As part of my day job—writing scripts for web-based training programs—I came across some information developed by the Institute for Global Ethics. Surveys conducted worldwide have consistently identified a group of values that people of all cultures and nationalities recognize as essential. These universal values are:
- Honesty
- Responsibility
- Respect
- Fairness
- Compassion
Sociopaths violate all of them.
Perhaps that’s why those of us who are ethical, who care about others, who want to live cooperatively among our neighbors, feel so shaken after a collision with a sociopath. These predators take the qualities that people all over the world consider essential to the social contract and stomp on them, run them through a meat grinder and then pulverize them.
But they don’t tell us what they’re going to do. (Or if they do, we think they can’t possibly be serious.) Instead, they mouth eloquent words about their loyalty, trustworthiness and caretaking. We believe the words. Eventually, however, we discover that the words are empty, and their behavior reveals their true attitude: To them, the universal values of humanity mean nothing.
Then we, trying to extricate ourselves from the sociopathic relationship, lose our footing. We suspect that no one really cares about honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness and compassion. We were the only chumps who took these qualities seriously.
The good news is that we were right in the first place—most people in the world do respect the universal values. As we heal from our traumatic experiences, we’ learn how to differentiate those who do from the sociopaths who don’t.
Dear dear Tami,
YOur question of “Have any of you experienced these doub tful thoughts and feelings about yourselves” I think EVERY ONE of us who have ever gotten very far along with the healing process has asked. It is perfectly normal for you to feel that way, to question yourself–but the ANSWER is that THE PROBLEM IS HIM, HE IS THE LIE. You did NOT CAUSE THE PROBLEM, HE IS THE LIE.
Keep on reading the various essays here and some of the answers too, because so many of us (if not “every one”) have had these same feelings. There are essays on should I tell the other person he’s victimizing now? MOST of the time, the next victim will NOT believe you.
Does it make any difference if the “serious problem” is called psychopath, sociopath, rubber duckie, or green tea? The problem is HIM and HIS BEHAVIOR.
Wanting justice (for him to get what he deserves) again I think the feeling in US is almost universal, and sometimes we “get it” sometimes not, but even if we don’t get justice, which they so richly deserve, we can’t allow that to ruin the rest of our lives.
Dear dear Tami, all your thoughts are NORMAL and I can promise you IT WILL GET BETTER—read, learn, read learn more and that will help. BE GOOD TO YOU, there isn’t any way he can be helped, but your focus should be on YOU, the MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW, and the MOST deserving of your love, concern, pampering and thought! (((hugs)))))
Tami, I do the same thing, sometime’s I wonder if I am a sociopath. I think we give them the benifit of the doubt, maybe hoping they will come back? Do you want him back? Regardless of how I label my X, he is disordered, dishonest, has no respect, no compassion, is unfair and very irresponsible. The book’s call that a sociopath. Look at where you are now after being with him (something isn’t right) we can call em bad man, monster’s or whatever, just realize he is distructive to your mental health. and about revenge? why bother? I think they live in constant fear and self loathing and go through life feeding off of the goodness of other’s. When they are left alone with their own reality, I think they suffer knowing who they really are or aren’t. As far as screaming to the world that they are a sociopath or whatever. I told a few people that and they looked at me like I was the crazy one, he did make me crazy, I know what he is and what he does and how he affected me. I know some of his past relationships. My X is a textbook sociopath. I didnt know about personality disorder until after he left. I wish I had known before the fact but I didn’t. This is my opportunity to educate myself and become aware of bad people and find my own happiness and joy. I am just glad he is gone and my scar’s are on the inside and not on the outside.
tami
i asked myself these questions over and over…in speaking with his past 3 wives and girlfriends ..i can find many patterns, that some of them do not see..but most of them do..you will NEVER convince a new victime..because they are prob just as innocent as we were and in a place in their lives that they will give him the benefit of the doubt…they are at a time where the benefits they feel they are getting outweigh the risks…after no one could be that evil truly could they….like henry, many of us didnt know these types really existed, until after we were in the boxing ring with them for a few rounds, or yrs…………..you know i took organic chemistry and many tough courses and aced them all..but for some reason i couldnt pass statistics..dropped out twice before i flunked it…it was mandatory for my degreestho….finally one smart instructor told me to stop trying to figure out the formulas..it took yrs for experts to come up with them..i should not expect to have them make sense……JUST ACCEPT them…he begged me to use that approach once….against my will and nature i did….and guess what, i aced the course…….i guess there are some things in life we werent meant to understand or be able to figure out…..but just to accept..in order to be able to move ahead
Ahh Henry,
It warms my heart to read your response to my post and your subsequent post to Tami. See? You are doing Mahhvelous, dahling!…haha. And I hope you DO emphatically realize that you are NOT now nor ever been…a sociopath. By you reaching out to LoveFraud, reeling with intense pain and confusion, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, you are a good, loving, wonderful human being. Don’t you dare second guess yourself, Mister sweety…haha. You are the real deal. Your ex loser is a mess personified. Not your problem anymore. You have a beautiful, loving family who care tremendously for your welfare. Also proof positive of how the ones we love show they love us back. Reciprocity, my friend. Don’t you agree? I’m so proud of you and how far you’ve come in such a short time. To you it may seem like forever, but you are healing and recovering very well. ****HUG****
Tami, dear, as Oxy says….”HE IS THE LIE”….And I love her sentence…”Does it make any difference if the “serious problem” is called psychopath, sociopath, rubber duckie, or green tea?” He is what he is. He has caused you beaucoups of pain and suffering. He has caused you to even doubt yourself, to almost sacrifice your own identity to please his own selfish, self-centered hungers. He drained you, being the emotional vampire he is. Do you really need more proof that he’s just damn wrong? That he is the polar opposite of everything you believe, everything you hold dear, everything you cherish in yourself and others? No, you don’t. As we’ve read here so many times, from so many wonderful, PD free, LoveFraud peeps, it’s time to think about Tami. It’s time to focus your finite energy on YOU. Of course, continue discussing your experiences with him, all miserable eight years of it, to help yourself. And as Oxy says, read, read, read. You are not alone, especially since you’ve become a member of the LoveFraud fellowship. We are here for you.
Dear NewWV,
I had a problem with statistics too! I managed to get through it in one semester, and even with an A, but I never did understand it! Organic chem was another problem too, memorizing as those sugars and how the molecules were shaped–I fought that for weeks until finally, one day I just DID it! LOL Later, I saw the PURPOSE for memorizing them all.
Sometimes I think life is like that too, we dont’ understand a thing completely so we resist learning the “take home lesson” which is just to ACCEPT that it IS the way it IS.
Like with my mother, she doesn’t “fit” the Psychopathic Check List at all, yet her behavior is pretty much like a psychopath, completely devoid of empathy. So is she or isn’t she a P?
It really doesn’t matter at all. If it “looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, lays eggs like a duck” it doesn’t matter if you call it a chicken or a duck, it IS WHAT IT IS.
When I worked iin the newborn nursery in a hospital, we used to have a “label” we would put on a child that for some reason the nurses instinctively knew there was something wrong with but couldn’t “put our finger on what.” We would call that child an FLK (funny looking kid) 99 x out of a hundred, there would be something genetically wrong with that child. We might not know the name for it, may never have seen a case of that before, but we knew SOMETHING WAS NOT RIGHT WITH THAT CHILD.
The same applies to the psychopathic behavior of the people in our lives, we KNOW SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT WITH THAT PERSON, we may not be exactly sure of the “exact” problem, but we know that it is problematic, that there is something going on with that person that adversely effects us. Since, there is no “cure” for psychopathic people, no “fix” that we can do, the ONLY “solution” is to AVOID that person as soon as we know that there is something “wrong”—our efforts to stay around long enough to find out what or to try to fix it, will only result in damage to ourselves and NO benefit for that psychopath, or disordered person, or whatever label might apply.
Tami, I am so glad that you are making such progress, your strength and knowledge is increasing geometrically by the day! (((BIG hugs)))))
Henry,
One more personal point and then I’m off to go swimming!
I don’t think it’s necessary to attend a faith based institution to worship the Lord. Of course, if the pastor/preacher is well versed in Scripture and is formally educated in Theology then going to church would be an informative, joyful experience.
My view is that the Lord is everywhere, in everything. The smallest pebble, a glorious tree, butterflies, all critters, ourselves, even air molecules. His glory shines in the microcosm as well as the macrocosm.
And I think you can accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your own personal Savior in the privacy of your own home. In your backyard with your lovable weeny dogs, smilling in awe and joy at the natural beauty that surrounds you. Just a thought to share with you. I never consider anything I write here to be about me, me, me….it’s about us, us, us. Sharing, learning, caring with and for each other is imperative for growing up, to be a well-rounded, mature, mentally healthy individual. We’ve spent too much time and energy giving our all to unloving, uncaring, undeserving PDs, who are nothing but adult babies in big bodies. Time is now, to love us and love those treasured ones who love us also. 🙂
Jane You are so right, I feel a deep connection to nature, to our planet, I see beauty and miricles in nature every day. I am so blessed to recieve your words of comfort, thank you so much.
Thanks to all for your great responses! My better senses KNOW beyond a doubt that he has was may possibly be “GREEN TEA RUBBER DUCKIE SYNDROME”. LOL!
Y’all I’ve BEEN a member of lovefraud for nearly a year and a half and just maybe haven’t posted since some of you have been members. If you don’t mind reading it–I’ll tell you my story in it’s entirety.
I started to do my own research about my situation and ran across lovefraud and the sociopath definitions. A few months later I started seeing a professional counselor and upon the first visit told him my story of the “perfect” husband that treated me like his princess and seemed madly in love with me for nearly 8 years and then one day out of the blue announced that he was leaving me. Of course, he didn’t reveal to me that he was leaving me for a 29 year old woman that the whole town KNEW slept around! I honestly think he was embarassed of her because he knew I had heard him speak of how wrong she was treating her husband by sleeping with his best friend. That best friend was also the lead singer in my husband’s band. He remained in my house for three weeks after he told me that he wanted to leave me “to be own his own” because he said he had never even “paid rent before”. He was about to turn 39 and I thought he might be experiencing a mid-life crisis. I cried for three weeks, couldn’t sleep and couldn’t eat. I begged and pleaded for him not to throw everything we had away.
Here’s the really WEIRD part: He had always had soft angelic looks and expressions and what I believed to be a heart of gold–so very sensitive it seemed. He was Mr. Nice Guy–for 8 years. He and his mother even claimed that he was an EMPATH–that he got sick if he went around other sick people because he could feel so strongly what they were feeling.
During those three horrible weeks after announcing his intentions of leaving–he would approach me and tell me how much he loved me and how beautiful I was and we’d have sex. I fulfilled his every request as I was trying to save my marriage. Then, he would turn into literally a monster insisting that he “had” to leave and his mind was made up. He always said that he HAD to leave–that was the word he used–HAD. He said horrible things to me like: “I don’t see what the big f***ing deal is, Tami. We can still be friends, I’ll call you and come by your house–we might even hook up sometime”. Or, “I just want to stick my “D***” in everything”. I was horrified–his face was totally dark and his eyes were as cold as steel. I honestly feared that he was mentally ill. We’d be driving down the road and while I was a total zombie stricken with grief, he’d turn the radio on and sing and act as though I wasn’t there. He had NEVER called me by my name–very rarely. He suddenly took on a totally different personna with me and made sure that he almost “carefully” called me by my name–not a pet name. I asked him over and over if he was in some kind of trouble? Was there another woman? Had he gotten another woman pregnant. Each time, his answer was NO. He told me that our marriage was over and that was that. I was in shock–how could something SO good go SO bad almost overnight?
Then, the little miracle that is talked about on this site so much lately occured from where I don’t have clue. It just suddenly popped into that not only was there indeed another woman but I knew her identity. That’s when I confronted him and admitted that I was correct. He always thought I had some kind of special powers because sometimes I do know things that I don’t know how I know and for some reason–there was a lot of things revealed to me about him during our marriage–go figure–divine intervention–maybe? He told me that he knew it would do him no good to deny it because he knew that once I knew something–it was the truth. That’s when I told him that he had to leave and he had to leave right then.
After he left, people started approaching me from every direction to inform me of all the horrific things he had done during our marriage. About all the sexual encounters he’d had with everything from drug addicts to toothless women from the wrong side of town. I was blown away! I couldn’t understand how this man who seemed so PERFECT and treated me with such respect could have been doing these things behind my back. That’s when I started my research and ran across lovefraud and then started to see the counselor. I NEVER mentioned to the counselor that I feared my ex to be a sociopath–I just told him my story and ask how could someone do these horrible things and then come home and be the perfect loving husband? He said “your ex-husband is a classic sociopath and a very good one”. You could have knocked me over with a feather but at the same time, I was happy to learn that it was definitely HE who had the problem and not ME and that my own research and lovefraud had hit the nail on the head! And, yes, after hearing a professional describe him in this manner, I set out to warn his new “victim” and looking back that was a crazy thing to do! He had me totally fooled and I was 45 years old! A 29 year old girl didn’t stand a chance!
HENRY–YES! I SO agree with your statement about sociopath’s being big babies in adult bodies!!!! That is a perfect description of my ex and sadly, I think his boyishness is why I was attracted to him!
AND TO WHOMEVER IT WAS THAT ASKED IF I WANTED HIM BACK: No offense, but do you think I’m crazy???? LOL! There is NO way because I came to realize very early after he left that he is a LIE. He was NEVER real–this loving, sweet man that I called my husband never existed. Who he really is is the monster that I saw during those last weeks and I would not even want to BEFRIEND someone like that much less every be romantically involved with this kind of monster. I’m just working on my own recovery–trying to tell my story to people who DO understand because everyone else thought I was just a scorned ex-wife that couldn’t move past my grief! It’s not the grief–it’s the anger that I struggle with every day and the frustration in knowing that he’s still doing what he does to someone else–and once she wises up to him–he’ll move right onto the next victim that he more than likely already has in place! What these people do is CRIMINAL and they should be removed from society.
my sociopath does’nt understand the word NO. Everytime i tell him no, he acts like he didt hear me, and clearly ignores my request. He Has no Boundries on the word NO. Its funny to me how by me saying no, he says to me that i dont love him. haha i just laugh bc its unbelieveable how clueless they are and how they treat other people. its sicken to me, b/c they dont call or text bc they care or love you, they only do it bc they want to see if you will respond, if you r still are around. you tell them to stop calling you, and they continue like that conversation never happen.
Tami It was me that asked if you want him back. Because I ask myself that question all the time, and then I mentally list the reasons and whys and go over the past 3 years to reasure myself and be confident in my decisions. i know you didnt want him back sorry if it sounded that way. And thanks for re-posting your story, i like to know some specific’s with everyone here. As I am sure you have seen with me and my post sometime’s I am just all over the place with emotions that don’t even pertain to specific thread. But everyone here has a story and I am so fortunate that I found this place…. OXY you are right, what I was fearing when he was here is that I would feel pity for him, that is how he hooked me in the beginning and he did try it today, and deep down I do pity him but there is nothing I will do for him ever again,,,it’s done,,,it’s over,,,,,,thanks OXY for the hug 🙂