To the Sociopath I Fell in Love With

You came looking for me when I wasn’t looking for anything. You did everything right and I fell in love with you. I cleared space to include you in my entire existence. Then you were done with me, you checked out, and I was left holding empty promises.

Apparently, I outsmarted myself, too. With my belief in theories of time, I should have known that 40 years can happen in 5 minutes.

Because of the project we started working on, some of our references to it and notes were made in personal texts, which I had saved.

I found two comments from you to me that would appear to have been made in jest:

“If I get what I want, you may have outlived your use.”

and

“You can’t hurt my feelings… (I’m a) sociopath.” (Even though I already knew what that meant, I looked it up, anyway.)

Out of everything that you said that I listened to, these were the two things I should have heard. I’m listening now. You were right. In fact, there is another point you were right about. During one of our many conversations we had discussed the idea of hiding things, and you pointed out that the best place to hide something was in plain sight. That includes the truth.

Well done! I completely missed it.

I’ve never been a huge fan of labeling. Giving a person a label has the potential to pigeonhole that person into one set of characteristics only, leaving no room for redeeming (if necessary) qualities. Labels can also keep a person stuck in a rut. In this case however, my use of a label enables me to begin to eliminate the “why” that has been plaguing me since you left. I’ve wasted too much of my time trying to understand how the man that I loved to a capacity I didn’t even know I held, who supposedly loved me just as much in return, could have dropped me so abruptly. Your own label serves a purpose for me at the moment. Right now, I need to use it in order to be able to raise my own energy, to have an answer to the “whys” that have been playing on a continuous loop. My emissions have been low, and I can only raise them one step at a time. (I don’t plan on sticking around on this step for too long.)

Besides, I can’t hurt you. Win-win.

Really, my calling you out as a sociopath is not a label but more of a statement of agreement. You said you were a sociopath and you were right. Charming, charismatic, superficial, and egotistical, living behind the delusions based on mistrust of other people and the grandiose beliefs that only you are “real”. With an uncanny ability to convince yourself that you are always right, and that you are doing things for the highest good. You use your supposed ability to live peacefully among others without argument as validation for your rightness, when actually what is going on is that you allow no one to disagree with you—accomplished by avoidance and refusal of acknowledgment. You can make promises, and hurt someone’s feelings without remorse or apology, because you don’t stick around to face what you’ve done. No one can argue with you if you’re not there. Ergo, you are always right. Clean conscience. Originally, I had mistakenly attributed that avoidance to cowardice, but have come to realize it’s a tactic to uphold your delusions. Cowardice and fear could be behind it, but the avoidance is a deliberate tool. Don’t face what you don’t want to see.

You are truly brilliant, but you know that. You have an exceptional ability to read people, and to say the right things. An extraordinary businessman. One who understands all of the strategies, including how to intersperse just enough of the personal into business dealings to achieve your desired outcome. Your knowledge of the personal is remarkable, and is exceeded only by your detachment from it.

Your ego demands honesty from other people, yet you feel that you are above adhering to it. Not to deliberately deceive someone, as in to cheat them in business-- you know that you have many other skills to get what you want without lowering yourself to that type of dishonesty. Your own dishonesty plays in with your avoidance game. The lie by omission. The refusal to face a conflicting opinion. The refusal to acknowledge that someone else may feel differently about something you may have done – or worse, that they may be right.

You promote expectations in other people’s minds, then denigrate them for having those expectations, using their presumptions against them, calling them “unrealistic.”

There’s no need for you to apologize, because you know exactly the outcome of any given conversation, because you’ve already had it in your head. Besides, if you don’t face them you have no need to acknowledge your actions and, therefore, no need to apologize.

You limit everything that is personal. You keep yourself alone and separate from the commoners, because you know you are truly different. That doesn’t mean you don’t have supporters and fans, and that is all you need. The yes-men, the people awed by your brilliance and charisma. Keeping relationships superficial absolves your full personal involvement and allows you to bask in the adoration and praise that is heaped on you even when you’re not there. He’s a great guy.

Argument or discussion are not means to the end of creating a better outcome, but are used an enjoyable pastime, a pleasant diversion--like a bar room debate--that will be shut down the moment it gets real, or if you feel you could lose ground.

I have to face what’s real. Even in light of things you may have said recently, you truly have no use for me. And I have to stop listening to your words and focus on your actions. If I mattered to you, you would show me. Period. We mere humans do silly things like that. Not just for people we love, but even people we like. Even people we just know. Agreeing with your self-title actually allows me an acceptable enough reason to stop my constant tripping on the “why.” And I have learned your limits on love and friendship—as well as your capacity for them. I accept that our definitions are different. Loners don’t need friends.

I know that the man I fell in love with was a mirage, and as distant as the moon I thought him to be. And I am not “his star” like he said, but one of the many stars he looks down on--with the exception that for a brief moment he shined his light on me. I continue to love that man anyway, as illusory as he is, because love of any kind is positive (and resistance to it was harder!), and will learn soon how to re-channel it into something even more beneficial, to more people. And love without the burden of expectation in and of itself feels good. I don't have to delete him, block him, or cut him out. I can just let him be there. I can even acknowledge and interact with him. It's quite freeing.

Thank you, my sociopath, for helping me learn that.

“I had some dreams,  
they were clouds in my coffee…”

Putting it out there: I understand that my determination to learn to be patient and accepting of what is will stir up resistance from old habits. And I will be more forgiving of myself, and not be too harsh when I have moments of lower frequency.

--If I’m going to learn fucking patience and acceptance, I’d damn well better give some of it to myself!

(Nope. Can’t go without that word even once.)