Why Does The Narcissist Get Rid Of You?

The discard. Treated like refuse. Cast aside. Thrown away. Jettisoned. Abandoned.

As you know, the word Dis-Enagement is more accurate but for the sake of familiarity I will continue with the use of discard in this article, but do understand there is no finality associated with this act.

You may actually be told that the Formal Relationship is at an end.

More usually, you are left wondering if the end has come, a further parting coup de grace to add to the cocktail of bewilderment, anxiety, misery, pain and carnage that has been left behind by our kind.

I have explained what triggers the discard, a variety of different circumstances which give rise to you being dropped, but whilst you may understand how those circumstances cause you to be discarded, there remains certain nagging questions. Why go to such effort to only leave you in the dust? Why get rid of you if we need you for fuel? Why get rid of you if we are only going to come back and hoover you?

Once again these apparent contradictions only serve to prolong your confusion. Indeed, so much of our behaviour is inherently contradictory because in being so, this allows us to generate misunderstanding and misery on your part. That equates to fuel, that equates to stopping you moving forward and escaping us and it equates to creating something that we will come back to.

Why do we go to such effort to seduce you if all we are going to do is fling you to one side?

First of all, when we seduce you, we see the manifestation of our enduring hope that you are The One, that you possess the unlimited supply of fuel which will put an end to our seemingly never-ending quest for fuel. You will provide fuel which is potent, plentiful and permanent. This is what we want. The person that means never again shall we have to seek fuel from another source. No longer need we engage in so many manipulations to keep our lifeblood flowing. Everything that we have ever wanted and ever needed is finally within our grasp. Such a promise means that we must go to such lengths to seduce you. You are our Holy Grail, restitution will be poured on our lips from that chalice and in so doing, you will grant us freedom. Freedom from the hunting, the chasing, the harvesting and the extracting. Relief from this burden that we carry – some of us doing so far more effectively than others – each and every day. This prospect is why we must seduce you, bind us to us and keep you as ours. We do not set out to discard you. That is furthest from our minds when we look into your eyes. It makes perfect sense for us to give you everything that we know that you want if that means you will remain with us and give us our precious fuel. It is a transaction. We grant you the illusion of the perfect love and in return you are to provide us with our perfect fuel. It is the ultimate deal.

Why get rid of you if we need you for fuel?

When we dispose of you, it is precisely because of our need for fuel that you are discarded. You no longer provide us with the fuel that we desire. It does not matter if from your perspective you are just as loving as you are now as you were when we first met. It does not matter that you have crawled across broken glass to fulfill our needs. It becomes irrelevant how much you continue to adore us, worship us, beg us and strive each and every day to accord with what you think that we want. You are second-guessing us to the extent that you no longer even know who you are. Your thoughts become dominated as our thoughts – what will he say to this, how will he react to that, what is the best thing to do now, should I stay or go? You can give and give and give but when the discard comes, it just is no longer enough. From our perspective, you have failed us. We must place all of this blame on you, for we have to remain blameless. Most of our kind do not recognize any culpability because they have no insight, but there are those of us, the highers, the greaters, who know you have done all you can but it is not enough. Still we must blame you, because that is the way it has to be. We are to remain superior, you are to remain inferior, because if we allow that balance to shift, then we are no longer in control and if we lose control we lose ourselves.

Yes, the rampant paranoia will cause even those of us who are greaters to continue to blame you, you are but an agent of the vicious world, a manifestation that has been sent to topple us from our lofty perch. But we also know that we must continue to blame you, even when we recognise there is no blame or perhaps less blame, because we must at all times, in all circumstances exert control. We dare not countenance what would happen if it were any other way. To do so would be to entertain the unthinkable. Extinction.

Thus, your failure is both believed and manufactured and you must be discarded because we need the fresh, edifying and invigorating fuel from elsewhere. The shiny, new and exciting appliance that has been successfully embedded during your devaluation. If this has not happened, then it is in progress or quite possibly, although rarely, about to happen, if the discard has occurred as a consequence of an emergency measure.

Our need for this glorious and fresh fuel means you have to go. We do not care if this seems unfair from your perspective. This is what has to happen. We need fuel. You are no longer providing it as we require it. You are discarded. The positive fuel has lost its lustre, the negative fuel has dimmed and so because all is as the fuel orders it to be, we must attach to the new appliance and cast you to one side.

Why get rid of you if we are only coming to come back and hoover you?

This suggests that we may as well keep hold of you if we are only going to return to you at some later juncture. Why don’t we just maintain a grip on you and save ourselves the bother of hoovering – and you the pain of discard – and keep the Formal Relationship going?

There are four elements to this answer

1. Punishment. You let us down and we must maintain the façade that you let us down – part of the maintenance of control which I describe above – and for that you should be punished. We should not be let down. We should be given what we want, after all we consider ourselves as so entitled, therefore in failing to give us what we want and need you are in the wrong and we know only too well that if you are wrong then punishment follows. That is the way that it always has been. By discarding you in such a harsh and callous manner, we are able to dole out a punishment to you and thus we feel in control once again. You took away our fuel, that means you exerted control over something that belonged to us. We do not like you to do that, in fact we hate it. Thus, the discard allows us to punish you for this heinous act and assert control once again.
2. Shame. Whilst our kind would never admit it outside of this arena, shame follows us like some spectre through our lives. Shame drives many of our behaviours and it is sufficient to state no more about that in the context of shame’s role with your discard. We thought you were The One and we got it wrong. This makes us feel ashamed because this failure is a reminder of something we would much rather forget about, the weakness that threatens to escape and consume us. We are ashamed that we chose badly, we are ashamed that we have been fooled again by picking The False One. Of course it would never do to admit this to you or somebody else and thus you have to be discarded. Like some diseased limb which shames the rest of the body, you must be amputated, like some infected clothing you are torn away and thrown to one side, our revulsion at our own shame causing us to fling you away. Once you have been discarded, the shame abates and we can be what we want to be once again, grand, superior, omnipotent and brilliant.
3. Contrast. If you have not had sex for some time, when you eventually do, is it not usually the case that the sensation is all the more heightened, the orgasm more intense and the experience all the more rewarding? If you abstain from your favourite chocolate, do not drink for a month, refrain from smoking, or attending your favourite restaurant, is it not the case that when you reinstate these things it is so much better? Indeed, it is and this is just as applicable to you. By discarding you we are also allowing us to experience fuel from elsewhere so that when we hoover you, your fuel becomes delicious and amazing once again. If we remained with you, drawing the fuel that has become stale, this would never happen. We need to discard you to prime the pump for the future need. At the time of the discard, we do not envisage returning to you, but invariably it must happen because of the rule of fuel.
4. Potency. If we had not dis-engaged from you, we would not be given the opportunity to flex our hoover muscles and demonstrate our power by drawing fuel form you once again, with or without the restitution of the Formal Relationship. Hoover fuel is potent because of the contrast and the break from your fuel, but also because we are drawing it from someone who may well have resisted our overtures – or ought to have done so – and this provides us with a huge sense of omnipotence. Imagine, we treat someone disgracefully, fling them to one side and then with our powers of persuasion and seduction we bring them back to us, to do what we want again. That is power. If we had not discarded you, then this we could not do this.

These are the reasons we dis-engage from you.

As ever you are blameless, but we must make you to blame.