Aunt Alex’s Army has a manual. I’ll post a chapter tomorrow.
Check it out:
http://tinyurl.com/3j49a6a
Tag Archives: getting over a narcissist
Toads, and the Women Who Kiss Them.
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The First Cut Is The Deepest.
drawing by koren shadmi
OK, Aunt Alex is going to tread into some very delicate territory here. And, no, I don’t mean the risks taken by posting about yet another Cat Stevens song. Though this one is awesome.
I would have given you all of my heart
but there’s someone who’s torn it apart
and she’s taking almost all that I’ve got
but if you want, I’ll try to love again.
Now, I’ve railed pretty consistently about how the people who get tangled up bad with narcissists aren’t the crazy ones in the relationship, and I’ll keep right on railing about it. People get involved with personality disordered people because they’re emotionally generous, not because they seek out the punishment narcissists dish out.
That doesn’t change the facts, though, about how particularly vulnerable people are if they were raised by a narcissistic parent. (VULNERABLE. NOT DEFECTIVE.)
When a kid grows up with a narcissistic parent, they’re forced by the situation to bend their healthy boundaries in order to survive. Their psyche KNOWS Mom (or Dad) is a psycho, but they can’t really internalize that point because little Junior or Jane has to keep living with the Parents from Hell until they reach adulthood. Or, if they’re lucky, until they get rescued by other, much more sane relatives. But usually they have to put up with fake, passive aggressive, no-empathy Mom or Dad for the duration, and they have to be able to get through the day for a whole lot of days before they can leave the nest. So, they bend the boundaries in order to interact with NPD Mom or NPD Dad on a daily basis.
Then, Junior or Jane grows up. They go out into the world. They meet flaming narcissists, who smell their vulnerability from a mile away. They can’t shove them away before the narcissists gets their tentacles wrapped around them, because their boundaries are bent from childhood. So they get sucked in, idealized, devalued, thrown away, dangled, contacted…. You know the routine.
For these folks, the recovery from the narcissist assault is basically the same, but they do need one more step in the process. And that’s to go back to the first cut. When they think about the narcissist’s damages, they also have to think about those of the narcissist parent. When they blow off some healthy anger at the narcissist they broke up with, they also have to let some loose at the narcissist parent. The “no-contact” rule is also perfectly appropriate for narcissistic parents of adult children.
I can’t say this enough: When a kid of a narcissistic parent grows up and end up pairing up with a narcissist, it does NOT mean they’re damaged. Or crazy, or neurotic. It means the boundaries have been bent. Those boundaries can be repaired with some work and time, and the adult kid will go on to live a full, rich, NPD-free life. This is in contrast to the narcissist, who isn’t fixable, has no hope, and will never change.
The first cut is the deepest. If you have a narcissistic parent, then you had a horrible childhood that also needs to be mourned, along with the losses in the break-up with the narcissist. Your parent didn’t bond with you properly, didn’t take care of you properly, and didn’t love you properly. These don’t “damage” a child, but they definitely stiffed you and made you feel unsafe. You did NOT “get yourself” into this current narcissist situation; there is no “repetition compulsion” or “seeking out of abuse”. That victim-blaming is disgusting. Mending and fortifying those instinctive boundaries of yours will put you right where your psyche wants you to be — Creep-free. And it’s never, ever too late to start.
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Patches Make the Goodbye Harder Still.
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.
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How to Make a Narcissist Pay
Mmm, it’s delicious to think about sometimes, isn’t it — making that mofo writhe in misery to pay for the pain and destruction he’s caused. It’s justice, with flair and attitude. And, how hard can it be? Spraypainting “assclown” on the side of his car, lobbing dozens of eggs at his house, or getting him drunk and, when he falls asleep, drawing daffodils on his forehead with permanent markers. Tying him down and tattooing “I hurt people” across his clavicle. Posting unflattering pictures of him in the post office with the FBI Most Wanted, or in public restrooms with “Pervert” written on them.
Ahem. Not that Aunt Alex spends much time daydreaming about such things. (This is true. I’m usually thinking about Italian food.) But it’s perfectly healthy thought-play, orchestrating revenge scenes in your head, and the more elaborate and creative, the better. He hurt you, and you’re allowed some justice-dreaming.
But what I encourage you to think about doing is very, very different from what I encourage you to actually do. Your wanting the narcissist to suffer is completely understandable, and it’s wonderfully fortunate that the best way to make him suffer is also the best thing for you. See, all that stuff above feels good to us as revenge, but he’ll actually love your retaliations because it’s just more attention directed his way. The technique to make him really suffer is — wait for it — ignore the living daylights out of him.
Shun him. Obey the “No Contact” rule. Sit shiva for him, so that he’s dead to you. However you want to put it, the plan is for you to have nothing to do with the narcissist. This leaves YOU going on with your life and putting the pieces back together, and HIM squirming in his toxic juices.
This is the BEST way to make a narcissist pay, and the BEST thing for you, but it’s not perfect. The missing will be excruciating. And the ignoring him will make him try really, really hard to get your attention. Resisting these efforts on his part will be monumentally hard for an emotionally generous person. It’ll be a giving person shutting out someone she’s loved, who says he wants to get back together — a pretty dangerous situation. For that reason, shutting him out won’t be fun, or easy, or likely to be successful the first time. If he catches you in a weak moment, it’ll go like this: you’ll shut him out, he’ll beg to come back, you’ll allow him back into your life, and he’ll be just as destructive and assclowning as before (if not more so). This isn’t a bad thing, because then, when you ignore the crap out of him the next time, you’ll KNOW what you’re in for if you let him back. Experience is a great teacher.
That putting your life back together part doesn’t get talked about much, and it’s critically important to keep from being vulnerable to another narcissist. Beefing up boundaries is a mandatory part of recovery. And letting all the air out of his tires while he’s at a bar meeting another woman, releasing a box of snakes in his house, and posting his picture and a detailed list of his mental and physical shortcomings on the “news” page of your town, are perfectly splendid ideas best left unexplored.
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Dazed and Confused
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.
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If Only Chickens Could Fly…
“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.
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What We Can Learn From Sheldon
There’s a popular TV sitcom on CBS called The Big Bang Theory. It’s about a group of super-nerdy friends, one of whom is Sheldon. The writers of the show appear to write Sheldon as someone with Asperger Syndrome, but whether or not this is the case, Sheldon is a tremendous example of detachment from the emotions of others. He’s socially inept, but does sometimes take his friends’ advice on how to interact with others. So, he wants to function in society, but has a hard time doing so considering he’s OCD, anxious, thinks he’s globally superior in intellect, has next to zero empathic instincts, and is so wonderfully and incurably awkward and nerdy.
Anyway, this isn’t a paid pitch for a TV show. I wish. No, we’re talking about this because Sheldon, while certainly fragile, wounded and even unstable, also has a certain, precise trait that we can all benefit from studying. It’s the ability to just say no to getting emotionally involved first and thinking later.
Sheldon is the only one to portray this for us, because true, real people with no empathic ability just plain don’t care about other people, how they feel, or what happens to them. But the Sheldon character is different. Purely for the plot of the show, and for the “pacing” comfort of the audience, Sheldon’s been given a unique mannerism: When confronted with a setting where it would be appropriate to respond to someone emotionally on some level, Sheldon seems to stop, and, for a split second, to ponder whether or not he wants to get involved in the emotional complexity of the situation. He invariably decides against it, and goes on his merry, nerdy way.
That split second of apparent analysis of the circumstances is where I’d like to start seeing us spend some more time. If you’re reading this, and you’ve been emotionally mauled by a narcissist, then chances are you’re an emotionally generous person. You’re someone who feels easily, empathizes very easily, and reaches out to connect with others easily. You do it all the time. You’re very giving, very loving, and very trusting. Why do I feel I can say this with all confidence? Because these are the very people, and indeed the only people, that narcissists seek out like a weasel seeks out prey. Emotionally generous people are the only ones who can give them the huge volume of unearned adoration and attention they so desperately need, and emotionally generous people are the ones who are most devastated by the devaluation, the empty aftermath, and the realization that life with a narcissist is one big lie.
So, back to Sheldon. Sheldon is not even remotely emotionally generous. But watch (or, alternatively, just take my word for it) how he, albeit fictionally, stops for that split second to decide whether to get emotionally involved. Truly emotionally defective people don’t do this; they just don’t have the equipment to even consider connecting as an option, and so they don’t get truly involved, ever. But emotionally generous people don’t often stop to decide either (though they CAN, and have the ABILITY to do so — BIG difference there). Emotionally generous people give themselves and get involved and connect very easily, because it’s their nature. Would an ounce of detachment be a great thing when getting to know new people, especially those that seem a teensy bit “off”? Or when confronted with a “bad feeling” situation with someone you know? Yes. Yes it would. And would this ounce of detachment feel very uncomfortable, and wrong, and even unfair to an untrained person who is emotionally generous? Oh, yes. It would. Big time.
We’re going to talk a lot more about this; my social worker pal is writing a book about it, and I said I’d help. She’s also helping to gussy up the blog a little. But she has GOT to stop hitting me with a rolled-up newspaper whenever I boost the idea of people keeping their narcissists and sparing the rest of us their narcissistic assclowning. Stay tuned for who wins the Skirmish of the Ideologies….
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