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.
Wow, this is a s manifesto, regardless of who/what wrote it. As for Valerie, I am glad she listened to her guts and cut bait.
In regard to malignant hope, or malignant optimism…I read this at my office the other day:
If you think everyone is good….then you haven’t met everyone.
As tongue in cheek as that is supposed to be, it stopped me dead in my tracks, got me laughing. I could see myself, through the years ‘believing’ everyone was good ‘deep down inside’. I think we all learn that stuff from our culture. And then if we’ve got crazies in our family, and the family requires us, as children, to catagorize them as normal….well then we learn to ‘normalize’ and see those who do terrible things to themselves and others as being good.
If molesting grandpa, alcoholic angry auntie, and selfish mom are all normal and good it is no wonder we develop unhealthy doses of malignant hope and optimism.
I believed (up until I met Oxy) that the reason psychopaths were like they were: was because they had been brutalised on every level as a child…like I had! It didn’t occur to me that “hang on, but I ‘m not a psychopath!” DUH…A HOMER!
learnthelesson says:
humans”so in that sense I do believe” (oh no here i go again” but I do believe some of my ex-tox “ways” were “ways” even he had no clue and was confused about my sudden reaction or comment to something he might have done because they are so different they dont do what we expect them to do and they dont necessarily know whats expected (barring the learned behaviors and common sense stuff that we all know”
I remember noticing that over and over. She looked so puzzled like a child sometimes. Didn’t have a clue how she should respond. Big red flag!
Dear Sugarandspice,
Thank you, sweetie, I am glad that my ramblings have struck a nerve with you, and especially that my stories about Fat Ass and Hairy Ass made you LAUGH. The asses make ME laugh every day with their big floppy ears and “sot en thair ways” behavior.
Tilly, you are so right on, too, that they are what they are and not just because they were treated badly as children. (Some were and some weren’t) I can testify that my P son was never ABUSED, but boy O, does he pretend he was/is abused by me—and believe me if the cops would let me and his brothers in a room with him for half an hour he WOULD BE ABUSED.
Some times I still try to oget the “malignant hope” that my egg donor will “see the light”—I read this great book recently and I got this idea if she would just read it she would “see the light”—so I even ordered a copy for her, and was going to send it to her—sheeeeeeeeeT!!! WTF? Where did THAT idea come from? Out of the blue, obviously! OUt of the deeply buried desire I must still have to get through to her. NOT GONNA HAPPEN, OXY! Get over it!!!
I agree with slimone, if you think everyone is good, you just haven’t met everyone, but then I would change that to ANY one. LOL
Oh, well, onward and upward! Keep reading, keep learning, and internalize it the best you can! (((hugs))))
Tilly,
Me too. And I kept thinking the same thing: that we were kindred, injured spirits. That they needed lots of love and tenderness….like I did/do. Not to say that they may not have been brutalized. But from what I’ve read the abuse in their own backgrounds ‘flavors’ them (though I think they ALL taste like sh*t after you get a real mouthful), but does not turn them into p/n/s.
And as strange as it may sound there was a time when I wanted to be detached and ‘strong’ like I perceived them to be.
Without intellectual/book-learning I kept trying to understand them from an emotional place. And I am admittedly a ‘romantic’ and an ‘individualist’ and a ‘victim’. So, I was ripe for the pickin’!
I have re-categorized many of my past relationships/friendships and can see how my own woundedness, and my belief that they were the ‘walking wounded’–like myself, made me feel lots of compassion and tolerance for their horrible acts.
If they gave me the sad story of their ‘brutalized’ pasts, I was an instant goner. Felt like I just found my soul mate.
I wish more information had been available 20 years ago about s/p/n’s, it would have been SO good to have found out about this then.
Hey everyone–
I am freaking out. I was put on Wellbutrin two weeks ago for Major Depression/post sociopath.
Has anyone else ever been on it????????????????
It has eased my symptoms of depression, but I am noticing a lot of hair coming out on my brush etc.
could be coincidence.– something else. thyroid is fine as is nutrition.
no hormonal probs.
if anyone could tell me their experience with Wellbutrin=== I would really appreciate it.
I will see the shrink on Wed.
Love to all of you.
I hate psychopaths.
akitmeg,
I lost a lot of hair too. Mine was stress related. And it didn’t show up right away, it was after I had a high level of stress, over a prolonged period of time.
I hate them too!
Me, too. Two large patches. At the time it showed up, it was a year after I had fled the dangerous psychopath. I was working for someone who used to be a hairdresser, but who had reinvented herself as a businesswoman. She laughed and laughed at my bald spots.
Turned out, she was a psychopath. Guess what happened to the money she owed me for the work I did!
The good news is that the hair grows back generally pretty quickly if this is stress related. You’re doing the right thing, Akitameg, by getting your life back on track.
I put my hair back in a clip that hid the spots. Don’t panic. This too will pass!
Diagnostic Criteria for Schizophrenia
A. Characteristic symptoms: Two (or more) of the following, each present for a significant portion of time during a 1-month period (or less if successfully treated):
* delusions
* hallucinations
* disorganized speech (e.g., frequent derailment or incoherence)
* grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior
* negative symptoms, i.e., affective flattening, alogia, or avolition
Note: Only one Criterion A symptom is required if delusions are bizarre or hallucinations consist of a voice keeping up a running commentary on the person’s behavior or thoughts, or two or more voices conversing with each other.
B. Social/occupational dysfunction: For a significant portion of the time since the onset of the disturbance, one or more major areas of functioning such as work, interpersonal relations, or self-care are markedly below the level achieved prior to the onset (or when the onset is in childhood or adolescence, failure to achieve expected level of interpersonal, academic, or occupational achievement).
C. Duration: Continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least 6 months. This 6-month period must include at least 1 month of symptoms (or less if successfully treated) that meet Criterion A (i.e., active-phase symptoms) and may include periods of prodromal or residual symptoms. During these prodromal or residual periods, the signs of the disturbance may be manifested by only negative symptoms or two or more symptoms listed in Criterion A present in an attenuated form (e.g., odd beliefs, unusual perceptual experiences).
http://counsellingresource.com/distress/schizophrenia/dsm/schizophrenia.html
Diagnostic Criteria for Schizotypal Personality Disorder
A. A pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with, and reduced capacity for, close relationships as well as by cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
* ideas of reference (excluding delusions of reference)
* odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior and is
* inconsistent with subcultural norms (e.g., superstitiousness, belief in clairvoyance, telepathy, or “sixth sense”; in children and adolescents, bizarre fantasies or preoccupations)
* unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions
* odd thinking and speech (e.g., vague, circumstantial, metaphorical, overelaborate, or stereotyped)
* suspiciousness or paranoid ideation
* inappropriate or constricted affect
* behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar* lack of close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives
* excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about self
B. Does not occur exclusively during the course of Schizophrenia, a Mood Disorder With Psychotic Features, another Psychotic Disorder, or a Pervasive Developmental Disorder.
C. The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition.
Note: If criteria are met prior to the onset of Schizophrenia, add “Premorbid,” e.g., “Schizotypal Personality Disorder (Premorbid).”
http://counsellingresource.com/distress/schizophrenia/dsm/schizotypal.html
Or does Dylan have a cluster B personality disorder?
Or maybe Dylan is just acting out of social norms trying to find out just who he is or who he thinks he is? Something teenagers do before they reach maturity.
Really I for one don’t know but I would worry if I was Valerie. She may want to seek some type of therapy just to get a handle on her feeling and desirers on what is happening to her husband.
But I agree with Donna that he did describe to us in part what a sociopath is.
I for one can only hope that Dylan will at some time reach out to others who understand just how complex we are as human being and get the help I believe this person needs.
One question I asked myself is that if this is a “love letter” what type of woman would be attracted to this type of person? But then again how many “ladies” fall in love with serial killers after they are caught and are in prison?