Thank you Everyone for Sharing.
Birch and Chimpkin, similar experience to mine, thank you two especially.
Everything is a means to an end for these people. Even friendships and relationships
By comparison Birch,
I do not believe that your perpetrator maintained outwardly healthy relationships with family and friends from any true depth of feeling of love or empathy.But from a sense of 'role acting' for personal social gain or image maintenance.Keep mum and dad on side to be used as pawns as the 'life history changes with each victim" or "act the family man or morally upright citizen to hide the dark sins"
Sociopaths view people as objects, and can feign and mirror the spectrum of acceptable feelings to gain their personal advantage. And they do seek out the weak. They are predatory. To some perhaps having one victim at a time to act out on is enough and the stable family back ground and social status provides the perfect folly.
To others, perhaps the more solitary ones, one is never enough lest the requirement for ties as the need to constantly evolve and alter life story to attain another victim, or a 'better' or more 'pliable' one. What ever gets them off
I do not believe that your perpetrator 'cared' for his family and friends more than he did you. He cared for no one. Everyone's value to him was what they represented to him, not what they were. They were just pawns to be used to play their role in his charade.
And while they may maintain friendships through association, it all relates back to self and personal gain. Not any true feeling of respect, love or appreciation. One of manipulation at the core, with dishonesty at the forefront in courting and marriage. What they can do for or how they can reflect on him in society. Doors like minded people may open in associations of 'like types'.
These people in loss of death mourn for what they have lost, not who they have lost.
Yes, the sad part is these people are everywhere.
My mother is a sociopath I have learnt this week. I always knew something was wrong from a very young age and seen the poison family background but put it down to depression, anxiety whatever!
I was the whipping post,emotionally abandoned, verbally degraded and abused, sexually molested by her teenage brothers to which I was blamed 'what did you do' when I tried to tell her,caretaker to 3 kids and her in dads absence, she took over the role when he was home. Jealous of my relationship with my father and continually trying to drive a wedge, play him off me with deceit then sniggering in spite behind his back when he sided with her.
My life has been a constant battle for self identity, however without the correct tools, has been quite a journey! Childhood of no self esteem,masturbation from a young age,teenage bulimia,self sabotage..........all triggered by her seen my teenage years fly from a person who could have been anything to a person that self sabotaged. The athelete smoking cigarettes, the girl, who while not promiscuous in a sense, sex drive was lost to emotional void and would seek out one nighters for fear of attachment and worst still 'validation' of all she said I was. Then the people that wouldnt let me go didnt treat me with respect as they figured, I didnt respect myself and I was by nature and easy going laid back person,non plussed with the dating formalities as I never viewed any engagement as being a forever thing....but I stayed for years in each and each left me the same emotional scars as my childhood. I denied myself the courtship game.
Why? because she wanted me to crumble because it made her feel good about herself.She WANTED to destroy me. Still does.
But I never stopped trying to make sense of it all, battling against it all to believe in myself. I have spent alot of time on my own btw relationships and yes, attracted the same types, or more so, sold myself short by not identifying with my own value and worth then battling to get it.yes, I have been treated for depression. However the fact is what my mother triggers in me, and experience with like type persons is bi-polar episodes. However, they will not rule me as 'being' bi-polar. they say I am not.
Every action has a subsequent reaction and so it goes. Any time spent around persons with disorders will affect the balance of another. Any childhood spent around a personality type will affect others in their range
My last relationship:
Second Cousin. abandoned 2 kids. One abandoned then signed over adoption to step father. second abandoned in the hope the same would happen. @ divirces, he always portrayed himself as the caring misunderstood guy trying to find his way
He lied about this when we met, however as I had knowledge of family history, and entered relationship with no view to a full on relationship, I was quite detached at the start, feeling quite a bit of shame and confusion at the situation. Identifying with each lie as it was told but he angled and angled to find that weakness get under my guard. He was determined to get me, I was the best thing that ever happened to him. I gave it to him. I had a couple of one nighters, that did not follow through. And I felt guilty for this man standing in front of me always there. And started to think perhaps we could help each other. Not in the traditional relationship sense, but as friends.
Its as if as I fell, he withdrew. I thought he was afraid of his feelings, he said we were getting too close. I accepted his boundaries and we continued as friends and casual lovers. At the same time, he mentioned his neighbor, a famous persons beautiful rich ex wife. but it became apparent he had his sights set on her.
I thought, you have abandoned 2 kids, 2 failed marriages, she has 3 kids, what would she want with you. And beleived in what he said to me about me, that we would be together if we could be. then he started not staying over, I could not stay at his house for various excuses. I knew he was trying to get the neighbor, even wanted him to have a relationship. He renewed his ties with his abandoned son, I thought because of my love for my children which showed him to be a better person. It appears it was just to con his way into her door. I even thought, she has 3 kids, you have abandoned 2, your not going to take this on. But for a year he courted her and played the game then got to "sleep with her' when I queried he said he wanted to keep both...he had got himself into something he couldnt get out of with the neighbor. My take was, you can see people, we just tell the other when we intend to, or when we start. he didnt.
I felt somewhat hurt as I felt my needs in the time proceeding had been abandoned as I had been through a rough personal time and a little tlc would have gone along way. But it was inevitable that one of us would move on. He knew what I needed and refused to give it to me.
I refused to continue sleeping with him but then as I retained his friendship its as if he went out of his way to rub my face in it. Outline all the wonderful and nice things he had done for her, how she was so wonderful and this and I felt the full weight of his judgement he made btwn her and me which acted on my self doubt and I started to question him. was it just my insecurities, or was it his spite
Then the lengths he went to to stalk this woman out...using the son he abandoned to get in her door, using another stray and lost teenage cousin to show he was a caring selfless guy trying to steer him in the right direction, the front door of his house being mysteriously jammed when the real estate put the property on the market and the dogs warded on visitors from the back.
A predator, a sexual predator, look what I got, I am better than you, look what i can get, but they cant keep me, I got this woman and let her go. Every thing in his life revolves around 'getting a woman' or evolving to get a better type of woman...because you lie to get them and cant keep the act up that is why you have to move on. The cracks begin to show. Or the emptiness comes back as the superficial ideal does not fill the void.
She got all the good. I got all the bad. That does not mean she was better than me or he thought more of her or she deserved it more. He had to to keep the charade up
Then I pin point him. He played the charmer for as long as he could trying to keep me in place cracked, blamed me, played on my past hurt and pushed me and played by anxiety until it was out of control and yes, triggered a bi polar episode.....he knew it would happen. He knew from me devulding past that my eotions were raw and flared.
The thing is he didnt really care more for this other woman. His ego had her on a pedalstool for what she represented socially/classwise/defacating on another mans
(somewhat of a hero's) domain. He was never going to be able to keep up the act. Just had to play the role as it was public, he had been invited into the home and life and social circle of another which he relished in and fullfilled his narrcissistic desires about self.
In the end he was so worried about protecting the facade he had built with her. Not for any other reason than her powerful friends and the fact they lived in the same street. And perhaps leaving the option open to return one day when her 3 kids up and move on. He eventually left after moving out.
So in the end, I felt used,even though he didnt have to, he WANTED to. He WANTED to punish me. One minute he would be with me forever, the next, he was in love with her, the next he just wanted to see what she was like in bed, the next I was just an 'empty' the next she was. Who knows the truth. Perhaps he would have stayed with her as she was rich with status and he was penniless with none. But the kids chased him away. He wanted to get an emotional reaction from me. And I beleive it is the suffering he thrives on. The anti christ.
All this from a man, I allowed into my life because I accepted persons pasts and did not judge as i was working through my own dealings, assumed everyone else was doing so too.I seen his pain. Just likened it to my mothers and thought we could help each other.
I dont think that people are born this way, they are bred this way and not through intent. Family dysfunction has alot to do with it and the ethical and value system within the family unit.
Kids lie. However once they see a fertile ground for lying, get away with it and are in a sense 'rewarded' by attaining what they want from it, they will continue to do it. And will not identify with the moral implications of misleading anothers life. This evolves as they get older and move into teen years and so on.
I think a deep seeded hurt is retained in these persons, one that splits off and sees them intentionally want to hurt another person. Repressed trauma, emotionally