From Soul Mate to Psychopath

April 14, 2012

M,

     It has now been a month since we first made love.  Far from abating, my feelings toward you have multiplied in intensity.  It seems as if I am genetically wired to be with you.  Everything feels so right.  I trust you to the depths of my soul.  I feel as if we fell from the same star onto this planet and have only just been reunited.  Suddenly the world makes sense.  We are not kindred spirits, we are of the same spirit.

     Everything you say and do resonates so deeply within me that it’s unnerving.  You are so psychically in tune with me that it often feels as if you know what I need more than I do.  I’ve never been one to let the man lead the way in bed, but I am ecstatic to let you take control.  You thrill me.  Your every touch awakens in me a passion I have never dreamed of.  When we make love I often want to cry with joy and fear at the amount of power you hold over me.  I am completely at your mercy.  Never have I been in this deep.

***

     Again I have to laugh as I read over the words I wrote at the very beginning of my “relationship” with M.  I was freaked out by the intensity he was creating, yet I conclude that it’s because we are kindred spirits, not because he is personality disordered.  I write of fear and how ecstatic I am to let him control me. 

     Going into this, I had no idea what sociopaths, psychopaths, and narcissists are.  In the last year, I have exhaustively studied Cluster B personality disorders, and I am beginning to have a fairly good understanding of how they work.  I have come to believe that M. is a covert narcissist, and he admitted to it when I questioned him.  Clinical narcissism does not work at all in the way I believed it to.  I had always thought that narcissistic people adored themselves and believed they can do no wrong.  According to my studies, the exact opposite is true.  Narcissists, in reality, hate themselves so much that they will constantly do favors, flatter, and brown nose their way into the good graces of everyone around them.  Their entire M. O. is to look as good as possible in the eyes of others.  They are not able to find worth by seeing it in themselves, so they look to others to validate and worship them so they feel approved of by their peers.  So while it seems like they are being a good friend, they are really manipulating you to believe they are great person because of all the things they do for you and say to you.  This is how they are able to manipulate a large group of acquaintances and keep up a facade of a nice guy.

     With lovers, this becomes even creepier as narcissists really want some high level worship from their closest partners.  To really hook a lover in, a narcissist will develop an entire custom personality suited to securing unending worship from her.  Whatever it is she desires most, he will become.  In my case, M. knew that I regularly checked my horoscopes, believed in spiritual connections, synchronicity, and the like so he flattered my scorpio traits and would make up stories where he had seen me out in traffic YEARS ago and that he just had this knowledge that we would someday be together.  He knew I liked to make jokes so he would always tell me how funny I was (even though he was never laughing when he said it).  He flattered my body and my looks as well as my brains, my job and my independence.  These were all things that I was hesitatingly proud of.  I was working out a lot, had a career in my field, and was living alone for the first time in my life.  I was proud of myself, yet I also judged these things harshly.  I thought I still wasn’t very physically strong, my job was sort of silly and not using much of my talent, and I had been single for almost 3 years (hence why I was living alone).  He seemed to sense my insecurities and especially flatter these traits. 

     Simultaneously with this, he was laying the ground work for excusing all of his future bad behavior.  He made sure to tell me he was polyamorous by nature but always insisted that I was the only woman he was with (keep in mind that he was still officially with his ex girlfriend at this point).  He used his lack of being over his ex as an excuse for every bit of bad behavior for the 9 month duration of our “relationship.”  Even when I found out that he had another NEW girl who he was calling his girlfriend, after almost a year of telling me he “couldn’t possibly be in a relationship at that moment due to mourning his previous relationship”, he still fell back on the “my ex girlfriend hurt me so much” excuse.  First, he claimed he couldn’t be in a relationship because his ex hurt him, and NOW suddenly he was IN a relationship with another woman and lying about it, because his ex hurt him.  I mean, even if his ex was the bitch he made her out to be (I’m sure she probably isn’t) that hardly excuses the rest of this nonsense.  The sad thing is that I bought into it for so long. 

     I had just begun feeling healed after being dumped by my ex fiancé when I met M.  It had taken the better part of two years to get over.  He claimed to be coming out of an equally intense relationship, so I naturally tried to be kind and loving while he processed the pain.  I knew I was in a place of strength and security so I took it upon myself to not demand too much of M. knowing he was in such a vulnerable place.  When I discovered that all of this story line was just a farce created to manipulate me, I was furious.  All the listening and sympathy I gave to him was just another way to control me. 

     Sometimes, I wonder why I’m still so furious after 11 months.  But really, imagine you wake up tomorrow and find out that your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend doesn’t actually have anything in common with you, and that they only want you around for your ability to worship them and make them feel good about themselves, having otherwise no concern for you.  You discover that everything you love about them is actually a lie, finely crafted to rope you into their bullshit reality.  Furthermore, they have another relationship with another person and an entirely different personality custom designed for him/her.  And that’s only the relationship you were able to find out about.  If they have lied to you this much, who knows what else they are hiding.  But here’s the thing, YOUR love is REAL.  You are completely and utterly in love with someone that has never existed.  You are left with this disordered man that is doing everything in his power to make you feel crazy so he can keep you under control but you still lust after that illusion that he created.  It’s a bizarre thing to see your soul mate and the devil incarnate reside together in the same shell of a body.