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.
An old friend used to tell me if the mess looked to big, to sweep everything into the middle of the room and then chuck it out! Whatduyu reckon?
Tood: You have made a very important distinction. You said,”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 knew that I was undergoing a transformation unlike anything I’d ever imagined when I experienced that first type of tears, and they would show up whether I had been asleep, or was awake and in a place where I couldn’t assign a trigger to my tears. I wasn’t dissociating, I wasn’t paranoid or dangerous, but I was experiencing a type of tears that were not at all under my control and that seemed to be coming from a place I never knew could exist within me.
In my effort to gain greater understanding, I came across this website. This information may not be to everyone’s taste, but it might be meaningful for some of us.
http://www.integral-inquiry.com/cybrary/sacredtears.htm
This academic paper touches on some historical, spiritual comments on people who undergo profound transformation, and who experience “sacred tears.”
Rune,
Thank you so much for that link. It strikes a chord.
Strange, but just this week I have been reflecting on those “big fat rolling tears.” Yes, they were unlike anything I had ever experienced before. And yes, they went on for a very long time, unabated.
My reflections this week have been on the word “weeping.” And how “weeping” is different from “crying.” And how “weeping” is a spiritual practice. Such synchronicity here on LF.
I’ll re-read the link tomorrow. Sincere thanks.
Tood: Let’s watch for each other. I’m glad I found this link and could share just now. And, in the LF synchronicity, I’m sure others will be watching as well.
I take a deep breath and breathe in grace and goodness, and let it permeate my being, and then I breathe out the old, tired illusions, so I can clear my body, heart, and mind, for the next incoming breath that brings new miracles of understanding.
Akitameg,
About Wellbutrin.. be careful if anyone suggests the generic for Wellbutrin to you. My sister took the generic and it made her paranoid, more depressed and kinda psycho…. a little bit.
She eventually googled it and found out there are a lot of terrible side effect to the generic one.
good luck with your healing.. dear akitameg.
Aloha
I am making this gigantic gothic window and I have had to do a lot of oil paintings in all the different panels . Making the actual window is the hardest part..I am so DUMB in carpentry. Its taken a lotta work. Last night I painted these two paintings that I really loved. It was one of those “five in your life time” paintings that you think, “God must of painted that through me cos I couldn’t paint that”. So off I went to place them in the two top panels this morning. I had decided that they were abstract pictures of “God” (as one had a kinda face in the heavens), it, came from nowhere.
When I got there they said. ” No, you can’t put those two paintings in the two outside top panels. They are the completely wrong style and they are too big.”
So they cut the paintings in half to fit them and now I have to repaint them. I was watching them, as they cut Gods head in half on the machine.
It reminded me of a time almost ten years ago.
I had taken five years to recover from the psychopath solicitor. I had been on my own and was starting to get my sense of humour back. I was going to church regularly, ( I don’t now), and I was praying more than I ever had before. One of the prayers that I was praying was, “Thankyou God for sending me my true heart partner for life, in Your time not mine and in Your way not mine”. One of the women at church helped me write a letter to God each week stating similar. It also asked that it be Gods will not my will and to protect me from evil. And guess who walked into my life?
You got it!! The psychopath dentist!! He came in to my life quoting the book,”Mans Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankl.Right on cue.
That is what the whole destruction of my God painting reminded me of today.That is what I was thinking of as I watched them slice my two favourite paintings I have ever done, in half, (so that they would fit in the churchy Gothic frame).
At first I had said to them, “no, you can’t cut it. I won’t let you cut them.” And they said “don’t be so ansy !”. Whats ansy?? Anyone know? (We had a deadline).
And then the three of us, (two men and me) had a quiet argument about it. Then I said, “well, bugger the Gothic window, we will just make it a flat top window because I am not cutting up this painting”. Then they said I was being unreasonable because it didn’t match the rest of the painting style in all the other panels. But I thought it did.
The worst part of it was, because I respect these people’s work (they are good artists), I wanted them to like me more than I could stick up for myself.
The grief I felt when they destroyed my paintings was terrible.
But they didn’t know, because I wanted them to like me, so I was saying, “Oh, I will just paint over it. Don’t worry.”
And now both paintings are gone.
And I am not going to paint over them. I am going to leave God with half a head in both sides
Because half a Gods head in two places is better than no Godhead in one…or something..
After all, we gotta compromise in this world aye Rosa??
Tilly:
I am sorry that they made you destroy your 2 favorite paintings.
You say they are good artists, and you respect them. They should be more respectful of YOU!
I am glad you are not going to paint over them, spoken just like a true artist.
And I have no idea what “ansy” is.
Dear Tilly,
Whose WINDOW is this? Yours or Theirs? WHAT HORRIBLE PEOPLE THEY ARE!!!! Art is about YOU not their idea of what YOU should paint!
STAND UP to these creeps! I am so sorry that they did this to you! My “favorite” painting is one that NO ONE but ME likes! My teacher, a renound portrait painter hated it, but it is MINE and I LIKE IT.
Good for you, for leaving “half” in there as is…but next time, you will tell these arseholes to LEAVE YOUR PAINTINGS ALONE! TOWANDA!!!!
Dear Tilly!
“The worst part of it was, because I respect these people’s work (they are good artists), I wanted them to like me more than I could stick up for myself.
The grief I felt when they destroyed my paintings was terrible.”
Your story reminds me of the today’s newspaper where I read that they cut off a man’s legs because he was too tall for the coffin. The widow, it was stated , was “not happy”.
I would leave this course ASAP. Creeps!!! Paintings are like one’s babies, and NOT TO BE CUT OR DEVALUED (“wrong style”!) Heck, van Gogh was also WRONG STYLE and sold but one painting in his lifetime!
It was a barbarian act and I strongly suspect pure and evil jealousy by those “artists”!
I think you found some other insignificant to practice NC. Towanda!
And before exiting the scene I would cut some of THEIR works 😉 There is a famous Italian painter who cuts his canvases… I forgot his name, but every museum I visit has at LEAST one of the “slit paintings”. I will seach for the name tomorrow; you can state that you will make THEM famous NOW!
Thankyou my beautiful, loving, kind, amazing friends!! How lucky/blessed I am to have all of YOU!! You make me feel so good to be alive! There is nowhere else I could go and speak the truth and be understood…THANKYOU SO SO MUCH!!
The huge Gothic window (which is full of paintings in all the panels), is mine. it is to go in an exhibition with some other artists and their are already two prospective buyers.
But guess what?? God had a greater plan. i.e.
God looks ten times better with half a head in each panel and some white graffitti spray!!!! Who wouldathunkit? So all the psychopaths will be green with envy when it goes under the hammer! HA HA!!