Lovefraud recently received an e-mail from a young man, we’ll call him Kyle, who has just broken up with a woman whom he now believes is a sociopath. Based on the behavior he described, I’d say the guy is right. The woman cheated on him, and when confronted, either downplayed her behavior, said it was none of his business, or verbally attacked him. She had no interest in resolving problems. “Her solution to everything was to run, wait awhile, and then pile on affection as if nothing ever happened,” Kyle wrote.
Kyle has been researching sociopathy to try to grasp what is really going on with this woman. Here’s more of his e-mail, which I have reproduced with his permission:
First of all, I don’t believe criminal behavior, monetary fraud, substance abuse, or any other overt signs of social misconduct are primary symptoms of sociopathy. I suppose that’s the big question though… what is a primary sign? My theory is that the sociopath is incapable of developing personal values through the process of induction, meaning they are unable to look within themselves to gain a sense of self-esteem. This results their inability to experience empathy. After all, if one cannot generate a sense of self worth from their own reasoning how can they be expected to relate to others who do?
It seems in every case I have read about, the sociopath is an extravert. I think this is natural as the person must constantly be in contact with others because they find no satisfaction in themselves. Sociopaths also seem to be universally intelligent. (Perhaps these are the factors that differentiate a sociopath from a psychopath. Again, forgive my ignorance on the subject). What results is a charming individual who preys on other people to satisfy an endless hunger for temporary esteem. Because they cannot make sense of the internal values which should be generating this esteem, they simply try to get it from others, essentially reversing cause and effect.
In the end, this system never quite works, so they develop an incredible defense to avoid the fact that every close relationship falls apart. Every interaction is bounded by a series of rules/parameters. So long as the victim stays within these, things run smoothly. However, close human contact results in an emotional trade off that is impossible to control. Normally this is a tremendously good thing: trust, loyalty, and compassion are established. However, these all rely on a person’s sense of self worth, and the sociopath is not able to understand that. Sooner or later the relationship becomes too close and loses all stability. This is the point where the sociopath is “found out.”
In dealing with the woman, I felt a certain childlike quality to her emotions throughout our relationship. Though she was highly developed socially, in a lot of ways I almost felt like I was dealing with a puppy who just killed a small bird in the front yard. I think my mistake was in believing that I would be different. If I held my hand out she wouldn’t bite it. But I think this quality is misleading, as that naiveté is something the sociopath will avoid at all costs. They simply refuse to learn from their mistakes, or even acknowledge them in the first place. It seems to be a rare combination of a highly developed intellect and a poorly developed emotional response.
Perhaps at some point every sociopath learns to guard that core of insecurity at the deepest level and as such cannot even look at that, let alone analyze it and learn from it. In time, they develop an incredibly complex mechanism to guard this, adding another component with each deception. By early adulthood, these deceptions become so many that the cost is just too great to turn back, and it’s just so much easier to keep going that the thought never even crosses their mind.
These people are not normal
Kyle has correctly observed many traits of a sociopath: Criminality, fraud and substance abuse are not necessarily the prime indicators of this personality disorder. Sociopaths do not experience empathy. Sociopaths are extraverts. They are highly developed socially, but emotionally immature. They do not learn from mistakes.
However, his theories on why sociopaths are the way they are suffer from a fatal flaw: They are developed from the perspective of someone who is normal.
The hardest part of understanding what happened during our entanglements with sociopaths is coming to terms the extent to which these people are not normal.
Lovefraud readers have described sociopaths as not human. Aliens inhabiting human bodies. As cold as these descriptions may sound, they’re probably the easiest way to grasp what you are dealing with in a relationship with a sociopath.
So how different are they? Let’s take a look.
What sociopaths want
Normal people want love and harmonious relationships with others. Normal people want to feel competent in some form of endeavor. Normal people want to contribute to the world in some way.
Sociopaths want power, control and sex. Since they do not really value human relationships, they only want to win.
Kyle is correct in stating that sociopaths cannot look within themselves and develop personal values. He is incorrect in assuming that this causes the sociopath distress. Yes, these disordered people are empty inside, and they may be vaguely aware that they are missing something. But most sociopaths do not have issues with their self-esteem. If anything, they are grandiose, and their views of themselves are ridiculously inflated. They feel absolutely entitled to anything that they want, simply because they want it.
Self-esteem and sociopaths
Kyle speculates that sociopaths must be in constant contact with other people because they are trying to borrow self-esteem from others. This is not the case. Sociopaths view people as pawns to be manipulated into giving them what they want. Every social encounter is a potential feeding opportunity, a chance to convince someone to provide something.
Many people, of course, eventually catch on that they are being used, and stop serving as supply to the sociopaths. Sociopaths are aware of this—they’ve experienced it many times. So they are constantly on the lookout for new targets. When one victim is depleted, he or she must be replaced with another.
This leads to the answer to Kyle’s question, which is, “what is a primary sign of sociopathy?” Dr. Leedom has said lying. Steve Becker has said exploitative behavior. Put them together and you can say deceitful exploitation is central to the disorder.
Insecurity and sociopaths
Kyle suggests that sociopaths are insecure and build defense mechanisms to protect themselves from being hurt. By the time they’re adults, these defense mechanisms are so elaborate and complex that sociopaths can’t return to their authentic selves.
Again, he’s trying to interpret the sociopath based on how normal people may cope with personal issues. This is a mistake.
Wikipedia defines insecurity as, “a feeling of general unease or nervousness that may be triggered by perceiving oneself to be unloved, inadequate or worthless.” Sociopaths probably should see themselves as unloved, inadequate or worthless, but they don’t. They may seem to be exhibiting insecurity, but in reality it’s one of two things:
- Frustration that they’re not getting what they want.
- Manipulation tactics to get what they want.
Sociopaths have no feelings, so there are no feelings to hurt. They can certainly pretend to be hurt, but it is a ruse designed to guilt others into giving them what they want.
Genetic roots
So if sociopaths are not trying to protect their deeply felt insecurities, where does this disorder come from? In most cases, the temperamental traits that lead to sociopathy are genetic. That usually means one of the parents is a sociopath, and sociopaths are notoriously bad parents. If a child is born with the traits, bad parenting can make them develop the full disorder.
But even if a child with the traits gets good parenting, the disorder can develop. Parents who have a child at risk of developing sociopathy need to take extra steps to help the child overcome his or her predisposition, but the parents may not realize it. And in some cases, even the best parenting is not enough to overcome negative genetics.
It is also possible for a mostly normal child who has extremely an extremely bad growth experience—such as being moved from foster home to foster home as a baby—can develop the disorder.
Accept and avoid
Please understand that I am not picking on Kyle. He’s obviously given a lot of thought to his experience with a sociopathic woman, and is trying to understand what happened. He has a reasonably good handle on normal behavior and normal motivations.
His letter simply provided me with an opportunity to illustrate that what we know and understand about normal human behavior simply does not apply to sociopaths. Thank you, Kyle, for allowing me to quote you.
In the end, we may not be able to truly comprehend sociopaths. The way they go through life is just too foreign to our natures. We must simply accept that they are very, very different from us, learn to recognize the symptoms, and if we see them, run for the hills.
DEar Kathy,
Ask Donna for my e mail address or ask her to send me yours, I would love to discuss things with you.
Yes, the dysfunctional family situation has gone on for GENERATIONS on my mother’s mother’s side of the family. I can trace it directly back to a man born in 1800 who was an alcoholic, and abused his slaves and his family. There is a 287 page court document in Sumner County, TN where he was in a “custody” fight with the uncle of his step-son over custody of the kid (who BTW had a heafty inheritence from his deceased father) the two men were both Ps and were in a spiteful nasty court case over the kid and his inheritence, the kid died at age 14 before the court case was over and his inheritance from his father went to his half siblings, but the court documents in 1840 and the testemony were absolutely FUNNY in retrospect. The Psychopathic step father was a “real peace of work” and so was the “uncle”—it read like the National Enquirer! But that whole branch of the family had so many murder/suicides and alcohol problems that it is pretty obvious that the genetics were there to start with.
It was very interesting to me because unlike many counties, Sumner County, TN has COMPLETE court documents all the way back the l770s and my family were some of the first to come there so I got all kinds of “dirt” dug up on them, and with the oral history from my grandmother to start working from I got a great picture of the dysfunction of a whole group of people in one family for over 200 years. Right on down to my own P son (who got P-genes from both sides of his family from my mom and dad, and from my x-husband’s family too. At least 3 out of 4 grandparents were big time dysfunctional or disordered.
The “family” tradition of t he women being such hard core enablers and keeping the “familly secrets” and the “playing let’s pretend” is so overwhelmning I am not sure how I EVER saw the light MYSELF. I bought into it for SO LONG until it got to the point my very LIFE was at stake and I rebelled against it. Breaking free from this entirely (not just a SHORT TERM REBELLION) is an eye opener.
Looking back now, I realize that there have been other times I have REBELLED SHORT TERM but I ALWAYS came back into line with the “family dysfunction”—it might have been a month or even a year but I started playing the game again and playing let’s pretend.
Anytime I did anything that my mother “objected” to we would have one of these “set to’s” and “not speak” for a while (the longest one lasted a year) until tempers had cooled down, and then we played “let’s pretend.”
When I married my late husband my mother got really mad at me because he had been a former business partner with my bio-father and though she didn’t even know him (he and I had been great friends for 20+ yrs) she objected and got really hostile because (A) I married without her permission to someone she objected to because of his association 20 years previously with my bio-father, and (B) my P-son was starting to act out and get into trouble with the law, so when I tried to clamp down on his behavior (which at the time I thought was just teenaged rebellion) she took in the poor mistreated baby AGAINST MY WILL. All of this was partly because, too, not only had I married without her permission, I had MOVED TO ANOTHER STATE and taken “her” kids with me.
So, I had to be PUNISHED for my refusal to allow her to control my life….and she punished me by enabling my P-son against my will.
It amazes me how I could have played such a “rousing game”of “Let’s pretend” for all those years. It was like I swept all this dysfunction under the rug…..like cat crap, though, it continued to STINK…but I couldn’t figure out where the odor was coming from! LOL
Now it is obvious where it was coming from.
Funny thing though, after she got to know my husband she became “best friends” with him and thought it was a great marriage. DUH!
When I started to date my X-BF-P after my husband’s death she told P-son in a letter that I shouldn’t date because I had “had enough men” LOL Then after she met X-BF-P she started to like him cause he sucked up to her. LOL (head shaking here)
I’m getting to a point now that I can “look back at the past actions, of both them and of myself” and the pain and emotion is NOT connected to those memories. Not that I trust any of them, but the only way I can describe it is like when I first saw the movie “Jaws.” I sat in the theater with my heart beating 130 beats a minute and the adrenalline racing through my blood stream.
Now, though, I can tell you the movie scene by scene and all the plot BUT THERE IS NO EMOTION ATTACHED, AND NO ADRENALINE.
If that makes any sense in how I can “look back” now and not feel the pain, hurt and grief. I just don’t know any other way to explain how I can talk about it and not CHOKE or cry.
Soo many of my earlier posts here on LF were so emotional that it is a wonder I didn’t DROWN my keyboard with the amount of tears I shed while I was writing them. Now, the only time I tear-up here is when someone writes something that particularly touches me in a SENTIMENTAL way. I am a big bad SENTIMENTALLY tearful person. I cry if I watch a Lassie movie, or in Bambi, I will just BAWL—“Old Yeller” is my all time worst crying jag! LOL That and “The Yearling” or “Where the Red Fern Grows”—I will just get a whole box of tissues to go through a movie like that. LOL
Dear Meg,
Yep, I call them the “night time demons” and when you are i n pain they are almost like “bats” flying around in the darkness as you try to go to sleep, you can almost FEEL them. (((hugs)))))
Hi there everybody;
I’m a relatively new member to the group (which I really enjoy and visit daily), and so far I’ve posted a few lists (3 lists so far: of the type of lies and deceptions the spaths tend to give, of problems with reaching them on the phone and the last, excuses used to get back in touch with us), and today I am proposing a list I’ve been thinking about in my head in order to heal, which is the type of manoeuvers they’ve used in the PAST to HOOK us. It is like their modus operandi from day 1 – and until the person starts discovering the lies and cheating, and thing start falling apart.
Hopefully this could be useful in others’ personal therapy and for people still involved with these crazy makers, to realize the kind of manipulation they are entangled in, so here goes:
– Saying they have had it with the dating scene (and casual sex) and are now looking to settle down
– Talking about the eventual move-in together in a few months (usually the Spring)
– Promises to get married down the road (even talking about a ring they have already bought…)
– Talking about the money he has to buy a nice house or bring you on a nice trip (never happens)
– Talking about the unbelievable chemistry you two have, and that it will never be found again (touching you on the hands and arms and telling you how electric it makes him feel to do so)
– Using terms of endearment that constantly underscore your special connection
– Pretending to be interested in your day and problems
– Using crocodile tears to sympathize with your pain of losing someone dear
– Making you feel that both of you are really alone in life, and that he is as alone as you are
– Making you feel everything that bugs you about people, things etc…is the SAME things that bugs him too (talking about these similarities constantly)
– Asking you if you lost weight, even if you haven’t, just to get on your good side
– Saying I love you more and more every day…(meanwhile, unbeknownst to you at the time, is increasing his lying and cheating)
I’m so glad I see clear now..it is still a battle for me but I see through all these tactics….anyone else?
Oxy, that’s an amazing story. I wish you’d write it.
There was a book called “Five-Finger Discount” about the author’s marginally criminal family. It reminded me of my father’s side of the family. There are family stories about a lot of things — a patricide in Canada, a bag man for Tammany Hall, my grandmother selling numbers in her candy store. But all apocryphal. My father’s stories of growing up with his father (a self-centered, violent monster) explain a lot about my father.
My mother’s father came from an old Mayflower family, civic leaders, Eagle Scouts, lots of college education. But he married a feisty beautiful Danish immigrant — we figure she dazzled this shy boy in the roaring 20s. The marriage didn’t go well. For reasons we never learned, Nana never forgave Poppop for something. And when I knew them, she barely spoke to him, he puttered in his study in the basement when he wasn’t attending some service club meeting, and she ran the town over the phone, smoking Parliaments, drinking coffee and eating coffeecake.
My mother sided with her father (she was thoughtful, wry and softspoken like him), so of course, she married this wild, noisy, domineering Irishman who was like her mother. The biggest mistake of her life, and then there were four kids to carry on the history of dysfunction through alcohol, drugs and bad relationships.
Ironically one of the reasons I’m as sane as I am is that Nana (my maternal grandmother) adored me. And her irreverent, screw-them view of things, as well as her endlessly loyal support of me, was like a window into another reality.
Why me of all the kids? Because I look like my mother, and she was able to love me in the place of her resentful daughter. She called me by my mother’s name half the time.
Families are such stories. And the oddest part about it is that the last surviving member of my immediate family, my sister, interprets very little in the same way I do. Same basic information, a totally different take on it.
Oxy, my e-mail address is in the contributors section.
SocioFree: Thanks for writing. Your list is a good start. Maybe we can all add to it … as time goes by.
Just wanted to say HI … and I can chat with you later.
Right now I’m logging off for a few hours.
Peace. I’m glad you got it .. and are starting your healing.
hi all,
just found an old love letter to the ex-spath. it was a HOOT FEST! but the thing that struck me most was this: while i was completely aware of what a cheating, lying, conniving a-hole he was (says so in the letter!), the ultimate gist was how much i love him anyway!!
so, my question is — while we’re trying to determine what and who these bastards are — the new BIG question is: who the hell was I!?!?!?!
i don’t know who that woman was, but i can tell you one thing for sure … she’s never coming back again. i NEVER thought of myself as soft, or abuse-able, or a masochist, but holy hell, the woman who wrote that letter wasn’t me before him, during my times apart from him, or now.
i was so brainwashed and mind-f#ck#d by him, i didn’t know which way was up (or OUT!).
anyway, i’m keeping the letter — as a reminder of who i truly am and how i will NEVER be taken in (or over) by any man again. and besides, it’s really very funny when you get over the tragedy of it!
TOWANDA!!!!!
Wini
Thanks for dropping me a not.
Lost in Grief,
I can so relate…I too was completely aware of his lying, cheating and conniving from week 1, and hence was totally mindf…ed by him for a while and didn’t which way was out.
I think in early days, we are simply mesmerized, wanting to experience this super-natural love and put our guards, hunches and judgment aside for a while. It is natural as we are not machines but human beings.
Problem is though, it would have been best in hindsight to run away as fast as we could. Now we know better, and you know what, I think it makes us more evolved people as a result….
lostingrief TOWANDA! I am LMAO! Great idea to keep the letter as a reminder. It really helps to see how far you have come and how much you have healed! Too funny and such an epiphany too.
Thanks!
Rune, not a red flag on the credit card issue. Being the primary I stopped his card immediately and put a freeze on the account. He couldn’t use it anymore and was furious! This was last Feb. 18th. He left a balance of $1,600.00 on it and has to pay the minimum until we go to mediation and resolve it all.
Thanks!
sociofree: great list! i am becoming more aware of the game the more i read the posts on this site. a lot of the items on your list sound very familiar…. !!!! whenever he called me “sweetheart” i knew he was going to come over and ask for money… so endearing!