Wednesday, November 5, 2008

In love with a sociopath

People got problems. I understand. One such problem is loving a sociopath or narcissist. It's a tough job, sure. But is this a problem without answers? Or a problem whose answers you don't like? Here's the following problem from one such person:
I have seen your blog. I am not sure if you can help, however here goes... I have a "friend" that I was very involved with. Much of what he did did not match what he said..but he (when pushed) would open up and show me things to show me he was sincere. he said things like "I love you but not the way you need to be loved" he would tell me he wanted me in his life, then ignore me... I would get angry and we fought, all the time.. it was a pattern I didn't like... He was very bad in business, lied all the time, had and has such potential, but does everything to ruin what he has. He cheats people and doesn't see it that way. He cheats on his wife (second one) and on his lovers as well. Omits truths and gets angry and shuts down when confronted. Always runs to different places, keeps his business as a means to escape reality, never lives in one place. I have told him I believe he is a sociopath, it expalns much of what I have seen and know of him and his backround... he says he know he has problems, but wont accept that is what it is. he said he wanted my help, then stopped talking to me, says he is too busy and will call, then doesn't. This of course starts a fight...only on my side because he does not respond at this point, but still wont say he wants me out of his life... I told him that is all it takes for me to go.

I don't know what to do, he is hurting people, owes money all over. I believe he is trying to dupe women because he needs money, his wife is ill, he says she is divorcing him, but I dont believe him, and I am not sure if he is damaging her more. I dont know how to reach out to him to get him to at least be open to this and try to straighten out his life... it is late, he is already almost 60. I know it is very difficult to change, but I think he may want to because he wont tell me to go away.
Let's first talk about the wisdom of getting involved with a sociopath, and then we can talk about specific ways you can handle a sociopath in some other post.

Loving a sociopath can be great. I know all sorts of people in relationships with sociopaths and narcissists, and they seem happy:
I believe in the possibility of loving narcissists if one accepts them unconditionally, in a disillusioned and expectation-free manner. Narcissists are narcissists. This is what they are. Take them or leave them. Some of them are lovable. Most of them are highly charming and intelligent. The source of the misery of the victims of the narcissist is their disappointment, their disillusionment, their abrupt and tearing and tearful realization that they fell in love with an ideal of their own invention, a phantasm, an illusion, a fata morgana. This "waking up" is traumatic. The narcissist is forever the same. It is the victim who changes.
Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List - Part 1 Listowner: Dr. Sam Vaknin. See also.

This makes a lot of sense, right? You order a vanilla milkshake, get a vanilla milkshake, everyone's happy. You order a vanilla milkshake, get a chocolate milkshake, start complaining to the server that she screwed up your order, no one's happy. This happens all the time when people get exactly what they asked for without realizing what it was wanted. So the first step to assessing the "problem" of being in love with a sociopath/narcissist is taking a hard look at yourself and figuring out whether you "asked for it." If that is the case, the "problem" is not with the sociopath/narcissist -- it's with you.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Empaths = ticking time bombs

A reader emailed this article with the subject line, "What happens when you don't properly break up with a sociopath." I was excited for a possible sociopaths in the news post, but disappointed to read that it looked like a simple crime of passion:
Carol Anne Burger killed her former lover by stabbing her 222 times with a Phillips-head screwdriver and then took pains to hide her crime, police said Wednesday.

Jessica Kalish, who shared a house with Burger despite breaking up with her more than a year ago, was found last Thursday stuffed in the backseat of her gun-metal BMW sedan, abandoned behind a medical office at 2300 S. Congress Avenue. Her blood was splashed around the rear end and undercarriage of the car, as if her killer had tried to load her into the trunk. The driver-side window was shattered.

Examining the body, detectives absorbed what had been done to her. Stab wounds were clustered around the back of her head and stitched across her back and arms and face. Most were between an inch and an inch-and-a-half deep. A blow to Kalish's neck probably killed her, investigators determined.
Okay, murder with a screwdriver, not bad. I feel like I have seen that before in scary sociopath type movies, but that's where the sociopath connections end:
Burger, a 57-year-old writer, did yoga, had a fondness for Shark Week on the Discovery Channel and preferred to watch musicals in theaters with Dolby Sound. She recently stopped drinking coffee. She thought Jackson Browne's "For a Dancer" was good to listen to when you were sad, and she refused to take anti-depressants despite her relationship problems with Kalish.
Okay, so not a sociopath. I mean, maybe with the "fondness for Shark Week," but you keep reading the article and can only come to one conclusion: crime of passion. Yes, sociopaths can kill, maim, or otherwise injure "loved ones," but at least we act predictably. Empaths! They are the scary ones! They'll get all worked up about things, get into this emotional frenzy, and next thing you know you have a screwdriver shoved in your neck. "Watch out for empaths" warns this article:
On the morning she realized her husband and son would learn the family was losing their house, Carlene Balderrama, 53, faxed a note to the mortgage company, then went to the basement and shot herself.

"I hope you're more compassionate with my husband than you were with me," she wrote in a suicide note left for the company.

It is a dramatic picture of the worst that financial stress can wring. As home foreclosures and unemployment mount, so do their companion tales of fraud, robbery, arson and even murder. And though suicides remain rare, evidence that financial stress is erupting in rash, often illegal behavior isn't difficult to find.
Not just suicides, murder-suicide--like that man who killed his his wife, mother-in-law and three sons, and then shot himself at their Los Angeles home. Empaths are on the rampage!

I admit that sociopaths are sort of scary. But that's just because we don't have the same boundaries for human behavior that you expect in neuro-typical individuals. But what is scarier? Being out in a jungle where you know there are tigers and you take the appropriate precautions? Or being in a zoo with your family when the tigers suddenly break free from their enclosure? Empath boundaries don't do any good when they can just hurdle over them whenever they're upset. That's what empaths are like: ticking time bombs. Screwdriver-murderer's friends know what I am talking about:
Her friends, the ones who can bring themselves to believe what police said about her, turn the question over in amazement.

If this could happen to someone like her, they said, what does it mean for the rest of us?

Does no one comment?

One of my favorite comments is an outraged response to this post:
"Does no one comment? I see the psycopath as a mutant being, an accident or freak of nature then a combination of nuture but not allways just mostly in the poorer classes. God can heal you people but you have to become self aware enough to choose the right or the good rather than self! May His hand touch you all and heal your pain and fill your hearts with His Grace!"
I laugh inappropriately whenever I think of this comment. "Does no one comment?" the outraged individual asks. Sort of a "how can you people read this and not be incensed?" In my mind, I picture some outraged Christian type who has fallen down the rabbit-hole into a bizarre world where up is down and down is up. What a delicious image! Welcome to my rabbit-hole, sociopath friends and friends of sociopaths.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Pretending to be normal

I'm sorry to keep harping on this (and this), but aspies get all the breaks for some reason. This article is about bit torrent programmer Bram Cohen who learns late in life that he has Asperger's. Under the heading, "Learning Empathy:"
One afternoon in the summer of 2003 he was eating at a Mexican restaurant in Berkeley with his girlfriend, Jenna, and her young daughter. They were talking about empathy, a notion that baffled Cohen. "Then a baby cried, and my daughter turned and made a sad face," Jenna recalls. "He said, 'You mean like that?' I said, 'Yes, it's automatic.' " Not for Cohen, though, who told her that emotions seemed mysterious. Jenna, who had worked with autistic kids, suggested he might have Asperger's.

Cohen never sought a formal diagnosis but turned his considerable attention to the matter. He learned how to detect and mimic human expressions, follow social cues, maintain eye contact, flirt. He began pretending to be normal. "Then I realized how out of it I had been my entire life," he says. Jenna likens Bram to the android Data on Star Trek: "He'd add information to his social algorithm and practice until it became natural. He's graduated to being an eccentric nerd."
After that comes more "bla bla bla, aspies are great, look what this aspie was able to accomplish" lovefest. And then the ridiculous comments:
"What a well written article on a seemingly great guy. You've got to admire anyone who acknowledges inherent 'differences' and actively works to improve themselves and their relationships. And to his wife, you must be a true saint to put the time and effort into such a complex situation. Thank you for sharing your story."
And even more naive:
"Profoundly uplifting story. Mr. Cohen shows the world what it's like to see with the eyes of a genius"
I'm seriously disgusted. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. I'll never understand empaths. What is the difference between this guy's crazy lack of empathy and a sociopath's? Is it really just because he seems sort of harmless? ("Little kids would be frightening psychopaths if not for the fact that they're relatively weak and dumb compared to adults.") But he can't be that harmless if he created a program that is used to share pirated movies and games with millions of users.

As I have said before, I am all for rights for the empathy challenged, but have a little consistency! How is that everyone hates sociopaths for having no conscience, but aspies can do no wrong? People are utterly creeped out by sociopaths learning and mimicking emotions, but with aspies it is "acknowledg[ing] inherent 'differences' and actively work[ing] to improve themselves"? I feel like I am taking crazy pills.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

V is for Vendetta!

[guest post from elite sociopath, V]

This is a Taoist parable from the book VITALITY ENERGY SPIRIT, translated and edited by Thomas Cleary.

THE AILMENT

Lung Shu said to the physician Wen Chi, "Your art is subtle, I have an ailment; can you cure it?"

The Physician said, "I will do as you say, but first tell me about your symptoms."

Lung Shu said, "I am not honored when the whole village praises me, nor am I ashamed when the whole county criticizes me. Gain does not make me happy, loss does not grieve me. I look upon life as like death, and see wealth as like poverty. I view people as like pigs, and see myself as like others. At home I am as though at an inn, and I look upon my native village as like a foreign country. With these afflictions, rewards cannot encourage me, punishments cannot threaten me. I cannot be changed by flourishing or decline, gain or loss; I cannot be moved by sorrow or happiness. Thus I cannot serve the government, associate with friends, run my household, or control my servants. What sickness is this? Is there any way to cure it?"

The physician had Lung Shu stand with his back to the light while he looked into his chest. After a while he said, "Aha! I see your heart; it is empty! You are nearly a sage. Six of the apertures in your heart are open, one of them is closed. This may be why you think the wisdom of a sage is an ailment. It cannot be stopped by my shallow art."
Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies

.

Comments are unmoderated. Blog owner is not responsible for third party content. By leaving comments on the blog, commenters give license to the blog owner to reprint attributed comments in any form.