Lovefraud recently received a letter from a woman who we’ll call Valerie. She met her husband, who we’ll call Dylan, at age 18, and has been with him for seven years. She thought they were happy together in their wonderful home with their family of pets.
Suddenly Dylan started acting erratically. He said he didn’t want to be with Valerie any more. He picked fights. She asked Dylan to leave, but made it clear that she was willing to do whatever was necessary to help him. So he left, and wouldn’t tell her where he was. Eventually, Valerie’s intuition told her to check her husband’s Facebook page, where she found Dylan’s love letters to another woman.
Then Valerie found how Dylan described himself on another website. Here’s what he wrote:
My name is Dylan and I believe in Chaos, destruction and murder. I will contradict myself but I don’t think that should make me a hypocrite. I hone my strengths and hide my weaknesses because only the strong will survive. I lie, cheat and steal. But only if it’s the most intelligent plan of action; & only the stupid get caught. I’m fighting a personal rebellion I can’t justify. I’m losing my mind, my friends and my morals with each passing day, but each day I pass leads me closer to finding myself. I would rather live my life in surrender to temptation than to deny my natural instincts. I never hurt those who do not hurt me first, I don’t believe in physical confrontation but as in eastern philosophy I am trained to engage in it, if for nothing more than the practice of strengthening the bond between mind and body.
I know who I am, but not where I am, or why I am here. I find Art to be the only voice of reason in a place otherwise inhabited by counter-production. I promote sex, but lack emotion, I hate addicts but I believe in drugs, I make music but I destroy everything else. I bore easily but I am doomed to repeat myself.
My name is Dylan and this is only the beginning.
Whoa! Did this guy just write the sociopath manifesto?
I don’t know if Dylan is truly describing himself—apparently he’s got some kind of hardcore band and perhaps he wrote the above statement for its shock value. Still, is it possible to even come up with these ideas if he didn’t experience the state of mind that they imply?
Fundamentally different
The truly scary thing about sociopaths is that they are fundamentally different from the rest of us. They do not want what we want. They do not value what we value.
Normal human beings want affection, cooperation and achievement. We want to care about others and contribute to life. Sociopaths want power, control and sex, and they’ll destroy anyone and anything to get what they want.
But sociopaths look like us and appear to act like us. That’s why they are so hard to identify. It’s also why people who have not experienced their manipulation up close and personal find it so difficult to believe us. The uninitiated—those lucky souls who have not been devastated by a sociopath—have yet to learn that there are people in the world for whom proclamations of love, truth and promises are nothing but tactics in a power game.
Everything changes
This is the bottom line: Dealing with a sociopath changes everything. Normal human courtesies do not apply. Social protocols do not apply. Rules do not apply. Contracts do not apply. Laws do not apply.
If we find that we are interacting with a sociopath, the best thing we can do is get the person out of our lives. When that is not possible, we need to be on mental red alert at all times and understand that anything the person says may be a lie. We need to know that for the sociopath, we are not a friend, or a lover, or a relative, or a co-worker. For a sociopath, all we are is a target.
“Valerie” has been married to “Dylan” for seven years. He changed very rapidly. He may be mentally ill.
That being said, I’m pretty sure he’s given her grounds for a divorce. You haven’t mentioned children. That seems like a blessing.
A good friend of ours was married to a wonderful young woman who became severely deranged in her early twenties. She was institutionalized, and he divorced her. He did this because the person he had fallen in love with and married no longer seemed to be present in the body that remained. He was a Lt in the US Marines at the time. Even if he had remained married to her out of a sense of obligation, her needs were not compatible with the transient, stressful lifestyle of Marine Officers and their families.
This sounds cruel, but I support these hard choices. I think Valerie may have to mourn the loss of her husband and move on with her life.
Donna wrote “The truly scary thing about sociopaths is that they are fundamentally different from the rest of us. They do not want what we want. They do not value what we value.”
I might add that in the end, it is their lack of “humaness” that is one of the most shocking revelations of all. And because of this lack, they are very capable of plowing their way through other peoples lives over and over again…. Rarely being held accountable for their actions…Those of us who are with human qualities will always be hurt and betrayed by them.
PS – in another instance the patient grew up in a loving Catholic family, the successful middle child in a large family of successful, well educated young adults.
One morning the family woke up to the shocking reality that he was pacing in front of the Whitehouse, pleading for a meeting with the President. He was aware of horrible threats to the President’s life, and wanted to save him.
He was mentally ill, and in spite of medication he has not recovered to the extent that anyone hoped. He still lives in a group home, carefully medicated and monitored. While he’s not dangerous, he’s not husband and father material either.
Several experts have speculated that the reason this man is not dangerous, in spite of his paranoia and delusions, was his unusually good family life.
When a young adult changes overnight, we have to consider the possibility that they’re mentally ill.
In Dylan’s case, it may be that he has abused the wrong drugs. Many street drugs do profound neurological damage.
Please do not call every behavior you do not like Sociopathy. There are other conditions that cause serious interpersonal difficulty.
Donna wrote
“Suddenly Dylan started acting erratically” (RED FLAG)”
” He said he didn’t want to be with Valerie any more.” (HUGE RED FLAG)
“He picked fights.” (RED FLAG)
“She asked Dylan to leave” (STOP. CHANGE DIRECTION – for others it may be simply leaving “not asking the P to leave”…but it worked for her.)
“but made it clear that she was willing to do whatever was necessary to help him” THIS IS WHERE I STRUGGLE WITH MY PAST. THIS IS WHERE I STRUGGLE WITH HOW TO DETERMINE RELATIONSHIPSTHAT ARE SAVED THRU THERAPY AND RELATIONSHIPS THAT ARE DOOMED WITH A P- PARTNER…but we are so confused and conflicted that we offer that shred of hope/understanding/willingness to do whatever is necessary to help him or save relationship..
I think I learned rather than stick my head in the sand…doing what Valeries intuition was “investigate”…albiet secretively…so as not to use it against him but to gain valuable information and proceed with caution is probably the best one can do…or maybe one better is to severe ties based upon the bad treatment…but being married you have to get divorced so I guess its not that easy….
But if you arent married, the best course of action is ACCEPTING and ACKNOWLEDGING you arent being treated right…no offer to” help “the other person figure it out or work it out..if you love the other person who is treating you badly…you self-protect and self-respect and self-trust your abiilty to ask yourself am I being treated good – if not – you let them go and you remain NO CONTACT – or you WILL find yourself a continual target.
Good luck Valerie…your intuition and you acting on it likely saved you years of confusion and P-inflicted pain. Sorry for your journey. So glad you stopped and changed direction!
Dear Witsend,
Im posting under this thread for you so that all of us reaching out to you are spread out on the board…in case you are catching up on threads… I am thinking of you as school is nearing completion…altho I think maybe your sons school has ended for the summer? I share my concern with Oxy and Rune, and hope you check in soon and let us know how you are doing with everything… Continued thoughts and prayers for you… xoxo Learn
Learned:
QUOTE: “THIS IS WHERE I STRUGGLE WITH MY PAST. THIS IS WHERE I STRUGGLE WITH HOW TO DETERMINE RELATIONSHIPS THAT ARE SAVED THRU THERAPY AND RELATIONSHIPS THAT ARE DOOMED WITH A P”
I think this is a good assessment of where most/many of us have been in the past. Still wanting to “help” them and give them the “benefit of the doubt.”
It isn’t original but I call this MALIGNANT HOPE, it is hope founded on delusion and denial, and it is just like CANCER, you have to CUT IT OUT IN ORDER TO SURVIVE. That kind of hope nails your feet to the floor when you know the “house is burning” and you stay just wondering if you can blow on the fire like a birthday cake candle and put it out.
That delusional hope that I held on to with my P son when he was 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 when he finally committed the murder and went to prison to stay a while….even after that I kept on with delusional malignant hope that ate my heart and soul like a cancer.
A sudden change in a person’s behavior CAN BE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES, but even if the man was mentally ill, UNLESS HE IS AN IMMEDIATE DANGER TO HIMSELF OR OTHERS even a wife can’t FORCE someone to take medication. He may, indeed have started studdenly to exhibit mania of bi-polar or several other things might have happened, but it doesn’t matter in the PRACTICAL SENSE because she can’t fix him and he obviously doesn’t want to be fixed.
NO MATTER WHAT THE LABEL FOR THE “PROBLEM” IS, trying to fix it will make this woman’s life a living HELL.
EC wrote: ‘Please do not call every behavior you do not like Sociopathy. There are other conditions that cause serious interpersonal difficulty.’
I think this is a such a good point. Human beings are all so complex an as a society all kinds of bad behaviour and exploitation seems to be encouraged.
I have done so much research over the last few months into personality disorders and mental health issues, not least beacause of my own depression and strange behaviour both as an enabler all these years and now as a ‘victim in recovery’. I am not very good at expressing myself,or very bright, Its mind boggling for a bear of little brain like me; the myriad of problems people have, personality wise or due to circumstances that can cause interpersonal difficulty.
But most of these things(most) are something that is happening to the poor person suffering from whatever the dysfunction is, The person most hurt is the sufferer.
So I keep coming back to the same same place and that is that S/P’s seem to be in a separate box to all of these other variations in human behaviour, and degrees of mental health because they LACK that ‘humanness.’
I feel like I could spot it a mile off.I hope I dont have that theory tested too often;)
Just my thinks.
Southern man said:”I might add that in the end, it is their lack of “humaness” that is one of the most shocking revelations of all.’And because of this lack, they are very capable of plowing their way through other peoples lives over and over again”. Rarely being held accountable for their actions”Those of us who are with human qualities will always be hurt and betrayed by them.” Well said.xx
Also – I agree with Oxy – that whatever the problem may be, trying to fix something that may be beyond repair will make your life a living hell.
Oxy,
Said
“NO MATTER WHAT THE LABEL FOR THE “PROBLEM” IS, trying to fix it will make this woman’s life a living HELL”
IMHO, Lifes single most difficult and painful lesson to learn with loved ones, family and friends.
Essentially a living hell either way…but some peace and sanity when you chose to save yourself vs the other… :((
Life…sometimes…I just wanna kick it in its butt…
Blueskies”
“I feel like I could spot it a mile off.”
Are you saying you think you could spot a psychopath from “a mile off?”