Sociopaths

[rexbeccarox]

I've just had one fuck me up considerably. I'm wondering what other people's experiences are: are you a sociopath? If not, have you had a run-in with one? What happened?

[Napoléon]

I seem to be living with one who doesn't give a shit about anyone else's feelings, so I feel your pain.

[ManMachine]

I've just had one fuck me up considerably. I'm wondering what other people's experiences are: are you a sociopath? If not, have you had a run-in with one? What happened?

Antisocial psychopathy is not an on/off condition, it's a spectrum. We are all somewhere on that spectrum and all of us possess the potential to move in either direction, although its unusual to make significant changes in this respect.

MM

[Thumpalumpacus]

Hope all's well with you.

I've had tangential dealings with them, but definitely keep them at arm's length if and when I get that vibe. It helps that I'm pretty good at reading people, from my interview experiences.

[Chas]

I've just had one fuck me up considerably. I'm wondering what other people's experiences are: are you a sociopath? If not, have you had a run-in with one? What happened?

I was married to one. We got divorced.

[DeistPaladin]

As ManMachine has said, it depends what your definition is.

There was once a good friend of mine from college that, from my perspective, devolved into narcissism. Does that count?

I say "devolved" because I remember him differently in college. Back then, he was nerdy and at times socially oblivious but really seemed like a nice guy who would always apologize if he had one of those moments of being socially oblivious.

As he got older, he made a lot of really bad choices which basically resulted in his life completely falling apart in every department, financially, professionally, socially and romantically. If he'd taken any responsibility for his choices, he might have learned from his mistakes and turned things around. Evidently, his pride wouldn't allow that.

Instead, he developed a powerful victim mentality, always blaming other people who were always out to get him for no reason. Nothing was ever his fault. This was his psychological death spiral. The more he failed, the more he retreated into a fantasy world of persecution, the more he became disconnected from reality, the more he became incapable of coping with reality and so the more he failed.

Some good advice I once received but failed to heed in this case: if you are involved with a victim-conscious person, watch out because you'll be the next person who's fault everything is.

The psychology term that, from my layman's perspective, described his condition, is "compensatory narcissistic personality disorder." The "compensatory" part describes the victim style. Unlike normal narcissists who lash out in rages when they don't get their way, the compensatory type will whine like the stereotypical Jewish mother trope. But don't be fooled into thinking the passive-aggressive behavior is harmless. In his mind, you've wronged him by not catering to his narcissism and will look for ways to "get even".

There were warning signs of his deterioration that I see in retrospect. He started telling stories of his previous experiences and exploits that didn't seem likely. Since we lived in other states after we graduated from college, I couldn't say that these stories weren't true but they seemed kind of outlandish. They were the "...and there I was..." kind of tales. As the years past, the stories got better with the telling.

Narcissists, unless they have some unique talents or wealth, typically encounter failure since they antagonize others. As reality conflicts with their inflated view of themselves and their sense of entitlement, they begin to focus more on an invented glorious past that never happened and a vision of a glorious future that is unlikely to ever happen. The extreme form of narcissism is "pathological narcissism", where their grasp of reality is all but gone as the divide between their fantasy world and reality becomes blurry. At the end of our friendship, he was even remembering conversations that never happened and "promises" I never made.

What caused the end of our friendship was where he verbally poisoned a friendship I had with someone else. Oddly enough, when I confronted him, he simultaneously professed his innocence, that he hadn't done it, and also accused me of provoking him to do it with imagined slights that I had never done. He had completely lost it.

I don't regret my choice to break off all ties with my former friend. It was tragic what happened to him but I don't feel sorry for him. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't look on his condition as a mental illness he couldn't have helped. He made choices. They were tragic choices but they were his.

[rexbeccarox]

Thanks for sharing, DP. That definitely counts!

[paulpablo]

I've just had one fuck me up considerably. I'm wondering what other people's experiences are: are you a sociopath? If not, have you had a run-in with one? What happened?

I don't like the trend of diagnosing people with psychological problems, and there's probably a lot of people out there who have long running arguments with people and they're sure they are sociopaths.

BUT I did have a friend who pretty much ticks the majority of boxes of being a sociopath.

I added a lot of detail in my descriptions of what went on in my run ins with this guy just because I think it's easy to say someone is manipulative or deceiving and it wouldn't mean much unless I did go into detail.

Very manipulative, he tried to get me to buy his girlfriends entire christmas shopping list using her money but on my staff discount, which could get me fired. I said no because it might get me fired and he tried every trick in the book, telling me he thought I wouldn't be able to do it because I'm just not smooth enough to get around rules, then telling me I'm not kind enough to do it, then the silent treatment, bringing up every past favor he ever did for me, until he just gave up.

No real friends. His "friends" consisted of people he got close to in order to gain advantages, or associates who would gain things from him, he's a musician so these consisted of studio owners, people with transport, drug dealers, people in locally famous bands. And after a while of going around with him you never see any of these "friends" around at all, except for when he wants something from them or when they want something from him.
Plus then I find out most of his friends have caught him bitching about them behind their back so aren't his friends anymore, for example ex band members and so on.

Starting arguments for seemingly no reason., but usually after not getting his own way.
He once txt me telling me I could only get girls who were older than me with kids. The context of this message was out of the blue from no where, we hadn't even txt each other barely at all that day apart from to discuss maybe some mundane band things. This was directly a few days after I declined to help him with an amateur radio station he was working on. Bare in mind his girlfriend is older than him, and she has kids, and at the time I was seeing more than one girl. So his argument pretty much tries to insult me, insults his own girlfriend, and doesn't have any relation to reality because I wasn't just seeing one girl at the time.

Drug addiction, taking speed constantly, nearly on a daily basis, plus cocaine at the weekends, pretty much increasing mental instability and paranoia.
He would txt me while I was in work and couldn't reply telling me he knew what time I finished work and he knew I was ignoring him, by the time I'd finish a shift I'd look at my phone to see I had a barrage of txt messages all accusing me of purposefully ignoring him.

High levels of vanity, and pride.

High level of charm, he had the ability to charm people, but as I mentioned before it was mainly short term, as the majority of the friends he talked about having were simply not around anymore or only around when some sort of transaction was taking place.

It ended because we were in the same band, he called me once complaining about the bassist and singer of the band and talking shit about them.
The singer brought his girlfriend to rehearsal, while she was there he (the person I suspect may be a sociopath) was very charming to the singers girlfriend, giving her compliments and stuff, then later on the phone to me complained to me about the singer bringing his girlfriend, complained about the singer and the bassist for various other reasons which didn't actually make sense.
I called the bassist and singer and told them exactly what he said, he denied saying these things, they believed me, he got kicked out the band.

He acted like he actually believed his own lies while this argument was taking place within the group so you can add self deception to the list, if he actually did believe his own lies, he might not have done, I have no idea.

It didn't help his case that him and his friend/drug taking partner who he lived with could never remember what lies they were supposed to keep to themselves and what they had already said.

There's certain things which point to him not being a sociopath for example he seemed to exhibit a high amount of empathy for animals, he was a vegetarian, and for people, he would always remember birthdays and so on, but it's difficult to tell if this was just an act or not.

Also he did seem to exhibit a significant amount of nervousness in social situations, even though he was charming, but I've heard sociopaths are supposed to not be nervous usually.

[rexbeccarox]

Thanks for sharing, paulpablo.

From these stories, I'm just glad I was only involved with one for a very short time.

[Silver]

I seem to have sociopathic tendencies.

But according to this test I am not a sociopath:
Sociopath Test