The first thing that may clue you in to the fact that you are dealing with a sociopath is that you may end up feeling pity for them, when there is really no very good reason to.
They are experts in emotional manipulation, and seem to be able to "sense" what they need to do to reel each person in.
They do tend to look at life as a game, since they
do not really value people connections except for the way they can use each person for their own purposes.
So, in his own way, my psychoX does "love" his dd, but that is only because she holds some value to him as in:
he uses her to control me
he uses her to show others that he is a good, "normal" dad
he uses her to bolster his own self esteem and world view of himself
But when she does not "get with his program" he gets very angry with her. He does not want to see an unhappy or bitchy dd. He wants a happy smiling pretty little girl he can show off. He has no interest in her inner emotions or feelings. She is not to complain or whine. She is to be happy all the time, because he is "perfect dad" and that is the kind of daughter that "perfect dad" has.
So she does have value to him, on those terms.
When we lived together, every disagreement was a war for him to win. There was no coming to mutual terms, or trying to see the other persons point of view. It was only him trying to scream his point of view into my head. Over and over and over. And he would not even take in anything that I would try to say, he did not hear it at all.
The coldness that he views the human race with is scary. The absence of any emotions at all when 9/11 happened and the towers fell, the absence of feeling when others lose a child or a loved one. The fact that when his own mother was dying, he did not even get out of bed to go see her.
Mine was actually diagnosed with sociopathic tendencies, but it is very hard to get a professional diagnosis as they never think anything is wrong with them. They don't understand why the rest of the world is so weak and will put themselves on the line for other humans. I tricked him into getting counseling.
When we were watching the Titanic, his words when the ship was sinking was he would only be taking care of himself, he would be the first off the boat. I truly believed him. He would have left me and dd to fend for ourselves.
He only showed chivalry when it would benefit him, to look good in front of others, because his whole life is a farce and a show.
He does know the right words to say when something bad happens, but if you look in his eyes, there is no feelings behind the words.
He just doesn't get it. At all.
And....from what I have read about APD (antisocial personality disorder, which is how sociopathy is described in the DSM-V), is that a sociopathic individual will tend to seek out those that have inner strength and compassion, as those are traits they do have, and so they either want to feed off of yours, or knock you down to get rid of your inner strength so they don't have to feel bad that others have something they do not.
[This message edited by NaiveAgain at 10:48 AM, September 9th (Thursday)]
