The Beginning
“I was seeing Mr. Wonderful for a little over a year. The first 6 months or so were... wonderful. He told me he loved me, alluded to our future, was warm and ‘connecting.’ Of COURSE there were flags; he was coming on strong, and I knew he was very intelligent and intuitive and I couldn’t shake the feeling he was letting in under my radar; I hated his flirting and how I’d go for days without hearing from him sometimes; but I trusted him and he was saying things I wanted to hear. Then the splitting started, and I started to unravel. Back and forth, bonding and withdrawing—he never broke us up, but would say he didn’t see how it could last, and he thought we ‘might’ be incompatible, ‘might’ not, he didn’t know. I was bewildered and fought a long time (WAY too long) to figure out what I was doing ‘wrong,’ what was going on, what he was thinking. And then he’d always bond again with persuasive ‘sincerity.’ Finally I told him I meant it—I wanted a commitment or not. I kept some distance for weeks and he never committed OR let go, seemingly ‘proving’ that he loved me even though I wasn’t ‘feeding’ him, though probably I was. About 2 months ago he said some pivotal things and I totally surrendered. LATER THAT DAY he withdrew again. I left.”
“His facade was so polished. Had I not been clouded with my own ego needs I would have recognised a wounded animal that was doing the best he knew how to survive. I was perplexed when he bit at me for no reason, retreated to his cave quite frequently.”
“When we met he portrayed himself as a sensitive new age guy (SNAG) and courted me heavily. I wanted to BELIEVE in his portrayal and enjoyed the courtship so we satisfied each other’s scenarios.”
Buying the Lie
“I chose mates who in the dating phase of the relationship were kind, romantic, fun, funny, seemed to possess good character and insight, intelligence and sensitivity {one was a special-ed teacher and published poet, one was a musician, the hair color N taught seminars in conflict management...'bite me'....} The person you fall for at the start is not the person you wind up living with at the end.”
“Sometimes he is the most caring, generous person I know - those times are few and far in between, but it is at those times that I think he can't possibly be an N. But the fact of the matter is that he is - he is also a gambler, alcoholic, spendaholic and so forth. He definitely lives only for today and it drives me crazy. I have supported him financially for four years now and it still continues. I make his life so easy - no wonder he wants me in it - I have to realize though that I deserve someone who wants me in their life because they actually love me.”
“We fall prey to the seduction, it is irresistible. Then the nightmare of horror begins. The shabby treatment, the avoidance. I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. He had been so sincere, so kind. It was Jekyl and Hyde.”
“Friends and family kept warning me of him and what he was doing to me, but I believed that he had been hurt so badly by others that I could “love” him healthy. It didn’t work and wont ever work. A friend gave me a piece of advice that is lifesaving to me ... he said if you keep playing with a snake, eventually it will bite you ... well, I heard it but didn’t take it to heart…”
The Right Victim
“They go for the strongest and the best, but preferably those who are something of rebels within the group...the LEAST controllable. Because if they can crush them, they crush most of the rest at the same time. If they start at the bottom, with the weakest, it’s a long way to work their way up…The ideal target is therefore, strong, smart, rebellious and vulnerable through previous abuse.”
“These guys can sniff it out. They know a good person when they see one and use every means, every method to ‘get some’!”
“A caretaker focuses all the attention on others and not themselves, and a N wants all the attention focused on him. The glove fits.”
“…they are so selfish, they just want everything done for them. Some of them are parasites, so who else would they try to latch onto but a caretaker, and bleed them dry.”
Living with them
“It was like trying to raise another kid, but an irrational, mean one at that. One who couldn’t, wouldn’t learn and it was all my fault.”
“At some point in the relationship I realised that my role was no longer ‘partner’... it had evolved to mentor, coach, and at times I felt more like a mother than anything else.”
“That mother-love is so good, so unconditional. I too loved him after he treated me poorly time after time. He loved the Mother-love and he hated it. All children do.”
“He cheated on me endlessly, used women for money and sex, kept telling me it was my fault, and the sorry thing is I believed him because of low self-esteem. So for years I thought that if I tried a little harder, worked harder, pleased him more, did more at our business, then he would wake up and see what a wonderful person I am...but no. He would blame everything that happened to us on me. Said people didn’t respect him as much as they should because I would try to tell people about our home life and it sounded too made-up and crazy... how could this wonderful, charismatic man be so bad?”
“For 23 years he made excuses for her behavior and he hid behind the lies, hoping against all odds, that she would somehow transform herself through his love. She did not, in fact she got worse, not better at all.”
“I knew that his emotional world was comparable to the way a shark feeds. If you study sharks it is a great metaphor for the emotional world of an N. Their whole being, I mean every word, gesture and action is to present a false picture and to supply their insatiable need to avoid emotional contact with others without losing their supply and false sense of perfection. It quite a balancing act for them. And you better believe that they are very good at it because they have been at it since childhood and for them it is a matter of survival.”
“They steal the innocent, harmless fun out of life.......It’s like you find yourself in a position where all the good things and good intentions in the world are somehow blocked from applying to you. As though they poison the sunlight. They try to gag and ban truth... You get to feeling like there is no safety, no hiding place, no-one you can trust...”
“They are trapped in the mind of a two year old, and they possess no cognitive ability to reason, to negotiate, to cooperate, to give and take, to love, to empathize. Rather their lives consist of ultimatums, demands, greed, egocentric thinking, bullying, temper tantrums, and a plethora of ‘I wants’ and ‘Give me’s’ etc.“
Devaluing
"To my experience, a favored technique for Narcissists is to debilitate your identity [personally, I hate the term self-esteem] by levelling false accusations and/or questioning your honesty, fidelity, trustworthiness, your “true” motivations, your “real” character, your sanity and judgement.”
“He has devalued me so much. he has lied, cheated, been a total son of a bitch and has sucked my esteem right out of me - yet I still have hope for him. I can be so damn mad at him that I think I am going to kill him and then he usually says something that makes me forgive him.”
“It will get worse too, if you want to be devaluated all the time whenever he doesn’t get what he wants, and I don’t know if you can be lover, mother, sister, friend, counsellor, financier, etc., all in one with no returns.”
“Ns invade our emotions and our psyche like a virus and it’s hard to get over it. They mastermind our dependency on them (and we cooperate) so that we won’t abandon them—then they abandon us, a sort of pre-emptive strike.”
Selfishness
“At our house, he had a candy and sweet stash that the kids weren’t allowed to touch, he would eat in front of them, them be MAD because they begged some from him. He would stop for gas and buy a pop and chips or candy for him and no one else and sit and sat it in front of us and yell at me for letting the kids ask for bites and drinks. He never got how come I thought that was so cruel. He said I didn’t discipline the kids well enough.”
“We don’t exist for them, not really. I’m basically here in the ‘wife’ role, to make his life easier...to cook and clean and wash his dirty undies. If I DARE to mention an unfulfilled need of mine, the reaction is always rage. That’s NOT the way a loving husband responds to a wife he loves!”
They’re Sadistic
“One of the sickest aspects is the pleasure they appear to get when they cause pain. Most healthy people back off when they cause others pain. N’s feed on it and even increase and repeat the act to prove they were right in the first place (they can’t ever be wrong) and as a means to denegrate vulnerability. It’s all so unbelievable because it is so irrational that it takes a long time to really get a grip on it.”
“…he was the MASTER of saving up your most personal “confessions” and then using them to tell you why you are so disgusting and sickening.”
“They’re keenly intuitive and know just how to get to us and know we’re giving, and it’s a huge rush for them when we respond even though they treat us badly.”
No Morals
“In the three years I’ve been married to him, I haven’t seen one speck of morals; I just hear a lot of hot air about my morals and the kids morals...as if he’s okay in that dept. Delusions, denial, blame, excuses, arbitrary rules for everyone but themselves, it’s all smoke and mirrors to try to hide the empty spot where their soul should be.”
“They are vile, despicable creatures with no conscious. They know right from wrong, they simply don’t care.”
Entitlement
“It never ceases to amaze me at the N’s ability to continually use and abuse people with no sense of right or wrong. It is as if they feel the world owes them something, they are ENTITLED to anything they want.”
“What is incredibly scary to me is that N’s do not see ANYTHING wrong at all with taking from people, it is as if they are entitled to all the luxuries that money can buy.”
Boundaries
“Are most usually found, like small puppies, or dinky toys, EXACTLY where you next intend to tread...”
“As far a boundaries go, I was the one who didn’t have clear, defined, well-established boundaries on what I would permit, not permit during the dating experience with my N (soon to be divorced). If I had the boundaries, I would have booted his butt out the door on the first date!”
Hatred
“If I’m not nice of course, then I’m a bitch and “protest too much” my ex N said. Of course when I went along a few times in his opinion of other people to see how he would react, a very mean opinion, very cold, he loved it. He wanted me to join with him in his hate toward the world. He was brainwashing me from the very first time we spent together. Telling me I was no different than him, turning me into a monster like him. He knew I was a caring person and said, “…you mean we aren’t going to be Bonnie and Clyde”?…how sick! He said all men are like him, they just lie to me and he is being the honest one. That we had a bond and would be friends forever.”
Instant Gratification
“They are filled with their own set of fears and really can’t persevere in a relationship. Everything is “instant gratification” for them. Either they want what they want, NOW - or they will move on to someone else to get it.”
Idealised Love
“He didn’t want to try. He didn’t want understanding. He didn’t want to “work through” anything. All he wanted was his own idealized version of love and since I didn’t fulfil the 110 qualifications for a relationship - he moved on. Forget the fact that I did fulfil about 99 of them. I wasn’t perfect. Sooooo...off he goes to find another “perfect” love.”
Contradictions
“They talk out of both sides of their mouths - mine did it all the time - one minute he would say let’s get a bigger house with a garage, etc, then the next he would say we needed to downsize to save money! I learned not to put any hope into anything he said and that’s no way to live.”
Lies
“An incredible actress, she can suck people dry and they are left having no clue as to what just happened. She thinks nothing of lying, as a matter of fact I am not sure she even knows the difference between fact or fiction.”
“They are absolutely the world’s best manipulators, liars, and fabricators of truth. They do so convincingly because they believe their own lies. After all their life is nothing but a lie, a sham, how can we possibly assume they know anything different.”
Money
“Mine borrowed money from me constantly - I mean were talking in the 10’s of thousands. I actually had to file bankruptcy because he ran up my credit cards so high. Of course, it didn’t affect him any - he has repaired his credit and is on his way to getting credit again while I sit with a public record on my credit report.”
Change
“I couldn’t believe that some people couldn’t change. But beware of an N, this one goes to Church when he is in trouble or need, he has even gone into rehabilitation centers, during times of failure and great need. But up and at em, don’t be fooled, he always reverts to his old self, false, or true…the nasty N self. He even enrolled in school telling me he would change and got a job there, 5 weeks later, back to his old binging and behavior, I think it is admiration, sometimes they try to comply for approval and admiration, but there isn’t a True Self with morals and beliefs that actually do it. So be careful, of being misled about their ability to change.”
“My therapist says that it is virtually impossible for him to change because he is an N and why would he want to? He gets everything he wants from whichever dumb girl he is with at the time, he feels no attachment to anyone so he doesnt have to deal with a painful breakup and he thinks the world spins around him, so why would he want to change?”
"He never would take responsibility for anything. It was always some one elses fault, or mostly mine. He would say he was just reacting to my behaviors and if I wanted him to change, all I had to do was change me, so I tried for years and years and then I woke up one day and said “my God, he will never change, no matter how much I change or how much I do, it will never be enough” so that was my breaking point.”
“My husband describes personality disorders like this - (he uses an apple as an example) when someone has a neurosis it is like a bruise in an apple, you cut it out and the rest of the person is fine; however when someone has a personality disorder it is as if the core is rotten!!! The apple is bad! You cannot simply cut out the core, impossible. He was married to one for 23 years and she will NEVER change. She is a very nasty person, a control freak, a manipulator, and a pathological liar! She sees absolutely no harm in her ways and she NEVER will.”
“…you can just bet this person will never commit. And it is hard to accept if you are attracted and pulled in. Or if you have a need to change him…Forget it, it’s a waste of time. You can just bet he has others NS supplies on the side and other women. That fear of life, he is not going to take a chance that only one person is there for him, even if he is never there for anyone.”
“Don’t fantasize he will change either. He needs someone there, and the fact he needs someone makes him hate himself and everyone else, and they are so needy, it won’t be just one NS supply. Believe me. It can be male or female, but a hoard of friends, friends, friends, and relationships. Be careful of venereal disease or STDs.”
“I have finally come to the conclusion that they cannot change, so all we can do is to refuse to participate in their sick drama and leave the stage.”
“These people are not reachable....!!!!!! They dont love you...they use you. They dont appreciate you...they abuse you.”
Moving on to New Victims
“I don’t hate him, I feel the way you would about a disease or an injury you had that long... I guess I have always wished that people like him never got born... All they ever do is make hurt, pain and trouble in this world, if not for me then for someone else just as important and valuable. I cannot bear that either...”
“For obvious reasons she is going to paint a glorious picture of love and happiness with this new ‘partner’, the last thing she would want is for you to get ANY satisfaction that the relationship is just as miserable as all of her previous relationships (yours included).”
“While I do not know positively, I think we can presume that there is not one Narcissist out there, that magically transforms themselves when the right one comes along. There are no right ones, because they are incapable of recognizing one if it hit them in the face. Just supplies and as long as it lasts, they’ll stay.”
“And it doesn’t matter how many people tell them they are F----- Up, they will just go on the search for those they can manipulate. Unfortunately there are a lot of vulnerable people with a lot of unmet needs and they are just sitting ducks for N’s.”
ORIGINAL
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