It is likely you are reading this because a sociopath said “I love you” and you believed him/her. You also probably thought that when the sociopath said “I love you” he/she used these words as you do, to express a sense of intimacy, passion and commitment. However, what a sociopath says and what a sociopath does are so different it can be crazy making.
In the aftermath of a relationship with a sociopath, former romantic partners are left to wonder, “Just what was going on in that person’s mind?” “What was he/she thinking?” Many people have written in asking, “Did he/she really love me?” and “Do you think he/she loves that other person now?” It is the second question many find most disturbing.
In 1943, Dr. Abraham Maslow in his classic paper, A theory of human motivation, declared that psychopaths lack the capacity and motivation for love. “The so-called ‘psychopathic personality’ is another example of permanent loss of the love needs. These are people who, according to the best data available (9), have been starved for love in the earliest months of their lives and have simply lost forever the desire and the ability to give and to receive affection (as animals lose sucking or pecking reflexes that are not exercised soon enough after birth). ”
Contemporaneously with Maslow, Dr. Hervey Cleckley described psychopaths in The Mask of Sanity and developed a set of criteria for their identification. According to Cleckley (criteria #9), psychopathy is associated with “pathological egocentricity and incapacity for love.” He declared “The psychopath seldom shows anything that, if the chief facts were known, would pass even in the eyes of lay observers as object love.”
Cleckley also maintained that an “absolute” incapacity for love is even found in those with an “incomplete manifestation” of psychopathy, who lack the full disorder. Writing in 1956, Drs.McCord and McCord disagreed with Cleckley and Maslow. They described psychopaths as having “a warped capacity for love” stating, “there are indications that the capacity, however under developed, still exists .”
My guess is that the McCords got fooled just like you and I and a recent paper shows us why.
Dr. Barbara Gawda at Maria Curie-Skldowska University Poland studied the “Love Scripts” of sociopaths. Love scripts are simply ideas about love that a person has. These ideas include how people fall in love, and what people in love are supposed to do.
Dr. Gawda showed a picture of a man and a woman hugging to 60 sociopaths in prison, 40 prisoners without disorder and 100 university students. She asked all participants to write a story about the picture and to imagine themselves as one of the characters.
The sociopaths stories were significantly longer, more detailed, and more self-centered than the other two groups. Contrary to expectations then sociopaths do not lack love schemas. They are perfectly adept and perhaps more adept than most in talking about love. The findings of this study jive completely with my own clinical experience. That is, over the years many people I knew to be sociopaths told me about their love experiences. Their stories were impressive and had me believing that they were capable of love.
If clinicians, scientists, lovers and family members rely on verbal reports, they will never come to understand the lack of capacity to love that characterizes sociopaths. Cleckley reached his conclusions about psychopathy and love only after observing their actions over a number of years. He also said this,
“In a sense, it is absurd to maintain that the psychopath’s incapacity for object love is absolute, that is, to say he is (in)capable of affection for another ”¦ He is plainly capable of casual fondness, of likes and dislikes, and of reactions that, one might say, cause others to matter to him. These affective reactions are, however, always strictly limited in degree. In durability they also vary greatly from what is normal in mankind. The term absolute is, I believe, appropriate if we apply it to any affective attitude strong and meaningful enough to be called love, that is, anything that prevails in sufficient degree and over sufficient periods to exert a major influence on behavior.”
References
A theory of human motivation. Maslow, A. H.; Psychological Review, Vol 50(4), Jul, 1943. pp. 370-396
McCord, W and McCord, J (1956) Psychopathy and Delenquency New York: Grune and Stratton, Inc. page 13
Love scripts of persons with antisocial personality.Gawda B.
Psychological Reports 2008, 103, 371-380.
This study compared the scripts of love among 60 prison inmates diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder and those of 40 inmates without an Antisocial Personality Disorder diagnosis but low antisocial tendencies, and a control group of 100 adult students in extramural or evening secondary schools without Antisocial Personality Disorder traits. The study focused on emotional knowledge about love of the group with Antisocial Personality Disorder, as they present lack of capacity for love. The study was done to examine how they perceive love and how much knowledge they have about love. All described their reactions to a photograph of a couple hugging each other. The content of these scripts, analyzed in terms of description of actors, their actions and emotions, and length of description, was compared among the groups. The scripts of love by antisocial inmates contained more actors’ feelings and strong emotions, as well as more descriptions of actors’ traits, their actions, and presumptions. The inmates with Antisocial Personality Disorder showed more focus on themselves when they described love than the other inmates and the controls.
Great thought-provoking article. I am adding “The Mask Of Sanity” to my reading list.
I think when an S/P or any Cluster B says “I love you”, what they really mean is “I love what you do for me.” or “I love how you make me feel.” or “I love how you satisfy my needs.” To them love is always about them. They can’t fathom anything beyond the bottomless pit of their own needs. That is what gives it it’s vampirish quality.
Whenever I asked the ex Spath why he loved me, or what it was about me that he loved, trying to draw him out while in my own state of fogginess and wanting to believe in him, he would say one of two things.
He would either say he loved how I made him feel or he just knew he loved me because of how good and different and better he felt with me. Or, he would spout a bunch of shallow, flattery-type of one word cliched compliments always with the sexy come-on – ie. “Oh you know, you’re soooo cool. You’re so beautiful. Special. Sexiest woman ever. You are smart and not typical.” blah blah blah and after all the shallow compliments, the clincher was always, “You’re the woman I’ve been waiting all my life for. You really are. I know that sounds cliche but I’ve known my ideal woman for 20 years and I never thought I would meet a woman like you.”
ALL SHALLOW, CLICHED, UNORIGINAL, LIES
The sign was it’s always about them and never any substance.
They do have a script. As he was in the actual act of discarding me (which he spared all of 5 minutes for, after over a decade together), and willing me in that exact moment to take the children away to another country, saying he would “pay what he could, when he could”, he was still attempting to paint himself as a hero…He denied trying to send us away to avoid his responsibilities, saying he was doing this because he cared about me “like, a lot”, and denied that he was trying to get rid of us, and said that it was in fact “the greatest gift a man can give his ex-wife, in the form of the children”. He then informed me within the same 5 minute period that he had had “no feelings whatsoever” for me “for the last five years”, and when I responded with a resounding “WTF?” to all of it, as my mind was still reeling with the realization that he would give away his own children, and attempt to make it look like generosity, he stated angrily that I should be “grateful” he was leaving now, “not five years from now” (when I would be old…er), and that when my emotions settled down, we would be once again be friends. When I asked him why on earth he thought we would be friends, when he had just stated that he had no feelings for me whatsoever, and had realized it five years previously when I was crying one day, and he realized he “didn’t care at all why, and couldn’t be bothered to find out”, he said “I guess it’s not like television”. I was stunned into silence. At first I thought he was so glib that he was thinking that we would all be like “Gary Unmarried”, or “Reba”, but later I remembered his affinity for “Dexter”, and the creepy smile he would have as Dexter fooled Rita again and again. In the episode where he discovers Rita’s body, and is chagrined, in a detached sort of way, I saw him so clearly, and knew, if it WAS like television, and I was Rita, that is precisely how he would have “felt” upon discovery of my body in the bathtub. In the early days following his departure, when there was nothing in place to force him to pay support, and we were literally penniless, and eating from the food bank, I broke down one day and called and asked him for $50 for groceries. He loved it. He said “Of course”, and “how about $100?”, and “come to my work and I’ll give it to you right now”, and used all soothing caring tones. He ROMANTICIZED it in his mind! It did not escape me that although HE was the cause of our financial sitation, he enjoyed playing the role of the hero, in rescuing us from it….because I was begging. It did however, escape me that he deliberately had me pick up the funds at his place of work so all and sundry could see his generosity to his impoverished ex-wife with their own eyes. What’s the point in paying support if you don’t get extra kudos for it right?
And yes, BTW, he developed extremely bad teeth over the course of our relationship – this recurring theme of poor hygeine, I feel, stems from their inherent arrogance and lack of respect for any partner who might share intimate quarters with them. And now, at age 41, he has a brand new full set of dentures – presumably to impress the new woman – his latest target. I am sure I have been blamed for the state of his teeth…probably tells her he didn’t have the money for dental care due to my outrageous spending on diamond tiaras or drugs. The “pity play” in full swing. LOL!
Also, remember in a moment of clarity, right in the begining, before I knew intellectually what he was, when I said to him “Go then – I have decided not to fight for you, because you treat me like S**T” he was absolutely ENRAGED. Because of course, that was NOT part of the script – I was supposed to fight for him, and massage his ego, and continue to believe in him, just in case he needed some more supply…
I often look back on that moment as my saving grace : )
Dear Going through the motions,
I actually laughed when I read your story, not at you, or the sadness of it, but how TYPICAL he was…how there was nothing different about him, just how much of a slime bucket he was/is.
I am so glad that you can look back at least and see this piece of carp for just what he is—bottom-feeding scum-sucking carp!
Don’t you KNOW how generous and such a big shot he felt to have you come BEG him for money at his work. He didn’t even “get it” that anyone with “one eye and half sense” would know that any ex-wife who had to come begging to a man’s office must have been royally mistreated and screwed over for money by the prick! Just like my P-son convict thinks the world sees him as a BIG WINNER and “successful”– when in truth, no one sees him as anything but another low-life Texas convict who hasn’t seen a full year out of prison since he was a teenager. There is NOTHING successful about him or about your X either, they are both what they are–scum-sucking failures as human beings.
I now wish I had saved emails from my x-spath, particularly the one in which he dumped me (yes, by email) and one describing his Xmas holidays after he dumped me but when there was still contact.
The email in which he dumped me came two days after he spent the night in a hospital with me, sent with the knowledge that I was both bed-ridden and facing the possibility of being HIV+.
He told me that it was a “privilege” for him to be there for me, then went on to tell me what I great guy I was, followed by “I thought about us all day yesterday. I know you are not going to like what you read but I can only be your friend.” He provided some apology about hurting me but I don’t remember it being to heartfelt and of course there was blame shifting back to when we first met “I told you I was not sure what I was looking for…”
Most of that email was strange, as he went on in detail to describe all the things that he would do for me while I was, such as go shopping and stopping by to make dinner and see if I was well. But he added “of course I cannot really do these things as I live 3000 miles away… but I would if I could.”
The quotes are not exact but accurate.
His Xmas email contained no warmth or feeling. He spent more time describing, in detail, travel difficulties visiting his only sibling than what he did while visiting her. Of course he had the callousness to talk about a long night of drinking and playing guitar hero with this “new” friend of his.
Certainly his own words fit the observation that sociopaths stories were significantly longer, more detailed, and more self-centered, here again taken from one of his dating profiles:
“I’m a down to earth level headed guy. I am viewed as good looking by my friends and family. I am independent and live alone I work full time in a professional job and I am presently single (looking for a boyfriend). I have a positive outlook on life and have a great sense of humour. I don’t take myself too seriously and would say my personality traits are chilled/calm, caring, loyal, charming, kind considerate and genuine, loving…lol. In terms of appearance I am quite boyish not camp or masculine just the boy next door.”
Since he lies about certain details, I did not realize this was him until I was on this site last month. I had seen it in the summer of 2009 and bookmarked it, but thank god did not respond, probably had some gut feeling about too much about himself, even though all his interests were a match.
Most men do not describe themselves like he does.
He told me that it was a “priveledge”
i don’t know where I’d be without this website to come home to.
I have experienced exactly what this article is talking about.
How sick– that people who CANNOT love–
are the ones that do it best?
How purely evil.
They can certainly mimic what they think love looks like. I think my soon to be ex has an idea that something is off with him but can’t face it.
When he came over with the realtor this week he said he loves me and misses me. Now I had a passing feeling of sadness but then had to slap myself and remind myself that he is slandering me to his friends, family, etc. Saying I’m crazy and making up crap. Is that in any way, shape or form, a version of love? Nope. No way is that love. You don’t slander someone you profess to love.
The sadness is mostly because I wanted so badly for those feelings to be real. That he was capable of change and of love. When he told me that he couldn’t feel it, after asking if I loved him, he was actually being honest. He knows it’s missing and can’t feel a true connection with anyone.
I end up feeling sorry for him. He is really doing the victim thing so well right now that I even get sucked in. Again, I have to slap myself. Sometimes I wish my empathy meter was a little less active. Good article, I always find empowering information on this site.
Oh Oxy – I have tears of laughter streaming down my face! It IS funny, after all….realizing he ACTUALLY thought it would all wrap up nicely after the next commerical break, after a brief word from our sponsors. Chuckle.
As for your son thinking he is viewed as a succes, all I can say is “Snap! You too?”. One day, after so many shocking behaviours, having endured so much loss in such a short time, due to his choices, I said “How can you look in the mirror?” and he said “I CAN look in the mirror, I CAN, I CAN, and I’m very proud of what I’ve accomplished!”. Which was a great big load of absolutely nothing. I repeated that convo to family and friends, and each of them had the same bemused, amused, and confused expression. Basically, nobody could think of any accomplishments. LOL!
And Behind-Blue-Eyes, I wish you still had your emails too. Sounds so familiar. That’s what mine pretty much said to me when I told him to “go then”. He shrieked back “You act like I never gave you anything”, in a sulky and petulant way, complete with bunched fists and a foot stomp (all of this while wearing only his underwear – the TV writers couldn’t come up with this stuff – heh heh) and in that moment ALL I could think of, ALL that was bouncing round my brain, was “Two Sperm, Two Sperm, Two Sperm”. But of course, I did not SAY that, because that would have been cruel….that is, it would have been a cruel thing to say to a normal person. Plus, I still thought he was having a breakdown – hadn’t yet FULLY admitted to myself that he was actually like that ALL ALONG.
I realize, he felt that his mere presence in our home was a privilege, and should have been enough to make me eternally grateful for whatever crumbs he threw my (our) way. I remember saying to him in the weeks prior to his announcement that he was leaving “You get out of a relationship what you put in”. But you know, I was totally wrong, because he would never get anything intangible out of it, because of course, he cannot give, or receive love either. And as for me, well, I definitely didn’t get what I put in, although back then, I was able to fool myself into thinking I was, because I was still “owning the blame to preserve the relationship” and waiting for “the man I fell in love with to return”.
Oh yes, and my ex s’s online dating profile went on at length about himself, and ended with “Looking for someone else who doesn’t want to sit around at home alone on a Saturday night, someone who will be there for me…as I will be for them”. So, reading between the lines, he was: looking for a good time on Saturday nights, with someone who would be deceived into thinking they had met someone who also knew the pain of sitting home alone on Saturday nights, someone who would be vulnerable enough and grateful enough for the Saturday night lovin’, that they would want to give him all their support, and if they could supply the goods, then, as an afterthought, he would be there for them too…promise”
ROFLMAO – Good times!
Hope4,
Go buy yourself your very own CAST IRON SKILLET and every time you feel yourself feeling sorry for the bottom-feeding scum-sucking piece of carp, just hit yourself up “side da haid” and you’ll instantly feel better! LOL (((Hugs)))) My recipe for getting better! LOL