By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
What is hope? The word “hope” means a kind of “expectation of obtainment” and an emotional state of optimism, a trusting that what we want is going to come true. Here is how Wikipedia defines hope:
Hope is the emotional state, the opposite of which is despair, which promotes the belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life. It is the “feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best” or the act of “look[ing] forward to with desire and reasonable confidence” or “feel[ing] that something desired may happen”. Other definitions are “to cherish a desire with anticipation”; “to desire with expectation of obtainment”; or “to expect with confidence”. In the English language the word can be used as either a noun or a verb, although hope as a concept has a similar meaning in either use.
And here is how Webster’s dictionary defines hope:
intransitive verb:
1: to cherish a desire with anticipation <hopes for a promotion>
2 archaic : trusttransitive verb
1: to desire with expectation of obtainment
2: to expect with confidence : trust
So we work because we hope and trust that we will get paid on Friday. We work hard in school to get good grades because we hope our work will pay off with a degree that we trust will allow us to get a better job and make more money. We are nice to others and we hope they will be nice back to us. We teach our children honesty and kindness because we hope they will grow up to be happy successful adults. We do lots of things because we hope and trust that those actions will result in good results.
However, there are times we hope and trust and work hard, but those good results do not materialize. Sometimes no matter what we do, or how much we hope, there is no possibility that what we want to happen is actually going to happen. It is at that point that we must accept the reality that our hopes are in vain. The doctor gives you or a loved one a diagnosis that there a limited time to live. What are the choices? To accept the diagnosis and get affairs in order, or do like Steve McQueen did and look all over the world for some quack who promises a “cure” to your terminal disease.
Webster defines another, less hopeful aspect of “hope” as:
— hope against hope
: to hope without any basis for expecting fulfillment
Malignant hope
Many times it seems that in our relationships with psychopaths we seem to hold on to that “hope against hope” that the relationship will improve. We try first one thing and then another and the relationship does not improve, but we hold on tenaciously to that “hope against hope,” which I call “malignant hope.”
Why “malignant hope”? Well, being a former medical professional, I like those 50 cent words that medicine uses, but this particular 50 cent word is pretty well understood by the general public. “Malignant” means “toxic” or “cancerous,” and that is exactly what “hope against hope” is—it is malignant like a cancer, and it metastasizes to every part of the body and soul. It spreads like a cancer and it destroys like a cancer because it forever keeps our expectations from being met, yet we “keep on trying” because of that malignant hope.
Each time we “hope for” something and it fails to materialize we are disappointed in proportion to how much “hope” we had, and how important the result is.
When I buy a lotto ticket I know the odds are above 13 million to one that I will win. Of course I “hope” to win, but I don’t really “expect” to win ”¦ so I don’t base my payment of next month’s rent on me winning. If I don’t win, I am not devastated. I really didn’t have MUCH hope that I would win.
However, let’s take a ridiculous example, and say I bought a lotto and had a great deal of false hope, malignant hope, that I would win, even with the odds being against me. I just KNEW FOR SURE that my hope against hope was going to come true. I knew I would have enough money to buy a house, a new car, a boat, and to live the life I wanted to live. I had never won before, but I knew I would win this time because I wanted it so badly. I needed it. When I watched the lotto drawing I just knew I would win. What happens when I fail to win? My hopes and my dreams are shattered, my entire life shatters before me, because I based everything I wanted on something that had little if any chance of happening. My hope of winning the lotto had become a malignant hope.
Psychopaths and malignant hope
Unfortunately, there are times when our hopes do become malignant hopes. When we hope against hope that a psychopath will change, will stop lying to us, stop cheating on us, bring their paycheck home. It never happens, yet we keep hoping it will.
People said to me concerning my son, Patrick, “he’s your son, you can’t give up hope,” or “where there is life, there is hope.” Those people were well meaning I am sure, but what they were telling me to do was to hold on to that malignant hope. I held on to it long enough, I saw over and over that he was not going to change, yet I kept hoping that he would. I saw proof that he had not changed over and over. Yet I continued to hope. Each time I was shown evidence that he had not changed in how he behaved, I was wounded again.
Someone gave me a sign once and I hung it on my wall, little realizing just how prophetic it would become. The sign said, “I feel so much better since I gave up hope.”
Actually I DO feel better since I gave up the malignant hope that my son would repent of his crimes, that he would change his attitude of entitlement.
It was only when I gave up that malignant hope that I ceased to be wounded and re-wounded by my son and the other people I had hoped would reciprocate my love and caring for them. I quit hoping they would change. It didn’t happen. It isn’t going to happen. I no longer hope or anticipate it will happen. I gave up the malignant hopes that I would win the “psychopathic lotto,” and the 13 million to one odds are not likely to be overcome just because I hope so much that they would be. People buy tickets and say, “Well, someone has to win, it could be me.” Well, I am no longer wasting my money or my hope on either the state lotto or the psychopathic lotto of malignant hope.
Oxy~ A fantastic article!! I held on to that malignant hope that things would get better. Held on to it for 3 years, actually. And like your sign reads….”I feel so much better since I gave up hope”.
Oxy/Joyce-
Thank YOU! You so get it!!!!
I first heard the phrase ‘abandon hope’ when reading Pema Chodron’s book “When Things Fall Apart”. She talks about all the concepts you mention, from a Buddhist model. But it is identical wisdom.
She talks about the ‘egos’ hope. Which is the same as the malignant hope you write about. The hope that sets us up for suffering and despair, that drains our hearts of happiness.
What I found in having malignant hope in regards to my relationshit with the spath was that I became, ulitmately, hopeless. What I mean is that I lost my connection to REAL hope: that once I saved the money I would go to Hawaii, that my friends might have a birthday party for me, that the new man I was being introduced to might be really nice and healthy.
Instead I became caught in my experience of malignant hope, where the payoff was BIG. I was going to get love from, through my unhealthy desire and fortitude, a monster. Everything else, by comparison, felt flat and dull. Who cared for ‘simple’ and attainable hopes and dreams. My ego wanted the Big Enchilada!
In Buddhist tradition (I am not one, but have read a bunch of stuff) the ‘ego’ is not our healthy Freudian ego that we need to have to be solid in the world.
They use the term to describe the undeveloped, grandiose, unrealistic, demanding, confused, wounded, and impatient ‘consciousness’ that resides in us all. We ALL were, in more Freudian terms, ‘narcissistically’ wounded as children. Child rearing being what it is we all suffered some kind of wounding at the hands of our parents/others’, during our formative years.
So we all internalized this twisted ego to a degree- “Who” did not get its needs adequately met.
When I read this a light bulb went on. THAT was the part of me that was hooked by the Bad People. That sorta spathy woundedness in me, that wanted a BIG exciting, larger than life event/person to change everything.
It was like the spathiness in my caregivers was lodged inside of me, and a battle for ‘real’ life was going on inside there (lucky for me, cause if there is no battle it means you ARE a spath!).
Of course I understand not everyone here can relate to this. My story, my realization about myself. I had always had issue with life being so…lacking. I wanted magik. I wanted to win the love of someone who couldn’t give it (found out that was my mother, grandmother, and grandfather….not to mention the dad I never knew).
I was a sitting duck for Baddies. I would muster all the malignant hope I could for these folks, and work my butt off to keep them around, in the event I was going to get my big payoff.
This kept me, always, at a distance from what life REALLY had to offer me: the simple acts of real cause and effect that can be so sweet and peaceful. The act of hoping for something with a loose ‘grip’, and letting it go without angst if it doesn’t happen. The process of working hard and ‘making’ something happen, and feeling the success of my labors.
I was raised by those who developed in me a taste for unrequited love. I think that is very tied into malignant hope and co-dependency (over compensating for anothers’ dysfunction). It teaches us to waste our time and talents on unrealistic and illusory activities and people.
Once I understood this more I was able to feel real anticipation and gratitude for things I could likely count on…..
Likely I would go on vacation when I had the money saved. And my friends, who love and cherish me, might have a party, or would call and send cards. That being introduced to someone by people I trusted could result in me meeting a life partner (and this did happen).
Thanks Oxy for all the gifts you bring to LF
Slim
Dear Slim & Donna Dixon, thank you I am glad that the concepts resonated with you….
I finally figured out that I had hung on to this CANCEROUS HOPE for so long. I had a therapist tell me once that I had the THICKEST PAIR OF ROSE COLORED GLASSES SHE’D EVER SEEN…in other words, I was looking at dog poo through these glasses and believing it was candy! LOL I never forgot what she said, but at the same time, I NEVER APPLIED IT TO MY LIFE AND MADE CHANGES.
I remember meeting a person some years past that was spending all of the money she could muster to buy lotto tickets because she was CONVINCED she would win, she BELIEVED she would win, and each time she lost she was DEVASTATED because her MALIGNANT HOPE, her expectation, of winning was dashed. Now she was without funds for food, rent etc and she had COUNTED ON the lotto to rescue her.
At the time I met this woman I laughed at her, but later, as I look back, I realize I had no cause to laugh at her because I WAS HER…ONLY MY “LOTTO” WAS MY SON PATRICK, or my P Boy friend who was going to stop my grief for my husband’s loss and make me happy forever….or my egg donor who was going to finally approve of me…
That’s the thing I think, is that we have to realize that that woman who BELIEVED she would win, HOPED AGAINST HOPE SHE’D WIN THE LOTTO, she is no more “foolish” or “misguided” than We are when we believe the psychopath is gonna change. In fact, I think she probably has BETTER ODDS!
Abandoning hope is a fairly new concept to me and I WISH I had come across it years and years ago. I might have made a proactive choice then, rather than waiting for hope to be worn out of me, much like the sea repeatedly hitting a rock.
We are taught that Keeping Faith Unconditionally is a good thing, in much the same way we learn that Love Conquers All and Don’t Stop Believing and so on. But it’s not for nothing that G F Watts painted his iconic depiction of Hope wearing a blindfold and plucking at a one-stringed harp!
I hope this blog reaches many people still clinging to the notion that if they can only make themselves loveable enough, their partner will love them in return.
Slimone, I know it’s almost certainly a typo, but ‘relationshit’ so perfectly describes our entanglements with the conscience-free that I am going to pilfer it and use it from now on!
Ox: Wow: this really came at a time that I needed to hear this. Me and my sand pail and scooper have been just hanging out, HOPING that some day I will be able to fill up the Grand Canyon with the little bit of sand I have in my pail…for far too long…
I am so sorry about your son. I can’t even try to imagine what that must feel like for you. My heart and thoughts are with you.
Such an ‘addiction’ we have been inflicted with…trying to ‘hope’ and knowing, in reality, there is no hope that things will ever change. I guess I have known that about 5 years now…just wrestling with the ‘devil’ himself….things with ppaths don’t ever change and I can attest to that. Sometimes all we have is to ‘let go’ and allow ourselves to blend in with the miraculous threads of life itself. Sometimes hiding in that life until we feel confident enough to step outside of our fears, our disappointments and our disillusionment.
Thank you for this Ox…you have given me something very serious to think about this morning and I am going to try concentrating on your words, all day today…xxoo
Mrs Grimm, nah “relation-shit” is not a typo, it is one of our UNIQUE LoveFraud WORDS, I think Hens started that. It has just become part of the LoveFraud culture around here! LOL there are other words that you will come across I’m still too sleep addled this morning to remember many of them to make you a list. LOL
Yea, giving up “hope” (actually FALSE or PSEUDO hope) is the only way we can extract ourselves from the relationships we are entangled in.
What you quoted about Love Conquers All, Don’t stop believing, and so on, go along with a lot of FALSE “truths” we are taught, such as “there are two (valid) sides to every story” or “it takes two to fight”
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me “you can’t give up hope, he’s your sonnnnnn” I would be wealthy beyond Bill Gates. Blood is NOT “thicker than water.”
Hope against hope is malignant when we HOLD ON TO IT and won’t let go, when we “hope” instead of wish. We can WISH we might win the lotto, but we don’t EXPECT to, big difference in wishes and hopes. There is a reasonable expectation of a hope coming true, but wishes are just that WISHES but little expectation that they will actually materialize.
I wrote another article on the fact that “unconditional love” is really unrealistic. My son Patrick after the family found out he had sent the Trojan Horse Psychopath to kill me (and probably also other family members) and take over our family’s assets, for about a year no one in the family including my egg donor communicated with him….he wrote people and had them call my egg donor to see “if she was okay” and he wrote a 10 page letter to a minister we know telling him how UNChristian we were because we were not giving him UNCONDITIONAL LOVE —meaning we were withdrawing communication (NC) because he tried to have me killed. LOL ROTFLMAO and that was UN-Christian of us.
Well,eventually he got to my egg donor and she started writing him and sending him money, etc. and lying to us about it and my sons and I went NC with her as well…but the point I’m trying to make is that she started with the malignant hope again and she CLINGS to it even though it threatens my life in a literal sense.
Thanks for pointing out about the painting of Hope….good illustration.
Mrs Grimm:
“Relationshit” was not a typo. That is a word that was started on this blog that everyone tends to use now 🙂
Oxy:
Thank you so much for this. It really hit me.
You’re welcome Louise, glad it hit you!
This morning a friend who is a FB friend now, but we were close when our kids were growing up and her son Dusty is in prison (again) and she just can’t “give up hope” She asked for prayers this morning as she and her mother drive three hours to see him…. I feel for her such compassion because I know she is holding on to hope against hope, malignant hope. Her son sounds to me like a psychopath for sure….and I have other friends whose son is due out of prison AGAIN in August and they too have the malignant hope that THIS TIME he will change. Another “last chance” that he will blow and then they will give him ANOTHER “last chance” and then another and another.
I’ve been there…but I can’t do it any more.