He is not charged, instead they both get warnings, he for assault, and she for hate crimes. Much later, at home, he tells her he’s sorry, and that he loves her. She looks at him, and sees the man she fell in love with. For a brief moment she feels the connection again. She wants this so much, and she’s so afraid of what comes next. And then she remembers his violence, his lies, his stealing. The other voice speaks. "Get out," it says, and she takes a step towards him. "Make me!" he says, but takes a step back.
Just Leave?
When we meet others suffering from abusive relationships, our first response is often disbelief. "Leave!" we say. "Change jobs! Divorce! Move out!" Yet that is like saying to a sick person, "Get better!" The victims find themselves tied down by a web of lies, promises, and threats. Escape can seem impossible. Captivity and suffering seem inevitable.
In this chapter I’ll describe the second half of the psychopathic relationship: the Feeding. The word sounds like there’s a deadly blow. A bite to the throat, then the ripping of bloody flesh. Yet, that’s not how it generally works.
What we see is the victim accepting, even embracing their situation. If others criticize them, they become defensive, and hostile. They protect their abuser, praise him or her. They produce tortured rationalizations that make you ask, "are you crazy?" to which the unspoken answer is, "yes, at least for now."
How does this happen? How does a psychopath force adult humans to accept such pain, neglect, and violence?
I’ve been researching mind control techniques since the late 1990’s. I stumbled onto the Cult Information Centre[45], a website describing how cults work. The loss of self within a consuming group… it was familiar. It reminded me of working in large businesses. Or military service.
What I found interesting was how many of these techniques seem to work both ways. One theme that we’ll see in this chapter is pushing people into a juvenile state of mind. The adult mind needs real (even small) problems to chew on, and freedom to solve them. It’s like a muscle that needs real work and freedom to move. Take away real problems, or remove freedom, and the adult mind weakens and shrivels. This leaves the juvenile mind unprotected. And that is far easier to push around.
If you give people full freedom and responsibility, then their adult minds get stronger. This can make them rebellious, if you are a tyrant. What it also does is unleash a self-controlled creativity.
My business is making software. To be more precise, I build on-line communities, and help them to make software. One tactic I used was to take the cult techniques and reverse them. Cults use arbitrary, inconsistent rules. Healthy communities need consistent, pragmatic rules. Cults form a pyramid of power. Healthy communities form a network of peers. And so on. Cults tell their members what to do, and when. Healthy communities self-organize around real problems.
So we can learn a lot of positive lessons, from the worst things people do to each other. Bear this in mind as you read this chapter, else it may be quite unhappy reading.
Motivations
Let’s recap. Mallory has persuaded Alice to invest a relationship where she’s losing control. She’s stopped building up her own future and is handing over resources to Mallory. In a normal healthy relationship the two parties complement and strengthen each other. The psychopathic relationship is one-sided. Mallory takes everything he can, and gives as little back as necessary.
Keep in mind, it is about economics: money or time or sex. Sometimes access to property or assets. Sometimes power of different kinds, when it benefits Mallory in some tangible way.
In pop culture, the psychopath is the caricature of an unpredictable and deadly killer. It is how the mouse describes the cat. "The monster was upon us! All teeth and claws… it got my family, luckily I escaped! Crazy!!" The cat does not share mouse emotions and psychopaths do not feel social emotions. No hate, fear of rejection, jealousy or self-pity. And no revenge, nor even enjoyment in the pain of others.
Psychopaths are scary because they can inflict extraordinary damage onto others without restraint. Their emotional states are those of a predator. That’s it. How do you talk to animal hunger? Yet I suspect the worst monsters in history are social humans. People who are aware of the pain they cause, driven by beliefs that can seem insane. At least Mallory follows the logic of the predator.
So the "why?" is easy to understand and predict with psychopaths. As long as Alice has something of value to offer, Mallory keeps the web strong and tight. As Mallory drains Alice he shifts gears and prepares to exit in safety.
Until that point, Mallory must ensure that Alice stays put. This is no simple task. We’re all the descendants of an unbroken chain of survivors. There has been a long arms race between human predator and human prey. This gives even the nicest of us strengths to call on when we need them.
Alice is an adult, and capable of walking out of the door at any point. Mallory cannot stop her by physical force. He doesn’t need to. Instead, He explains to Alice, in different ways, that she has no choice but to stay. There are many ways to do this. These are Mallory’s main tactics:
❂ Cut Alice off from the outside world and sources of help.
❂ Strip Alice’s assets so she becomes too poor to leave.
❂ Keep Alice confused so she accepts Mallory’s arguments.
❂ Break Alice’s empathy and ability to care for others, and herself.
❂ Break Alice’s ability to think and make plans.
❂ Regress Alice to a juvenile state so she accepts her situation.
Mallory could be an organization rather than a person. Organizations tend to take on the characters of their founders. When psychopaths bring people together, we see the same patterns as between individuals. We see this in organizations like investment banks, cults, and VC-funded startups. They tend to abuse their members more than they abuse the rest of the world.
That Big, Bad World
Every cult and police state does the same cheap trick: "they hate us for our freedoms!" This refers to the devastated wastelands of the outside world, filled with roaming zombies. The message is clear: "stay here and follow The Rules, and you will be safe. Leave, and your death will be slow and nasty."
It is already hard for a single mind to make sense of an infinite and chaotic universe. We depend on others for our sense of reality, even our memories. It is the power of a social species, and also its weakness. An isolated individual is much easier to manipulate.
An antagonistic "them and us" mentality is a red flag. If your company defines itself by hate for its competitors, watch out. With individuals it’s harder to see. The first thing you may see (and often, accept as truth) is a "trail of tears." Here, Mallory plays the victim. She tells convincing stories of abuse from her parents, teachers, and ex-partners.
After you have accepted Mallory’s vulnerability, she learns your most important relationships. Then she breaks them, one by one.