Predator-Prey Relationships

Every now and then, I'll be sitting, thinking, [coffee is usually involved in this process] and suddenly two concepts snap together like puzzle pieces. The join is absolutely seamless. And all at once the world looks different, and I wonder why on earth I never saw 'the fit' before.

Most of the time this is a good thing, and uplifting; but now and then it can be very unsettling.

Recently I've been contemplating the way in which abusers seem to focus on eliciting pity.

They seek pity from the people they want to target, and they seek it from the people they want to dupe. The duping is important, because an abuser can't successfully isolate and abuse the target unless friends, co-workers, relatives, etc., can be counted on to side with the abuser if the target ever tries to describe the abuse and obtain help. It's essential, in other words, that everyone else be fooled into thinking the abuser is a terrific person.

This business of pre-emptively poisoning the well is, of course, a secondary level of abuse, from which the abuser derives even more pleasure. Not only is he or she abusing the target, he or she has the target's friends and loved ones so totally deceived that the target can find no solace or support...

And the foundation upon which this entire process rests appears to be the deliberate eliciting of pity. For this awareness I am indebted to Martha Stout, Ph.D., and her book "The Sociopath Next Door", as well as to Robert Hare, Ph.D., author of "Without Conscience" and [with John Babiak, Ph.D.] "Snakes in Suits: When Sociopaths Go To Work" and Lundy Bancroft, author of "Why Does He DO That?".

Dr. Stout makes it clear that sociopaths [all of whom are abusers; and I believe that all abusers are essentially sociopathic when behaving abusively, even if the label doesn't 'stick' at other times] deliberately seek to be pitied because they know that pity is disarming.

This I understand, this I have internalized, this I am defended against, now.

Over the coffee, however, I put this information together with something else, something I learned long, long ago in ACOA:

"Adult children of alcoholics [and of other dysfunctional parents] tend to confuse pity with love."

I am not, ordinarily, an "OMFG" type of person, but that is precisely what I said, except not as an acronym, when the significance of these two facts, taken together, hit me.

O.

M.

F.

G.

Those of us with severely dysfunctional parents tend to confuse pity with love; this is a lifelong weakness against which we must be ever vigilant.

Meanwhile, abusers deliberately seek to elicit pity from those they intend to abuse or otherwise exploit.

Net result:

Children raised by dysfunctional parents - parents who are actively alcoholic, mentally ill and untreated, or otherwise impaired in their parenting - are PREDISPOSED TO LOVE ABUSERS PREFERENTIALLY OVER NONABUSERS.

Abusers KNOWINGLY USE this predisposition.

It troubles me greatly to think that so many of us have, for all intents and purposes, been programmed to love monsters - even worse, to prefer loving monsters - so that we risk spending our lives in what can only be termed

"predator-prey relationships".

What troubles me even more, however, is that the monsters clearly know this, and have just as clearly known it all along.