Living With A Psychopath

Buckle up, it's going to be a rocky road... Part three

Photo by John Salzarulo on Unsplash

Relationships always change as time goes on, so in my reasoning, I can do my best to meet the infatuation and initial chemical love of the other person, and as that fades away and they are more themself with me, I can be more myself with them. There is never going to be a time when I am dealing with someone in a relationship that there isn’t some kind of mask. There may be moments without it, but no significant amount of time. I know that people need more than I have to offer naturally, and if they improve upon my life, some acquiescence is required of me. Completely mask off would be detrimental to this.

That doesn’t mean that you won’t see it from time to time and it can be confusing, disconcerting, frightening, and leave you feeling like you aren’t sure what you are seeing. People will see me mask off on a few occasions.

1. I’m not pleased about something. This is rare, and usually does not result in mask off. Every once in a while it will.

2. I am really sick. If I am really sick all my energy is going to functioning. I am not the sort that wants to be taken care of when sick. I have no interest in appearing weak. However, that takes an incredible amount of focus, and being nice at the same time is unlikely to happen.

3. When they have done something that crossed a pretty significant line with me. Sometimes a reminder is necessary for people that the frilly sweet person that they are used to is a presentation for their benefit. When I care little about their benefit they will deal with me sans mask.

4. When I’m alone. I get to be me. Sneak up on me when I was alone it might take moment to reapply the mask. However, this is kind of your own fault. If I was alone, and you didn’t tell me you were coming, you are invading my space, so what you get is what you get.

5. When I am concentrating on something and am interrupted. My focus is not going to be on you, it is still on what I was doing. I will interact with you, but it isn’t going to be very masked.

People that see me in my home are more likely to see me mask off than anyone else. This means that if you are not living with the psychopath in your life you are not likely to see this aspect. If you move in with them, that might change. This isn’t because they hate you, or anything of the sort. As I said, relationships change, and the people relax and get to know who the other is without as much performance. You wouldn’t be shocked into meeting a psychopath sans mask, it would be something that is eased into.

This is another place where the neurotypical’s experience will differ from the psychopath’s. To a neurotypical, it may seem that the person that they got into a relationship is more distant. To the psychopath, they are settling into their normal. They wouldn’t be around you if they didn’t want to be, and if in their minds you have demonstrated that you are worthy of being trusted, letting you see more of who we are is a compliment. Our idea of compliments can be very unsettling to our partner.

How would you react to someone saying, “I don’t need you in my life, I want you in my life”? Some people see that as very healthy. Others see it as devastating. It seems like they are telling you that they could drop you at any moment and not look back. In the instance of a psychopath, this is true. You are never going to be needed. If you are wanted, that is a high compliment. it just doesn’t sound like it to the person hearing it. In their minds, they hear, “you’re disposable.”

If you heard that you are disposable, it can be world wrecking. The psychopath will not understand your anger and sadness. Communication between the two people can be endlessly frustrating. To a psychopath hearing, “I need you”, isn’t something that interests us. We don’t want you to need us. We want you to be able to stand on your own, not be dependent. That is what we liked about you in the first place. We do not want to be responsible for you. We really don’t want to be responsible for ourselves, but that really isn’t negotiable.

What seems normal to us is confusing to you. What is normal to you is a demand upon us. It is no wonder that relationships with psychopaths often have great difficulty. You are speaking different languages, and there is no interpreter. How do you communicate? Well, you either figure it out, or you don’t.

In my relationship, being in the same room for hours and not speaking to one another, just us doing our own thing is us spending time together. As I write this he is directly behind me on his phone and I have been working on this series for the better part of an hour. We both have things we are supposed to be doing, but we are perfectly pleased in our current state of avoiding responsibility.

Can you be in the same room with someone and not feel the need to interact? Can you do your own thing while they do there’s and not need to feel acknowledged, or have to speak to that person? I know a lot of people that cannot help themselves. They can’t be in a room and simply be still in the silence. If this is you, you will never succeed with a psychopath.

Another thing that has to be discussed and adhered to is the division of labor. This needs to be talked about. This needs to be assigned. You have to do your part of the work, and the psychopath has to do theirs. If you don’t, do not be surprised when you get no help, and nothing gets done. I am happy to live up to my end of the bargain, so long as you live up to yours. Break the contract and I will no longer participate in the agreement.

Even when living together, there are going to be stark differences in how things are handled. Psychopaths, male or female, are very action-oriented. We are not interested in hearing you complain about your problems. We are only interested in solving said problem. To a psychopath, the best life is a problem-free life. If there is a problem it is handled and then forgotten about.

Let’s say you are having problems with a coworker and it is making you feel very unhappy. You might want to talk about this, work through something nasty that they said to you, or the fact that they took credit for your work. If you bring it up to your psychopathic partner, it would be to work through it and feel better about it. If this happens to a psychopath they are going to look for a solution to this problem. Something like this might follow you home emotionally and make you miserable, dreading returning to work.

If they discuss it with you it is to get a perspective that they hadn’t previously considered. Anything to end the problem and get back to not having to deal with the nonsense of others. If they solve this on their own without seeking other ideas, you will not hear about it. It isn’t important.

Let’s say your sister died and you were traveling to an area for the funeral. In said area, there is a place that the psychopathic partner wants to go to while you are there. To the neurotypical partner, this might seem incredibly dismissive of their grief and their pain. They might consider this especially cruel. To the psychopath, it isn’t. To the psychopath, they would want to go to wherever this place was even if it was their own sibling. It isn’t a dismissal of your grief, it is the lack of ability to feel it themselves.

Remember, we see the world through our own lenses, and your lens might be very emotionally tinged. Ours isn’t. They aren’t going out of their way to be mean to you, they just have no idea why you are so upset. You can tell us, but that only goes so far when there is such a great divide. No, we genuinely do not get it. You can be mad at us, but that doesn’t shift reality.

Let’s talk about manipulation, shall we? This is something that psychopaths are accused of relentlessly. Is it fair? Sure, but it isn’t only fair that we alone are called manipulative. It is fair that all humans are called manipulative and that is because they are. We learn this behavior and the tactics that work from you.

We aren’t born into a world of psychopaths, we are born into a world of neurotypicals using their emotions to get what it is that they want. That’s fine by us because we are self-interested. We want what we want when we want it, and neurotypicals are excellent teachers of bartering with emotional language. Every human interaction is manipulation. You use your emotions and the emotions of others to communicate and get those things met. You are trying to get what you want and what you need fulfilled. What does this have to do with relationships?

Oftentimes psychopaths see emotions as excuses for bad behavior, and that is because often they are. Emotional manipulation is used on us our entire lives, but because we don’t share that wiring, it is just painfully obvious to us what it is and what the motivation behind it is. Sometimes you are actually upset and with good reasons. Other times you are trying to manipulate us into doing something that we aren’t interested in. The difference in how it is communicated? Zilch.

You use exactly the same tactics when you are serious, and when you aren’t. It also upsets you that it doesn’t work on us. It’s not our fault that one of your tools, or in this case weapons, doesn’t work on us. We weren’t born this way to piss you off, it just is how it is. The problem with this sort of communication is it tells us not to trust what you are saying. There is a good chance that you are lying to us. This makes us not trust you, and with good reason in our book.

Why psychopaths will be unlikely to trust you. 

If you want a relationship with a psychopath to work, provided that they are doing all the things they need to do to keep you happy, there is something you need to consider.

Let me be clear neurotypicals, you use your emotions to get what you want a lot. You do exaggerate, and you do manipulate pretty much all the time. All humans do. Step out of your comfort level for a moment and see this from the outside. You tell me that you are hurt, and you want me to believe you. All right, I don’t have the library that you are checking this book out from, but I’ll believe you. It exists.

Then I catch you using those exact same emotions to try and manipulate me into doing something. They aren’t real, this time they are a tool that you are utilizing. Anger, crying, coyness, sadness, loneliness, love, you name it. All of these emotions that you tell me are so painful and crippling? Now they are just a tool to get a certain end goal out of me. So explain this to me.

Why should I believe any of it?

These sacred emotions that are so precious and difficult, that I need to change my way of interacting with you in order to be respectful of them, a good portion of the time are just for show. At least with me, it’s consistent. It’s for show. It is a presentation to make my life easier. With neurotypicals, it’s a lot more duplicitous in my estimation. Half the time they are real, half the time they’re pretend, but I am supposed to have reverence for how important they are in your life.

If you want to have a good relationship with a psychopath, you need to leave that emotional manipulation at the door. You have to accept that the moment you use it because it is easier than asking for what you want, you have significantly damaged the willingness to believe you the next time around that you are really in need of emotional support.

Trust in psychopathy is an intentional act. There is no feeling of trust, there is trust in action. You earn it by demonstrating that you are worthy of it. If you show you aren’t trustworthy, such as using emotions as a negotiating tool, not something that you are actually trying to attend to in a healthy and mature way, there is no return from that. I will always doubt you when you say what you are feeling. 

Neurotypicals incorporate actions into their words, but often because of emotional reasons, there is a disconnect between their words to their actions. If you lack the emotional wiring, you are likely going to be unable to see the honesty in their actions. This creates a situation where a psychopath has no idea what they are seeing in that person. This leads to a lack of trust, as well as emotional manipulation. 

Why do I call all human interaction manipulation when NTs don't see it that way. NTs consider their own manipulation just their normal interactions. They do not see it as manipulation. that same behavior has no effect on us, and comes across to us as the same as that overly dramatic and obvious emotional manipulation that annoys NTs.

Once you play this game with your psychopathic partner, they are going to look at you askance. You have demonstrated to them that your words and actions do not match. This is especially true when you are losing an argument. So often the tactic taken is to try and turn it around on us and make us think we are the bad guy.

How do you overcome this? For you, you are simply acting in a way that you always have. Your world is wired for exactly this kind of interaction. It doesn’t work on this partner and they can be so *cold when we argue. If you want to succeed in an argument with a psychopath, you need to be logical and present a reasonable grievance. If you are going to scream about how you feel, you are wasting your time. You have to tell them what they have done that upset you, and why it upset you. You have a good chance of them just listening to you and considering it so long as they have cognitive empathy. if they don’t, why are you still there? Seriously, leave them.

If you can’t speak to them without it being an emotional tirade, then you aren’t going to get anywhere. All your screaming about emotions is like me screaming at you about florbow. You still have no idea, right? Neither do we.

*Why are psychopath’s so cold in a fight?

How else would you expect them to be? The rage you are feeling? That’s not available to us. We can be angry for a moment, but we aren’t going to be emotionally charged in an argument. We can certainly seem like we are though. I have a rule. If someone tries to use me as their emotional punching bag, then I am happy to remind them why that is a bad idea. My cognitive empathy is high. This means I can understand how and why you do things. It tells me what makes you happy, and what causes you pain. You want me to use it for what makes you happy. You never want me to use it for what causes you pain.

We aren’t sadists, but we do have boundaries. You are setting the rules for this engagement, and if you want to go after me personally trying to hurt me that is going to be a problem for you. It won’t work on me, but it will emotionally destroy you if you want to go down this path. In my case, I am very clear about what I want and expect when there is discontent in the relationship. You need to tell me about it as soon as you are upset. Do so reasonably and rationally and I will listen to you. However, if you decide to start a fight because it apparently entertains you, then we now have a problem. I give warnings, other psychopaths may not, but I would bet the way they handle it is the same.

A major factor in success is being able to explain what it is you are saying, why you are saying it, and what you expect the other person is going to glean from your words. This is true on both sides. You have to be able to articulate what it is you want and need from that other person. You two might be very attracted to one another physically, but that in no way means that you are compatible with each other emotionally or intellectually. It will take extra work for the two of you to be able to understand each other.