Me v You
Should you ever ask certain people what the secret of their success is ,those asked may often reply,
“We are a partnership.”
This applies to a happily married couple, to a duo who run a burgeoning advertising agency, to the group of people who deliver excellent professional services and to the champion sportsmen and women. Think Lennon and McCartney, Laurel and Hardy, Abercrombie and Fitch, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers , Bill and Ted, Batman and Robin and Marks and Spencer. Even those who might be regarded as having achieved their success as an individual will be keen to share the glory and attribute that their success has been as a consequence of a collaboration. The pro golfer who acknowledges his Masters win was down to a joint effort between him and his caddy. The formula one driver who thanks his pit team for their expertise and lightning fast tyre changes and refuels. The Olympic diving champion who thanks his father for all the support over the years in taking him to competitions and training.
The world is geared to encouraging collaboration and driving people to come together for the greater good. It wants people to co-operate, to work together, to support one another and share. It recognises that many things become better when they are combined, joined and complemented. Consider, for example phrases such as
“Two heads are better than one.”
“The more the merrier.”
“A problem shared is a problem halved.”
“Greater than the sum of its parts.”
Look around and everywhere you will see that the world believes that combining is desirable. Gin and tonic, burger and fries, ying and yang, fife and drum, the two Steves in a garage (Jobs and Wozniak), the Owl and the Pussycat and even M & Ms. The message is simple; together we are better.
We hate it.
We do not want to share or pool our resources. What belongs to us always remains with us. We take from others. There is no sense in working together. Not only do we jealously guard what we regard as ours, we fail to see the benefit of partnership. It is an alien concept. If we are to work and live in tandem with others this means that we have to share. We have to share the attention, the credit, the congratulations, the workload and the burden. We find this offends us mightily. There is no sense in sharing the credit with you, that means there is less for us. Less credit equates to less fuel and those are words which strike a sense of dread into our being. Nor will we share the workload by helping, we will not even share by dividing our burden with you, so we each play a part in making the task or problem easier. No, we will dump the lot on you and divest ourselves of any burden whatsoever. Should you solve the problem having been left marooned with it by us and there is the scent of praise in the air, watch how quickly we return to claim it. Yes, the situation was resolved by our quick thinking in delegating to a particular colleague. It was our decisive behaviour and keen leadership qualities which saved the day as we elbow you aside and bask in the congratulatory comments from a higher-up.
Not only will we not work together or share, even in circumstances where normal people would expect that to happen, we regard you as our competition. A couple in a relationship are ordinarily expected to bring different things to the party, support one another, look out for the other, give and take and a fruitful partnership evolves to apparent mutual benefit. That is not the case with us, We regard you as only there to be our appliance and supply us with fuel. We are not designed to do things for you (unless we can see a greater benefit arising for us). You are the enemy. You are trying to hog the limelight that we need. You question us and seek to unseat us from our position of power. Oh yes, we know your game. When you dress up elegantly all you are trying to do is make us look less desirable and shift the focus of everyone’s attention at the party on to you and accordingly you deny us the attention we desperately want. By keeping fit and in shape you are wanting people to be drawn to you, rather than us. Furthermore, you are trying to heighten your desirability so that you can acquire a new partner and leave us. We already have you worked out. You sit and read a lot. We have sussed you out again, You are doing it in the hope that you can gain more knowledge and appear superior to us. You want to belittle us. You want to be able to defeat us in an argument and make us feel small. The cooking class you have signed up for is a ruse by you to demonstrate you are the better cook at home (even though we never do any cooking) but you want to show you are superior to us. Why are you doing this? We are meant to work together aren’t we? You keep doing all these things to try and outshine us, make us look bad and exceed our abilities and we hate this.
Of course we are perfectly entitled to do anything we like to show we are better than you because we are well, better than you. It is also legitimate on our part to keep you browbeaten and under our control. We must not have you competing with us in any way as otherwise you will take away the attention and admiration of others and in turn you will remove the fuel that we need. Like any successful and domineering business (and that is what we are, a business, one that is established for the detection and extraction of fuel) the competition must be diminished and extinguished. That means you.
10 thoughts on “Me v You”
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Just so you know. I laughed when I read “we hate it”
And proceeded to baby talk in my head
“Aww poor narcimus! Nacri narcimus!”
😛 you’re so silly HG.
@Bethany
I noted my narc had 2 of his ex’s and his ex’s female bestfriend, helping with his projects and he was trying to get me more involved. He asked me to join his website and test it out, so I teased him saying “sell it to me! Why is it better than Facebook?”
He held that against me of course!
Which was also a contradiction since he said himself he doesn’t want us to become one person and lose our individual identities…so then don’t except me to be part of everything you do!
HG , the N I was involved with radiated this me vs. The world energy often…more in his body language and occasionally in his words. I knew it was there…but because he was so (seemingly) interested in our “partnership”…and referring to himsekf as my “partner” and using terms instead that indicated it was he and I vs. The world…I was somewhat intriqued by his attitude and yes, fell for his now obvious grooming behavior. I was his “One”….until I let him down of course.
As the relationship played out, I got to see how he hated routine expectations that came with the partnership that HE insisted on having. It irked him to have to reciprocate favors and gestures of friendship or what normal people do for each other.
I actually pointed this out to him in one of the last emails I sent him …saying something to the effect of how he had let me do so many things on his behalf…buying his kids presents, helping him with work projects, running around taking care of his life. And his response:
“If you’re going to base an entire relationship on what we do for each other…well.”
WTF???
N3 was 6 years my junior. We’d often go to happy hours during the week. He’d would get jealous and angry when the bartender carded me…and didn’t card him! I thought he’d be proud of the fact he had a gf in her 40’s that looked like she was still in her 20’s….*smh*
It’s such a shame narcs feel intimidated as let’s be honest the people they choose as intimate partners are empathic and doing people down, belittling or suggesting they are superior are not their traits. They cause the fear within them by looking in that mirror and seeing themselves and not the love an tenderness of the empath.
Fair points Freedom, it is the way we have been designed.
I remember this post from the past! Its a very good one. My 14 year marriage.
But its funny that this would be also part of the dance that is perfectly designed to work im between Codependants and N’s and it doesnt 😢. I speak about the limelight part. CoD’s in general do not like to be in the limelight. If the narcissist is on the limelight is okay because he is happy then and we feel it as ours through him.
So with my ex I did not try to be on the limelight not steal it away from him, but as soon as somebody would comment something good about me, this automatically ignited his fury and he would just start telling all my weaknesses straight on like if we would be speaking about the weatherforcast.
I remember one special case out of 1000, because I remember particularly the pain I felt.
It was during a weekend we had been invited to a social media gathering of tweeters up in the alps and I could not join the dinner but my daughter did join her dad with all those people.
it seems maybe she stole a little bit of his limelight but it had to be me who paid for the injury to his construct. I had to hear the story from my daughter that during dinner she actively engaged in the conversation of the adults. Somewhen somebody told her, wow you are very intelligent holding for so lomg a conversation with adults. And inmediatly her dad reacted ” of course she has the imtelligence only of her dad” !!! And proceeded to tell I had been pretty average in school.
Then the person commented. Ah but then certainly the beauty must come from your mother? And he blurted out ” of course not, she looks just like me, see blond like me, her mother has dark hair” and then I dont remember what else was said but it seems he continued to tell how I could not do anything right without him, etc etc. L 😱😡. when they came up my daughter told me all the story ( in form as telling a very funny story) and I rember having felt in my heart a stroke of pain and kept silence.
After some minutes I turned to him and said ” of course she looks just like you, specially the size of the nose and the full lips” i received a mean glare back.
It is impossible a couple survives such a dynamics. Apart that like you say HG. You domt like to do the work. He did not split any responsabilities except helping with homework in his mother toungue. For the rest nothing and took all the praise.
The taking the praise is not the main problem there, but not helping around and in addition putting me terribly down when people noticed the obvious or just barely complimented me, was in the longterm a no go. I was his competition and I was not even competing because I dont even like that. !!!
There is no way of making fit, no way!!! Isnt it like that HG? .
Oh I love the title of this one, I wonder why?
Yes, you describe the spoilt brat syndrome perfectly, he absolutely hated me correcting his spelling and grammar, oh the tantrums and sly digs he even pretended to have dyslexia to justify it. I was only trying to help him, to improve him; we were a partnership after all, isn’t that how it works? (*wicked grin)
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