Sociopaths, loss, and fungibility

I have been thinking about loss recently. I have always thought that I treat people as being more fungible than they are used to being treated. I once warned a friend that i was likely to use her up like a paper napkin and dispose of her. I have always understood what a "friend of convenience" meant to me, and treated those people accordingly. I am unable to care for those people unconditionally. The kindness I show them is directly proportional to the value they have to me.

When I was younger, I was as quick to make "friends" with inanimate objects as they were real people. One particular "friend" has stuck with me through the years. He is as valuable to me as most actual friends, and perhaps even some family members. I lost him once and was able to reclaim him only through hard work, brilliant problem solving, and luck. Since then I have been very careful with him, until recently. I was scheduled for a long trip and wanted my friend to come along, but was worried for his safety. I started searching for a substitute on the internet and chanced upon his twin available for sale. When substitute friend came in the post, he looked different, and I still favored my old friend. Quickly, though, the two have become surprisingly interchangeable. Whatever my faults, I have always considered myself a rather loyal person by nature (Cancerian?), but here I was discarding a lifelong friend for someone who just fit nicely into the mold. But am I so different from empaths? One of the empaths in my life said the following about loss:

"One of the saddest things about death is that the world does go on, and you feel like that devalues the person that they were. Eventually even we move on, we fill the void that was left with other people. We have to, it's human nature."

However, she admits that void fillers won't ever be perfect. She remembers particularly her mother losing her parents, how painful that was, and how she was never able to find that type of relationship again, not like she expected to.

"People come in and out of our lives a lot. That's the nature of the beast. For some reason in our culture, only family sticks around, and even then certain family members will drift apart."

Death has never made me sad, maybe I because I've never cared that much about anyone who has died. I have lost people in other ways and been sad, but am I really sad for their loss? Or am I upset that they have left me? Angry at myself for failing to keep them around?

I feel your loss

Many readers have asked me how sociopaths respond to feelings of loss, either a break up, a death, etc. I discussed this once myself in the context of fungibility.  A sociopath reader agreed to share her own experiences regarding the loss of a partner.

He was the ultimate empath. Not blind to my sociopathy at all. Yet he embraced me and loved me unconditionally. It was an intense and giving sort of love, which suited my selfish love just fine. We were puzzle pieces.

One morning, I stopped hearing from him. No cheerful "Good morning, beautiful" text. One day turned to two days. On the third day (he didn't rise again), his brother sent out a mass message saying he was involved in a motor vehicle collision and was in critical, comatose condition. I expected to feel like I'd been sucker punched. Instead, I felt strangely the same. As devoid as I'd always been. I really thought it would work out and I'd get the sociopath's version of happily ever after, haha. We were planning on an extended vacation, just the two of us, for later that summer. After he passed, my sister, with whom he was on friendly terms, revealed to me that he had been planning on proposing that summer. She'd been sworn to secrecy.

Shit sucks. But you get over it. For those of us who have an emotional deficit, it's an easier and quicker process. I still miss his presence and unconditional acceptance, but I have no intentions of putting a halt to my life for a body that's six feet under. I'm currently dating a guy who displays distinct sociopathic traits and that has its own problems. I don't concern myself with what-ifs with the dead, unless it's the zombie apocalypse.

Young love (part 3)

(cont.)

Four months later, after she learned that I was going through a hard time, we began to speak again. She seemed more firm in her resolve that we would never be together again, and insisted that she was over me...while insisting that I move in with her, calling me sweetie, saying I love you all the time, sending me poems about how much she missed holding me, talking about raising kids together. Eventually we got into an argument because she would randomly be angry at me and never explain why. In the end, she told me that there wasn't even a good reason. She just felt that way. And she would lash out. Having pep talked myself into the idea that I was worth more, I gave her an ultimatum to treat me right, or leave. Later, I apologized, figuring our fight could be fixed that way. She blocked me on facebook and replied to my message and forwarded her response to my father, saying that she never wanted to see or hear from me ever again.

She also posted a facebook status that I was stalking her when I wasn't. She called me disturbing and pathetic, claiming that she didn't want to lose sleep at night worrying about what I might do to her friends.

We haven't spoken since.

I'm angry. I'm hurt that I got treated like his and that she didn't get what she deserved. Why wasn't she hurt? I'm still not over her. I can try to repress my feelings for long periods of time...and then I burst, like I can't keep it under control. I just miss her so much sometimes. I beg and plead with whatever I feel like I can with a god I don't even believe in to have her come back to me, or to at least let me fall out of love. I'm kind of nervous to even go back to college next year because of the fact that I see the Northeast as her "territory."

I'm trying to work on it in therapy and it's not as effective as I'd like. My therapist thinks she was borderline with a nice, thick and heavy coating of narcissism. I've never ever been attracted to a girl, which was something that made the relationship so weird. I wasn't even attracted to her at all, but she seemed to complement me so perfectly at times, that I dismissed this HUGE detail. I think that this just further suits the profile. In fact, I like guys-a lot. Given the fact I had PTSD, it seems like I was a prime candidate for further victimization.

My question is this: Do you think that she is a sociopath, or not? What do you think about her and the relationship?

M.E.: I actually think that there is a decent chance that she is a sociopath, although your therapist's theory is interesting as well. A lot of sociopaths have a parent who is a narcissist. She sounds very changeable, which is also associated with other personality disorders, but for whatever reason I am not getting a borderline vibe from her. She seems in control of what she does, but not really aware of what exactly she is doing (or at least all of the ramifications of what she is doing). I think that behavior is consistent with a young sociopath, but then again I am not familiar with young borderlines. If you imagine that she is just playing at love, experimenting with what love means to her and other people, reveling in the power and control and intense feelings she is having, that could be consistent with a young sociopath, or a lot of other things of course.

Death and fear

There was a recent death in my family, a close relative of mine. The family has been convening, making me wonder why there needs to be all of this effort over someone's death. I feel no grief, but then again i never felt emotionally close to this relative. It is making me wonder who I would grieve for, though, and I think there are only about 10 people for whom I would feel genuine loss at their deaths. And even with those people, as I have said and read before, the sadness seems to be more a feeling of personal loss than sadness for the deceased himself. Or is that how everyone feels? Sadness for their lack in your life. Which seems good enough, I guess, because it means that they had a significant role or impact in my life, unlike all these other relatives that I am interacting with now, for whom I feel nothing.

I have also been thinking a little about my own death. All my life I have felt todestrieb/thanatos, the death drive. Whenever I have been faced with death, I simply consider how bad it could be to die. Not bad at all, really. In fact there have always been very appealing things about death -- no more work, no more masks, complete and eternal rest. Plus my own spiritual beliefs acknowledge a life after death, an eternal existence of self, so death holds no fear for me. Maybe that is why I am so fearless in general -- isn't all fear just a derivative of the fear of death?