Become involved with one of my kind and the issue of money will not be far away. Of my high-functioning brethren money is not an issue. We are successful individuals. Indeed, the driven nature of our narcissism has enabled us to become successful. We are not hampered by concerns about having to please everyone. We have no worries about treading on somebody’s toes and if someone is hurt by our ruthlessness well we have no capacity to care about it so it is onwards and upwards for us. In fact, the world needs my kind to be the achievers which will take risks and create and build in our preoccupation with success and status. The happy consequence of this success is that we have plenty of money and use that during our Love Bombing phase to shower you with gifts and invitations to expensive places. Everyone enjoys receiving those type of things.
You will however then notice a shift in our largesse whereby despite our not inconsiderable remuneration you will find yourself paying for everything. I will forget my wallet or make it clear that it is your turn to pay. We will dash to the bathroom when the bill arrives and you will pay it as we stand watching from across the room to make sure you do, only returning thereafter. We will feign a lack of cash about our person to use yours, pretend our credit card is at its limit to use yours and that we are waiting for expenses and thus have been left somewhat short this month. Why do we do this? Surely we would prefer to continue our grandiose gestures at being in possession of a black Amex card and continuing to show off our financial resource? No, we have given you all that during our seduction of you and now we are delivering the bill for all of that. We see it as being entitled to you paying for us. Even if our initial generosity was not huge, we showered you with love and affection. You owe us for all of that and we will take payment by means of cash, card, bank transfer or hostage exchange. We want to make you pay to reinforce your obligation to us. We are exerting control over you. We are testing you. We want to push you to see how far you will go in paying to keep us with you. How much debt you will carry in order to ensure that we remain together. With everything we do, our attitude to money is framed through entitlement and the need to control you so that you remain attentive and provide us with our precious fuel.
That is how we high-functioning individuals regard the matter of money. I shall touch on in a future post on how the low functioning members of the club treat it, so save your tales of enforced penury until then.