The Importance of Binding You To The Narcissist
One of our central aims when we have targeted you is to bind you to us. During our seduction we create this magical place and invite you and only you to inhabit it with us. We build a fantastic place and place you on a pedestal in the centre of this artifice. It is very difficult for you to realise this is a fallacy and even harder to do something about it. Every day, every hour that you remain close to our influence allows us to create more ties, more connections and increase the extent that you are bound to us. We make you feel fabulous, worshipped and loved. The dizzying, whirlwind nature of our passion is unlike anything else you have known and you readily accept it. It is of course not informed consent. You have no idea what we are, but nevertheless you accept all of this wonderful treatment. You allow us to permeate every aspect of your life. We draw you into ours and make you feel special and privileged for being allowed to do so. Consider how we penetrated your every network so everywhere you turned we were there.
We knew all your friends, we ingratiated ourselves with your family and got to meet your colleagues. We knew all the places you liked to go to and introduced you to some additional ones. We made sure we knew every favourite thing of yours, from books to plays to food. Your wine rack became stocked with the types of wine you preferred, your wear the jewellery that was bought for you after careful solicitation of what you deem pretty and I occasionally arrive bearing a new book from the stable of authors that you enjoy to read. Bit by bit I invade your life and as our relationship progresses at light speed, the gradual, creeping advance of my influence has actually gained more than a toehold. It has spread across your territory like some formidable weed that cannot be held back, covering and smothering. My clothes hang in the wardrobe, I have my favourite chair at your house, you now buy the cereal that I prefer to eat in the morning even though you think it is just a mouthful of sugar. You now wash my socks, my songs populate the iTunes playlist and the bathroom is testament to my occupation with the bottles, razors and accoutrements mingled amongst yours. You cannot fail to see my influence all around you, but you welcome this and from it you gain a great happiness. From dating, to staying over, to co-habiting and on to marriage, this inexorable march of sudden and frantic seduction, although this is only ever apparent with hindsight as at the time it was the right thing to do, results in our lives entwining as I wrap my tendrils around your life and drag you tight against me. So many links, connections, lines and ties between you and I.
These ties keep you in place despite the abuse that is to come. It is sudden and bewildering but you will not give up easily. Not only did you say those vows, you meant every word and we know this. You will not let what we have built up crumble to dust. Admirable as your fortitude may be, you may as well stand on a beach and command the tide to halt its own unceasing advance for all the good you will do. This will not stop you trying though. We know this. The ties are many and they are tight so you will not run for cover at the first administration of a silent treatment. You will not down tools and walk away when the shouting continues long into the night. You do not pack a bag and leave it in the hallway, sitting on the stairs as you wait for us to return, late at night, from whatever tryst we have been engaged in. You keep going, bound to the hope that everything will be good once more, that the golden period will return. You hang in there, you battle, you demonstrate misguided resolve as we lash out time and time again, drawing the negative fuel from your distress, dismay and disarray. You will not let go. The connections are too many. Our behaviour is reprehensible as we open up front after front after front against you, leaving you confused and crushed. We twist, blame, push and pull yet you will not waver. No matter how many times we knock you to the floor you keep coming back for more, dragged back onto your feet by the ties that bind you to us.
Then one day you remove yourself from our toxic influence or in some instances you are removed. Those ties remain but there is an elasticity which allow you to escape us. To be taken away from the acidic words and vicious schemes. The insults, the violent rages, the isolation and the denigration may have been halted. You may no longer be subjected to being spat at, your hair pulled, your money withheld, your social interactions curtailed and your self-esteem trampled underfoot. You may have escaped the daily devaluations which came at you in so many different and unedifying ways but your ordeal is far from over.
You may not have our furious face shouting into yours anymore. You may not be sat cowering behind a locked bathroom door as we pound on it demanding you come out. You may not lie crying in a bed made to feel empty by our absence. You may not stand outside the study seeing the glow of the monitor within, under the door and wonder who we are engaging with online, that knotted sensation in your stomach inducing sickness. You may have escaped many of these manipulations but the ties that bind remain.
The bond we have created with you is so strong, so deep and so far-reaching that every day you will feel a vast void at being parted from us. You will excuse the abuse as you hanker for those golden days. You will feel like something has been ripped from you by our absence. Even though you know how terrible we have acted towards you, you will still suffer that sense of illogical loss. Every day feels empty. You wonder what we are doing, who we are with and whether we are thinking about you. You see our presence all around you still, people still ask about us, you collapse on to your bed burying your face in that t-shirt we kept under our pillow and you still smell us on it. You drink deep of the scent, hoping the nagging pain will recede, that somehow you will be magically restored to where we once both were, when we were happy. Your run your fingers over the tub of hair wax which we left and you remember watching us as we carefully applied it. You cannot bring yourself to discard it, clinging on to these reminders of the joy that once abounded in these walls. You pass the bookcase, touching the spines of the volumes we bought for you, the words and letters all further reminders of our presence here in this house. You miss us you miss us so much, you shouldn’t do, not after what we have done. Not after the vile treatments you have suffered. It makes no sense that you should feel this way but you do. You ache for us, the ties that remain are still being pulled and yanked, even though we are not there with you. The searing pain rises as another reminder appears, the tie still strong. Unlike an umbilical cord which provides life, your cord to us continues to pain you. When will this end? When will this agony recede and be replaced by something else? Would it now not even be better to feel nothing? To be numbed and anaesthetised so you do not have to endure this ongoing pain.
The bond we create with you is so powerful, so deep and so long lasting that it is often the aftermath of the ties that bind that hurts more than the abuse itself. That is how dangerous we are.
58 thoughts on “The Importance of Binding You To The Narcissist”
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Miss you? muahahahahahaha…..Oh, hell no! I can’t wait to get out of here and return to a normal, no drama, life. You are insane and the only thing I crave is sanity, sweet sanity. You don’t have the power to hurt me, you never really did. I know who I am and no amount of screaming or verbal abuse from a mental midget (you) is going to change that. In truth, your passion ain’t much….and your money has always impressed you far more than it did me. Once I leave, there will be no returning….I never want to see you again. This has been most unpleasant, and if you make the mistake of contacting me you will regret the action. I promise you.
Please pass the scissors. I still feel threads hanging, dammit!
I love this article.
Because it is so validating.
Outside of this place there is so little, if any, understanding.
That lack of understanding is so frustrating and therefore becomes upsetting on top of everything else.
It is good to read your work here HG.
Because of who you are, it means you actually really do understand… and although you are technically the enemy, you are the one person that makes me feel understood inside and out.
That gives me comfort and strength on the weaker days.. it is such a paradox that someone like you who deals out at times unkind and inhuman treatment in your private life and yet it is you and your honesty here which allows me to feel completely validated as to the awful truths and effects.
Outside of here.. so much of it is so unbelievable ..you can’t just speak to ‘anyone’ about it. so many people just don’t get things, they just don’t understand.
It isn’t their fault of course not… but it is no help at all when people do not understand. no one is blaming them for not understanding but all I’m saying is it’s lonely when people don’t get where you’re coming from.
Thanks again for the many insightful and revealing articles.
Thank you DW and you are welcome.
It’s so true Debbie. This whole blog is validating and comforting. Here you can be understood. HG is not the enemy in this space, but I understand what you mean.
MB
Yes..its helped me a lot over this last 18 mnths.
thisblog and my consultation.etc with HG.
HG has been a tremendous support to me since Christmas 2016/2017.
He literally got me through the whole of last year.
Debbie
I’m convinced he’s heaven sent! I wish he could feel all the warm fuzzies he deserves.
My narc wife encouraged me to quit my job and return to school. Although I am about to have my doctoral degree conferred, I believe the reason she encouraged such was to keep me dependent on her. It is mind-blowing that she left during the last year of my graduate program as I would believe she would want to reap the benefits of her investment.
Yes that’s the complexity of it. Thanks HG brilliant, that’s my last part of my journey. I now understand it all, I know I will never go back, I know it was never real and I hate him but still the void and sadness stays inside. That’s the worse because you want it to go, to disappear but it won’t and leaves that dread that it might never. but those thoughts come less as the weeks go by so I’m optimistic, maybe helping others will help to fill that void and disarm the pain from the memories, or maybe helping just keeps the void open and aching? maybe hypnotism is the answer? has anyone tried it? and to HG if you want to be cured maybe hypnotism childhood regression may work ? what do you think?
Is there someone that could conjure a forgetting spell? K? Surely you have access to the how-to book of spells for the empathic?
Too bad Narcs can’t cast that like they do the initial spell of the golden period. Poof when they’re done (for now) and you forget and move on. It could work to their advantage. Easier for them to Hoover if you don’t recognize them.
MB
It is called compartmentalization and I can teach it to you, JK! The best spell is NC, reading HG’s articles and time. It took me about a year to forget.
So true K. There’s no substitute for putting in the work. It always takes me about two years to get over a broken heart. Around that mark, the realization comes that I haven’t thought about it in a while, then thinking about it doesn’t hurt and I feel free.
Up until that point, it’s like my favorite T Swift lyric: “I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to.”
I was hoping for something a little more expedient, hence “the spell”. It could come in handy for lotsa life’s situations!
MB
Trust me, If I had a magic spell that could cure a broken heart in a NY minute, I would share it with you and everyone here.
The magic is in the logic and the logic is here. It is ironic that the cure for a broken heart comes from someone who breaks them.
A spell or charm is a set of words, spoken or unspoken, which are considered by its user to invoke some magical effect. Wikipedia
Nobody can convince me that narcissists don’t put a spell on their targets. It’s definitely magic.
MB
I agree. It is “voodoo-black-magic-narc-heroin” a.k.a. the golden period/seduction.
The things that are bad for you always taste the best!
MB
The special traits in Sitting Target explain why we are more susceptible to mirroring/seduction and some narcs mirror so well that you literally fall in love with yourself. It is amazing how well it works.
K, yes that is a great book. One of my favorites. I just wish they could use their powers only for good.
It is one of my favorites, too, MB! And I really need to read it again.
No, actually, the worst most awful thing in the world. I compartmentalized, forgot him and he hoovered me 30 years. Only after he got me binded, pulled out all his tricks, did the walls of the comparentalizing break and I remembered it all. It was the worst, more horrific thing to go through to realize I had walked right into his trap. The shock was barely suriveable. And I think he knew all along that I was missing the memories of some of what he had done once before. Never forget.
wow that’s frightening
yes we just have to do the time MB X
You are correct Lynn! I hope you’re doing well.
Yes!! So much this!
How do you know how this feels? You’ve never felt pain like this. Spot on HG.
I listen.
You’re fortunate to have had interaction with those with the ability to articulate their feelings. But for you to be able to home in on them and truly understand in a way that you can convey to others in such an eloquent way is astounding. A rare gem. I’m glad I found you.
The narration of this article on YouTube 😍
I rewound at least 10 times to hear you say “accoutrements” It might be even better than “cadre” Divine accent indeed Mr Tudor.
…” being spat at” …. HG: say more about this one. This was one freaky assed behavior he did with me. How have you spit on people??
No, I have not.
I am glad to hear that. You seem too sophisticated to stoop to that level of tactics. The others are awful l, too, but this one is pure animal.
I would say HG is too much of a gentleman for such overt and vile behavior.
I think the purpose of yours doing it to you is to exert his superiority over you and to express his disgust for you. I cannot even imagine being spit on/at. The only thing lower would be urinating on you. Nobody deserves that treatment sarabella! I’m sorry you lived it and am pleased that you speak of him in the past tense.
MB, it was really incredible. I think he had alot more going on than malignant narcissism. Someone he screwed over badly said he was extremely psychotic. We were messing around. It was sort of dark, and it was like he checked out. It felt like he wasn’t even present. His eyes seemed rolled back or just gone. And suddenly, spit just started to come out of his mouth. Not an agressive spit. I freaked out inside as it was so shocking to watch. The guy was sorry for what he had once done to me ages ago, and then he was about to spit on me?!? I reached up and took it out of his mouth. It was revolting. Truly. But something told me to do that rather then just lay there and let it fall on me, as a way to take control of it. I know this is waaay too much info, but its something that just blew my mind. Why would someone do that? And worse, was he even conscious of when he did it? He didn’t seem present. Like something evil had taken him over. More freaky, chilling stuff happened afterwards that same night and that was the massive trauma bond he left me. He was really, really sick in that space. Demented, sick, like the devil had taken him over. What HG describes about his behaviors seems so deliberate and calculated, conscious, but this was like he was possessed. Truly. Why?
Omg Sarabella! I didn’t imagine a spitting incident like this. This is something so extra and different than that. You must have been terrified!
My heart is racing imagining how I would deal. Pretty sure I’d find a way to call 911, thinking he was having a seizure. But when I make a move for the phone, he comes to and attacks me. Bad idea.
I would love to hear the rest of the story, but it is so personal. Girl, if we was friends, we could open a bottle of wine (or two) and talk for hours!
I hope you are away from him. Please tell me you’ve talked to HG!
Yes, I am away from him. I finally did talk to HG on some stuff. This one defies understanding even until this day. If it was in anger, I could have more context for it and seen it a mid ranger type thing. But it wasn’t in anger. It was something else far more terrifying and sick.
Good for you sarabella! Let his sickness be somebody else’s problem, whatever it is.
That is the part that will always hurt though. I don’t think he lets all others see how sick he can be. I know of one person and I can’t believe she was shown the same horrible treatment and still seems to love him and care for him and does so openly and he returns it. I am still hurt at how much he tricked me into acting like he was a decent human being. It will always hurt, why me. A once friend said that she thought he really loved me but somehow, felt such a need to want to destroy me. I don’t know why other than I must just have been like this flashing light to him… hurt her, hurt her, hurt her. I realized today, I am still having a hard time forgiving myself for that. Anger still is there, the old scars still hurt, and I can’t forgive it all, 100% shrug it off even knowing how sick and awful he was to me and is in his life. Why did so many others get the nice version of him? I get the mechanisms of why, I still just don’t know why. There is still a hurt disconnect.
You know in your heart sarabella that you did not deserve that treatment. He wanted what you had for himself because he is void of it. She only gets the “nice” version for the facade. He is just as horrible as he ever was to you behind closed doors. He will not change. He doesn’t have the capacity to do so. You know all of this in your mind. Convincing your heart is something else. The pain is almost unbearable at times, I know. And it’s so unfair that he comes out completely unscathed. But hear me when I say “you do not want that monster in your bed ever again” Let her have him, it will distract him from you. He sounds really dangerous. Find somebody that can actually feel your love for them, don’t let it go to waste.
That is and was the great mind f*** : he made it clear I had nothing of value. Nothing about me was valuable to him. So it’s hard to ever think I had something he wanted, other than my hurt. That put me pretty far down. I doing ok, I just once in a while fall in bad spaces, trying to reconcile the conflicting realities: to feel I never really got even a tiny of what she and other got to the real knowledge that life with him would have been truly awful. This is the really only remaining emotional stumbling block. If I could just tell the ET that I don’t ever want a life with him and it would never have worked out, I could really finally put this behind me. I know it’s the truth, and then occasionally I am pulled into, “Why couldn’t he have lost ed even a tiny bit of me? Surely I wasn’t that awful?” A child’s place ….. thanks MB
You’ll get there sarabella. You’re in the right place. I’m thinking of you and sending healing thoughts your way.
That is a very triggering question Sarabella – “Why did so many others get the nice version of him?”
I was in such a rat race tied in with the intermittent reinforcement, that I thought surely, stick it out long enough and eventually it would be received (the nice guy). I thought I was proving how loyal I could be. How dependable I am. It was also infuriating. I always felt a sense of “how dare you treat me like this” which would lead to some of our fights. Once he told me I was the only person on the planet who brought that side out of him. One time I responded with “well it’s in there to come out. I’m just the first in a long line it’ll happen to.” I know he has that dark side to him. Even if he goes several years keeping it under wraps. Somewhere, somehow, life will make a turn of events happen where it will be too hard for him to contain or his subconscious will be exploding for the rush of getting that negative fuel. Life will get too stale without it. As calculating as HG is, I’m sure life has thrown a few curve balls. He did after all, have to go to the good doctors.
You want to know what is so sick? He once gave me this speel about how women needed to bring their A game. After massive pity play that no one loved him. So of course, bot getting the sick manipulation, I set out to do just that. Prove my loyalty. And then, they hate you for it.
I’ve read most of your articles and they have been spot on, but this is exactly the scenario I’m in now, which is perfectly described by you. My narc was obsessed with me meeting everyone he knew really quickly. I did think it was odd at the time but never said what I was thinking. I haven’t seen him in 5 months, but I’m allowing him to hoover me by txt etc. I know he is a narc, I don’t want to be with him but I can’t seem to let go once and for all. This article has spurred me on to go no contact.
Good and well done.
‘You may no longer be subjected to being spat at, your hair pulled, your money withheld, your social interactions curtailed and your self-esteem trampled underfoot”.
I had forgotten how my ex hubby lesser narc 10 yrs ago would control my money and throw a cheque at me for house keeping only after I had begged.
And I could have no friends because they would put things in my head.
I had to leave with the children a wonderful xmas gathering with friends to collect him from the pub so we could be together as a family. The rest of the evening he ruined by using a silence and staring at the TV. Merry xmas. Sad days.
“The bond we have created with you is so strong, so deep and so far-reaching that every day you will feel a vast void at being parted from us.”
You are in my head yet again, HG. That line up there pretty much summarizes it. Even though I am/was a Shelf DLS/IPSS this “vast void” is something that claws at me. Probably similar to how your creature claws at you. Excellent writing. So painful but also so very accurate.
Thank you FOTS
True 🙁
I often feel that its about him, shadows of him. But I think there is a trick sometimes. Sometimes, I sink into a very particular place and he comes up. This used to happen when he and I were interacting heavily so it made sense, right. But that this sense of bonding can still go on so long has me digging under it and realizing that at this point, my mind just wants to name something as the cause. Just like HG wrote in a post somewhere about why his tactics work because of the human need to find blame. It was a good piece of writing.
I feel that he did brainwash me in some ways, hard to imagine he could do what he did with such little actual interaction and in such a short time. And when it was an ‘active’ relationship, I know that a bond was created by him. I autopsied the exact things he said to make me feel like there was a bond between us. But now, when I think it still exists, I realize it doesn’t anymore. Oddly, that makes me sad. Because I know that means he killed it all. He made sure to kill in me what I felt for him. Why go to such lengths? I wasn’t even shelved but killed entirely. He wanted to kill me and what I felt for him. So he did.
So when I feel that feeling, what I used to associate with hurt bonding, I know its not about him anymore. He is just where my mind slides to as it wants to blame. This wierd hurt/bond with him I still very occassionally feel is only the trauma bond that remains, and all about my own past. Its not him. He wanted me to feel a void. He got me to feel that. But honestly, I always kind of had one before him. He just got me to think that he had something to do with filling it as a way to control me. But I had one already, and then he filled something old and familiar (because I once loved him as a kid and he made sure to remind me of all that had happened and pretended life had kept him from me and he was back to find his old lost love he never got a chance with), but then he put that void BACK IN ME on purpose. Only it was magnified. But, now, its at the level of a void I always lived with. I just tell my mind over and over that this bonded feeling is not him anymore. Not anymore. Its my life. He has nothing to do with my life anymore. He got me to stop caring for him. Admitted he lied about caring for me both by words and actions and all of this is stuff that was my own life scars well before he came back along in my life. Because we do have our own places of emptiness and hurt that is not entirely different in nature than a narcs, but only in scale, reaction to them as we grew and how we operate in the world. You and I and all others got picked because he saw what he knew was in him but I think we didn’t ever know was really in us. I know it now. He showed me the part of him that is also in me. But the difference is that I can take care of that void in a healthy way, he only has a limited number of tricks to take care of his and someone always gets hurt.
Sarabella,
I recall some of your similar comments really resonating with me and this one does as well. What you say makes so much sense. Back when I was seeing a therapist for a little while she told me, “You may have been attracted to him, love him, care for him, etc. but it is not who or what he is but what he REPRESENTS”. And your explanation above nails that for me. He represents my insecurity and my fear of being abandoned. And yes he filled a void that was already there and now it is even bigger and more empty.
I do think the love is more than what they represents. But once the abuse starts, the denigrations start, and the fraud starts to show, then it slowly becomes our own attachment to what the whole experience now represents. The void will seem more huge but my theory is that in that part of it, it’s your own void coming back plus fresh grief and hurt. So it feels just huge. I found that I had to grieve him. I had to grieve him and the loss just as one might grieve anyone else. I had to find ways to identify this is my void, this is me grieving the loss of him. He wanted me gone, so even though he is still alive, and he assured me he is but a text away and he is not going anywhere, the truth is, he never wanted me. And I can’t accept that. I can’t accept all that he could do for strangers, flatter others, admire others, openly claim friendships with others and with me, I was disposable and a target for him. So I just learned to grieve him as if he had died, he kind of had, go through all of the process in that as it was a fresh, grief filled experience and eventually, it did abate and I am left now with the void that was my own life and my own hurts he had nothing to do with. But I really had to allow myself to mourn him. I was so angry and hurt, it delayed the mourning. I had to make myself stop being so angry so let the grief rise up. I literally curled in a ball for 3 months and broke the worst ties of the bond. Hard to do because I didn’t want to do it all all. But I knew I had to break, them, too. I hope my experience or process might help why it seems even bigger to you. I think two things go on in the healing. You get back to yourself, and you need to grieve and mourn properly.
So true Sarabella! I find so many of your comments so insightful! It is buried grief that comes to the fore when we are being devalued or disengaged from.
The tide shifts when we click to acceptance in our brains and you allow real mourning to occur for the loss of the illusion and knowing you have to completely cut ties.
Hi gabs…i can relate to your post too! Thats what narcissists do they learn as much about you your weaknesses, insecurities and needs. Then they use that info to manipulate you to get what they want and need. The hook is the fact they can give us what we want so well that we forget about the abuse or ignore it.
Sarabella
I really agree with this. I have always had this void in me, too. It seems like losing the relationship with the narc creates this horrible void that we feel each day, but I think that’s an illusion. We’re just feeling our own void that we had all along, but had been ignoring. What the relationship did was trick us into believing the void had been filled and we’d been completed somehow. Now that the relationship is over, that internal void we’d been ignoring is glaringly obvious. But it is never possible to be competed by anyone else. Everyone has to complete themselves from the inside.
And you’re right as well. We can fill our own void and complete ourselves by learning and personal growth. The narcs are the ones trapped, unable to fix themselves and forced to keep moving from illusion to illusion. We just need to give up on the idea of a fairytale solution, roll up our sleeves and get to work on fixing ourselves.
Are MR narcs aware of the bond that they have created or their sense of entitelment make them blind to this bondage? Some may be doing it intentionally I think. Is this act, the need for survival for them or just calcuated act for sadistic pleasure?
I ‘died’ to escape, many times
Yes, the broken dream and the nightmare after that bind much more than the real man behind. And you know that and create/encourage daydreams at first. Although you will deny it, there is no real bond between your kind and us, there is only a bond from us to our own fantasy of a man and a relationship with this fantasy man. And your kind feeds this dream until we realise that we only kissed a hologram.
Our feelings, pain and desires are always more real than the abuser. I didn’t even like my narc as a person, he triggered something in me that i struggle with. The struggle against the bonds, was the whole thing for me.