My Psychopath

Filling in the gaps is a dangerous pass time

“Imagine someone who lusted after her personal trainer for months, sent hundreds of pestering sexts, and when she finally wore him down when he was drunk one night, left her children home alone asleep and sneaked out to fuck him in a van in a local car park”

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David cut me off, mid sentence.

“It doesn’t matter why she’s doing it. You’ll likely never know the reason why. And even if she told you, she might well be lying - to herself or to you.

What matters is what she’s doing. Not why she’s doing it.

And besides, she may have already told you the truth. She said she didn’t feel guilty, and wasn’t afraid of being caught.

Why don’t you believe her?”

We’d been discussing a psychopath whom I’d thought was a friend.

Her name was Kelly*, and she was a monster.

And that’s when David told me about what he called “Filling in the gaps”, also sometimes referred to as Rationalisation.

My Psychopath

The problem with writing about my psychopath is knowing where to start. Or how to continue. Or how much to include. The problem with writing about my psychopath is everything, really.

Right now, many of you will believe you could never be fooled by a psychopath. They love that you think that. That makes you an easy meal.

And you’re thinking of Jaime Gumb or Ted Bundy or Myra Hindley. I can understand that, but, not all psychopaths are violent. However, they all take pleasure from breaking social norms and causing harm. They enjoy causing suffering—insofar as they feel recognisable human feelings.

Attractive, intelligent psychopaths obviously find predation easier. My psychopath was of average intelligence and below average physical appeal—fortunately for the world.

It’s important that you understand that psychopaths do not feel love, guilt, shame or fear. They learn to mimic these emotions. But actually, most of them aren’t very good at it. Unfortunately, those of us cursed with empathy — which is most of the rest of humanity—try to naturally fill in the gaps, and they get away with a lot of bullshit.

And no, you’re not an “empath”, Skylar, there’s no such thing. Deanne Troy was a fictional character and empathy is a perfectly normal human trait felt by nearly everyone to a greater or lesser degree—and if you truly believe, or claim to believe, that you can read the emotions of those around you, you’re narcissistic, attention seeking, insensitive, irritating and possibly dangerous.

Motivated by motivations

The reasons don’t matter.

The only thing that matters — or should — to a victim of any attack, bullying, criminal behaviour, abuse, psychopathy — is the behaviour, its impact, and how to stop it happening again.

Never forget that the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour.

Does that mean nobody ever changes or improves? Well, sometimes it’s possible to make changes to your behaviour.

But character and temperament remain stable across a lifetime — so say many researchers, and so say I, based on a lifetime of experience.

And you have to want to change to even begin to try.

The Kellys of this world have neither the tools, the ability nor the desire to do so. They’re quite content marinating in their own sewage.

For many people without a moral compass, there’s no deep dark mystery to be solved — they just enjoy it.

The problem is that you refuse to believe that.

Psychopaths among us

Imagine you had a friend who slowly but surely revealed that she didn’t feel guilt, empathy or fear or consequences. She behaved in a cruel, flippant and sometimes dangerous fashion towards her family, and pretty much anyone else who came into range.

But she didn’t lead with that. She lured you in gradually.

Imagine a mid-40s woman, not in great shape, who lusted after her 24-year-old personal trainer for months, sent him hundreds of explicit, pestering sexts, then when she finally wore him down when he was drunk one night, left her children home alone asleep and sneaked out to fuck him in a van in a local car park — taking advantage of her husband working FIFO.

Imagine her youngest child, who was 8, woke up terrified when he couldn’t find his mum, so she gaslighted him into silence. Imagine her oldest child took to sleeping in their bedroom closet, perhaps trying to find comfort in the dark of an enclosed space, and when she finally took them to a psychologist at the urging of friends was told “It’s your fault”.

Imagine her telling people this over coffee, and laughing.

Imagine she tried to start online affairs with every man who would even talk to her and you only discovered this because she used your laptop on a visit to your house and forgot to log out of Fakebook.

Imagine her posting selfie after altered and doctored selfie on Fakebook, appearing 50 kilos lighter and 20 years younger in each one. Imagine two of her Fakebook friends commented on the great photoshop job (not me I might add, I was just trying to avoid her at this point) and she ludicrously denied it, claiming they were just good photos.

Imagine that her conceit was so huge she would argue about basic, irrefutable truths and react in disgust when proven wrong - including an entire discussion where she insisted the equation for area (length times breadth) was incorrect, and ended the argument with “Well, that’s just stupid!”

Imagine she thought it was funny to allow her pet bird to masturbate itself on her hand. I didn’t even know such a disgusting practice existed until the day she did this in front of me, explaining what was happening. I was utterly revolted and got up and left. This was one of the last times I went to her home.

Imagine someone so devoid of decency that none of this was remarkable for them, and they did far worse besides.

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Once, I was a friend to a woman who led me down the garden path of “Don’t judge me, I need you to support me” while gradually drip-feeding me the full horror of her habits and inclinations.

She appealed to my vanity, my pressure points and most of all my compassion and empathy. I was the proverbial frog.

But eventually, drip feeding was too much effort, or no longer as exciting, and she displayed her true colours more brazenly, leaving me swimming in a vat of filth, connected to a person whose reputation was that of a terrible mother, cheating wife, nasty gossip and horrible liar.

She swore me to secrecy, and until I blurted it out to David, I kept that promise. I discovered later she’d told several others of her antics. How disappointed she must have been that I kept my word and no delicious scandal was leaked on my account.

As the weeks slid by and she exposed more of her true self, my mind scrambled to rationalise — nobody could be so messed up without some sort of a reason, surely? Brain damage, abuse, a terrible upbringing?!

Actually, yes they can. Some people are born missing a vital component — call it empathy, a soul, call it whatever you like.

And if you choose not to believe that you are giving them the keys to the kingdom.

They love a sucker. You are their meat and drink.

Once, so was I.

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In retrospect, there were dozens of clues that she was not as advertised on the tin.

Kelly laughed a lot, particularly when telling some amusingly vindictive story, but I never saw her cry, not even at a sad movie, not even when she had her healthy dog put down because he’d become too much work.

Why had her freshly minted home business so suddenly folded, with no explanation? The women coming to her for treatments were just too gossipy, she claimed vaguely, so that was that, despite her boasting just weeks before of the thousands of dollars she’d spent renovating the room for suitability.

She was slippery as an eel, her vagueries legendary.

And why didn’t I know she had a brother, despite having chatted about everything imaginable over the course of nearly two years. One day, she slipped up. Who’s James? I asked, all innocence. Her sour face told a thousand tales; this had not been a deliberate revelation.

They just didn’t get on, she stated firmly. Again, details were scant.

Later I found myself wondering — did her brother, who grew up alongside her, know things about her she didn’t want anybody else to know? Was it easier to simply pretend he didn’t exist than introduce him to anyone currently in her life?

And why, for that matter, was she not friends with anybody at all from her home town, her childhood, or even the last place she’d lived for ten years?

But she’d invested a fair bit of time in wooing and grooming me to be her friend, and by the time my spidey senses were properly jangling, I was hooked.

On their own, each strange occurrence might have had a reasonable explanation, but the peculiarities kept piling up.

But, you see, loyalty is one of my weaknesses, added to which she’d engaged my compassion and appealed to my vanity.

And I was busy filling in the gaps.

Irrational rationalising

Noah Elhardt Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5

Not everyone who behaves badly and wants complete, unfettered reign to do whatever they please with your support and validation is a psychopath. Probably.

Sometimes people behave badly because they’ve been damaged by others in some way, while some lie and are wicked for the fun of it.

You cannot tell the difference between the two.

And you cannot fix the genuinely damaged ones either.

The last month or so of this relationship felt like a Venus Fly Trap, where I wriggled to free myself from the increasing horror, until the day David opened my eyes and set me free.

I learned that day that I should and must judge people by their behaviours.

I learned that their reasons or excuses simply do not matter.

A lucky accident

I’d been seeing David for help with my anxiety with driving, caused by a couple of motor vehicle accidents — neither of which I caused, I hasten to add. I was stationary in a car waiting to turn right when a ute screamed up behind me and slammed my car into oblivion, and I had been on a school bus when a truck rammed us from behind.

We’d been using CBT tools to make driving less stressful, and generally discussing my propensity to anxiety for several weeks.

Then, during one session, David noted that I seemed particularly stressed and asked a few probing questions.

And so it all came tumbling out. And I begged him to help me understand. What on earth could be wrong with her? WHY was she behaving like this?!

Don’t judge me was one of Kelly’s favourite mantras, she typed those precise words on her Fakebook pages more than once.

I told David how guilty I felt at feeling such disgust, how disloyal at the thought of simply leaving her to it. Didn’t she need my support?

David reframed the narrative. “If you saw a traffic accident up ahead you’d turn around and drive away. Kelly is a traffic accident. Don’t plough into the wreckage with her.”

“And why don’t you believe her when she tells you she doesn’t feel guilty? She probably doesn’t.”

I was stunned. This had never even occurred to me.

Some people don’t feel guilt or shame. Not everyone experiences the world the way I do, or you do.

And be kind, be nice, don’t judge is a mantra that ruins lives and gets people killed.

As I began the struggle to escape the relationship she had lured me into, I read the book Without Conscience, Psychopaths Among Us by Dr Robert Hare.

And there she was.

I began to realise that we are regularly groomed by the media, by society, by friends and family, to reserve judgement.

Judge not lest ye be judged is not a dictate not to judge anybody, because that’s impossible. You may as well ask humans not to breathe.

It means expect to be judged by the same standards you apply to others.

I do expect that. Of course you should and must judge me. And you do anyway, regardless of what you claim. You’re judging me right now, as you read these words, weighing me up and making your own decisions.

Don’t be judgemental is the demand of an insane person, a naive one, or a crafty one.

I should have judged her, and fled.

Flee

The only response that will save you from a psychopath/ NPD/ sociopath is to flee and don’t look back.

Don’t try to save them, don’t argue with them, don’t try to convince them, let go of any hope of an apology or for any of it to make any sense.

You will never. Ever. Win. They will keep moving the goalposts and arguing. They will deny reality straight to your face. And if you anger them enough, they will use whatever power they have to try to harm you.

And what of the genuinely damaged?

Sometimes people do terrible things because they are vulnerable, have been harmed, or have other challenges.

This is not your problem.

You cannot fix them, you cannot help them and you will put yourself in danger if you try.

Just ask Richard Gadd of Baby Reindeer fame.

This holds true on both the micro and macro level.

Unreasonable reasons

The behaviour of those around us is a puzzle that most of us long to solve. After all, if you can figure out a person’s motivations, you can predict their behaviour, and that’s a useful and protective skill to develop.

Unfortunately, the reality is that you simply do not know what other people are thinking. And the only prediction that matters in the case of a person like Kelly is that they will hurt those around them.

But humans who have empathy and kindness have a habit of indulging in the game of “Filling in the gaps”.

I used to tell myself that Kelly must have been abused — something of which there was absolutely zero evidence— but what else could make someone behave like a remorseless trollop? I told myself that she didn’t really mean it — she couldn’t possibly really mean it — when she said she felt no guilt at all at some of the stunts she pulled. Surely this was shame masked as defiance?

I filled in the gaps with motivations I could understand. For too long, I cast around trying to find the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

A singularly dangerous and pointless waste of time.

A waste of time and money

There are no positives to tolerating harmful people or trying to understand them.

You can’t fix them and you can’t help them. You might, however, be able to help yourself.

Society is rampant with this behaviour, chock full of court jesters and enablers busily trying to figure out the whys and convincing themselves that they will be the ones to fix the unfixable who walk amongst us.

But the whys don’t matter. All that matters is the behaviour.

The scales fell from my eyes, and a great weight lifted from me.

On both the civilian and criminal level, people are harmed daily by the fiction that the reasons matter.

What matters is protecting victims, removing harmful people, being watchful and building strong boundaries.

Some dangerous children might be capable of rehabilitation, but even there the most urgent concern should be to protect their victims, before attempting to fix the miscreants.

Criminals, miscreants and other dangerous people, regardless of their background, leave an enormous swathe of harm behind them.

Stop trying to justify their abuses. Save your sympathy for the victims. And when you have the choice, simply remove yourself from their circle of influence.

The best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour. And dangerous people lie about their motivations, if they even know them.

The only concerns you should have are:

• How likely is it that this person will repeat their behaviours? Bearing in mind that the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour, bearing in mind that character and temperament remains stable throughout life*

• What actions can you take, bearing in mind that rehabilitation doesn’t work*

• How can you protect yourself and other from harm, if you have the power to do so.

Lessons learned

Wicked is as wicked does.

Apparently, every generation has to re-learn the same costly lessons.

My mill grinds slow but exceeding fine; the lesson is now learned.

I will judge you and I will look for inconsistencies and perilous behaviours. And if I find them, I will leave you in the dust.

And if you’re wise you will take my advice and judge those around you too.

Because filling in the gaps is a very dangerous pass time.

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*After some thought, I have changed her name for this piece, for the sake of plausible deniability. I doubt she’d have the wit to sniff me out, or much interest in my doings these days, but you never know, and psychopaths don’t react well to feeling exposed. After her husband divorced her, and her kids went no contact, “Kelly” started going by her middle name and last I heard she had scarpered to the UK. God Grante That She Lye Stille. 

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