Narcissistic Abandonment: Find, Feel, F……., Forget

“I used my desires for sex, alcohol and pleasure to get my basic instincts met to dominate and control.  “Find, Feel, F…k, Forget” (Secrets of a Narcissist).

Narcissists are people who have no capacity to empathize and cannot feel your pain.  They don’t care about the damage inflicted by their ruthless negligence and are clearly sadistic in their emotional abandonment of partners.  Narcissists break hearts and humiliate partners to feel all powerful or punish for not getting the attention he or she craves.  Uninterested in experiencing an intimate connection, many narcissists lead hidden sexual lives compulsively watching pornography, masturbating, having affairs and/or visiting prostitutes.

Narcissists draw hostages to them that are fearful of rejection and suffer with unhealed pain in childhood.  A certain vulnerability or “woundedness” is appealing to them. Particularly vulnerable are those with absent fathers, angry mothers, or a history of abusive partners.  Narcissists are selective vampires with a psychic knowing of what emotional vulnerabilities to prey on, exploit, devour or destroy.  They look for naïve people and will present themselves as a person of honor and virtue.

A person who was physically or emotionally abandoned by a parent or caregiver may struggle with loss throughout life and not develop healthy self-esteem.  Experiences of abandonment growing up often contribute to feelings of worthlessness as well as a distorted view of how to care appropriately for one self in relationships.  Children who experience chronic loss without parental protection internalize incredible fear and believe they are not important or of little value. As adults with low self-esteem they often seek narcissistically unavailable partners and friends.  Additionally, rejection fears can impair a person’s ability to trust others and may cause anxiety, depression, and codependency.  Codependency is the inability to leave a chronically abusive relationship behind, whether that relationship is ongoing or past.  The codependent is a perfect match for the narcissistic relationship.

Abandonment, physical or mental, is very cruel and a plain act of insensitivity.  A narcissist can be physically present during conflict yet emotionally disappear in front of your eyes.  They will not talk about problems and will isolate themselves. Refusing to acknowledge the emotional distance with resounding silence can drive you crazy. Narcissistic vampires will continue to stick around aloof and cold until they suck the life out of you.  The emotional and mental violence is excruciating.  They perceive confrontation, disagreements, needs, respect for your boundaries, or being ignored as threats.  This pattern of emotional neglect destroys any chance of happiness and is traumatic.  As you get to know him better and begin to withdraw sexually and emotionally for protection the psychic vampire senses this change.  He disengages abruptly to maintain control of the abandonment and might start looking for a replacement relationship. The interpretation of events becomes a mixture of lies, distortions, half-truths, and bizarre accusations to make him look like the mistreated.  He becomes a saintly hero and his partner the abuser.  The narcissist controls the whole show and becomes defensive and resistant.  He is at risk of becoming enraged and suicidally despondent when you finally walk away from the insanity. No contact or ignoring a narcissist is the final torture.

Healing from abandonment takes time as you go toward it in stages of denial, anger, negotiating, and sadness.  The only way to get through your pain is to go through it.  Getting support from a healing professional is a good choice.  You can choose the direction of your new life.  By pursuing direction and happiness you begin the healing process.  Above all, choose to be kind to yourself; leave behind crisis and chaos.  Develop self-compassion; it is a necessary step towards removing yourself as a victim.

Thank you for reading my post. I’ve dedicated my personal and professional life to the importance of non-violence and self-compassion by teaching from my experience.  As a result, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes put an end to relationship abuse.  And, as I learn and grow, I teach self-compassion and give advice I use myself, in the hopes that it helps you to improve your own life.

 Roberta

 

 

 

Partners Who Are Incapable of Feeling Love

Broken Heart Courtesy Wikipedia

Each person who enters your life has a unique lesson to teach you

What if your partner is incapable of feeling love? Chances are they have a deep-seated fear that if they love you (or anyone) that will give you the power to hurt them, deprive them, and to abandon them. What he or she is feeling and thinking is what causes extreme fears, not what a you are saying or doing. To ease these fears this person will strip you of self-confidence to make you weak so that you are afraid to leave the relationship. To calm fears of being abandoned they will make you a focus of their rage, panic, fears, and inevitably their hatred. These behaviors effectively sabotage the relationship. Your partner controls the relationship abandonment through abuse because they are terrified of your ability to leave them. The partner incapable of love sets-up their own abandonment. The fear of rejection runs profoundly deep.

Falling for someone incapable of love locks you into whatever false image the person is projecting. You fall in love with an illusion. During the honeymoon phase of the courtship you see a person who seems to want and needs love.  Once you commit they begin to ignore your emotional needs and sometimes are unfaithful. Suddenly the partner begins to withdraw and provoke arguments. You wonder how could your partner who seemed to love you change so totally toward you. The relationship becomes too close for comfort for the person who is incapable of love. You as a person are not seen as a separate self with needs and a separate identity. This means you end up taking part in the relationship at the cost of not being yourself.

Why do you stay with someone incapable of loving you? Usually something in your history has led you to this place and what keeps you in a loveless relationship. Being loved is what most of us really want and often we are afraid of love without consciously knowing it. This is especially true if you have a history of over functioning and avoid worrying about your own personal goals and problems by focusing on others. This caretaking becomes a way of managing anxiety in relationships under stress. Developing a clear and authentic self means you can be pretty much be who you are. When you are not able to leave an emotionally painful relationship the tendency is to construct an explanation to make sense of your experience, “He just can’t deal with intimacy” or “She had a bad childhood.” The cost of not leaving may include chronic anger, resentments, feelings of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, or even self-blame (i.e., “I am such a loser for not leaving”). When you sacrifice your well-being you might also experience sexual problems, physical complaints, or compulsive behaviors. This leaves you angry at how badly you are being treated and with an overwhelming need to hold on to your relationship no matter how it is hurting you.

Acknowledging that your partnership is destructive and deciding to leave is not easy. Often there is regret, disappointed dreams, and damaged self-esteem. You may feel leaving is wrong and a sign of failure, especially if children are involved. In truth, what is wrong is to accept cruelty, abuse, and unhappiness. The abuse is a deal breaker.  The relationship will be more painful in the long run than the temporary pain of leaving. If you don’t take responsibility for your life, you aren’t really living. Establishing a good relationship with yourself allows you to find love with others. If you are afraid to leave the relationship, please give yourself permission to ask for help.

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Thank you for reading this post. I’ve dedicated my personal and professional life to the importance of non-violence and self-compassion by teaching from my experience.  As a result, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to create healthy relationships.  And, as I learn and grow, I teach self-compassion and give advice I use myself, in the hopes that it helps you to improve your own life.

Roberta

Curing Your Fear of Intimacy in Relationships

Most everyone carries fears about intimacy and being vulnerable.  We are afraid of being hurt, abandoned, rejected, humiliated, or betrayed.   Some of us are more afraid than others because of experiences that shaped us growing up.  Attachment style with our parental relationship serves as a model for adult experiences, particularly in the most intimate of relationships.  When a parent is emotionally absent, dismissing, inattentive, constantly distracted or downright cruel and rejecting, the distress confuses the child and desperate behavior begins to intensify.  As adults these children fear the threat of rejection or abandonment more than others.  They can become extremely clingy and angry, overwhelmed by their unmet dependency needs and unable to contain anxiety.  Often, they become people pleasers to receive approval from others.

Adults that have a negative self-image are fearful and doubting in their ability to keep a partner interested and maintain a loved one’s attention.  They worry excessively about rejection.  They are emotionally dependent and constantly feel unappreciated.  In intimate relationships they are romantically obsessive and jealous.  They tend to take hostages and are preoccupied with their partners.

Some adult children are dismissing and come across as emotionally disconnected, cold, and uninterested in intimate relationships.  They can waver between being distant and cut-off emotionally, to being critical and controlling.  These people are cynical and have negative views of others.  They are particularly guarded, mistrustful, and reluctant to self-disclose in most intimate relationships.  They tend to have more break-ups and are less invested in partnerships.  They feel less grief or distress when they have break-ups than others experience.  They just don’t seem to care as much.

Those who don’t care at all and are emotionally shut down as a result of trauma are often incapable of human intimacy.   If their behavior is characterized by a lack of remorse, lack of empathy, manipulations, and emotional coldness they may be a psychopath.  True psychopaths are constitutionally incapable of normal human interaction.  If you are in a relationship with someone like this, run, get out.  You cannot experience genuine intimacy with someone who abuses power and control and deals with emotional discomfort by blaming and attacking.

Many of us have these problems because we are afraid of being hurt or betrayed.  We still want intimacy, but are afraid of depending on someone and then getting wounded again.  These experiences are a driving force in ambivalence about intimacy.  The more painful and unresolved our earlier experiences are the more we crave intimacy and the more we feel threatened by it.  This is demonstrated by “come close”, “go away” relationship behavior.  We get close, get afraid, find fault with our partner, feel hurt and sabotage the relationship.  We then find ourselves alone, crave closeness again, and the repetitive behavior starts all over.  So if you sabotage intimacy and see it as a negative behavior you want to change, focus on the fear that fuels your actions.  You can learn to be compassionate with your fears and with others.  When you can see your fears and needs more clearly you can stop the cycle.  Love is what we really want and often we are afraid of love without consciously knowing it.

If you love someone and want more intimacy, and a decent relationship, you can learn how to create intimacy better.  Find out what your partner needs and how to support those needs.  If you pay attention and care about your loved one’s feelings, you can learn to be a better (not perfect) partner.  And when you stay in a relationship over time you can build your capacity for intimacy.

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Thank you for reading this article. I’ve dedicated my personal and professional life to the importance of non-violence and self-compassion by teaching from my experience.  As a result, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to create healthy relationships.  And, as I learn and grow, I teach self-compassion and give advice I use myself, in the hopes that it helps you to improve your own life.

Roberta