Are we naive?

1.Naive: having or showing unaffected simplicity of nature or absence of artificiality; unsophisticated; ingenuous.

2.

having or showing a lack of experience, judgment, or information; credulous: She's so naive she believes everything she reads. He has a very naive attitude toward politics.

3.

having or marked by a simple, unaffectedly direct style reflecting little or no formal training or technique: valuable naive 19th-century American portrait paintings.

In a world with 500+ TV stations, thousands of newspapers and magazines, 24 hour news channels from around the world, millions of movies, books and videos instantly accessible and downloadable to portable devices and the internet….unless you live on a remote island with no electricity, it is difficult at best to be naïve in this day and age.

However, when we hear of the horrors in the world, and we view the “bad guys” from the myopic view of the media, we are only getting a glimpse into the worst personality disorders have to offer. What we usually see are extremes, extreme examples of psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissistic people. The “villain”, the hardened criminals. Their crimes are heinous, unthinkable and happen “out there.”

In our own worlds, we haven’t run into to those types. We know to avoid certain neighborhoods because certain “elements” stay there, hoping to target an unsuspecting victim for their own personal gain. We protect ourselves by not walking alone down a city street at night, in hopes to prevent being accosted by a really BAD guy.

Rapist, serial killers, thieves, gang bangers-that’s the portrayal of sociopath most of us have seen, and seen from the nightly news, to horror movies, to stories on Oprah.

Politicians, actors, musicians and sports figures are the best view of narcissism we have, from the outside looking in.

But one needn’t be in these big leagues in order to be personality disordered enough, to ruin lives, hearts and bring a lot of damage and trauma to a soul. These are frankly, the worst offenders of all….because there is no warning. There is no stereotype where we can assume arrogance-a rich surgeon, a successful lawyer, a driven political activist. There are no gang colors or signs to let us know we should cross to the other side of the street. They don’t look sinister, aren’t necessarily decked out with tattoos, piercing and muscles, in other words, they don’t fit the stereotype for bad, monstrous people.

So when THEY come along……we are stunned to discover that even though they don’t fit the “mold”, they are in fact, as evil as all of the above. This, we find incredulous. Our minds simply can’t wrap itself around the fact that a normal, average run of the mill guy, could be as calculating, devious and manipulative as some mafia grunt. We fail to see how it’s possible that anyone who has never served jail time, much less got a traffic ticket, could be using us and conning us for things we have that they want. After all, bad guys have a “past”, don’t they?

We think that because they’ve never laid a hand on us or any other woman that we are aware of, or because they’ve never killed anyone, raped anyone or hurt any children, that they are not “sociopaths” or “psychopaths.” Because of this, we forgive them. We believe that they may be a lot of things, but certainly nothing as harsh and as loaded as some sort of “path.”

But there is a different kind of psycho than the obvious ones. They are in their own classification. They may never reach notoriety or infamy from their crimes of the heart, but they are just as malignant and troubled as the guy doing the big crimes.

They don’t have to extort millions from companies, don’t have to run shady underground businesses, don’t have to own a gun, or have a trail of felonies. They may in fact seem like pacifist and have never so much gotten into a fight in a bar or while in school with some other guy. They could seem anything but the type, wimpy almost.

I guess you could say there is different levels of evil, just as there is different levels of every emotion in life. So maybe he’s not as bad as the worst, but he’s also nowhere near good of the best. This is where our naietivity comes in. These men manipulate and play women-and that is sociopathic. They stalk, they harass, they are sadistic, and that’s psychopathic, and the guilt trips, the sense of entitlement, the lack of caring and empathy about anything but themselves, is narcissistic. It needn’t be on a grand scale to be true. But when we see loaded words such as these, we can’t help but think of the myriad images for years that have played about psychos, and we compare our men to that. And then, our men are not “like that” so therefore, they aren’t the intense adjectives used here.

So what? So what if they aren’t a true text book of sociopath, psychopath, or narcissist? So what if they just have traits? The traits outweigh the healthy aspects of their personality, therefore its safe to say, they have these problems. You can have a cold, or pneumonia, but does it really matter? Both make a person sick, both exhibit the same symptoms. One may actually kill you, but they will both make you miserable.

So, is it naiveté, or simply being ignorant?

1. Lacking education or knowledge.

2. Showing or arising from a lack of education or knowledge: an ignorant mistake.

3. Unaware or uninformed.

Ignorant means “Not Knowing.” We didn’t know. We didn’t know that these types of psychos exist, because they aren’t the ones getting all the attention. It seems boring in comparison to their much sicker counterparts-but to those of us who have been infected by one, we know that they are just as cruel and malicious and life-altering than the truly devilish ones.

Our ignorance, not our naïveté is the problem. We know there are bad people out there. We aren’t stupid and we protect ourselves from dangers as much as we can.

We just didn’t know that a psycho could look, talk, and be as unassuming as the men we’ve met. But now we are learning. Psychos can live next door to you. They can be your nurse, your mailman, the guy that fixes your car. They can be gregarious and popular and good looking. They can often be viewed as “nice guys” to the outer world. So is it naïveté, or just not realizing, because this isn’t a topic discussed or portrayed much anywhere, that there is this subculture of psycho men (and women?)

I don’t believe its naïveté. I grew up realizing that some people can really suck. This was further emphasized with my best friends murder, and my subsequent job in an Emergency Department where you wouldn’t believe what people do to themselves and each other. If anything, you could say I’m jaded. Definitely not naive. Just didn’t know. But now I do. And I hope I’m helping others to know it, as well.