I generally lost, because he was much better at arguing than I was. Of course, he was not interested in coming to a mutually agreeable solution. He just wanted to win, but I didn’t know that at the time.
After the fight, when I had capitulated, my husband wanted sex. At the time, I thought we were making up after arguing. Now, I realize that he had gotten a charge out of exerting power and control over me, and it was a turn-on.
A Lovefraud reader told me that the sociopath she was involved with became sexually excited when she was angry. He demanded sex, and engaging in it when the woman didn’t really want to probably enhanced his sense of power.
Sex with a sociopath isn’t about sharing intimacy or building a connection. It’s about their personal physical release. Or, it’s a means to an end. Sociopaths know that if they can hook their targets sexually, they have a better chance of getting what they want—money, a place to live, or perhaps simply entertainment.
In the end, sex, for a sociopath, is just about domination.
Oh I so agree with this article.
I’ve observed this with the woman who raised me to the last two men I have dated.
They start to become abusive in other-ways to set the person up to look crazy even before you’re aware of what they are doing. This last guy (except this guy had an extremely important but; sadly disappointing veryyy micro smallll manhood part)
I finally listened to the men’s off-the-cuff remarks about him and got the hell out. This pissed him off so he tried backstabbing to get me to return and screaming on the telephone threats of destroying my reputation. That’s okay and no longer a way to manipulate me. I rather be sane and safe then be dating a sociopath.
I have finally realized to not say I had a bizarre upbringing to anyone until I’ve been in a relationship for 6 months. I now believe I was leaving a sign for the sociopaths that I’m a target.
My sociopath used sex to control me, withholding it when I was “out of line” and giving it to me when I had been “a good girl”. He was very much into the dom/sub play, introducing me to “Story of “O”, requesting that I mimic many of the behaviors displayed by “O”. Cognitively, I understand why I was pulled into his web of deceit but emotionally, it is still somewhat difficult to bear and/or believe that I was taken in by a low life such as he.
You know what’s crazy is that I still question weather this jerk is a sociopath or not. I think my doubt stems from my low self-esteem but it also stems from a friend of mine who “let me in” on the secrets of men’s thinking towards women. He said to me, “There are women you screw and then there are the ones you marry.” And apparently, “the woman you just screw” are the ones you have a free pass to brag about and degrade. He insists that all guys think like this even if they won’t admit it.
So here is the paradox: Is my ex just a typical guy who saw me as “a girl to just screw” or is he really a spath. So hard to figure out when you are told that his behavior is normal among men.
All I know is that I was certainly degraded and regarded as a lower status human than my ex-spath. He had no respect for me and I still don’t know why. He apparently perceived me as a girl to just “screw” but I wasn’t promiscuous. He certainly made me out to be promiscuous by the time he was done with me. And in some way it was a self-fulfilling prophecy after we broke up. I was so lost I had very little self respect left.
After all is said and done, I am still left with the sadness that he didn’t really love me. It is still so hard for me to accept. I know that my childhood emotional neglect has set me up for such a fall, but it still is so difficult to come to the realization that I was just used and looked at as nothing special. Sigh…
There are whole cultures and societies that have the “Madonna and whore” system set up to control the women who live there.
Sisterhood,
there used to be confusion in my mind about that too. It’s more clear now.
Someone who would “use/screw” a woman, any woman, is a dehumanizer. The woman he marries will be dehumanized in a differerent way.
Let me elaborate: The green river murderer. There is actually a video tape somewhere, (on the internet, I saw) where he says that he killed the prostitutes because they are trash. When I was 15, I was hitchhiking and he gave me a ride. He asked, “how much?” I bitched him out for making that assumption and he apologized and dropped me off. He didn’t kill me because he didn’t think I was “trash” once I stood up for myself. But is he a “normal man”? No.
Your “friend” who “let you in” was trying to undermine your self-confidence as well as the ability of all men who truly are human. Granted, this attitude is wide spread, but believe me, the guys who insist that ALL men are like this are envious of the ones who aren’t. Their “being” is very small so they must hate someone. Women are safe to hate, they don’t usually strike back.
I’d get rid of that friend.
GIS,
Yes, its very true and to me it seems rooted more in religion than in culture. I think of them as being separate.
Interesting to me the recent censure of Nuns in the US by the Holy See.
The attempt of religion and or culture to define women is age old.
And a lot of the perverted definitions or misinterpretations have been foisted on women for a lot of years.
Its worthy of study because there are a lot of wackos out there who have some pretty weird ideas.
The spath I knew couldn’t get it up unless he was cheating on somebody else. They all are pretty weird
If you know what healthy sex is, then its hard to accept a lover who’s just weird or even abusive. The nearly hypnotic effect of being persuaded to do things which are outside your comfort zone considered. why not study tantric ritual and find out what people know works really well. The practices have been perfected over centuries and the rituals aren’t that unusual compared to what some of the people here describe. And yes, I remember a few rounds over whether or not I was going to “go along” with some bizarre thing he had in mind. The answer was NO. NO is a complete sentence. But it bothered me a lot that the conversation even had to occur…
The most powerful tool is knowledge. What you don’t know you don’t know can leave you in a situation to be persuaded into something you don’t like by someone who is doing it intentionally.
The hard part is a lot of times, it doesn’t come out until after the knot is tied and then, what d’ya do? It doesn’t take long to know things are wrong, but it can take years to get out.
And the fear and abuse of self esteem etc, etc play heavily on that.
Its good to come here and tell each other that we are special and worthy and so on, but its better if we arrive at the very conclusion for ourselves .
As long as we wait in hopes some magical calvalry or lover is going to come rushing to our aid and make it ok, the longer we remain sitting duck for the next target seeking paycho.
Its the decisions we make about ourselves that change our lives.
And given that most of what we are made of is the space between the atomic particles and they themselves are changing and in motion all the time, isn’t it fair to suggest that there is plenty of room for reaaranging our view of self regardless of who we have related to in the past or who raised us?
If we can be authentic, here in the moment, what if that is the best we can do? And building on the wisdom of the Al Anon, we can be that just for today. And then make the decision tomorrow.
It isn’t what your mind is full of, its the clarity to choose your thoughts and actions that helps the most. So if all of these emotions and memories and pains are clutter, what happens if there is housecleaning from the inside out?
I am wondering what we know we know about how to create miraculous changes so that the day next becomes much more interesting and full of wonder than the day last?
Your thoughts?
Sisterhood, dump the friend who told you that! That was a tell. Is he a spath? I don’t know, but he’s a jerk. He suffers from the madonna whore complex that G1S mentioned, and, even if a man like that decides you’re the kind he wants to marry, he’ll split your psyche down the middle and desexualize you. He won’t be able to get it up with you, because you are too pure, meanwhile he’ll have the hots for every bad girl out there. Classic example of black and white thinking….at our expense. IMO many insecure men fear the power of womens sexuality, so they marry the ones they don’t fear…then run around proving they can conqiour the ones they do.
Silvermoon,
I just read an article about what you were talking about in Time magazine April 16th, 2012… by Fareed Zakar called “a region at war with its history” in which he contends that it is not the religion (Islam) that is the cause of these countries to be undemocratic but the culture. He quotes the harvard economic professor Eric Chaney about the democracy deficit in the Arab world. In the paper they look at various things from religion to economics and come to the conclusion that the countries who were taken over by the Arabs in the 12th century are the ones that are NOT democratic in any way, and while the “Arab spring” looked good for a while in Egypt etc, it will be replaced by a centralized government that conspires with the religious right wing to keep the people under the thumb of a dictatorship of military might and religious fanatics. So ultimately the cultural “genetics” has been handed down for almost a thousand years that will keep the population and democracy suppressed.
Unfortunately it also keeps women suppressed as well and treated as nothing more than incubators for the seed of the men.
While we in the west see democracy and freedom of speech and women having rights as “right” and “good” this is seen in this part of the world as WRONG….as BAD…and this isn’t going to change in our life times.
There are portions of this country that have cultures that are almost as repressive. It is SLOWLY changing but in pockets it still remains that women are second class and men are the “final word”—Look at that off shoot Mormon group that Jeffs headed….nothing but a group of male perverts who cloak themselves in the name of “God” to practice what their perverted minds come up with.
Silver, also I’d like to repeat one of your passages in the above post++++
As long as we wait in hopes some magical calvalry or lover is going to come rushing to our aid and make it ok, the longer we remain sitting duck for the next target seeking paycho.
Its the decisions we make about ourselves that change our lives.
+++++
That is awesome and so true. Thanks for all you share here at LF. (((hugs)))
Silver,
I was blown away by what the Vatican said to those nuns and that they thought there would be no objections.
Oh, maybe they thought somebody would object.
I’m waiting for the pushback to be more forceful than they realized.
Sisterhood,
Yes, dump that “friend”—NOT all men think that way, just the ones that are dysfunctional and unsure of their manhood. Any man who thinks like that is not a “man”—he is a beast! He thinks that way, so the thinks everyone else thinks that way “even if they won’t admit it.”