It's Over

The end of a relationship with a psychopath can be bewildering... Part five

Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash

I am sure you have heard a thousand times about what the end of a relationship with a psychopath goes. They are outside your house in the middle of the night and you are hiding in your bathroom. The psychopath has been stalking you relentlessly and is obsessed with you. They call you at work, follow you home, and text and call you a thousand times a day. You can’t get away from them.

The situation above certainly does happen, but the person harassing their ex isn’t a psychopath. That isn’t what makes the end of a relationship with a psychopath so shocking. They won’t do any of the things above. They will just leave and forget that you ever existed.

Relationships with psychopaths are investments for the psychopath. You can read about that here:

Psychopathy and Love

They can love you in cognitive ways, but will never chemically love you. They cannot bond to you at all. When a neurotypical’s relationship ends normally, there may be a lot of anger, sadness, leftover love, loneliness, and other very strong unfinished emotional business. The end of the relationship might unfold over months. You might break up and get back together, or still talk, text, or are friendly when you see each other in public.

That will not happen with a psychopath. If it’s over, it’s over. There is no unfinished emotional business for one of us. Once investment is over we are done. There is no desire to see you, speak to you, or hear about you. From a neurotypical’s perception that would be like an ice-cold bucket of water to the face.

In most relationships, you will have no idea the person is psychopathic because the psychopathic person doesn’t know themselves. Most psychopaths will never have any idea how they are wired, but that doesn’t change the fact that their biology makes them impervious to things like the loss of a partner, so let me explain what it is that happens for us when it ends. It won’t change the feelings that you are experiencing in that moment. You are still probably going to feel abandoned, and you are likely still going to question your worth.

What I can tell you is that it is inevitable. If the relationship ends there is nothing to tether us to you. In my case, I don’t end relationships, but have no interest in convincing a person not to leave if they decide to. Psychopaths live in the moment, and they do not code memories emotionally. We lack this ability. For instance, if we go on some amazing vacation that was magical and delightful, it remains that way in your memory. It does not do this at all, in ours.

To us, the fun ended when the vacation does. After the event is done the memories are filed away as events that happened, but nothing more. I could tell you that the vacation was fun, but I can’t relive that fun with you. I can make it appear that I do, but it is the mask, not reality.

This same thinking applies to the relationship as well. If I am with a person I like who they are. I have a saying that I use often to describe my interest in relationships:

My preferred state is one of solitude. If someone comes along and improves upon that state I will make adjustments to accommodate them in my life. If they leave, I return to my preferred state.

There are no emotionally coded memories of you and there is no ability to miss you. We prefer your presence, but if it is absent such as you pass away, that’s also fine. However, in the situation of a relationship ending you have told me that you want to go. In my mind, your decision is made, and I see no point in arguing with you. Obviously, the relationship isn’t going the way you want, and I am not going to be willing to change more than I already have to make it appealing for you to stay.

Once you go, the investment immediately ends. I prefer that you take everything that is yours. I greatly dislike people using the need to reacquire goods as a rouse to speak to me again. All of the loss you are feeling, we don’t. The missing of your partner, we don’t share.

The real pain of a relationship ending with a psychopath is the total lack of care, and the deafening indifference. That is where the true pain originates from. It is one thing to have an ex that won’t or can’t get over you. It is a totally different thing for you to be forgotten about in an instant. There is no emotional closure with a psychopath, and none of us are going to bother playacting it for you.

It may seem quite harsh to you, but we are done with the song and dance that our relationship requires of us. All of the masking, all of the accommodations, and all of the adjustments were made for your benefit to make you happy when you were around. You left. Accommodations are over. If one of my exes called me to tell me that they had a terminal diagnosis I would ask them why they bothered calling me. It’s not my problem. Why would I have any interest in what is happening in your life?

Keep in mind. I am describing the end of a relationship to give you an understanding of what a psychopath experiences. Neurotypicals often feel the need to explain things through their own understanding because they cannot fathom what the psychopath is thinking, nor how their mind works. Oftentimes when neurotypicals are hurt they will ascribe intent to actions where it has no business being.

Lannie Lotts over on Quora was married to a psychopath, had children with one, and divorced one. No part of the end of the relationship was easy for her or her children. She, however, unlike most people was able to understand her husband and separate out his behavior from the negative outcome. She was able to see the reasoning that his mind had instead of assigning motivations that don’t make sense to a psychopath.

I bring her up because it took her six years I believe to find out he was psychopathic. A family member of his told her about his formal diagnosis because they were still in contact due to having shared children. That finally made things fall into place. It took six years, but she finally got some answers.

Many people will think that there are emotional reasons behind the immediate disconnect. Often this is a place where some neurotypicals will soothe a bit of their hurt feelings.

They don’t contact me because they miss me too much.

They won’t take my calls because they feel guilty for the way they behaved.

They know it’s their fault that I left.

They’re angry because I took all their power away.

They won’t talk to me because I humilated them.

I can promise you, none of those things are going through their heads. They don’t have any reason to talk to you. They don’t care about the new person you are seeing, nor you telling them how much better looking the new person is. The response from a psychopath regarding these games is to wonder what your deal is.

The purpose of this post is to illustrate what causes that absolute shutoff of interest and contact. It can be very upsetting and make you question things about the relationship. If this happened to you and you are seeking reasons or what happened in their minds, here you go. it won’t change it, but it might answer some of your questions. If you decide to go into a relationship with someone that is diagnosed as a psychopath, and you are aware of it, know that if it ends, this is how it ends.

Completely and utterly.