Saturday, June 11, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
In love with a sociopath (part 3)
The reader replies:
I do understand that I should never expect anything of him, and if he is being nurturing and sympathetic sometimes it's only because he enjoys the feelings which his rare sweetness awakens. I'm willing to go forward with this weird friendship. I'm not going to give up on him just because he is somehow different, after all he is a human being as well. Plus it gives some kind of drive.
I was thinking about sociopathy a lot lately and i came to a conclusion that such people are like tigers, wild animals, and trying to tame one takes skill. And the best part is that you will never fully tame one, today he loves you, and tomorrow he will bite your throat out. Being in this arena gives me a sense of life. I came up with a theory that people can be placed under 2 categories; the pets, and the wild animals. Sociopaths are more likely to survive -- I do believe they make good business people, because in situations where others would think twice before either breaking the law, or defying some other social norms (dont steal, dont cheat, bla bla) a sociopath wouldn't blink an eye. And they project a sense of power -- women are drawn to that. So maybe that's why I like the guy. For me its an honor to be within his close circle, and hopefully I can keep this place without being replaced. And I'm willing to become his perfect victim, and put him on a pedestal. Yes, this takes balls and courage, but I dont want to be replaced. He is free like the wind, and untamable, but he is my wild tiger, and I want to stay in the arena.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
In love with a sociopath (part 2)
My response:
It's a pleasure to read such a thoughtful email about the realities of a relationship with a sociopath. I imagine my friends and family feel similarly about me, or at least I hope they do.
Sociopaths are odd people when it comes to relationships. They're "antisocial" but they can also get immense satisfaction in pleasing people. The satisfaction does not come from imagining how good the other person must feel, it comes from being able to provoke such a strong reaction in the other person. Because you are apparently charmed by the blatantly sociopathic elements of his personality, you are especially valuable to him because he can charm you, provoke you, thrill you and chill you without having to put forth any sort of effort. He may get some special pleasure in doing this all without wearing a mask (or at least not his usual mask), but probably it's less self-affirmation he is after and rather just an awareness of how singular a presence you are in his life. If you are not the only one in his life that he can be that way with, you are probably only one of a handful and he will not let you go easily because of this.
I wouldn't hold out hope for ever having a more intimate or committed relationship with him. He would never want to "have to" be supportive, nurturing, protective, etc. To the extent he does it now, he does it because you view those behaviors as a gift, not an obligation. And it's an unfortunate tendency for most people in relationships to feel like the other person somehow "owes" them something. If you want to try a relationship with him, I would focus on this aspect, never making it seem like you expect anything. Have you read "Washington Square"? The protagonist heiress is seduced by a gold digger. I'm paraphrasing here, but there's a passage about how she felt about his sporadic visits:
Sociopaths are odd people when it comes to relationships. They're "antisocial" but they can also get immense satisfaction in pleasing people. The satisfaction does not come from imagining how good the other person must feel, it comes from being able to provoke such a strong reaction in the other person. Because you are apparently charmed by the blatantly sociopathic elements of his personality, you are especially valuable to him because he can charm you, provoke you, thrill you and chill you without having to put forth any sort of effort. He may get some special pleasure in doing this all without wearing a mask (or at least not his usual mask), but probably it's less self-affirmation he is after and rather just an awareness of how singular a presence you are in his life. If you are not the only one in his life that he can be that way with, you are probably only one of a handful and he will not let you go easily because of this.
I wouldn't hold out hope for ever having a more intimate or committed relationship with him. He would never want to "have to" be supportive, nurturing, protective, etc. To the extent he does it now, he does it because you view those behaviors as a gift, not an obligation. And it's an unfortunate tendency for most people in relationships to feel like the other person somehow "owes" them something. If you want to try a relationship with him, I would focus on this aspect, never making it seem like you expect anything. Have you read "Washington Square"? The protagonist heiress is seduced by a gold digger. I'm paraphrasing here, but there's a passage about how she felt about his sporadic visits:
Whenever Morris Townsend had left the house, her imagination projected itself, with all its strength, into the idea of his soon coming back; but if she had been told at such a moment that he would not return for a year, or even that he would never return, she would not have complained nor rebelled, but would have humbly accepted the decree, and sought for consolation in thinking over the times she had already seen him, the words he had spoken, the sound of his voice, of his tread, the expression of his face. Love demands certain things as a right; but Catherine had no sense of her rights; she had only a consciousness of immense and unexpected favours.It's a good book for someone in your situation to read though.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Trickster
A reader linked to these selections from “Trickster: Trickster Makes This World Mischief, Myth, and Art,” by Lewis Hyde. From the review, the book appears to be an interesting account of some of the mythology that predates evolutionary biology with regards to how predator/prey relationships shake up the status quo. Although the selections are definitely worth reading in their entirety, here’s a taste of what it covers:
The trickster myth derives creative intelligence from appetite. It begins with a being whose main concern is getting fed and it ends with the same being grown mentally swift, adept at creating and unmasking deceit, proficient at hiding his tracks and at seeing through the devices used by others to hide theirs. Trickster starts out hungry, but before long he is master of the kind of creative deception that, according to a long tradition, is a prerequisite of art.After many stories of how Trickster accomplishes his tricks and the effects that Trickster has on “society”, a few words on what it all means for Trickster:
***
In Evolution of the Brain and Intelligence, Harry Jerison presents a striking chart showing the relative intelligence of meat-eaters and the herbivores they prey on. Taking the ratio of brain to body size as a crude index, Jerison finds that if we compare herbivores and carnivores at any particular moment in history the predators are always slightly brainier than the prey. But the relationship is never stable; there is a slow step-by-step increase in intelligence on both sides. If we chart the brain-body ratio on a scale of 1 to 10, in the archaic age herbivores get a 2 and carnivores a 4; thirty million years later the herbivores are up to 4 but the carnivores have gone up to 6; another thirty million years and the herbivores are up to 6 but the carnivores are up to 8; finally, when the herbivores get up to 9, the carnivores are up to 10. The hunter is always slightly smarter, but the prey is always wising up. In evolutionary theory, the tension between predator and prey is one of the great engines that has driven the creation of intelligence itself, each side successively and ceaselessly responding to the other.
In all these stories, trickster must do more than feed his belly; he must do so without himself getting eaten. Trickster's intelligence springs from appetite in two ways; it simultaneously seeks to satiate hunger and to subvert all hunger not its own. This last is an important theme. In the Okanagon creation story, the Great Spirit, having told Coyote that he must show the New People how to catch salmon, goes on to say: "I have important work for you to do ... There are many bad creatures on earth. You will have to kill them, otherwise they will eat the New People. When you do this, the New People will honor you ... They will honor you for killing the People-devouring monsters and for teaching ... all the ways of living." In North America, trickster stepped in to defeat the monsters who used to feed on humans.
The myth says, then, that there are large, devouring forces in this world, and that trickster's intelligence arose not just to feed himself but to outwit these other eaters. Typically, this meeting is oppositional--the prey outwitting the predator. The bait thief suggests a different, nonoppositional strategy. Here trickster feeds himself where predator and prey meet, but rather than entering the game on their terms he plays with its rules. Perhaps, then, another force behind trickster's cunning is the desire to remove himself from the eating game altogether, or at least see how far out he can get and still feed his belly (for if he were to stop eating entirely he would no longer be trickster).
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