Can a psychopath fall in love?

Can a psychopath fall in love? Answering this question forces us to answer another: what do we understand by “love”? The truth is that, although each of us may have our own definition, there is a certain consensus that it is located in the emotional world.

Furthermore, it is important to differentiate love and falling in love from romantic relationships, since, in the latter case, psychopaths can have this type of relationship. However, being in love and loving is not the same as having a romantic relationship.

We analyze What is the mind of a psychopath like? and why their way of loving will be very different from that of people without psychopathy. Finally, we will talk about what a romantic relationship with a psychopath can be like.

What is a psychopath?

A psychopath is a person with narcissistic characteristics, unable to experience emotionsguilt or remorse, who takes advantage of others to achieve his own benefits.

For the psychopath, people are a way to satisfy their own desires, but nothing more. This does not mean that they cannot make us believe the opposite, through their manipulative techniques.

Psychopathy: antisocial personality disorder in the DSM-5

In the DSM-5 (Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders), psychopathy is classified as “antisocial personality disorder.” This alteration involves the following symptoms or characteristics:

Deviant social behavior.Manipulation towards others for one’s own benefit. Absence of respect for the rules or rights of others (and contempt and violation of these). Absence of empathy and the ability to experience emotions.

On an intellectual level, his capacity is fully preserved. It is estimated that up to 3% of the population You may suffer from antisocial personality disorder. With all this, do you think a psychopath can fall in love?

Psychopaths often manipulate others to get what they want or need from them.

Is it possible for a psychopath to fall in love?

Well, it depends on what we understand by love. If we refer to what is commonly understood by it, as “a feeling of lively affection and inclination toward a person or thing for whom one wishes all good things“We can say that no, a psychopath cannot fall in love. In any case, he could fall in love “his way”, but not in the way that most of us understand on a social level.

Thus, a psychopathic person, not being able to experience emotions in general, does not feel love either, and therefore could not fall in love as most people do, since they do not have this capacity.

On the other hand, we know that romantic love for most “mortals” involves intimacy, passion and commitment, and is a very human emotion. However, For a psychopath, love takes on a different meaning, as does the act of falling in love.

Love for the psychopath

The meaning of love for a psychopathic person can be very different from the meaning that a person without psychopathy gives to this type of feeling. For example, it may happen that for these people love is unilateral, that is, that look for the other to fall in love with them. They can also understand love as a form of gratification, something that provides them with what they need.

Thus, They can understand love in an unbalanced way (although this does not always have to happen, logically), or as a source of material goods. And to obtain love, they may resort to strategies such as manipulation, deception, and lies.

And it is that, For the psychopath, love is like a game of seduction, in which he can get what he wants (sex, money, company…), but not love itself. Thus, his objective will be to obtain the love of the other to take advantage of that love, and not to enjoy it. For this, and for some other reason, we say that love for a psychopath is different.

Romantic relationships in psychopaths

Although the psychopath You cannot fall in love as such, you can establish romantic relationships. However, these will be based on their own interest (something that the psychopathic person wants to achieve and maintain).

For a psychopath, Social relationships are a way to get what you need at that time. In this way, what are your personal relationships based on, or supported by? Basically, they are based on the psychopath’s search for three elements:

Your own satisfaction. Self-indulgence. The increase in your own ego (due to your narcissistic personality).

Relationships based on avoidant attachment

On the other hand, in most relationships established by a psychopath it can be easy to identify avoidant attachment. Because? Because They are incapable of establishing intimate, emotional and honest relationships.

AND Avoidant attachment is that manifested by people who do not seek support from others.no They tolerate emotional intimacy, which makes it extremely difficult, as we said, to build deep and lasting relationships.

What would a romantic relationship with a psychopath be like?

Psychopaths have a marked lack of empathy, as well as an inability to feel and express emotions (if they do, They are reproducing what they have learned on a social level, but not what they really feel, because they cannot feel it).

Therefore, the relationships we can establish with a psychopathic person will not be easy, even if they can manipulate them and make us believe things that are not (in the end, everything falls under its own weight and one day the psychopath’s mask falls off).

Thus, it is likely that if you establish an “intimate” relationship with a psychopath, you will also be witness their great difficulties in identifying what you need (because of that lack of empathy). It will be difficult for him to put himself in your place, and also in other people’s.

There does not always have to be manipulation

However, we don’t want to generalizeand although psychopaths can manipulate, or not be honest in their romantic relationships, the truth is that this does not always have to happen.

And it is also good to understand that what happens in many cases is that for people with psychopathy it can be more difficult to avoid the temptation to engage in manipulative behaviorprecisely because of the difficulties they have in establishing an emotional connection with others.

Adapted behaviors

In addition, there are also people with psychopathy who are capable of behaving in an adapted way (even though it may be less natural for them, or cost them more), and if only because other important variables come into play, such as social reinforcement towards normative behavior (that is, others reinforce the fact that they show “expected” behavior at a social level).

So it is important not to generalize, but to understand what lies behind the behaviors of a psychopathic person.

Psychopaths can have a relationship, but they do not experience love like other people.

There may be a lack of commitment and absence of regrets

On the other hand, and as we said at the beginning, one of the key ingredients in romantic relationships is commitment. Well then, The psychopath may have great difficulty committing, due to his great impulsivity. and the imperative and pressing of their desires.

And since he doesn’t feel guilt either, if he hurts you, he won’t feel remorse for it. So, we recommend that you know your partner well, because psychopaths know how to give us what we “expect from them” to achieve their goals.

However, we insist that Every person is a worldalso psychopaths, and that is why it is important to know our -future- partner in depth, as well as freeing ourselves from the prejudices that we may have at first.

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