Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited

(faq page 79 cont.)

The Narcissist and the Opposite Sex

This chapter deals with the male narcissist and with "his" relationships with "women".

It would be correct to substitute one gender for another. Female narcissists treat the men in their lives in a manner indistinguishable from the way male narcissists treat "their" women. I believe that this is the case with same sex partners.

A good point of departure would be jealousy, or rather, its pathological form, envy.

When a narcissist becomes aware of how romantically (=possessively) jealous he is, he usually reacts with anxiety. This is a peculiar response. It is characteristic of other kinds of interactions with the opposite sex where a possibility of rejection exists. Normal men are anxious before asking a woman to have sex with them. With the narcissist, though, the range of emotional reactions is very limited and underdeveloped.

He reacts with anxiety to any situation in which there is a remote possibility that he be rejected or abandoned.

Anxiety is an adaptive mechanism. It is the internal reaction to conflict. When the narcissist envies his female mate he is experiencing an unconscious conflict.

To start with the object of jealousy is a forbidden one. Jealousy is (justly) perceived as a form of transformed aggression.

To direct it at the female (=the representation of the primary object, the Mother) is to direct it at a forbidden object. A feeling of imminent punishment ensues. The punishment is likely to be in the familiar form of abandonment (physical or emotional).

But this is the "surface", easy to unearth, conflict. There is yet another layer, much harder to reach and to decipher.

To feed his envy, the narcissist has to exercise his imagination. He imagines situations, which would justify his feelings. If his mate is sexually disloyal or promiscuous this is a good reason to be jealous – he unconsciously "thinks".

The narcissist is a con artist. He easily substitutes fiction for truth and vice versa. What commences as an elaborate daydream ends up as a plausible scenario.

But, then, if his suspicions are true (they are bound to be - otherwise, why is he jealous?) - there is no way he can accept his partner back. If she is infidel - how could the relationship continue?

Infidelity and lack of exclusivity violate the first and last commandment of narcissism: uniqueness.

The narcissist tends to regard infidelity in absolute terms. The "other" must be better than he, or put differently: more special. Since the narcissist is nothing but a reflection, a glint in the eyes of others, when cast aside, he feels totally discarded. His entirety is wrecked. His partner, in this single (real or imagined) act, is perceived by the narcissist to have passed judgement upon him as a whole not upon this or that aspect of his personality and not in connection with the issue of compatibility.

This negation of his uniqueness makes it impossible for the narcissist to proceed in a relationship contaminated by jealousy (if this is the form of aggression he chose). But there is nothing more dreadful to a narcissist than the ending of a relationship, or abandonment.

Many narcissists strike an unhealthy balance. By a behaviour pattern characterised by emotional (and physical or sexual) absenteeism, they drive the partner to find emotional and physical satisfaction outside the bond. This achieved, they feel vindicated - they are proven right in being jealous.

On the other hand they are thus able to accept the partner back and to forgive her. After all – they argue - the infidelity was precipitated by their absence and was always under their control. They experience a kind of sadistic satisfaction that they possess such power over their partner. In provoking the partner to adopt a socially anomic behaviour they see proof of the unlimited control they have over her. They read into the scene of forgiveness and reconciliation the same interpretation: their magnanimity and how addicted their partner has become to their presence.

The more severe the infidelity - the more control through guilt is available to the narcissist. His ability to manipulate his partner increases the more forgiving and magnanimous he is. He never forgets to mention to her (or, at least, to himself) how wonderful he is for sacrificing himself. Here he is - this assemblage of unique, unprecedented traits - willing to accept a disloyal, infidel, inconsiderate, disinterested, self centred, sadistic (and, entre nous, most ordinary) bitch back. True, he is likely to invest less in the relationship, to become non-committal, and, probably, to host hatred and rage. Still, she is the narcissist's one and only. The more voluptuous, tumultuous, inane the relationship - the better it suits the narcissist's self image.

After all, isn't this the stuff Oscar winning movies are made of? Shouldn't the narcissist's life be special in this sense, too? Aren't the biographies of great men adorned with such abysses of emotions?

If an emotional or sexual infidelity does occur (and very often it does), it is usually a cry for help on behalf of the narcissist's mate. A forlorn cause: no real change is achievable with this rigidly deformed personality structure.

Usually, the partner is the dependent or avoidant type and is inherently incapable of changing anything in her life. Such couples have no real, mutually agreed upon narrative or agenda, they are compatible mostly on the psychopathological level. They hold each other hostage and vie for the ransom.

The dependent partner can determine for the narcissist what is right and virtuous and what is wrong and evil as well as enhance and maintain his feeling of uniqueness (by wanting him). She, therefore, possesses the power to manipulate him. Sometimes she does so because years of emotional deprivation and humiliation by the narcissist have made her hate him.

The narcissist - forever "rational", forever afraid to get in touch with his emotions – often divides his relationships with humans to "contractual" and "non contractual". By doing so he drowns the small, immediate, identifiable (and absolutely and totally) emotional problems (with his partner) in a torrent of irrelevant frivolities (his numerous other "contractual" "relationships").

The narcissist likes to believe that he is the maker of the decision which type of relationship he will establish with whom. He doesn't even bother to be explicit about it. Sometimes people believe that they have a "contractual" (binding and long-term) relationship with the narcissist - while the latter entertains an entirely different notion without informing them. These, naturally, are grounds for innumerable disappointments and misunderstandings.

The narcissist uses this language to describe his relationship with his partner. He says that he has a contract with his girlfriend/spouse. This contract has emotional articles and administrative-economic articles.

One of the substantive clauses is emotional and sexual exclusivity.

But the narcissist feels that there is an asymmetry in the fulfilment of contracts that he has with other humans in general - and with his female partner in particular. The narcissist always feels that he gives and contributes to a relationship more than he receives from it. This is true in all the types of relationships that he has, be it business relationships or emotional ones. He needs to feel deprived (read punished). This is the only way he can safely execute the guilty verdict rendered in his case by the primary and all important object in his life (usually, his mother).

The narcissist, though highly amoral (and at times, immoral), holds himself, morally, in high regard. He describes contracts as "sacred" and feels averse to cancelling or violating them even if they expired or were invalidated by the behaviour of the other parties. The narcissist engages in asymmetric moral judgements. When violated by the partner the violation of a contract is deemed either trivial or nothing less than earth-shattering. If a contract is violated by the narcissist he is invariably tormented by his conscience to the extent of calling the contract (the relationship) off even if the partner judges the violation to be trivial or explicitly forgives the narcissist.

In other words, sometimes the narcissist feels compelled to cancel a contract just because he violated it and in order not to be tormented by his conscience (=by his superego, the internalised voices of his parents and other meaningful adults in his childhood).

But things are even more complex. It is true that the narcissist acts asymmetrically as long as he feels bound by the contract. He tends to judge himself more severely than he judges the other parties to the contract. He forces himself to comply more strenuously than his partners do with the terms of the contract.

But this is because he needs the contract more than the others do. The contract represents a relationship.

The annulment or the termination of a contract represent rejection and abandonment, which the narcissist fears most. The narcissist would rather pretend that a contract is still valid than admit to the demise of a relationship. He never violates contracts because he is afraid of the reprisals and of the emotional consequences. But this is not to be confused with developed morals. If confronted with a better alternative - one which more efficiently caters to his needs (see the next chapters) - the narcissist will annul or violate a contract without thinking twice.

Moreover, not all contracts were created equal in the narcissistic twilight zone. It is the narcissist who retains the power to decide which contracts are to be scrupulously fulfilled and which offhandedly ignored. The narcissist determines which laws (=social contracts) to obey and which to break. And he expects society, his partners, his colleagues, his spouse, his children, his parents, his students, his teachers – in short: absolutely everyone – to abide by his rulebook. White collar narcissist criminals, for instance, see nothing wrong with their behaviour. They regard themselves as law-abiding, god-fearing, community-members. Their acts are committed in a mental reserve, an enclave, a psychological no man's land, where no laws or contracts are binding upon them.

top | continued | table of contents

home | about me | narcissism defined | faq | narcissism list excerpts
the book | book excerpts | articles | email me