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?
sstiles54,
I am 3 years out of a psychopathic relationship which has affected my life for a total of 18 years and counting now.
The man I was involved with was extremely sadistic and adept at non-stop, brutal psychological torture.
I share your sentiments. An experience of this kind has got to be one of the most entirely, deeply isolating experiences in this lifetime. I’m so grateful for forums like this because even though our own experiences are our own-so no one can really know the extent of the pain, damage and insanity of it…just knowing that others have gone thru similar experiences in their own way, takes a little of the edge of that feeling of complete isolation.
I am one of those who will NEVER look at this experience as any kind of gift, nor blessing in disguise, nor lesson nor anything of a positive nature-and that’s ok. It doesn’t mean that I won’t be able to move through the wreckage.
Because I still have very bad PTSD at this point still and have so far had no luck in finding adequate, relevant help through the regular channels in my community (DV center, local psychologists).
I started doing keyword searches online for psychologists with experience in Personality Disorders and I found a woman who clearly and totally understood the nature of what I had gone through.
She explained to me why it can be so difficult to find people who can constructively help us with these situations-to truly understand it and be able to provide the right kind of assistance to your client, you need to have studied the Personality Disorder at length and most “therapist” don’t ever do so as specializing in that kind of thing is not where their interest lies.
The 1 hour that I spent with her on the phone a few weeks ago, was so completely validating-I came away feeling a great sense of relief and that has been priceless.
Another route to possibly consider when searching for help which could be most useful for victims of Sociopaths may well be therapists who specialize in dealing with victims of Cults.
Cult victims tend to go through a similar kind of all- encompassing destruction of their self, emotions, minds, finances, and the therapists who treat former cult members are usually former victims themselves-they have lived it, so they have that understanding and would never think of you as the dummy that fell for it, gee so sad. They know.
There are people out there who can help, it’s a tragedy that they aren’t easier to find.
-Stunned
Don’t know how I missed this great thread—and the wonderful comments on it. I can identify with most of them.
We go through such a MEGA-grief process, losing my husband in such a tragic way was horrible, but it was by comparison a “cake walk” to the grief I suffered over my Ps…I think maybe because there was no preventing the aircraft crash, it just WAS. It was NOT INTENTIONAL.
When my son D finally made a break from his fiancee after realzing that she was a narcissist, he told me “this was worse than the aircraft crash” He had been IN the plane as well and was severely burned over much of his upper body.
I think the SENSELESSNESS of the devestation wrought by the Ps and our own complicity in allowing this to continue past the FIRST RED FLAG makes healing from this more difficult.
My emotions during the MEGA-GRIEF process were more intense and “crazy” and self blaming than anything imaginable from any other trauma or happening. Plus, the length of time that we are involved makes it a much more, to me, bitter experience.
My emotions ranged over the full level of what is capable for a human being, I think. Then back again and again and again.
It is only my faith that has kept me mostly sane I think, that and good mental health care providers, and handsfull of psychotropic medications. In the past I have looked “down upon” some of the people who have been suckered into cults that are so “far out in left field” as to be almost “laughable” yet now I do NO LONGER LOOK DOWN UPON THESE PEOPLE, because I realize that I was sucked into a smaller “cult” but one that was just as “far out in left field”—
I would sum up my changes as “sadder, but wiser” over all, but the on-going healing process is going well, I think, and though I have some ways to go, I think over all I am neither jaded nor cynical, just wiser, and listen more to my own emotions rather than to the “tapes” that tell me what I “should or should not” feel or think. I have a greater respect for myself and my own wisdom, and I am LISTENING TO MYSELF MORE NOW. Setting boundaries in relationships that are reasonable, and enforcing them. Some of those boundaries are NO CONTACT, or VERY limited contact.
I can’t help being reminded of Carly Simon’s song “the way I thought it should be”…
I think the revalation in it all is that what I believed to be true about how relationships worked was missing some key elements of understanding.
So what made me happy was having my expectations for that filled.
What makes me suspicious is understanding now that there were some really important things I was missing.
Some perspectives that didn’t lead to the real I thought I found.
And some of it is just the fault of a liar. He marched right in and lied.
That was one person. It doesn’t make anyone else a liar- (although it will provoke me to check more carefully).
Now that one person is fired from my life. He was actually escorted out.
He made his business lying to women and he was methodical and very purposeful about it. I got lied to by someone who was really good at it.
Does that make me anything? I think it says I was targeted and hit. That is what these guys do and this one got to me.
OK. Does that make me Something I wasn’t before? Wiser? Yes. I have learned a great deal- not all stuff I would have picked – I mean basketweaving might really be more pleasant!
Stronger- Yeah. Anytime I can connect and be part of a community like the one here, I am strengthened.
I guess I see experience good or bad as additive, not detractive.
Why do I have to be anything except someone who was lied to and learned the truth?
My interest and goal at this point is to find out what I didn’t understand and why, to find out how to learn it and move on with MY life.
If one describes themselves as jaded, what does that really mean? It strikes me as taking the posture of a wounded mystery which dares rescuers. An invitation to more of the same it seems to me.
Cynics are bores. They know it all already and have nothing to learn. And it seems to me that people who know it all and have no need to exert effort to learn give off a toxic kind of aura- but, that is just me.
There is no gain to hiding in anyway from what hurts about being betrayed severely and there are people here who have been hit much worse than I was if you want to put that on a scale.
I think we have to call it square and say I’ve had a painful emotional experience. Or maybe even a bunch of them. It does hurt.
There are specific things that I can do about it.
There are things I can learn from it.
And unless I choose to do so, I don’t have to have this experience again.
I may choose to help others along my process which is a way of grounding the things I am learning and participating in a community which is supportive will help me not to go backwards into the fantasy which I thought was my life.
In all of it, I am not diminished. I have only to gain and grow here. I find the opportunity to be a blessing and look back on the intervention of that relationship as having been on the order of Divine.
I have been very, very lucky to find this place and this knowledge and I am saddened only by the understanding that there are suffering people out there who don’t know what we do.
I am very,very lucky not to be in that population so how could I possibly describe myself as jaded? or cynical?
I don’t see the community here as either of those things by far no matter how tough their stories are.
In life, experience counts. Look at what we know now. Wow.
I think it is true that there is a very limited resource pool for finding help but a huge population of professionals who want to get paid.
I don’t understand why or how I got through life being so naive about these kinds of men. But I did. And I opened the door to him believing what he said was true. Now, I belong to a community of people who share that experience.
This is a community that has a right to ask for solid results, clear boundaries and straight talk and action.
Kinda like a cowboy sittin in the dirt after gettin’ horse kicked. Ever been kicked? Well, it’ll knock you down and hurt for a while.
How long you gonna sit there? Are you gonna walk around the back end like that again and what did you learn about why they did?
Nuthin’ from nuthin’ is nuthin’. That’s just the way it is.
If you can walk, you can ride.
Dont do that again.
Cowboy up and move on.
I think I will write a book about Roost Cockburn as a therapist….
My point is that nothing, not even labels that allow us to get stuck here or defined by this is of value to the recovery process.
Looking back at this article and my post (I posted on this thread almost two years to the day ago) and reading what I wrote then, and being able to SEE what I thought at that time (two years ago) and seeing also, the things I have learned in those two years, the ups and downs I’ve had since then, mostly as a result of “getting kicked” again….but also of me not respecting the ability of a horse/mule/donkey to kick! I see that I HAVE moved along on the road closer to healing, but it only reinforces my knowledge that “healing” is a journey, not a destination.
Life is the journey with only one destination.
What is real is that we have been required to learn about these animals along our journey, but their kicks do NOT define us.
We get up, we move on and what happens next there is no way of knowing. All we can do is the best we can.
And that, over and over again.
Can I say that I believe that NEVER AGAIN right now? No.
It is that which provokes the deepest concerns.
What I will do now is the best I can to learn from it and move on.
And I will learn once more to respect the ass end of a mule for what it is and can do to me.
all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again:
but winter’s not forever,even snow
melts;and if spring should spoil the game,what then?
all history’s a winter sport or three:
but were it five,i’d still insist that all
history is too small for even me;
for me and you,exceedingly too small.
Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave
merely to toil the scale to shrillerness
per every madge and mabel dick and dave
—tomorrow is our permanent address
and there they’ll scarcely find us(if they do,
we’ll move away still further:into now.
ee cummings
This is my first post on this sight. My S LEFT me while I was at work. For several weeks prior to his leaving I could feel something amiss. There was a deep vacancy in him. So distant, I almost felt like he was not even there physically.
It took me 8 months to start researching what I was dealing with. I immediately went into damage control the moment I came home from work that day, and am still in that mode. I am not yet divorced from him. In a sense, I feel in limbo.
My attitude….I am on high alert, anxious, isolating as much as I can. I do go to work, but that is all I can do, and my work confidantes say I am holding up a good front at work. I am telling you that is all I can do to work my 3 days (12-13hrs)and honestly I could sleep and DO on my days off.
For the 2 1/2 years, yes that is all that we were together, I was exhausted trying to believe in him, trying to express my support, trying to fathom his spending my hardearned money, his refusing to work, lying, late night internet.
Dear Angel,
Welcome to Love Fraud, glad you are here even if it took a trauma to get you to this comforting place.
I’ve “kept up a front” in life for most of my life, surrounded by Ps, and I know it takes a lot of energy to do that.
It is a GOOD thing he left you, that he is GONE and now you can heal. It takes time, energy and support in which to heal, to find out what made you vulnerable to this MONSTER of a man, but I am glad you are here. Read, go back through the archives of articles and read every article (just the articles at first) and SOAK in all the information there. Some of it may not resonate with you yet, but it will. It will all helpl you on your way toward healing from this thing.
Be good to yourself on those days off, and if you are suffering the signs and symptoms of depression, I suggest you seek professional and medical help for that. It won’t take away the pain, but may help you work through it easier. There is no easy way to heal over this, no “pill” that will make it instantly go away.
Take care of YOU and be good to yourself. Do healthy things even if you don’t feel like doing them. ((((hugs)))) and God Bless you. Glad you found your way here to this place.
Dear Angelforyou,
Welcome to LF…this is a healing place…lots of interesting articles to read, and so much support from so many who have experienced very toxic unhealthy relationships. Im sorry for your pain, and glad you had an Angel watching over you to get him out of your life. Thank you for sharing your journey and hope you continue to share how you go through the damage control and get out of limbo to walk on….as its an achievable goal of so many of us here at LF. Take care of you,
Oh Thank You Ox!, and Bless You LTL!
Hello All,
I am greatful for this sight, and reading all I can. I realize many of you have gone through much of the same and more, or similar stories. It is insidious and calculating how they are.
Ox, thank you for sharing about putting up a front. It seems like I have a double life. I am depressed at home and can’t be depressed at work. It takes all my energy to get through work. To the extent I am considering a new career.
Life goes on. And I am lucky to have grown up with a strong work ethic embedded in me by my mother, family, and friends as I grew up and began learning life’s lessons. As I am trying to undo his emotional and financial damage.
He committed identity fraud on my accounts. When the ID theft is by your spouse, it is kind of taken with a grain of salt. So, I am still trying to make the bank somewhat accountable for allowing him to pretend he was me and put my accounts “on line”.
When I got home from work, there were huge bags of shredding, and a smashed up computer motherboard, among other things. I felt disbelief and shock. My mind keeps taking me back to that Saturday evening when I walked in the door and realized he had left.
I promise, I AM working on it. I have my moments. And winter is almost over.
Take Care,
Angel
When he left me 8 months ago, each of my sisters said, “Well Thank God you are still alive.” Every time I heard that I actually felt like screaming and got nauseated. As I thought it over, I realized that when it was happening to me in the first week , what I was feeling was ( I thought then, in my confusion) that I did not want to be living, feeling as anxious, betrayed, scared, caught off guard, numb, paralyzed, irritable, afraid for my life and my loved ones lives. No wonder those words were not consoling at the time. I am sure now that he would have loved me to find a convenient accidental demise. He often whined about wanting to make a trip to the Grand Canyon…Yikes!
I want to get back to where I was three years ago, when I had good self esteem, a feeling of security, wanting to actually be around people, and in touch with life. Loved my job. Engaged with work.
I love my sisters and my friends and care for them dearly. And I am forever indebted to family and friends who were right where I needed them in my time of shock.
It has been a long winter all over.
Today it was 60 degrees, I got some sun on the back deck. And I agreed to go to dinner with a friend on Friday.
Progress!