Bitter
Envy and jealousy form two of the limited range of emotions that we are permitted. Of course, our reduced range of emotional responses is entirely by design so that we are furnished only with those emotions which drive us forward in our pursuit of fuel and thus we are freed from the hindering effects of many emotions which you experience such as compassion, sadness and joy. Envy and jealousy certainly provide us with the impetus and motivation to gather our precious fuel but they are emotions that you exhibit as well. Admittedly, there are those amongst your number that are so selfless and giving that an envious thought or look of jealousy never clouds your saintly features, but for many of your kind there is a bitterness that arises from this jealousy although we know you would never admit it and would prefer to blame it on us. Take for example the following exchange I had with one of my ex-girlfriends. I have not named the individual,not because I have some semblance of decency by granting her anonymity. Not at all. No, this is borne out of highlighting that this conversation could have taken place with any number of my ex-girlfriends. It is a conversation that could have taken place with many of you. She was in a period of devaluation and was providing me with plenty of negative fuel so as I worked behind the scenes to line-up my new prospect there was no urgency to bring about a discard. We had arranged to meet at a wine bar. I was fifteen minutes late.
“Oh here at last,” she remarked as I walked in to the wine bar. I pretended not to notice her at first,my eye caught by a tall and attractive lady who was stood near to me at the bar. I smiled at the tall lady and she returned it.
“I said,” declared the ex in a louder voice, “you are here at last.”
I turned to where she was sat as if noticing her for the first time.
“Ah hello, yes what a day, major deal going on and I had to take a conference call with New York,Pretoria and Frankfurt. It’s all happening I can tell you.”
“You could have rung to say you were running late, I have been sat here wondering where you were.”
“Am I late? We said 7-15.”
“No, seven o’clock.”
“I think you will find it was 7-15. I remember distinctly because I told my secretary to schedule the conference call for 4pm to last for no longer than 3 hours to give me sufficient time to get here. Big deal you see, so it needed that time allocated to it.”
“Well, I was busy too you know,” she remarked.
“Not on the scale I have been my dear,” I replied with a smile as I continued to scan the wine bar to see if there was anybody I knew and any further opportunities to gather fuel.
“Oh of course, your work is always more important than mine isn’t it?”
“No need to be like that, I am just stating a fact.”
She began to say something but I cut her off by pointing at her wine glass which was nearly empty and asking,
“Which wine is that?”
“Er, the chardonnay,” she replied.
“The Chablis here is far better, I will get that,” I remark and smile as I see her twist her face at my comment. I indicated to a waitress to come over to the table and I ordered two glasses of the Chablis.
“A far better choice,” I declare pleasantly,
“Oh it would be wouldn’t it since you chose it?” she added sourly.
I pretend I didn’t hear and thrust my hand out and revealed a watch from underneath the double cuff of my shirt.
“What do you think of this then? Impressive no?”
“Why have you bought that? I got you a watch only last month,” she announced in irritation.
“I know but, well, this is of a superior quality and the strap on the one you got me did not fit my wrist properly, not like this one,” I explained and I then continued to espouse the virtues of the chronological item as her face darkened. I of course revelled in this but I maintained the pretence that I did not notice.
“Anyway, enough of that,” she snapped.
“Something the matter? Not jealous are you? Jealous? Of a watch?”
“No I’m not jealous,” she answered far too quickly.
“Yes you are.”
“No I am not, anyway, where are we going this weekend? I thought we might go to Rockcliffe for a couple of nights, the restaurant in the orangerie is apparently really good,” she continued.
“I am not going there.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have been invited to Guisborough instead.”
“Who by?”
“What’s it got to do with you?”
“Er just a bit, I am your girlfriend or had you forgotten about that?”
“I would rather not say, you will only get jealous,” I grinned.
She looked indignant.
“Let’s just say Guisborough is better than Rockcliffe so that is where I will be going,” I added.
“Oh I see, you always have to go one better than what I suggest,” she snarled.
“Hey,I cannot help it if people who have excellent choice invite me to such a place can I?”
“You do it all the time. I get a new car, so you do the same only yours is more expensive. I gained a promotion and rather than congratulate me you tell me all about the targets you apparently smashed. I cook you a fantastic dinner but you tell me it is not as good as the one you did the previous week. I show you a picture and you tell me you have one that is similar only yours is better. Good God, I even told you about a moisturiser I was using, just chit chat and you have to explain how the one you use is superior to it. What is wrong with you? You always have to bring it back to you and go one better?”
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?” I replied feigning a look of displeasure despite the fact I was revelling in all this fuel that was being provided.
“You are consumed by your petty jealousy. I share what I achieve, I tell you first, I let you into everything I do so you can feel reassured that you are with someone who is successful and all you can ever do is be jealous and envious. How about being pleased for me for once rather than thinking about yourself?”
“I cannot believe what I am hearing. You boast all the time, you do it with everything. You tell me repeatedly about how you are ‘kicking ass and taking names’ at work, how the higher-ups adore you, how you are looking at buying an even larger house and how you have always been the highest achiever in your family. I told you about my degree result, yours had to be a class higher, if that is even true of course as sometimes I wonder. Your university was better than mine, your post code is a more desirable area,you have more friends than me, you have visited more countries than me. Every time I try and tell you something you have to trump it and go one better,” she continued as the anger tainted her words.
I slowly stand and her eyes widen as she seems surprised by my movement.
“I’m not sitting here listening to your jealousy, I am parked on a double yellow line and I am not getting a ticket just because you are envious of me,” I hiss. I turn as I hear her shout after me.
“There you go again, it couldn’t be a single yellow line could it? Oh no.”
I smiled and walked away content in the knowledge that these continued bouts of envy provided me with such delicious fuel. So predictable. Single yellow? I liked that.
15 thoughts on “Bitter”
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Hi HG Tudor,
I have read extensively through your articles.
I am utterly confused and suffering cognitive dissonance plus having gone through a traumatic episode 2 weeks ago.
The below is my story and I do trust that you will guide me and give me your opinion/insight on what this person is: ( as in your video I am questioning myself with the emotional thinking about what this person is):
I am so broken and confused, so destroyed.
I will try to summarise the story in the best of my ability:
In December 2017 I had an interview via Skype for a job I applied in another country. I was interviewed and I wasn’t offered the job but somehow the person who interviewed me and I started chatting via whatsapp. We were talking quite a lot. After a couple of days, I asked if he was married by any chance to what he said yes. I thought to stop there and then but he went onto say that he wasn’t happy in the marriage, that he felt he had married that person in order to not stay alone and that he didn’t want to spend the next 30 years of his life like this. Married 25 years and 3 children. (10 years back he had moved in with another woman and after 2 months he returned home because of the children). He told me he was falling in love with me, that his heart was mine, that he wanted to live with me, be a couple and that he was serious about me. We continued talking.
Coincidentally, at that same time I was offered another job I had applied for in that same country where he lives and where he is from and I took it. This job was in a city 300 kms away from where he is. He told me things such as – “being without you is not an option”, “I want to replace my current relationship” (with me) and so on. I really believed what he told me. Thing is that after about 2 months he came to visit me one day and told me out of the blue that he was not leaving his family and was staying. Somehow, we continued talking but during the 8 months I was living there he came to see me a total of 5 times for about 12 hours each time. Many times, he wouldn’t reply to my messages on whatsapp, another time I was talking to him and told him that he didn’t seem to have the initiative to call and that I was feeling things had changed. He hung up on me while we were talking and told me he wasn’t wasting his Sunday listening to things like this. He refused to answer my messages for hours on end and never apologised. Then he went onto say that he didn’t do that to people, i.e. hanging up. There were many times I would see him online on messenger and whatsapp but he always denied talking to others. Even at the start I remember twice when he said he was going to sleep at 11 PM and then I would see him online at 1 AM. He would never ask me how my weekends were or what I did despite knowing I was alone in a foreign country and knew no one. One weekend I was sick and he wouldn’t even ask how I was. He said we were not living together and therefore he didn’t have to ask and that he wasn’t my babysitter. If I had a toothache he wouldn’t ask and he would say he is not like that. He always would say he likes me a lot but when I asked what he liked he would say – I will tell you one day or I’d rather tell you what I don’t like because I will finish quicker. Another day I told him I like him and what I liked and when I asked back he said I had described it very well and that he would use exactly my same words.
I stayed there for 8 months and decided to go back to my country and leave everything in November 2018. He told me he was convinced we would see each other again and I didn’t really understand how since I was going back home in a different country. After one month, in December 2018 while we were talking one day he told me that the person who was working at his company, which was the position he initially interviewed me for, was leaving and if I was interested in the job. I didn’t have a job at the time and I said yes so this time at the beginning of January 2019 I moved to the city he lives in and where he works to work with him. I must say that he didn’t promise a relationship but he never told me there would be nothing between us. In fact, I came back and there was something going on between us including sex. He always would say he was staying with his family and that this would stay that way. For 2 months he was nice to me although he barely saw me – just maybe once every two weeks. In the office he flirted with me when people were not around and he looked happy to have me here. We went twice for dinner and the last time he said we could go somewhere the next time. And I travelled back home for a week to get stuff from there and he told me “please, come back”. I asked why he offered me the job and he said that it was better to have me here than back where I lived in my country.
He was with me last time on the 11th of March – sex included. The next day I asked if we could have dinner sometime and he started to be really angry saying we couldn’t have dinner every second day!!! – we had had dinner twice in 3 months. He was talking to me in such an angry state to the point he told me to get off the car and that he was leaving with me or without me in it. I was shaking, in shock not knowing what I had done wrong. The times he would visit me he would spend 1 hour at the most, had sex and soon later out of the door. I felt bad, really bad but kept going.
Out of the blue a few days later after being together and after spending the whole weekend without answering a single message I sent, he tells me he has a crisis at home and that he has to deal with it and follow a certain order but he didn’t want to share details with me. He mentioned something about drugs with his son but my intuition told me there was something else. He told me it was better to distance the situation between us and to be friends. I insisted and he ended up telling me “yes I met someone very recently and it is serious”. I asked “but you were seeing me” and he said “yes, but not at the same level”. Then he goes home at 11 PM on a weekday and tells his wife about this and the next day he travels to meet the new woman. He told me the wife was very shocked and I don’t know what he proposed to her. He is planning to move out now for someone he met days ago when he had always told me he was staying at home and this was not changing.
He refused talking to me when I tried asking for an explanation as to what was happening, walked out on me every time I wanted to talk, shouted and even at the beginning when he was very nice to me one day, he told me he would like to have me in the basement and he would give me food and drink.
Now I wonder, he always told me he would stay where he is with his family, now he meets someone a few days ago and he leaves when on top of that there are family problems with one of the sons. The other woman married with children too. I don’t know what this has been really and I am leaving this job and country. I can’t work with him anymore and this was a mistake to accept this job. He told me he would hate not to have me in this office because he likes to work with me and have me around.
From my post you may know I am alone in the country I am in, no friends and no family.
I gave this person the resignation letter at the end of March ( although without signature) that I was leaving at the end of April. He confirmed it in writing, that I would leave end of April. My soul and intuition told me to leave. I could not continue working there. His presence was intoxicating.
I did tell him I dont want to see him ever again either as a partner, friend as he proposed ( only when it suited him as he already had someone new) or as a colleague. I told him all I think of him and how he played with me and used me.
2 weeks ago I go to work and I receive an email from him copying HR and my colleague saying I had to hand in the key today and that my services are no longer needed there although I would get paid for the month of April. I responded by email asking the reason why copying HR and stating that he had confirm my departure as of the end of April. He came to my desk angry and shouted in front of everyone to give the key and leave. I said I wanted a reason. He said he doesn’t have to give me a reason. This with the whole office listening. He switched off my computer and I said I had to close my email. He removed keyboard and mouse aggressively and told me that was the company’ s property. I told him whatever he had to tell me to do it in private. He didn’t. He continued talking to me like this in front of everyone. By the way, I continued to do my job as usual even if I informed I was leaving at the end of the month. I asked for a reason to ask me to leave like this. Next thing was ” I will call the police if you dont go now”. The bitch of my colleague, clearly alineated with him said ” yes, I call them. I got my things and he came to the door holding it for me ( I felt escorted like a criminal and I even felt asvhe would push me if I didn’t leave quickly. I couldnt do anything.
Please help me with your insight. I am destroyed.
Thanks,
LG
This is a matter which should be addressed through consultation.
Not sure where to put this. I am so disgusted with myself. I had HG do the Fuel Matrix Questionnaire for me and I was told I am a DLS!!! OH NO NO NO!!!! I think not. That was what I was waiting for. I knew there would be something to push me over the top and this was it. He has been blocked, my instagram and FB are now private, other texting apps removed from phone. I will park somewhere else from now on at the train station. If he decides he is going to hoover me there, I will come up with something else. I will change my work hours if need be.
I AM DONE!!!!!!! FU and the high horse you rode in on.
Now of course we all know this is me spouting right now because I am hurt. I am well aware that ER will be VERY HIGH for the next god knows how long. But as of this very moment I AM DONE.
Will be back looking for support…lots of it…but for now going to go cry and lick my wounds.
Thanks HG. I knew the break thru would come.
Anything I forgot or should watch out for?
Your humble empath.
Let’s see if this moment of awakening is what jolts you enough to maintain no contact so your ET reduces and therefore you commence a sustainable escape from this narcissist and avoid the repeated patterns of thinking and behaviour you have engaged in previously. Harness this kickstart and do not waste it – you still have to put the effort in, so do so and embrace this moment.
Gonna give it my all HG. I know it will be an uphill battle but your assessment of where I an in his matrix made me realize I dont matter to him at all………..Going to let some ET out now in the form of tears
Correct. Know it and apply it.
Sorry Kim e.
It is learning that I simply don’t matter to any narc that is helping me get past my permissiveness. Because I never fully grasped it.
I think once you see, you can’t unsee. I wish you the best.
I understand that Ns emotions are limited HG. But what about stress? Can Ns experience stress.
For example if they were suspended from work, facing disciplinary, likely to have their contract terminated. Would it cause them to feel stress, what will they say to their wife? How will they pay their bills? Or would it be more like that if the mr reality gap.
Or would they just blame everyone else for whatever unfolds?
Thank you
Those are matters which affect the narcissist’s control and therefore given the narcissist’s hyper sensitivity to control will result in attempts to assert control over those situations and a manifestation of that might be akin to a stressed response because the narcissism deploys that as the best response to try to achieve what the narcissist needs.
That’s really helpful to understand HG. Thank you. Not actual stress as we would experience it but things are spiralling out of control and they need to regain that control.
Correct.
Now I want to be an N!
Come on in, the water’s fine! (No sharks – honest!)
Now I feel stressed! Hahhaa
I am left wondering, if she had been endlessly understanding and refused to engage with your quest for negative fuel, how might that have gone? If the conversation had started with, “I’m glad you’re here. I imagine your day was pretty busy. How are you?,” and she never picked up the invitation to argue, regardless of how many times you baited it, how would you have responded?