Author Archives: alexandra nouri

I love Cat Stevens. I know there was all that kerfuffle about his allegiances and such, but none of that can change how old-school great his music is.

In his song Oh Very Young, the lyrics actually aren’t the most comprehensible in his oeuvre, but here’s a clip:

And though your dreams may toss and turn you now
They will vanish away like your daddy’s best jeans
Denim Blue fading up to the sky
And though you want him to last forever
You know he never will
(You know he never will)
And the patches make the goodbye harder still.

So, by the end of the verse, I’m not sure if he’s talking about dreams, the dad or the dad’s clothes, but I LOVE this line:

And the patches make the goodbye harder still.

The more you take care of something, the harder it is to let go when you must.

Entanglements with narcissists are no different. Take two couples. Both have a narcissist in them. Both last the same duration — say, eight months. One is a relationship where they don’t get to spend a whole lot of time together, and so the relationship crashes and burns and needs to be rebuilt only six or eight times. But the other happens to be more intense, and the sane partner in that one finds herself constantly under threat of loss, and with many upheavals and repairs — with Herculean effort, she’s temporarily repaired things a couple dozen times.

Both of these people are going to be roadkill by the time the narcissist is done with them, but the second babe is the one who’s going to have a harder time recovering. She gave so much of herself, and put so much work and love into constantly patching things up, that the loss is of the man, the potential, the hope, the dreams — AND all that careful crafting she did. The extra soul she put into it. The patches.

Now of course, there’s a moral to this story, and of course it is this — ALWAYS keep trying, and ALWAYS pour yourself into a narcissist relationship, and make it last as long as possible. Hmm — you’re not buying it this time, are you. OK, fine. The moral is, a relationship with a narcissist IS going to hurt when it ends. And more fixing, mending and soul on your part will only make that inevitable final hurt more intense, more eviscerating, and more intolerable. (Yes, I know those all generally mean the same thing. But if you’ve been with a narcissist, you know how important it is to drive that point home.)

Patches extending the life of a beloved pair of jeans — priceless. Patches extending the time with a narcissist — ruinous.

Generally, Aunt Alex doesn’t like to delve into the whys and wherefores of what goes on inside the “brains” of narcissists, as this tends to encourage thinking about him and even feeling sorry for him. However, she understands the questions don’t fizzle away that easily, and can be distracting. That “roadkill” feeling can be soothed with yet another reminder that there’s no way you did anything wrong in the relationship, and nothing you could have done. So, let’s take on a few of those questions here.

“Why are narcissists the way they are?”

There’s some minor disagreement about this, but the reality is pretty clear: They’re born that way. They’re born with a major personality defect; the whole empathy – interrelationship piece is missing. If it seems like he MIGHT be damaged because one or another parent was horrible and he had to grow up with them, then the horrible parent is probably the one from whom he inherited the damage he was born with. Key point: It’s permanent, it’s not fixable, and he will never, ever have an awakening to the power of love or the instincts of bonding. He’ll never grow, and he’ll never change.

“Don’t they get lonely? Doesn’t this make them want to be better people?”

They’re ALWAYS lonely. That’s one of the things for which they use other people; they’re always seeking to abate the crushing loneliness they have. But normal people get lonely when their friends and family aren’t available; narcissists are lonely because they have zero people to whom they’re connected, because THEY CAN’T CONNECT. The narcissist himself is the broken link. It’s not that there’s no one special for him to connect with, or no one with whom he can be friends. He could be in a stadium full of people who adore and admire him, and two hours after the glow has dissipated, he’s just as bleakly and hopelessly lonely as ever. But he’s too broken to do anything meaningful about it, so he uses people, family, partners, girlfriends, friends, even kids, hopping from one giving person to the next, constantly embezzling their emotional strength, in order to keep from feeling bad. Yes, it’s that pathetic. No, there is NOTHING you can do for him.

“Does he miss me?”

Oh, boy. First, you deserve better than what he was throwing at you. You’re emotionally generous (which is why he picked you), loving, and without question can do better. You’re special. But one of the ways in which these asshats are a disaster is that they can’t — not ‘don’t’, but CAN’T — value a person. Valuing, missing, wanting, loving a person involves bonding with them, and that equipment is missing in a narcissist. He doesn’t miss anyone, ever. He misses the attention, the sex, the appearances of being in a couple. He feels sorry for himself that he’s not being taken care of, or coddled, or paid attention to. But only normal people miss other people. To narcissists, attention is like a drug, and they don’t really care who’s pushing it, as long as the drug makes him feel good.

“Why me?”

Because you’re emotionally generous. Did you have a narcissist as a parent, which “bent” your boundaries when it comes to them? Maybe, maybe not. Do you have a taste for bad boys, or for lost souls? Maybe, maybe not. What’s a certainty is that you’re emotionally generous, which is a fabulous gift that I want you to cherish, not change. Emotional generosity isn’t a problem, or a fault. It’s part of being a loving person and having a rich and meaningful life. The only thing we’re going to “change” is the boundaries — beefing them up so that people with personality disorders don’t barge in and wreak havoc like a rabid yak in a china shop. Narcissists can smell emotional generosity from a mile away, and they bolt on in and immediately start charming, intoxicating, and figuring out how to push your buttons. All with the cold calculation of a serial criminal.

Sound creepy? It is. And now you understand why Aunt Alex is so hopeful that you’ll hang on to these guys, and distract them away from the rest of us.

“If only.” Now there is some loaded words right there, I don’t care who y’are. (Ahem. Pardon me, I was just briefly taken over by my inner hick.) Those words have lots of power. The problem is, none of that power is good.

“If only I can get him to see that….” “If only he would understand that…” “If only we could communicate about…” With narcissists, the ways to complete those sentences, or mix them into new ones, is endless. This is because a narcissist is rarely BLATANTLY useless at something, or OBVIOUSLY permanently defective. From where his partner sits, it looks like they’re so close to making it work. It’s not like wishing pigs could fly, which is so clearly and ridiculously impossible. It feels more like wanting chickens to fly — they’re just so CLOSE to flying sometimes, like when they jump off a perch and flap their wings. It feels like narcissists start out a day or an hour with such promise, and then it collapses into disappointment and pain because of… something. What is it? Well, no doubt it would help, and be better, if only… If only. With a narcissist, it always seems like there’s still… hope.

Narcissists LOVE creating this feeling in their partner, because it keeps her sucked in. It ALSO keeps her believing that if SHE makes some or another change, or if SHE cobbles together a workable plan (because SHE’S the one feeling like there’s a problem), they’ll be a fabulous success as a couple. They’ll be happy, relaxed, and the model of bonding and intimacy. If only. If only we can fix this one part, things would be awesome.

“If only” is a very common and not necessarily unhealthy place for our heads to go. It turns into a problem when, with narcissists, we believe we can actually create, or wait out, or “find” those conditions that resolve the “if only” deficit. We continue struggling. Seeking. Compromising. For something that will never, ever come together, because we’re trying to play Patty-Cake with an armless puppet — he doesn’t have the equipment to bond, or be fair, or be a good guy. He couldn’t if he tried. This sounds harsh, I know, but, if only it weren’t true…

Here’s one that works: If only he weren’t a narcissist, you’d stand a chance as a couple.