Narcissist and Women - Excerpts Part 26 - Narcissist and Relationships

Written by Sam Vaknin

They are as potent as love, yet so ever more purposeful, crystalline and honest.

There is no hypocrisy in terror, nor is there pretence in hatred.

In them, we seek the ruin of our tormentors, thus to obliterate our addiction.

We seek to be freed from the shackles of dependence.

You ask me what would have been my choice if I could live one day as someone else - to be a Hitler or a Mother Theresa. The choice is easy. I always prefer the true (however evil) over the fake (however "unselfish").

You write to me that never having experienced love, I am hardly in the position to pass judgement.

This, needless to say, is a fallacy. My position is privileged in that, indeed, I was never infected.

Immune to it, I can observe with perfect factual objectivity, the basis to my utterly subjective views.

But I am subjective - not prejudiced, there is a big difference between the two.

You grieve over my "loss". You compliment me: I am attractive and intelligent and powerful and famous (wherever I live, that is). You cannot understand how I deny myself the joys of love and sex.

And I cannot understand how you deny yourself the joys of the intellect which are far superior to the obsessive and farcical exploration of orifices that is human sex. I cannot fathom how you are so irrational as to believe in the possibility of communication between minds - a philosophical impossibility, Wittgenstein notwithstanding. And if minds cannot communicate, how could psyches?

What is the currency of emotions? The legal tender of pain? It is with ourselves that we communicate, mistaking echoes for replies and our own reflections for others'.

Yes, you are right, I do live in a concentration camp. And so do you. Only you deny it.

9. Going to Therapy

There is no way to convince anyone to go to therapy - nor is there a point in doing so.

The decision to seek help must be the result of insight (often brought on by crisis and ego dystony, of "feeling bad"). It must be the eruption of the will to live FULLY.

You cannot provoke it in anyone and it is not a function of how much you love someone, devote and dedicate yourself to him.

10. Official Psychology and NPD

Official psychology (whatever that is) claims that the prognosis of NPD is poor but that psychodynamic talk therapies (=psychoanalysis mainly) can be of help.

I think that narcissists (especially what I call "cerebral narcissists" of which I am one) should be treated with a cocktail of supportive therapy and CBT/DBT.

11. Loving Narcissism

It looks as though it is not your wife that you love - but her narcissism.

The excitement, the unpredictability, the capriciousness, the torment, the agony - she is a sole and exquisite provider of all these.

You need not worry, she will never leave you for long.

Narcissists are sadists and inverted narcissists are both rare and the perfect match.

Concentrate on your problems and on your healing - NOT because you are "sicker" or "sick", but because this is your only way out.

Ignore her problems - she is as much your instrument as you are hers.

She is irrelevant, a symbol of your own imperfections.

Your wife does display traits borrowed from a few personality disorders (mainly the histrionic but also the narcissistic and the borderline).

Your behaviour is typical of a co-dependent and inverted narcissism (or "covert narcissism") is, indeed, a type of co-dependence.

You are compatible, in that you satisfy each other's psychological needs.

It would seem that this IS what you enjoy: the thrill, the fear, the pain, the dissolution.

Otherwise, why haven't you stayed with the other woman?

You are attracted precisely to your wife's ability to mimic a capricious, omnipotent, unpredictable, and arbitrarily sadistic parent.

I am NOT saying that you don't crave compassion and affection. I AM saying that you find a woman who offers you ONLY compassion and affection, understanding and kindness - unbearably boring. You need the drama, the excitement, the punishment, the adrenaline of a rocky relationship.

next: Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List Part 27