This is a story close to my heart. I live at the Jersey Shore. Every June and July, female turtles creep from the bay and go in search of high ground to lay their eggs. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them never make it. Their journey takes them across paved roadways, where many are squished. I’ve seen them.
Research by two young men show that a certain percentage of the turtle killings are intentional.
Nathan Weaver, a student at Clemson University placed a plastic turtle in the road near his campus. In the course of one hour, seven out of 267 vehicles, 2.62 percent, swerved in order to hit the turtle. Read:
Clemson student’s turtle project takes a dark twist, on CharlotteObserver.com.
A psychology professor quoted in the story explained the intentional killings as “the dark side of human nature.” He said,
“They aren’t thinking, really. It is not something people think about. It just seems fun at the time.”
I think the good professor is wrong. I think Weaver was observing sociopathic behavior. Experts estimate that 1 percent to 4 percent of the population are sociopaths. Well, the 2.62 percent of drivers who swerved in order to kill the turtles fit right into that range.
Mark Rober, a NASA engineer, conducted a similar experiment using a rubber turtle, snake and tarantula. He observed 1,000 cars, and 6 percent of of drivers intentionally ran over the animals.
Turtles were hit 1 percent of the time and snakes 1.8 percent—again tracking with the estimated number of sociopaths in society. Tarantulas, however, were hit the most, by far. If I were to interpret this, I’d guess that the tarantula-killers perceived them as dangerous.
Here’s a video of Mark Rober’s Roadkill Experiment.
[youtube_sc url=http://youtu.be/k-Fp7flAWMA]
Ox, so I know why I wanted to speak to this X friend again. I needed to tell him how I felt about his betrayel so many years ago, I needed to let him know I WAS a good friend. I needed to tell him how he hurt me. And yes a small part of me wanted to see if perhaps he had changed..Well I got a big apology from him but it was not sincere, and he has not changed.. So it wasn’t for not.. I told him how I felt.. I released some pain, but no I cant be friend’s with him..he is a sociopath.
Ox is right, when somebody tell’s you who they are Listen Close the First time…
ya’ll got a rare thing MoonDancer. Closure. good. i kin live vicariously. 🙂
Happy New Year everyone! I know, a “blast from the past”… It’s winter and I hibernate and stop running around with my girls after school..so I decided to stop by and say “hello”…
I was told by my xhusb/socio by his best friend, 2 weeks prior to our wedding…that he tortured kittens when he was young!! I remember the chill up my spine that day!
The first month of dating him, as I introduced him to my uncle outside of my condo where my uncle and I lived…my cat came along…and he chased it into the busy main street we lived on! I remember my uncle telling me to get rid of him…he saw a huge red flag…
Eight years..and 3 kids later…I divorced him. That was ten years ago. FF>> He never paid child support, until they would arrest him…He was abusive during the marriage to us….and neglected them all of these years. So, 3 years ago he moved out of state, to Fla to avoid being arrested and put in jail until he paid back support.
Well, he married a Brazilian woman and made her a citizen..They are both “born again Christians”…etc. So he sends my 3 girls..ages 15,16,18…a photo of a baby via text….”This is your new brother”. (He owes 50k child support…btw) Right before xmas!! It really upset them so I texted him and told them not to text them and upset them.. Does he really think they are supposed to be “happy” about this? Gee, I have a new son….and I’m happy even though I never took care of YOU girls!!!!
I usually don’t contact him at all..but I texted him to tell him to STOP …that THEY asked me to tell him that.
He told me to stop interfering with him and “HIS” girls!!
He is really sick. And my 15 yr old wants to know him for some reason…lately. She asked him how he plans to support his new son…since he doesn’t support her…and he lied and said that he DOES!!!
It never ends with these dangerous liars!!!
Anyway…People wonder why i have no interest is getting involved with another man! Arms distance….
Hi Tobehappy,,, What a turd he is….how cruel and heartless..so sorry for you and your children but thanks for stopping in…
Katy, yes is was closure, I am not happy about it but it was closure….and this was not a XBF just a Xspath. I guess closure doesnt always feel good because right now I am reliving alot of betrayal…
MoonDancer
I’m sorry for your sad time, but still am proud that you got a little of your own back. Take care dear heart. Katy
Dear Moondancer, I’m sorry your “friend” was still a spath…yea, it is nice if we can get some closure from these old situations…sometimes we just get bitten again if we try to get that closure. I hope you do feel better about it though and got some closure.
I look back at some of my past relation-shits (I love that word, thanks for inventing it!) friends, co-workers, etc. and I would like to have a “last word” with them but As much as I might like that, it just isn’t worth it because THEY ARE NOT GONNA GET IT, OR CARE. The OR CARE part is the biggest reason I don’t contact some of these folks again.
It is just like my egg donor..they may not be psychopaths, but they are NOT HEALTHY FUNCTIONAL PEOPLE. Not people I want in my life any more. I used to think I had a LOT OF FRIENDS….but now I realize that my real friends can be counted on less than the fingers in one hand. REAL friends. Friends that won’t let you down, that will be there no matter what.
I have BEEN that kind of friend to lots of people, but few people have been that kind of friend TO ME. Just like I was a pretty good parent and friend to my biological kids, but you know what I got in return. One tried to kill me and the other one just doesn’t warn me…and afterward, when he almost got killed and I was a “prophet” he still LIED TO ME and broke agreements.
It hurts when you ARE a friend to someone who is NOT a friend to you, but I find it is still better to know the truth and accept the truth, and have only 1 or 2 GOOD friends than 1,000 fake friends.
One year I entertained so much, not formal entertainment or “parties” as such, just every weekend and most week nights from 5 to 10 folks for supper or other meals, so many meals that I actually butchered and cooked 4 COMPLETE STEERS that year that went across my dining room table. I thought most of these people were “friends” but I realize now they were just folks that we “knew”–and who were more than happy to sit at my table and EAT my food and enjoy the company around here, but where are they NOW?
Well, some of them I have literally THROWN off the farm and told never to come back for stealing from me. (actually that number is fairly significant)
A couple of them died.
Some moved away.
And the rest…well I have no idea where they are, they just vanished into the fog.
Then there is my x best friend for 30+ years. I miss her, but she is so depressed from her abusive husband that she is no longer functional, and in her pain she strikes out at those nearest her. But I can no longer tolerate this. I realize she has done this “forever” but in my own dysfunction I just “over looked” this and allowed her to do this. But I can’t do that any more. I can no longer tolerate overt abuse from anyone any more, even those I love. ESPECIALLY from those I love.
The last words she spoke to me were “that’s what best friends are for, they hurt each other and make up” and I replied “No, that’s NOT what best friends are for, best friends don’t attack each other”
She isn’t a psychopath, though I think her abusive alcoholic husband is high in P traits, and she is emotionally and financially trapped in that marriage, but I am NOT. I don’t hate her, I still love her, and I’m still her FRIEND…even though we may never speak to each other again, she is just a victim, but I can’t allow her to strike out at me in her pain.
There’s a lot of things we have to learn in order to become healthy ourselves, and part of it is that we can’t allow others to abuse us, no matter who they are or how much we love them. We can’t keep holding on to “hope” –MALIGNANT unrealistic hope– that they will change.
That’s what I did with Patrick, was hold on to unrealistic, malignant hope that he would change…I did it for DECADES.
I did it with my P X BF but thankfully, only for a few weeks not decades…
I did it for my entire life with my egg donor.
I did it with my son C, and so on down the list of friends, associates and relatives.
Not all these people are psychopaths, but they are at least dysfunctional and not healthy for me to associate with.
Learning and growing is painful sometimes but in the end we are better for the process.
I have had friends that left me feeling like, wtf? and then I never saw them again. I felt that I didn’t get closure.
One gift that the spath gave me was closure with those friends, because once I understood what a spath was, I was able to pull those friends out of my wtf? bucket and place them in the sociopath bucket, then slam the lid on them. Closure. It feels great.
Once you know spaths, that’s the kind of closure you can make for yourself. DONE.
skylar:
I agree!
I recently had an encounter with a friend or I should say former co-worker. It’s kind of long to type, but short story…I contacted her because I saw on Facebook (we are friends on Facebook) that she moved to another location within my old company…is a much shorter drive for her, etc. so I contacted her via email and congratulated her and asked if she wanted to get together. She replied and said she would love to…we set up a time…when time came, she didn’t reply to my trying to confirm with her (I wasn’t going to drive there if she wasn’t able to make it)…she never replied…we finally got in touch with each other and she made excuses and suggested another date…I said that would work and then she never replied. WTF?? I think she didn’t want to talk about spath and was avoiding me, but in the beginning she seemed really eager to meet with me. She even said that she REALLY couldn’t wait to catch up! Because we were meeting around Christmas, I had bought her a Starbucks giftcard. I ended up mailing it to her in a Christmas card and she has never even thanked me for it! Never heard a peep from her! That is RUDE! Sooooo, needless to say, I will never speak to her again. It’s a prime example of behavior that there is NO excuse for…none. I won’t ever see her anyway so there is no reason to speak to her again. I won’t ever reach out to her again…I did and she in essence rejected me so that’s it. I didn’t write about this before because it’s kind of long and it’s really draining. Blech.
Plus, what she did to me totally triggered me because that is exactly what spath would do to me…suggest times to get together and then ignore me! GRRRRRRRR.
Louise,
lack of empathy on her part. We would feel bad if we did that. I also think that she is a fence sitter or a spath. She has probably been hearing gossip about you (spaths never stop slandering their victims) and loved it so much that she couldn’t wait to get a jab in.
It’s amazing how many spaths just sit around doing nothing until a BIGGER spath shows up and goads them on, then they jump in the game!
My brother is a prime example. He has never done much, just drink, do drugs, kill kittens, some burglary he got busted for in his youth – the usual. He’s been a manipulative parasite but not an active plotting spath.
When I ran from my spath, I ended up at my parents’. He was already there living in the basement utility room. I had no idea he was a spath, but I had started to figure out that he was a narcissist, from a book I read, not quite understanding what that meant. (I just thought n’s were people who never grew up and that if you explained it to them, they could try harder LOL!)
But when he heard what the spath had done, it was like he had tasted blood. The change was amazing. He got right into the act, the love bomb, the attempt to solicit money, the whole drama rama. Then he attacked me.
In all my 43 years (at the time) he had never shown this kind of behavior toward me. Then seeing me injured, brought out the predator in him.
I think that this is where the saying, “Never let them see you sweat” (or bleed) comes from. Evil loves to prey on weak prey.
OxD, I clearly identify with the loss of friends and you put it very well: disappeared into the fog.
I used to take this kind of loss to heart – something I did must have caused them to dislike me, and I would often attempt to find out what I’d done!
After this past year, I’ve heard from NOBODY that I used to work with – one student and one fellow artist have taken the time out of their lives to keep in touch with me. All of the other people who said that they were “so sad” that I was relocating and would “promise to keep in touch” never did. I mean, in a preivous life, I would have been calling people and chasing after them because I was so needy. Today, these people rarely cross my mind because I came to accept that these people never really cared, either – just like the exspaths, they simply did not give two shits about me, my well-being, my son’s well-being, or what I’ve been surviving.
And, it doesn’t bother me, anymore, like it once would have. For that, I feel that I’ve made some strong progress in letting go, seeing a spade and calling it what it is, and moving forward with my own life. I actually feel GOOD about this.
So, yeah……I may have lost a great many things, but I also gained some priceless self-esteem and dignity out of all of this.
Brightest blessings