The “sociopath,” boiled down, is someone who routinely does, and takes, what he wants, unconcerned with the impact of his behavior on others. Nothing in my mind defines his essence more than this concise, factual description. He is rather unique, and thus diagnosable as a sociopath, to this precise extent.
Sure, we’ve discussed this before, but it always merits, in my view, fresh reconsideration. And so let me add, I think, an important caveat: The sociopath doesn’t necessarily feel he has the “right” to what he’s pursuing, or planning to take.
Rather, he doesn’t feel he needs the right. He just needs the want.
Simply wanting what he wants, with or without the right to it, meets his standard for laying claim to his quarry.
Because after all, you may ask the sociopath, “Did you have a ”˜right’ to take that? To steal it?” And he may answer, with intellectual honesty, “No. I realize, intellectually, that I had no right to what I took.”
Which gets to the nub, the essence, of his condition: His” right” to what he wanted wasn’t relevant, didn’t even enter his thinking; rather, his wanting it was the sole factor necessary to support his comfortable, non-conflictual pursuit of it.
To sum up, the sociopath’s disordered essence is captured best in his pattern of taking, without remorse, what intellectually he may very well know doesn’t belong to him—he has no right to it—yet he takes it anyway.
To be clear: when I say that the sociopath intellectually can understand he may lack the “right” to what he’s taking, I’m not suggesting that he lacks a sense of entitlement. Quite the contrary: his sense of entitlement is all the more astounding for his intellectual awareness that he may lack the “right” to what he wants, yet still takes it. In doing so, he is exhibiting self-entitlement, and attitudes of contempt, in their gaudiest, most audacious forms.
One always must beware of oversimplifying complicated concepts. The sociopath’s disorder is complex on many levels. Yet on some levels the sociopath’s mentality isn’t so complicated at all. In some respects it’s pretty simple.
In this article I suggest the sociopath is, essentially, that strange, disconcerting, disruptive individual with a history, and pattern, of taking from others what doesn’t belong to him with an impoverished sense of shame and remorse. When you confront an individual with this history and pattern, you are dealing with a sociopath.
What he takes, and even how he takes it, are less relevant considerations that that he takes, with no right.
(This article is copyrighted © 2011 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns is strictly for convenience’s sake and not to suggest that females aren’t capable of the behaviors and attitudes discussed.)
2X: (OR 3X…..but who’s counting! 🙂 )
Girl…….you sound like you’ve got a good handle on what is going on! You GOT IT!
EVERYTHING IS A LESSON!
at first….I read your statement of “deep in my heart, believe that we must never give up on love. Never, ever””
As you weren’t going to leave….for any betrayal….
I think I misread that, as I read the rest of your post.
🙂
Never giving up on love is a good thing…..but setting boundaries IN it is even better!
I was one of those ‘idiots’ who was never going to give up on my marriage…..until I was faced with NO CHOICE!
And i’ll tell ya…….it worked out just fine leaving. No, not easy…..but just fine! 🙂
There is alot to be said for being alone right now…..i can raise my kids alone…..I can work on myself….alone….I can spend this time ‘figuring’ out the ‘how I got here’…..alone.
Alone is a gift. Once we open that gift……and ‘play’ with it awhile….it’ll be time to open lifes next gift.
My gift to you tonight my dear…….ENJOY!
Amaretto Shortbread Cookies
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 large egg yolks
2 tbsp Amaretto (or 1 tsp almond extract)
1 tsp orange zest
1 tsp lemon zest
3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
½ C. Toasted Almonds
additional sugar, for topping
Preheat oven to 325F and line a 17 x 12-in baking pan with foil and lightly grease(Note: a half-recipe can be made in an 8×8-inch pan with about the same baking time, if you don’t have this size).
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks, followed by amaretto and zests.
Sift the flour and salt over the butter mixture and stir to combine. Turn dough into prepared pan and press down into an even layer. Press toasted almonds onto dough.
Brush shortbread with beaten egg white and sprinkle with 1-2 tbsp additional sugar.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until shortbread is light brown all over. Let cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then run a knife through to cut while still soft. Let shortbread cool completely before reslicing and removing from pan.
Makes about 36 cookies.
One/Joy: Sorry…I meant to say “gentle eyes” comment, not “warm eyes,” which is why your post warmed my heart and almost made me cry.
God, I really miss my mom and dad! 🙁
One joy- it’s sounds like you need, at the moment to care for yourself and your own health… First and foremost. You cannot take care and share moments (good and painful) with your mom if your own body, mind, and spirit are sick due to illness. That will only make things so much harder… Anger and reaction to the incompetent staff will take over, which could make it worse for you and your mom. They’re not gonna change, why: because they don’t have to. If you are in the right place of mind you can take note of all this (document) and when ready file a proper complaint… In writing to the person in charge.
I can’t imagine how difficult that must be. I have not been there.. However it sounds very difficult.
I’m sending you some positive thoughts. Hang in there!
DL- yes from personal experience the retraining orders (injunctions) were the ONLY thing that has worked in my favor with respect to jr and myself. My state takes them very seriously! However family court is a different ordeal altogether…no logic there.
I now have a 7 year against my spath which would never had come into play had the first 2 never been filed. The first one issued had 3 assult felonies associated with it. Although the spath has had his record sealed they are tracked through the previouse orders. Keep all documents..I did and they might one day come in handy. You can’t trust the system with proper record keeping!
To Donna Dixen,
gambling
My son’s dad was a gambler. I don’t know why I didn’t see it. I saw the pile of scratch-offs on the floor of van. I thought it was because he never cleaned-up after himself. I thought the pile had accumulated over time. I wasn’t about to clean it so I was “waiting” him out.
It wasn’t until he jumped to his death after he lost at gambling that I realized he had a gambling problem.
Looking back I am not sure how I could have pinpointed a gambling problem. There were so many things OFF with that guy. I am not sure if his worse vice was drugs, women or gambling.
He would insist that he needed new shoes. He never wore them, and then the shoes disappeared. Or he insisted he needed something else and something else and he never used the stuff, and it disappeared. I think he was selling it. This was early in the relationship. As the relationship progressed he didn’t bother with the buying and selling. He wanted the cash. He was stealing from me at every chance. He blamed my kids every time, or he blamed me. He said I must have been sleep walking to the ATM at 5:00 am.
The stuff that came out of his mouth floored me. He took advantage of my dropped jaw to rapid fire his outrageous lies. It gave me such a headache and I couldn’t get a word-in edgewise, and I wanted to keep the peace because he always picked fights with my kids while he argued with me. That he got away with it every time.
The only way to get him out of my house was to have the police remove him.
This was something that came back to haunt me. I had to call the police on my ex-boyfriend Jim too. He pointed out to the judge that I make a habit of calling the police on my boyfriends…..! He said he broke up with me. He made me look like the scorned woman.
Yes, ladies these sociopaths listen carefully when you tell them your vulnerabilities. They will use every bit of it against you like a weapon.
I gotta bring up one quickie subject.
Last night I went to the bar with my neighbor Dana. The owner of the bar Stella, marched up to Dana to attempt to force Dana to pay her ex-boyfriends bar tab. Stella was so loud that I could hear her across the room. Dana simply said she is not responsible for his debts. Stella continued to try to rattle her cage. Dana just looked around (not making eye contact) and softly said she is not responsible.
Finally Stella gave up on that approach. She came up with a new approach. She told Dana that if he comes back that he can’t live with her (cant live with Dana)
Women are held responsible for the debts of the men we are with. or were with…
Their sins become our sins…
Dana must have felt the way people feel when they answer the phone to find out it is a bill collector looking for someone who lived there. They want to stick you with the debt — just because you answered the phone. A bird in hand……!
EB:
2X or 3X is fine, either way; it’s who I am or, at least, it’s where I’ve been. Although, I often forget that I was ever married to my first husband. I was 21 when I married him and I was a single mother of two babies by the time I was 26. I remember one day, when my daughter was about 7 or 8 years of age, she said, “Mommy, why did you marry Craig?” (My kids never referred to my first husband as their father and my daughter, even now, refers to him as the “sperm donor.”) Without losing a beat, I said, “Why, so I could have you and Tate, of course! “Oh,” she said, “that’s good.”
And, my kids are terrific, so that was my lesson…and my reward! (And stay away from alcoholics, especially the abusive ones!)
Unfortunately, my next lesson took a lot longer to learn, as I definitely fell into the “save my marriage and the family at all costs” trap. It took 14 years and three separations before I realized that it HAD to end. His constant lies, betrayals and double-life was depleting our family of all positive energy. It was devastating when it ended, especially since my business partner and I parted ways at the same time. I needed therapy to make it through, but my daughter, my son and I became the “3 Musketeers” and we eventually pulled through just fine. (I even felt sorry for his next wife and was so thankful that he became her problem and was no longer mine.)
So, your comments about treasuring and valuing your “alone” time with your children are so appropriate and will end up as some of your most treasured years when the gift of hindsight becomes real.
My son and daughter are adults now and I became a grandma seven months ago. Truthfully, I am angry that these first few months of my darling granddaughter’s life have slipped though my fingers as I’ve spent the hours, days, weeks and months putting out fires that I didn’t set, cleaning up messes that I didn’t make, and spending more than half of my small retirement account trying to resolve failed and/or sabotaged ventures that were purchased with my husband’s innocent victims’ money.
The last time, the only people hurt were me, my kids and my ex’s other women. This time, there are more than one hundred victims and I have had a very hard time reconciling the man I loved, lived with, and went to bed with every night…with the cold, calculating, manipulative, evil person who could take a retiree’s last dollar and blow it on his personal wants/needs.
One of my closest girlfriends is very ill, yet not only did he take her last retirement dollar, he convinced her to give him the money she had available in her equity line, too. And now she’s in foreclosure and I can’t do a thing to help her. And that’s just one of my friends. There are others who all trusted him because I did. It makes me sick to my stomach that he could steal from anyone and everyone and sleep well at night. (I rarely sleep well at night anymore.)
My wounds are very raw right now, but I’m hopeful that I will, at some future point, figure out what the last six years of my life were supposed to mean. I need to know what this lesson is or I’ll go crazy trying to figure it out. So many people have been hurt, and even though the Feds know that I knew nothing, I still know, deep inside, that none of my friends would have been hurt if I had been more alert and never let him anywhere near me.
P.S. Thanks for the new amaretto recipe! I’m going to start off with Shrimp Amaretto this weekend! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
2TimeSurvivor,
I felt incredibly guilty for the status ride I gave to my ex spath. He scammed people in my country as well as tourists at his place using me. He made sure to pretend he was head over heals with me, praising me to anyone who could also come into contact with me… and well if I trusted him (and I’m known for my integrity), then he was trustable too, even though many may have had initial gut reserves.
I was so angry over being used like that, that I made sure that anyone who had ever come to trust him because of me knew he was scum
DarwinsMom: God, I know exactly what you mean! The guilt of knowing that my integrity was used for evil by a person with absolutely NO integrity at all is almost unbearable. 🙁