For three years before I was born, even with another sister between us, Kathy got all dad’s attention.
Mom was pregnant again. If my folks didn’t have a boy, that would put an end to any future generations of our family branch. In that vein, Marcia was probably a disappointment of sorts, not being a boy, which contributed to Kathy maintaining dad’s favor after Marcia was born.
It’s a Boy.
Namesake, even. Photos of me being held by every distant relative, many whom had not appeared in any previous family photos, and virtually no sign of Kathy in any of those early photos.
Kathy must have felt deeply rejected and hurt, and apparently, no one noticed. Even in this photo, Marcia is very relaxed, I’m having a great time, but look closely at the stress in Kathy’s little hands. Since some of my earliest memories include unprovoked hostility from Kathy, I really wonder when it actually began. As young and innocent as I was, I had already become a target.
A rejection that so obsessed Kathy, she never let it go.
Attack avoidance.
Memories of my childhood are filled with my abusive, alcoholic father spanking me, and only me, when I was young, then turning to hitting me as I got older. My mom would place herself between us to let me get away. Then I’d hear dad yelling at mom for “interfering.” My oldest sister, Kathy, was violently hostile to me, and me alone. It was obvious to me that they hated me, but since it was what I was used to, I simply accepted it. What mattered was staying safe.
I was spanked often, even though he didn’t need much of a reason to spank me. I don’t recall my siblings ever being spank. There was the bare hand spank (usually avoided since it would hurt his hand), the belt, the wood paddle, the broom stick, and whatever else was within reach.
Witnessing a public persona.
When we were young, we always went to church services together on Sunday. Not that I knew what I was witnessing back then, but that was when I first experienced my dad’s public persona. He could be yelling at us in the car one minute, but as soon as we pulled into the parking lot, he’d smile and wave. I’d watch him walk up to his buddies, laughing and shaking hands, and I wondered how he could change so quickly.
He had just been swinging into the back-seat attempting to hit me, and next he’s yucking it up with his church pals. He belonged to the mens’ club, volunteered his company’s services to the church, and always greeted everyone with skilled showmanship. He should have sold cars.
During summers, when I would go to dad’s office with him, I realized he was a completely different person to his employees as well, and if they were around, he’d treat me with a modicum of respect, too. He treated his employees so well, that I remember wishing I only worked for him. But once we got in the car to go home, he was able to remove his persona, and remind me what he was really made of. He would open-up on me for something I said, something I did, but no matter what day it was, there would always be something.
Having it backwards all these years.
Living during those times, I always felt that first and foremost, it was dad who hated me, and since Kathy was dad’s favorite, she hated me, too. And knowing she would not get in trouble, she also contributed her own hostility. At least, that’s what I believed until recently … amazing how a series of current events can correct history.
In some ways, dad’s and Kathy’s abuse was very similar, but not in every way. They both abused me physically and emotionally, such as being continually called “stupid” and “will never amount to anything” — funny though, but it was Kathy who never amounted to anything. She’s never kept a job. But one way they differed was in their physical approach: dad wanted to hurt me, but Kathy wanted to injure me. There’s a huge difference.
Dad was physically abusive to me when he drank, and although he drank everyday, he didn’t begin drinking until 5pm. A tall tumbler filled with vodka on ice is what he’d call one drink. He never had just one, though. So I did my best to stay away during that period.
When push came to shove, mom stood tall.
Once, when I was 16 or 17, I walked into the house to find dad waiting for me with closed fists. Luckily he was a terrible aim when he was drunk, but he just kept coming. Mom came in, yelling at dad to stop, but he wasn’t listening. Mom became almost hysterical, and headed to the other side of the house. Minutes later, Kathy ran in, announcing that mom had called the cops. Dad immediately stop and left the room, but Kathy continued looking at me, and said, “If I were you, I’d get out of here.” Her comment made me believe that I was in big trouble … probably what she was hoping for.
I did leave on foot, just at dusk. Sometime after dark, as I was walking through an unlit field, I was suddenly hit with a spot light, and then a second … I simply came to a stop, and waited. I heard footsteps coming towards me from two directions. The first officer simply asked if I was Larry … to which I replied, “Yes.” He then asked if I’d come with him, and I agreed. We walked backed to his car, he opened his front passenger door for me, and drove me back to our house. In addition to the car I was arriving in, there were three patrol cars parked in front. The word “serious” probably never had a greater meaning. Once inside, a detective introduced himself and asked me what happened.
As I’ve always been, I opened-up with complete candor. After no more then five or ten minutes, he got up, and asked me to wait there until he returned. He headed to the other side of the house, where my dad evidently was. Minutes later, he reappeared, and said, “If this ever happens again, please call me” — and with that, he handed me his business card. I recall being shocked, with my head spinning … I was led to believe kids would usually take the fall if it involved parents. But instead, it was the first time an authority figure revealed to me that my dad was in the wrong.
Mom did an extremely brave thing for which she probably paid for. The cops didn’t arrest dad, as I had no injuries. But he never attempted to hit me again.
Sibling brutality.
Kathy, though, had no time constraints. Every chance she got, I was in her sights. And she was brutal. She wouldn’t just scratch, but she’d attempt to create canals … deep bloody gouges. I always had to be aware of her legs, too, as they were her weapons of choice. As soon as I saw one leg swing back, I had very little time to twist and ruin her targeting. Instead of hitting her desired targets, I’d take the kick in my upper thigh. An impact with such force that it would result in a black and blue bruise the size of a baseball. She always tried … she never succeeded.
I was also keenly aware that whenever Kathy brought home a friend, and introduced them to the family, her friends would greet my siblings quite differently than me. They would warmly acknowledge Marcia and Alan, but with me, they’d rarely make eye-contact and maybe mumbled a “hi.” Though I was already a victim of it, it would still be many years before I knew the term “character assassination.” The introduction I clearly remember was when Kathy introduced us to her future husband, Marlin. After seeing how warmly he greeted the others, I felt I had leprosy when he greeted me.
Kathy answered only to dad … not to mom.
I also witnessed Kathy physically brutalizing mom. It was during one of Kathy’s arguments with mom, one which turned violent, that I first felt Kathy’s capability of true evil, cold-blooded hostility.
I was about 10. After just arriving home on my bicycle, I heard yelling between Kathy and mom on the opposite side of the house. I arrived to see mom literally flying backwards across the hallway, slamming into the closet, her spine hitting the doorknob, screaming-out, then dropping to the floor crying, obviously in intense pain. Mom saw me when she first looked up from the floor, as I approached to help her. When I got to mom was when I was first able to see Kathy’s closed bedroom door.
Kathy never opened her door to see if mom needed help. I remember feeling a very eerie chill that, behind that door, Kathy was smiling. And because she never opened the door, Kathy never knew there had been an witness. There was no one else in the house.
Out on my own.
Within a month after graduating high school, I moved out. The abusive relationship I had with dad evolved into no relationship. Kathy had achieved her long-term objective of having dad to herself. Kathy and Marlin had married and moved to Alaska. During my 20s, there would be periods of 2-3 years of no contact with dad. Mom and I were very close, and I had a relationship with her like no one else in the family.
Dad would not let mom have a private conversation with me, so we’d have to wait until dad would be out doing errands. Then we’d talk and laugh for 1-2 hours sometimes, until mom would say, “Oh, I hear the garage door opening … your dad’s home.”
Right when I’d hear him walk into the house, mom would say, “It’s Larry, he just called.”
Mom was such a funny lady, yet I don’t believe anyone in the family, but I, was aware of it. Mom would never speak openly to me unless she was alone, and as time went on, I realized that meant not only dad, but no one else in the family could be present.
Of course, now that makes more sense than ever. Dad brought the “bad gene” into the family. Dad, as well as all three of my siblings exhibit sociopathic characteristics. I’ve caught all of them lying, and I believe they’ll lie to be safe.
For some reason, I was spared the effects of the bad gene. I assume I was the skipped generation. That also meant I was closest to mom than any of the others, but other than in mom’s eyes, I was the borne outcast.
Time for change
At about the age of 30, after all those years of emotional and physical abuse, which led to my own fairly-low self-esteem, I met a very attractive woman who virtually fell for me. She treated me differently than anyone else ever had, which in turn had a very positive effect on my own well-being.
In just less than a year, driven by Julie’s desire to establish a solid future together, we were married. And with that, 
I began the next chapter of my life, with the most psychotic sociopath I would ever know. Bipolar, borderline schizophrenic, and dangerously vengeful — all verified when I found her psychological evaluation, twelve years later.
More on Larry, but from the physical side: Parallel trauma.
###
April 13th, 2010 at 00:41
Kathy looks so smug in the second photo and you look so sweet! I just want to smack her.
April 13th, 2010 at 15:26
When someone points a camera at an adult, I believe that most react knowing it’ll produce a photo that will be seen by many.
But as kids, I don’t believe we thought much beyond who was holding the camera — that photo would have been taken by my dad. Our facial expressions seem to support what my life was already like, as well as Kathy’s relationship with dad.
July 11th, 2010 at 01:46
This sounds very familiar to me. I am a woman in my 40s, unfortunately live with my parents, and my father does all he can to stop me from speaking to my mother.
He rarely leaves the house without her and doesn’t like her to leave without him. She won’t go anywhere at all with me because he forbids it. He’s now trying to kill the relationship my mother and I have with my brother’s children by refusing to let us spend time with them unless he is present.
It is a miserable way to live, but I don’t think he is capable of understanding that all his nasty antics can’t kill the real love in the family.
March 2nd, 2011 at 04:06
S,
Your dad is not capable of understanding the results of his actions because he’s likely incapable of feeling them himself. As someone afflicted with one of the personality disorders, he’s void of typical human emotions, so he feels the need to control others.
September 30th, 2011 at 04:17
Interesting website, and I can say with 100 percent certainty that the life experiences are similar. Thought it might be interesting to share a story that illustrates how those “missing chromosome” folks inter-relate.
Several years ago, my paternal grandmother became terminally ill with cancer. My grandfather had since passed.
Grandma chose her “Golden Child” to have “Power of Attorney.”
“Golden Child” is reported by her own daughter; as having left Grandma sitting in a pile of her own feces for two days. While focusing on artfully writing herself checks in grandma’s back bedroom so that “Golden Child” could go out and gamble “high stakes” style.
As an “outside” observer? I have a lot of questions about that.
1. How did the daughter know? Why didn’t the daughter do something about it? Especially since her grandmother had given her “homes, cars, cash and land?” I mean really WTF?
2. Why does my dad even bother to tell the story? The man lived less than a quarter of a mile away. His parents had given him land, career and income. Did he not go see his mom? Or smell that she was sitting in *hit?”
3. Their brother is retired. Get’s to fly for free as a benefit. The man knows his mother is terminally ill. His wife is dead. He likes to tell the story too? Turns out the man had plenty of time to engange an “out of state” attorney on his behalf. To try and “wrestle” control from his younger sister. But yet he couldn’t seem to find the time to hop his *ss on a free plane…having no job, no wife, no other accountablities…to check on that dear ole’ mom he allegedly cared about?
So I’m talking about others; perfectly willing to open myself up for some scrutiny here in that the woman was my grandmother.
I hadn’t seen grandma in over six years. I used to regularly visit and take her shopping, even though I lived thirty miles away. On the last visit “Golden Child’s” son ran across the lawn and attacked me without provocation. He was living in his grandma’s basement, and had been diagnosed as schitophrenic. sp?
Got through the skirmish fine. Defended myself, without attacking…wishing to cause no harm.
Didn’t visit at her home again, explaining that I didn’t feel “safe” and that obviously my presence might make my cousin feel uncomfortable…Grandma decided she wasn’t willing to visit unless it was on her turf and terms. Which is atypical for the sociopathic/narcissistic spectrum. Why is it always about them?
As an aside, it doesn’t have to be. When on finally reaches the space called well, f* them! What about me?!?
So six years later, my phone rings while I’m at work an hour before grandma’s funeral. It’s my sister that’s been elected to call on my dad’s behalf…I hadn’t seen or heard from my dad in ten years at that point. Got the impression they were all only concerned that it might make them all look bad if I didn’t show up for their mother’s funeral. Do tell what will the neighbors think?
Which knowing my sister it’d be equally as plausible that she was asked to contact me from the beginning. That she just waited until the last minute; in anticipation of keeping her dad to herself.
Who knows? What I do know is that trying to read a sociopath’s mind will make one “crazy.” Their brains function differently, don’t even waste a moment trying.
So I didn’t go to the funeral. Honestly, I didn’t even shed a tear.
Indeed, I became like them. Excepting a feeling of being incredibly disturbed for weeks afterward.
What I said to my sister on the phone call? “So Grandma’s been terminally ill for three weeks. I haven’t seen her in six years. I haven’t seen my dad in ten; sounds like the perfect opportunity for a family reunion.”
“It’s exactly an hour before the funeral. I’m at work. I’m not dressed for the occassion, I could barely make it in time for the distance. You people are expecting for me to go to my boss an HOUR BEFORE THE FUNERAL; and ask to go? NO! I’m not doing that to myself, just to please “you all.”
I didn’t say this part out loud, but it’s what I felt and what was in my head. “Are you crazy?!? Are you people CRAZY!?! Because it sure as hell seems like it!”
So in the moment of learning of my grandmother’s death. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t grief stricken…I was mad as hell. And the feeling lasted for several hours. I actually went home and threw uh, stuff. Which was very therapudic.
Lots of people who survive this type of family; who are a little closer to the wider range of human function. Depression, Anxiety, and PTSD are often issues. Those elements to life are only anger “turned in.” Anger not properly dealt with and released. Granted not in all cases, but most definately in my own. I’ve gained a lot of healthful skills over the years, I didn’t learn at home.
Long ramble, and I hope at least somewhat coherent. It’s now four years later. I’ve forgiven everyone. I haven’t heard from anyone. I haven’t tried to call anyone. Excepting I do return my sister’s contacts with the same interval, method and approach she uses. So I don’t hear from her in two months, she calls. I wait the same number of hours and days it took her to return my last call. If she calls six weeks sooner the next time, I give her a call two weeks later just to say “hi.”
I’m 100 percent convienced the greatest “tell tell” sign of a sociopath? They’re always “sorry.” You don’t even have to ask for them to be “sorry” they just usually are a little oddly and proactively ARE.
SORRY M*F uh, lovely people. ; )
November 29th, 2011 at 20:02
I’m sure my daughter is a sociopath, my ex husband (her father) as well.
My ex husband was never happy, had a violent temper and was extremely controling. My daughter was 9 when her grade 4 teacher told me that my daughter wouldn’t take responsibility for her actions and was telling lies. Very young she started her mean behaviour with my son, she would pinch his cheeks hard when he was a baby if i left the room. My parents were watching them once and my daughter was kicking my son he was only a year old. She was uncontrollable from a young age, i notice drastic changes in her after the age of 3. Mean to other kids, and her brother.
By age 11 and 12 her behaviour was brutal, she could never control her temper, she was cutting herself, could never keep friends, always fighting with everyone. When i left my husband, she was 14 had started to use drugs and was totally out of control, promiscious sexual behaviour with both sexes. Stealing money off me, never going to school.
At 17 she had a child, by the time he was a year old she handed him over to me, she had been neglecting him, leaving him in his crib for hours, only feeding him bottles, not watching him (he fell down the stairs). Her latest boyfriend is a drug dealer, robber, and arsenist. She had no where to live last April and i let her move in and tried to straighten her out, what a disaster. She was going to take my grandson in a stolen car to the beach with this guy, i had to kick her out and she wouldn’t leave me alone, cops were called.
Now i want to adopt my grandson, i have full custody, but i don’t want her having anything to do with him. I do grieve my daughter, the good times, however i feel like a huge weight has been lifted. Sorry this was so long. Kathy
December 8th, 2011 at 23:25
Unfortunately I can relate to a lot of the physical and mental abuse you and many others have gone thru that have family members as sociopaths.
The easiest way for me to describe my childhood is my mothers nick name was “Mommy Dearest” you know like the movie but without the all the money. The one thing she told me a few years before she passed was when I was first born in the hospital I was very premature and weighted less than 2 lbs. Now more than 40 years ago they would inform the mothers that the baby had little chance of survival when they are born at that weight. There may have been some other issues going on with my health cus they had told my mother and father to arrange for my funeral which at this point my mother tells me that while I was in the hospital under the presumption I would die she went on vacation. Yes, vacation.
She politely told me that she had wanted to get away from all the stress that I had been causing her. She told me this with no guilt or remorse. Now as a mother of 4 kids one of which was born with a chronic illness thats been in and out of the hospital since birth there is no way I could ever think of leaving my child like that. When she said this to me I was in shock.
I just keep thinking how could you have done that and most of all why is she telling me this. At this point in her life when she told me she was very ill and she knew that she may not have to much time to live. To this day I question why would you tell your child this when you are on your death bed.
January 17th, 2013 at 08:25
I was born 15 months after my older brother who is a sociopath. I’m only now, in my late 50’s, coming to realize how my whole life was ‘given to me’ by decisions I made growing up under his tyranny, manipulation, and dishonesty.
One of the dominant themes that showed up repeatedly in our youth was that he expected our parents to constantly reward him for being the oldest. For example, when we were about 3 and 4 years old, dad once set two orange crates in line, on the ground, and put us in them. He told my brother (in the ‘front’ box) that he was the engineer and I was in the cabooses (Dad loved trains). Dad made all these amazing sound effects of a train chugging along, and when my brother was told to make certain arm motions like pulling the whistle or ringing the bell, dad would add in the appropriate sounds.
My brother and I were totally enrolled in the train fantasy for several minutes, and I couldn’t wait my turn to be engineer so I could pull the imaginary whistle, etc. When Dad finally said it was time to switch seats, my brother refused, so Dad picked him up, and physically made him switch seats. I didn’t understand my brother’s refusal to share, because I thought we were friends; but my brother could not tolerate me being in front of him and found a Handy-Andy metal-headed hammer laying within reach, picked it up and gave me a hit on the head so hard it left a bump that remains to this day. I’m not making this up because it was all filmed on home movies, but when he got older, he figured out how to splice it out and the train incident mysteriously disappeared.
A year or two later, one Christmas morning he woke me up early to sneak downstairs to see what Santa brought before the parents were awake. He said, “Let’s open our stockings” but then proceeded to remove the contents from both his and mine. I’ve never forgotten how troubled I felt in that moment because I knew that if you loved someone, you wouldn’t open their Christmas present in front of them – and I was standing right there as he went through each one doing an inventory to see what we got. I remember begging him not to open mine – that he should let me go through my own and it was hurting me (betrayal) that he was opening mine. To this day, I remember his response, was, “Relax Danny, it’s OK. This isn’t between you and me… This is between me and the parents!” There was no animosity in his voice, so I got that it wasn’t meant to be personal, but it sure FELT personal to a 4 year old.
Turned out the stockings’ contents were evenly matched, whereupon he threw a tantrum like I’d never seen before… waking up the parents & wailing, “How come Danny got as much as I did?!?!? I’m older so I should get more!!!” I was dumbfounded… Why would he expect to get more? We were brothers – best buddies. I didn’t have an expectation that one of us should get more than the other, and believing in the Golden Rule, I would never have opened his gifts either. What were these new rules he was unveiling on me? I remember thinking that my relationship with my brother, my protector, my best friend – was lost, and I wanted it back, but I wasn’t sure what I could do about it.
The parents’ initial reaction was dismay that we were already opening gifts without them (we knew better), but he was so inconsolable that the conversation turned from punishment to ‘saving’ Christmas morning from being a disaster with my brother’s crying. I remember thinking he deserved a spanking for being such a cry-baby – especially since I was the one who’d been wounded by having my gift opened in front of me, plus his unloving, totally self-centered, unholy expectation that he should get more than me.
Finally, Mom went to the kitchen and came back with one cookie and gave it to him as an ‘extra’ to be added to his stocking… which quieted him in the moment – while he watched carefully to see if I would get a cookie too. Mom then came to me and asked if I’d mind if she gave him a cookie but not give me one – basically asking me to help her stop the tantrum because she didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to scream, “NO! – I AM NOT OK with it!” but I wanted to please her so I said OK… besides, I figured I could sneak a cookie anytime I wanted to make things even, and I’ve been sneaking sweets ever since.
Genetics or Training? As an adult I’ve always thought that if Mom had told him to quit his whining or she’d start taking things away from his stocking then he might have had a different upbringing, which might have modified his behavior… Instead, she spoiled both my brother and a younger sister who followed the next year. I never expected or wanted to be spoiled, so I was always ‘easy to raise’ as she later told my wife… but I remember my brother demanding expensive Christmas gifts well into his high school years. One year was especially memorable because he’d hinted for several months before Christmas that he wanted a particular $250 Panasonic Stereo which was waaaay beyond anything my parents would ever have spent on a gift. When he didn’t get the exact stereo he was expecting, he threw a tantrum that lasted for days until Mom caved and told Dad to return the beautiful & generous $150 stereo they’d bought and go get him the $250 one he demanded. I’d never seen Dad look so disgusted when he drove off to ease Mom’s (self-inflicted) burden – which I think was because she spoiled my brother. If it was my kid, I’d have returned the $150 stereo and come back empty handed.
I’m not aware of either of my parents (or their sets of parents) being sociopaths or psychopaths, so I don’t know where the gene would have come from, but I’ve always known that Mom grew up on a farm with no money to spend and she always wanted to be ‘spoiled’ – so I figured she spoiled my siblings as a compensation for her Spartan upbringing. I’m sure she would have spoiled me too if I’d wanted that, but I’d decided at a very young age that Mom was someone not to be messed with, so my relationship with her was always one of fearing the consequences if I didn’t please her – hence I was ‘easy to raise’.
Part of my wanting to please my mom also stemmed from a decision I made around six years old that hopefully if I could prove to my brother that being older didn’t make him any better, then maybe he’d give up that silly mantra and be my equal – my friend again… I figured he had nothing to do with being born first, so maybe if I proved that I could be better (as measured in the eyes of our parents) then he would finally realize how silly his expectations were… that being older didn’t make him any better or more deserving… so I decided at an early age to bring home better report cards, & to do whatever the parents asked – from chores to attending Sunday School without resisting, etc.
My whole youth after 6 or 7 years old became about beating my brother. My efforts never had the intended effect, but it did have the side benefit of my turning out better educated and in less trouble. The one area I could not compete with my brother in at a young age was physical contests, so I wrote off sports as being unimportant in my life.
A few years before my mom passed away, I asked if she could shed any light on my brother’s deep-felt need to be ‘rewarded’ for being older. She didn’t have an answer at first, but she did remember an incident from shortly after I was born. She was nursing me and he wanted to climb up on her lap like before, but she didn’t want him to. She remembered a very pained look on his face when she refused him and she remembers telling him, “You have to be the older one now!”
Nature or nurture? – It makes perfect sense to me that when he’d gone from being the center of attention to being displaced through no fault of his own, in the moment when he was experiencing, for the first time in his very young life, that life wasn’t always going to be as ‘warm and cuddly’ as before, he may have needed some way to rationalize how he was going to get back to the former state where everything would be warm and cuddly again.
It makes sense to me that he might have rationalized that he would comply with mom’s request that he stayed off her lap and ‘be the older one’ in exchange for the perceived promise of some greater future reward for taking on the role of ‘the older one’. That’s why I’m not convinced that his being a sociopath is genetic, but then I am just beginning to inquire into sociopathic behavior so I’m not trying to pick an argument… just to share my insights that it might have come out his deciding that there was something hugely wrong with the world that wasn’t his fault, so he had a right to expect others to fix it for him since he’d been so wrongly and unfairly deprived. I believe that is the filter through which he views the world – that he has no responsibility for others, while others owe him a huge debt since he was forced to give up a good thing (Mom’s lap) through no fault of his own.
In fact, I believe the world pretty much divides into two easily identifiable groups – those who blame others (& thus are irresponsible), and those who blame themselves (& thus hold themselves responsible for fixing whatever they have a complaint about). Both groups are seeing the world through a false filter made up as a little child, but the ones who blame themselves are a lot easier to be with.
Larry – I was stunned when I read your quote about sociopaths thinking of others as disposable ‘toilet paper’… My brother and I always shared a room growing up. One day, in our high school years, he’d left the bathroom door open during his shower, thinking I was asleep and unable to see when he dried himself off with his towel. When he was done, he then took my towel and used it to dry between his butt cheeks. I remember thinking that surely he will then leave my towel on the laundry pile, but I watched in horror as he returned my towel to its rack for me to use after he’d wiped his arse with it. I jumped out of bed and confronted him immediately but he totally denied it! Said I was dreaming or seeing things! It was so futile to argue with him about it… but I was too beaten down to complain to the parents or confront him further. The next morning I laid in bed acting asleep but squinting through half-lidded eyes to see if he continued and he did, so from then on I just used a fresh towel every morning. Talk about a self-esteem killer – sharing a room with an older brother who thinks it’s ok to use my towel for his ass-wipe. So Larry – your ‘toilet paper’ analogy was perfect and unbelievably accurate!
The biggest damage he’s done to me over the years has been the irrationality of his utter unwillingness to admit to anything wrong – even when confronted with damning evidence. I thought I was dealing with a normal person and spent my whole youth thinking it was just me that was unable to convince anybody of anything. It’s had a big impact on my self-esteem having to share my whole youth with a roommate who always thought I was ‘usable and disposable’. I’ve caught him numerous times in blatant lies, thefts, and even molesting our sister once, yet I cannot remember a single time that when I’ve confronted him about these things that I ever got him to admit to anything wrong.
When our parents died ten years ago and left their home to the three of us, my sister was executor but has always felt sorry for my brother and she sided with him in every 3-way decision we had to make – even when I was clearly trying to help her in the face of a bad decision he insisted we make. Upon Mom’s death, he nearly disappeared for two years while my wife and I did 90% of the work to restore our parent’s home so it could be sold for a maximum price. My sister made a lot of phone calls and did executor paperwork (the other 10%), but refused to get her hands dirty. The moment the restoration was finished my brother moved in and lived there full time – making it much harder to sell. My sister sided with allowing him to do this! The eventual buyers had to practically use a crowbar to remove him two weeks after it sold!
I do not understand what hold my brother has over my sister – I just know that if he and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on some decision, she would always end up siding with him no matter what and no matter how unfair it was to my wife and I. Even when I showed my sister written receipt evidence that I’d caught him stealing a lot of money from both of us, she didn’t want to know about it.
Frankly, I don’t have much use for either of them anymore. Friends and neighbors who’ve gotten to know all three of us cannot believe I grew up in the same family with them.
I’ve hardly spoken to my brother since then and I’ve had no desire to go visit my sister either, though we at least talk on the phone and email occasionally. Whenever I want to talk about the issues I have regarding her and/or my brother, she doesn’t want to talk about them, or worse, she tries to change the subject or starts making up false accusations against me to distract me from where I want the conversation to go.
I’d love to hear from others if you have any insights on why my sister (whom I’ve always treated as very special) has always sided with my brother (despite the fact that he used her frequently, gets her to pay his way often, and never treats her special). I’m sure she’s a victim of his manipulative, schmoozing ways too, but it has always puzzled me that she sided with him over me in every disagreement, even though I’ve taken much better care of her than he will ever do. I think she has sociopath tendencies, but due to differences in age I didn’t spend as much time with her so I don’t have nearly as much childhood evidence… but I will say this… If she were not my sister, she would not be in my circle of adults I consider friends.
January 17th, 2013 at 14:09
Wow, Dan, except for genders of our siblings, and which parent was the spoiler, our lives have been very similar. I’ve read more than once that the middle child has it the worst. We are not that special first born kid, nor are we the special baby of the family. We just fill in the void.
I’m glad my toilet analogy made sense to you, though I’m not glad that it needed to. It came to me one day in replying to someone’s comment. I often think in analogies to get a complex thought across.
We are about the same age, and I began to recognize the evil in my family back around 2003. Sometimes people don’t understand why it takes so long, but it’s what we were use to and we knew nothing different. It can always come down to “those things happen in other families.” The last time I spoke with a sibling of mine was over 2,200 days ago.
Keep educating yourself on psychopathy. Be a bit wary of some of what it put on the web, as it’s often written by people with no direct experience. The more knowledge you gain, the better your life will be. My ex-wife was also a sociopath. After our divorce in 1995, when she was picking up the kids for her visitation weekend, after they ran out to her car, my ex turned back to me and with a smile on her face gave me a death threat. I recorded many of our conversations, but that was one I missed.
After you really learn the traits of psychopathy, if you’re like me, I recognized past co-workers and supervisor as having obvious psychopathic traits. We’re surrounded. Good luck to you.
February 4th, 2013 at 22:44
Wow, Larry – You’re right about how much we have in common. I had not known that about middle children having it the worse… So, does that point to it being nurture (upbringing) more than nature (genetics)?
2003 was also the year when I first began to realize how totally wrong I was about my younger sister. I cried myself to sleep one night when I realized I could no longer believe in the fairy tale I’d made up when we were younger. I liked playing the role of a big, older brother whom she looked up to but it was a fantasy to keep telling myself that she was a sweet, innocent little kid-sister in the face of her repeated lies, character assassinations and manipulative behaviors. Believe me, it was really hard to give those cherished beliefs up, but by the time I was 50, all the evidence piled up that she was utterly self-centered and her abusive treatment of my wife & I was so indefensible that I had to give up my cherished image of her to be able to live in the real world and deal with her. She’d always counted on me to be the ‘nice guy’ but she’d taken more advantage of it than I could tolerate because I had allowed her to – rather than forfeit my cherished beliefs.
Once I gave those false beliefs up, I was able to be firmer with her. That hasn’t changed her much but it has protected my wife and I more. Now that I see clearer, I see how much she used manipulation to get her way. I always thought of her as an empathetic person – especially in how she treats animals (versus my brother who has been accused of torturing cats), so I had not concluded that my sister was a sociopath… but I do not appreciate the manipulation and character assignations. I have not seen either my sister or my brother since 2004, though I’ve spoken with them long distance from time to time.
I know my previous letter above was mostly about my brother, while this one seems to be more about my sister… I’ve run the sociopath ‘test’ on my memories of growing up with my brother and concluded that he is a sociopath, while I’m still evaluating if I think my relationship with my sister is even worth holding on to. The interesting contrast is that my brother is a very good schmoozer and part of that includes that he doesn’t go around bad-mouthing other people. Sure he has hurt me in many indirect ways, but I’ve never caught him deliberately spreading lies about me or trying to ruin my (or anyone else’s) reputation. While I’d never trust him with any of my assets, I actually find him easier to be around than my sister because he never has a bad word to say about others or me.
On the other hand, from the day my sister first met my wife, she smeared my wife to all of our relatives before they ever got to meet her. My wife is literally a godsend – a wonderful person, who cannot tell a lie and is always working to help people. Because of my sister, my mom was biased against my wife before she’d even met her, as were all my aunts and cousins until they actually met my wife. Yet, on her deathbed, my Mom wrote the most loving note to my wife – admitting that she’d been wrong, thanking her for all she’d done for her, and telling my wife that she was the best thing that ever happened to her… the kind of note that normally a mom would only write to her own blood-children… and my wife had truly earned it!
The point is that my sister has been outrageously hurtful to my wife – accusing her of things she never did (indeed would be incapable of doing), yet when these lies have been proven wrong over & over again, my sister never once apologized to my wife. In that respect, my sister seems sociopathic (lacking empathy) yet regarding empathy for nature, she’s very empathic.
She begs me to fly out and visit her but I’ve been unwilling because she can be so nice at the start of a visit or conversation, but they seldom end well… and when I try to engage her in a discussion about why that is, she never wants to talk about it… she just hangs up on me or leaves – feigning some need to be somewhere else. I feel like if there’s no possibility of progress in the relationship, then what’s the point of having a relationship like we’ve had before where my wife & I will just end up feeling ‘abused’ by her again.
As a Christian, I’m willing to turn the other cheek, but I also believe that ‘forgiveness’ is meaningless until victims can be certain that the offender will never do it again. There’s not much point in ‘forgiving’ someone who offends, then says, “I’m sorry”, and then continues to offend & be sorry repeatedly. I can forgive them repeatedly, but I will not TRUST them until they’ve demonstrated an actual, permanent change in their behavior… and that has to begin with a willingness to at least apologize for their past behavior… It’s that inability to apologize that seems to be one of the strongest indicators of a sociopath.
Once they’ve demonstrated a genuine commitment to not repeating the hurtful things they’ve done in the past, then forgiveness becomes almost a moot point. All anyone really wants is for the hurting to stop and/or to be reassured that it can never happen again.
I love my brother and sister and pray that their lives will be happy and productive, yet I feel like the man who is welcomed everywhere else but in his hometown (family).
Neither of them have close friends as best I can tell, while my wife and I have no shortage of good friends who stay in touch with us regularly – even when we’re traveling. I consider these good friends to be our true family as they are the ones who truly enrich our lives. I continue hoping to have an honest, meaningful relationship with my siblings, but I’m tired of waiting for them to be honest with me in the important things. I’ve so outgrown the dishonesty – they seem stuck at a two-year-old’s level of honesty.
I’ve offered them help and they’ve refused it. I refuse to be manipulated further and if that’s all they’ve got to offer me, then we have no basis for friendship. Merely sharing the same parents does not guarantee relatedness if the benefits are all one-sided. I think they’re capable of being better than that, even if they don’t see it for themselves. If they’re incapable of changing, then I might as well cut all remaining ties, but I cannot accept that there’s no hope for them. I’m sure that my refusal to be their victim has already contributed in some way to helping them realize they cannot continue to take advantage of others – i.e. they’re that much closer to eventually hitting bottom on the path they’re on, and from the bottom there is no where else to go but up. Just wish it didn’t take so long as it would be fun to have siblings I could trust.
February 5th, 2013 at 15:09
Dan, it would seem as if you are experiencing revelations just as I did a decade ago. I didn’t want to believe it, but when they discovered that I knew too much, it was already too late for me. I realized that my sister had been assassinating my good character all my life, but then it went into overdrive. Virtually everyone in my extended family has shunned me.
Your situation seems different in as much as I can trace the disorder through four generations on my dad’s side. But the disorder can take on different faces and can skip individuals.
I believe being the middle child is something different, as we missed the nurturing that the oldest and youngest received. But just like in dogs, if one has two dogs and gives more affection to one, that one receiving more affection will possibly show aggression to the other. I’ve rescued dogs through most of my adult life, and I have come to realize I can only have two, since I only have two hands to show affection.
Being a solo dad for my daughter and son from when they were toddlers, I made sure that they were both treated with the same respect. And even though we had a great “childhood together” my daughter took on her mom’s traits in her teens, and went to live with her. I have not seen or heard from my daughter in six years, though I’ve tried.
I stopped trying when she called 911 as I was knocking on her door, and she lied to the dispatcher that there was a restraining order against me. There never was, but her lie to the dispatcher resulted in three cops with one K9 unit to show up. When they discovered there was no restraining order, one of the cops (the only female) explained to my daughter that she could request a “criminal trespass warning” be given to me and that if I ever stepped on the property, I would be arrested. She requested it. The cop also told me I could be arrested for stalking if I tried to make contact again.
It was one thing to lose my siblings to the lies, but another thing altogether to lose a child. There’s a lot more to that story.
It’s not easy to do by any means, but we must let go of family members that represent evil to us, since there’s little chance, or none at all, to changing that.
April 2nd, 2013 at 16:09
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I am sorry for you…sorry that your childhood had to be that way. At least your mother was a good woman. Cherish the memory of her. I do mine who has been deceased now for several years. I still have my dad, and I was always close to him, too. It was my siblings who were and are difficult to get along with. Most of them are close to one another. I am the youngest of six, and I am the “odd duck” in the family, I guess.
One of my brothers told me a couple of years ago that it was easy to love me as a child. I find that to be true with many people…it’s easy for them to love cute little children but once these children begin to grow up and become more complex, these kinds of people no longer have a use for them. Children are not play dolls. They are human beings, too, who will grow up sooner or later. People in my family don’t discuss problems. They don’t hold each other accountable for fear of offending each other. No problems get solved. Oh. don’t get me wrong…each of them have had their own problems between each other and times when they wouldn’t speak to each other. But right now it seems as if all that is ancient history, and I am their common enemy.
I posted a comment earlier saying that my two oldest sisters are bonafide sociopaths. Their personalities are different and so is the way they manipulate others, but their ultimate goal is the same: to control everyone else and to get what they want at any cost. Thanks to those two I don’t communicate with too many people in my family – including their children. There is a big difference in our ages. 22 and 20 years difference respectively. I am not tooting my horn when I say that both have always been very jealous of me and both are very competitive – something I am not.
Even though each person’s story is unique, I find that there are some vague similarities between yours and mine. Imagine that. I remember my oldest sister (22 years older than me) striking me once in front of her son, and forcing me to sleep on their couch one night. Why? Because she claims that when she visited my parents and I when I was growing up, we never once offered our beds to her and her children and they had to sleep on the floor.
This was the way she thought and still thinks…that was her way at getting revenge. I guess she’s a queen and we all have to give up our beds to her? And I believe she rarely hit her own kids or punished them. The son she struck me in front of grew up to be a spoiled rotten, irresponsible ne’er-do-well. I recently called the last number that I had for her, and got another woman on the phone. This person did not know my sister at all but she informed me that people called there constantly asking for her – every day. And most were bill collectors looking for her son. Ha ha. My sister and her ex-husband are wealthy, but it’s so funny that her son can’t manage his money.
I have know other sociopaths who were not related to me, but unlike friends, one cannot choose their own family. Thankfully I am married to a wonderful man now for over 12 years who knows firsthand how my sisters are. The other sister of mine would stoop so low as to try to ruin my marriage if she could. She herself has been married 4 TIMES and managed to run off three of them. Not even having kids could help her hold on to one of them. The last one (a bit older than her) died under what I call mysterious circumstances. I don’t think she killed him, but I think she is the kind of person who would delay calling 911 (he died of a heart attack and she claims that when she came home she heard him making funny noises on the sofa and she thought he was snoring).
In their first year of marriage she had managed to convince him to will her everything and leave his own biological kids out of his will. She never loved him. I did not attend his funeral but I heard that she carried on like she was at a social event. Unlike my older sister who was not so pretty by conventional standards, this sister was a beauty queen who married her high school sweetheart (shotgun marriage) – the high school football star. Even at her age and after three kids and four marriages she still thinks she is the belle at the ball. I have noticed that she, too, can quickly change around different people. She can go from being angry to smiling and waving to people she wants to be friendly to. And she is constantly looking to see who is looking at her. Big ego.