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.
“For too long, I have felt like a spectator sitting on the side lines watching bad plays on the field of my life. I finally know that I need to get up and actively participate in the game and become not just a first class player but one heck of my own personal cheerleader.’
I have recently returned to my favorite park for walking/biking/running…In the past I would usually only do these things with the ex or with a friend in tow..now I lace up my sneaks, grab my ipod, and JUST DO IT! I bring my dog (for moral support :))…I hold my head high and strut along to my favorite songs, smiling, laughing, and yes folks…sometimes STILL crying when I let a song get to me (sunglasses are a MUST :)…but I am for the first time in my life cheering myself on…with whatever I want to do that feels right, and good and healthy FOR ME, ALL BY MYSELF AND I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!!!!! AINT NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT…OUT WITH THE OLD IN WITH THE NEW….ME!!! EXTOX WHO?????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The one who I made bad choices with and the one who made really bad choices with me?? LIVE AND LEARN!!!!! LOTS OF LOVING AND LAUGHING AROUND THE HORIZON WITH YOURSELF AND GOOD SOULS!!!!! LET GO!!!1
Dear Meg,
Hair loss is SEASONAL and also a response to STRESS, it is not I think a side effect of Welbutrin. Welbutrin is one of the better of the AD medications that I know of. I have taken it myself and Rx’d it some too. It actually works with ADHD adults and has less sexual side effects than many of the AD drugs so men tend to like it better.
It takes about 4 weeks or so to see the effect you will get. It does NOT make you in “la la” land you should just feel “more normal” and less ‘down” so much. It won’t cause you to feel euphoric like a tranqualizer might ( such as valium). I iam currently taking effexor (the generic kind taken twice a day because of cost, rather than the once a day kind) I can definitely tell if I cut my dose or miss one or two through neglect of taking it) I was taking more than twice the dose I am now, but the dose I was on was necessary at the height of the chaos when I was crying uncontrollably 24/7.
I figure I will have to be on this dose the rest of my life, but you know, thati’s OKAY. I have a chemical imbalance just like a diabetic does and sometimes you have to take medicine for the rest of your life for some problem, an dit sure beats the ALTERNATIVE. There is some evidence that PERMANENT changes are done to our jbrain by HEAVY STRESS, AND CONTINUAL STRESS, but it doesn’t mean there is anything “wrong” per se with us or that we are crazy, just INJURED.
I’ve had so many patients come to my office depressed and I would give them an RX for medication (I also made them get therapy as well) and they would come back to me in a few months crying again—BECAUSE THEY HAD QUIT THEIR MEDICATION—usually because “I just hate to take pills and I was feeling so much better—sheeeet! Then why the heck did you quit the very medication that was making you feel better? THEN, they would RINSE AND REPEAT THIS WHOLE SCENARIO OVER AND OVER—frustrating to a clinician for sure. So STAY ON YOUR MEDS or before you quit, talk to your prescriber for sure! (((hugs))))
Hi All,
Going back up this thread ab out halfway – *SHOCK-a-ROO!” – I hadn’t heard of ” – isearch – ” before – but searched myself and there were 3 freaking profiles – so I went to each of them and blanked out my personal info; searched for others on there, people who wouldn’t WANT to be found for whatever reason, and found two pages for my little brother!
Personally, I use “zabasearch DOT com” for my searches – and I wanted to share that resource here with e1 – you can find a wealth of info…be sure to KEEP SAFE if you DO have profiles out there – and don’t pay “intelius” for search info – UNLESS you can use property records for a divorce settlement, or the like. I will add “isearch” to my many resources. Believe me, you cannot have too many ways to research s/p/n individuals!
*hugs*
After posting, reading the posts today, I came across this. I wanted to share it with ya’ll. It is quite profound and most helpful to me in getting past being stuck with what I want. Sometimes, the Dalai Lama says, not getting what you want is a stroke of luck!
I am reading “Shadow Dance: Liberating the Power & Creativity of Your Dark Side” by David Richo. He is a psychotherapist. The excerpt below follows Buddhist philosophy but I think it can be helpful whatever your spiritual beliefs are. I plan on reading it over and over again every day until it is incorporated into my Being.
The Practice:
Read the following aloud. Write it out in your own words and repeat it each day until you finish reading this book.
I have it in me to enjoy desire and be free of its grip over me. I can become free of the habit of grasping the transitory and believing it has permanent gifts to give me. When I am caught in desire, I exaggerate and inflate the value and appeal of what I want. I act as if it were all there could be for me. Under the spell of desire, I go to sleep and become obsessed at the same time. As long as I act as if such delusions are all that compose me, I cannot contact the profound depths of my own potential. Potential means power, and my power is in the hands of the tyrant of ego as long as I remain imprisoned in my illusions.
The most inveterate and insidious habit of my ego is to believe that what I need is outside myself. To be fooled by such an empty promise is the most intrusive obstacle to enlightenment. When I renounce my preoccupation with the necessary outside, I liberate my boundless inner untapped potential. Renunciation does not consist in giving up my human pleasures but in giving up my unproportional expectations from these pleasures. Once I stop searching the streets, I can go down to the wine cellar of my own house, where so many vintages are gathering dust as they await uncorking. What is missing has always been and only is I, the best wine saved till last and waiting, wanting to be poured. “Be not afraid, it is I.”
Namaste.
Not much good going down to the cellar if you are an acloholic who was brought up by psychopaths. Not much down there in the cellar for moi, aye Rosa!
Shabbychic:
Thankyou! If your all coming with me then i can easily hang in there! xoxo
TILLY! BOINK!!!! That is the sound of my iron skillet hitting the top of your thick skull!
YOU ARE SOOOOOOO WRONG!!!! There is LOTS OF WONDERFUL VINTAGE “YOU” DOWN IN THE CELLAR! It is hidden behind all the TRASH that your P parents left there, that may be true, but it is STILL THERE MY WONDERFUL FRIEND!!!!
So, those of us that have been raised by the self-absorbed enablers and abusers, we must clean our cellars to
FIND THE GOOD STUFF, it is there, it was always there, we just didn’t see it!!!!
((((hugs))))) NOW CLEAN THAT CELLAR OUT! OXOXOXO OXY
hey guys, having a very hard time. Got the s out of my life and still dealing with long term effects, loss of weight, not back to work yet etc. and now i have my dad (narcissist) who is terminally ill and a brother whi i suspect is a s or at very least alcoholic and he is stabbing me in the back and i’ve tried so hard to get the approval of these two , and all iget is treated like crap. My youngest son and i went up to visit my dad yest and he was n’t well, sleeping and didn’t look very good and it really upset me. Then i get to hear that because of my visit my dad’s blood pressure went up. My ex sister in law informed me of this. Then i have a stepmother and her sister who never leave the room so i can visit so i’ve just given up. My youngest leaves for Banff tomorrow back to where he works and they see how i’ve been treated and i sit here and cry and try to understand why i keep getting this treatment and crap whe n i know i’ve done nothing to deserve it. you’d think at a time lik e this it would bring the best in them but as my one gf says i have to just accept that this is the way they are. The s/daugher drug addcict keeps calling and i even went so far as to tell her about my dad and how sick he is and nothing not even a sorry. What a leach is all i can conjure up, just like the article i just was reading aobut parasites and leaches, no shame to people like that. I don’t know how to deal with my Dad as he is so controlled and brainwashed by my brother for money etc. Then add the step mother and her controlling sister and i just give up. I called my brother on what he said and i was so hurt and crying, but i at least told him what i thought , that nobody even likes him or this sister of my stepmothers, not that they care. I’m done feeling like an alien when i’ve done nothing to these people. There is a farm involved and it’s a long sordid story but suffice it to say that i let my brother manipulate me into taking my grandmother(whom adored me and i her and i looked after visiting all on my own as her sn and grandson didn’t even bother) and having the farm left to my brother an d i superceding my stepmother. Then my brother totally turned the story around as if it were my idea and i had no intentions of the sort, i was just protecting my own interests and doing what he wanted. I know the truth and it has now worked against him as he would have pissed it all away by now and will in the future if given the opportunity i know 110% that it would happen but i come off as being the bad person . Im sick of all the lies and bullshit that he spews and i can’t beleive that my Dad can’t open up his eyes and see these people for who they are. Any advice would be appreciated. love kindheart
Kindheart:
You did not cause your Dad’s blood pressure to go up. That is ridiculous. If anything, you are probably the one person who he DOES want at his bedside.
I would tell you to just concentrate on your sick Father. Forget everything else, if you can.
Morgan,
Thanks for sharing that lovely passage with LF.
I have been “striving” (magic word here) for years to smother my bratty ego. It just stirs up nothing but trouble for me, repeatedly prattling on about how I need this or I need that, when in actuality…….having my ego stroked gives me no long term satisfaction, contentment whatsoever.
For years, especially in my 20’s, I needed the constant admiring attention of men as if that “corrected” or “fixed” some brokenness inside myself. It never did. It was a shallow and transitory illusion as you have quoted. I was a cute girl and men noticed. Big deal. Men notice cute girls all the time so I was no exception.
Stupid insecurity ego stroking which most certainly attracted the snake charmers and ne’er do wells, to put it nicely. I was confused, really I was. I thought I was somehow worthy if a dude wanted to have sex with me.
Wow, I don’t miss that sad, insecure, clueless little girl I was. Believe me, I have NO scorn for her….only compassion. Nowadays, I prefer NOT to be noticed by guys. First, because I’m tired of their bullshit. Second, the mating ritual and the small talk it entails bores me. (as in…”I’d rather be reading than chatting with this guy. My books are always much more interesting)
What does the mean? Am I succeeding in some way to stomp on my deceptive ego? Or after a life time of crappy involvements with men, I’m plain tuckered out!
Good!…That’s fine with me! I’m no longer that shy, scared creature I was and I DO enjoy (like the sweetheart LTL says) going places by myself, looking at the world and all the beauty that surrounds us, just….living as best as I can.
I truly think that passage is wise beyond wise and I so do hope to tap into my own “power potential” not for the sake of harming others but for my own spirituality to increase, to grow stronger and more enduring until I can finally journey through life with grace and serenity.
That is my most fondest endeavor. It truly is.
🙂