The Toxins of Abuse: How to Spot an Abuser on Your First Date - How to Recognize an Abuser

Written by Dr. Sam Vaknin

10. What do you advise about having friends with benefits? Why?

 

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A. There's nothing wrong with short-term, interim, intermittent, and less committed liaisons that involve sexual gratification as well as companionship. It provides for an oasis of much-needed calm in between more demanding, serious, ad sometimes onerous relationships. As long as this does not become a permanent and predominant pattern, it should be regarded as a welcome addition to the emotional and psychosexual arsenal of singles and the divorced.

11. What is your advice to people still hooking up with their ex? Should they break it off or try to make it work again? Why or why not? How should they approach the subject with their ex?

A. It depends to a large extent on who the ex is. Breaking up to a relationship is like illness to the body: it doesn't have to be terminal. Some couples convalesce, re-establish their bond and reaffirm it. But, if the ex is narcissistic, psychopathic, or paranoid, hooking up again may not be such a great idea. Personality disorders are all-pervasive and intractable. Best stay away and avoid the traps of rescue fantasies and malignant optimism.

You cannot change people, not in the real, profound, deep sense. You can only adapt to them and adapt them to you. If you do find your narcissist rewarding at times - you should consider doing these:

1. Determine your limits and boundaries. How much and in which ways can you adapt to him (i.e., accept him AS HE IS) and to which extent and in which ways would you like him to adapt to you (i.e., accept you as you are). Act accordingly. Accept what you have decided to accept and reject the rest. Change in you what you are willing and able to change - and ignore the rest. Conclude an unwritten contract of co-existence (could be written if you are more formally inclined).
2. Try to maximise the number of times that "...his walls are down", that you "...find him totally fascinating and everything I desire". What makes him be and behave this way? Is it something that you say or do? Is it preceded by events of a specific nature? Is there anything you can do to make him behave this way more often?

Remember, though:

Sometimes we mistake guilt and self-assumed blame for love.

Committing suicide for someone else's sake is not love.

Sacrificing yourself for someone else is not love.

It is domination, codependence, and counter-dependence.

You control your narcissist by giving, as much as he controls you through his pathology.

Your unconditional generosity sometimes prevents him from facing his True Self and thus healing.

It is impossible to have a relationship with a narcissist that is meaningful to the narcissist.

Moving On

To preserve one's mental health - one must abandon the narcissist. One must move on.

Moving on is a process, not a decision or an event. First, one has to acknowledge and accept painful reality. Such acceptance is a volcanic, shattering, agonising series of nibbling thoughts and strong resistances. Once the battle is won, and harsh and agonizing realities are assimilated, one can move on to the learning phase.

Learning

We label. We educate ourselves. We compare experiences. We digest. We have insights.

Then we decide and we act. This is "to move on". Having gathered sufficient emotional sustenance, knowledge, support and confidence, we face the battlefields of our relationships, fortified and nurtured. This stage characterises those who do not mourn - but fight; do not grieve - but replenish their self-esteem; do not hide - but seek; do not freeze - but move on.

Grieving

Having been betrayed and abused - we grieve. We grieve for the image we had of the traitor and abuser - the image that was so fleeting and so wrong. We mourn the damage he did to us. We experience the fear of never being able to love or to trust again - and we grieve this loss. In one stroke, we lost someone we trusted and even loved, we lost our trusting and loving selves and we lost the trust and love that we felt. Can anything be worse?

The emotional process of grieving has many phases.

At first, we are dumbfounded, shocked, inert, immobile. We play dead to avoid our inner monsters. We are ossified in our pain, cast in the mould of our reticence and fears. Then we feel enraged, indignant, rebellious and hateful. Then we accept. Then we cry. And then - some of us - learn to forgive and to pity. And this is called healing.