Old time psychoanalysts connect a young child’s desire to share experiences with caregivers to the development of a healthy personality. The idea that any pleasure is better if we share it starts shortly after the first birthday. That is also the time language starts to develop. Words then become a way to share experiences. Healthy people use words to share their feelings, interests and desires. A little child who has just learned to walk will bring her toy over to dad to share it. She is delighted when he makes some comment about it. We take for granted that everyone has this desire to share and take mutual delight.
As I write this I am sharing with you truths I have found deeply meaningful, so you are getting a part of me when you read what I write. If you read the many posts I have written you can get to know me to a certain degree. But what if my writing was not a reflection of anything I personally care about. What if I wrote only to cause some sort of reaction in you? I am not capable of that kind of writing because it is only my desire to share what I think is interesting and compelling that at all motivates me to write. If nothing interesting happens to me I find I have nothing to share and nothing to write. For me the sharing is everything, I wouldn’t write without it. After reading a new book, I thought about sharing this week and realized that if I didn’t want to share, I wouldn’t communicate at all. I like teaching at the university because for me teaching is a form of sharing and I feel affection for the students.
It has been nearly 6 years since I said goodbye to a sociopath, but I am just now coming to grips with many aspects of the disorder. This week I understood on an emotional level this idea of sharing through verbal communication.
Regarding psychopaths, Elizabeth Howell wrote in The Dissociative Mind page 251:
Used instrumentally, words do not share the self or communicate with the other, but function as triggers to effect targeted behavior in another person. Even when the psychopath uses words imbued with a highly symbolic meaning, such as religious words or words evoking trust, he is not operating in the realm of symbolic thought (because his/her words are not functioning to symbolize any inner feelings). Thus psychopaths may appear or seem to be involved with symbols, as others are, but they are using their knowledge of others'(use of words) ”¦and manipulating through them.”
Rather than for sharing, a sociopath uses words instrumentally or for effect. His or her words have no real relationship to anything on the inside”¦ truly remarkable if you ask me; a reality that completely blows me away when I think about it even after all these years.
Howell further writes:
Unimpeded by any concern for the other or considerations of conscience, the psychopath uses language in a manner that can be highly effective in achieving the desired ends. And to the degree that instrumental behavior is effective it will be repeated.
As I consider what Howell wrote I am reminded of the card Gem’s father wrote to her for her 18th birthday (see last week’s blog). The card was purely instrumental, designed to have an effect on the reader.
Consider the profound implications of the instrumental use of language. You will likely come to two conclusions regarding what your sociopath says. First you always have to wonder what the sociopath is trying to achieve with his words because it ain’t sharing. Second you realize that no real communication is possible.
If you are stuck in life with a sociopath or are trying to decide if a continued relationship is possible please consider that every word that comes from the sociopath is instrumental. The sociopath has never shared herself with you. The sociopath has never really shared a pleasure with you. Even the sex was not about sharing. The sex was about the sociopath’s pleasure and his or her prowess as a lover.
Rune,
Yes, I am sure he had those feelings. These people feel a lot, but it’s all about them. And it’s mostly about the gap between what they have and what they want. If I had to boil their feeling spectrum down to a single thing, it would be ripped-off. And their emotional structure is built around that.
And that, ultimately, is how they leave us feeling.
You misunderstood me (or maybe I wasn’t clear). I didn’t train him. He did or said whatever he did or said to keep me on the hook and keep me funneling my resources into him.
I don’t find them mystifying. They’re actually pretty simple. They can’t trust, can’t feel empathy and can’t bond. Their best effort at understanding human relations with those handicaps is that they are about power dynamics (who’s up and who’s down), and their idea of a successful relationship is one in which they are winning.
Their handicaps make it impossible for them to navigate any area of human affairs that requires compassion or trust, so they use what they have to neutralize those factors. They use bullying, intimidation, sabotage, emotional abuse, and anything else that levels the playing field to power issues, at which they’re better than anyone else because they’re not distracted by caring about anyone else. Unless that person has more power or something else they want, which they will suck up for, until they taken all they can.
So the net of it is that you can’t play with them, unless you like losing. You can’t invite them into a communal situation (including a relationship) unless you want to see it turn into a bloody power drama. And if you’re stuck with one of them and can’t get rid of him, you’re only chance is to use their own tactics against them. This is — hold out a big gold ring with “Total Power, Universal Fame, Enforced Adoration” written on it, pick a time when the sun’s in their eyes, and use it to guide them right off a cliff.
What’s not to understand, unless you’re still waiting for them to snap out of it and act like a communal animal. It’s not going to happen. That side of their brain has all the lights turned off. All they do is me, me, me.
As far as following the money goes, it’s not money with them. Or money isn’t the primary issue. It’s winning, domination, status. More of the power stuff. When I look at my history with this guy, and ask myself what he got out of any given interaction, 99 percent of the time it was about power positioning. Getting what he wanted fell under that umbrella.
The other one percent was about thrills. Something that would penetrate the dead zone around their hearts. Dangerous sports. Weird sex. High-risk whatever. That’s my take on their famous lack of impulse control. They are desperate to feel something more interesting than triumphing over the rabble. It keeps them from getting depressed about how boring their lives are.
And their lives are boring and depressing. Can you imagine what it’s like to always be hanging around with lesser beings? Or to keep winning and winning and winning without it ever really changing your feeling of being ripped off?
Even if they’re bipolar, which a lot of them are, and they get occasional times of manic optimism, reality returns and their reality is black and bitter.
As I said, they’re no one to play with. But they’re great to feel sorry for, if you can get your mind wrapped around it.
akitameg,
I know you miss your dog, but the more I hear from you the more confident I feel that you are going to do well this year.
I will keep you, your sweet ex husband and your dog in my prayers.
.
Kathy:
I agree with you about how simple they are. They’re good at using whatever tactics they have in their grab-bags to try to keep the upper hand during the course of a so-called relationship.
Mine was always the master at using words to keep me on the hook. Now that I think back on it, he always knew which ones to trot out just when I had reached my limit — “you’re right. I’ve been running from my problems. Between prison and my ex, I do need to see a therapist. yada. yada. yada” Exactly what I wanted and needed to hear.
But then the brain fog lifted.
I don’t think you have to wait until they have the sun in their eyes to lead them over a cliff. I’ve recently come to see my S for the one trick pony he really is.
Personally, I’m surprised at how easy it has been to manipulate him into the spot I wanted him. Healing Heart and I both commented on this on another thread. After the extended browbeating and financial beating I took from him,. I expected more.
Blondie:
Do you keep a journal or date book with where you are at particular days and times and with whom? If so, have pull this stuff together so you can counter the charges in the PPO.
The complainant (aka psycho bitch) is going to have to give the DA’s office specific examples of when you supposedly harrassed her. It will help bullet-proof yourself if you can present evidence or witnesses that you were no where near her or ever contacted her on those occasions.
Litterbox:
Personally, if you were my client I’d advise you to continue no-contact and doing the third party drop and having all communications go through your lawyer.
Based on what you’re saying, it looks to me like he’s startng to crack and you’ve got him on the run. It’s clear to me that he’s desperate to engage you because he thinks he can manipulate you. By keeping out of the mix, you’re taking that away from him.
I hate to say that the only thing most people understand is a hit to their pocketbooks, but I think its true. You can try to reason, cry, and everything under the sun. End of the day, its money (aka sawbucks, moola, greenbacks, dead presidents, cash, dinero, etc) that speaks loudest.
Right now, your ex-S is in a “pay to play” situation. He’s paying child support for the right to keep playing with you and your child. Any engagement with him keeps the playing alive for him. When he finally realizes you won’t play, he will most likely, move onto a new playground and stop paying.
If he doesn’t pay child support, you’ve got some pretty potent weapons in your arsenal. You can attach his income tax refunds. If he’s in a licensed profession, in a lot of states he cannot renew his license (hence, no livelihood). You can garnish his wages. If he owns real estate you can lien his property. You get the idea.
The point is, your two most potent weapons against him are refusing him what he wants — contact and making it hurt financially. When he sees there is nothing to be gained, he’s going to want to cut his losses.
That will be your opportunity, as OxDrover pointed out, to bargain with him — you terminate parental rights and I stop coming after you for money. A lot of states are reluctant to terminate parental rights — unless the parents is willing to have his rights terminated. Something tells me yours will.
blondie, I had been working with a woman in victims resources and her take was DO NOT RESPONND or you just look defensive when you are not required to be. she probably is pissed at him and lashing out at you. the XS had all kind of female responses to protecting him….his sister, daughters, trashy girlfriend. they are all poisoned. we are not crazy but can be made that way with that kind of craziness. ignore them. its not something that you can respond to in a positive way.
keeping_faith:
I just want to clarify. I agree with you about her not responding to the girlfriend. I was referring to blondie’s having to respond to the authorities if they approach her.
Akitameg: When I said, “you can’t even follow the money,” I mean that even GREED is not a reliable indicator of what they will do. In fact, you may see them do something that will cost them money, or destroy money that they might have gotten, just because they get a bigger thrill out of sabotage (a power trip) than out of getting money. They may also go along on a predictable course to lull you into security; then they’ll jump out and do something dangerous or destructive.
As Kathleen said, “As far as following the money goes, it’s not money with them. Or money isn’t the primary issue. It’s winning, domination, status. More of the power stuff.” And I add, that I’ve seen pointless unpredictability, just because being unpredictable is another power trip.
Matt: I agree with just about everything you’ve said, except your confidence that money will talk. It doesn’t hurt to work that angle, but don’t be thinking that you really can control the situation that way. By all means, get back all you can, and use every part of the system to do it. I’m all in favor of that.
But I think it’s important to remember that this is a Personality Disorder, and you are dealing with a Disordered Person. Thinking that the horse will follow the carrot can get you in trouble. The horse (jackass, Oxy?) may follow the carrot only long enough to lull you before galloping off in the worst possible direction to take you over the cliff.
I also think it’s important to remember (and experts tend to agree) that this disorder runs along a spectrum. You may have been dealing with an 8, my neighbor with a 3, Oxy seems to have had everything from a 4 to a 13, etc., etc. (I’m making up those numbers just to illustrate a scale, not to refer to the PCL-R or any other diagnostic tool.)
Kathleen: I think I had a different breed. He was excellent at faking emotions, but I don’t believe that one of them was real. Maybe mine (I hate to claim him, but I guess he was my personal “lab rat”) was further along the spectrum, and the emotions were approaching non-existent. But, wow, he was great at faking them.
I didn’t get rages from him, a bit of weird jealousy that didn’t play well since I was running construction crews that were virtually all male, but I got a lot of tender solicitous concern. “Have you had breakfast, dear? Let me bring you coffee.” While he was burning money with his stupid sabotage maneuvers behind my back.
You say, “Yes, I am sure he had those feelings. These people feel a lot, but it’s all about them. And it’s mostly about the gap between what they have and what they want. If I had to boil their feeling spectrum down to a single thing, it would be ripped-off. And their emotional structure is built around that.”
No, I saw him matter-of-factly turn away from a situation where he didn’t think he had anything to gain, and move on to the next situation. His brother was his long-lost brother, dearest man in the world, until suddenly he didn’t have anything to say to his brother at all. Couldn’t be bothered to go to a 5-person dinner to feed his brother on his birthday. It was like the brother just ceased to exist in the S/P’s mind. The only time I saw him angry was when he felt thwarted by something. I was more likely to see him just calmly setting up his next maneuver, with no emotion at all.
I do remember him getting misty-eyed one time early on when he described his family life. “I was working from before dawn until late in the evening, but I would come home from work or from a business trip and the children would all run to the door and dance around me, shouting, “The King is back, the King is back.” He looked mournful as he said, “I really miss that.” Was that an authentic emotion? I have a hard time putting that anecdote and what I know about the guy into any meaningful emotional spectrum. At this point, I think he was mostly telling me that story to try to get sympathy out of me, while remembering how good it felt to have all that narcissistic supply.
Matt,
I agree with you. in fact, in my case, I had over 30 incidents of stalking documented and witnesses and this was after a call from the sheriff to the xS. so yes her own documentaion of even sightings of these people or person is important for he to keep as well.
its no wonder WE start to think WE are crazy. look at the lengths they go to just to be on the offensive.
Rune, I think the anger you saw was genuine. I think your circumstances were different than mine, but not necessarily the emotional make-up.
I’m probably being too abstract about the ripped-off thing. And I’ll have to think about how to be more articulate about it. It doesn’t mean that he’s projecting that, just that it’s a core value that his personality is constructed around.
Where your situation was different that mine was that he was projecting a facade. Mine wasn’t, or not to anything like that degree. Mine would push the occasional button to get something he wanted, or put on a cheery or amusing bit of charismatic facade to hold onto his position, but mostly he didn’t bother to hide how he felt. I knew what he was. He knew that I knew what he was. I was so hooked it didn’t matter.
About the sentimentality. Yeah, that’s their version of participating in human emotions. It always makes me think about Nazis singing song about the homeland and crying in their beer about their mothers and girlfriends in between rounding up Jews, gay people and gypsies.
But I actually have a wonderful/horrible story about my ex. After he’d left me in California to go skiing for the winter, taking income (from a client I gave him) that could have saved the house I’d been renting for him and supporting him without a cent of contribution from him (including the months he was working on that client), and I lost the house, and there’s more but I don’t want to bore you or embarrass myself, after all that …
He called me one day to tell me, “you aren’t the only one who had feelings about the end of our relationship.” Oh really?
It turned out he’d been driving through one of the flyover states between Colorado and his parents’ home out East when a song, a piece of pop rock he’d liked when he was a teenager, came on the radio. And wonder of wonders, he found himself remembering how nice it was to live in that great house in the Hollywood Hills and — drumroll, maestro — feeling something like missing me.
I was so impressed that I wrote a phony article for the Journal of Paranormal Events about the sighting of a mysterious feeling in the Midwest. I sent it to him with a note about how, if I’d only known that was the trick, I’d have run it like Musak in the house, and maybe I’d still have the house.
My father was sentimental too. He could make himself cry by singing “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.”
Blecch.