Friends With An Actual Psychopath?

What adjustments can you make?

Photo by Jarritos Mexican Soda on Unsplash

When I started this post, the first thing I did was look for an image of friends hanging out, as this post is about being friends with a psychopath. For those of you wondering, no this is not the post that my friend will hopefully get around to initiating soon. Instead, this one is about what makes a good friend in the eyes of a psychopath. When I was looking for an image, pretty much all of them were friends hanging on one another, and being very affectionate. If you are friends with a psychopath, this will not be the case, and finding an image that was more representative of what a friendship with one of us is like wasn’t easy.

I recently got a comment from another psychopath speaking about their friendship with a neurotypical. They mentioned some of the pitfalls that they have dealt with in that relationship that can be quite vexing when you are psychopathic, but your friends are not. They wondered if I might be able to explore the idea of how neurotypicals can be better friends if they are friends with a psychopath. It is an interesting idea.

Psychopaths are constantly changing how we would naturally interact with people to meet their needs, as the world is made up of mostly neurotypicals. It is rare that many of us will ever meet another psychopath, be aware that they are a psychopath, and that person would be compatible with us as people to ever be friends. Therefore friends tend to be of the neurotypical persuasion.

As I mentioned, we are used to creating a persona for the sake of the feelings of others. That being the case, neurotypicals have no idea how much we compromise to make them happy. It is our normal to have to do this, and those around us tend to take it for granted. Considering it from the other direction, what compromises could a neurotypical make to be a better friend to us is an intriguing quandary, so let’s begin.

1. If we warn you about a person, listen. That is not to say that you have to substitute our opinion for your own, but at the very least, listen. This is especially true about relationships. We pick up on things that your emotions blind you to. I mentioned in a previous post how the love cocktail can lie to you and make you miss things that others see right away. This is doubly true for us. When you have other neurotypicals telling you that they don’t like someone, they may be telling you the honest truth, or they may have ulterior motives. Or, at the very least, you might be able to ascribe ulterior motives to them because it allows you to go on with your infatuation with someone that is not a good person.
   
   None of those motives can be reasonably applied to a psychopath. We are never going to be jealous of someone else. Jealousy, or the perception of jealousy that comes from someone desperately trying to defend their dreadful tastes in partners can not be the excuse that you use to ignore our warnings. We can’t feel jealousy. We also have no interest in controlling you as apparently is the case between neurotypicals at times. We don’t have feelings for the same person and are trying to sabotage you. We don’t sadistically just want you to be alone for… reasons. The most important one, however? We can’t be charmed by someone that has bad intentions toward you.
   
   Someone that has bad intentions, who is a scammer, or an abuser, or simply a toxic person, is used to dealing with humans that are emotionally like-minded to everyone else. This means that their toolbox is a limited one, and it is going to be based in emotional manipulation. That is a dead end with a psychopath, so we see through that garbage straight away. They might be very skilled at charming your neurotypical friends and family because they know what works on them, but they will get nowhere with us. We aren’t moved by this at all. We are also very skilled at the proper tone of emotions, and when someone is discordant with their emotional tone, we know that they are a liar. If your psychopathic friend warns you about someone, listen. If you choose to ignore that warning, the next thing that you can do to be a better friend to one of us…
   

2. Don’t come crying to us when you fall on your face when you were warned about the cliff ahead of time. None of us are interested in dealing with drama. It’s boring, it’s emotionally cathartic to many neurotypicals in ways that make no sense to us, and it takes us away from whatever it is that is actually interesting. If said drama was avoidable, and I provided ample warning about the coming slow-moving trainwreck that a friend is now trying desperately to get me to feast upon the carnage of, I am going to be annoyed. This will be especially true if this is a repeat performance.
   
   I get that emotions sometimes make you want things that aren’t great for you. I get that, I do, but… if you ask me for advice, and I tell you, this is a bad idea because… and I give you very well-reasoned and grounded arguments to support my case, but your response translates to a whine of, “I know, but I WANT IT!!!!” I will, again, be annoyed. This is something that people really need to understand about psychopaths. We don’t care that you suffer. I know that’s mean in your world, and that somehow this should be different if we consider you a friend, but generally, our mentality is, it sucks to be you.
   
   If I take the time out of my day to give you a heads up because you asked this of me, but you decide that you know better and are wrong, it sucks to be you. If a friend tripped and fell all over their bad decision-making, learned from it, and got on with their bad self, I would respect that. I would be fine with them deciding to learn from their own mistakes. But. But there is a limit to my patience with their self-indulgent need to be the center of attention because once again, they either thought that they knew everything, or, for whatever reason, felt the need to prove me wrong and got hurt in the process.
   
   My investment commitment was when they came and asked for my advice in the first place. I gave it, that was my demonstration and action of care. I am not here to kiss their boo-boos when their lack of logic treats them like they are three-year-olds jumping off a roof convinced that they can fly. That is a ‘them’ problem, not a ‘me’ problem. To be a better friend to the psychopath in your life, consider their advice, and if you decide to not listen, and all that they said would come to pass does and you are unhappy with the outcome, own that the result was entirely your doing, and whinging to the psychopath is not going to win you any favors from them. Instead, their mentality is going to be one of:
   
   I told you three months ago that this result was coming. You wanted to be right instead of happy, I am not fixing this for you again. You wore out your welcome already. I have a low tolerance of people and their nonsense. If you really want my help, when you come to me, either say “I need to vent” - in which case I offer you no advice and let you whine at me until you feel better - or say “I am ready to change” and then take the advice that I offer you. I am not asking you to substitute my opinion for your own, but if you are asking me it's because you don't know what to do, or what you have been doing isn't working. So, trying my advice will harm exactly no one.
   

3. Understand the difference between your need and love of affection, and our indifference to it. Not all neurotypicals are highly affectionate, I get that. Many are, however, and this is not something that psychopaths need or even understand. All the photos that I mentioned at the beginning of this post that are supposed to illustrate what friendship is like are not representative of psychopathy at all. I can be affectionate if I need to be, but there is no inclination.
   
   This does not tend to be an issue when being friends with men, but women have a whole different communication structure, and a lot of them have decided that hugging after meeting you five seconds ago is completely normal. It isn’t, so stop that. A lot of females like to be hugged by their friends, they touch their hands, they hang on one another especially when drinking, there is a whole physical part of the friendship that happens. Psychopaths, male or female, do not have this. We can be tolerant of it, but this is a concession made for you. If you are a touchy-feely person, curb it when you are dealing with your psychopathic friend.
   

4. Be direct. If they want something from me, if I pissed them off, if they have a question for me that might be uncomfortable, just ASK IT. I do not need fifty minutes of backstory, I do not need to be gentled to something, I do not care about how whatever this conversation is is making them so uncomfortable to ask, just DO IT. I have limited time in my day, in my life for that matter, and I do not want to have to sacrifice hours of my time to their emotional need to indulge these aspects of themselves.
   
   This is especially the case in the instances that I did manage to piss them off. I do not take kindly to someone having some reason that they are upset at me, but instead of saying something and giving me the chance to weigh in on it or fix it, they hang onto it until it builds up and now it’s a fight. I didn’t want it to be a fight, but here we are, that’s the decision that they made because they couldn’t just address the situation when it presented itself. They let it fester and build until it became a tantrum that they are unloading on me. No conversation, just angry ranting.
   

5. Speaking of being upset… I get it, our lack of emotional investment into things creates an environment where you can be as emotional as you want without having to worry about making one of us angry. It is very tempting to be furious about something and direct that anger at someone because it is cathartic, but unless they tell me that they need to vent, I am not that person. I am a fixer, not the emotional catharsis hug machine. If they have a problem I am going to offer a solution. When someone wants to be upset and is not interested in that, solutions might make them angrier.
   
   If a friend needs to vent, that’s fine, but they need to be upfront about that. I will let them go whole hog and not say a word, or say whatever words of encouragement that they may need to hear. However, the words need to be uttered so I understand my role in this conversation.
   

6. Understand how we engage and that how we engage is not an indictment on our thoughts regarding you. I do not contact people unless I have a specific reason to do so. I don’t call people, text people, or think about people that aren’t directly in front of me, or unless they contact me first. I do not call anyone almost ever. This is not something that is going to change. If someone reaches out to me, I respond and consider the ball in their court. I fulfilled my obligation regarding that interaction. It is done until they reach out again.
   
   This is not something that a lot of people understand. They think that when someone cares about them that person will seek to be around them. That’s probably true if you have oxytocin and emotional empathy. I don’t. I have none of that and am extremely self-focused. I will set aside what I am doing if you want something from me, but my friends need to be comfortable with the fact that they are going to be responsible for contact. I don’t hate them, I’m not mad at them, I am not harboring secret thoughts that they suck and I wish that they would die. I just don’t have a need to talk to them.
   
   When we hang out I’m invested in that occasion and will have fun with that individual, but that fun doesn’t inspire the desire to try and repeat it. That’s not how a psychopath’s brain works. If you are going to be friends with a psychopath, you are going to have to learn how to divorce yourself from this aspect of us, and the emotional things that it makes you think and feel. If you are unsure, again, ASK.
   

7. Either be able to have a logical reasonable discussion about things that you are emotionally invested in, or DON’T ASK. This is true of things like religion, politics, social issues, whatever it is that people have a deeply emotional response to and have very strong beliefs regarding. If they decide that this is a conversation that they decide we are going to have, I am not interested in their feelings on the matter, though I will listen to their position.
   
   I am interested in the facts. Do not try to initiate a conversation that you have already decided that your emotions dictate the proper response. It doesn’t and I don’t entertain being told what to think, nor do I tolerate someone trying to berate me because I disagree with them about something that they are passionate about. Figure out how to have a conversation, or don’t bring it up.
   

8. Understand that many of your assumptions about the meaning behind the psychopath’s actions or inactions are not likely to be correct. An excellent example of this is the notorious response to questions of condition of, "I’m fine”. This is not a puzzle game. It is not, deduce what they mean by that response. They said exactly what they meant to say. I know that, “I’m fine”, nearly never actually means that they are. I know this because I know a lot of people that use it as code for, “figure out how you f*cked up, or I will punish you forever”.
   
   Psychopaths don’t have a need to play this game. If you crossed a line, they are either going to shrug it off and forget about it because it isn’t worth the effort, or simply tell you that you crossed a line. There is no subtext to, “I’m fine”. We do not have the emotional wiring necessary to find this game fun or satisfying. Understand that most of your social ballet is a dance you learned with neurotypicals as the director and the audience. All the steps that you have come to believe are hardwired into many interactions have no place with us. If you are unsure, ask.
   

9. Emotional escalation is not appreciated. You are not making a point with a psychopath when you demonstrate your ire through emotional displays. It is going to have less of an impact, not more. Also, just because you are upset about something, doesn’t mean you are right about it. I have had many conversations with people that are upset about an interaction with someone else, and they have read a ton of context into it, but haven’t considered that they may not have any idea what they are talking about. They are mad for no reason. Your emotional investment into something does not equate to that something being valuable or correct, and just because I am friends with someone does not mean that I am going to just assume that they are the one in the right.
   
   That can be jarring to not have your friend back you up no matter what, but I am not the pitchfork and torch kind of person. No psychopath is. We don’t get emotionally charged up about anything, and often we can see perspectives that you have missed altogether. We tell you about these things because it is better in our minds to be correct than it is to be emotionally satisfied. Don’t come to us for that kind of soothing. Maybe you’re totally right and the other person is a piece of garbage, but we are going to want more information prior to agreeing with you. Trust… but verify.
   

10. If you don’t know, ask. I know I have said this several times, but it really needs repeating. It is easier to ask than assume, and we don’t get offended, so just ask. This saves everyone time, and while that may not be a priority for you, it is for me. I don’t want to spend a ton of time having to untangle myself from a litany of misunderstandings to get back to neutral ground again.

Those are the ones that I can come up with right now, and for most of you, these are totally useless tips as you are unlikely to be buddy-buddy with a psychopath, but it’s information all the same. For those of you that are friends with one of us, hopefully, you find it useful. We make many adjustments on a constant basis to accommodate the neurotypicals that we interact with, these are a few you can make to even things out a bit.