The two most recent Letters to Lovefraud both had the same theme: Sociopathic men who relentlessly pursued women, proclaiming their love, making glowing promises of a committed relationship. The men pushed for sex, and although the women resisted, eventually, believing they were involved in real romances, the women succumbed to the men’s physical desires. With that, both women were dumped.
Read the letters here:
I met him on Facebook, was used for sex and dumped the next day
I felt bonded, even though this made me nauseated
Both women were astounded at how they were unceremoniously booted. They had a hard time coming to grips with the idea that they’d been used and abused. How could a man say all those wonderful things and not mean them? How could a man who talked so eloquently about love be lying? How could a man paint such a beautiful picture of the future and then discard me? Was there something wrong with me? Wasn’t I sexy enough? Smart enough? Pretty enough?
Both women tried to get answers from the men. The men, however, never admitted the true reason that they did what they did:
They wanted to.
Core of a sociopath
Sometimes it’s hard for us to get our minds around how truly different sociopathic individuals are from the rest of us. This is understandable. After all, 96% to 99% of people are like us—capable of love and consideration.
But that 1% to 4% who are sociopaths—well, they might as well be aliens. These people:
- Feel no empathy at all towards other human beings
- Have no conscience
- Are interested only power, control and sex
This is the core of a sociopath—no empathy, no conscience and desiring only power, control and sex.
Implications
So what does this mean? It means sociopaths feel entitled to take what they want, regardless of how their actions may damage others. It means they get no satisfaction from connectedness with others, they only get satisfaction from winning. It means sociopaths view the world as predators and prey—they are the predators and everyone else is prey.
This is shocking. Mind-blowing. Impossible to understand.
So we cannot try to understand. We can only accept. This is how they are.
They do not want us as lovers, partners, friends or family members. They want power, control and sex.
Melissa: you are right on the internet being loaded with predators that use it for illicit purposes. My X cruised the internet after I dumped him. He met females for sex. Our daughter together was disgusted. She said he went thru so many in one year, that she got tired of counting. He liked to keep multiple going at the same time. Thought it was funny to play them. And if one found out about the other he enjoyed pitting them against each other. Wicked.
I feel crazy after the interactions that stress me so.. I feel like no one else ‘gets’ it exactly and if they do they don’t want to talk or hear about it for long.. as there is nothing that can be done…
style – we live in a world where we are taught to believe in the love of family. so, then what do we do when our families don’t love us (this is ‘love’ as a verb)?
well, some of us feel inadequate and our self esteem takes great hits…then end up repeatedly looking for love from people who cannot love.
others escape from any feeling at all via addiction.
others cut off from family, with repsect for themselves, coming to know that the family is at fault, not the wanting love, and not themselves.
others become scapegoats within the family – someone on whom all the bs is piled up on and they are sent in to the wilderness, so that the dysfunctional stasis can be maintained.
others stay and rail against the storm, and become more bloodied in the process…………..
and each one of us can cycle through all of these ways.
accepting that we will not get what we want or need is not the easiest place to come to sometimes. someone called my father ‘corrupt’, and by this he meant, damaged, as in ‘the computer disk is corrupt: sectors of it non functional and continuing to try to use it breaks down further file access’.
i think dealing with disordered folks time and again and specific ind. disordered folks over time messes with us, and the more we do it, the more it does. then the more we do it. it’s a groove.
we can start to work at accepting that we will never get what we want and need from someone who is corrupt. they may flash moments of care or concern (real or feigned), but they will not consistently act in our best interests – just repeat that, because, IT IS THE TRUTH. i think denying the truth is very painful and that that is what makes us the most f**ked up really.
it’s like looking at an empty pail and freaking out that it isn’t a full pail, and fixating on its emptiness, and hurting because it is not miraculously filling up. i know there is huge separation anxiety involved in walking away from the pail – but any idea that the pail will fill is delusional, and the kind and gentle thing to do is to accept that. if we raise our eyes from the pail for just a moment we can see that there is a world outside of this focus. i think fixating on the pail IS A WAY TO DENY ITS EMPTINESS, a form of addiction, if we follow the current usage of the word in pop culture.
the moment we look away we see that there ARE other things in the world; we feel the pain of having been fixated;we feel the deep grief of the reality of the pail’s emptiness; we might even get a little curious about what else is in the world.
i don’t know what will happen with my dad over time. truly i am hoping for a quick death. his. and that is me not wanting to deal with the feelings of his being alive and corrupt. there and so not there for me.
don’t give these folks your power….it is just candy to them. if you withdraw your attention, and stop playing the part of the expresser, it will free your energy. i am the caretaker. i have stopped – at least in the outward manifestation. i have a whole lot of work to do around this. but for the moment i am not casting pearls before swine, or yearning love glances at empty pails. sorry about the jumble of metaphors. 😉
one step.. thanks you and I get what you wrote so totally and at times, I do so well, with it.. but things seemed to be going better in my family then bam.. I am kicked like my Dad does and I reacted by interacting with a sister about it.. She tells me that there is nothing I can do.. so just let it go and she is correct… but for some reason, I got caught up in the emotion of it the hurt of it.. the indignity of it all…
I am the personality that emotes and is the scapegoat of the family.. I live away from the rest and have for years.. and I attract men similar to the dynamics.. in that, I try to be and am in ways, attractive, a good cook, a decorator, physically fit, kind, stylish, physically healthy .. all the ‘good’ stuff.. but inside I hear my fathers and mothers words and lack of love and attention as you aren’t good enough … you are dirt under my feet.. we are great, you are nothing..
And that is not true.. many have told me that they are jealous of me… and that is why they dismiss and put me down..
I attract men that do the samethings.. instead of loving me.. and accepting all of me my faults and good parts.. when anything that ‘they’ don’t deem as ‘perfect’ or what they want … I get annilhated, yelled at, or turned away from.. it has become a pattern in my relationships instead of acceptance and love.. I get criticism ….
I can step away.. and look at distance.. I don’t enjoy being with my family all that much.. they drink too much, not really that interesting in that they aren’t interested in most the things that I enjoy.. we are just different. I can be with them and get that family feeling but I leave feeling unfulfilled.. my Dad only cares about money, women and control over everything in his life..Even if I empty the dishwasher for him.. he critiques and criticises.. it is absurd and stupid.. yet I can get hooked into this .. and it spins me into feeling like I am nothing and worhtless.. I guess that it is a life long task.. and like you when my father is no longer around to get this projection onto me.. I won’t miss it.. I will feel free at last…
There is so much wisdom in what one-step-at-a-time says. The part about getting stuck in a groove really resonated with me. It’s like a car stuck in the mud and the spinning wheels making the groove deeper and deeper. Somehow you’ve got to get out of that rut in order to go on with life. I had to walk away from my family when it became known to them when I was an adult what my pedophile uncle had done when my sister and I were children. To my shock and horror, they continued to accept the pedophile in their midst and acted as if nothing had ever happened! Of course, that made me feel like I had no worth to them whatsoever so I walked away and have never regretted it. Good luck style1 in getting your car out of the rut. I for one am pulling for you.
style – have you read the Betrayal Bond?
i started reading it a couple of months ago and doing the exercies, and will go back to it when i have the time and energy for it.
maybe, it’s a relapse when we think we can get what isn’t going to come our way with them. maybe it’s a signal that we need to dig deeper into our own understanding of what we need and figure out how to get that somewhere else.
i know i am thinking about my dad a lot the last couple of weeks – dad’s day and his bday coming soon. and what is being triggered for me is the desire for tradition and a desire to give love to another. i have another friend whose bday is soon, so i will make HER something, and will think on the tradition piece. maybe do something i have done for years.
the other thing is that i have yet again dodged the bullet of homelessness and hunger for this month. i know i can probably make it one more month without a job, and then i am really toast – so i know that thinking about my dad is about wanting a safety net, about wanting some place/ some one to go to if all else fails. so i have to figure out that piece in my life – that may take a very long time to figure – then i will probably stop wanting my dad. ’cause he is a pr**k. and comes with such baggage as to be a weight around my neck and not a buoy.
jeanne – you know how rutted country roads are? long after the rain, the grooves have become entrenched, and there is no other way to go down the road.
good for you for choosing the paved highway.
(i had a similar experience in my family with my g father being the predator – the whole thing was toxic as hell. i cut my gfather and gmother out of my life, and a few years later when confronted about it, i told. got ugly from there, but i never backed down. i am glad i was younger then – 26 and full of righteous indignation, and a take no prisoners mentality. predators and collaborators/ enables ruin families. and there was not a thing i could do about it but continue to speak my truth. they all want to pretend that i didn’t out him – but i did and the reverb from that is still felt decades later. gfather is dead – i am alive. i win. )
okay – gotta go do some work.
I probably need to read the BetrayalBond.. and my interaction with my Dad was becasue of a negative place that I am feeling that I am in and I asked him for a consideration on something and instead of being understanding… he annilhatred me…
My Dad loved my ex .. and was disappointed when I broke up with him… and since then I have been pretty much alone in the male dept.. dating but nothing.. and my Dad gives me attention when I am with a man.. in that, I have value to him when I am with a man .. My Dad thinks little of women except for sex and of course, that is not the intention of daughters and he is prim and proper in his behavior with us.. one of my sisters had an affair with my first husband and when I found out and exposed it.. I had already divorced the man. but my father and mother did not believe me and I was the one excommunicated.. but as the years went on , my father now sees that I was telling the truth.. he even stated to my last man friend that I always tell the truth and I am always right.. but he still treats me like I am dirt under his feet..
No one inmy family wants the truth and the tellign of it.. or the talking about what is real makes me the one that is not liked…
yes.. I need to shft gears and get out of the rut!
one_step: good posts.