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People are often willing to forgive the actions of their psychopathic friends, even if those actions may cause confusion, upset, or consternation. They are unwilling or unable to penetrate the surface of a psychopath, often overlooking the obvious signs in the name of maintaining “friendship.” The invisible is the driving force behind psychopaths, especially if you have something they don’t have. When this happens, the psychopath can become jealous. According to the Dictionary of Fine Distinctions, “Envy is when you want something that someone else has.” 1
Psychopaths are jealous of others and what they have.
The book also says, “Despite the protests of some people, jealousy can also be used to mean being jealous.” 2 However, jealousy hardly applies when talking about psychopaths. Jealousy is defined as “when you don’t want someone else to have something or someone you have.”3 But when a psychopath gets something or someone, they don’t appreciate it.
Psychopaths are not inherently jealous; they are jealous. Her envy arises as a result of her desire to have what others have. Maybe it’s the house across the street. It might be the operatic voice of an acquaintance. It could be the fame of a movie star or the physique of a tennis player. It could also be someone else’s child.
Psychopaths cannot experience jealousy
Psychopaths don’t form bonds with others, so they don’t get jealous. They do not long for or cling to others with warmth and affection, as they have no ties of affection even to those closest to them. Instead, they use and exploit others. They are characterized by being emotionally poor and not loyal to anyone. 4
Psychopaths try to gain something, but they quickly get bored.
Psychopaths try to get something, whether it’s an object or a person, but once they get what they want, they get bored with it, take it for granted, and call it “anything.” It is ignored as something that does not exist. According to psychopathy researcher J. Reed Meloy, the psychodynamics of jealousy in psychopaths is characterized as “a cycle of aggressive ingestion and expulsion, integration and elimination, and a sense of ‘I have to do this.’ It begins with a conscious thought and ends with a conscious thought.” “It wasn’t worth having.”5 British psychologist Betty Joseph says: “He spoils and wastes what he has got.”6
The vegetable garden: A case study of psychopathic jealousy
My mother exhibits highly psychopathic traits and I have observed how envy motivates her. I remember one scene that was both comedic and sad. I witnessed the elation and joy she experienced at the expense of her long-time neighbor. Envy was on display.
In the adjacent backyard, our family and our neighbors had a vegetable garden that was open to each other. My neighbors were going on a short vacation and asked my mom to take care of their garden while they were away.
The other day, I happened to overhear my mom talking to herself in the kitchen…a monologue I still remember. She never looked at me while she was talking, but she had a “someone over something” look on her face…a typical look for a psychopath.
The monologue began in the most dramatic way when she whispered that some animal, perhaps a rabbit, had just destroyed the vegetables her father had planted a few months earlier. She said to herself that this awful rabbit had the nerve to eat and destroy her neighbor’s garden without even touching a bite of it. The highlight of my mother’s soliloquy was when she praised herself for sneaking next door and taking away all the neighbor’s lettuce and tomatoes and making it look like her own destroyed garden.
When the neighbors returned, they were surprised to find that all the vegetables were gone. When they asked my mother what happened, she pointed to her garden, shrugged and blamed it on a rabbit attack.
When feelings of envy arise, the psychopath’s instinct is to even the score. She knew her neighbors would never be able to prove what she had done. Why should they get the fruit from their own garden when her garden was destroyed!
According to Dr. Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door, “The greedy sociopath suspects that life has somehow deceived him and has not given him nearly the same benefits as others.” Therefore, she deprives people of things. 8 The neighbors were shocked to see that there were no vegetables left in the garden, but they did not blame my mother for the theft… A classic way for psychopaths to get away with their dastardly deeds!
