Is it possible for sociopaths to feel genuine remorse for their actions or thoughts towards others, even if they are skilled at hiding it from others?

Do I think there’s a grief within them over losing the people who loved them?

Did he seem proud of his crimes?

“I’m just kind of surprised. How did you feel reading everything?”

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When he told me that, he seemed really agitated. But I was forthcoming about my mental illness, so, again, he seemed to feel safe not being judged and he told me. I asked if he agreed with the diagnosis, and he said, “Do you agree with it?”

We don’t speak anymore, but he recently got out of another prison stint, and he wasn’t blocked. I see him check my stories now and again.

He said, “That diagnosis I’ll agree with.”

Hi everybody! I have been looking at posts on narcs and narc abuse on here and if has really helped me out a lot. I am currently struggling with my situation and need some advice/support. I met a narc last year, everything seemed to good to be true. Love bombing, always texting calling and taking me on dates. Everything changed when someone warned me about him out in public in front of him and who he is. This caused a conflict with us and the love bombing seized. he would tell me that everything is okay and i can come and talk. He would set a time limit on me and kick me out after that. he would then text me like everything was fine and we hung out again and after that he completely ghosted me for one week. He came back and texted me a week later laughing about the ghosting and acting like nothing had happened. he continued to text me ( not like in the beginning) make plans with me, then on the day of the plans he would just ghost me. One day he would act interested the next silence. i contacted him a month later and he acted like nothing happened. He was on a vacation and sent me a picture of another woman ( someone he allegedly met on the trip) to strike a reaction but i never gave him one. After the trip he came to my place and was extremely rude, accusing me of going on dates with a bunch of men. The next day he accused me of being an alcoholic and that he wanted nothing to do with me but said well maybe we can be "friends" then ghosted me i assumed at this point it was over and i would never hear from him again. He contacted me on the holiday a month later acting like everything was great. We ended up hanging out a month or so later and when we hung out it went well, i thought things were going in the right direction. after we hung out.. silence. I would try to text him and if he replied it would be very short then he just stopped replying. He ghosted me for almost three months. I thought he was done this time and of course he popped up again like nothing happened. At this point i was getting sick of if so i questioned him as to why he dissapeared and always does this. Of course he had some sob story about a injury and family member dying of cancer. I felt pity for him and he gave me an apology.. so i took him back stupidly. things seemed to be going smooth for a couple months, of course until his family member died and his injury got better he never contacted me and was distant. Menawhile, i was there for him during the difficult time for him. He lied to me about the funeral and never wanted to chat. I was chasing him and he would always claim nothing was wrong but when i said i thought he used me when he was down he could not handle it and would always tell me he didnt care and to go away. I would get so upset i would try texting him to work it out he would barelt respond and if he did he would not be nice about it. we did hang out a couple times after that, he would ignore me after. One day i was like hey i think you are seeing someone else, and i was like well ixam seeing someone so no problem if you are he said " buy bye good luck with your new guy stop contacting me" i was devastated and tried to get into contact with him for weeks then i just gave up and accepted it was over. He ended up contacting me a month later acting like everything was fine. He wanted to go out and have drinks i told him i would. He and i both seemed to have a great time. He ends up ignoring me again. I kept texting him trying to figure out what was wrong. He kept saying everything was fine and i said ok can we hang out again? He said maybe i was like why? He just kept saying maybe … our last conversation we had… i said what is wrong ? He said nothing is wrong everything is fine. I asked him why he keeps saying maybe. He said " maybe but i dont want to see you right now" i said why? He saix " im just not feeling it, if i wanted to date i would" i said why did you contact me less then a week ago wanting to go out? He said i didnt.. even though he did. So i said should i just move on or what? He said whatever you want to do. So i said that he was really confusing me and asked him if he had anything more to say before i move on? My messages were turning green so i panicked he blocked me and reacted irrationally. I said " omg did you block me? My messages are not going through. Even texted him on my work phone asking what was up. And called him twice ( please dont judge me i know it is pathetic i never was this type of girl before him) so he replied and said " Ok I'll block you now" then immedietly blocked me. He has never blocked me before since I have met him he will just ghost. Is this ths final discard aka " grand finale? Did i just push him too far? this has upset me so much its hard to even function.

She had no memory of telling me. And her brain had reverted back to the narcissistic state, which was denial.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe my story needs to be told. And I can’t tell it.”

And the thing is…that man is only not in prison at my mercy, and he knows that. Is he grateful?

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Only then did he seem slightly irritated, “What’s done is done, Anne.”

“And….?”

He sure f#%*ing did.

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But did he ever show remorse after that?

Nope. Nada. Not even a little. No empathy means no empathy.

I didn’t know what he was apologizing to her for, and why he didn’t come to me, because I genuinely loved him and my sister vocally hated him and always said I was blind to how sick he was. Turns out, I have good reason to believe he sexually assaulted my sister.

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That way, they avoid any shame whatsoever over their criminal and immoral acts.

Their accusations are projections. They’re confessions. Yesterday, a sociopath commented on a post bitterly, “This is pure fiction.”

In their normal narcissistic baseline, they’re not only not remorseful, but they’re extremely selfish and entitled. No matter what they know they’ve done, they have a bottomless desire to have the best of the best in life, and they seem to genuinely think they deserve it.

What do you love to do at night when you’re alone?

I was truly stunned. But I said what is true, “A child who molests is a child who was molested.”

“Are you sure? I can take out anything you aren’t comfortable with.”

Not really. He was pretty stunned when I pointed out that all his worst crimes happened at the anniversaries of his brother’s death. When I connected his behavior to PTSD, he seemed like it was a revelation.

I feel like my boyfriend doesn't love me. Why?

“Because you’re not judgemental and you’re genuinely not a rat. Which is rare. But, don’t think I won’t lie whenever I have to.”

“Why don’t you lie to me? Why do you tell me the things you hide from others?”

I’m the daughter of two sociopaths: I have BPD (colloquially known as an empath) and I trauma bonded to quite a few sociopaths throughout my life and I have the near death experiences and restraining orders to prove it.

Why can’t my wife just accept the fact that I’m going to cheat?

“I read your chapters.”

But their anger can also be because my work has a lot of truth in it: I don’t have the benefit of delusion to protect me. And they get triggered by the truth. They hate for their worst shames, like rape or pedophilia, to be discussed. They’d rather their victims be gaslit that their abuses never happened.

“Why are you okay with me telling all those personal things?”

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I felt destroyed by these events, because I saw and experienced all the trauma that led him to that 11 year prison sentence, and I knew he had PTSD and addiction issues: it was very obvious. We’d known each other since 6th grade, and we were rebellious kids then, but there was still an innocence in that experience that made me always feel really tender towards him.

“Did he?”

A main reason they are violent towards innocent people is because they project their traumas. They re-enact them onto others, but they do so as the one in control rather than the one powerless.

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And even as he drugged and raped me, I was kind to him. (Fawn is a trauma response). We had some genuine heart to hearts. He taught me a lot about sociopathy. I was diagnosed with Stockholm Syndrome. The cognitive dissonance of that really messes with your head.

As a result, you almost never see emotion from them and they can’t emotionally connect to anyone. The false self is like a big monster they’ve created to protect them from ever feeling vulnerable and powerless again.

I’m sure my stalker tells himself the same thing he told me back then: I deserved it.

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She was crying and screaming and shivering so hard that I couldn’t help but cry too. I kept telling her it wasn’t her fault how her brother turned out.

They DO know when they’ve done behavior that is wrong, however. They just don’t feel bad about it. Their disorder functions in a way to justify EVERYTHING, and they’ll go into delusion and cognitive distortions to do so.

They don’t live in reality: they can only handle the fantasy of the false self, who is not only perfect, but superior.

What would happen if the Soviet Union had simply annexed Manchuria after World War 2 or kept it independent as a puppet state allied them and separate from China as China was too weak too oppose it anyway?

Not only did he not show remorse, but when I escaped, he upped the ante and had people gang stalk me and terrorize me for several months before he finally quit.

The penpals I had, as well as my childhood friend, could easily—and chillingly frankly—talk about their crimes. But they never showed remorse in any way, though they could articulate that what they did was wrong.

Did he have any idea why he did them?

She screamed, bitterly, “I molested my brothers!”

Deep down, yes. But you’ll only see it if they go into a narcissistic collapse.

“You don’t feel bad about that?”

“No.”

“Do you feel guilty?”

Not particularly.

I said, “I think you were a very traumatized child.”

“I felt like I shot my friend.” (Notice: no emotion).

Yes—again, I’ve only seen it in a collapse state.

I wrote a memoir (coming out next month!) and I detailed our trauma, while also including his crimes and even a personal letter he wrote me in prison. I was very honest, so I wasn’t sure how he’d react to it—I knew how he was about shame and these chapters detailed both of our worst traumas in life—but I gave him the chapters he appears in, and he read them. This was how that text conversation went down:

I’ve had a couple sociopaths in my life who were extraordinarily forthcoming with me. Don’t get me wrong: they were still chronic liars with a ton of secrets. But they told me more than they told most people. And I think, for a time, it was a relief for them to do so without judgement.

“Turns out, no.”

My stalker and rapist who raped me for several weeks was pretty sadistic most the time, but one time, he cried and called me “mama.”

“No.”

After knowing some of the abuses he faced in prison, I became disturbed by our punitive justice system and how it exploits mental illness for cheap labor and profit. I joined abolition groups and I began writing people who’d gone to death row as teenagers. I hated the idea of anyone being cast off and unloved. I’ve been abandoned and traumatized a lot in my life, so I hate to see it happen to others. This is still true: my trauma hasn’t made me change my stance on our traumatic prisons.

When my father collapsed and attempted suicide, he went to my sister’s room and was sobbing so hard it really spooked both of us, and he apologized to her.

This is why I think the most famous quote from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is true: “If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers too.” (And spoiler alert: the book ends in suicide…).

“Do you think I got it right?”

For example, when my friend got out of prison, there were times that he hit his wife or beat his golden child. He told me those things happened (but he’d deny them up and down to anyone wanting to give him consequences or judge him).

Does he care at all how badly he traumatized me?

“Yeah.”

But after that collapse, I later brought up what she’d confided in me, and she looked at me in utter terror and snapped, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

For someone with compassion and the ability to feel guilt, it’s a confusing disorder to make sense of—-they’re both in horrific pain and…they cause a lot of pain, but really all their grief is severely repressed in order for them to survive.

Not even a little.

So I think that re-enacting their traumas is sometimes the only way they can momentarily grieve over what happened to them without feeling vulnerable over it.

After she discarded me and broke my heart, I put together her NPD in therapy a year later and I reached out to her exes to confirm, and, according to them, she was still a rapist and abuser.

It’s the best way they can protect you from themselves. Because they are triggered by love and extraordinarily dangerous when they feel it. They will seek to drive you away and make you hate them before you can trigger their abandonment/attachment wounds by unmasking their darkest secrets.

He didn’t seem the slightest bit proud of it, but it was not something he was emotional about either. It seemed like a fact of his life that just made him…weary.

“Really?” (I was shooketh, honestly).

“No, because at the time, I thought he betrayed me.”

A friend of mine collapsed when her brother went to prison for murder. A narcissist collapse is a pain like you’ve never seen and it’s especially jarring from typically emotionally cold people.

“They’re good.”

But….did he eventually turn on me and abuse me despite all I’d done for him?

She said, “I fucking know I was molested! But why did I have to become a fucking rapist?”

Yes, he was diagnosed with NPD and ASPD in prison, and he found that very irritating.

The men I wrote on death row were all murderers: one killed his pastor who was molesting him. (Many victims came forward after his death). He explained step by step what happened.

I’ve never ever seen such agony and self hate as I did then. And I was really shocked that she used present tense, as if she was still a rapist.

“Good? Do you have any problem with anything I wrote?”

“It’s your life; it’s your story. You can tell it how you need to.”

The truth is that their grief is gnarly, and they’re only children emotionally, so they’re far too vulnerable to survive it without the narcissism protecting them as a trauma response.

He would explain it like, “And then I lost control and I put my hands on her. I know, I shouldn’t have.” But it was very matter of fact. I grew up with violence, so it’s not really something that shocked me, and just the fact that he’d say, “I shouldn’t have,” was really enough for me. I saw no need to lecture or judge them. I saw it as a trauma response and hoped I could help them work on that. (Yes, I was naive. Part of having BPD).

From a young age, I felt disturbed by our prison system. The main reason why was because my first love, a sociopath, committed suicide at 15, then his brother, another sociopath, went to prison at 17 for beating someone with a lug wrench until they were mentally handicapped.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Did he know he was mentally ill?

Do I think there’s guilt and remorse deep down?

Like two opposite charges of a magnet, every sociopath has some empaths who were important in their life. Ying and Yang. Light and dark. We’re mirrors to each other. And we smash the mirror… eventually.

They do that with the empaths in their lives they’ve pushed away. We had no romantic connection whatsoever, but honestly, I think that made our bond feel…stronger. It wasn’t about sex at all. I genuinely cared for him. And I feel that deep down, he did for me too: I know he knows my heart was genuine.

And that was that. I knew better than to keep pushing when he seemed irritated.

“I DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH ANYTHING YOU WROTE ANNE.”

He has also definitely read my work here, as he attempted to log into my account when I changed my password, having hacked my phone, and I wrote a whole book of poetry on the experience. He may not have read it, but I’m sure he knows it exists.

This also can satisfy some revenge fantasies they have towards parents sometimes.

“How did you feel when you did it?”

No. It’s pretty rare for them to exhibit any emotions except anger, and if you ask them how they feel about anything, they’ll expertly dodge the question.

“Because it’s a crime, Anne. And I got away with it.”

But if a sociopath genuinely loves you deep down, which is rare, but I do believe they reserve for some people, they show you by leaving you alone.

My friend confided in me that he’d shot his friend once—and had gotten away with it. Unlike other confessions, I was pretty shocked by this whole story. He seemed relieved just to tell it. I asked him after he told me:

A narcissist’s entire identity and sense of self is pure fiction. It’s a FALSE SELF. It’s a MASK.

But sociopaths not only don’t care about the pain of loving people, they envy that you’re loving and more logical and sane: they think you don’t deserve it and your life is better than theirs. Without empathy or the ability to grieve, they don’t understand your pain. They’re also really self centered in their own pain and victimhood. Sociopaths often read my work and then make malicious comments or send me cruel DMs. And they call ME cruel, when I’ve never done the kind of things that have been done to me and I really feel empathy for them. (Though I won’t lie: I do have pain, anger, and bitterness at times in my grief. I’m no saint. And I can be triggered in my BPD).