caring is creepy

watching dexter is an illuminating experience for me, probably more so than other people. i'm pretty much convinced, fine completely convinced, that one of my ex-boyfriends is a psychopath. i was with him off and on for a long time, and i could never really understand the hold he had over me, or why i stayed until i had distance and clarity. i have a better understanding now.

for clarification, let's call my ex "A".

i know that A cheated on me relentlessly, lied pathologically, and when i was mad would say *exactly* what i wanted to hear to get me back. he even cried when needed. scarily, and sadly, i decided that he was a sociopath in 2001. we started dating in 1999, and i was with him until 2006. like i said, he had a hold over me.

in 2001, when i was working on my master's degree, i took a forensic psychology class, which i loved. one of the things that we discussed was the hare psychopathy test. when i took the class, there were 14 characteristics; the revised version now has 20.

here are the characteristics:

• glib and superficial charm
• grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self
• need for stimulation
• pathological lying
• cunning and manipulativeness
• lack of remorse or guilt
• shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness)
• callousness and lack of empathy
• parasitic lifestyle
• poor behavioral controls
• sexual promiscuity
• early behavior problems
• lack of realistic long-term goals
• impulsivity
• irresponsibility
• failure to accept responsibility for own actions
• many short-term marital relationships
• juvenile delinquency
• revocation of conditional release
• criminal versatility

now, A's never been married, so that one can be thrown out, and he has never been convicted of a crime as an adult, so he hasn't had a release revoked, but the rest of the traits? except for one, he pretty much has all of them.

*all* of them.

i'm not formulating my own diagnosis or trying to justify many bad decisions to stay in an admittedly bad relationship. i have a BA and MA in psychology, i worked as a group counselor and intake specialist in a psych hospital (oh, the irony), and did intensive in-home counseling for several home preservation programs. i'm not an idiot.

i started watching dexter because i heard from several people that it was a good show, and i've run out of things to watch. it's surprising that i didn't watch it sooner, because i love true crime tv shows, books, and movies. now that i've watched a few seasons, it's become more personal than i ever thought it would.

watching dexter's behaviors, many of which he narrates, has shed more light on A's way of thinking. it's also made me rethink things that he told me, like i "had more influence on him than anyone else." i believed him then, and i still do, but i don't think that i influenced him in a good way. i think he used me like he used everything else.

i was an example of how to be an emotional person, and how to be (and treat) someone in a committed relationship. not so much anymore, but when A and i were dating, i was an *extremely* emotional person. i also expressed what i wanted, liked, didn't like, thought was mean or unacceptable, and ridiculous. and i forgave him. a lot.

he has mutated over the years, and when i say "mutated" with all of the negative connotations that come to mind, that's what i mean. i think he has mutated based on what he thinks he's *supposed* to be, what clues he gathers from his environment, and what the people around him express that they want and need.

when i met A, he was 23, made a lot of money for doing not a lot of work, and had recently moved to dallas, which if you didn't know has some of the most plastic, sluttiest, looking-for-sugar-daddies girls in the world. easy pickings.

A spent a lot of money, slept around *a lot*, got a flashy car, stated that he'd never get married or even live with a girl, and didn't form one real or solid connection with anyone in the five years he lived here. he actually convinced his two best childhood friends to move down here. problem solved.

and like a sponge, i could feel A sucking my energy. he wouldn't talk unless it was something he was interested in (none of which i was interested in, but feigned), or i asked him endless questions about himself or things he liked: cars, sports. that's about it. i almost had to force conversations.

if you know me, zzzzzzzzzz. i really don't give a shit about cars and the endless specs about them. and i like sports, but how long can you discuss soccer moves? and i know *nothing* about volleyball, don't want to, never will. oh wait, there's sand, right? sometimes...

A thought it was weird that i liked to read, and couldn't understand why i wanted to further my education. he didn't want to get know himself, or his motivations, better. feelings; what are those? he treated me like i was a martian if i showed anything outside of a blank stare or happiness. he even went so far as to blame others for his despicable actions, like cheating.

he actually told me that he "didn't want to sleep with those girls." they "made" him do it. at the time, i almost threw something at him (or threw up), but now i think he may have been telling the truth, as much as was possible. A thought that these girls expected him to sleep with them. why was he in a physical location where it was possible to sleep with a bunch of other girls in the first place? another story altogether. A can't read emotion or body language, but he's a master at giving someone what they want, so even if he "didn't want" to sleep with them, he thought that he was doing what was "normal".

as he got older, he changed his viewpoints on a lot of things related to relationships. he relented on the co-habitation thing, then he decided he was up for marriage. i was the lucky recipient of the first, and in discussions for the second. he was militantly against having kids throughout all of this, however.

so, i talked to A at length a little over a year ago. it was like talking to a completely different person than the one i had known for over 10 years. he wants kids, he wants to get married asap, he wants to settle down, he just wants to find someone that he can have a deep and meaningful relationship with because everyone where he lives is shallow and vapid and no one understands him. *sob*

um, hello? who the hell are you?

i look at his facebook profile every now and then, too, and because of the privacy settings, i can't see much, which is fine by me. the one thing i can see is his favorite quotes, which really irritated me at first, now i just see it as spooky.

FIRST OF ALL, two of them are from 'into the wild'; he also had society (an eddie vedder song from the movie) as his myspace song for quite a while. if you've seen 'into the wild', my ex is *everything* that christopher mccandless was not.

he also has a quote from 'sex and the city', a quote that i TOLD him was my viewpoint about love, which he thought was ridiculous, along with other choice tidbits that are obviously geared toward creating an introspective, loving, boyfriend-type person.

oh.my.god.

i know that none of that is directed at me, but at future victims.

there are soooo many other things he has done over the years that are indicative of psychopathic tendencies, but i think the change over the years (and not the normal maturation of a man) is the worst. i feel violated, like my heart and mind were raped and photocopied, and the information was stored in A's brain to be integrated into his daily life.

here's one more example: he couldn't *stand* pearl jam when we were dating. the first time i got to shake eddie's hand, he picked a massive fight when i told him and pretty much ruined the whole experience. every time A and i broke up, i was the one to do it...all 877 times. i'd get fed up because he was an asshole, end it, and then call him a day, a week, or a month later.

i thought i had finally gotten away from him when i started dating *another* ex (i told you i recycled boyfriends). btw, this is the ex whose marriage i inadvertently ended, and this round of dating is when it happened. quite the tangled web, please try to keep up. make sure your fingers and toes are in, and place all of your carry ons under your seat.

i was dating another guy, and hadn't talked to A in six months, a RECORD!!

and then A called me, saying that he loooooved me, he wanted me back, blah blah blah. all the things he thought i'd fall for. and i told him that i was with someone else, i loved him, i was done. all that was well and good until the other guy and i broke up, and i somehow ended up talking to A, who was living about 1500 miles away at the time. he drove straight to dallas the next day, and a few days later, we were looking for something in his car and i found the entire pearl jam catalog.

what.the.hell.

when i asked him about it, he said he was listening to the CDs because he wanted to understand what mattered to me better, and he wanted to give them a chance because he knew how important the band was to me. he was trying to get closer to me. at that point, i believed him. i thought it was sweet and thoughtful, and quite the effort. now i see that he was trying another tactic to appear normal, or what he thought i expected normal to be.

when he and i lived together, it was in northern california, around the time of laci peterson's murder. one day, i realized that if i got pregnant, there was a chance that i could end up like her. i don't know if A would ever be capable of murder (never say never), but i felt that there was a very real possibility that he would get rid of a money-sucking, fun-ending child to which he bore financial responsibility for 18 years.

that's when i got out.