Jealous Of Your Contentment
Granting you contentment is part of our design when we seduce you and grant you the golden period. The provision of your contentment at that juncture in our entanglement provides the luscious positive fuel to flow in our direction and all is well. We truly do delight in seeing you content with the illusion that we have woven for you. It is when you and us move into the stages of devaluation and discard that we regard your state of contentment in a wholly different manner,
During devaluation if we witness you appearing content, we are overcome with jealousy. Why should you be allowed to sit there satisfied, happy and relaxed? Why do you not suffer the repeated unease of the desire to gain fuel when those supplies become low? We look across the room at you, your features composed in an expression of peace. The envy rises and we despise the fact that you are sat in pleasant repose, seemingly all at ease with the world. We invariably associate that your composed appearance is achieved in order to annoy and frustrate us. You know don’t you? You know that we have this churning fury inside us which shifts and slides. You know that we have the growing hunger for fuel and how this creates a restlessness in us. You know all of this and yet you sit there, revelling in our discomfort. If you cared you would not be enjoying that book, talking on the ‘phone to a friend or watching your favourite television programme. No, if you loved us properly then you would be ensuring that this restlessness was banished and that our sense of power and might was reinstated. Your content state is being bandied about in front of us, teasing and provoking. You are mocking us because you are achieving something that is denied to us at that time. How dare you behave in this manner? How dare you forget about our needs? This is symptomatic of the selfishness we knew you possessed and now you wave it in our faces suggesting that somehow we are inferior to you. This will not do.
Your contentment at this stage amounts to a provocation and is tantamount to a criticism of us. You have achieved contentment whilst we experience restlessness and you know this don’t you? Oh, we know that you will pretend to be unaware of what you are doing, but we know your game. We are not fooled by these protestations of innocence so when we fling the dinner plate to the floor, shattering the plate and silence, causing you to jump up in fright, you knew it was coming. The plate lies broken and your contentment in one swift move is similarly smashed. You are not allowed to be content unless it is by our say so. We want you on tenterhooks, your nervous eyes looking to us for approval and consent. Exhibit any sign of being relaxed, at ease or content and we will take action to destroy that state in an instant. We will pick a fight, create an argument, call you a name, break something, interrupt you with an insult walk out and slam the door and so many other actions all designed to remove you from your contented position. When we see you like that, you remind us of what we cannot achieve at that time and we hate you for it.
It becomes worse when the relationship has ended. Whether you escaped us or we discarded you, there will come a point when we turn our sights on you again in order to extract that wonderful hoover fuel. It may be weeks or months later but we will have been undertaking observations in order to determine the most effective way of hoovering you. If we see you getting on with your life, radiating happiness and an air of contentment it infuriates us hugely. How dare you seem happy without us? You are meant to be broken and distraught, that is how the aftermath is supposed to be. Admittedly, it usually is, but every so often we may find that one of our victims has seized the power and advanced his or her position, forging through the emotion and formulating their recovery. It may be the case that we have seen you on one of the few good days, the bad days taking place where the world cannot see, but that does not matter to us. Should we witness you looking well, smiling, having lost weight, or looking fitter, dressing elegantly, meeting friends with laughter and smiles it wounds us considerably. You seem to have forgotten us. You are bound to us, forever, have you forgotten that this is the case? You are at our beck and call until the day either of us breathes our last, yet here you are striding across the street, hair glossy and styled, posture confident and uplifted and meeting somebody with a kiss and a broad smile. This was not meant to happen. You exude contentment, a confidence that we thought was shattered and unlikely to be rebuilt for some time. How did this happen? Who has caused this transformation from the sobbing wretch we left without so much as a goodbye to the contented person we now look at from the shadows? It may be a one-off, it may be a glimpse of something that is a work in progress, but such considerations do not matter when we see it. We are wounded by this display. You appear to no longer need us. Where is the stooped figure? The haunted individual with dark-circled eyes and pallid skin? Where is the comfort-eater that we mocked so horribly? Where has the lank-haired, nervous shuffling person we tormented gone to? This was not meant to happen. Ever.
Seeing you so content post escape or post discard is a massive criticism to us. The lesser or mid-range of our kind will most likely slink away, regarding this show of strength (temporary even though it may be) as evidencing somebody with defences high and radar warily sensitive. Any hoover would be doomed to hoover and might even result in further injurious harm. No, the lesser or mid-range will retreat and return to the new prospect that has been acquired and other sources of fuel and make a mental note that a hoover at this juncture is unlikely to meet with success. The Greater of our kind will seethe and glower, dismayed and wounded by this peacock performance. Unseen, we will send baleful glares your way as we formulate a way to pierce this shield of contentment. Schemes will be concocted once again in order to hammer this contentment into nothingness. The Greater may, if sufficiently motivated, spring forward and unless malign actions for the purpose of drawing negative fuel, preferring to adopt such a tactic rather than seek to draw the target back in. It is time to lash out and destroy rather than capture. Our fury is ignited and our calculating minds will ascertain that this can only be a veneer. It is far too soon for you to appear to content again, no matter how much it appears genuine. We want to halt the recovery before it gathers any more momentum and thus the Greater will unleash a savage malign hoover, smearing and hurling insults, dredging up those historic vulnerabilities in order to break the contentment again, just as we did those many months ago during devaluation. The ignited fury drives the Greater forward to shatter, break and destroy and if successful, then he or she knows that further malign assaults can be rolled out to cripple the recovery. Once the recovery has been derailed, the contentment eradicated and the veneer of confidence stripped, then the golden period can be dangled again before the quivering victim.
It never does to see you contented. This is why when we see it during devaluation you will suffer and adverse reaction. Following the cessation of the relationship it wounds us considerably and will generate a certain response dependent on the type of our kind that you were entangled with. The maintenance of contentment is indeed a blow against us.
18 thoughts on “Jealous Of Your Contentment”
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My last ex-narc hoovered me about a fortnight ago when he saw a picture of my boyfriend and I being happy together on my social media and he wrote that he was happy for me that I found love again.
I off course knew enough about narcissism to know that that was total BS, so I ignored him and blocked him again.
I suspected that instead of feeling happy for me he would be annoyed, angry and jealous of my happiness.
HG confirmed this to me and with this article I now know for sure what he was really thinking and feeling about my contentment.
In the past I would have gloated while reading it, but now I felt nothing. It was just interesting to find out a little bit more about this strange disorder.
So now I can finally quote the immortal words of Rhett Butler: “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”.
Free and happy wirhout the N for ever!!!
Ha! I KNEW my ex narcs hated to see me content! The lesser and mid did exactly what you wrote, H.G!
The greater tried to reinstate me, though, although I did catch a hateful glare in my direction. I never got any malign hoovers. I suspect he knew I would have simply hung up/walked away had he started insulting me, so maybe he was trying to restore the golden period just long enough to punish me properly once I was ensnared again?
Also, a new relationship must be fury igniting. Will you post an article about that eventually?
I imagine a lesser banging on the door threatening to kill the new paramour, and a mid bemoaning how now they see what they have lost and will change, how the new partner cannot love them as the narc does, or even just receding into the shadows to avoid conflict and lick its wounds…
As for the Greater, I think a well-supplied one might brush off any new relationship as irrelevant, maybe saying “we can just be friends, I don’t want to lose you entirely”, just so he can try and cause trouble through charming manipulations. It might just ve seen as a challenge. Perhaps he would use lieutenants to instill rumours and doubts of infidelity in the new partner’s mind, so after any confrontation the greater might sweep in as the saviour of the unfairly treated empath… Am I close, H.G?
Mine just vanished, perhaps he was too low on supply, but there is no doubt in my mind this one was no mid or lesser, he fits all other characteristics.
I suspect he would have acted as ypu say, had he been better supplied (if he was indeed running low), had I shown more susceptibility, or had I not wounded him so much prior to the revelation of my new relationship by being happy. I am sure H.G. Will correct me if I am wrong
Also, his triangulations & isolation backfired: he had isolated me so well, when we broke up he no longer had people close to me who also knew him!
This shows once more how correct H.G is about watching out for the coterie and allies just as much as the narc himself.
Clarification: the mid and lesser both tried to come back, but gave up very quickly, so I think H.G.’s description still applies to them
When you become too comfy in the relationship the narc becomes agitated. They feel they are no longer in control.
This reminds me when i worked in the seniors lodge we had a narc supervisor. She still works there and is still a tyrant. I learned very quickly how she operated of course back then i had no clue what a narcissist was. She liked people on their toes and if you got too comfortable she would amp it up a notch via a devaluation. She would make one up if she had to. You couldnt do your job too good or she would sabatoge it and say you were doing something wrong yet you couldnt slack either or youd face her wrath. You had to be just in the middle. If she seen you enjoying your job too much she would think you werent working hard enough. She never liked to see the workers content. Thats bc she never was content and wanted everyone to feel like her. She even admitted to having a mood disorder ironically. I hated working under her.
I wonder if this happened to me with my former Greater narc. I was a longtime IPSS , shelved/disengaged when I met him at a conference. I was dressed to the nines and there was no outward sign of the inner turmoil he had created. He was there with the IPPS – quite friendly/flirty when she wasn’t around. He suggested lunch but when I followed up with an email a few days later, he labelled me a stalker , threatened to call the police and my employers if I contacted him again. Was this wounding because of my outward recovery or fear that the IPPS had spotted us…?
What would you say is the difference between Jealousy and Envy, HG?
Envy is where you want what someone else has – thus my neighbour is envious of my new car.
Jealousy is where you fear something you have might be lost. Jealousy appears in triangulation – You are jealous because I am spending a lot of time with your sister (thus you fear you might lose me).
HG, except that this isn’t how we Empaths think. We’re not envious of others, nor jealous. We may sometimes wish we had a new car or new whatever but I can’t say I’ve ever been envious of someone else’s new whatever. Not in the pathological sense at least. As for jealousy, I might feel puzzled or a bit put out if you were to spend a lot of time with my sister but not jealous for fear of losing my partner. I guess this is the difference between non-pathological envy and non-pathological jealousy and how you and your kind feel which is pathological envy and jealousy. The same applies to others success. We feel pleased for another person’s success whereas I guess you and your kind would feel envious or jealous of others success. It used to seriously puzzle and frustrate me when Narcissists would insist on their ex targets being jealous or envious of them in some way, as if we would be jealous or envious of their seriously f*cked up behaviour (lying, cheating, stealing, gaslighting, verbal attacks, etc). Your worldview is skewed….. although I can’t help but be quite fond of you personally, HG!
I was projecting.
HG, you replied “I was projecting” – I know you were but isn’t it also the case that you and your kind genuinely believe that others are jealous and envious of you?
Correct and they are.
No, we’re not HG. This is your worldview. It’s not grounded in fact.
This explains perfectly the ‘inevitable payback’ – your kind get that look of sheer contempt (hard look in your eyes and / or a tight-lipped expression) and we just know there’s going to be a payback for being genuinely content and at peace. Thank you for providing yet another insight.
Survivor – the look of “sheer contempt and /or tight lipped expression” is a familiar one!
Hey Amber, yes it sure is a familiar look. Scary if you don’t know what they are but when you do know, that ‘look’ becomes laughable! Merry Xmas to you.
According to facial expression analysis, that is the look of hatred.
Lol gonna try this 😂😂