It could be argued that the sociopath is cynical: contemptuous; mocking; concerned only with his own interests and typically disregarding accepted or appropriate standards in order to achieve them – the opposite of idealistic.
And there is a danger that one who has learned the hard way about sociopaths becomes jaded: dulled, blunted, deadened, inured; tired, weary, wearied; unmoved, blas̩, apathetic Рthe opposite of fresh.
The online version of the Guardian newspaper runs a series in which readers provide their responses to ‘Ethical conundrums’. Given the nature of our interests on this blog, this one caught my eye: Is it worse to be cynical or jaded?
One reader’s response captures the issue I raise above (our key terms inserted):
A jaded person [someone who has fallen for a sociopath] has loved and lost. A cynic [sociopath] has never loved at all.
Another provides some clues as to how come the sociopath and his or her victim get together in the first place:
I don’t like either alone, together though: the jaded person before becoming jaded makes friends with a cynic and then they both have a great time. So long as the cynic enjoys the doses of optimism and doesn’t get annoyed by them. And the optimist doesn’t become disillusioned by hanging out with the cynic. Because that would be boring, pointless and gloomy. Cynics and optimists together can be really proactive and make great company: CAN be…
Or not, right?
One reckons that positivity can turn into negativity, but seldom the other way round:
Pessimists tend to become cynical, as they tend to believe the existence of a hidden motive. Optimists, with experience, tend to become jaded, as the world falls short of their expectations. Jaded people tend to become cynical, but cynical people rarely end up jaded. So, being jaded is kind of the scenic route to cynicism.
One reader sees the merit of cynicism:
Cynicism is essential for surviving this lousy superficial society. Being jaded is the result of being insufficiently cynical.
I was tickled by this one:
Someone who’s jaded hasn’t lost the will to change, they’ve just lost the means….Polish the surface of a jaded person and you’ll find they’ll come up good as new.
As we get a new year underway, what are your thoughts?
Southernman429. Good point. But when I think back to the time with my ex. He was giving me clues from the beginning -yes he was keeping his good behviour going for about 3 months – but they cant maintain that behaviour for long, dont forget they have poor impulse control. I dont know what other peoples’ experience is of the time scale of ‘good behaviour’.
Sub personalities have different triggers too – but the main beast of the story speaks with the same language (as I have discovered here) – so the red flags will be familiar. I think most of us are worried that we may meet another like the ex. But we know the cues, the tricks, the way they try to rush us into a relationship, we know things dont feel right, that there is some oddity in their behaviour. We know this time to really check them out first with family and friends and that they wont keep information back or mislead us. We know that they wont ask us to lend them money. Basically their behaviour will be fairly ‘normal’ and consistent. Hopefully none of us will need to run from the house!!
beverly – You’ve provided some solid practical tips – things to look for: “the way they try to rush us into a relationship, we know things dont feel right, that there is some oddity in their behaviour. We know this time to really check them out first with family and friends and that they wont keep information back or mislead us. We know that they wont ask us to lend them money.”
Dr. Steve,
You asked us about unhealthy attitudes and our thoughts, and the discussion has led to how to overcome unhealthy behavior in the future.
As I am getting on with life, I think because of faith and because I’ve always taken responsibility for my behavior and circumstances, this episode didn’t leave me with an unhealthy attitude. I didn’t feel jadedness or cynicism nor that I was bad or worthless, i.e., I make mistakes, but they are honest ones and though accused and blamed for whatever happened, I knew better and I did not accept his blame or wear his guilt. I am kept busy enough with my own sins, I’ll not take on someone else’s. Forgiveness is a powerful tool too, and when my attitude starts to slip I can look up at the cross to put things back into perspective. I’m not sure where non-Christians get their strength and guidance so I can’t comment there, but it seems it must be somewhere inside that leads them toward finding a better way of thinking, if they choose to look.
My behavior warranted some further examination for my part in the melee and for the hurt I experienced. Faith truly is a powerful ally. God gives us every tool, divine and carnal, but we have to get up and go use them. That brought me to introspection. Of course you are correct, introspection can leave you going in circles or drowning in denial. But when you’ve gotten it wrong, you have to understand what you did before you can get it right the next time. That introspection led to reading many books and participating in several relevant web sites and gleaning a wealth of advice and pertinent information. That helped occupy my mind, and time is also a great healer. I found out what and who I was dealing with and hopefully the part I played. Now I too know the signs, as Beverly mentioned. Another key is what Southernman said too about reality, living in honesty and openness.
The most important things I had reiterated or I learned as I walk forward are these, taken from Christian authors. Where there is deceit, there is no relationship. Without freedom and responsibility the relationship cannot grow. Freedom is making mature choices based on values not on fear or guilt born from the past. Taking responsibility is protecting love by confronting problems. Both people must bring these attributes to the relationship. (Boundaries in Dating, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend)
But also of course the discussion of our future behavior is paramount and is what will tell the true tale. Unfortunately I’ve also read that changing behavior is difficult and the success rate is not favorable. People are prone to repeat unhealthy behavior again and again, though we all think “never again!” For example, I thought I knew what evil was, I had even dealt with it in business, but when it looked me in the eye up close and personal, I didn’t see it. I saw the red flags but still forged on. I am now much better prepared but I don’t want to repeat that mistake, as I’m sure no one here does.
I think we are all more informed now, so I’ll ask you, Dr. Steve, what else is left to do and what do you think lies ahead for us?
I think faith of any sort must help people generally in life as they go through problems; but I imagine that this faith is ‘reinforced’ by conscience. Religion seems to add the idea of punishment (and of course reward!) to following what your conscience already says. Our consciences punish us already, without religion. I don’t imagine sociopaths can ‘discover’ religion and suddenly be converted to new behaviours.
I’ve noticed in a lot of my reading that some sociopaths have ended up drawn to fairly prominent positions in one church or another, but for them it’s a way of building up that ‘smokescreen’; of appearing a model member of society, the last one anyone would suspect of living without morals.
Learning more about all this has made me reassess my ideas about what good and evil is. I am now back to the idea that as far as the concept exists it’s the absence of something rather than the presence of something. (Something that we used to call privatio bono, which was apparently discredited by philosophers years ago – well sod that!)
Benzthere…
Would you mine emailing me. I too am a believer and actually ran into the loving arms of Christ after my socio relationship… there are some things I’d like to share, and of course, I’d like to have the opportunity to learn and listen with you. My email is cottie95@bellsouth.net
I also have a Myspace page which started out being a way to express myself and make friends, but although it wasn’t my intention, it has evolved into a ministry so to speak. I am amazed at how many broken people there are out there, and most of them have been pained by love. God has called me to offer inspiration to those people and all people. I love being used as a vessel by Him, to serve Him. How can one so softly bind the wounds of another than he who has felt the same wounds. My page takes a while to load, but worth the wait.
http://www.myspace.com/southernman429cj
benzthere – I agree with you that people who go on a spiritual/personal pilgrimage are in a much better position to 1. have a truly good relationship and 2. stay out of a truly bad relationship. Absolutely.
I wish I could say this situation is guaranteed, but as you know it’s not.
I’m no theologian, but Norman Mailer’s model (see ‘The castle in the forest’) does help to visualise the problem. There is, he says, a struggle between God and Satan i.e. there is no guarantee God will win! (this is the sacrilegious part, I think, but take it as a metaphor for now). Each sends angels or devils out to look for opportunities to do their respective master’s work, etc.
OK, enough of that – I mention it only to say our difficult task is to approach life with an open heart, an open mind AND with open eyes.
Thanks for the question.
ennlondon – Thanks for this comment on good and evil. You see good as something we can either turn towards or away from, the latter we call evil. It’s a powerful view.
What do you make of the idea I mention to benzthere of two things, good and evil, both calling us?
I wasn’t familiar with the notion of privatio bono so include the bit below which I googled for readers’ interest.
from: http://rudyscott.com/philosophy/evil.htm
“Internal suffering is the result of poor decisions made by an individual. This category is explained in Augustine’s privatio bono and defined by Ricoeur as ‘blame.’ It is turning away from the good as I perceive it. My friend Nathan Becraft described sin as ‘thinking that because you have suffered, it is all right to make someone else suffer.’ My only addendum to that definition would be to claim that there is some level at which I know that it is not ‘all right’ but that I do it anyway.”
Correction…. My myspace address is
http://www.myspace.com/southernman429
This site has been a lifesaver for me. I’ve been reading it for the past few months. My brain has been mush, and coming here has helped me get a grip on reality and to see that, yes, my husband is definitely a sociopath. At first I could hardly believe it. I had an inkling, I could see some of the signs, but still, I thought he couldn’t be completely remorseless. Yes, I was learning he did do some terrible things, but I thought surely that must bother him. Surely, he did not want to hurt me, truly cared about me, felt sorry for what he was doing.
Like a drowning person, I clung tenaciously to that branch of hope. I thought I couldn’t live without the reassurance it offered, I couldn’t let go of the dream. But with the help of Al-Anon, God, friends and this wonderful website, finger by finger, I’ve loosened my grip. I’m floating downstream, and the wonderful thing is that I’m finding I don’t have to go under, I’m starting to see I can swim. I can fight against the current if I need to. I can drag myself on shore and survive. I can live without this man. Even thrive.
I don’t have to die.
It’s taken me nine months to get here. (How symbolic is that?)
Starting the middle of April, I began to realize my husband was a liar and cheat. Through a series of flukes I found out he was having an affair and so I became a detective and dug and dug and found out more and more and discovered that only was he planning on leaving me (under false pretenses, of course) for a woman he’d been having a 4-year affair with, but he’s not even being “faithful” to her. He is scamming on women in a 12-step group he attends. He’s a sexual predator and has cheated on me almost our entire life together (almost 19 years), all the while convincing me–and everyone else–that he was an utterly devoted husband and family man.
Honest to God, I thought he was my soulmate and best friend. He had me so fooled. All these years he’d be calling me 5 times a day and I thought it was because he missed me so much when all the while he was only checking on my whereabouts.
The sentimental cards. The tender voice, the soft eyes. The sweetness, the seduction. All of that, he did all of that. He lies like most people breathe.
And I was so susceptible. When I met him (at work) I was coming out of a long, pretty much loveless marriage. I was ripe for the picking and here he was and I thought he was so nice, everyone else thought he was so nice, his ex-wife even thought he was nice (reading Secret Monster’s blog is like looking into my husband’s mind; none of “his” women even realized they’d been victimized).
He was romantic and the sex was fantastic and he made me feel like the only one, the best one, he had me on a pedestal (totally over-idealized me), and even as the years went by, he continued to say these things to me.
He was like a magician really. Sleight of hand, don’t watch what the left hand is doing. He exploited everyone’s assumptions (which were reasonable given how skillfull an actor he was and still is).
I had entered a hall of mirrors where every illusion seemed real.
A friend’s husband said that he doesn’t know how my husband got away with everything he did for so many years. He says there had to be red flags I ignored. I told my older daughter this and she said this guy doesn’t really know my husband. He had everyone fooled. Our whole family. Everyone. Everyone fell for his lies.
As for my attitude now, well, I’ve come a long way over the past nine months. From devastation to despair to feeling completely worthless, to feeling suicidal, to bitter jealousy, to desperation, to obsession, to anger, to numbness, to grief, to the greatest pain I’ve ever known, to thinking I could never trust anyone again, to relief, to down again, to flickers of hope, to courage, to action, and only last week, a feeling of happiness. Whoa, that one caught me by surprise.
All in all, I would not say I’m either cynical or jaded. I am finally learning to enjoy life on my own, something I never thought I could. I never thought I would have to (except through death). I feel I need to learn to be happy by myself, and if someone comes along that would be wonderful. I’m certainly not looking for it, at least not yet, but I do feel that the possibility is out there someday. I know I will be wary. I will never be the naive, gullible, trusting person I once was. But I know not everyone’s like my ex. I know I have work to do on myself so I won’t be as vulnerable, also. This whole experience has in some ways been positive (boy, it wasn’t too long ago that I never would have thought I’d say anything like that). I have always been a compassionate person, but this makes it all the more heartfelt. It’s not compassion on an intellectual level, like, oh, that’s too bad; I’m sorry. It’s tears in the eyes, pain in the gut, love, reaching out. I am not ready to thank God for all this yet, but I’m beginning to see that someday I might.
Dr Steve: I’m probably being too flexible in my interpretation of it, but I didn’t see ‘privatio bono’ so much as a choice between good and evil, but just literally as ‘deprived of good.’ That (since I’ve been reading about sociopaths – yes, they supposedly know the difference between right and wrong, but what’s their motivation for choosing right when they’ve been deprived of what we all value – meaningful connections with our fellow human beings) in some personalities the things that we would traditionally describe as good (obviously that’s another discussion that could go on all day!) are just completely absent.
The thing about evil is it makes an onlooker judge others – I’ve certainly wanted to do that, and it’s only had a negative impact on me. But realising that sociopaths exist, I’ve no need to do that. They’re simply privatio bono! (Of course they’re ‘deprived of good’ altogether – ie no real joy as experienced by the rest of us). I have absolutely no idea what society’s meant to do about them though.
Anyway apart from that – thanks for your excellent blog, which I found thanks to this superb site. This whole issue raises so many paradoxes and is utterly mind-bending; thank goodness for all these great sites making us realise we’re not alone.