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.
Matt:
You are AMAZING! I know it cannot be easy there for you.
You (and your mom) are in my thoughts and prayers.
I have had to cut and paste and print a ton of stuff off here today. Thanks Morgan for the post as it will be printed and framed and read daily.
Henry, Jade is a very pretty stone and prized among some:). Jaded? I would think for a time a least we all are a little. Helps us protect ourselves.
Matt, I think I speak for us all. We are there with you in spirit sending love and strength your way. Hope and pray it all works out for you! Mom is your focus and that is as it should be.
Matt,
“I can’t do anything to stop my parents’s enabling him. All I can do is focus on the one thing I can do something about the relationship between my mother and me.”
TOWANDOOOOOO! Best wishes to you and your Mom. God Bless…
Matt, kindheart, my heart goes out to you both and your mom and dad, and I hope you find the strength to just let drop off the comments of the insignificant others as rain drops fall from a duck’s well oiled feathers.
Stargazer, I could relate so much to what you said about your parents! Now my little nieces I met yesterday (10 and 8 and 2 years old) get the same treatment by my brother and his second wife as we got by our parents ourselves, it is a shame as my brother always complains about the bad treatment he got, the golden child! The nieces are so obviously not loved but a pain to their parents (the girls are just angels and wonderful, I got very angry when I realised this all). They get shoved about as we have been used to. It is a little miracle to me that my mother (N) kind of “got it” that it is just a very horrible treatment the children get and that we have to do something about it, and she will now be in charge of the two older kids. It is an inconvenience for her, of course, but finally she kind of SEES the problem (when we were kids it was no problem at all). I am also very proud of my mother that she is able to set healthy boundaries towards my brother financially who seems to develop into a P more and more, and the second wife is just a horrible horrible bad queen from the fairy tales.
Morgan, thank you for the wonderful words of the Dalai Lama. I also loved your analogy. Vintage to me means not only old wine (that often has turned into vinegar…) but also cherished memories, and of course lots of things thought to be of value at a time that did not “age well” but decayed. thanks a lot! I will open an old port in your honor!
Once a psychologist said to me as I told her some years ago that I was cleaning my garage and my cellar and the attic: you are really cleaning up with your OLD LIFE, and she explained to me that these are the places hidden from the others and only we know what it is there. It is very demanding to do such a task!
For my patients when they tell me about “they are clearing the house”, it means often for them to prepare for the last part of their lives, getting rid of burdens they refused to deal with so far (I work as a doctor with cancer patients). It is a sign for me to look for. You have to be prepared to face the cellar and the attic, often it is very hard (specially the “cherished but decayed things”, to let go).
Oxy, I also could relate on your comment on “being too hard towards oneself”. I was once attending a course on “nonviolent communication”, and a part was about “internal communication”. I did command and reprimand and rant at myself that the teacher kind of “boinked” me in a very kind way, to set boundaries to MYSELF for not being self-abused by myself. Amazing, I did not know where it came from, and it still is kind of an enigma to me, because I hardly ever raise my voice or shout on the OUTSIDE. Respect oneself!!
Trash and treasure: like my good old shit and manure, depending where it is put on (shoe or meadow). I try to look in every shit where it could be useful as manure. (the port went to my head a little bit, sorry). Have a nice evening!
Oxy–
thanks so much for your info on Wellbutrin.
Just saw my doc– he does not think it’s causing it either.
thanks.
Dear LIbelle,
Shit on a shoe, or manure on the meadow! A GREAT ANALOGY!!! On one it is useful and on the other it is filth! Never thought about it that way!!!!!
If I ever get cancer, I want you for my physician!!!
According to Dr. Eric Berne, who wronte “Games People Play” the internal critical “voices” are the “tapes” we record from our parents criticizing us and we just play them over and over in our heads. We can’t ever totally get rid of these critical evaluations, but we CAN hit the “mute” button when we hear them play and make us feel guilty or bad about ourselves.
This “internal parent” has both good qualities and bad qualities, and we can CHOOSE which ones we listen to. We can also insert our own analysis of ourselves independently of the “implanted” ones from childhood.
Not all of us had totally nurturing and loving parents, some of us had parents who were abusive and more critical of us than others. some had 99% good parenting and others 99% critical parenting and every combination inbetween. However, we don’t have to take all of these “tapes” at face value.
Even if your parent put nothing but abuse into your “cellar” and “attic” you can clean it out. You can SELF assess what you are TODAY no matter what “mommie dearest” told you that you were when you were a kid.
I never pleased my biological parents, though I know for a fact that my step-father treasured and was proud of me, and so I focus on what HE thought about me. My last 18 months with him when I cared for him through his ordeal with cancer was some of the most prescious time we spent together and I got to see a wonderful side of him that I didn’t even know was there, his quiet nature and dry sense of humor BLOOM and expand. We laughed more those months, in the face of gloom and doom, than either of us had ever laughed. It was my pleasure to be there for him, as he had been there for me when I was a kid.
Since my husband died in July of 2004, I have been going through a great many “cherished but decayed” things (that is a great way to phrase it!) and clearing out my life’s attic and cellar! As well as the Physical attics and storage rooms. It has been a journey frought with good memories and bad ones, but healing for me.
Thank you so much for being here on LF. Your gentle wisdom and kindness is always appreciated. (((hugs))) and my prayers for you!
Oxy and libelle…..
“OxDrover says:
Dear LIbelle,
Shit on a shoe, or manure on the meadow!”
Reminded me of a song…got the cd…Kris Kristofferson called it an “answer” song…to The Wind Beneath My Wings…I’ve dedicated it to my ex-tox…but in the past tense. LOL
The Race
The Race is harder than arithmetic
And some’ll say it can’t be won
And it gets harder when your shoes are slick
But I had set my mind to run
And it was harder than I bargained for
With broken dreams at every turn
But I had heart enough to almost make it through
And a lesson yet to learn
I slipped and fell before the finish line
Just when it seemed I couldn’t lose
I can fall anytime you want me to
You are the shit beneath my shoes
_________________________________
Kris Kristofferson
Broken Freedom Song Album
Live From San Francisco (2003)
Jody Ray Publishing, Inc (BMI)
(couldn’t find it on YouTube)
One more comment about Wellbutrin. I took it for 2-3 months during the initial “shock” stages and it helped me reach a somewhat even keel. Later, I went back to it after almost a year, when I found myself stuck in the deep depression that went along with my recovery process…when I’d find myself waking up from a sound sleep with tears already running down my cheeks, when the many psychic pains were so relentless and distinct, I could distinguish between “types” of tears–the big, rolling, fat ones for long-suppressed infant pain; the pinched feeling of the throat-clenching tears of adult betrayal; and the intermittent snot-slinging tears of anger and incoherence.
I didn’t have any physical side effects, and I did find the Wellbutrin (or whatever its generic equivalent was) useful. It helped me reconnect with a genuine feeling of happiness, a feeling with which I had entirely lost touch during my many years with the psychopath. I remember driving to work one morning, looking at the just-budded spring trees and the picturebook sky, and realizing that I was happy for the first time in recent memory. And I knew I wouldn’t have been able to get there without the help of the drug. I had been too traumatized for too long. I was out of whack. The chemical boost helped me find myself as a separate, adult person and focus on what could be done, rather than what was never to be. It helped put me squarely in the “now,” and enjoy it besides. The prescription helped me get out of that feeling of being diffuse and unconnected with reality. You guys know what I’m talking about.
However, I personally have a deep and abiding distaste for becoming dependent on prescription drugs, especially psychoactive drugs. My first husband had a history of mental illness, hospitalization, and dependence on Tofranil and Valium, and I did not want in any way to become dependent on these kinds of drugs. I saw what the mental dependence did to him. It turned him into a panicked junkie, and not even a passing sane one, at that. So I made the decision to get away from the prescriptions as quickly as I could. I’m a natural sort of gal. Organic. NNWWSNM
But, in any of our individual cases, I say stick with whatever works. This recovery business is so specific to us as singular and unique people, even though we all share so many traits and life experiences. If it works, keep it. If it doesn’t, give it the old heave-ho. Try anything in your struggle to recover. Just recover. That’s the main thing.
It never occurred to me that i didn’t have to attend my P parents funerals! ( they are not dead yet!) OMG! What a relief. I was dreading the fake speech from my P brother, not to mention the demands on me. That is a whole new idea for me to ponder. Will my FOG allow it?
I find it easy NOT to attend their “deathbeds” as I have been beside waiting on them my whole life.
Meantime I have found a whole new room to clean out…more like a gigantic warehouse to be honest.
The label on the rollerdoor of the wharehouse says, The :”I feel completely unworthy when other people, (that I respect )don’t like my work or me” room.