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?
Dear Seastorm,
Sending you a large helping of kick arse attitude.
I admire your strength girl. You said its been a long road back! You came back from that experience. He didn’t win.
Towanda my friend. Never, never, never give up. Human resilience is remarkable and what your story tells me is you have it …..by the bucket load. He may have replaced you but if he’s anything like my ex it wont be long before she is discarded also.
Spaths suck. Literally.
Life is for living Seastorm. Keep fighting the good fight love!
Many thanks for all your kind and experienced words. It is good to talk to people who have been through the same experience and survived. Just surviving is a start. I am sure this kills some people through stress or worse.
Sea storm
Seastorm, I admire you for ripping up the picture. You could have stirred up so much drama with it, but instead, you chose to just walk away and get on with your life. Good for you.
Yes when I met him, my word was full of future, trust, love and everything. Believed world to be a better place, where people care for each other, he agreed all these good thinking I had. At that time he and I talked a lot about making a home, which will welcome friends, family, children all the time.
But then I found out it was my dream, he wanted to own me and dstroy my dream one by one with a very cruel way. Family stopped coming, friends will not even call anymore, children were hiding in their rooms, would take even tehir dinner to their rooms, a big house was decorated as model house, but you feel no warmth, it was just him, and I know he loved his effect on everybody.
So he cynical, was I jade, no, I was not, I was very unhappy, because I could have felt in my bones, that whatever is happening around me was wrong and I am compromising to keep an artifical peace in the house, which could explode anytime, whenever he felt.
And guess what my firends, family and children pulled me out of there. Yes I doubt men in general, because it hard to know what anybody says is real or not, other than that I going to back to myself and hoping I will be old person, who knew how to laugh all the time.
For everyone who is surviving and attempting to emerge, we have one thing that the spaths don’t: a conscience. We are able to process right and wrong, good and bad, love and hate, and everything in between.
I am grateful that everything went down the way that it did. If I had asked the worm to leave in a civil manner, he would have packed up all of the stuff that he left behind in his haste to leave and I would never have discovered how deep and far-ranging his sociopathy went.
I feel that I will never trust another man, again, and that I’m even suspicious of women – I don’t want to expose myself to someone else’s agenda. I feel that my view of sexuality has been thoroughly destroyed – I was sleeping next to someone who entertained vile perversions even before we ever met. I feel that my ability to trust is permanently compromised.
But, I feel that all of these things are in place so that I will focus upon myself and my son. Rather than the attention being placed upon someone else, it’s time for me to concern myself with myself – my health, my spirituality, my well-being, and my emotional issues. Working on these things may be daunting, but they aren’t impossible to manage, especially with strong counseling.
We’re all changed by our experiences. We’ve all had our perceptions dashed. We’ve all been emotionally exanguinated. And, we’ve all faced the disbelief and derision of those who just “don’t get it.” Well, fark everyone else! This lifetime is about our healing, growth, and realizing our potential. We have been spared for “A Reason,” though that “reason” may not be immediately apparent.
BRIGHTEST BLESSINGS to everyone – we’re all going to be okay in due time.
I’m not jaded, nor cynical. I’m optimistic, but not innocent or naive anymore. You can unjade again and be realistic about certain people.
Over more than a week ago, I did something I’ve neer done before. I made a profile on a dating site. Not sure why I did it at the time, but it’s been of some use to me. Which will sound like a paradox, because I am not making any contacts, hardly even go on the profile. Perhaps I did it for symbolical reasons to me, and to test my emotional response if somebody shows signs of wanting to “get to know me”.
Nobody can see my picture, unless I verify I want to get to know them, and I can’t see their pictures either. They don’t know my name either… Only a number is displayed. So, they can’t look me up on facebook either. And I’ve been getting a flood of requests the first couple of days. I ignored them all. After a few days the requests went down.
There was an interesting lesson in it for me regarding boundaries. With the first wave of requests, I was considering responding or not. And then I realized I was considering to respond from a wrong sourced feeling: it would be impolite to ignore them. I realized that if I accepted a request, I wouldn’t be doing it for myself, but out of consideration for the requester. And I realized how absurd that was. They were in the need of getting to know me, but not the other way around.
I wondered: Is it because I fear them? Is it because I’m cynical of what they want from me? And all this could have been a reason… and I did feel instances of those feelings and had those fleeting thoughts… but they had no hold on me. I felt the fear and had the cynical thoughts only in response to the feeling of obligatiion. Once I released myself from feeling obliged to respond or even contemplate to respond, I felt no fear nor tried to tell myself what they wanted.
The only basic throught remaining was that these profiles wanted something from me, and that I basically want for nothing at the moment.
Not sure yet what I will do with the profile. At the moment I’m just letting it sit there. But I start to feel a growing dislike against meeting people this way, irregardless of the fact that it’s a spath hunting ground. So, I’ll probably delete my profile in the coming weeks.
Truthspeak, your post above is so good, I just wanted you to know how much I agree with what you had to say and how “sane” you sound! Congratulations.
Darwin’s mom, yea, it is “fishing in a sewer” in my opinion and all you will catch are TURDS…I saw an article written the other day in a newspaper about how GREAT on line dating sites were and said that 60% of people now have found their Current “mate” on the net….WOW! That makes me shudder!
I am glad that you realized though about your feelings of “needing” to respoind so you wouldn’t be rude to them. Too many times I think we do respond to psychopaths and others because we are taught MANNERS and we respond when we should be using BOUNDARIES.
Travis, well put post up there about forgiveness and what it means and doesn’t. I applaud your attitude so very much! I strive for that myself, but don’t always manage to stay there, but have been making progress…at least I am getting the concept if not always the practice. LOL
I agree with Truthspeak, darwinmom and OX,
I never belived in sprituality, but I do now. Many times question come why we met spath. Answer was we needed to learn a lesson in a very harsh way that trusting somebody blindly and did everything from thir point of view and giving up good in the name of love can take us to HELL.
And us being careful now exactly was the purpose for our key learning. Don’t trust people blindly. My brother told me many times when I was with spath, you have so much to give to people in need, why are you wasting that good energy on this person, this person and his mom will never appreciate even if you give your life for them. I didn’t realize that then.
I see a secret behind everything now. Now I am free from spath, I am more focused on taking care of my children, myself, my finances, and on the top of that my very sick parents, who need us now at the sunset of their life. I know I would have never imagined doing all this if Spath would have in my life today, no way. God has sense of humor to show me something.
About online dating. I have been there. Tell you truth about 80% of them are predetors. I thought about asking online dating company to hire me to pick the frauds. It is amazing you can pick them right away even with one liner reading. Stay away from these people.
And trend is whenever a new post comes, everybody launches on the person, if they don’t recieve any response they go away. If you take your profile offline for few days, and bring it back online same thing will happen.
Anybody who is 6 and above feet tall, widower, working on mechanical production, self employed, working over seas, STAY away from them. Their pictures are fake as well.
Dear My heart, you make some good points. I also agree that this whole thing (including life itself) is a spiritual journey as well—-whatever your spiritual belief we must include that in our healing, we must use that to find some meaning in this thing.
Dr. Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s search for meaning” written after he got out of the Nazi prison camp in which he lost everything was the key to my seeing the spiritual aspect (though I had felt it before he wrote about the spiritual results of the torture had on the various people and described how some people sat down and gave up and died, others fought, some became co-abusers with the Nazis, etc. after they got out some became very bitter and struck out at others and felt justified because they had suffered so much it was now okay for them to strike out.
Some of the Germans had no empathy or sympathy for the former inmates and said “well, WE suffered during the war too”
Interesting book covering some interesting spiritual concepts. It helped me to see though that I had been spiritually abused my entire life b y my egg donor and her “religion.” I am still a believer, but not in HER INTERPRETATION of the scriptures, but my own.
REgarding meeting a mate online:
The online dating services like to promote the message about the high percentage of people who say they meet their mate online. But like spaths, they leave out the most important part of the story.
PEOPLE ARE MEETING THEIR MATE VIA THEIR FACEBOOK FRIENDS.
In other words, it’s someone who is KNOWN to their friend or known in their circle of friends. Not a shot in the dark with online dating services which is the preferred venue for desperate people and thus where spaths hang out, truly the vulnerable are “fishing in a sewer”.