I have spoken about relationships with psychopaths, and friendships with us as well, but something that I think needs mentioning is that being friends with a psychopath is not for everyone. People tell me all the time that they wish that they had a friend like me, and while that work for some people, there are many that would not benefit from that friendship.
Friendship changes everyone to some degree, even psychopaths. I learn a lot from my neurotypical friends. How they relate to one another, how they process difficulties and problems, what matters to them and why, and how they respond to different things. All of that is rather fascinating to me, but it is all observational, there isn’t an emotional impact these observations have.
Psychopaths, on the other hand, do have an emotional impact on those around them, especially friends, and especially emotional friends. When someone experiences high levels of emotions and those emotions are present around another neurotypical, there is a degree of contagion that happens. The other person has their mirror neurons triggered and they share that feeling. This is what makes weddings so appealing to a lot of people, especially women, as they get a high off the happy couple and the occasion.
I have noticed that when these same types of people interact with me, as they do not have that mirror experience, it changes them. Their emotions start to diminish in volume. In some regards, this can be a very good thing. If they tend to be reactionary to emotional stimuli, this quiets down and they are able to weigh situations in a more logical light.
However, I think that with some people their high levels of emotions are rather important to their understanding of self, and being around a psychopath like me might be detrimental to them. When someone is upset they often want that upset mirrored back to them. It makes them feel heard, it makes them feel like their experience is valid. Friends know this about one another and they will provide this service to their friends, because their friends will provide it to them when they in turn need it. It is a reciprocal arrangement, and mutually beneficial for their mental health.
When someone comes to me with a problem, they tend to find me listening to them through a critical thinking lens. I tend to find aspects of their thought process that might not be congruent with reality. If they are seeking a solution to their issue they will often find that readily available but many people do not want a solution, they want to be heard. I can do that, but I don’t provide that mirror experience to them. Over time, if this person is simply hardwired to be an emotional person, I think that this lack of a mirror experience degrades their mental health over time as I think it degrades who they know themselves to be.
Emotions have served a very good purpose for all of human evolution. They provide social cohesion and serve the mental health of the tribe. Humans are, without a doubt, meant to have these emotions and as many people have told me, it is what makes their lives worth living. Exchanging those emotions is also very valuable for most alive. It is one of the things that keep them alive and keeps them healthy. That is not to say that there is not a time when this goes the other way. Too much of a good thing can be toxic.
Being friends with a psychopath and lacking that emotional exchange can be very disconcerting for some people. I think that this is because emotional experience more or less informs a person of who they are. It orients them in the world. When that is shut off, or when that isn’t present as often as they are used to, it might erode a part of what they value in themselves.
For some people that I have known in the past, this is good for them. It made them able to see a delineation between their emotional responses to situations, and what they thought about a situation. It gave them insight into manipulation and provided them a gap between how a manipulator may make them feel, as opposed to what they are saying or what their actions are communicating. In this regard, I think that it is a really valuable part of being friends with a psychopath.
However, when the person isn’t being mirrored, perhaps there is something inside them that begins to think that their emotional responses are wrong because they are one-sided. Instead of the emotions getting a bit quieter and their logical brain speaking a little louder, perhaps they instead suppress their emotions or detach from them to a degree.
This might work for a time, but it is bound to erode their mental health I would imagine. As a psychopath, I do not know how important emotions are to your function, but the very least that I do know is that everyone is unique and different in this regard. Some people do very well getting that distance from their emotional responses in the world. That isn’t to say that those that don’t are in any way in the wrong. It is a difference in what they can tolerate. It is finding their limits and knowing what they are comfortable with.
To be able to be friends with someone like me, that person has to know themselves pretty well and if there is some negative impact on their lives from that friendship, they would have to know to pull the plug. I certainly won’t take offense to it. They need to do what is important for them and their wellness.
This isn’t only true when it comes to being friends with a psychopath though. Friendships of all kinds place an amount of stress on the individuals within them, and there are some friendships that aren’t really good for one or both parties. Sometimes this is through no fault of either, but sometimes it is because one of them is maladjusted and manipulative. A lot of times the degradation of a person because of an individual like this goes unnoticed because the person causing it is very good at making the person who is suffering question reality.
How many of you have had a friend that left you feeling ill at ease when they aren’t around, but somehow make you forget that feeling when they are? I would guess more than a few of you. What about the friend that places too much expectation on you and will use your emotions to get you to comply, especially guilt? Likely more than a few of you as well. How many of you stayed friends with someone way longer than you should have because they were your friend after all, you can’t just walk away, right?
Healthy relationships of any kind have a built-in requirement if they are to start and stay healthy, and that is you having well-defined boundaries and a willingness to uphold them. It is one thing to tell yourself, I will never allow a person in my life to do “X”. X is whatever you find unacceptable and you decide that this is your hardline. No one will cross it.
Unless you are paying attention and you have boundaries about how a person is allowed to treat you, you may not even notice that not only are you fast approaching X, but nothing in your head is setting off alarm bells. No one comes into your life immediately and aggressively charging your boundary lines. They come in, and make you feel happy and safe. Some of the most toxic people in your life are the ones that made you absolutely adore them when you first met them. It is often these feelings that make it so difficult to see when their behavior has tipped from enjoyable and helpful to harmful and destructive.
I have to be clear about something as well. Some people that degrade as friends like this do so intentionally. They are users that never had any interest in you past what they can get out of you. However, others are just very emotionally damaged and it is their thought process that causes them to be the way that they are. Often the why really doesn’t matter when you are on the phone with them at three AM with them threatening you with suicide if you cut off the friendship, but it is good to keep in mind that many toxic people are toxic because that is all they have learned in their lives. Not because they are just looking to make your life miserable.
Their motivations, however, do not have an impact on the effect. If you have someone in your life that you find yourself slogging through every interaction with and you are only there because you feel obligated, it’s time to go. Sometimes there is an argument to be made that they are going through something specific and when they are through it they might go back to normal, but often times what you are seeing is a layer to them that you were simply unaware of. Once you have seen it, and accepted it, and tolerated it, it will be there more and more often.
People will push you just a little bit further, and a little bit further, until you push back. If you push back and require the ending of that behavior, holding them to it, you might be able to still have them in your life. More likely though it will be that they quit for a short period of time, and then start pushing again in a different way than they were before. By then you’ve cooled off and aren’t so defensive of your boundaries because you feel like you made yourself clear. You are looking for the same behavior as last time, but they are using a different tactic.
Some people who are maladapted really do thrive on making drama between their friends. They feel alive when they do it, and in doing it they feel that the person that they are creating problems for or taking advantage of is proving to them how good of a friend they are by overcoming those issues. It is a fire test that never ends. They feel more secure when people are willing to suffer for them. It isn’t necessarily a conscious thought, but the actions are very clear. The more you put up with, the more they push. The more they push, the more they get their emotional payoff that will never last.
You have to decide what you want in your friendships. There are times that friendships will be work because everyone goes through hard times. It is a matter of not allowing that work to become the entirety of that relationship with only meager scraps of rewards left at the end of the day. You also have to be okay with letting a friendship go. It is understandable that you care about that person, perhaps you even love them, but if they aren’t respecting you or how you want to be treated, they don’t care about or love you in return. Know who you are, know what you will accept, and make sure that you don’t convince yourself that it’s normal to dread when you hear their ringtone.
this is some solid advice, especially while learning the ins and outs of different boundary types + signs of approach to people crossing them. thanks for this one.
Excellent write-up on friendships and boundaries. Often neglected people lack proper training on boundaries among normal people and struggle to learn what they are.
X often is actually a mysterious thing to such people! They then end up doing things that are socially awkward or even unacceptable as a result. Helping them is not easy.