The Relational Tower
I sit up on high in my Relational Tower. I can see so much from this throne.
I look to the north and see the golden and shimmering lines which extend from me to my loyal subjects across the land. I see my supporters, my followers and my coterie going about their daily lives but all the while connected to me. They feel such privilege to be linked to me, their liege and I feed on that sense of privilege and the admiration and that adoration which is entwined around it.
I look to the south and see yet more lines of sparkling gold which link between me and my most devout lieutenants. From my vantage point I can signal to them and they will obey, carrying out my commands, executing my diktats and honouring my instructions. It is a source of great comfort to gaze in their direction and observe their industry on my behalf.
I look to the east and frown at the assembled legions which march towards me. The malcontents, the rejected, the fools and the idiots, all those who have taken up against me and now march in the expectation that they will unseat me. Yet further lines span out from me to these traitors. Dark purple lines, nearly invisible against the glowering firmament, these multitudinous lines which have those transgressors permanently attached to me and through which I pull, twist and yank. They moan, they wail and they lament their fate but there is no hope for any other for these are those who bear the stain of betrayal, the putrid stench of sedition emanates from their shambling frames. Let them come, let them advance towards me and I shall watch them as they break against my tower, like waves against the rocks as they are sent scattering and dissipating into so much spray. I watch them from afar, sometimes commanding my lieutenants to enter the fray to cajole and direct, a myriad of gold and purple shimmering and glinting as the lines combine. From time to time the purple becomes golden as by my most glorious bounty I bestow the wondrous joy upon the select few.
I look to the west and there I see you. You shine with such glory, the golden line between you and I fizzing with effervescence. A thick line which coils about your wrists, torso and throat, sending that precious essence towards me. There are days when that connection will dim to the purple of guilt, the thick line becoming stretched and thinned, but never ever breaking. I watch you as you journey towards me, face upturned, eyes rapturous, hands outstretched as the light burns brighter and those who are less than me would struggle to gaze upon you, but I always will. Though I may turn my face away from you from time to time, my dark eyes will always look for you.
I watch you all as you journey towards me, the supporters, the lieutenants, the outcasts and you. I can see it all from this elevated position as I organise, direct and orchestrate. I know what you want. I know what you all want, each and every one of you.
I am attached to you all, you are bound to me, some tighter than others, some with those chains which bite and burn, others who raise no objection to their silken bondage, but all are bound to me. I made it so. I wanted that. I am connected to so many of you. I have a relationship with each and every one. Our relational proximity varies from stranger to intimate partner, from minion to inner circle friend, from colleague to family member and so on. Relationships. I have them by the hundred and create more each day, reaching out with my tendrils of gold and purple in order to remain exactly where I want to be – at the centre in my tower.
I know why you all head towards me. You want to enter this tower and thus gain admittance to me. You wish to unlock the vast gate and pass through the imposing portal to enable you to climb the winding stone steps, each time passing without hindrance or complication through the many doors and gates which guard my inner sanctum.
I know you want to enter my inner sanctum.
Some of you want to cradle what you find there. Some of you wish to possess what your eyes will rest upon. Some of you wish to claim a portion for yourselves and be forever imbued with its effects. Some of you wish to release what is in this inner sanctum. Some of you wish to understand what lies there. Some of you wish to destroy what is revealed.
Whatever it might be, the hundreds of relationships which I have, no matter how long, how strong and how tightly bound or otherwise these may be all seek to enter my Relational Tower and penetrate the inner sanctum.
This cannot happen.
I made this tower. I built it high. I built the walls deep and thick, constructed from the stones of denial and the slabs of deflection all held in place with the mortar of fuel. I fashioned the thick timbers of the door from projection, the timber bolted together through triangulation and the lock created from a steely gaze and iron resolve. The heavy bar that is set against it arose from the blame-shifting. I have set many traps and pitfalls within this tower in order to prevent anybody reaching the inner sanctum. The stone steps are smeared with vitriol, the walls spiked with character assassination, cauldrons wait to pour their heated fury onto you and cast you in deep pits of despair. The stone is so thick that there is only ever silence here, it as if the very walls are giving you a cold and baleful stare. Everything that I have learned will be used to impede your progress, hamper and hinder you so you may not ever reach that inner sanctum.
I know you all want to go there. I know you want to reach deep inside of me, into my inner sanctum but I must not allow it. I dare not. I cannot admit anybody. Ever.
I built this tower high. I built it thick. I made it impenetrable.
I built it to keep you out.
I built it to keep me in.
We are always connected but so long as I remain in my Relational Tower in such splendid isolation then my inner sanctum remains preserved and so do I.
58 thoughts on “The Relational Tower”
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Dear Empaths, let this writing be a reminder of how insanely sick people with NPD are……the grandiose thinking, the perception of self importance and control-their magical thinking is ridiculously out of proportion with reality. Don’t believe it, they’re full of shit. Don’t waste your precious time- move on and never look back.
This continues to stand out for me. I commented here some time ago about a man I was intimate with casually over a number of years. That’s long gone now. I can’t remember what the illusion felt like before he cracked it with revealing he loved me all through those years.
I beat myself up about it some time ago, but really he betrayed me. I see his entire agenda in hindsight. Manipulating the manipulator. I don’t want to take responsibility for any of it anymore. I don’t remember what it felt like to believe myself in love with him either. I remember what it felt like to feel remorse, but I feel none of that now since I blame it entirely on him.
A few months back, I met someone who I had that spark of a connection with. I suspected he was a narcissist also, or some sort of borderline. Both same from the same sort of parents, narcissists typically breed the same type. We both had a confronting, disabling past few years, some similar experiences. It was as if the universe presented me with my own image in someone else. I think there was that common ground. Very strange. And the feelings, a glimmer of home, it was as if just for second there I thought I saw something before I shut down. I think we both felt it, like we could be okay, fix, accept each other. What fools.
First time I tried to end it, he asked me not to discard him, asked that we both stop each other from the discard. As if he knew what we both knew and know without having to say it.
I agreed to his ‘pact’. Pretended it wasn’t inevitable and then tried a new tactical approach for my exit the next day and then the next. He’s fading now. The discard is less obvious now. I cannot stop the train. Noone can stop the discard once the discomfort sets in.
And for as much as it fills me with sorrow for what could be, I know well enough to know my ideas of what it ‘could’ be are only illusory. It’s a painful truth, but one I’ve come to accept.
What are your thoughts HG?
I think you have a good handle on what has happened from the manner in which you have described it.
Yes, it was an empathic reaction. That was the most horrible thing anyone could have done to me. Do you understand?
Hi Anon. Thanks for replying. If I understand you right, your lover pricked your stream of consciousness which violated your narc code…? He penetrated your defences by revealing his true feelings…? Or am I wide off the mark?
That’s about right. That person accepted me for who I was once and all those years. I could be myself with him, I could be intimate at any time with him without any obligation or responsibility. For years I lived in a fantasy that things never got anywhere because he didn’t want me, and that I loved him, in some pure way I didn’t, had never loved anyone else. It was just an illusion though, all dependent on his ever really falling in love with me. It’s a very strange circumstance, the experience, that one person I put meaning into and drama that became of it just reminds me how everything is meaningless. I question if I am a collapsed narcissist or just a self aware one Whois now uncertain about the prison I’ve built for myself:(
Will you ever deconstruct the walls you have built and allow some one truly in?
Even if I chose to, I do not know how to. Yet.
That makes me want to give you a big fat hug HG.
Yep your turn to shudder…..
And shudder I did, although I acknowledge the sentiment behind it.
Yet, is the key word.
https://youtu.be/-0skjm-uJSs
I love the analogies you use. It started with silken bondage and yes, I never objected. This bond strengthened over the years, or so I thought. As it turns out those silk bonds had been replaced with heavy chains without my knowledge or consent.
We can break those chains that bind and never be bound again. Thank you HG.
You are welcome.
I identify with this. I allowed myself to fall in love with a particular person who I fantasized as someone who would never ‘really’ love me and therefore never be hurt by me. I believed it was a casual arrangement, on and off over a decade. I believed I could do as I pleased and it would never hurt him. I believed he lusted me ONLY. He knew I was a narcissist. I liked that he knew I was a narcissist. I enjoyed having genuine feelings of love for someone. I never pretended to be anything I wasn’t with him and THAT was my mistake. Eventually, he revealed he was in love with me all through those years. It was the most horrible thing he could ever have done to me. I let him in the tower and he detonated it from the inside. My rational mind knows all he did was express feelings of love. My coping mind blamed him for conning and betraying me. I did everything in my power to kill all feelings he had for me so he would never come back and then I blamed him. I chose me. There was no other option. We don’t want to change because we CAN’T. We don’t like to be confronted with knowing that we can’t change. We depend on our disorder for survival. It is our armor and our prison. Trust no one.
Hello Anon. Do you mind me asking, if you are a narcissist why did you “feel it was the most horrible thing he could have done…’? Why was it so bad to discover that this man loved you? That sounds like a stream of consciousness to me, an empathic reaction to another human being… If I’m way off the mark perhaps you would be willing to explain? Thanks.
Hi Anon, are you sure you’re a narc? I’d question it if I were you. There are many things in your post that absolutely are not conducive to NPD.
May I ask what makes you think you are a narcissist?
Aye, HG, you’re right; no girl is going to see you coming during the cartwheel bit of the dance. Your kind are predators… I’ll cut that bit out of the vid. ;))
Ha ha.
😏
It takes several years to truly know someone. Some people will take advantage of our trust when problems arise or when the relationship ends. We have to protect our inner sanctum.
“We’re damaged people
Drawn together
By subtleties that we are not aware of
Disturbed souls
Playing out forever
These games that we once thought we would be scared of”
I used to think he really did let me in. And that is what triggered his flight. Once, when I was still demanding answers and truth, he said he couldn’t deal with my shit as he was struggling alot. And me, of all people should know what he was dealing with. Then I realized he was always implying I had some special access. Occupied some special place. But now, I see that was just one more game to his con. I never meant a thing to him and it was all false intimacy.
I tried my best to penetrate the inner sanctum, but, alas, I couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t let me.
But I want approvedness more than Scout.
I’ll see your Kate Bush dance and raise you a chopped off arm.
Your on. My Bat wings could do with a bit of a trim… ;))
For you, I’ll see what I can do HG… ;))
HG approves.
I’m sure you do! A freckle-faced school girl in a long flowing dress with long hair in bare feet, screeching ‘let me have it!’
HG, forget the school girl bit in my comment; I was reminiscing… 😛
I hate/love it when you build the pressure and hatred in me while Im reading the story and then bam! the last paragraph crumbles me into pity for you.
See I don’t even know if I love or hate that. That’s how powerful the confusion is. Always the confusion. The confusion would have killed me in the end I’m sure.
I feel like now I’m educated I shouldn’t be allowing confusion in. It is what it is. The fine line between love and hate. What does it matter? Who cares what I feel? Why do I have to analyse and analyse and then analyse my bloody analysis!!
It drives me insane at times. The need to know, the need to understand, the need to see everything from every God damn angle before I can lay anything to rest.
Argghhhhh.
Yu are a truth seeker you see.
But right now I want to be a narc. Shoot me.
In my 20’s I was a keen animal rights activist. Marches, protests, the lot. It got to the point though where it really affected my mental health. I couldn’t lie anything to rest and I ended up with severe insomnia because I couldnt switch off. I felt guilty sleeping (or doing anything for myself) because, in my head, I had no right to a life when do many animals were suffering. Instead of socialising I should be writing more letters, getting more involved.
In the end I had to completely shut down. I had to walk away from the whole thing before it drove me insane.
I haven’t felt that passionate about anything since until now. Fingers crossed my wisdom will help me find a healthy detachment line.
Ditto Karen ! Just when I think I understand I believe I know what to do and how to think about this disorder something throws me for a loop. Very frustrating indeed. Part of me wants to equate this all to a snake bite it’s as simple as a snake bite … we wouldn’t question, feel sorry for, need to know why the snake bit us ..it’s a snake they bite …. what does it matter why he bit you ? But no we analyze the why .pure .madness
It can be quite dibilotating can’t it Shantily!
We are truth seekers HG says. I wish there was a cure for it!
👍👍👍
Heathcliff, it’s me Cathy, I’ve come home. It’s so cold, let me in your window.
It gets dark, it gets lonely, on the other side from you.
But can you dance like Kate Bush?
I can… Or used to at any rate! My mother still likes to remind me of my Kate Bush Wuthering impression, and that’s were my similarity with Ms Bush ended… 😀
You can send me the video Scout. Just between you and I.
Yes. I’ll even dance like David Brent from The Office if it gets me into your tower.
Like Ms Bush will suffice, thank you. But for mentioning the Brent dance you have to do the dance for both Wuthering Heights and Babushka, interspersed with the moves from Army Dreamers.
Something always comes over me when you reply.
a dark storm cloud?
It’s songs like wuthering heights that made empaths easy to ensnare tho :0)
That’s because when they are doing all that dancing they don’t see us coming.
Oh aye, I just went and listened to a few of her songs and got a great deal of pleasure.
Brian, are you the Empath’s Front of Judea?
Made me laugh.
EFJ are splitters. Im with Judean Empath’s Front for Freedom
JEFF
My ex (mid range) once grabbed me out of the blue and whispered in my ear, “You’re trying to get in, but I can’t let you”. The deepness and intensity of his voice was scary yet extremely erotic. It caught me off guard because we were in the midst of what I now know was my golden period. His voice was a tone I never heard before… deep and breathy. I was confused because it came out of no where. As quickly as he said it he retuned to his normal tone and pretended as if nothing had just happened. Yes, I can admit that I am now somewhat curious as to what lies in his inner sanctum. However, since I was finally able escape I dare not venture to find out.
And there in lies the contradiction; one half of your kind want us to save you, the other half of you and your kind doesn’t want us to get anywhere near.
This blog reminds me a little of the current BBC series Versailles; King Louis believing he is on the throne by divine right (like all royals) therefore next to god and so shall he be treated. Not content with a Queen he has many mistresses and women desperate to catch his eye to be the next bed-partner. Courtiers too would line the corridors and shuffle to gain access to the king’s inner chamber. The king demands obedience, loyalty and total respect. He is always right. He is cruel, calculating and overbearing. Yet he builds a palace fit for a king and makes it a gilded prison for himself and his followers. They want for nothing but they all become miserable because he won’t allow them the leave. The women fight among themselves for the king’s attention; if the inner court aren’t gambling and having sex, they are poisoning one another, and the Sun King becomes ultimately miserable as well.
And what does the king learn from all of this? He learns it’s a very lonely place at the top. He has everything, but in reality, he has nothing.
Sick !!!
Yes, it’s sad,, but I am so grateful for HG Tudor,, he may just be what I need to pound the terror into this empaths head the need to go no contact,, I have just went through the worst disgard,, I feel I cannot breath,, it takes all I have in my soul to go through the motions ,, he made me an extended part of his self so I feel alienated,,
Don’t give yourself a hard time. Going NC is hard but once you’ve made your mind up yo do it, just go for it and don’t go back. Do breathing exercises every day. Remember, he’s not thinking about you so you must learn to let go of him.