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, blasé, apathetic – the 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?
Newstepmom,
Yes! excellent tactic. Spaths don’t understand humor. They don’t know how to laugh at themselves. When you laugh, they become envious but they pretend they get it and try to laugh with you. Just keep laughing.
They also hate laughter because it breaks up tension. Tension is the basis for drama and they don’t want to let up on that.
Yes, I’ve used laughter and it works like a charm. When they start raging, just laugh. Of course it makes them madder but when you keep laughing and tell them you can’t help it, their rage just dissipates. Drama is no fun when nobody participates. When they insult you, laugh at yourself.
Laughter is right up there with Gray Rock as a tactic for dealing with spaths.
Stem mom,
My suggestion would be you and your husband sit the kids down….just confront this thing head on and honestyly.
Say something like “I know you have hear rumors about how awful I am….DON’T say who you heard them from….and don’t ask the kids to say who they heard them from.
It doesn’t matter to me what rumors are out there, because they are first off not true, and then you might mention one or two easy ones they have heard that are easy to prove wrong.
Your dad and I love each other and we’re going to make a family with you. I know you also have a family with your mom and I want to cooperaste with her and you.
Well have rules here lkand I expect your do your best to live within those rules.
I want very much for us to all get along and enjoy each other’s company and have fun togheter. SSo I hpe you arfe gracious enough to decide forf ourself if I am the monster you have been told I am. I have no deoubt that from time to time I will do or say something you may nnot like, but When I do I would expect you to talk to me in a reasonable wayl and we will work it out.,””
That’s my best suggestion but I am fallihng asleep zxzzzzzzzzz
Newstepmom ~
Make sure you read Sky’s article on the gray rock technique. It works. The way I use it there is a lot of “silent laughter” involved. I may be keeping a straight face on the outside but I’m laughing hysterically on the inside.
If they don’t know something is bothering you, they can’t use it against you.
Really, it works.
http://www.stepfamilies.info/
Thanks for all comments and responses! Great to know the official stepfamily recommendations, though this master manipulator uses all those keywords toward her own desires, of course. So… that feels hopeless to even worry about though yes, to check ourselves against to be sure we are doing healthy things.
One funny note regarding the reverse psychology is that I bake a lot of bread and the kids love it, so I’m dying laughing hearing she gets a really expensive bread mixer (I do mine by hand). I love laughing dreaming of other hobbies to take up, just to watch any other imitation: tap-dancing, ukulele-playing, fencing. Thing is, I would love to do all of these things, so maybe I just will. 🙂
Interestingly last spring she -may- actually have been trying to influence me — noting on my fake-nice note to her mother’s day that the kids helped her plant flowers her “favorite” activity (the woman never does any work herself), possibly hearing I had a giant garden at the house I moved from. I remembered that this morning.
I love the thought of laughing while fake-niceing, and reverse-psychologying, for my own sanity. It’s overall pretty hard on me otherwise, this all having been a big surprise once I married this guy!
Newstepmom – All the thought you are spending on ways to get at the sociopathic ex is wasting your time. The sociopath doesn’t actually care about your hand made bread making. You say you love laughing and dreaming of her trying to take up these hobbies such as ukulele-playing? I have dealt with a sociopathic ex and what I have learned is that you cannot consume your life and thoughts thinking of things to upset the sociopath as she has you. You will never win this way. The only way you stand a chance is to pay her NO ATTENTION. We have NO CONTACT with ours as the children are now older.
You are spending all your time obsessing over the sociopath. Trying to future out her next move. It’s a waste of time. My husband and I don’t believe anything the sociopath says. We just live our life and have learned that his ex wife has bad intentions, and everything she does has evil or manipulative motive behind it so we just ignore her. The kids are old enough to make their own decisions and we accept that. They still want to see us – even after all the sociopath has said to try to make them hate us. My step daughter has even told me that her mother was crazy and always sleeping and she can’t rely on her. I still DONT bad mouth her. Even when both her children do because they see thru her craziness. I will actually say “your mom might be tired and stressed but she loves you and y’all need to respect her. Even though this woman has trashed my name in our community as well. My situation is similar to yours except my husbands sociopathic ex has burnt all her bridges in our community. No one listens to her and everyone thinks she has lost her mind – since being fired from her job with the city. Because of her crazy antics. In the beginning I felt the need to defend myself against her. Until I realized it was pointless and she had already ruined her own reputation by sleeping with married men and stealing money. She has been on a spiral downward for 10 years. Her own family won’t even speak to her. They won’t attend family functions she will be at. Because of her behavior.
My advise to you would be to stop obsessing with her. I think if you are playing the ukulele around the house – just to see if the sociopath will do that also. Think if the sociopath looks ridiculous doing it – think about how ukulele playing may make you look. You must live your own life and stop doing thing to get a reaction out of the sociopath. The sociopath lives for getting your blood boiling. Always know they will keep bothering you as long as you react. It took me a while to learn this. But now I do not react to anything she does. Even when she tries to involve the children. It only hurts the children – she doesn’t care though as long as she thinks we are hurt too. My husband is numb to situation and doesn’t care anymore. He is the type of person who avoid conflict and confrontation. So the more drama she is the more my husband withdrawals. And now that I have stopped putting myself in the line of fire by trying to help the kids and I have detached. I let my husband handle the kids. Which is sad but every time I would do anything nice for the their mother would mentally lash out and verbally attack me. So for my own sanity I had to take a huge step back. And since I have things have been better for me. You must take care of yourself when dealing with a sociopath or otherwise you will make yourself miserable
Unfortunately, I’ve realized I’m still stuck in anger and I might even say a touch of rage.
I fit the jaded description. I can’t ever envision myself with another man.
Even after the N/NS, I made efforts at new relationships but each one just fizzled. I guess I’ve given up. I’ve reached the point of concluding I might be too damaged to salvage.
The N/NS didn’t help by telling me I must have met someone in my past that really messed me up. Little does he know (I’m sure he doesn’t or if he did he would not care) that he did the most damage of all.
I just want to find a way out of the anger at this point. I’ve given up the illusion that he is “really my soulmate” if I “just try hard enough.” Besides, I lost (or was forced out of) my nice home in my nice neighborhood so I’m sure he’d have no use for me now.
I wonder what the stats are on people who have had a relationship with one of these devastators and who go on to find a new happy relationship.
I don’t know if this is good or bad, but just reading this blog has really put me in touch with my unresolved anger. I guess it’s something to work on in therapy.
As hard as my divorce was, at least I can say I married a decent guy. And I say that knowing that he may have been in some secret affair, but I was no saint either. The difference between that and this is that my ex husband and I remained friends and I truly believe he is a decent human being who was just not happy with me. I didn’t have all the deception crap to deal with.
And furthermore, as traumatized as I’ve been over the last seven months being stalked and forced out of my home, I can honestly say that the wreckage of dealing with this NS is worse.
I feared for my life at my former house. It cost me thousands of dollars to fight back at (more than I ever spent on the NS). Still, just a few nights of peace and no stalking and I am okay. Sure, I’m still spooked and do have a way to defend myself, but it did not hit me at the core of who I am.
I used to think that if the NS ever moved in I would be afraid to be in the pool with him. For some uncanny reason I feared he would drown me. Same with the stalkers, although I knew the enemy there and there was no question in my mind.
I think the difference might be in the devil known vs. the devil unknown. The stalkers have been the former, hence easier to deal with. The NS was the devil unknown. Just how far he would have gone is the big unknown. I don’t know if this makes any sense to anyone, but I prefer to deal with an enemy head on, rather than someone who pretends to care yet every action makes him out to be my enemy.
This is a very good one i found here! For those of you who are still trying to keep your head above the quagmires of insanity, given what you’ve learned the hard way, what’s your attitude like? Me? Cynical, angry, hostile, triggered, spiteful, hostile, vengeful, hostile, depleted, hostile, angry, outraged, hostile, malevolent, malicious, provoked, mocked, hostile, disheartened, grieved, vexation of soul, disconsolate, calamitous, animosity, hostile, furious, vehement, infuriated, rabid, ashamed, raped, mutated, antagonized, unhinged, hostile, vindictive, hostile, assassinated, ruinous, hostile, stupid, hostile, diminished,
dislocated, subverted, disgraced, foreboding, hostile, hoodooed,
skeptical, hostile, foolish, inept, swindled, mentally contaminated, hostile, maniacal, trifled with, ruthless, just to name a few. Yes, I’m doing some ranting and raving here. I guess I still have a lot of work to do…..
I have felt all of the above, Radar, and can we just add sad, bereft, abandoned, and misunderstood to the list. I may have lost yet another friend because I just cannot stand watching this person be a willing enabler/co-dependent, in spite of being someone who should “know better” (a counselor) not to mention repeating dysfunctional patterns of behavior. Yes, part of me is angry because in spite of describing my experiences with a spath this friend did not heed the warning signs, so I am maybe taking it too personally. If I disassociate with all the unhealthy people in my life, is there going to be ANYONE left?
Radar,
Your description sounds like you are describing a spath!!
I think that the spaths intend for us to become them, while they take on our outward appearance. So they leave us feeling like they do, filled with rage.
As you said, though, you learned. What I’ve found is that being grateful for the wisdom I received is the key. Of course it takes practice. I actually have to remember to be grateful, it doesn’t just happen. Whenever I begin to feel angry about what he took, I just remember what I gained. Lets face it, there was no other way to gain this wisdom because it’s not a lesson I was willing to endure.
Skylar, what you said is so profound in that it seems like they wanted us to become them, while taking on our outward appearance. I have been so afraid for this last year and a half that somehow my spath somehow rubbed off on me. I feel all that anger and violation as Radar has written about, but at the same time I sort of have flatlined emotionally. Trivial things people complain about mean so little to me. Inside I want to scream “get a real problem and walk for a mile in my shoes instead of complaining about how a bad hair day ruined your week”. Yet I know I could never lose my compassion toward others, I am concerned in that I don’t know how to show emotion or really experience happiness anymore. When I do experience sadness, its alone, where no one can see, and usually triggered by something unrelated (like a sad story on the interwebs or something). I have been so afraid that sociopathy can somehow be “caught” because the victim has been put in a place where their emotions and core beliefs about others have been so shattered that the only safe way to exist is in a way that does not show emotion.
Spaths want us to become something other than the human beings that we are but I don’t think they want us to become like them. Spaths don’t want to be with other spaths; associations like that easily makes them exposed, naked.
No, they want to strip us of our humanity. Whole people can fight back; shells, robots are at their beck and call, on remote control.
Our emotions are the first and most important things they have to destroy. Displaying them, even with innocuous things like cheering/booing during a sporting event, or reacting to a movie puts the spath at a disadvantage. They don’t want to hear laughter, they don’t want to see tears, then they will be forced to put up the mask and emulate being human, something they would not rather do.
They do not want us to be cunning, then they could no longer be sure they had the upper hand. They don’t want us to lie, because that would befuddle them. They don’t want us to wear masks, for that would confuse them.
My spath did strip me of my emotions. I no longer reacted to TV programs, I stopped yelling when he hit me, I stopped caring about me.
In the end though, he lost. He wanted to destroy my emotions, he completely eradicated them. The day he died, I sat in kitchen and answered the questions the first responders asked with no reactions at all. I was so stoic, not in shock, the emts checked me, just blank, that the coroner asked me if I was sure I was married to this guy.
Spath loved it whenever I “lost my cool” and he DEFINITELY wants to change places with me…looking like he’s spiritual while making me look as bad as possible!
I got a knock on my door tonight while I was putting groceries away.My neighbor said “I gotta tell you about someone that knows you!”I said “oh yeah?!” He said “yeah,I met him at —- and he was in a wheelchair and wearing oxygen”.He had ALL my attention then! “you met my husband!” Because of what came next,I can’t remember if he said he had his chihuahua with him;at any rate,spath told him that he HAS a chihuahua too and showed him a picture(I bet it’s one he got from someone).He said he would get custody of the dog.
It’s true he ‘bought’ the dog by trading his guitar for it.But the puppy never bonded with him.I was the one that showed her kindness and love.My husband wouldn’t allow her outdoors (I take her out and she LOVES it!) and so I would get down on the floor and play with her.Spath would quickly get jealous as he thought he was the center of the universe,and tell me to put the puppy in her carrier.That happened far too often!
Since I left spath,I have made sure the puppy has had all her vaccinations and been spayed(oh dear,don’t think spath will like the spaying part as he had other plans!),she gets her nails trimmed regularly by the vet,and I spoil her with toys and snacks and most importantly,lots of lovin’!
Blossom, similar for me with one of my 2 cats. The ex bought her on Craigslist then effectively ignored her. He stole from me constantly to the point that there were times we had little to no food when she was a baby. She is almost 3 now and healthy because since I left my first order of business was getting her vet shots and putting her on a great diet. She is small and always will be, I carry horrible guilt over that in not getting out sooner, I think that the poor nutrition she had as a baby caused her to have stunted growth. I pray she has no worse issues later in life. My ex spath also pretended to be spiritual and tried to make me look like I wasn’t. Yet behind closed doors was a different story when I was still with him. I will never forget the times when his teenaged son would come to stay for his custody visitation. His son has aspergers, and full blown delusional schizophrenia and severe bi-polar disorder. My ex – a sociopath, possibly borderline psychopath also has bi-polar and I believe schizophrenia based upon the things I witnessed when he wasn’t high on crack. Anyway, my ex used to joke around with his son in front of me that he was going to take the kitten and put her in the microwave. I mean how sick can someone get? Its one thing on how evil he was, but planting that suggestion into his severely mentally ill son’s mind took it to a whole other level. I used to be terrified to leave the apartment, not knowing what I would find when I got home. When the time came when I got out, I remember I couldn’t move that same day, so I went for a few days to stay with family and sort out my plans. I made sure to leave my cats with a kind and generous neighbor. If I hadn’t, they would be dead – of this I have no doubt. I later learned that as a child, my ex spath used to trap neighborhood cats and feed them to pitbulls.
So glad you have been able to take care of your puppy. It is so rewarding to give our companions the care they need without fear of repercussions.
the jb,
What is it with these men that wear the spiritual mask?!They should be aware that our pets are God’s creatures and should be treated with love! I’m so glad you got out with your cats and have been able to give them the love they so deserve!
I’ve been assured that nothing could be done even if my husband took me to court other than making me pay half of what he paid for the puppy.I don’t even know if that could be done,because I’ve spent ATLEAST that much on her just taking care of her(could be considered kenneling fees)Plus if the court knew his history of dropping animals off when he feels like it,they’d likely take that into consideration.
One of my daughters asked my husband about his claims of taking the puppy into custody (I really wish she hadn’t done that!),and his words were:”I would NEVER do that to your mother!” I trust him like I did before I left him!