Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited

THE NARCISSIST AND THE OPPOSITE SEX

Chapter 5

page 1

This chapter deals with the male narcissist and with "his" relationships with "women".

It would be correct to substitute one gender for another. Female narcissists treat the men in their lives in a manner indistinguishable from the way male narcissists treat "their" women. I believe that this is the case with same sex partners.

A good point of departure would be jealousy, or rather, its pathological form, envy.

When a narcissist becomes aware of how romantically (=possessively) jealous he is, he usually reacts with anxiety. This is a peculiar response. It is characteristic of other kinds of interactions with the opposite sex where a possibility of rejection exists. Normal men are anxious before asking a woman to have sex with them. With the narcissist, though, the range of emotional reactions is very limited and underdeveloped.

He reacts with anxiety to any situation in which there is a remote possibility that he be rejected or abandoned.

Anxiety is an adaptive mechanism. It is the internal reaction to conflict. When the narcissist envies his female mate he is experiencing an unconscious conflict.

To start with the object of jealousy is a forbidden one. Jealousy is (justly) perceived as a form of transformed aggression.

To direct it at the female (=the representation of the primary object, the Mother) is to direct it at a forbidden object. A feeling of imminent punishment ensues. The punishment is likely to be in the familiar form of abandonment (physical or emotional).

But this is the "surface", easy to unearth, conflict. There is yet another layer, much harder to reach and to decipher.

To feed his envy, the narcissist has to exercise his imagination. He imagines situations, which would justify his feelings. If his mate is sexually disloyal or promiscuous this is a good reason to be jealous – he unconsciously "thinks".

The narcissist is a con artist. He easily substitutes fiction for truth and vice versa. What commences as an elaborate daydream ends up as a plausible scenario.

But, then, if his suspicions are true (they are bound to be - otherwise, why is he jealous?) - there is no way he can accept his partner back. If she is infidel - how could the relationship continue?

Infidelity and lack of exclusivity violate the first and last commandment of narcissism: uniqueness.

The narcissist tends to regard infidelity in absolute terms. The "other" must be better than he, or put differently: more special. Since the narcissist is nothing but a reflection, a glint in the eyes of others, when cast aside, he feels totally discarded. His entirety is wrecked. His partner, in this single (real or imagined) act, is perceived by the narcissist to have passed judgement upon him as a whole not upon this or that aspect of his personality and not in connection with the issue of compatibility.

This negation of his uniqueness makes it impossible for the narcissist to proceed in a relationship contaminated by jealousy (if this is the form of aggression he chose). But there is nothing more dreadful to a narcissist than the ending of a relationship, or abandonment.

Many narcissists strike an unhealthy balance. By a behaviour pattern characterized by emotional (and physical or sexual) absenteeism, they drive the partner to find emotional and physical satisfaction outside the bond. This achieved, they feel vindicated - they are proven right in being jealous.

On the other hand they are thus able to accept the partner back and to forgive her. After all – they argue - the infidelity was precipitated by their absence and was always under their control. They experience a kind of sadistic satisfaction that they possess such power over their partner. In provoking the partner to adopt a socially anomic behaviour they see proof of the unlimited control they have over her. They read into the scene of forgiveness and reconciliation the same interpretation: their magnanimity and how addicted their partner has become to their presence.

The more severe the infidelity - the more control through guilt is available to the narcissist. His ability to manipulate his partner increases the more forgiving and magnanimous he is. He never forgets to mention to her (or, at least, to himself) how wonderful he is for sacrificing himself. Here he is - this assemblage of unique, unprecedented traits - willing to accept a disloyal, infidel, inconsiderate, disinterested, self centred, sadistic (and, entre nous, most ordinary) bitch back. True, he is likely to invest less in the relationship, to become non-committal, and, probably, to host hatred and rage. Still, she is the narcissist's one and only. The more voluptuous, tumultuous, inane the relationship - the better it suits the narcissist's self image.

After all, isn't this 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?

If an emotional or sexual infidelity does occur (and very often it does), it is usually a cry for help on behalf of the narcissist's mate. A forlorn cause: no real change is achievable with this rigidly deformed personality structure.

Usually, the partner is the dependent or avoidant type and is inherently incapable of changing anything in her life. Such couples have no real, mutually agreed upon narrative or agenda, they are compatible mostly on the psychopathological level. They hold each other hostage and vie for the ransom.

The dependent partner can determine for the narcissist what is right and virtuous and what is wrong and evil as well as enhance and maintain his feeling of uniqueness (by wanting him). She, therefore, possesses the power to manipulate him. Sometimes she does so because years of emotional deprivation and humiliation by the narcissist have made her hate him.

The narcissist - forever "rational", forever afraid to get in touch with his emotions – often divides his relationships with humans to "contractual" and "non contractual". By doing so he drowns the small, immediate, identifiable (and absolutely and totally) emotional problems (with his partner) in a torrent of irrelevant frivolities (his numerous other "contractual" "relationships").

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