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If you’ve been with a narcissist, chances are you’ve got the Dangles. This is standard, common-grade narcissism: The guy comes back after pulling away, far away, only to dangle shiny words, promises, and other attention-grabbers in front of you looking for a response.

Waiting for ol’ narcissist-boy to stop with the constant post-breakup contact, sucking you back into his mind-maul world and trashing your soul and ego even more than before? (And who knew that was even possible?) Wondering when he’ll finally leave you alone and quit with the Dangles, so you can heal?

Got that answer for you right here. Now, where did I put it?… I just had it… Ah, here it is:

NEVER!

As long as the toad thinks he can pull you close enough to suck more of your energy, as long as he thinks you’ll give him the time of day, as long as he thinks you’ll play along and be a good little victim (seriously, this is how he thinks), he’s going to come back for more. 100% guaranteed. More energy, good vibes, attention, and drama for him; more misery, disappointment and frustration for you. 100% guaranteed. Ah, the luxury of certainty! The comfort and security of a sure thing!

Not.

To get rid of this albatross around your neck and his stupid Dangles, you need to take matters into your own hands. YOU need to end it. YOU need to derail his train of destruction and soul-stomping that’s barreling through your life.

Fortunately, this isn’t hard. As soon as you cut off the free, unrequited love and attention, as soon as he realizes you’re not giving out emotional SWAG anymore, the mooch will go away. He’ll come back later, just to check; tell him he’s a bore and then ignore him, and he’ll check in with decreasing frequency. Once he gets it that you see him for what he is and that he’ll get nothing more from you, he’ll give up and go away.

The truth of this hurts. But you’ll get over the pain of moving forward; you’d never get over the pain of trying to work with him.

So, when Narcy-Pants comes along and dangles sweet words or promises in front of you looking for your willingness to play along, see it for the Dangles infection that it is, hit the delete button, and get rid of the problem once and for all.

Now, if you’re like most people who’ve been steamrollered by a narcissist, you’ve had a discussion or an activity (or a thousand of them) between the two of you completely fall apart and end up tense and miserable, and found the blame for that laid squarely on you. As a Very Nice Person, you’ve been willing to consider that you MIGHT have had something to do with it. But I bet you’ve been so confused about what went down that you’re wondering what you did wrong just because it’s impossible to sort out what happened, and he’s telling you it’s your fault. You sort of know you didn’t cause the breakdown in communication, but you don’t see what happened, and if he says he does, maybe he does.

And that paragraph was MUCH easier to understand than the random meltdown of a narcissist.

Let’s look at what really happened, and then next time he completely screws up a nice time (you ARE still with him, aren’t you? Please? For me?), you can see if this resonates with what seems to be going on.

The reason these freaky fights, struggles and meltdowns can be so hard to figure out is that it wasn’t an event, or words, or deeds that started it. I know it LOOKS like it was something you said or did, or something he “felt” or thought or “misinterpreted”. And I’ll bet the farm that he’s SAYING it’s something you said or did. But what really happened first was a totally unpredictable and irrational explosion of anxiety, rage and/or terror inside his head. THAT is what happened first. It happens a lot, and he can’t control it. Then, feeling that awful anxiety or rage, he looks around for someplace to put it, because he sure as hell can’t just hold it and deal with it. He has to vomit it out. Oh, and look who’s right there.

You.

So, suddenly, on an otherwise splendid day, he’s all uptight, furious, making bizarre assumptions, and generally being an ass and blaming you for what amounts to one thing — making him feel the way he feels. Yet the truth is, it’s his screwed up head that’s making him feel the way he feels. It’s his disorder, his disease. It has nothing to do with you. But you’re a close target, and he sure as hell isn’t going to handle his feelings like a grown-up. He’s gonna act like a deranged ape and get rid of as much toxic emotion as he can.

By spraying it out onto you.

Through tantrums, passive aggression, withholding, or overt abuse, he’s going to pretend you caused it, you did it, you started it. The truth is even scarier, and weirder: What started it was invisible and completely erratic pinballs of hate slamming around and wreaking havoc in his head. Not even he sees the meltdowns coming. The nasty feelings come first, out of nowhere, like a pop-up clown in a pinball machine.

And you sure don’t need me to tell you what comes next.

Friends, please don’t take on the responsibility for bad scenes just because he says you should. And please don’t waste a lot of time struggling to figure out his moods. They’re as random as the banging around of a pinball.

We have a lot to talk about, and much to do. But let’s get warmed up with a few quotes. After all, when something needs to be said, sometimes someone’s already said it.

“…(T)he problem isn’t that a guy with a personality disorder needs more time or love, it’s that you’re working with extremely poor material. These guys have something wrong with them. And our goal is to get to a place where, when we hear that and know it’s true, we say, ‘Enough said.’ ”
–L.M.

“With toxic men, relationships without boundaries are downright dangerous. You lose yourself in his reality, and his reality is a distorted, self-centered one.”
–Joseph W. Rock, Psy.D and Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”
–Carl Bard

“… Controllers are shocked if the relationship ends. They not only don’t know that they are pretending, they don’t know that their ignorance predisposes them to mind-boggling behaviors. Their idea of themselves as “wonderful” blinds them to the impact of their behavior — reactions to, and defenses against, all threats to their illusory connection. They are difficult to deal with at best. They are terrifying and life-threatening at worst.”
–Patricia Evans

“[The narcissist] is a … master at frustrating others – frustrating their small and big hopes, their need for attention, reassurance, time, company, enjoyment. When others remonstrate against such treatment, [he tells himself] it is their neurotic sensitivity that makes them react this way.”
–Karen Horney MD

“What you are will show in what you do.”
–Thomas A. Edison

“[The narcissist] may be extremely proud, consciously or unconsciously, of his faculty of fooling everybody — and in his arrogance and contempt for others believes that he actually succeeds in this.”
–Karen Horney MD

Got any quotables you’d like to share?

Now you’ve done it. Forced to choose between your own sanity, your future and sense of self, and the arbitrary, absurdly selfish whims of a mentally ill manipulator, you’ve chosen the high road to peace and clear thinking. You’ve broken up with the narcissist.

IT’S NOT TOO LATE!!!! CALL HIM!!! Beg his forgiveness! Yes, he’ll wiggle with glee at your showering him with this attention and taunt you with ambivalence or outright haughty insults as punishment for your taking control of your own life, but hang in
there! You might still be able to resume your place in his whacked psychoworld!

OK. I know. You miss him. We all know how that feels. But, now, let’s take a peek at this ‘missing’ thing.

I assume we all agree that with narcissists, we’re generally dealing with two people: The guy he is, and the guy he pretended to be. You miss one of them. I take it we all know which one.

Pretend Guy is gone. Deceased. This hurts. This really hurts. It needs to be mourned. In addition to the loss of Pretend Guy, you’ve got mucho grande abuses heaped on you by Actual Guy. Topping off this pile of misery and trauma, Actual Guy and Pretend Guy inhabit the same body. Only another psycho wouldn’t be thrown into a tailspin by the surreality of it all.

When he calls you after the breakup, he sounds just like Pretend Guy! ‘You’re alive!,’ you think. ‘You’re not dead! Yes, YOU are my true love! You’re finally back! Oh, WHEN can I see you?’

Whoa, there, Sister. Let me spare you a tiny bit of hurt here by having us skip ahead to where he slams you again and you wake up in the harsh, cold world of Reality. Things just got even worse. Pretend Guy is still gone, Actual Guy is still abusing you, Pretend Guy and Actual Guy are still the same guy, AND now any baby steps into healing you might have made just got deleted into nothingness.

And you wonder how he’s feeling. Of course you do; not only are you sensitive and caring (narcissists don’t pick hardasses for partners), but you’re conditioned to feel that way. The entire relationship was about him and his wants and needs. He literally trained you to think of little else. The real you, the pre-narcissist you, doesn’t want an abusive, mentally ill, inconsistent, selfish freak, ridiculous in his pandering for attention, chock full of contempt and inner conflicts that spill out and burn you. The real you wants a real partner.

“Hey,” I hear one loyal heroine say. “Don’t talk about him like that! He’s NOT an abusive, selfish freak! He’s…. Well, OK, he’s an abusive, inconsistent, selfish, ridiculous, freak, but he’s MY abusive, selfish freak!” Oh. Sorry. Hey, didn’t I see you last week on Jerry Springer?

For the rest of us, we need to heed the experiences of my online friend Lin. Lin’s man came on strong. Charming. Wonderful. They married, and he immediately became selfish, cold, and ambivalent about their marriage but refused to leave; he was unempathic, wildly defensive and manipulative. He was a Narcissist. Lin knew something was morbidly wrong, but she stayed; he’d grow distant, she’d work to make it better. How long did this go on before she read the writing on the wall?

Friend Lin stayed with her narcissist for three decades, until she ‘selfishly’ left him to preserve the remaining shards of sanity she had. I wonder if she has any regrets about leaving and wishes she could have him back, or if she has any general advice for the rest of us. Let’s ask her, shall we?

Aunt Alex: Hey, Lin. Do you have any advice for the gals out here who are on the fence about their narcissist partners?

Lin: G E T! O U T! I WENT THROUGH YEARS OF HELL. I SHOULD HAVE LEFT THIRTY YEARS AGO. I WANT MY THIRTY YEARS BACK!!!

Hmmm. Well, don’t pay any attention to her. She should have stayed for 31 years; maybe THEN he would have changed. Besides, YOUR narcissist is different! HE’LL get better! He will! I swear! Please, just take him back and get him away from the rest of us…

When we leave the narcissist, it’s because the abuse has gotten intolerable. Afterward, when he calls us and pushes the buttons he knows extremely well, the temptation to give him another chance can be overwhelming. We’re hurt; we’re mad; we want to recoup some of our losses; we love him and want it to work; we just can’t believe that anyone would be so warped as to hurt us that way, so we want to give them the benefit of the doubt. All roads point to trying again with the narcissist.

Except for one. Reality. Which is Truth. Reality is Knowledge, and Honesty with yourself. It’s Your peace. Your health. This road points in the opposite direction, away from the narcissist. Yes, it’s an uphill road, but if you can invest in the climb, the view from the top is spectacular.

Does it seem like if you just invested enough love and time in the narcissist, well, it just can’t help but to get better?

Our Lin spent 30 years wanting her narcissist to get better. I wonder if he started to get a little better around year 10. Or year 17. Year 23? Year 29? Is Lin content that she tried hard enough to make the relationship work? Let’s ask Lin.

Aunt Alex: Hey, Lin, are you glad you spent 30 years in a ‘relationship’ with a narcissist?

Lin: AAUUUUUGGGGGGHHHH……. AAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKHHHHHH….

Sorry, folks. Apparently I said something wrong.

So.

I hear you’re beginning to consider thinking about mulling over the possibility of your perhaps pulling away from that narcissist of yours.

WHY??!! Why unleash his toxic spewage on the rest of us; why grasp at the vision of a happy and fulfilling life for yourself while making the rest of us targets for his fake, psychopathic pursuits?

AFTER ALL I’VE DONE FOR YOU??!!

All right. If you’re going to continue with this infuriatingly healthy, sane line of thinking, there are some things you should know.

**Narcissists HATE to lose. When you say, “It’s over,” you, a sane person, mean, “It’s over.” To the psycho you’re talking to, however, you are throwing down the gauntlet and saying, “Take THAT, Buttface.” If you say it’s over, he’ll instantly click into “I don’t think so” mode. Which brings us to:

**He WILL pursue victory. He won’t pursue YOU. It will LOOK like he’s pursuing you, but I assure you most vigorously, he’s not. He’s wanting to put things right back to the way they’re SUPPOSED to be, with him screwing with your mind and your taking it, with you’re dousing him with adoration and admiration no matter how he treats you, and if you take him back he WILL incorporate in there some punishment for your “abandoning” him. He wants you back, all right, but on his terms, with exactly the same degree of selfishness and psychopathy as before. Nothing has changed. If you respond to him and give him another chance, you’ll regret it.

**He will want to check up on you. Because he loves you? Oh, my, you haven’t been listening, have you. No, because he wants to make sure you’re suffering without him.

Memorize this: Knowing you’re miserable without him is as satisfying to him as having you with him.

If he can’t keep you feeding him attention in the relationship, he wants to know that you’re thinking of him and having a hard time without him afterward. He’ll eventually offer to alleviate your suffering by accepting any and all apologies and taking you back, and then once you’re together again he’ll abuse you until you get sick of it and end it again. If he can keep you swaying nauseatingly between the two situations indefinitely, he will be having a very happy time of it indeed.

**Your only hope for success is a cold turkey break-up. No, you can’t “still be friends.” No, the occasional e-mail is not harmless. Narcissists who have been dumped will NOT be normal ex-mates any more than they were normal mates. Respond to him and he will, without fail, hurt you and devalue you again. Every little contact, every “chance encounter,” will set you back in recovering from what’s been a psychologically traumatic experience for you. You can’t heal from a trauma you’re still experiencing. If you’re going to recover from this, you MUST stay away from him. Marvel from a distance at his efforts to hurt and abuse you even though you’re not even together anymore.

There are a couple of different strains of narcissistic ex-mates.

The Herpes Narcissist ~ He never goes away completely and flares up when you need it the least. He will come back and act like absolutely nothing has happened and the two of you were just having a tiny tiff, for which he’s prepared to forgive you. He’ll act this way even though you’ve been ignoring him for four months and have a restraining order out on him. This looks like love and devotion on his part, but it’s not. If you warm to him in a weak moment he’ll do a brilliant job of reminding you why you left him in the first place, and you’ll have suffered a major setback.

The Lyme Disease Narcissist ~ He goes away, but not until you’ve employed radical defense routines for months and then you’re left with bothersome lasting reminders of the experience. If you were married and have kids together, he’ll make your divorce proceedings a living hell just like he did your marriage. He’ll act like he can’t wait to get rid of you, and then stall and impede the divorce as much as humanly possible just to make sure you know who’s in control. And that’s BEFORE the real nightmare begins, with the custody arrangements. You need to stay as strong as a pillar of rock to get through it, and then you still have to deal with him until the kids are grown.

The Itchy Rash Narcissist ~ The best of the four, really. The only way to get over an itchy rash is to ignore it no matter how excruciatingly annoying it is, no matter how much you know giving it attention with bring relief, and then after ages of depriving it of attention it really does go away.

A very few extremely lucky targets (as target luck goes) are dealing with a Train Wreck Narcissist. These jewels will, often without warning or provocation, leave suddenly and completely with as much cruelty and abuse as possible and are never heard from again. Often they will sniff a hint of intent on your part to end or at least abate the abuse you’re enduring, and in a knee-jerk response they’ll do what they perceive to be abandoning you before you abandon them, and they’ll do it coldly, harshly and totally. Though their targets are devastated and profoundly hurt, they are left alone to commence their recovery without threat of interference from the abuser. They don’t feel even remotely lucky, and I have utter compassion for that, but in the context of recovering targets, they’re sitting prettier than they’ll ever know: It’s a whole lot easier to recover from a trauma that you’re not still experiencing, over and over again.

The best way to get rid of a narcissistic tumor on your life is to “stay down” in his eyes when he’s in his stupid devalue-you stage. It’s like a head start on a new life without his crap. He’ll probably ignore you and treat you like dirt, and then, later, want to see you again. Here’s where you ignore him. Treat him as you would the unfortunate young man two doors down who has a man’s body but the wits of a four-year-old, and who knows how to dial your number and send e-mails but who has absolutely nothing to say. Just likes doing it. Get caller ID and don’t answer his calls. Delete messages without reading them. If he shows up, keep the conversation on the doorstep– don’t let him in. Just answer with bland monosyllabic responses, no questions. They HATE to be thought of as boring; if that’s the vibe he gets from you, he’ll fade away comparatively quickly.

Trust me. This is what you want.

All narcissists are selfish, mentally disturbed abusers. They’re not cute, they’re not cuddly, they don’t have “hidden potential.” They don’t “get better.” They’re self-absorbed actors pretending whatever they have to in order to get attention. Period. Hear the fat lady singing?

After an experience with a narcissist, you’ll need to recover. You’ve been badly used and abused, and you need to face that in order to go on and have a healthy, whole life. You need to mourn and you need to get mad about how that assclown had the nads to hurt you like that, before you can heal. Remember: Every word, glimpse or gesture from or about him is a trigger, a set-back, and the fewer of these you allow into your life, the faster and cleaner your recovery will be.

Take the word passion. Split it up, add a handful of letters, and you get passive aggression!

Coincidence? I think not!

Narcissists have to feel like you think they’re supremely and exquisitely perfect, all of the time. (If you fail in making them feel that way, the problem is with you, not them.) They also need to punish you for slights such as wanting them to be honest and direct with you, and they devalue you so that you don’t threaten them with intimacy and healthy expectations. One wouldn’t think they could accomplish both being perfect and being punishing and devaluing at the same time, but they’re damn well going to try. What ensues is passive aggression.

Narcissists love passive aggression because they get to be cruel, sadistic and punishing without having it overtly look that way. They can pull nasty stunts and have it look like an accident or like the responsibility of someone else, most likely you. They love being “late” for dates and appointments with you. They love telling you they’ll do something and then saying later that you misunderstood. They really love sniveling little digs like, “Last night with you was fun. You were hardly critical or nagging at all.”

The most prevalent passion you’re going to get from the narcissist, far more than romantic passion and even more yet than passion for life, is passive aggression. Narcissists throw great energy and practice into their passive aggression. As a result they’re good at it, though not usually very subtle.

His favorite passive aggressive move will be ignoring you. Days without word from him, if you’re dating; days without touching you or talking to you in complete sentences, if you’re living with him.

If something is important to you or hard for you, he’ll minimize it and turn your attention to himself. If your mother is terminally ill or you just found out you can’t have children, he’ll manage to be away from you for long periods of time and when he’s with you he’ll talk about the biggest issue in his own life, usually something like his ingrown toenail or how his boss snubbed him that day.

If you’re laying in bed weak with the flu and have four or five kids galloping around needing parenting, he’ll go ahead and knock off work early on Friday and go on a four-hour kayaking trip with a couple (predominantly female) friends. Then he’ll call you from the parking lot on the way home and ask if he can pick you up some soda crackers or something, and expect to be showered with appreciation and await your tears of joy at having someone so deeply considerate as he. When you fail to do so, it will be YOU and your COLD, unloving self that is responsible for any ensuing tension.

And tension there will be, if you persist in your irrational assaults of pointing out his behavior. PLAY ALONG, DAMMIT!! He’ll be giving you a chance to make up for your lack of appreciation, your attacks on his very being, your being sick in the first place; APOLOGIZE! Then the passive aggression can eventually subside.

People with extended exposure to narcissists need intensive therapy. They’re often on anti-depressant medication and have health problems like migraines and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. They’ve forgotten their purpose in life and they feel numb. They can have symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Prolonged Duress Stress Disorder.

Coincidence?

I think not.

All you idealistic young (i.e. younger than 25) whippersnappers out there might not remember this, but Jon Lovitz used to have a character on Saturday Night Live called the Master Thespian. He was a caricature of a stage actor backstage, in a silk robe and scarf, with pompous gestures and a hilariously dramatic voice. He’d act out “rage” or “anguish,” and his fellow thespian, being understandably fooled and taking him oh so seriously, would try to assuage him. Here, Master Thespian would say:

“Acting!”

His friend would cry, “Brilliant!”

Master Thespian would reply, “Thank You!”

Which brings us to your cuddly life partner, the narcissist. (You ARE still with him, aren’t you? You PROMISED to keep him, don’t forget. That way he only annoys the rest of us by flirting with us unrelentingly and making us gag with his pomposity, rather than his actually putting us at risk by pursuing us.)

No actor on earth is more the master thespian than the narcissist. Actors take breaks. Not so the narcissist. He is ALWAYS acting. His whole life is pretend. This is one of the biggest cues to most people that the narcissist has something weird and creepy about him; he can’t help but show himself as ridiculously and somewhat nauseatingly fake. He seems shallow and untrustworthy in his fakery. He seems that way because he is that way.

He feels exceedingly comfortable fantasizing because it feels like real life to him; nice, comfy and familiar. He spends a lot of time fantasizing because real life tends to let him down a lot, since all the stupid boors around him fail to see him for his true worth, and in fantasy he can revel in the worship that is his due. The trouble is, his actual presentation is so fake that it gets all mixed up with his fantasies, and so here is one thing the narcissist will never, ever say:

“Acting!”

In fact, if you EVER suggest he’s faking or playing up anything, chances are he’ll turn on you like a rabid jackal and hate your guts the rest of your life. His image of perfection means that he must be seen as authentic and credible, and that the perfect shell he projects is perfectly believable every moment. He’ll tell you you’re projecting, cruel, off-topic and totally wrong. And that HE is REAL.

This is part of the reason why nothing they say means anything. Mostly it’s because they’re forever editing their reality, and if one minute he’s going to marry you and asks you to pick out the house, he’ll likely say the opposite soon afterward and deny ever even suggesting such a thing. But another reason you can’t possibly take these guys seriously is because their whole life is a charade, a drama being read from an ever-changing script. There’s no foundation of meaning or depth of character to anything they say or do, no continuity or rhythm at all. They are truly a thin veneer of plastic personality covering an empty interior. When he seems to love you, he’s faking. When he appears to want to get closer to you, he’s acting. He’s not “exaggerating true feelings” or “especially passionate,” he’s faking. It’s all an act designed to get you to feed him attention and adoration. Yes, it really is that sick. And yes, he’ll always devalue you in the end. Every single time.

Ah, the stimulating challenge of it! You are one lucky mama– you get to play daily head games and you keep your mind sharp by second-guessing every single thing out of his mouth, AND you get drama, you get theater, you get play-acting that, admittedly, isn’t even remotely entertaining, but is all his disturbed personality can muster.

Whoops, there comes your man the narcissist.

Lights.

Camera.

ACTION!

Ever wonder how the narcissist you know can live with himself? Well, the best weapon in his self-love arsenal is something I like to call Selective Editing.

The narcissist edits the past. He edits the present. He’ll tell himself things are exactly the way they need to be for him to have an unblemished, sterling image of himself, even if that involves saying you started an argument when you hadn’t even opened your mouth, or saying he was hurt that you avoided him yesterday when actually he’d told you a week ago he needed a break from you and not to call, or telling you he loves going out with you and that he loved the opera when the fact is he bitched about the opera from before you left until long after you got home. All with a straight face, a level eye and sometimes a clenched jaw.

If the two of you have a conflict, he’ll tweak the facts as much as he has to to make it all your fault. He’ll tell you how you feel and if, later in the day, he needs you to have felt different, he’ll tweak it again. He shapeshifts to suit his mood (remember the roiling chaos in his head?) and to appear the star of any moment, and any tiny or not-so-tiny adjustments to the facts that need to be made for him to be the star are fine. The facts are incidental. Your feelings are of no import. What truly counts is his thinking he’s perfect.

Some people call this “lying,” but there is actually a nuance of a difference in that as the words are leaving his mouth the narcissist actually believes what he’s saying. He not only thinks it’s true, he’ll defend it to the death.

Until he forgets it twenty seconds later.

Then, whatever is leaving his mouth THEN is the inviolable truth.

If he contradicts himself? Point this out to him. Some of the best narcissist lines ever uttered can come next.

“I know it can seem that way sometimes to you. It’s inevitable.”
“You weren’t listening the first time.”
“Not at all. Both are true, just in different ways.”
“I don’t have to be consistent to be right. Everyone knows that.”
“What, are you calling me a liar? Aren’t you projecting a little here?”

One can only watch in speechless wonder as the narcissist, endowed with the powers of the Great and Wonderful Oz, knits and weaves such fanciful fiction, such utter animal excrement, out of nowhere to “explain” his behavior, mood or inclination of the moment. If he needs you to have been inexplicably distant in the recent past, you were. If he needs to have been gushingly attentive while you were so distant, he was. He’ll take the tiniest, most unrelated detail and inflate it into an event of such import as to direct the rest of your future together. He’ll take a response on your part to his selfishness or manipulation (You: “I’m sorry, but if you’re going to always pull away from me like this when I need you the most, then I think we need to reassess our relationship”), and create a story around it that has him the victim of your senseless wrath, your fickle and arbitrary abuse. (Him, later, about the words above: “Like that time you broke us up– and, I’d like you to admit you did break us up– because of your unrealistic expectations of me, and blindsiding me when I needed you the most?”)

Reality is highly malleable in Narcissist World. What can’t be messed with is his pathological idea of his own unique perfection. And he needs YOU to reassure him of that perfection with a neverending flow of attention, adoration and praise. If you’re hopelessly stuck in reality like the boring boorish masses (that is, good, cool people with no psychiatric disorders to hide) and can’t spend your life in his world where it’s a privilege to help distort the truth to accommodate his self-image and worship his magnificent being, then there’s gonna be a problem.

OK. On a less acerbic note.

Now, we know love is a good thing. Good love involves exchanging respect, affection, time and support with someone special. It feels good and when it has rough spots the two parties work them through.

But the harsh truth is that there are those among us who don’t love. And when they pretend to, at our expense, that’s a painful thing for the rest of us. They pretend to love because they know we’ll love them back and they like the way it feels when we adore them and struggle to make a relationship with them work. It makes them feel special.

But one day we look up and we see that we’re the one putting in all the respect, affection, time and support, and they’re taking it as well-deserved worship and hold out their hands for more.

We try to work through rough spots. And with a narcissist that’s where the REAL ouchies kick in.

In rough spots good people look at the matter and review their own role in it as well as that of their partner. Narcissists are so desperate to always look perfect to themselves that the chances are zero of them ever considering they might have caused someone discomfort. So, if the two of you have a problem, guess whose fault it is?

In rough spots good people look toward the goal of working it out and going on in better understanding. Narcissists would rather dump the whole thing and start fresh with someone else. If you’re with a narcissist, your purpose in life is to reassure them that they’re as perfect as they want to be. So, if you find that there’s something imperfect about them and show it, as in your saying, “You hurt my feelings,” “But you said you’d call. I needed to hear from you,” or “Why did you spend our whole night at the party talking to the pretty woman from work?”, then you aren’t doing your job and may need to be replaced with someone much weaker or more troubled. (Healthy, strong people defend their due and their boundaries in relationships. Narcissists hate that.)

In rough spots, good people engage in logical though maybe passionate debates about the issues. They ask each other what they want and use that information to make each other and themselves happy and fulfilled. A narcissist may very well ask you what you want; they’ll then use that information to manipulate you by threatening to withhold what you need and try to extract more attention and reassurance from you. And this is what you’ll get in return: punishment for having challenged their perfection in the first place. Threats of abandonment. Accusations. Contempt.

Does all this sound far-fetched and like a lame made-for-TV movie? Then you’ve never had an encounter with a narcissist.

If you’re with a narcissist, do research. Write your feelings down. Get some therapy. Do whatever helps, but before you do anything, get out. Just get out. And don’t look back. The view ain’t pretty.

Any more traits lying around here?

“Exploitive…”

Oh, ignore that. It sounds so negative. They don’t ‘exploit,’ per se, they just… ‘enjoy and don’t bother reciprocating.’

Let’s say you’re seeing a dashing, sensitive narcissist. You meet at the beach, have a picnic that you brought, you listen to his bitching and tell him what a masterful work of art he is; you walk back to your house, you make love; he naps, gets up and showers, and, with a kiss, of course, leaves and you don’t hear from him for a week. A normal guy might call, send flowers, ask you out the next night, take you to meet his friends, something boring like that. But a narcissist, he’s got things to do! People to see! PRIORITIES! If you say, “I need to see you more. I feel like you don’t take us seriously,” he’ll probably respond with a reassuring and comforting selection from the following, meant to end the discussion cold:

“I know. This is hard.”
“I just don’t know if I can.”
“Maybe you just need to decide what we have is enough.”
“But this is special. Like a summertime affair. We’re like kids again.”
“I do take it seriously. It just doesn’t seem that way to you. Maybe something’s wrong with you.”

“Sense of entitlement…”

Well, yes. When he’s the most special, unique butthole in existence, he has certain perks. One is that he gets to do whatever he wants, to whomever he wants, right at that moment. This is particularly so as applied to you, the one who loves him. He gets to flirt and not have it bother you. He gets to ignore you and have you gush with joy when you see him next, like some codependent Irish Setter. He gets to tell you it’s over and dump you and then come back to your open arms when he’s short on attention from other people. And, most of all, he gets to soak up the attention you give him, bask in it, and then sneer at you and go get more from someone else.

Now, some of these “medical criteria” can be a little vague; let’s see if we can be a little more experience-based about it:

If the most sensitive thing he’s said in six months is, “Your sister’s really beautiful,” or, “I mean, she’s REALLY beautiful,” he might be a narcissist.

If he’s so fake that professional actors walk away from him weeping openly with feelings of inadequacy, he might be a narcissist.

If the only time he gives you a gift of any substance is when he wants something from you or he thinks it will impress other people, he might be a narcissist.

If his idea of a close, intimate evening involves his telling you in front of a fireplace that he might be in love with someone else, or getting up and leaving early because he has “things he has to do,” and he drops these stink-bombs so often that you’ve come to expect them, he might be a narcissist.

If after sex you have the vague, persistent feeling that you should have been paid for what just took place, he might be a narcissist.

If he’s sitting at a funeral service and he whispers to you, “Aren’t they going to have SOME kind of entertainment?”, he might be a narcissist.

If he broke it off with you, sucked you back in, broke it off with you, sucked you back in, broke it off with you, and, when you resisted his sucking you back in he REALLY turned on the charm and pushed all your buttons and did everything humanly possible to suck you back in until you caved and you were sucked back in, and then he broke it off with you, he’s very probably a narcissist.

If within ten hours after your wedding he undergoes a shift that would make Dr. Jekyl jealous and acts like he can’t stand being with you, a demeanor that hangs around in varying degrees for the rest of your relationship, he’s very probably a narcissist.

And if he acts like a warm, devoted, responsive partner when other people are looking, and then literally drops his arm from around your shoulders after they’ve left and, when you try to elicit more attention from him, he blocks you, he’s definitely a narcissist.

If your narcissist throws you a crumb of attention, take it and savor it and deluge him with appreciation for it. Do NOT under ANY circumstances snort with disgust and drop his sorry ass to free yourself up for someone much, much better. Hang onto him at all costs. ALL COSTS. This won’t do you a damn bit of good, but it will help keep him away from the rest of us.