He imagines situations, which justify his negative emotions. She must usually endure confinement in her own home. His partner, in this single (real or imagined) act of adultery, is perceived by the narcissist to have passed judgment upon him as a whole - not merely upon this or that aspect of his personality and not merely in connection with the issue of sexual or emotional compatibility. In most cases, it is an insidious form of envy, which poisons the relationship through mutated forms of aggression. She prefers intimacy and companionship to sexual satisfaction. The narcissist tries to convince himself that such abuse is an expected result of the daily friction of cohabitation, especially by partners with radically different personalities. This perceived negation of his uniqueness makes it impossible for the narcissist to survive in a relationship tainted by jealousy. If an emotional or sexual infidelity does occur (and very often it does), it is usually a cry for help by the narcissist's mate. And yet women seem to be interested only in these pursuits. The narcissist is sometimes perceived as whimsical, traitorous, posing and double crossing. Women gave birth to them and moulded them into what they are: dysfunctional, maladaptive, and emotionally dead. Still, she is the narcissist's one and only. The cerebral ones regard sex as a maintenance chore, something they have to do in order to keep their Source of Secondary Supply. When Primary NS is available, the woman is hardly tolerated, as one would reluctantly pay the premium of an insurance policy. A profile of the narcissist's spouse emerges: She must value the narcissist's companionship sufficiently to sacrifice any independent expression of her personality. But the narcissist is not constant and predictable in his judgements. This is because they wish (and often succeed) to sadistically frustrate the interested party. Last - but definitely not least - is the issue of procreation and of having offspring. The narcissist likes to believe that he is the maker of the decision which type of relationship he establishes with whom. (2008, November 6). 
If his mate is sexually promiscuous this justifies romantic jealousy - he unconsciously "thinks". It is a hybrid, almost transcendental existence led by the narcissist's mate or spouse. The narcissist has to cope with his special predicament as well as with social changes and the disintegration of the social fabric, which anyhow make sustaining relationship an ever more difficult achievement in today's world. As it is, the narcissist regards any need to promote himself as demeaning. on 2022, July 20 from https://www.healthyplace.com/personality-disorders/malignant-self-love/the-narcissist-and-the-opposite-sex, Every woman on earth has fantasized about some explicit sexual fantasy that she may or may not have been too ashamed to talk about. By forcing him into homemaking, child rearing and the assumption of long-term consumer credits (and mortgages), women are likely to reduce the narcissist to a Common Man, an anathema. This is all part of a facade whose genesis can only be partially attributed to repression or denial mechanisms. Obviously, this apparently ingenious mechanism is, in itself, destructive. This asymmetry is also an effective barrier against the expression of anger, even legitimate anger. This reliance on others is both external (economic, for example) and internal (emotional). On the other hand they suffer from all the problems of a regime of psychotherapy: transference, counter-transference and the like. One promotes oneself because one needs others, because one is inferior (however temporarily). The more voluptuous, tumultuous, inane the relationship, the better it suits the narcissist's self-image. Less sex, less talk, less touch. The narcissist is a con artist.
To live with a narcissist is an arduous and eroding task. Thus, a violation of the contract by his romantic partner is deemed to be either trivial or nothing less than earth-shattering. Because she is more interested in the accumulation of experiences - her life is not guided by a "master plan", or even by medium-term goals. This, of course, is exactly what the narcissist does to people. Yet, there is nothing more dreadful to a narcissist than the ending of a relationship, or abandonment. The army is such an institution and so is a hospital, or a prison. But the narcissist is frustrated by his inability to meaningfully interact with women, by their apparent emotional depth and powers of psychological penetration (real or attributed) and by their sexuality. True, henceforth he is likely to invest less in the relationship, to become non-committal, and, probably, to be full of rage and hatred. To him, they are the conformity agents of society, the domesticating whips. Women threaten this quest. These, in turn, encourage the partner to abandon the narcissist. next:Chapter 6, The Soul of a Narcissist, The State of the Art, APA ReferenceVaknin, S. Thus, his view of women is a projection. He scorns such behaviour in others. Rather, he generalises and tends to treat people as symbols or "classes". The narcissist's partner has to share quarters with him. In the other, converse case, the narcissist labels many of his behaviour patterns as "sick". Depression can make life so gray that you arent sure where the sunshine is hiding or if it will return.. They do try to have lifetime partners. These, naturally, are grounds for innumerable disappointments and misunderstandings. Infidelity and lack of exclusivity violate the first and last commandment of narcissism: uniqueness. This, no doubt, is the direct result of the narcissist's very flawed sense of self-worth and of an overpowering sense of inferiority. It triggers a strong feeling of imminent punishment - a likely abandonment (physical or emotional). He tends to judge himself more severely than he judges the other parties to the contract. In his internal dialogues, the narcissist mulls over his problematic experience with the opposite sex. The narcissist has an alternative in this case. But others feel relaxed and secure. The narcissist's whole life is a pathetic and pitiful effort to prove her wrong. The narcissist does not have to internalise the failure or to identify with it. The Monoandric woman is psychologically mature. They live in an infinite present. narcissist This mirror matrix of forces is too much for the narcissist to bear. He seeks her dependence within a relationship of superiority and inferiority (teacher-student, guru-disciple, idol-admirer, therapist-patient, doctor-patient, father-daughter, adult-adolescent or young girl, etc.). After all, they are the warped creations of women. That one (or both) of the partners will have changed so radically that the former specifications of compatibility are replaced by new ones. Thus, the narcissist emotionally believes that women are the continuation of his mother by other means and in different guises. There is nothing in these activities to set the narcissist apart and above others. If a contract is violated by the narcissist he is invariably tormented by his conscience to the extent of calling the contract (the relationship) off even if the partner judges the violation to be trivial or explicitly forgives the narcissist. trustworthy health. If she is unfaithful - how could the relationship continue? Deep inside, he thinks that no one else would have been (or will be) as foolish, blind, or ignorant to have made this choice. The more severe the extramarital affair, the more it provides the narcissist with the means to control his partner through her guilt. The narcissist acts asymmetrically as long as he feels bound by the contract. But the narcissist feels that the fulfilment of his contracts - especially with his female partner - is asymmetrical.
The cerebral narcissist also despises and derides sex, as we said before.
Women notice this as well as his pompous, inflated body language, haughtiness, rage attacks and severe acting out. They examine other types of compatibility by cohabiting or by prolonged dating. In a Total Institution (or in a Total Situation) the narcissist is no longer a human being - he has nothing. This chapter deals with the male narcissist and with his "relationships" with women. Only a stupid and blind person would have preferred the narcissist, with his myriad deficiencies, to others. Others include: "the sick" and "the healthy", "the doctor/psychologist" and "the patient", "the poor, underprivileged girl" and "the white knight in shining armour" dyads. This, in turn, leads exactly to the feared abandonment. The constant threat of sanctions restrains and constrains destructive behaviours. Sadistically, they tremendously enjoy their ability to frustrate the desires, passions and sexual wishes of women. On the one hand, there is nothing like children to make the narcissist feel threatened. This makes him the target of strong frustration, hate, hostility and even verbal, physical or legal violence. The narcissist is the chameleon-like "Zelig" - everything to everyone, no one to himself. This constant inner turmoil generates unremitting fear manifested in the form of anxiety attacks, or an anxiety disorder. An example that I always use: a narcissist, eating in a restaurant, would rarely feel that his uniqueness is threatened by the fact that thousands of people ate there before him and are likely to do so after his departure. To some extent, any alien environment is total.
People in these places have no past or future. Because if this partner, as qualified as she was, as desirous of him as she was, failed to sustain the relationship - surely, no one else is likely to succeed. Hardly the ideal partner. But throughout all this, the narcissist needs a collaborative partner. So, he is attracted to her while being devoured by his fear of abandonment. They possess the ability to hurt him through abandonment and rejection. This achieved, they feel vindicated - they are proven right in being jealous. When the interaction is emotional, the narcissist feels that he is risking the loss of his uniqueness, that his privacy is invaded, that his defence mechanisms are being unravelled, and that information divulged by him (following the collapse of his defences) might be abused through destructive criticism or extortion.
He never forgets to mention to her (or, at least, to himself) how wonderful he is for having thus sacrificed himself. At this late stage, he is likely to entertain suicidal ideation. In a way he is happy about it, because it gives him the illusion that he is in exclusive control of the relationship and of his own fate. The sociologist Erving Goffman coined the phrase "Total Institutions". This wish springs from contempt and overwhelming feelings of superiority. After all - he argues - her two-timing was precipitated by the narcissist's own absence and was always under his control. 2022 HealthyPlace Inc. All Rights Reserved. The cerebral narcissist's partner is usually his only sexual mate. The narcissist always shares his life with a fantasy, an idealisation, with an ideal phantasm he imposes upon his real life partner. They seek to frustrate and humiliate them. The Total Institution offers no frame of reference or of comparison which might foster feelings of failure or of inferiority. He begins to disintegrate and veers into utter and complete dysfunction. He expects society, his partners, his colleagues, his spouse, his children, his parents, his students, his teachers - in short: absolutely everyone - to abide by his rulebook. Through complex Projective Identification processes and other projective defence mechanisms the narcissist fosters a dialogue between parts of his self, using his partner as a mirror and a communication conduit. In the back of his mind the narcissist always remembers that he is "different" (sick). Narcissists are angry men - but not because they never experienced love and probably never will. We are on safe ground, therefore, when we say that mentally stable and healthy women refrain from having relationships with narcissists. The narcissist envies his successful offspring as he would any other competitor for adulation and attention. The narcissist rails against slights true and imagined. This way they feel alive. Is There a Way to Discipline a Child Who Just Wont Listen? This prevailing sense of falsity permeates the relationship from the very start. Or that each partner is even more specifically compatible than its predecessor - a highly unlikely occurrence. They masturbate, using women as "flesh and blood aides". Physical, psychological and behavioral symptoms experienced by adults sexually abused as children and the impact child sexual abuse has on its adult victims. These conflicts lead to rapid cycling between gregariousness and self-imposed ascetic seclusion. Even if such rejection is the normal outcome of incompatibility, without any comparative judgment and "rating" - the feeling persists. But this is counter-weighed by a sense of emerging, compensatory uniqueness, the result of belonging to a mysterious select few, an order of suffering or guilt, a brotherhood of endurance. She is usually older and sexually sated. Lacking empathy, they are unable to offer to their partners emotional sustenance. There is yet another layer, much harder to reach and to decipher. In her relationships, she emphasises compatibility and is predominantly verbal. The narcissist thinks of all women as either Monoandric or Polyandric. His hate is primal, irrational, the progeny of mortal fear and sustained abuse. The narcissist would do anything to avoid this conclusion. The positive aspect of Total Situations is that the narcissist is rendered special and mysterious by virtue of being a stranger and even by the enigma of his prior identity. Because of the mechanisms of self-denigration I have described, the narcissist is likely to idealise his mate and believe that she must have been uniquely predisposed and "equipped" to cope with him. He alienates people. This leads to a vicious cycle of neediness and self-contempt ("How come I am dependent on this inferior woman"). The partner's health is idealised to form the background with which the narcissist's purported sickness is contrasted. He finds it difficult to have sex ("dirty", "forbidden", "punishable", "degrading") with feminine significant others (spouse, intimate girlfriend). They do not tolerate what they consider to be stupidity, disease and dependence - and love seems to consist of all three. It is the narcissist who retains the power to decide which contracts are to be scrupulously observed and which offhandedly ignored. In other words, they are sinister and are not to be trusted. The Polyandric woman is young (if not of age, then at heart). Usually, they choose for partners submissive women whom they disdain for being well below their intellectual level. His turbulent biography is likely to include abnormal sexual and emotional relationships, prison terms, bankruptcies and divorces. In short, nothing like children to create conflict in the tormented soul of the narcissist.
Narcissists like children only as unlimited Sources of Narcissistic Supply. This is the deep-rooted feeling of emotional inadequacy. He doesn't even bother to be explicit about it. Aren't the biographies of great men adorned with such abysses of emotions? The narcissist's mate, spouse, or partner is treated as an object. The narcissist desperately wants to be loved - and modifies and mends himself to render himself loveable. The narcissist cannot envy the natives' successes and happiness - clearly they had a head start. The narcissist is a lonely wolf. Last but not least, they want him to settle into a moulded non-unique way of life common to virtually all humanity: marriage, children, a career. This division resolves the narcissist's constant cognitive dissonance ("I want her but", "I don't need anyone but"). When he tries to derive consolation from the memory of past successes - the comparison depresses him even further, making him feel that he is at a nadir. To feed his envy, the narcissist exercises his imagination. Whereas the narcissist can always convince himself that both his emotions and their background are unique and unprecedented - he is hard pressed to do so concerning the sexual aspect of the relationship. The narcissist just "knows" that she is not sexually or emotionally exclusive (others preceded him and others will succeed him). Some of the anger is passively-aggressively expressed. Or, he constantly alludes to sexual opportunities available to him. Whenever he fails - and he is predisposed to fail - he "assimilates" the failure and identifies with it in an act of transubstantiation. These are not sour grapes. The somatic narcissist treats women as objects and sex as a means to obtaining Narcissistic Supply. Ultimately, the narcissist loses his partners in all his relationships. He gets a taste of the medicine (rather poison) that he often ruthlessly administers to others. They are most terrified of boredom and whenever faced with its daunting prospect, they inject drama or even danger into their lives. In Total Situations, the need to market oneself is understandable, external, and objective, a force majeure, really, though brought about by the narcissist himself. Because they are their worst enemy. Observing it from the outside, love seems to them to be a risible pathology. He recoils instead of getting closer. The narcissist's possessiveness is geared to safeguard his self-imputed uniqueness. But the narcissist, with an inflated sense of privacy and what can be best described as spatial paranoia, is very hard to live with. The narcissist regards abandonment or rejection by his emotional-sexual partners as a final verdict concerning his very ability to have such relationships in the future. The narcissist would rather pretend that a contract is still valid than admit to the demise of a relationship. As we said, heterosexual narcissists are attracted to women, but simultaneously repelled, horrified, bewitched and provoked by them. This usually coincides with latent or open hypochondriasis. He doesn't say: "I failed" - but "I am a failure". This kind of failure may have the worst effect, compounding the narcissist's feeling of worthlessness. Another hurdle on the narcissist's way to establishing lasting (if not healthy) relationships is his excess rationality and, chiefly, his tendency to generalise on the basis of tenuous and flimsy evidence (hyper-inductiviteness). The narcissist determines which laws (social contracts) to obey and which to break. The narcissist shivers at the thought of his partner's past lovers and her exploits with them. This could drive the partner to having extramarital sexual (or, even emotional) affairs. The truth is that he is predictable and consistent.
He feels ill at ease in today's modern world and is seldom self-conscious enough to understand why. But this is merely the "surface" conflict. He needs someone to serve as a sounding board, a mirror, and a victim. In other words, sometimes the narcissist feels compelled to cancel a contract just because he violated it and in order not to be tormented by his conscience (by his Superego, the internalised voices of his parents and other meaningful adults in his childhood). He is not as much attracted to the Polyandric woman as he is repelled by the Monoandric variety. Shouldn't the narcissist's life be special in this sense, too? That he was chosen by the partner is tantamount to receiving a quality award. But, being purely Sexual Communicators, they get bored very easily and find it ever more taxing to maintain regular (let alone exciting) sexual relations with the same partner.
Chapter 5, The Soul of a Narcissist, The State of the Art, HealthyPlace. They are under-stimulated and for want of alternatives, they develop a vicious frustration-aggression cycle, leading to emotional absence and coldness and to sexual intercourse decreasing in both quality and quantity.
He realises that his partner will be much better off without him - and this makes him sad (that he was unable to offer her an acceptable alternative) and envious (that her lot is likely to be better than his.) The narcissist is likely to devalue such a submissive partner. romantic relationships eft seattle interview rights network human woman The narcissist does not necessarily hate people - he simply does not need them. Most of them are asexual (desire sex very rarely, if at all). I believe that this is the case with same sex partners. This contract has emotional articles and administrative-economic articles. He knows how difficult and emotionally wrenching it is to live with him. It is understandable why one has to promote oneself if one is rendered inferior or unknown by circumstances of one's choice. He feels sorry because he was abandoned. Often, they invoke the existence of a girlfriend/fiance/spouse as the "reason" why they cannot have sex or develop a relationship. She must be submissive and motherly, sufficiently intelligent to admire and admiring enough never to criticise, critical enough to assist him and helpful enough to make a good friend. When it comes down to it, there is no reliable "Am I Gay test", so the only way, Trying to figure out how to discipline a child that wont listen is common parenting issue. Thus, the narcissist feels not only that he is the author of his own failures (which, in some cases, he, indeed, is) - but that failure forms an integral part of himself (which, gradually, becomes true). This he might do jokingly but he ignores his partner's avid protestations. Consciously, though, he realises that intimacy can be created only with this kind of woman. Sometimes the pent-up aggression erupts explosively in the form of rage attacks. They team up with women who serve as Sources of SNS (Secondary Narcissistic Supply). The narcissist "pathologises" others in order to control them. The narcissist's attitude to women is, naturally, complex and multi-layered but it can be described using four axes: The narcissist divides all women to saints and whores. He is likely to be grateful to his partner - and berate her! But this is because he needs the contract - the relationship - more than the others do. They exploit their capacities for deep psychological insight to further their goals. Most men, for instance, feel anxious before they ask a woman to have sex with them. It is this fear of failure - especially the fear of failing to promote himself - that thwarts the narcissist's relationships with women and with other figures of authority or of import in his life. Cerebral narcissists are normally very faithful because they are mortally afraid of the repercussions if found out cheating. freaky These are usually followed by panicky reactions intended to restore the balance and to reassure the narcissist that he is not about to be abandoned. The mental health problems of some narcissists grow worse in such institutions - and this is understandable. A good point of departure would be jealousy, or rather, its pathological form, envy.
In the course of such life crises, the narcissist briefly believes that he is intrinsically deformed and defective and that he is irreparably dysfunctional when it comes to establishing and to maintaining relationships (which is true!). The narcissist - forever "rational", forever afraid to get in touch with his emotions - often divides his relationships with humans to "contractual" and "non contractual", multiplying the former at the expense of the latter. The narcissist believes that, once their prey is secured, women assume the role of "body snatchers". They pose no threat of getting emotionally close to him (of being intimate). This is a vicious cycle. On the other hand, there is nothing like children to boost an habitually flagging Ego. The narcissist constantly seeks confirmation from others that he is special - in other words that he is, that he actually exists. Granted, most narcissists learn how to disguise, even repress these untoward feelings. He feels that he doesn't have "anything to offer". By doing so he drowns the immediate, identifiable, emotional problems (with his partner) in a torrent of irrelevant frivolities (his obligation within numerous other "contractual" "relationships"). Coping with recurrent failure is a figment of the narcissist's inner life. Humbling a woman in acts of faintly sado-masochistic sex is a way of getting back at mother. Put simply: children unconditionally admire the father-narcissist, they succumb to his every wish, submit to his every whim, obey his every command, and are deliciously malleable. He doesn't have to identify with his failures or to internalise them because he can convincingly argue (mainly to himself) that they are not his, that success was impossible under the objective circumstances. She is the subject of projections, Projective Identifications and a source of adulation. The narcissist needs to feel deprived and punished, thus upholding the guilty verdict rendered by the primary and all important object in his life (usually, his mother). She must endure long spells of sexual abstinence or be sexually molested by the narcissist. There when required by him, making herself absent at all other times. To re-iterate, Primary Narcissistic Supply (PNS) is any kind of NS provided by people who are not "meaningful" or "significant" others. And because, in their unmitigated paranoia, they see adversaries plotting everywhere and feel discriminated against and contemptuously ignored. The narcissist holds himself to be a total (systemic) failure. This is an enigma the solution to which provides us with important insights regarding the codes, which control the narcissist's attitudes towards women. They are unable to love in any true sense of the word - nor are they capable of developing any measure of intimacy. Otherwise, cerebral narcissists are not interested in women. The narcissist had internalised a bad object. He regards social interactions as a nuisance to be minimised. He reads into the subsequent scene of forgiveness and reconciliation the same meaning. Thus, the emotional and sexual exclusivity of his partner (a pillar in the temple of his uniqueness) must be both spatial and temporal.
If his mate is sexually promiscuous this justifies romantic jealousy - he unconsciously "thinks". It is a hybrid, almost transcendental existence led by the narcissist's mate or spouse. The narcissist has to cope with his special predicament as well as with social changes and the disintegration of the social fabric, which anyhow make sustaining relationship an ever more difficult achievement in today's world. As it is, the narcissist regards any need to promote himself as demeaning. on 2022, July 20 from https://www.healthyplace.com/personality-disorders/malignant-self-love/the-narcissist-and-the-opposite-sex, Every woman on earth has fantasized about some explicit sexual fantasy that she may or may not have been too ashamed to talk about. By forcing him into homemaking, child rearing and the assumption of long-term consumer credits (and mortgages), women are likely to reduce the narcissist to a Common Man, an anathema. This is all part of a facade whose genesis can only be partially attributed to repression or denial mechanisms. Obviously, this apparently ingenious mechanism is, in itself, destructive. This asymmetry is also an effective barrier against the expression of anger, even legitimate anger. This reliance on others is both external (economic, for example) and internal (emotional). On the other hand they suffer from all the problems of a regime of psychotherapy: transference, counter-transference and the like. One promotes oneself because one needs others, because one is inferior (however temporarily). The more voluptuous, tumultuous, inane the relationship, the better it suits the narcissist's self-image. Less sex, less talk, less touch. The narcissist is a con artist. To live with a narcissist is an arduous and eroding task. Thus, a violation of the contract by his romantic partner is deemed to be either trivial or nothing less than earth-shattering. Because she is more interested in the accumulation of experiences - her life is not guided by a "master plan", or even by medium-term goals. This, of course, is exactly what the narcissist does to people. Yet, there is nothing more dreadful to a narcissist than the ending of a relationship, or abandonment. The army is such an institution and so is a hospital, or a prison. But the narcissist is frustrated by his inability to meaningfully interact with women, by their apparent emotional depth and powers of psychological penetration (real or attributed) and by their sexuality. True, henceforth he is likely to invest less in the relationship, to become non-committal, and, probably, to be full of rage and hatred. To him, they are the conformity agents of society, the domesticating whips. Women threaten this quest. These, in turn, encourage the partner to abandon the narcissist. next:Chapter 6, The Soul of a Narcissist, The State of the Art, APA ReferenceVaknin, S. Thus, his view of women is a projection. He scorns such behaviour in others. Rather, he generalises and tends to treat people as symbols or "classes". The narcissist's partner has to share quarters with him. In the other, converse case, the narcissist labels many of his behaviour patterns as "sick". Depression can make life so gray that you arent sure where the sunshine is hiding or if it will return.. They do try to have lifetime partners. These, naturally, are grounds for innumerable disappointments and misunderstandings. Infidelity and lack of exclusivity violate the first and last commandment of narcissism: uniqueness. This, no doubt, is the direct result of the narcissist's very flawed sense of self-worth and of an overpowering sense of inferiority. It triggers a strong feeling of imminent punishment - a likely abandonment (physical or emotional). He tends to judge himself more severely than he judges the other parties to the contract. In his internal dialogues, the narcissist mulls over his problematic experience with the opposite sex. The narcissist has an alternative in this case. But others feel relaxed and secure. The narcissist's whole life is a pathetic and pitiful effort to prove her wrong. The narcissist does not have to internalise the failure or to identify with it. The Monoandric woman is psychologically mature. They live in an infinite present. narcissist This mirror matrix of forces is too much for the narcissist to bear. He seeks her dependence within a relationship of superiority and inferiority (teacher-student, guru-disciple, idol-admirer, therapist-patient, doctor-patient, father-daughter, adult-adolescent or young girl, etc.). After all, they are the warped creations of women. That one (or both) of the partners will have changed so radically that the former specifications of compatibility are replaced by new ones. Thus, the narcissist emotionally believes that women are the continuation of his mother by other means and in different guises. There is nothing in these activities to set the narcissist apart and above others. If a contract is violated by the narcissist he is invariably tormented by his conscience to the extent of calling the contract (the relationship) off even if the partner judges the violation to be trivial or explicitly forgives the narcissist. trustworthy health. If she is unfaithful - how could the relationship continue? Deep inside, he thinks that no one else would have been (or will be) as foolish, blind, or ignorant to have made this choice. The more severe the extramarital affair, the more it provides the narcissist with the means to control his partner through her guilt. The narcissist acts asymmetrically as long as he feels bound by the contract. But the narcissist feels that the fulfilment of his contracts - especially with his female partner - is asymmetrical.
The cerebral narcissist also despises and derides sex, as we said before.
Women notice this as well as his pompous, inflated body language, haughtiness, rage attacks and severe acting out. They examine other types of compatibility by cohabiting or by prolonged dating. In a Total Institution (or in a Total Situation) the narcissist is no longer a human being - he has nothing. This chapter deals with the male narcissist and with his "relationships" with women. Only a stupid and blind person would have preferred the narcissist, with his myriad deficiencies, to others. Others include: "the sick" and "the healthy", "the doctor/psychologist" and "the patient", "the poor, underprivileged girl" and "the white knight in shining armour" dyads. This, in turn, leads exactly to the feared abandonment. The constant threat of sanctions restrains and constrains destructive behaviours. Sadistically, they tremendously enjoy their ability to frustrate the desires, passions and sexual wishes of women. On the one hand, there is nothing like children to make the narcissist feel threatened. This makes him the target of strong frustration, hate, hostility and even verbal, physical or legal violence. The narcissist is the chameleon-like "Zelig" - everything to everyone, no one to himself. This constant inner turmoil generates unremitting fear manifested in the form of anxiety attacks, or an anxiety disorder. An example that I always use: a narcissist, eating in a restaurant, would rarely feel that his uniqueness is threatened by the fact that thousands of people ate there before him and are likely to do so after his departure. To some extent, any alien environment is total.
People in these places have no past or future. Because if this partner, as qualified as she was, as desirous of him as she was, failed to sustain the relationship - surely, no one else is likely to succeed. Hardly the ideal partner. But throughout all this, the narcissist needs a collaborative partner. So, he is attracted to her while being devoured by his fear of abandonment. They possess the ability to hurt him through abandonment and rejection. This achieved, they feel vindicated - they are proven right in being jealous. When the interaction is emotional, the narcissist feels that he is risking the loss of his uniqueness, that his privacy is invaded, that his defence mechanisms are being unravelled, and that information divulged by him (following the collapse of his defences) might be abused through destructive criticism or extortion.
He never forgets to mention to her (or, at least, to himself) how wonderful he is for having thus sacrificed himself. At this late stage, he is likely to entertain suicidal ideation. In a way he is happy about it, because it gives him the illusion that he is in exclusive control of the relationship and of his own fate. The sociologist Erving Goffman coined the phrase "Total Institutions". This wish springs from contempt and overwhelming feelings of superiority. After all - he argues - her two-timing was precipitated by the narcissist's own absence and was always under his control. 2022 HealthyPlace Inc. All Rights Reserved. The cerebral narcissist's partner is usually his only sexual mate. The narcissist always shares his life with a fantasy, an idealisation, with an ideal phantasm he imposes upon his real life partner. They seek to frustrate and humiliate them. The Total Institution offers no frame of reference or of comparison which might foster feelings of failure or of inferiority. He begins to disintegrate and veers into utter and complete dysfunction. He expects society, his partners, his colleagues, his spouse, his children, his parents, his students, his teachers - in short: absolutely everyone - to abide by his rulebook. Through complex Projective Identification processes and other projective defence mechanisms the narcissist fosters a dialogue between parts of his self, using his partner as a mirror and a communication conduit. In the back of his mind the narcissist always remembers that he is "different" (sick). Narcissists are angry men - but not because they never experienced love and probably never will. We are on safe ground, therefore, when we say that mentally stable and healthy women refrain from having relationships with narcissists. The narcissist envies his successful offspring as he would any other competitor for adulation and attention. The narcissist rails against slights true and imagined. This way they feel alive. Is There a Way to Discipline a Child Who Just Wont Listen? This prevailing sense of falsity permeates the relationship from the very start. Or that each partner is even more specifically compatible than its predecessor - a highly unlikely occurrence. They masturbate, using women as "flesh and blood aides". Physical, psychological and behavioral symptoms experienced by adults sexually abused as children and the impact child sexual abuse has on its adult victims. These conflicts lead to rapid cycling between gregariousness and self-imposed ascetic seclusion. Even if such rejection is the normal outcome of incompatibility, without any comparative judgment and "rating" - the feeling persists. But this is counter-weighed by a sense of emerging, compensatory uniqueness, the result of belonging to a mysterious select few, an order of suffering or guilt, a brotherhood of endurance. She is usually older and sexually sated. Lacking empathy, they are unable to offer to their partners emotional sustenance. There is yet another layer, much harder to reach and to decipher. In her relationships, she emphasises compatibility and is predominantly verbal. The narcissist thinks of all women as either Monoandric or Polyandric. His hate is primal, irrational, the progeny of mortal fear and sustained abuse. The narcissist would do anything to avoid this conclusion. The positive aspect of Total Situations is that the narcissist is rendered special and mysterious by virtue of being a stranger and even by the enigma of his prior identity. Because of the mechanisms of self-denigration I have described, the narcissist is likely to idealise his mate and believe that she must have been uniquely predisposed and "equipped" to cope with him. He alienates people. This leads to a vicious cycle of neediness and self-contempt ("How come I am dependent on this inferior woman"). The partner's health is idealised to form the background with which the narcissist's purported sickness is contrasted. He finds it difficult to have sex ("dirty", "forbidden", "punishable", "degrading") with feminine significant others (spouse, intimate girlfriend). They do not tolerate what they consider to be stupidity, disease and dependence - and love seems to consist of all three. It is the narcissist who retains the power to decide which contracts are to be scrupulously observed and which offhandedly ignored. In other words, they are sinister and are not to be trusted. The Polyandric woman is young (if not of age, then at heart). Usually, they choose for partners submissive women whom they disdain for being well below their intellectual level. His turbulent biography is likely to include abnormal sexual and emotional relationships, prison terms, bankruptcies and divorces. In short, nothing like children to create conflict in the tormented soul of the narcissist.
Narcissists like children only as unlimited Sources of Narcissistic Supply. This is the deep-rooted feeling of emotional inadequacy. He doesn't even bother to be explicit about it. Aren't the biographies of great men adorned with such abysses of emotions? The narcissist's mate, spouse, or partner is treated as an object. The narcissist desperately wants to be loved - and modifies and mends himself to render himself loveable. The narcissist cannot envy the natives' successes and happiness - clearly they had a head start. The narcissist is a lonely wolf. Last but not least, they want him to settle into a moulded non-unique way of life common to virtually all humanity: marriage, children, a career. This division resolves the narcissist's constant cognitive dissonance ("I want her but", "I don't need anyone but"). When he tries to derive consolation from the memory of past successes - the comparison depresses him even further, making him feel that he is at a nadir. To feed his envy, the narcissist exercises his imagination. Whereas the narcissist can always convince himself that both his emotions and their background are unique and unprecedented - he is hard pressed to do so concerning the sexual aspect of the relationship. The narcissist just "knows" that she is not sexually or emotionally exclusive (others preceded him and others will succeed him). Some of the anger is passively-aggressively expressed. Or, he constantly alludes to sexual opportunities available to him. Whenever he fails - and he is predisposed to fail - he "assimilates" the failure and identifies with it in an act of transubstantiation. These are not sour grapes. The somatic narcissist treats women as objects and sex as a means to obtaining Narcissistic Supply. Ultimately, the narcissist loses his partners in all his relationships. He gets a taste of the medicine (rather poison) that he often ruthlessly administers to others. They are most terrified of boredom and whenever faced with its daunting prospect, they inject drama or even danger into their lives. In Total Situations, the need to market oneself is understandable, external, and objective, a force majeure, really, though brought about by the narcissist himself. Because they are their worst enemy. Observing it from the outside, love seems to them to be a risible pathology. He recoils instead of getting closer. The narcissist's possessiveness is geared to safeguard his self-imputed uniqueness. But the narcissist, with an inflated sense of privacy and what can be best described as spatial paranoia, is very hard to live with. The narcissist regards abandonment or rejection by his emotional-sexual partners as a final verdict concerning his very ability to have such relationships in the future. The narcissist would rather pretend that a contract is still valid than admit to the demise of a relationship. As we said, heterosexual narcissists are attracted to women, but simultaneously repelled, horrified, bewitched and provoked by them. This usually coincides with latent or open hypochondriasis. He doesn't say: "I failed" - but "I am a failure". This kind of failure may have the worst effect, compounding the narcissist's feeling of worthlessness. Another hurdle on the narcissist's way to establishing lasting (if not healthy) relationships is his excess rationality and, chiefly, his tendency to generalise on the basis of tenuous and flimsy evidence (hyper-inductiviteness). The narcissist determines which laws (social contracts) to obey and which to break. The narcissist shivers at the thought of his partner's past lovers and her exploits with them. This could drive the partner to having extramarital sexual (or, even emotional) affairs. The truth is that he is predictable and consistent.
He feels ill at ease in today's modern world and is seldom self-conscious enough to understand why. But this is merely the "surface" conflict. He needs someone to serve as a sounding board, a mirror, and a victim. In other words, sometimes the narcissist feels compelled to cancel a contract just because he violated it and in order not to be tormented by his conscience (by his Superego, the internalised voices of his parents and other meaningful adults in his childhood). He is not as much attracted to the Polyandric woman as he is repelled by the Monoandric variety. Shouldn't the narcissist's life be special in this sense, too? That he was chosen by the partner is tantamount to receiving a quality award. But, being purely Sexual Communicators, they get bored very easily and find it ever more taxing to maintain regular (let alone exciting) sexual relations with the same partner.
Chapter 5, The Soul of a Narcissist, The State of the Art, HealthyPlace. They are under-stimulated and for want of alternatives, they develop a vicious frustration-aggression cycle, leading to emotional absence and coldness and to sexual intercourse decreasing in both quality and quantity.
He realises that his partner will be much better off without him - and this makes him sad (that he was unable to offer her an acceptable alternative) and envious (that her lot is likely to be better than his.) The narcissist is likely to devalue such a submissive partner. romantic relationships eft seattle interview rights network human woman The narcissist does not necessarily hate people - he simply does not need them. Most of them are asexual (desire sex very rarely, if at all). I believe that this is the case with same sex partners. This contract has emotional articles and administrative-economic articles. He knows how difficult and emotionally wrenching it is to live with him. It is understandable why one has to promote oneself if one is rendered inferior or unknown by circumstances of one's choice. He feels sorry because he was abandoned. Often, they invoke the existence of a girlfriend/fiance/spouse as the "reason" why they cannot have sex or develop a relationship. She must be submissive and motherly, sufficiently intelligent to admire and admiring enough never to criticise, critical enough to assist him and helpful enough to make a good friend. When it comes down to it, there is no reliable "Am I Gay test", so the only way, Trying to figure out how to discipline a child that wont listen is common parenting issue. Thus, the narcissist feels not only that he is the author of his own failures (which, in some cases, he, indeed, is) - but that failure forms an integral part of himself (which, gradually, becomes true). This he might do jokingly but he ignores his partner's avid protestations. Consciously, though, he realises that intimacy can be created only with this kind of woman. Sometimes the pent-up aggression erupts explosively in the form of rage attacks. They team up with women who serve as Sources of SNS (Secondary Narcissistic Supply). The narcissist "pathologises" others in order to control them. The narcissist's attitude to women is, naturally, complex and multi-layered but it can be described using four axes: The narcissist divides all women to saints and whores. He is likely to be grateful to his partner - and berate her! But this is because he needs the contract - the relationship - more than the others do. They exploit their capacities for deep psychological insight to further their goals. Most men, for instance, feel anxious before they ask a woman to have sex with them. It is this fear of failure - especially the fear of failing to promote himself - that thwarts the narcissist's relationships with women and with other figures of authority or of import in his life. Cerebral narcissists are normally very faithful because they are mortally afraid of the repercussions if found out cheating. freaky These are usually followed by panicky reactions intended to restore the balance and to reassure the narcissist that he is not about to be abandoned. The mental health problems of some narcissists grow worse in such institutions - and this is understandable. A good point of departure would be jealousy, or rather, its pathological form, envy.
In the course of such life crises, the narcissist briefly believes that he is intrinsically deformed and defective and that he is irreparably dysfunctional when it comes to establishing and to maintaining relationships (which is true!). The narcissist - forever "rational", forever afraid to get in touch with his emotions - often divides his relationships with humans to "contractual" and "non contractual", multiplying the former at the expense of the latter. The narcissist believes that, once their prey is secured, women assume the role of "body snatchers". They pose no threat of getting emotionally close to him (of being intimate). This is a vicious cycle. On the other hand, there is nothing like children to boost an habitually flagging Ego. The narcissist constantly seeks confirmation from others that he is special - in other words that he is, that he actually exists. Granted, most narcissists learn how to disguise, even repress these untoward feelings. He feels that he doesn't have "anything to offer". By doing so he drowns the immediate, identifiable, emotional problems (with his partner) in a torrent of irrelevant frivolities (his obligation within numerous other "contractual" "relationships"). Coping with recurrent failure is a figment of the narcissist's inner life. Humbling a woman in acts of faintly sado-masochistic sex is a way of getting back at mother. Put simply: children unconditionally admire the father-narcissist, they succumb to his every wish, submit to his every whim, obey his every command, and are deliciously malleable. He doesn't have to identify with his failures or to internalise them because he can convincingly argue (mainly to himself) that they are not his, that success was impossible under the objective circumstances. She is the subject of projections, Projective Identifications and a source of adulation. The narcissist needs to feel deprived and punished, thus upholding the guilty verdict rendered by the primary and all important object in his life (usually, his mother). She must endure long spells of sexual abstinence or be sexually molested by the narcissist. There when required by him, making herself absent at all other times. To re-iterate, Primary Narcissistic Supply (PNS) is any kind of NS provided by people who are not "meaningful" or "significant" others. And because, in their unmitigated paranoia, they see adversaries plotting everywhere and feel discriminated against and contemptuously ignored. The narcissist holds himself to be a total (systemic) failure. This is an enigma the solution to which provides us with important insights regarding the codes, which control the narcissist's attitudes towards women. They are unable to love in any true sense of the word - nor are they capable of developing any measure of intimacy. Otherwise, cerebral narcissists are not interested in women. The narcissist had internalised a bad object. He regards social interactions as a nuisance to be minimised. He reads into the subsequent scene of forgiveness and reconciliation the same meaning. Thus, the emotional and sexual exclusivity of his partner (a pillar in the temple of his uniqueness) must be both spatial and temporal.