Perhaps you’re in your 40s, 50s or 60s — and you have just come to the shocking realization that you have a sociopath in your life. Maybe even multiple sociopaths. So you wonder — why did you encounter a sociopath later in life?
I have three answers for this question. One is about awareness, another is about life stages and the last is about healing purpose.
Awareness of sociopaths
I am willing to bet that sociopaths were always in your life — you just didn’t know it.
By sociopaths, I mean people who could be diagnosed with antisocial, narcissistic, borderline, histrionic or psychopathic personality disorder. (The original definition of “sociopath” was “anything deviated or pathological in social relations.”)
I launched Lovefraud.com in 2005. At that time, nobody was talking “narcissists.” Whenever “sociopaths” or “psychopaths” were mentioned, they were almost always equated with serial killers. There was no general awareness that people with exploitative and manipulative personality disorders lived all around us. No one told us that these people made up about 12% of the population, and they look just like the rest of us.
So how did we explain bad behavior in others? When I was a kid, I had a cousin who was always in trouble. No matter what anyone tried, his behavior didn’t change. Finally, my relatives explained it as a “chemical imbalance.” I haven’t seen my cousin in many decades, but now I wonder if he had some level of personality disorder.
So, if you were clueless about sociopaths — well, you weren’t alone. Everybody was in the dark until the Internet came along.
Now you can Google whatever bad behavior you’re seeing, and sooner or later you’ll find articles or videos related to personality disorders. That’s probably how you found Lovefraud. So there’s starting to be more general awareness about sociopaths, although still not enough.
Life stages
I’ve heard from many people who were married to someone for 10, 20 or 30 years, and just figured out that their spouse was a sociopath. How does this happen?
Partly it depends on the level of disorder. The sociopathic personality disorders are on a spectrum, meaning some people are affected more than others. If your spouse was a violent criminal, you knew he or she was bad, and I hope you left. Still, you may not have identified a personality disorder (because you didn’t know they existed).
Plenty of sociopaths, however, muddle their way through life without violence or blatant criminal activity. Your partner may have lied, cheated, spent money recklessly, neglected the children or given you the silent treatment — without breaking any laws.
You, in the meantime, were on the hamster wheel of building your career and raising the kids. Or you assumed that your partner was dealing with stress or upheaval in the workplace. You kept thinking that life would get better when the kids were out of the house and you both retired from your jobs.
But when that life stage arrived — your spouse was just as bad. In fact, he or she may have gotten worse.
That was the key finding of my book, Senior Sociopaths. It was based on data from 2,400 survey respondents. They all described an individual who was age 50 or older and whom they believed was a sociopath.
About half of the respondents knew the individual both before and after age 50. Of them, 91% said the individual’s deceit, manipulation and antisocial behavior was just as bad, or worse, as they aged.
Now that you finally have time to reflect on your situation, you realize that your partner was disordered all along.
Healing purpose
I believe there is often a larger purpose for the sociopath in your life, and this is especially true when it happens in your mature years.
Maybe you had an unhappy marriage — with a sociopath or just a jerk — and finally got a divorce. Maybe you went for therapy to help in your recovery. After a period of time, you felt like you resolved your issues and were ready for the possibility of a new relationship. And who do you encounter? A sociopath.
Why does this happen? In my experience, it means you have more recovery work to do.
This is not a failure. Whatever work you’ve done on yourself so far has gotten you to this point. When another sociopath comes along, it’s an indication that you need to go deeper.
Read more: Male and female senior sociopaths — still nasty after 50
Emotional pain creates disturbances in our energy fields. They stay there until we release them, creating vulnerabilities. Sociopaths prey on our vulnerabilities and seem to have radar for these disturbances.
So why were you vulnerable? Most likely, you’re still carrying emotional pain from previous marriages or relationships. Perhaps from traumatic experiences. In many of the people I’ve spoken with, the pain goes back to their childhoods.
Sociopaths that you encounter later in life cause new emotional pain, which is like the old, buried emotional pain. The purpose of encountering a sociopath later in life is to bring the deep wounds to the surface and resolve them.
That’s what I mean by healing purpose. So here’s what I suggest: Reframe the experience of the new sociopath as an opportunity to do much needed internal healing. The disturbance absolutely can be relieved. It may be a bumpy ride for a while, but a terrific new life is on the other side of the process.
