After all these years, I remain struck and fascinated by how readily, abruptly, selfishly and destructively my more narcissistic clients use blame as an interpersonal weapon.
This isn’t a surprising observation: Don’t like what you’re hearing (because it’s inconvenient)? Blame the messenger. Find an expectation oppressive (because it’s inconvenient)? Blame your partner as a nag, a bitch, or as insatiable.
Find it inconvenient to admit your deviousness or treachery? Blame the victim of your treachery for driving you into a corner and leaving you no choice (in other words, you betrayed me, before I betrayed you!).
For such individuals, blame becomes a reflex. It is often staggering to watch, as it suits their convenience in the moment, how they’ll switch it up and accuse a partner of something that they (not their partner) blatantly perpetrated.
Blame, in many of these cases, is often projected. By projected, I mean that the blamer (the aggressor) takes a feeling—say, guilt—and projects it onto his partner as, say, blame.
For instance, his guilt over an affair is projected as, “You drove me into her arms!” (In other words, I’m not guilty, but you should be!)
Should you challenge his twisted version of the truth, he may escalate his projecting along the lines of, “Don’t go pop psychology on me! There you go again, manipulating me with your pop psychology! You were a lousy wife, you treated me like shit, and so what the hell did you expect?! Shame on you! Take a look in the mirror, honey. You’re a loser!”
By now, a gaslighting effect risks emerging: disoriented by his vitriol and the seeming conviction of his accusations, you may begin to wonder, who’s crazy here? Him, as I once thought, or perhaps me?
Blame, of course, doesn’t always involve projection; sometimes the abuser’s contempt—that is, his devaluation of his target—is so great that, even while he’s consciously, lucidly aware that he violated you, he’ll blame you anyway.
This, of course, takes hubris. But what it most takes, as I just suggested, is a massive level of contempt. Consider the example of the individual who sexually assaults his victim and, fully recognizing the nature of his assault, nevertheless (and shamelessly) blames the victim, calling her a whore, saying she wanted it, she asked for it, she had it coming, what the hell did she expect?
My own view is that the sociopath, in general, has less need than the narcissist to “self-justify” his use of blame. His feeble conscience, which makes few, if any, demands of him, effectively enables and liberates the audacious expression of his contempt and self-centeredness.
I suspect this also explains (at least partly) how, knowing full well he’s been a scoundrel, the sociopath can look you in the eye with unabashed, naked contempt and brazenly endeavor to blame or lie his way out of accountability.
The comfort with which he can do this, the seeming absence of conflict, guilt and ambivalence with which he can blithely commit, and just as blithely deny, such exploitive behaviors, becomes a diagnostic indicator of his sociopathy.
(My use of “he” in this post was merely a convenience, and not meant to suggest that females aren’t capable of the behaviors and disorders discussed. This article is copyrighted © 2009 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Dear Vision,
“Didn’t Adam blame Eve and she blamed the snake?”
Yep, and Adam blamed God as well for the “woman you gave me” LOL
Your story also reminds us all that psychopaths are NOT just romantic relationships but can be about any relationship from friend to boss or co-worker, etc. One of the signs that makes me start “looking at” the person with some caution is the “instant best friend” ploy that they usually make, the “love bombing” and instant attraction. I am cautious as well about loaning money, very small amounts at first with people I trust pretty much, but it is a good indicator if they don’t pay it back promptly.
I never loan more money than I can afford to lose. If I get it back, fine, but I won’t ever loan anyone money and absolutely EXPECT it back, or depend on getting it back. So I don’t put myself in a pickle by loaning out my last dollar. I might GIVE someone my last dollar, but never loan it to them.
my blaming ex and his current wife who fit together like two puzzle pieces (I just spent 6 hours in a conference room as my attorney deposed them – and when it was done, we both agreed it was like spending 6 hours in the Twilight Zone) – launched a blaming abusive campaign against me, which lucky for me, a judge has defined as “triable”. I’ve been trying to navigate myself and my 3 children around these two toxic people for 7 years now. Previously, it took me 5 years to divorce this guy. We met when we were 18, and most of my adult life has been about trying to get away from him – YET – my advisors and friends tell me that I need to continue to advocate for child support and tuition – their father is doing very well financially. Anybody that has read advice on how to deal with sociopaths knows that the first thing advised is to STAY AWAY FROM THEM. So my life dilemma has been how to protect myself and my kids – yet – stay clear. This is like leaning over a quicksand pit in order to catch fish. All I can say to anybody who is dealing with a blaming sociopath (hell hath no fury like a sociopath scorned is): Find that calm place within your soul. Learn to love the peace inbetween the battles. Let the sociopath believe they’ve won the battle at hand. And, when sitting across the table from a sociopath – no matter how they are attacking you or your children verbally – don’t show any emotion. Put your courage to the sticking place – It is going to be alright as long as you keep yourself together. After doing battle, or after any unpleasant (they always are) encounters with sociopaths that you’re stuck dealing with – Get yourself back into that peaceful place. Find a puppy to pet, hug your children, say thank you to everybody who helps you that day – force yourself to smile. Calm gives you strength for whatever you need to do the next day.
Dear OxDrover,
You are right….I forgot about Adam blaming God….!!
I like the “instant best friend” crapola…..Now, she is calling me with great enthusiasm and I don’t answer…..
When I did pick up, she went on about herself and how we are going to go out…..etc…
Well, I am done…..so I will be so busy…..so much work…..and to make her go away in a subtle way is for me to be going away…like I am moving far away…..
Her favorite movie is this big revenge movie where the brothers hunt down their mother’s killer and then kill all involved….she says she watches it all the time….yikes!!!
She boasts of a gun license , interesting how my SP’s, boyfriend too, have guns, so they say, blah.blah….
Boyfriend also had told of dreams of wanting to shoot his ex…..Told me a “story” about when he was in law enforcement, of killing a man in custody who was going to kill his partner in law enforcement…….then because of this incident he had to resign rather then get his partner in trouble…..then lied to a friend of mine at a party, telling him he worked in law enforcement, (was wearing a security t shirt at party)….he doesn’t work in law….if he really did before……
I sure attract them!! But now being enlightened to them, I can avoid and protect……
My own daughter has some big issues….She is borderline….I want to say she is slightly SP……could tell stories and might later on….verbal abuse…..she can’t seem to control her tongue and is harsh and becomes angry at the slightest differences…..
One day I will talk with you on this……right now….I am trying to weed out the toxic people in my life not related….my family is a 6 ring circus…….
Steve,
Thank you for another good article. Blame, shame and guilt has been the paramount of my experience and what has molded me starting from my family of origen to the present. Your articles and interview on the Marth Strawbridge show are always explaining a piece of the puzzle validating my reality, and helping me heal.
Tilly and Oxy:
I read your sad stories of early childhood abuse and the continuous pattern of abuse you’ve indured into adulthood and my heart aches for you. Your courage and spirit to share, as well as your dedication to healing are trully amazing and enspiring.
Blame and the associated guilt and shame is a life long sentence on our psychi that is very difficult to extracate when our self esteem is not good.
I am learning a great deal from this site and the all the recommended books. The Betrayal Bond has been one of the most difficult to read because it forces us to look at our painful hisory.
And yet despite everything…..I’ve had contact again with my ex-NS… the one who is about to undergo prostate surgery. Call it MORBID CURIOSITY, but I used this recent encounter like a scientist studying a lab rat…which he is….Everything from his subbltle body language, to his covert tactics at blaming me for seeking other women out when he told me that I didn’t pay enough attention to him because I was too busy with my job, family and friends….became all the more apperant now when he found out I was recently un-employed and now says “now you need me, and now you can spend more time with me so I wont be so enclined to seek other women”! EGADS!
…why is it such a struggle to stay in NC?
..now the lab rat is playing the sympathy card and asking me to be there for him during his immediate surgery post recovery. I told him to go find one of the other women but he says “you’re the only one I trust”!!!!! and of course I know this is all part of the seduction again….but I loved this rat at one time and I’m strugglling with all the feelings right now….all because I caved in to contact with him. my fault….I am to blame.
Aeylah:
Okay, you caved. Stop beating yourself up.
S lived through the surgery. He will find a way to live after the surgery. No reason for you to live your life to suit his needs.
Yes, you loved him at one time. We have all been there. But, you have learned, as we all have learned, that they are incapable of loving us back. Why waste any more of a valuable resource — your ability to love — on this piece of crap?
Cut your losses, quite blaming yourself and get out now.
thanks Matt!
I needed to hear that. The hardest reprocution of being caught up in this for me is the self flagelation.
One correction…the S has not undergone his surgery yet, so I anticipate being “love bombed” with his attempts to engage me again. I cut my losess and will not cave in but there is still that morbid-addiction part of me that wants to keep track of him.
p.s.-I read you posts a long time ago and just read your recent ones and I’m so happy for you, you are doing well and found a new love….just keep the red flag doll near by. (a doll we should all have to stick red flags in it once they pop up….if you “dress” the doll up, you know it’s gone way too far and it’s time to bail).
I was recently in Ireland myself and loved it…the country, the people, the food….even some of the memories I share with ex S.
The “P”ex-boyfriend actually called me. He referred to me with an affectionate nickname reserved for people who adore me. He went on and on about how he hadn’t seen me and was worried about me. He said he wasn’t flirting with me but just so very concerned. The last time he saw me I was wearing a hot pink cast because I broken a bone spur in my left heel. (Speaking of heels….) At that time he offered no concern.
I saw him a couple of weeks after the phone call. He mentioned he’d called. I told him I only called people who returned my phone calls. (During that discard stage he stopped answering my calls, calling me, etc.) He went on and on about how much he cared blah blah blah.
I reminded him that I did need some help at the time of my injury and he offered nothing. I live alone in a two story house. If he had wanted to “redeem” himself that would have been the perfect time. We all know, however, that redemption isn’t something a “P” knows.
So, the last time I saw him (we go to the same workout facility) I totally ignored him. It felt really good to be at the stage where I no longer search for answers.
After he first discarded me I wanted to see him because I had to figure out how he could have changed so drastically. It helped in the process. Now I no longer dread seeing him. Now I no longer feel the need to rescue any woman he is with…the “other” woman didn’t believe me… (Now they have broken up after he brought her to the workout club and she saw me there…hmmm)
Anyway, blaming myself probably did more damage. I have felt there was something wrong with me…but I’ve taken these months off from dating and realize that I am a loving human being who deserves something more. I have learned to listen to my intuition and make choices that are healthy.
Lovefraud has helped me realize I’m not alone.
sstiles: i sure didn’t mean to give you the impression that i’m some bastion of security now. lol … hardly. but i make a great effort to ‘hold my head up’ when i go anywhere. work is safe, church is safe. but often i feel like no one should have to look at me. the spath made me feel like the ugliest, fattest woman on earth toward the end of our relationship. made me feel that every woman was more worthy of attention and affection than i was. told me my weight ”doesn’t do a think for you … TRUST me!” even though he was still having sex with me. so for months — while he was getting some new gf prego — he took what was left of my self-esteem.
emotionally i’m doing well, but my body and my sense of my own beauty — i’m not gorgeous, but i have a handsome, sensual look about me — is really warped now.
but that will get better too.
my mom sent me pics of myself today from about 18 years ago. i was stunning. never realized how beautiful i really was/am. but i believe in ‘fake it til you make it.’ and i WILL walk with my head up, knowing i am a perfect daughter of god, and NO ONE can take that from me.
the healing continues …
towanda!!!
The X sociopath used this one on me to new heights of destruction. He knew it wouldn’t be too long till I left him for good. So for the entire last six months he began to co opt MY old friends. Friends I’d lost contact with largely because of what he had done, what he had put me through.
Some I’d lost because I’d stayed with him so long and they just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I’d gone back after having been stolen from, abused in every way imaginable.
I finally got out, I mean really out emotionally…only to discover that one of his “new” transient populations is my entire circle of old friends. The people I was close to before the S. Now they are all HIS friends…all are empathetic to what *I* have supposedly done to *him*
He gave me a little warning in an email not long before I left…something that said “Even YOUR friends don’t like it when you won’t talk to them” At the time I had been in NC with him….and that got twisted into a story to my friends as to how I had disappeared on them, and now I had disappeared on him too because of course he was right, I had been the one who was cheating and lying all along.
*sigh* And another little way to “blame” was to take private things we had said and to post them as ME all over the net…so my children can find them..I think he may have even enlisted someone else in this “joke”
It’s all so sick and twisted…the problem is that they know they can always enlist “new” people who have never been involved with someone like this…their lies and depths of depravity are so skilled.
It was as if he wasn’t happy for me to leave until he had taken absolutely everything good I had in my life before he came along. So even after I was gone he continued the destruction, I supposed until he is satisfied by the by standers agreement that I am to blame, and that I have nothing left of my previous life. Both those things are beneath contempt but, they feel nothing, and the by standers helping to participate in this…well, I suppose they either will or will not find out who he really is before he moves on.
Some of these people actually KNOW that he stole from me among other horrific things he pulled..and are STILL listening to his twisted version. He’s done this to every other person he has ever “loved”
I have moved on. I am interacting with new people…I’m slowly putting my life back together but, I must say..this was a huge waste of five years. My relationship with my son has suffered most. I’ve lost all of my savings but, losing the closeness I once had with my kid was the biggest blow of all.
I feel better than I did a year ago when I was suicidal, and had the symptoms of PTSD so badly. I feel blessed that I’m feeling much freer of this entire sink hole now.
In the case of the X monster…I wish there was a jail for him. He’s done nothing his entire life but, destroy anyone who got close to him…then blame them for having been destroyed to all who would listen. Some of the women who came before me…god the things he did to them. I was able to find them all…and find out their real truth and not the story line he told me. He needs to be imprisoned before he does cost someone their life. He is too slick to leave visible marks, his abuse is mostly financial and psychological..it’s only physical in that he loves to get someone impregnated as he called before he robs them blind and runs off. He does it on purpose..he told me so. He brags to new people about his “children” and plays “pitiful” with a made up story *blame* about how he can’t “see his children” due of course to some evil woman’s actions. It’s all lies…usually he’s hiding from them and has taken all their cash when he bolted.
Blaming someone and enlisted others in that blame for their own abuse…these are things I couldn’t even in my wildest dreams think of before the S.
I feel glad to be away from the exposure to such sick and twisted depths of depravity. Being around normal people with boundaries is so refreshing after this!!
Aeylah, It is interesting to me how you refer to a ‘morbid curiousity’ regarding the ex. I have the same strange fixation regarding my ex. I’ve kept it to myself because I’ve been somewhat ashamed of it but I do understand that I keep this vigil because of some need to find justice and vindication. I don’t hate the man nor do I actually care about him in any sense of the word. Yet, 15 years of my life were spent with a stranger and I didn’t know he was a stranger until after I got away from him. Now he is still connected to my family and I watch and wait to see who he pretends to be now and what he will ultimately do to his ‘new’ wife… who is my ex-daughter-in-law. I’d like to stop doing this because I understand that true healing will only come when I have developed a total sense of indifference. However, my grandchildren are living with him and this situation does not lend itself to full closure. You can not imagine how much I want this man to show his true colors again and then clear out… just like he did with me. Vicki