Should I Warn His New Partner?

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A question I frequently encounter is whether someone should reach out to an ex’s new partner to warn them about the abuse they endured. My answer is unequivocal: “No!”

First, it’s essential to examine your motivations. Are you genuinely trying to protect the new partner, or is there a deeper, more personal reason behind it? If you’re stepping in to “rescue” them, you might be engaging in the Power Triangle, where pathological rescuers intervene without being asked. This dynamic is fraught with trouble and is best avoided.

Moreover, consider how your ex has likely portrayed you to the new partner. It’s common for abusers to paint their former partners in a negative light. Reaching out could inadvertently validate everything negative he’s said about you, making you appear jealous, vindictive, and insecure.

I can speak from experience. When my ex and I had our first major argument, he handed me a list of emails of women he had dated before me, saying, “Contact them for a testimonial. I’m a good man, Marion. They’ll vouch for me.” So, I did. I sent out emails and received no responses. When I told him about the silence, he became furious, accusing me of being “high school” and immature. I reminded him that he had told me to contact them, to which he snapped back, “I didn’t think you would!”

The truth is, after a toxic relationship, your focus should be on yourself. When bitter thoughts arise or you find yourself wondering, “How can he be happy now after making me so miserable?” Practice wishing them well instead. Every time a negative thought surfaces, counter it with a kind one. This practice will help you release the negativity and move forward in a healthier, more peaceful way. Remember, your ex’s life is no longer your concern, and by sending them well-wishes, you’re actually helping yourself to move on gracefully. You don’t have to engage or maintain contact—simply wish them well and move forward.

Even though friends have informed me that my ex is in a new relationship, he still contacts me every 6-8 weeks with poems and declarations of love. In his latest message, he even gave me “permission” to move on with my business, stating that he is now “shining his light on my work,” despite having consistently criticized it in the past. I just chuckle and discard his notes, emails, and texts without responding, because to me, he’s like a cobra—if I let him, he’ll bite me again and again. His behavior remains bizarre, but I continue to send well-wishes telepathically, because in doing so, I’m also wishing myself well. “I wish you well. I wish you well. I wish you well…” has become my mantra. Over time, thoughts of him have naturally and effortlessly faded away.

When we reflect on our past relationships and recognize that we were psychologically or spiritually mismatched, as I often felt, why would we want to dwell on that person? If the relationship was severely abusive, as mine was, shouldn’t we be relieved that they have a new target or interest? Personally, I’m ecstatic to be free. Before he found a new love interest, he constantly harassed me and kept me off balance. It was a grueling time because I still had feelings for him and sacrificed my own happiness for someone who turned out to be a pathological liar. When my mind would start to replay the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of the relationship, I found solace in telling myself, “It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter!” This simple mantra helped me wrangle in my thoughts, and it’s a technique that can be incredibly freeing if you’re struggling with thoughts about the past or making wild assumptions.

Finally, if your ex has become a better person because of knowing you, then you’ve done your part. But what truly matters is that you’ve become a better person. You’ve expanded your consciousness, you’re setting healthier boundaries, and you’re focusing on your own growth. The best thing you can do now is take time for yourself. Unload some of the emotional baggage before entering a new relationship. Find a community or tribe with shared interests, and rediscover joy on your own before making yourself available to someone new. Rebound relationships often fail because people carry baggage from the past into them, or they may still be emotionally entangled with their ex. Take the time to heal and rebuild before moving forward.

The Power Triangle

Posted by Marion Trent on

The Power TriangleCentral to the understanding of  The Sociopathic Style™ is the power triangle.

Classically, one enters the power triangle from a power-down victim position or the power-up rescuer position. The stereotypical relationship style in our society is for the female to be seen as victimized by the male. This is certainly not always the case and we have seen many examples of males being victimized by females, females by females and males by males.

In the classical scenario, the Damsel in Distress needs the Knight in Shining Armor to rescue her as she is helpless and cannot get herself out of her terrible life circumstance. The hidden component of the triangle is the Villain. Classically, in the Sociopathic Style, the Knight and the Damsel are the characters in the drama. Only when the Damsel starts to gain strength does the Villain come into the drama. The Knight needs the Damsel to stay in distress or he doesn’t have a purpose for living.

As in all dualities, one side mirrors the other. The Knight is utterly powerless without the Damsel, as the Knight has no access to his core, his inner source of strength. He denies his powerlessness and finds power through his chameleon-like ability to be whatever the distressed Damsel needs. The Damsel is incredibly powerful in her ability to manipulate the Knight with her absolute, albeit unconscious, feigned inability to live life from her own resources. Her all-powerful message to him is that without the Knight she cannot live.

Now enters the Villain. As the Damsel begins to receive what she needs, she begins to come more alive. The Knight is then threatened by the Damsel’s developing strength and becomes the Villain through shaming her, diminishing her, blaming her for his woes and telling her how sick she is. He aids and abets her belief that she cannot live without him.

The degree to which she holds him as a credible authority, and the degree to which she believes she needs him to survive, is the degree to which he has power over her. Sometimes the authority and power are real as in the relationship between a doctor and patient, professor and student, attorney and client, clergyman and parishioner, parent and child, employer and employee, haves and have-nots. The reader can add many more categories of power dynamic relationships.

Because each person in the Sociopathic Style has emerged from childhood with a deep suppression of their essential self, having also an inner experience of powerlessness, they must operate in all relationships from positions within the power triangle. Being separated from their inner strength, they must get power by playing the characters of the drama.

Thus, the Sociopathic Style encompasses the victim, the perpetrator, and the rescuer. The typical cultural view is that of the medically diagnosable sociopath being a perpetrator on innocent victims. In our research, we have moved beyond this to reveal a larger picture of a relationship style that engages all three characters of the sociopathic phenomena. This means the victims are sociopathic to some degree as well as the identified victimizing sociopath. We have worked with many people who have been in relationships with medically diagnosable sociopaths. We have discovered that the Sociopathic Style relationship phenomenon is very widespread — perhaps universal — in our society. In many ways, our cultures foster the Sociopathic Style as an acceptable relationship style.

© 2013, The Sociopathic Style™

Narcissist Crumbles without Narcissistic Supply

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Handsome narcissisticNarcissist Crumbles without Narcissistic Supply

By Sam Vaknin
Author of “Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited”

The Grandiosity Gap (between a fantastically grandiose – and unlimited – self-image and actual – limited – accomplishments and achievements) is grating. Its recurrence threatens the precariously balanced house of cards that is the narcissistic personality. The narcissist finds, to his chagrin, that people out there are much less admiring, accommodating and accepting than his parents. As he grows old, the narcissist often becomes the target of constant derision and mockery, a sorry sight indeed. His claims for superiority appear less plausible and substantial the more and the longer he makes them.

Pathological narcissism – originally a defense mechanism intended to shield the narcissist from an injurious world – becomes the main source of hurt, a generator of injuries, counterproductive and dangerous. Overwhelmed by negative or absent Narcissistic Supply, the narcissist is forced to let go of it.

The narcissist then resorts to self-delusion. Unable to completely ignore contrarian opinion and data – he transmutes them. Unable to face the dismal failure that he is, the narcissist partially withdraws from reality. To soothe and salve the pain of disillusionment, he administers to his aching soul a mixture of lies, distortions, half-truths and outlandish interpretations of events around him. These solutions can be classified thus:

The Delusional Narrative Solution

The narcissist constructs a narrative in which he figures as the hero – brilliant, perfect, irresistibly handsome, destined for great things, entitled, powerful, wealthy, the center of attention, etc. The bigger the strain on this delusional charade – the greater the gap between fantasy and reality – the more the delusion coalesces and solidifies.

Finally, if it is sufficiently protracted, it replaces reality and the narcissist’s reality test deteriorates. He withdraws his bridges and may become schizotypal, catatonic, or schizoid.

The Antisocial Solution

The narcissist renounces reality. To his mind, those who pusillanimously fail to recognize his unbound talents, innate superiority, overarching brilliance, benevolent nature, entitlement, cosmically important mission, perfection, etc. – do not deserve consideration.

The narcissist’s natural affinity with the criminal – his lack of empathy and compassion, his deficient social skills, his disregard for social laws and morals – now erupt and blossom. He becomes a full-fledged antisocial (sociopath or psychopath). He ignores the wishes and needs of others, he breaks the law, he violates all rights – natural and legal, he holds people in contempt and disdain, he derides society and its codes, he punishes the ignorant ingrates – that, to his mind, drove him to this state – by acting criminally and by jeopardizing their safety, lives, or property.

The Paranoid Schizoid Solution

When narcissism fails as a defense mechanism, the narcissist develops paranoid narratives: self-directed confabulations which place him at the center of others’ allegedly malign attention. The narcissist becomes his own audience and self-sufficient as his own, sometimes exclusive, source of narcissistic supply.

The narcissist develops persecutory delusions. He perceives slights and insults where none were intended. He becomes subject to ideas of reference (people are gossiping about him, mocking him, prying into his affairs, cracking his e-mail, etc.). He is convinced that he is the center of malign and mal-intentioned attention. People are conspiring to humiliate him, punish him, abscond with his property, delude him, impoverish him, confine him physically or intellectually, censor him, impose on his time, force him to action (or to inaction), frighten him, coerce him, surround and besiege him, change his mind, part with his values, victimize or even murder him, and so on.

Some narcissists withdraw completely from a world populated with such minacious and ominous objects (really projections of internal objects and processes). They avoid all social contact, except the most necessary. They refrain from meeting people, falling in love, having sex, talking to others, or even corresponding with them. In short: they become schizoids – not out of social shyness, but out of what they feel to be their choice.

“This evil, hopeless world does not deserve me” – goes the inner refrain – “and I shall waste none of my time and resources on it.”

The Paranoid Aggressive (Explosive) Solution

Other narcissists who develop persecutory delusions, resort to an aggressive stance, a more violent resolution of their internal conflict. They become verbally, psychologically, situationally (and, very rarely, physically) abusive. They insult, castigate, chastise, berate, demean, and deride their nearest and dearest (often well wishers and loved ones). They explode in unprovoked displays of indignation, righteousness, condemnation, and blame.

Theirs is an exegetic Bedlam. They interpret everything – even the most innocuous, inadvertent, and innocent comment – as designed to provoke and humiliate them. They sow fear, revulsion, hate, and malignant envy. They flail against the windmills of reality – a pathetic, forlorn, sight. But often they cause real and lasting damage – fortunately, mainly to themselves.

The Masochistic Avoidant Solution

The narcissist is angered by the lack of narcissistic supply. He directs some of this fury inwards, punishing himself for his “failure”. This masochistic behavior has the added “benefit” of forcing the narcissist’s closest to assume the roles of dismayed spectators or of persecutors and thus, either way, to pay him the attention that he craves.

Self-administered punishment often manifests as self-handicapping masochism – a narcissistic cop-out. By undermining his work, his relationships, and his efforts, the increasingly fragile narcissist avoids additional criticism and censure (negative supply). Self-inflicted failure is the narcissist’s doing and thus proves that he is the master of his own fate.

Masochistic narcissists keep finding themselves in self-defeating circumstances which render success impossible – and “an objective assessment of their performance improbable” (Millon, 2000). They act carelessly, withdraw in mid-effort, are constantly fatigued, bored, or disaffected and thus passive-aggressively sabotage their lives. Their suffering is defiant and by “deciding to abort” they reassert their omnipotence.

The narcissist’s pronounced and public misery and self-pity are compensatory and “reinforce (his) self-esteem against overwhelming convictions of worthlessness” (Millon, 2000). His tribulations and anguish render him, in his eyes, unique, saintly, virtuous, righteous, resilient, and significant. They are, in other words, self-generated narcissistic supply.

Thus, paradoxically, the worst his anguish and unhappiness, the more relieved and elated such a narcissist feels!

Believing Psychopaths

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Believing Psychopaths“…almost all of us have, at least once, experienced a compelling idea or semi-dazzling person crawling in through our psychic windows at night and catching us off guard. Even though they’re wearing a ski mask, have a knife between their teeth, and a sack of money slung over their shoulder, we believe them when they tell us they’re in the banking business.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
p. 47 “Women Who Run With the Wolves.”

People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil

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By M. Scott Peck, M.D.

confrontationThere can be a state of the soul against which Love itself is powerless because it has hardened itself against Love. Hell is essentially a state of being which we fashion for ourselves; a state of final separateness from God which is the result not of God’s repudiation of man, but of man’s repudiation of God, and a repudiation which is eternal precisely because it has become, in itself, immovable.

The varieties of people’s wickedness are manifold. As a result of their refusal to tolerate the sense of their own sinfulness, the evil ones become the uncorrectable grab bag of sin. They are, for instance, in my experience, remarkably greedy people. Thus, they are cheap- so cheap that their “gifts” may be murderous. In The Road Less Traveled, I suggested the most basic sin is laziness. In the next subsection I suggest it may be pride –because all sins are repairable except the sin of believing one is without sin. But perhaps the question of which sin is the greatest is, on a certain level, a moot issue. All sins betray – and isolate us from – both the divine and our fellow creatures. As one deep religious thinker put it, any sin “can harden into hell”:

There are analogies in human experience: the hate which is so blind, so dark, that Love only makes it the more violent; the pride which is so stony that humility only makes it more scornful; the inertia – last but not least the inertia – which has taken possession of the personality that no crisis, no appeal, no inducement whatsoever, can stir it into activity, but on the contrary makes it bury itself the more deeply in its immobility.

So with the soul and God; pride can become hardened into hell, hatred can become hardened into hell, any of the seven root forms of wrongdoing can harden into hell, and not least that sloth which is boredom with divine things, the inertia which cannot be troubled to repent, even though it sees the abyss into which the soul is falling, because for so long, in little ways perhaps, it has accustomed itself to refuse whatever might cost it an effort. May God in his mercy save us from that.*

A predominant characteristic, however, of the behavior of those I call evil is scapegoating. Because in their hearts they consider themselves above reproach, they must lash out at anyone who does reproach them. They sacrifice others to preserve their self-image to perfection. Take a simple example of a six-year-old boy who asks his father, “Daddy, why did you call Grandma a bitch?” “I told you to stop bothering me,” the father roars. “Now, you’re going to get it. I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap. Maybe that will teach you to clean up what you say and keep your mouth shut when you’re told.” Dragging the boy upstairs to the soap dish, the father inflicts this punishment on him. In the name of “proper discipline” evil has been committed.

Scapegoating works through a mechanism psychiatrists call projection. Since the evil, deep down, feel themselves be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world’s fault. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad.

In The Road Less Traveled I define evil “as the exercise of political power that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion – in order to avoid…spiritual growth. (p.279)

Strangely enough, evil people are often destructive because they are attempting to destroy evil. The problem is that they misplace the locus of the evil. Instead of destroying others they should be destroying the sickness within themselves.

*Gerald Vann, The Pain of Christ and the Sorrow of God. (Temple Gate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois, copyright by Aquin Press, 1947, pp. 54-55).