It isn't easy revisiting the emotions that come with writing about that place. I try to include more of the things I felt at the time, mostly because I want someone who might be feeling the same things to know that none of us is alone.
Every time I talk to another survivor, I am always amazed at the similarity of our stories ... It's almost as if we all got involved with the same guy or at least they were all brothers!
While doing some research, I found this web-site:
I have cut and pasted some of the comments here about Narcissists and Women. As I read through the different characteristics and I would remember things Aydan had done or said ... things that I never understood at the time, but after reading about Narcissists and how they think, his actions make more sense.
Not all abusers are Narcissists. There are many indications that Aydan was. I am not qualified to diagnose him, nor am I interested in playing therapist, but I do want to understand more about "the snake" that bit me!
Reading about "why" guys like that do the things they do made me realize some important things. Aydan's words really hurt me, but after reading that his words and actions are typical, it took some of the bite out of what he said. Aydan wanted me to believe that everything was always my fault, but studying narcissism put the blame where it belonged. I wasn't crazy! Aydan might be. There was never anything I could do to help him. Most narcissists don't think they have a problem. Narcissists really do believe that their problems are because of everyone else so there isn't much Aydan can or will do to help himself.
Reading about Narcissism and it's traits taught me about the part of me that is attracted to narcissists. Reading about the traits of a narcissist allowed me to see those behaviors more quickly in others. I can make better, more informed choices in the future. As you read about the traits of a narcissist, you may remember things that have happened to you in your relationship?
If remembering abuse is hurtful to you, stop reading and give yourself a chance to think about it. Call someone if you need to. As much as I wanted to learn, I had to give myself a break, even now. I don't struggle with the memories as much anymore. I have been away from the abuse long enough to have a little objectivity but in the beginning, it difficult to look at the hurting thing for very long.
I still struggle with being mad at myself for getting sucked into "his narcissistic world". I knew better. I ignored all the warning signs and red flags.
Admitting to myself and realizing that I am not above falling victim to "a bad guy" may have taken away "the fairy dust cloud" I thought I lived under, but it made me stronger and wiser. I took off the rose colored glasses and really looked at my world. I examined my life. It wasn't easy, but it is worth it.
Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited
Narcissism, Pathological Narcissism, The Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), the Narcissist,
and Relationships with Abusive Narcissists and Psychopaths
By: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
Narcissists simply use women as objects and then discard them. They masturbate, using women as "flesh and blood aides". The narcissist hates women passionately and uncompromisingly. His hate is primal, irrational, the progeny of mortal fear and sustained abuse. Granted, most narcissists learn how to disguise, even repress these feelings. But their hatred does swing out of control and erupt from time to time.
To live with a narcissist is an arduous task. Narcissists are infinitely pessimistic, bad-tempered, paranoid and sadistic in an absent-minded and indifferent manner. Their daily routine is a rigmarole of threats, complaints, hurts, eruptions, moodiness and rage.
The narcissist rails against slights true and imagined. He alienates people. Their sexual and emotional lives are perturbed and chaotic. They are unable to love in any true sense of the word nor are they capable of developing any measure of intimacy. Lacking empathy, they are unable to offer to their partners emotional sustenance.
Do narcissists miss loving?
There is no way he can answer. Narcissists have never loved so they do not know what is it that they are missing.
Narcissists equate love with weakness. They hate being weak and they hate and despise weak people (and, therefore, the sick, the old and the young). They do not tolerate what they consider to be stupidity, disease and dependence and love seems to consist of all three. These are not sour grapes. They really feel this way.
Narcissists are angry men but not because they never experienced love and probably never will. They are angry because they are not as powerful, awe inspiring and successful as they wish they were and, to their mind, deserve to be. Because their daydreams refuse so stubbornly to come true. Because they are their worst enemy. And because, in their unmitigated paranoia, they see adversaries plotting everywhere and feel discriminated against and contemptuously ignored.
Many of them cannot conceive of life in one place with one set of people, doing the same thing, in the same field with one goal within a decades-old game plan. To them, this is the equivalent of death. They are most terrified of boredom and whenever faced with its daunting prospect, they inject drama or even danger into their lives. This way they feel alive. The narcissist is a lone wolf.
The narcissist is a con artist. He easily substitutes fiction for truth. What commences as an elaborate daydream ends up in the narcissist's mind as a plausible scenario.
Many narcissists strike an unhealthy balance. Being emotionally absent, they drive thepartner to find emotional gratification outside the bond. This achieved, they feel vindicated - they are proven right in being jealous. The narcissist is then able to accept the partner back and to forgive her. After all he argues - her two-timing was precipitated by the narcissist's own absence and was always under his control. The narcissist experiences a kind of sadistic satisfaction that he possesses such power over his partner. He reads into the subsequent scene of forgiveness and reconciliation the same meaning. It proves both his magnanimity and how addicted to him his partner has become.
Here he is - with his unique, superior traits - willing to accept back a disloyal, inconsiderate, disinterested, self centered, sadistic and most ordinary partner back. True, henceforth he is likely to be full of rage and hatred. Still, she is the narcissist's one and only. The more tumultuous the relationship, the better it suits the narcissist's self image.
After all, aren't such tortuous relationships the stuff Oscar winning movies are made of? Shouldn't the narcissist's life be special in this sense, too? Aren't the biographies of great men adorned with such abysses of emotions?
The narcissist determines which laws (social contracts) to obey and which to break. 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 rule book.
He is likely to be grateful to his partner - and berate her! - for having chosen him to be her mate. 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 purported stupidity and blindness of his mate or spouse is substantiated by the very fact that she is his mate or spouse. Only a stupid and blind person would have preferred the narcissist, with his myriad deficiencies, to others.
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. Because of the mechanisms of self-denigration I have described, the narcissist is likely to idealize his mate and believe that she must have been uniquely predisposed and "equipped" to cope with him.
The more convinced the narcissist is that his partner invested extraordinarily in the relationship and the more assured he is that she was uniquely equipped to succeed in it - the more frightened he becomes.
Why the fear?
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. The narcissist believes that he is doomed to an existence of loneliness and destitution. He stands no chance of ever having a resilient, healthy relationship with another partner. The narcissist would do anything to avoid this conclusion. He begs his partner to return and reestablish the relationship, no matter what transpired. Her very return proves to him that he is worthy, the preferred alternative, someone with whom maintaining a relationship is possible.
The partner, in other words, is the narcissist's equivalent of market research. That he was chosen by the partner is tantamount to receiving a quality award.
The narcissist is mortally terrified of being abandoned by his partner. This fear drives him to minimize his interactions with his partner to avoid the inevitable pain of rejection. This, in turn, leads exactly to the feared abandonment. The narcissist knows that his behavior instigates that which he is so afraid of.
Ultimately, the narcissist loses his partners in all his relationships. He hates himself for it and is enraged. Every conceivable psychological defense mechanism is employed to sublimate, transform, dissociate or redirect this self-mutilating wrath.
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 does not react to people as individuals. Rather, he generalizes and tends to treat people as symbols or "classes". This is also true in his relationships with "his" women. Women resent this kind of treatment and, gradually, the narcissist finds it more and more difficult to be himself with them.
Narcissism is a very unstable mental condition and it complicates the narcissist's functioning in daily life. The narcissist rarely accumulates wealth, property, assets, or possessions. The narcissist prefers to fake knowledge rather than to acquire it. He usually finds himself engaged in capacities far below his intellectual ability. Women notice this as well as his pompous, inflated body language, haughtiness, rage attacks and severe acting out. Finally, the closer they get to the narcissist, the more they are be able to discernantisocial, abnormal, and a-normative behaviors.
Hardly the ideal partner.
The narcissist believes that, upon closer scrutiny, he will be found lacking emotionally and, thus, unlovable. It is part of the narcissist's "Con-Artist Effect". The narcissist feels an objective and thorough scrutiny is bound to expose him for what he is: a fake, an impostor, a con man.
The narcissist's lifestyle, his reactions, in short: his disorder, prevent the development of a mature love, of real sharing, of empathy. The narcissist's mate, spouse, or partner is treated as an object.
Moreover, the narcissist himself is unlikely to cultivate a long-term relationship with a psychologically healthy, independent, and mature woman. (the healthier I got, the less interested Aydan got)
The narcissist thinks his reality is too "gray" and unattractive. He feels that his skills, traits, and experience are lacking, that his biography is boring, that many aspects of his life call for improvement. The narcissist desperately wants to be loved - and modifies and mends himself to render himself lovable.
While, usually, highly talented and intelligent - narcissists are emotionally immature and pathological. Narcissists know that they are inferior to other people in that they are self-defeating and self-destructive.
They solve this gap between their grandiose fantasies and their sordid and drab reality (the Grandiosity Gap) by manufacturing and designing their own failures. This way they feel that they control their misfortune. 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).
He feels that he doesn't have "anything to offer".
As it is, the narcissist regards any need to promote himself as demeaning. The narcissist is also afraid of the possibility of being rejected. The narcissist fails to understand why he needs to promote himself when his uniqueness is so self-evident. He envies the successes and the happiness of others. The narcissist cannot accept that anyone is more knowledgeable than he is.
The narcissist envies his deserting partner. He knows how difficult and emotionally wrenching it is to live with him.
He realizes 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.)
Of course, he blames his partner.
The narcissist does not feel sorry because a specific individual - his partner - abandoned him. He feels sorry because he was abandoned. It is the act of abandonment, which matters. For the narcissist, to be abandoned means to be judged and found wanting.
To be deserted means to be deemed replaceable.
Put differently, the narcissist experiences through abandonment transformed him into the deformed creature that he is. He gets a taste of the medicine (rather poison) that he often ruthlessly administers to others.
What a sad way to live ... BUT there is no pill yet discovered and not enough therapy in the world to repair a Narcissist. It seems their only function is to force the people around them into recovery! I chose to recover. What will you choose?
Malignant Self Love -Narcissism Revisited
Narcissism, Pathological Narcissism, The Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), the Narcissist,
and Relationships with Abusive Narcissists and Psychopaths
By: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
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