• Narcissistic dependence serves as substitute for emotional involvement.
• Immature emotional dependence and habit
• Object interchangeability
  (dependence upon AN object - not upon THE object)...
• Limitation of contacts with objects to material and "objective" transactions.
  The Narcissist prefers fear, adulation, admiration and
• Narcissistic accumulation to love.
• To the narcissist, objects have no autonomous existence except as PNSS and
• SNSS (=primary and secondary sources of narcissistic supply).
  Knowledge and intelligence serve as control mechanisms and extractors of adulation and attention (=Narcissistic Supply).
• The Object is used to recreate early life conflicts:
• The Narcissist is bad and asks to be punished anew and to have confirmation that people are angry at him.
• The object is kept emotionally distant through deterrence and is constantly tested by the Narcissist who reveals his negative sides to the object.
• The aim of negative, off putting behaviours is to check whether the Narcissist's uniqueness will override and offset them in the mind of the object.
• The object experiences emotional absence, repulsion, deterrence, and insecurity.
• It is thus encouraged not to develop emotional involvement with the Narcissist
  (emotional involvement requires a positive emotional feedback).
• The erratic and demanding relationship with the Narcissist is experienced as a burden.
• It is punctuated by a series of "eruptions" followed by relief.
• The Narcissist is imposing, intrusive, compulsive, and tyrannical.
• Reality is interpreted cognitively so that negative aspects - real and imagined - of the object will be highlighted.
• This preserves distance, fosters uncertainty, prevents emotional involvement and activates Narcissistic mechanisms (such as grandiosity) which, in turn, increase the repulsion and the aversion of the partner.

Sample sentences of narcissists:

• "The object is not as (some trait) as the Narcissist is",
• "She is boring",
• "She is dangerous because she is.",
• "A stable relationship cannot be formed because."
• Another interpretation offered by the narcissist:
• The Narcissist chose the object because of an error/circumstances/pathology/loss of control/immaturity/partial or false information, etc.

Functioning and Performance

• A grandiosity shift:
• A preference to be emotionally invested in grandiose professional fantasies in which the Narcissist does not have to face a practical, professionally rigorous and constant path.
• The Narcissist avoids success in order to avoid emotional involvement and investment.
• He shuns a success which obliges him to invest and to identify himself with some goal and emphasizes areas of activity in which he is unlikely to succeed.
• The Narcissistic ignores the future and does not plan.
• Thus he is never emotionally committed.
• The Narcissist invests the necessary minimum in his job (emotionally).
• He is not thorough and under-performs, his work is shoddy and defective or partial.
  He evades responsibility and tends to pass it on to others while exercising little control.
• His decision making processes are ossified and rigid
• (He presents himself as a man of "principles" - usually his whimsical moods).
• The Narcissist reacts very slowly to a changing environment (change is painful).
• He is a pessimist, knows that he will lose his job/business - so, he is constantly engaged in seeking alternatives and constructing plausible alibis.
  This yields a feeling of temporariness, which prevents engagement, involvement, commitment, dedication, identification and emotional hurt in case of change or failure.
• The alternative to a spouse:
  Solitary life (with vigorous emphasis on PNSS) or another partner.