A big problem we face in sizing up a partner is getting stuck on, or being seduced by, his “light side—”that is, his apparently (or genuinely) wonderful, engaging, admirable, gratifying qualities.
However, when we’re dealing with a sociopath, there is also the other side—the “dark side.”
By “dark side” I mean, essentially, the sociopath’s exploitive side. And by exploitive I mean, very specifically, his calculated use of leverage to betray you somehow; moreover, to betray you with gross insensitivity to your experience of the injury or insult he’s inflicted.
The “light side” of the man must never compensate for his “dark side,” regardless of how well-concealed, and rarely, the latter may surface.
Most of us would take six sunny days in exchange for one cold, dreary, rainy one. That’s a trade-off we’d probably gladly accept. It’s not perfect, but it’s good, and it does nothing to compromise our integrity.
Yet six days, six months, six years of the man’s light side must not mitigate a single instance, a single flash (let alone pattern) of his dark side. One act of exploitation, the very first, necessitates, however sadly, that we cut our losses with minimal delay and filibustering.
Yet, in case after case I see clients who, understandably, prefer not to see their partners’ dark side. They prefer, naturally, to see his light side—his strengths, what he can be, what he usually is, what he “really” is!
They seize on his capacity for sensitivity, thoughtfulness, tenderness, warmth, good humor, patience, soliticousness, you name it. They desperately want to convince themselves, if not others, that his capacities define his essence!
Because he can be thoughtful, his essence must be thoughtful! Because he can be sensitive, his essence must be sensitive! Because he can be unselfish and candid, his essence must be unselfish and honest! Because he can go periods when he’s not (apparently) screwing around, his essence must be faithful!
I’m not speaking here about flawed partners who screw up, who make mistakes, who lose their course, their priorities, and in so doing sometimes wound others badly. In our fallibility we can make a mess of things, and hurt the people we care and love. Whether our transgressions are forgivable is for those whom we’ve disappointed to decide.
But the man with the dark side is a different case. When he reveals the capacity to exploit, he’s not revealing his human face, but his inhuman face.
He’s revealing the face of his dark side.
And while it’s a sight you might like to avoid, you musn’t. While you’d rather turn away until the view of his “light side” resurfaces, you must not. You must, instead, see him, unmasked, and recognize him, unmasked.
You must recognize him for who he is, in his essence.
(My use of “he” in this article is for convenience’s sake and not meant to suggest that females aren’t capable of the behaviors discussed. This article is copyrighted (c) 2010 by Steve Becker, LCSW)
Myboys:
At 12 years old…they have a mind of their own….and the courts recognize this…
My kids told thier dad to FUCK OFF AND THEY HOPED HE”D DIE…
Yeah, yeah….I got ‘blamed’ for this….big deal! We have broad shoulders!
At what point in time does it NOT matter how a child feels towards their father?….They are entitled to their feelings. PERIOD…They lived it, saw it with their own eyes and came to their own conclusions.
DO NOT BE HARD ON YOURSELF, this was a challenge and you learned so very much…you learned that he will use your son….you learned the ‘words’ he uses to trigger you and make you seem ‘crazy’…(WHCIH Btw…is what any mother would do is protect their child…)
It’s easy to be NC when their not pursuing us….it’s when we either get lonely…it s hard or THEY are in touch with us and catch us off guard.
We need to mentally prepare ourselves for the ‘next’ potential attempt. Because it will happen…
Use this as information and enlightenment about YOU…how you react and how you feel…and fine tune your response for if your ever caught off guard again…you can be in total contol and have a poker voice/ face!!!
Yeah and the S even testified in court I encourage our kids to use profanity towards him!
No….but I can understand how they feel….and hate, jerk and mean just doesn’t fit their bill!
I think no contact with the father of your children would be very difficult. No contact would be more about healthy boundaries for you and your children, because like it or not he is their father. I feel for you, thank goodness my x is history.
And thank god you never got pregers too hens!!!
See their is an upside!
🙂
myboys – One of the MANY important lessons I learned from my own experience with a malignant narcissistic sociopath (today I really feel like hammering home exactly WHAT the piece of garbage is) is to….
STOP being mad at yourself.
STOP beating yourself up.
STOP putting yourself down.
STOP TELLING YOURSELF things that make you feel like SHIT.
Because you know what? YOU are doing the sociopath’s work for him!!!!
This is what I realized.
Telling yourself GOOD things about yourself AS OFTEN as possible WILL MAKE you stronger and better. It really works.
Beating yourself does NOT work. EVER. EVER. EVER.
It makes us feel like kaka and do we really need any more of that?
I think not 🙂
GREAT advice lightsaber….
Now to take my own advice and never break it, this is the hard part. But, I’m doing well. See? No beating myself up 😛
Myboys – we have all done it at one point or another – thrown all our good intentions out the window because they started their crap again and we were sorely provoked. This is normal – you have recognised that contact with him in a personal way is unhelpful for you … so just retain that message and move on – forgive yourself. You are human just like the rest of us and sometimes we make mistakes. You are doing well in maintaining no contact or limited contact so use this experience to strengthen those boundaries and remind yourself of what is BEST FOR YOU.
I am really sorry you found out you won’t be able to keep the house – that must be unsettling at the very least and upsetting. I would have lost it in those circumstance worse t han you! We go through all this suffering with them and then they walk off without a care in the world and we are expected to take the higher road and behave like ‘adults’ all the time when they get to do whatever the heck they want. Only a saint would be able to keep silent and not fire back something at them. I hope you’re feeling a bit better now 🙂
A guidebook for recovering from the devastation of a sociopath’
I want to pull this thread up, but for some reason the comment function is not operating in that thread.
it has been a very eventful 2 days.
i have had the opportunity to engage my ‘story’ in many ways. first, i wrote a piece about my N dad and sent it to Donna. It will show up here sooner or later. Then I spoke with a Lf blogger, and started to tell my story. it was hard. i started to tell the story of love that i had believed i was involved in, and i pretty quickly short circuited and went to how i knew who i was really dealing with, in that love story. i knew what i was dealing with, a sociopath, before I knew who, and her long history of abusing people.
i didn’t however, know all that a spath does and what they look like in our lives. i just knew that NO ONE would do what that person/ persons did without being seriously disordered.
I had this feeling laid ‘over me’ and clinging to me, and under my skin and in my life EVERYWHERE….this malignancy; truly this feeling like there was something growing and not right it my life. and i couldn’t shake it. this perceptual base/ this state/ this set of feelings/ this loss of hope/ this bleak sense of imminent nothingness with a journey of skinless self injury – I realized last night, that by coming here, and laying it down here, and listening to my heart/self here, and to your heart selves, your misconceptions of who and what you are in your hurting spathed spaces, I realized that that malignancy is no longer all pervasive/ formless, inherent to my waking moments – it has name and shape and some containment: it is SPATH.
NOT ME, but spath. NOT YOU, but SPATH.
and the unwanted visitor the other night: another piece in the puzzle. I am proud of myself for how i handled that. pleased as punch about all of us who were here and just closed. the. fucking. door. and don’t let it catch your dick on the way out.
it gave me a glimspe of what i want in my toolbox, to deal with a variety of people in life. I have genuinely beleived that evil was ‘out there.’ NO, evil, is EVERYWHERE. and so is joy and compassion.
I have lived a lot of my life feeling like i needed a barrier between me and some of the people – starting with family of origin. well, the old man is an N, and the mother – that diagnosis is for another day – the point is I didn’t need a skin to keep me safe from ‘people’, I need a special skin to deal with this N/s/P triad of fuckwads. I am grateful to see this. Cause, it’s NOT ABOUT ME. IT’S THEM!
i also feel that i am growing this skin i have so long wanted. i am open within it. but not everything is going to get behind it. i have NEVER thought this possible. and the big ingredient to growing it, is realizing it’s not me, IT’S THEM.
OKAY! 🙂
myboys,
Don’t beat yourself up. Learn from it and let it go, hon. I can’t tell you the times I’ve wanted to pick up the phone when yet another problem comes up that was created by the messes my ex left me with, but I know that’s what he wants and that “boy” ain’t getting what he wants out of me anymore. The urge is STRONG at times, but we all have faced that. I write instead. I have pages and pages written about that pig and what he did and what I think of him. That’s very healing for me. I’m getting the anger out but not giving him the satisfaction of hearing it.
Like pollyanna said, you had just been given some very tough news and that would make me want to go for the jugular in a heartbeat.
EB:Thanks to you and others as well for letting me know I’m doing this right and learning along the way. 🙂
Calling during a set time with an identifiable number…yeah, I like that! He had actually called here and I didn’t answer the phone. I told my son he called and my son wasn’t even interested in calling him back. What’s that tell you? I have complete custody and am quite sure I’ll retain that.
I’m filing the report today and asking for the extra copies as well. I did call and tell his probation officer that he had pulled this stunt and I agree with you, he was thinking he would look good when and if the police showed up. NOT. They do see through these things.
Making sure the other agencies have a copy is EXCELLENT. It has been a surprise to me that the sheriff’s dept. doesn’t know what the city police are doing and the city police don’t know what MY city police (I live in a suburb) are doing. I’ll get extra copies (I already have one in my purse) and send to them as well.
If he should try to walk even TOWARDS my house, I’ll call. And I can do that because there is even a certain distance he must be away from me. This works well for when I go to my son’s basketball games, etc. He can’t be there, but that’s part of what he did to himself. Oh well. ..
Myboys, I don’t blame your son for saying what he did. Mine will be 11 in May and he already has a mind of his own. I’m guessing your ex was more about blaming YOU for your son saying this than actually being hurt by what his son said. That isn’t going to matter. What matters is that now he has more ammo against you and don’t they just all love that? The courts understand though, as others have said.
lightsaber; excellent and well said! after my ex was caught stealing the family jewels because certain members of my family still believed he was worth saving, they were mad at me for bringing him into the family in the first place! I pointed out that as long as there was anger and dissension between family members, he was still in control. That stopped them in their tracks and things have been much better since.
I don’t know about others, but I can’t stand to even LOOK at this person. I swear I’m allergic to him. That few seconds he was in the house was enough to give me hives.