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I see that! Yeah, not the easiest pill to swallow. I have always been the one to be "counted on" and I assume that role very easily. Everyone around me will fall apart but I'm expected to keep standing. This does wonders for me in my career...
I see nothing wrong with this thread and what you are curious about. Having been in this situation you are often wondering, what the ****? And it's nice hearing others opinions. The situation made me second guess myself all the time. Being away from the situation I feel like I have a better perspective, and if anything PEACE!
I see nothing wrong with this thread and what you are curious about. Having been in this situation you are often wondering, what the ****? And it's nice hearing others opinions. The situation made me second guess myself all the time. Being away from the situation I feel like I have a better perspective, and if anything PEACE!
Mikala was only saying that this has been a theme for me, which it has. It's something I've been chipping away at.
He sounds like a textbook narcissist. Run away as fast as you can. A confident man of quality who likes you isn't going to play stupid mind games.
Agreed. My ex was that way. I couldn't be nice to him for too long. He'd start acting like a callous jackarse. So then I'd be like, "Oh, to hell with this guy already," and then he'd do this 180 and be the Attentive Boyfriend. But the minute he felt like he had me, boom, back to Narcman.
Agreed. My ex was that way. I couldn't be nice to him for too long. He'd start acting like a callous jackarse. So then I'd be like, "Oh, to hell with this guy already," and then he'd do this 180 and be the Attentive Boyfriend. But the minute he felt like he had me, boom, back to Narcman.
Fate owes me after dealing with that, boy howdy.
That's how this guy is. The second I start acting like he doesn't exist, he starts looking desperate and goes crazy to get my attention.
That's how this guy is. The second I start acting like he doesn't exist, he starts looking desperate and goes crazy to get my attention.
At least it's happening blatantly and in a fast enough cycle that you can see it now. Imagine not realizing it until you're 5 years in because someone stretches it out and does it insidiously.
I actually called my ex out on it. His response was, "Interesting." He knew what he was doing. Narcs know what they are. In fact, the best way to find out if someone is a narc is to ask them. Most of them will tell you they are.
In my layperson's opinion, those who don't cop to it are most likely the malignant ones who are also sociopaths. My ex alluded to having some of that, too, but he had too much cognitive empathy to be a sociopath. He just didn't see anything wrong with Dexter.
My eldest sister, though. I wouldn't be surprised if they one day find out she rushed along the deaths of two of her ex-boyfriends or something. As soon as she gets into someone's will, they die. It's scary.
At least it's happening blatantly and in a fast enough cycle that you can see it now. Imagine not realizing it until you're 5 years in because someone stretches it out and does it insidiously.
I actually called my ex out on it. His response was, "Interesting." He knew what he was doing. Narcs know what they are. In fact, the best way to find out if someone is a narc is to ask them. Most of them will tell you they are.
Doesn't it feel like they're "feeding" off of you? People often refer to narcissists as predators, and I believe that's true. They can't do real intimacy, because that would render them too vulnerable and exposed. So they continue to play these games, and their whole lives are reduced to only that. There's nothing real there, it's all predatory manipulation.
Doesn't it feel like they're "feeding" off of you? People often refer to narcissists as predators, and I believe that's true. They can't do real intimacy, because that would render them too vulnerable and exposed. So they continue to play these games, and their whole lives are reduced to only that. There's nothing real there, it's all predatory manipulation.
I think he tried. But after dealing with my sister and, to a lesser extent, my father, I didn't let him. Once I figured it out, I would just call him out on his shenanigans whenever he tried to pull them. I got tired of that, though. I felt like a lion-tamer after a while, holding a stool and a whip. It just got to be too much parrying.
Toward the end of the relationship, he told me a few things that actually, now that I've had a year to think about it, make me pretty angry at his parents. Narcs are usually the product of narcs. Basically, the narc parent comes in and tries to supplant the kid's developing personality with what they think the kid should be, that being a Mini-Me of the narc parent. And I can totally see how they did that to him. My ex has a lot of untapped potential in terms of creativity and self-expression, and his father pounded it out of him, while his mother overcompensated and doted. I think at this point, my ex has given up the fight, because now he's all big into nihilism. Can't figure out what you believe in because you have no identity of your own, don't believe in anything at all and write life off as meaningless. It's pretty tragic.
Yep, narcs really don't have much identity of their own. That's why they need constant adulation and validation. That's where the "feeding" comes in. It's also where the drive to turn the child into your identity comes from, even though you really don't have one of your own. And so the cycle continues unless there are others in the kid's life who let the kid be who the kid is meant to be.
It's actually a very lonely defect. It's not that they are afraid of intimacy. It's that they don't know what intimacy is. To be intimate with someone, you have to have emotional empathy and be able to feel what they feel naturally, not just look at a set of their behaviors and deduce, like with cognitive empathy. Well, how can you have emotional empathy and feel what someone else is feeling if you have no well-developed sense of how YOU feel about things, because you don't know who you are, because the person you were naturally destined to be was destroyed by your narc parents?
If you have normal levels of empathy, run from this guy. Despite my demeanor on here, I have uber-high levels of emotional empathy. Too high, actually. At first my ex-SO's lack thereof was a relief, because my ex-husband was also high empathy and that's just a whole other mess.
I ramble.
TL;dr Yes, they try to feed because they have no identity of their own and they need you to see one in them.
Last edited by Lilac110; 02-05-2015 at 11:09 PM..
Reason: type much?
Toward the end of the relationship, he told me a few things that actually, now that I've had a year to think about it, make me pretty angry at his parents. Narcs are usually the product of narcs. Basically, the narc parent comes in and tries to supplant the kid's developing personality with what they think the kid should be, that being a Mini-Me of the narc parent. And I can totally see how they did that to him. My ex has a lot of untapped potential in terms of creativity and self-expression, and his father pounded it out of him, while his mother overcompensated and doted. I think at this point, my ex has given up the fight, because now he's all big into nihilism. Can't figure out what you believe in because you have no identity of your own, don't believe in anything at all and write life off as meaningless. It's pretty tragic.
Yep, narcs really don't have much identity of their own. That's why they need constant adulation and validation. That's where the "feeding" comes in. It's also where the drive to turn the child into your identity comes from, even though you really don't have one of your own. And so the cycle continues unless there are others in the kid's life who let the kid be who the kid is meant to be.
It's actually a very lonely defect. It's not that they are afraid of intimacy. It's that they don't know what intimacy is. To be intimate with someone, you have to have emotional empathy and be able to feel what they feel naturally, not just look at a set of their behaviors and deduce, like with cognitive empathy. Well, how can you have emotional empathy and feel what someone else is feeling if you have no well-developed sense of how YOU feel about things, because you don't know who you are, because the person you were naturally destined to be was destroyed by your narc parents?
If you have normal levels of empathy, run from this guy. Despite my demeanor on here, I have uber-high levels of emotional empathy. Too high, actually. At first my ex-SO's lack thereof was a relief, because my ex-husband was also high empathy and that's just a whole other mess.
I ramble.
TL;dr Yes, they try to feed because they have no identity of their own and they need you to see one in them.
This is really an excellent post. The average person does not understand narcissism to this depth.
I think I've looked at narcissistic behavior as deliberate, which I believe some of it is, but the lack of empathy and emotional withholding that they do may just be as far as they can go. Like you said, they do not know what intimacy is, and they don't know what being a "self" is. So they are literally not capable of behaving in better ways, because they do not have the capacity for that. They are not emotionally built for it, because their "self" was annihilated early on by their parents. It's like a non-being. It's not human.
You have a point. I guess because I'm an honest person, I don't think that anyone would have bad intentions towards me, because I'm not coming from that place. I've been giving him the benefit of the doubt. But it's harming me at this point.
Many of the hardest life lessons I've learned centered on that fact that just because it would never occur to me to do something, doesn't mean someone else wouldn't do it. The sooner you can catch onto that idea, the better.
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Yeah, not the easiest pill to swallow. I have always been the one to be "counted on" and I assume that role very easily. Everyone around me will fall apart but I'm expected to keep standing. This does wonders for me in my career...
