Switched
One of the more difficult of my behaviours for you to cope with, let alone understand, is the switch. On the Sunday we have enjoyed a pleasant day together lounging on the beach with a picnic. The next day you try and call me and I do not answer. I do not reply to your texts. I am not subjecting you to a prolonged silent treatment on this occasion and eventually we managed to speak in the afternoon. The conversation is not going to win away awards. I ask no questions, I am monosyllabic in my responses and you feel like I have pulled down the shutters and put up the defences. You ask me what is wrong and I do not give you a credible response which satisfies this sudden change in behaviour.
You draw the contrasting behaviours to my attention and I know full well what I have done and what I am doing. I however feel no need to explain myself. I recognise that I was pleasant and caring yesterday but now I am like a block of ice. Do not make the mistake of thinking that I am unable to see this shift in my behaviour. I can. It is not that I cannot offer you an explanation for it. I don’t want to. This is because I am not accountable to you. If I want to behave this way then so be it. I have learned however that if I say this to you, it will make me appear bad, so instead I will ascribe it to being tired or I have other things on my mind. I am also doing this because I know that it will cause you to show you care (and thus give me more attention) by asking what is wrong and what has happened. If you push too far, I am likely to become angry and go on the attack (why do you always have to question me? Why must you assume there is always something wrong? I don’t have to be happy all the time you know?) Later on I will most likely send you a text stating I am sorry but I am under a lot of pressure at the moment or I had just received some bad news and did not feel upto talking (all lies of course) but you will then feel bad but also relieved at having received a (false) explanation and you will remain dangling, rather than doing the most appropriate thing which is to leave me to it.
29 thoughts on “Switched”
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Hi HG! I was thinking back to my ex and made a connection I thought I would ask u about. He has a family member who he appears close to( only one who puts up with him) and I realized that at times this relative was thought of in terms of “white thinking” , I was deemed “ black” and visa versa. Whoever was “ in “ with him at the time he would stay at their particular home.is this a common triangulation between the IPS and a family member if there is no other woman in the picture? And is this all just for different types of fuel?
Correct.
HG, although the switch can happen to shift from positive to negative fuel, could it be said that the reason for me be treated badly is that another appliance is enjoying a pleasant day? Can narcissists not be pleasant to more than one appliance at a time? Is being unresponsive to me a conservation of energy to shower “today’s toy” with delight? And in reverse, if I am being treated to pleasantry, is there some other poor soul suffering?
Yes it could.
Shouldn’t he be capable of being pleasant to more than one intimate appliance at a time?
We usually are, although it depends on what is occurring in the fuel matrix.
Thank you HG. A delight as always. Lotsa moving parts in that fuel matrix eh?
I was a little shocked and taken aback reading this – for me, this was the exact scenario I experienced a few weeks ago. I have suffered this scenario regularly over the last 8 years – but no more- I’ve had my fill, I reached breaking point, I reacted with frustration and rage… the fuel he desired, the reaction he so easily manipulated. This time though, I feel no more. I’ve switched. I am not going back. Thank you for this blog post. It reinforced everything I knew before but was too weak, to emotional to deal with. I was not being honest with myself. I knew, I couldn’t make the break. I tried but I experienced ‘the switch’ – the ‘you are my world’ speeches that sucked me back in. Not now, no more. Thank you – you have just saved my life.
Hello Josie and you are welcome.
Dear The flower and the rock
just in case you are thamking me because you have blue eyes, the above message was not for you, was for our blogger HG, that is how I call him because I imagine he has beautiful blue eyes. I dont believe they are so void as he says …
Sorry 😖😖😖. Hope today somebody else sends you a kiss.
The thank you was not directed towards you Nikita.
Thank you
A big kiss to you beautiful blue eyes 😘
Its a very nice posting to start the week. It is also a mixed situation, and by mixed I mean that also couples that have no disorders face this situation, but the difference is that due to other anxiety provoking situations like ST, disappearances, unexplained rages etc, the other person is just set into more confusion, unable to provide the space and the silence that is needed.
I read in this love book, that love is also letting your partner experience pain and not try to take him out of this painful/sad state, but rather wait until he has come out alone out of this state. Accept this fact and accompany the partner through it rather than trying to change it.
Even for the non-disordered like for the people with some kind of emotional barrier or PD it is difficult to open up and just really say truly what is going on and through his or her mind at that moment. This would make so much easier the fact of taking the pain that your partner needs this distance and space, because of course its painful to the other person also.
The difficult parts of relationships….
Have a fueled day HG ⛽️☀️⛽️
Thank you Nikita.
I am currently living with my ex husband…..yes, his hoover won me over again.
Of course, not working out again. I have moved into spare room until i find a place of my own. All a sudden one day..he decided he wasn’t happy with me again. He has other women commenting on his fb about cooking for them, etc and if i say anything about it…i am just jealous and causing drama. He has profiles on online dating sites, etc. But every other weekend when he is off work..we seem to spend that time together and end up in his bed. Only to be cast aside on monday like it was nothing.
What is going on? How do i react? So confused
Hello Mary, he is triangulating you with other women for the purpose of drawing fuel from all of you. He will complain about you to them so they think he has a hard time and they will feel sorry for him so he draws them in. He freezes you out during the week to gain a reaction from you and then lets you into the bed at the weekend again to draw another reaction. This switching between frozen and intimate maintains your confusion and the contrast in behaviours causes heightened responses from you so you he gains more fuel. I suggest you read Manipulated, Fuel and Escape to start with.
Hey, wanted to stop by and catch you up on what’s happened over the past 7 months. Last time we talked was late September, if I remember correctly. Here’s a summary of our conversations – just to refresh your memory on my situation: https://narcsite.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/the-slops-of-my-delinquent-mind/.
So, when we left off last time, we had sent a message saying we were done and wouldn’t be paying for college or anything else – given the evil way those two act (and have acted for the past 5 years). Keep in mind that over the course of those 5 years my fiancé was “courting” his daughter’s affections. Trying. Sending gifts. Cards. Flowers. Texts. Letters. Money….
He stopped last winter (about Jan 2015) and we sent the message in the fall that we wouldn’t be helping after our legal obligations had expired. And that they were dead to us, etc. Well, so fast forward to about October of 2015 – and the “His Evil Daughter” account. Well, I had followed her from that, and she had thus discovered that account that way. I never exposed that account to her friends, nor any of the blog messages you and I had exchanged. However, coincidentally around the same time that you and I were exchanging those messages her boyfriend of 2 years broke up with her. When that happened, she got very evil and dirty – and told all of her friends they were no longer allowed to talk to or hang out with him. Well, obviously they were like “wtf?!” and kicked her to the curb because of it – and she wasn’t expecting that. Then she made a fool of herself trying to get the guy back and just made herself look really stupid. So, essentially what happened was that people started to figure out who she really was (from her lashing out and trying to use flying monkeys) and she basically just got thrown under the bus. So, she apparently had a “nervous breakdown”. She was taken to the “hospital”, she had started wandering off aimlessly (almost getting herself lost in dangerous situations – let me roll my eyes real quick), and was always rocking back and forth and crying. This was all obviously dramatized to try to get attention – and it did. It got her mother’s attention – remember, her mother is the creator and sole member of the Stephanie fan club – and her mother was furious that her friends would be treating her like that. She started reaching out to other people to try to defame Stephanie’s friends and started telling people about how I had “started a blog about Stephanie”. Lol. Stephanie and her mom were going around telling people that I had created a BLOG about her. That’s hilarious, because I didn’t. The only blog I’ve ever written about them on is this one – so if they think this is my blog – that’s HILARIOUS. It must mean they recognize themselves in a lot of what you post. Guilty consciences, eh?
So, anyway – they had their NEIGHBOR call my fiancé and had him explain how hurtful my “blog” was and how me exposing her narcissism had ruined her life and all of her social relationships. Lol. Well, what does she expect? She’s an evil person. Obviously people are going to bail once they start putting 2 and 2 together. She had been able to maintain a facade until I came round. But, me telling you the awful truth of everything they had done – totally exposed them. I think it really freaked her boyfriend out to realize what a creep and evil person she is and has been to her father.
Funnily enough too, to go along with her narcissism stuff, she applied to like every single ivy league university – clearly thinking she was going to get in – and she didn’t. She literally didn’t get into a single one of them. I seriously just have to ask myself – what it the world would make her think that she would get in to Yale, or Stanford, or any other highly competitive university? She’s so nothing special, like at all. She’s 18 and has never held a job, no camp counselor, tutoring, babysitting, like literally NOTHING. She’s never had an internship, a volunteer job, done community service, never left the country, has never had any unique life experiences and no extracurricular activities at school other than band (and last semester she started doing robotics). She’s never been published, never created anything, including even a blog. Never won any special awards. She’s too selfish. She’s too worried about herself to actually devote time and energy to improving the world around her – or putting in effort that distracts her from herself.
She has good grades (see above, she’s never worked or done ANYTHING else – so I would hope she would have good grades given the exorbitant amount of time she’s had to spend on them) and she had a decent test score (due to her mother essentially buying it thorough one of those unethical “cheat your way to a good test score” business). So, it’s so incredibly ABSURD that she applied to and actually thought she had a chance at getting into any of those highly competitive schools. Geez, it’s so bad.
Anyway – they want us to pay for it – so now her mother is trying to be my fiance’s best friend. She’s basically our bitch now. We say “jump” and she says, “how high?” Keep in mind that this is a complete 180. Remember she was psychotic. Making him stand across the street to watch Stephanie get her car that he paid for, punching him in the face, smashing his Gordy Howe memorabilia, etc. She used to wait days to text him back. Now she texts back in under 3 min. She’s basically our bitch now. When he used to go to the house to talk to Stephanie, Mary (the wacky mother) would come out yelling that Stephanie didn’t want anything to do with him. Well, funny how now that Stephanie is an adult – she’s all of a sudden able to FORCE her to sit down and have a conversation with him (now that she wants money from us). She’s so low IQ. Like, it’s so incredibly obvious what she’s doing and she doesn’t even realize it. It’s pathetic.
So, because of her horrible nervous breakdown and the neighbor calling him and saying how horrible her life is now that everyone found out she’s a narcissist – my fiancé has started to text her weekly. Of course she hasn’t written him back. She loves that narcissistic supply, him trying, and knows that if she ignores it, it will build her back up after this huge blow she’s taken from me exposing her. She ignores it, because she thinks that secures that it will continue. She thinks she’s baiting him again and she’s no doubt trying to amp up the courting again. She wants it to be like it used to be prior to me – him showering her with gifts and supply while she ignores and acts her typical evil self.
Because Mary wants to kiss our asses in hopes that we will pay for Stephanie’s college, I expect that she will all of a sudden somehow be able to “force” Stephanie to text back – for the first time EVER. How is it that now that she’s an adult, Mary can force her to write back, or speak to, but during the past 5 years, when Stephanie was 13-18 she “couldn’t”? They are just such pathetic people. Ugh.
Quite the update there Nellie and some interesting dynamics at work. See how they come crawling to get what they want but it will not last. The sense of grandiosity in applying to the Ivy League universities is a key example of her mindset. It wont be long however before the payment of the college fees will change from being pleasant in order to get them paid to demanding them as of right. That’s in the pipeline.
Oh, I wanted to mention the fact that you had said before that when she came back she would apply a whole host of manipulative techniques including pity, guilt – and with her “breakdown” (pity) and having the NEIGHBOR call (guilt) – she did EXACTLY what you predicted. You also predicted that money would be the REASON she would pull this – and you’re no doubt correct, because it’s happening right as it’s time to start paying for college.
I feel sorry for him because he’s so sweet and they are so mean. You’re definitely correct that they view themselves as being entitled to his money – and that even though they are playing nice right now – it’s DEFINITELY fake and of course stuff will get REALLY dirty when he tells them he’s not contributing at all to her college because she’s been evil and doesn’t deserve it after the way she’s treated him (and everyone else).
The grandiosity in applying to all of those Ivy Leagues and not getting in to ANY of them is just stupid and ridiculous. I can’t even believe how out of touch with reality she is.
Really not looking forward to them getting nasty, which as you’ve stated is inevitable. Ugh. It’s going to get so ugly.
It certainly is Nellie but you are far better prepared as now you know what you are dealing with and what the next moves will be.
The switch. My mother is a narcissistic borderline personality & I refer to her “switch” as THE BITCH SWITCH (not to her face), as in “once that bitch switch is flipped, there’s no going back”, or “the bitch switch has been tripped, she’s now capable of great rage and even violence, everyone batten down the hatches”
I put this down to childish tantrums and let to the decline in respect for him. If he did the switch back and forth I realised best thing was to let him get on with it, I just regarded him as a pathetic a**hole.
I did find however, contrasting behaviour happened more so if something good or negative happened in my life. A constant competition to be one better, or worse. I’d have a good day at work, reach deadlines, could be anything, he would have just secured the deal of the century, then vanish as he was off celebrating (his fake achievements), forever boastful, seeking never ending praise, then do the ignore, cold attitude sh*t.
I had a two night stay in hospital (no visit despite promises to be there, nothing too serious), he suddenly developed a deadly virus that confined him to bed for 2 weeks supposedly, as well as faking tests and diagnoses for sympathy, which was not forthcoming and again led to silent then cold reactions.
He did it more when he was called out on the lies, this ‘flip-flop’ puerile behaviour, he just always had to be one better, or have a more serious issue. I did understand it, but it took a little while, and when I did he was history.
Yes Me it is inevitable we will engage in one-upmanship and especially in order to avoid showing you some support. You could be on life support and our fractured eyelash will be more of an emergency.
Oh HG spot on as usual, I’ve lost count the number of times this situation happened over the 4 yrs I danced with my ex narc. The excuses rolled off his tongue so easily. He was busy, he wasn’t well, he had a headache, he’d been asleep was sooooo tired, he’d had bad news and didn’t want to talk. He’d been walking and left his phone in the car ( yeah right), his phone had gone flat blah blah blah. Just wish I’d seen them as lies sooner instead of being understanding and excepting, what a gullible fool I was.
You are no more gullible than the many, many people who are similarly conned Freedom. We con by design, you trust by nature. There is only ever going to be one outcome.
What exactly is the shift? I know yiu recognize that you go from being pleasant to arbitrary or cold…but what is it? Do you actually feel either of those things or are they just two opposite ways of getting fuel?
Ultimately it is two opposite ways of getting fuel, but the shift from “good” to “bad” is triggered by you letting us down in the provision of fuel. The shift back will happen to gain fuel and to maintain the contrast. If it is negative all the time it will lose its effect so we switch back to being pleasant for a period of time. This makes the return to the negative behaviour more pronounced and more effective. Think of being dunked in a trough of water and held there in order to make you confess to something. Eventually you will pass out and die so its effectiveness (unless we intended to drown you) is limited in making you confess. If we haul you out spluttering for air you think you have some respite and thus when we push you back in again the effect is more pronounced and more likely to make you confess.