Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t
Society and people need rules. The requirement for regulation looms large in everyone’s life. Pay your taxes, don’t park in that place, don’t drop litter, say please and thank you and so on. From laws to rules to codes of conduct, through to convention to procedures to etiquette we are bound up in rules wherever we go and whatever we do. People grumble and complain about them but ultimately they prefer the world to have these rules. People like to know where they stand. You know what you can and cannot do. You may not agree with it, but you at least have some certainty. Those that found themselves in the horror of concentration camps complained that there was never any certainty to the day. You could be subjected to punishment for walking too slowly one day and too fast the next. It was random and awful, yet such a system is horrendously effective at undermining someone’s will and paradoxically causing them to try harder in order to avoid a sanction.
Our behaviour is much the same. There is no rhyme or logic to it. Last week I said I liked sugar in my tea and this week I do not. I deny that I said I liked sugar in my tea and moreover this triviality causes me to erupt in rage when you put sugar in my drink this week. You are confused and anxious by this random control that I exert over you. It is all intentional. Do not make the mistake of thinking that we cannot recall what we said or did the previous day, that we are somehow blind to our previous likes and dislikes as if affected by some form of amnesia. This disorientating tactic is deliberate. You may as well ascribe outcomes to the numbers two through to twelve and roll two dice. That gives you just as good a chance of determining how I will behave. One week I sleep with the bedroom window open, the next it must be closed. Yesterday I want silence in the kitchen in the morning, today I want the radio on. Each day you are put on parade and then awaiting the inevitable criticism as I will find some fault in order to control you, demean you and provoke a reaction. I am like an insane regimental sergeant major who deems the buttons on your uniform to not shine enough despite the hours you spent polishing each one. Like his parade ground bark, I will unleash my haphazard criticism of you with a barrage of abuse, raising my voice and making you wince with each syllable. We understand the effect of repeatedly being shouted at and it causes you to submit to our demands Invariably I will see what you are doing and pick the opposite as being what I want. I am a natural contrarian. All of this is done to maintain your heightened sense of anxiety, forcing you to second guess and thus become conditioned to our will. Periodically we will approve of what you have done and your sense of relief is so overwhelming you receive a natural high. This in turn causes you to want to repeat it and therefore each and every day you are walking on those eggshells as you try to please us and avoid our erratic and groundless rage. There is no system you can depend on, no method of working out what is safe to do and what should be avoided, yet still you will try. As ever, you want to make matters right and keep the peace.
16 thoughts on “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t”
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I think this is one of the worst N features, one that drove me crazy and hurt me the most, From every Narc I have encountered (starting with my father) that unreliable discourse/action line … I can still feel the past frustration from it, the fear. Better understanding that the Fuel is why is such a relief. Not to suck up but really I gotta say, what you are doing is really something, allowing us to talk back to the Narcs in our lives, allowing us to at last place reasons and logic (if wicked and twisted) on what happened to us, the closest thing to closure we will ever get. It is huge. Thank you!
Same here BR
With this blog and books I finally understood a big part of my life.
And it feels so good nikitalondon 🙂
Yup. You want sugar in your coffee Tuesday & by Thursday you never liked sugar in your coffee, I should know after all these years how you take your coffee. You love rules, especially the arbitrary ones you make up to keep me guessing.
Absolutely the case.
I recall how when MN started lovebombing me he used the fact I hated some guy to worm his way in !
The guy was a mutual acquaintance and MN would say unprompted by me what an awful man he was.
During the D&D he would almost be desperate to talk to this guy in front of me to show how ‘friendly’ the were.
He also said horrible things about his next target of fuel (this was well before he started to lovebomb her), he literally hated her and said awful things.
I now understand both it these were completely designed to confuse me.
Thanks HG
Absolutely. Confusing at the time but once you understand the rationale from our point of view it makes sense. A perverted sense from your perspective but it makes sense.
Total sense and now entirely predictable too. Once you know it actually makes it fun, because it is too easy to second guess what he’s going to do next.
This is an extreme behaviour, I think I was never subject to thanks God 🙏🏻🙏🏻, but a behaviour I notice, I think also typical for Ns, the radical chamge of a person in deep rooted things that you are left with a huge ? In your head and confused. I saw this with my sister in law and now I realize she could also be an N.
HG is this in black flag? I have not finished yet the book.
My ex sister in law when I met her talked about animal proection and animal love and ethics towards animals and years after I saw her wearing a very expensive fur coat that she had bought second had iike for 10% of the price, which of course caused admiration for very different reasons.
The last part identifies with me completely. Try and try and try to make it right, to keep the peace, to lets be happy! we are together 😢…. So much try…
Very good HG. thanks for posing again. Coffee also almost finished.. Pleasure to read even if I have to fight the emotions…
Have a nice fueled day. ⛽️.. Hopefully nice fuel. I cant other but to always wish you the best. 😘😘😘
A variation appears in Black Flag.
Terror. Self annihilation. Terror.
G and I were away for what I thought was going to be a romantic reunion trip (after a discard). It was actually a business trip for him and the hotel, car, and his airfare were all covered, but he decided to take me with him, so I didn’t want to seem ungrateful that he hadn’t exactly planned this trip just for us or paid for it himself.
On the first day he was complimenting me on my legs and encouraging me to show them off and taking pictures of me in short shorts. Two days later, I sent him (while he was in meetings) some suggestive but by no means graphic pictures of me in a robe leaning seductively against the hot tub and next to the shower clearly built for two. It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve sent him sexy pictures at work. He encouraged it!
Anyway, instead of the expected hot steamy reunion as soon as he walked through the door of our room, he blew up at me and went off on all of my physical flaws – which he knows I am trying to work on – and said are you trying to keep me from getting it up? He even criticized the cellulite on my previously “gorgeous” legs. Once upon a time he told me he didn’t notice it because they were so stunning. I know one of his former women supposedly had an amazing body and he used to get off on the videos they made of her performing sexy lap dances for him. I try to give him the same things as she did and he rejects me? I get it. I don’t have her model body. But he dumped HER for ME!
I know better than to try to be sexy now. I choose outfits that cover my flaws, which are pretty much everywhere, according to him.
HG, could I have become the “Madonna” for him? Obviously I’m
not hot enough in his eyes to be the whore like the one before me.
As you will recognise now with our kind many things are movable feasts and the whore can readily become the Madonna as a new whore is selected. If this state of affairs was prolonged then you moved from whore to Madonna. If it was confined to incidents such as the one you describe it would be more an act of manipulation in order to confuse and bewilder – first I like what you do and then I condemn the very same thing only hours later.
You’re believing lies. You are not the source of his discontent, he is defective malignant toxic narcisist out to destroy all who try to love him. They cannot love. They are soulless and like Satan pridefully refuse to see fault in themselves. Run.
Why?why?why?
Fuel. Fuel. Fuel.