Even bad people can sometimes behave well. That seems a strange twist on the idea of “good people behaving badly.” But it’s true. Even the skeeviest personality isn’t usually spending all day long exploiting everyone who enters his path.
Now this doesn’t mitigate his skeeviness one wit. But it’s also true that sociopaths aren’t always exploiting and mistreating others, all day long. They will be taking some time off, in different contexts, from their more unseemly behaviors.
And so sometimes, sociopaths can be nice, even very nice; sometimes they may extend themselves to others. Now we can question what motivates them when they are behaving well; probably, very often, their prosocial behaviors are driven by relatively shallow, if not manipulatively self-serving, motives.
Still, it’s fair to say that most sociopaths aren’t spending their lives 24/7 causing havoc to everyone around them; and it’s fair to suggest that, sometimes, if motivated to do so, they may even bring some cheer into others’ lives.
After all, we know these personalities can be charming and engaging; and that when they are, this isn’t necessarily, always an “act.” The sociopath can be genuinely charming and engaging, and he may enjoy, genuinely on some level, being charming and engaging.
In a sense I’m suggesting that not everything about even the sociopath is fraudulent; the sociopath, like anyone else, has genuine experiences, although we are right to question the depth of his experiences; and we are right to question his motives when he is behaving himself.
But to avoid confusion, my point is this: Beware! Do not rule-out sociopathy, or a similarly exploitative personality disturbance, simply because the individual is capable of behaving well sometimes, or even, alas, often. To do so risks our missing the significance of the dangerous, always lurking curve-balls that the even sometimes well-behaved sociopath may throw at any time (predictably or not).
One may be tempted to think, “If he can behave this well, can he really be that bad?” The answer is, yes. He can behave, sometimes, this well, and yet really be that bad!
So while I’m not necessarily saying “don’t be fooled” by his better behaviors, which may (or may not) have a genuine component to them, I am suggesting the exercising of great caution not to let the sociopath’s better behaviors distract you one bit from giving full weight to, and appreciation of, his destructive behaviors.
The latter should not be regarded as one bit less menacing and forbidding by virtue of his capacity to display the former.
(This article is copyrighted © 2010 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns is strictly for convenience’s sake and not to suggest that females aren’t capable of the behaviors and attitudes displayed.)
LETTER TO LOVEFRAUD: I fear for my granddaughter’s life
What have I learned from all of this? Well appreciate the true love that you receive in this world. Hold on to what is good, and do good yourself. Why be like the piece of sh*^? You will end up looking like a piece of sh*& and smelling like a piece of sh*& if you continue to play their games. Remove yourself from the foolishness- you will smell better.
Whyme,
EB’s words are true, it’s about appearances.
Maybe they look for people like us, who are true to their appearances. People, like us, who don’t need to pretend because we actually like who we are. hey, maybe that’s what attracts them to us, they envy our ability to like ourselves. this is an interesting thought… I’m going to give it alot more attention.
They perhaps envy our honesty/ innocence so much that they need to destroy it. LET THEM TRY. It isn’t going to work here. whatever they want to accomplish, it serves one purpose: it helps me distinguish right from wrong. If I ever have any doubts, I just ask myself, “what would the spath do?” then I do/feel/believe the opposite. After 25 years, I can see the pattern and I know what they want, but I’m not going to acquiesce.
I remember, several years ago, I was talking to my mom and said, “I just figured out how to make decisions that never fail to work out right. I just ask (my P) what to do and then I do the opposite” LOL.
I had noticed a pattern that worked, I just didn’t know WHY it worked. I thought that my P was just really really stupid. But now I know that he would expect me to follow his advice and then he would sabotage the results.
THEY ARE THE PEOPLE OF THE LIE, NOTHING MORE.
They also prey on each other as victims, or on their dupes, and dopplegangers as well, they are like rabid wolves and will cooperate for a time even with each other, but I still love the line my egg donor shouted when they had turned on her at last.
They had of course been in league with the egg donor and I WAS THE GUY IN THE BARREL and they were all shoving it to me, each one seeming to enjoy the sport more than the other….but when they turned on HER she screamed in surprise and agony “BUT THEY WERE ALWAYS SO RESPECTFUL OF ME!”
Wait a minute let’s examine this.
You saw them PERSECUTE ME.
You saw them be DISRESPECTFUL OF ME.
You saw them be HATEFUL AND MEAN TO ME.
You saw them, even aided them in HURTING ME.
And now YOU ARE SURPRISED WHEN THEY HURT YOU? Did you HONESTLY THINK that if they would treat ANY living HUMAN BEING the way they treated me, that you were SPECIAL and that they would NEVER treat YOU that way if it suited their purpose to?
Did you think that MAYBE they treated you so “respectfully” because it is much easier to con money and cooperation out of an old woman that you show outward “respect” for than it is to say “Hey, you old bat, give me your money!” You FELL for it. SURPRISE!
But when people will cooperate with you to con someone else, or when people cooperate with you to hurt someone else, don’t act surprised when they start to HURT YOU and CON YOU.
You knew what they were, you knew they were mean, you knew they lied, and you knew they were hurting someone else, but you learned you weren’t so special to them after all.
good one Ox! I remember thinking about the spath… you have no respect for any type of authority, what made me think you would respect me in a relationship? He didn’t want anybody telling him what to do in the big city… that’s why he moved out to the country where there is no city/code enforcement regulations to tell him what to do. Now that I think about it the sicko one up’ed his own self!!!! Now that’s bad!!!! I think he tried to one up LIFE as a whole!!! HA HA!!! Life is not so great where he is! Now that’s funny!!! LOLOLOLOL!
We just need to keep in mind that if someone will Fark someone else over TODAY they will FARK us over tomorrow.
They are forever joining forces with one person or group to persecute and abuse another one and it is just like in 4th grade how the cliques keep forming disbanding and reforming, they have no loyalty to anyone one, just to creating chaos.
Psychopaths show us who they are, we just need to BELIEVE THEM, and believe it applies to US, too, because it WILL.
WhyMe,
My heart goes out to you – it is horrible to realize that your loved one is/was a fraud, not being sincere about the “future” that you both had planned out for yourselves. It is unfathomable that anyone would do this to another person, stringing them along with broken promises. You can bet that his past wife was treated similarly and the present wife probably is learning some things about him that aren’t to her liking. Sociopaths lack COMMON DECENCY. I hope that your thoughts take you to a better place today.
Ox,
You are so right, they will treat us as poorly as we have seen them treat another. he had a friend of many years called “phyllis”, he did nothing but put her down, now take into consideration that she is a medicated bipolar, but he was up her arse and criticising her constantly.(mainly for her taking meds, I think he knows he needs meds but refuses to comply with what “he needs” ) What the FARK was that? He complained to me about her… I finally got tired of hearing it and asked him, “why do you keep expecting somethiing out of someone that doesn’t have the ability to give it?”
Where I am stuck in healing is….. I was so proud of where I had worked hard to be, my community was so nice, clean, pristine and secure (cookie cutter ?YES, that’s how you get a decent place to live). That’s what he could not tolerate, I guess being eccentric and needing to be able to drive across his front yard and park on his property wherever he wants… was the middle finger to being a “decent contribution to society.” 100 yr old house he lives in and NO heat/ NO AC barely an indoor bathroom and he thinks it’s GRANDIOSITY because it is paid for….. Needs more $$$ than he will ever make in a lifetime to be a decent comfortable place to live. I called it a tent! It’s old and falling down, no insullation, nothing sealed like windows and doors, musty(mold ridden), no climate control. Oh but we were going to work on it together…. that’s why he had an ultralight airplane in the yard and I had no heat in the house. Little house on the prarie!!! He needs some trashy single wide Honey that thinks that is the Taj Mahal!!!! Not someone like me that has worked hard and wants more out of life. I’m not materliastic… he cheated on me also, there was NO bond, no reason to stay, after I realized that I had been deceived.
I want my old life back… my cookie cutter, my clean, pristine and secure home/life. I just can’t muster it up. Some mornings I wake up and have to remind myself that he isn’t here to put me down anymore. That the sun is going to shine in my life today and he won’t take it away from me. OMG,,, Sorry for rambling… but I need to get this out!!!
Dear Notcrazy,
Well, each of us wants different things in life! That’s what makes it so grand! We are not all alike. I live comfortably in the country in a “real” house with inside plumbing and heat and AC, but I can park in the yard if I want to or pee in the yard if I want to as it is far enough back in the woods that no one can see the house from any road! It’s mine and I love it! My little hole in the woods with my old cedar fence posts for ground timbers around the flower beds of wild ferns and wild flowers I brought in from the woods, and buried stones for a walk way, but a PLACE is not home to me any more. I realized that when I had to leave this place because of the stalker my P son sent to kill me. I love this farm, it was my grandparents’ farm, my emotional attachment to a spot on the earth, but….it is really only a building of sticks and stones, my “home” is where I hang my hat. I can be happy here or I can be happy living in a tent! Happiness is attached to ME not to a place.
After my rather crazy divorce back in 1980 where I was literally left homeless with two kids and no money and a cat and two changes of clothes, I managed in a rented house until I could complete my college degree and get back to work at something that would support us (my advanced practice nursing degree) we lived on a shoe string until I got out of college and went back to work at a professional job. It’s been tough at times since then, but I’ve always used my common sense about spending money, saving some no matter how poor I am, and working toward a goal for a house that was paid for. I got there, but I also realize that even if something happens and I lose this place for good (I was gone almost a year living in a recreational vehicle until the stalker’s arrest) I realize I am still gonna be OK no matter where I live or what I live in.
Having my happiness and security be INTERNALIZED rather than attached to a house or a place is a big change for me.
You can “get back” your secure home life no matter where you live, but it has to come from inside. Make the place you live, no matter where it is or what it is, be YOUR SANCTUARY. Make it as neat as you can, as clean as you can. One talent I’ve always had is to find furniture and decorative items and make a place, even a rented apartment “mine”—even now I have the most eclectic collection of furniture and items in my house, a mixture of my favorite items, some antiques, some new things, some “found” and “repurposed” things but it is ME. Individually ME and there is no other house like it in the world. Yet when people come in for the first time, I can hear their intake of breath and they always say “Wow! I LOVE YOUR HOUSE!” But each piece was chosen carefully and none of it is expensive, but it is all high quality and nice. (I love buying stuff at auctions too) I have a chair I bought in new condition for $100, leather covered, etc. and I found it on line for $3500 new! I didn’t realize it when I bought it that it was such an expensive chair but I knew I liked it, that it was quality and that it would “go with” my other living room furniture and so I bought it! Plus, it sits sooooo nice!
But if I had to leave here and leave everything I have behind, I’d still “fix up” a new place just the way I’d like it, and make it mine and indivdually ME! So look at this as an opportunity to make a NEW PLACE for yourself that is JUST YOU! (((Hugs))))
Thank you, bluejay,
your really heartfelt note brot me to tears. Yeah, I really do feel sorry for myself, dammit!! I am sad daily for what happened to *ME*—-the ME I was, & all that I thot I was, & all that I believed in & trusted in & had total faith in! I never thot I was like a perfect person, by any stretch of the imagination, but I sure’s hell never thot I was so “inferior” a person that someone would do what Jamie did to *ME*! I was so sure for 8 yrs that we were Perfect for Each Other! I knew we’d been going thru some down times for 6 mos before he walked out, but Ida never dreamed in a milyun yrs that it was becuz he was sweating about how he was gonna complete what’d been going on for 4 yrs by being able to ease right on out of my life one morning! I cried a river of tears, begging for his forgiveness for 2 months (before he finally copped to being married), trying to find a way to repent from all *my badness*!
I loved him in spite of all his flaws & thot he loved me the same way. I know now that, however short I was from being perfect, there wasn’t anything “inferior” about me–other than I wasn’t a much tastier, younger, wealthier catch! Still & all, like so many of us freshly wounded ones here say, it’s gonna take a long time til I can get past the damage that he did to *ME*, apart from the damage he did to my life!
I’m finding it hard to trust anyone these days….not even myself.
Hugs back at ya Oxy!
Living in the country is great, just not with an spath. Being from South Florida 4 seasons was a change for me and I liked it. seeing it snow for the first time in my life was breath takingly awesome!
You are a rock with all that you have endured. I just typed away and somehow lost the darn thing! Oh well.. i am in the house I inhereted from mom and it is the home i grew up in. There is so much yucky going on at once! i am blessed that I had this to come back to. as the mask was coming off of my spath mom died! I came back here and to my old job which i just recently got laid off. The housing market here is a bust! and undesireables moved in close to me ( street level illegal activities of all kinds) .
I have done some ‘me’ decorating and I love a good bargain as well. auctions, thrift stores and garage sales! Lot’s of loss all at once and being here I have regurgitated my whole childhood. Grieving mom, reliving the past and trying to heal from my spath… Whew!! I am worn out!Don’t forget about swatting at the bad guys too! but i don’t make any irrational decisions or blow money. i thought if i came back here with my job back that life would be grand again. wrong… much healing time needed. yes, I am better off than where i was with spath. I read on here about functioning in our dysfunction, that is all i have been doing. i want my joy,pride and happiness back. i hope reaching out to the people that really understand the damage an spath can do will help with all this. sometime i feel like i am ready for the nut house!
Thanks for sharing
hugs!