NARCISSUS IN LOVE OR MARRY FOR LOVE CANNOT BE ANY KING. PART 1

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Self-love is the beginning of a love affair that lasts a lifetime

O. Wilde

I don't care what you think about as long as you don't think about me

K. Cobain

… such a person does not love not only others, but even himself

E. Fromm

The theorist of love Erich Fromm defined love as unity with someone or something outside oneself, provided that the integrity of one's own “I” remains separate. The experience of love puts an end to the need for illusion. In love, there is no need to polish the image of another person or your own, since the reality of love allows you to go beyond individual existence and experience yourself as a bearer of active forces that make up an act of love.

Love is the experience of oneness with another person, provided that you maintain your own independence. Most people, even without pronounced narcissistic traits, believe that the main problem of love is being loved, not the ability to love. The problem of love in this perspective revolves around the question of how to induce love. The male answer to this question is primarily to achieve success, material well-being and power. Female - mainly in how to make yourself more attractive, carefully looking after your appearance. The main question is not how to evoke love, but how to love yourself. Many are convinced that they are capable of love without thinking about what it is. If you cannot breathe in the absence of a person and take it for love, how much you are delusional. If your loved one went fishing with friends or went to a conference that will help him to declare himself as a specialist in a certain field, and at this time you “do not breathe”, “do not live”, but only wait for him will return, then you cannot make yourself or a person truly happy, whose short-term absence can lead you to such a state.

But let's go directly to the question of what kind of narcissist he is in love and can he go down the aisle in love?

Narcissists are people who, in their entire lives, have never been able to learn how to do something on their own. Narcissus is filled with fantasies of perfection, envy of others and fear of humiliation; inside they are empty. They lack the ability to enter into a relationship with another person, but they have an urgent need for someone else to connect with their emptiness and contribute in various ways to maintain emotional balance. The perfect candidate for this position is someone who wants to become an extension of the fragile narcissist.

In a healthy love relationship, partners are interested in the other's autonomy as well as their own. All of this is diametrically different from the illusion of fusion, which the narcissist takes for love. When two such “beloved” unite, the goal of one of them (and often the other) is absolute merging, the collapse of the partner's autonomy for the sake of his narcissism. In such a union, people cease to exist as separate individuals.

Love is not so much a mutual relationship with a specific person, but rather a relationship in general, a personality orientation that determines a person's connection with the world as a whole, and not just with one object of love. Nevertheless, as Fromm notes in his work The Art of Love, many believe that love consists precisely in the presence of an object, and not in the ability to love. Moreover, Fromm continues his thought, some even believe that if a person loves only his "beloved", this is proof of love. Indeed, such a picture of love is inherent in many people, and they do not want to hear about any other formula of love. This approach, according to Fromm, is comparable to the situation when a person wants to paint a picture, but instead of learning this art, he waits until he finds a good object. Love for a specific person manifests itself in the ability to say: "I love everyone in you."

Love is often understood through an attitude of possessiveness. The love of two, who no longer feel love for anyone, is actually narcissism together. This feeling of unity is illusory.

A man who succumbs to the tyranny of a narcissist is often a mystery. Why does a person need to sacrifice himself to the last drop for such "love"? Most likely, this person was programmed to humiliation and self-humiliation by the experiences that he carries from his early childhood. He appears to have had a narcissistic parent and developed a habit of feeling valuable only when he satisfies the needs of the narcissistic hunger. So, an adult beautiful woman, walking in the shadow of her narcissistic spouse, who was traumatized by her father's sexual abuse in childhood, has been trying unsuccessfully for several years to break the harmful relationship with her husband, however, every time she returns to continue the torture.

Healthy narcissism provides an opportunity to admire another person who is a reflection of a person's own ideals, to form attachments to other people, given their integrity and independence, and to maintain love relationships for a long time, while the narcissist has a dramatic end to them.

In healthy love, there is attention to the feelings, thoughts, health and well-being of a loved one. For the narcissist, the fulfillment of desire comes after competition or victory over the object of his love, the destruction of this person's autonomy. Narcissists are looking for a person who can mirror the experience of their significance and who, at the same time, can take on the unbearable burden of shame and envy.

Narcissistic personalities, as O. Kernberg points out, are not capable of deep involvement in the object of love. In relation to the desired object, they experience intense feelings of frustration and impatience, and immediately after mastering it, they become indifferent to it.

There are only two types of people who are beneficial to the narcissist: those who can pump inflation, and those whom he can "absorb." The former can do this, admiring, attributing to him special qualities so that the narcissistic person can bask in the rays reflected by them. The latter either allow the narcissist to project the burden of shame on them, or feel superior to them. More often than not, all the “beloved” of the narcissist do both. If you are hooked on a narcissist, expect to endure constant contempt in response to the endless admiration in which the narcissist is a hundred times more interested than in your love.

Narcissistic personalities, O. Kernberg points out, need admiration and unconsciously extort the resources of admiration available from another - this is their vengeful defense against envy. By projecting the same needs onto their partner, they fear that they will be exploited and "robbed" of what they have. Narcissistic personalities experience the usual reciprocity in human relations as exploitation and capture. As a result of conflicts associated with narcissistic envy, they are unable to feel gratitude for what they receive from another, whose ability to give free of charge they may envy. Lack of gratitude hinders the development of the ability to appreciate the love received.

It is perfectly normal to idealize those we love; the narcissist demands that his love object be idealized by others as well. To this end, the narcissist needs to choose a person who would be beautiful, intelligent, successful, or, in some other way, enjoy universal recognition due to his exclusivity. Thus, a narcissist can easily leave his partner, with whom he has lived for many years, only because an object has turned up that fits better into the narcissistic framework.

Although narcissists crave other people to envy their successes, they are not aware of their own envy towards those who have become the object of their love. Narcissists are incredibly competitive people, and the same qualities that attract them at the beginning of a relationship, over time, make them feel inferior compared to the object of love. The person who, as they thought, could sate their thirst for admiration, later becomes a threat; to recover, you have to eliminate this person. All the traits of a loved one that delight the narcissist, at the same time humiliate him. So, an obese man-narcissist at an age entered into an intimate relationship with a younger and slender woman, younger than him. At the beginning of this relationship, he became addicted to diets and, indeed, lost weight, over time, the dietary regime began to weigh on him, and the man began to gain weight again, while his passion easily keeps himself in shape, which became the reason for his envy.

All narcissistic relationships are exploitative, and love relationships are no exception. Being vulnerable to a narcissist means letting the other know that they can be used. If a person becomes addicted to a narcissist, he feels as if he has benefited from their relationship; however, the fear of being exploited prompts narcissists to deny their own addiction. They experience reciprocity as exploitation and interference in their affairs, so they build relationships in which they have an advantage, seeking to control their partner.

The means that give the narcissist the ability to control his lover are varied, they depend on the individual style of the person, circumstances and his capabilities. The goal is to destroy the autonomy of the beloved narcissist and maintain the illusion of merging.

The narcissist needs to choose people who will look at him with respect, acknowledge his exclusivity and thereby increase his sense of self-worth. The narcissist really wants his lover to serve as a mirror that demonstrates his dignity and goes into a terrible rage when the emotional pipeline that fuels his inflation breaks down. The beloved narcissist is not allowed to experience or express feelings or thoughts that conflict with the needs of the narcissist.

The narcissist tends to choose the object of his love, which may be in some way inferior, which can be easily manipulated. A little frightened girl is a tasty morsel for a narcissistic man, just like a small frightened boy is a godsend for a narcissistic woman.

Narcissists are the worst lovers with a variety of sexual dysfunctions inherent in them, as well as having a tendency to use their partners for their own selfish purposes. Heterosexual men have envy and fear of women that they will be rejected and ridiculed at them. So, a man-narcissist blames his partner for all his sexual failures, reproaching her for coldness, ineptitude, which lead to his sexual fiasco. Some narcissistic men, writes O. Kernberg, have severe sexual inhibitions, fear of rejection and ridicule by women, associated with the projection of their own unconscious hatred of them on women. Fear of women can also give rise to aversion to female genitalia. Splitting is also possible: some women are idealized and at the same time any sexual feelings for them are denied, while others are perceived as purely genital objects with which, due to the lack of tenderness and romantic idealization, complete sexual freedom is possible.

Both women and men with a narcissistic personality organization often have an unconscious fantasy of simultaneously belonging to both sexes, thereby denying the inner need to envy the other sex. These fantasies lead to a variety of ways to find sexual partners. Some narcissistic men seek women who unconsciously represent the mirror image of their self - "heterosexual twins" - unconsciously supplementing themselves with genitals and the corresponding psychological aspects of the opposite sex, so as not to feel the need to accept the reality of another, autonomous personality. In some cases, however, unconscious envy of the genitals of the opposite sex causes the devaluation of the sexual characteristics that generate it, which provoke envy, and leads to asexual twin relationships. This can be destructive as it carries with it harsh sexual inhibitions.

Narcissistic women are cold and calculating, with hostility towards both men and women. Such women tend to exploit their partner as long as he allows it, but if this partner has even a grain of self-respect and, ultimately, he runs away, they will feel anger, and will never yearn for the departed lover. As Kernberg points out, some heavily narcissistic women can maintain long-term self-destructive alliances with heavily narcissistic men whose power, fame, or talents make them look like the ideal male figure. Other narcissistic women, socially more successful, sometimes virtually completely identify with such idealized men, unconsciously feeling themselves to be their true muses, and eventually cease to live their own lives.

Some narcissistic women combine an intense search for the perfect man with an equally intense devaluation of their partner, which forces them to "switch" from one famous man to another; some, however, find that the power of the "gray eminence" also allows for the satisfaction of narcissistic needs and compensates for the unconscious envy of men. While sexual promiscuity in men is mostly narcissistic in nature, in women it can be of both narcissistic and masochistic origins.

A narcissistic couple in love is internally unstable; the interference of reality can unbalance the relationship and lead to conflict, suffering, rupture of relations, for example, if one of the partners succeeds or fails, unconscious competition between them can lead to the collapse of the relationship. At the same time, a couple in which both partners have a narcissistic personal organization may well find a way of coexistence that satisfies the needs of dependence on both sides and provides conditions for social and economic survival. And even if emotionally, relationships may be empty, but a certain degree of mutual support, mutual use, convenience can make them stable. The strength of the relationship of such a couple is determined by the general conscious ideas about the social roles of their own and their partner, financial factors, and belonging to a particular social environment. More often, however, there is an unconscious revival of past object relationships.

Let's also touch on one of the well-known and eternal phenomena inherent in lovers' relationships - jealousy. Kernberg, among other significant narcissistic symptoms, calls the inability to be jealous, which, in his opinion, indicates an inability to take on internal obligations in a relationship, as a result of which it is simply inappropriate to talk about infidelity. Lack of jealousy can also be due to the fantasy of such superiority over all rivals that a partner's infidelity is completely unthinkable. However, in a paradoxical way, jealousy can manifest itself after the fact: a strong degree of jealousy in this case indicates the narcissistic trauma experienced after the partner leaves him for someone else. Narcissistic jealousy is especially striking when the attitude towards the partner was previously devil-may-care. Narcissistic type of jealousy, activating aggression, can worsen an already unstable relationship. At the same time, it testifies to the ability to "invest" in another and to transition into the Oedipus psychological world. As Klein pointed out, if envy is characteristic of preoedipal, especially oral, aggression, then jealousy dominates in oedipal aggression [1]. Jealousy caused by real or imagined betrayal can awaken a desire for revenge, which often leads to reverse triangulation: an unconscious or conscious desire to be the object of competition between two people of the opposite sex.

If the narcissist can find support on the side that will fuel his inflation, then his pressure on his partner may be minimal. Frustrations, job loss, retirement, breakdown of other relationships, loss of status or replenishment from other "pipelines" lead to higher requirements for a partner, which is fraught with a worsening of both psychological and somatic state for the latter.

What draws people into relationships with narcissists? First of all, daffodils are "exceptional" and "unique." Their tendency to follow idealized fantasies can cloud reality. And when your desire to admire someone in other people makes you want to please you, you can mistake that favor for love.

[1] Envy is an angry feeling that another person possesses and enjoys something desired, an envious impulse is directed to take away or spoil it. Moreover, envy implies the relationship of the subject to only one person and comes from the earliest exclusive relationship with the mother. Jealousy is based on envy, but includes attitudes towards at least two people; it is mainly concerned with the love that the subject feels as his privilege and which he takes away, or there is a threat that his rival will take away. In the common sense of jealousy, a man or woman feels that someone else is depriving them of a loved one. Jealousy is inherent in the Oedipus situation and is accompanied by hatred and death wishes. Normally, however, the acquisition of new objects that can be loved - the father and the siblings - and other compensations that the developing ego receives from the outside world, to a certain extent, mitigate jealousy and resentment.