Does The Narcissist Think About the Disengaged IPPS?
I know that when I have disengaged from you that you will think of me more than anything else. This is all by design – be it instinctive (Lesser or Mid Range Narcissist) or calculated (Greater Narcissist).
Your mind becomes a whirling thought engine as the questions loom and dart about your mind like swooping spirits. Why did he do this? What did I do wrong? Where has he gone? Why won’t he talk to me? Is he with someone else now? How could he treat me like this? These questions and many of a similar nature remain at the forefront of your mind. They are exhausting as you grapple to find the answers, always achieving an unsuccessful outcome because invariably you do not know who has actually disengaged from you.
I cast you to one side, you did not leave me and cause me to apply an Initial Grand Hoover in order to bring you back under my spell. I saw no need for you anymore and therefore I was content to throw you on the scrap heap, broken and spent, a broken appliance left to its own considerations and dwelling heavily on this cruel treatment.
One of the questions which charges around your mind as you try to sleep is does he think about me? Do I ever feature in his thoughts? Does he think about what I am doing? Does he recall the good times? You wonder whether I am lying on my bed in a similar state of anxiety, mulling over what has happening. Your thoughts spill and tumble and whilst you want to dispel these memories you cannot help but want to embrace them, experiencing that bitter sweet sensation of both delight and agony – of course this is being driven by your emotional thinking which is wanting to feed your addiction to me.
You try to get into a comfortable position hoping that slumber will soon drag you into unconsciousness so that the pain will evaporate, if just for a few hours. Yet, even the place you now lie in evokes the image of you and I coupled together, wrapped up in one another as we made love through the night, or at least you felt we made love. Did we actually make love to one another? Did I really love you? You know you loved me, indeed you still do, but what of me?
Yet again a question leaps into your mind. I am everywhere. You consider whether I think about the treatment that you have received and do I feel guilty for behaving that way? Do I have a reason for hurling you to one side so callously and am I wondering whether you are all right? Your truth seeking empathic trait is being seized on and corrupted by your emotional thinking. It drives you to want answers and you are left believing that such a driver is logical and should be addressed. It keeps the thought of me in your head, going round and round, question after question, ensuring that your emotional thinking is alive and surging.
Just as you hold onto the precious memories of the golden period you wonder whether I am similarly replaying them through my mind, recalling the wonderful times, the delicious things we did together. You can summon it all in such detail. The places we went to, the other people there, what day of the week it was, even the exact date. You remember what we wore, what we ate and what was said as the memories tumble through head. As the clock shows it is now closer to morning than it was to the evening, you wonder whether I am thinking about you in a similar fashion?
While you toss and turn in your bed which resembles a place to be endured rather than a place of comfort, I am fast asleep. From the moment my head touched the pillow I fell asleep free from thoughts about you. No imp sits on my shoulder jabbing me with a precious memory and keeping me from sleeping. Whilst you ruminate, cogitate, fathom and review, I am oblivious to everything. During my waking hours you do not invade my consciousness. There is too much to be done, too much fuel to extract as I deal with looking after and nurturing the new primary source of my fuel which replaced you. You have been deleted because you failed me (at least in my mind that is the case) and therefore you have erased from the record. The narcissism demands that. You are of no use to me and therefore you are erased, deleted, removed and wiped away.
Truth be told it was more of an overlap with both you and her supplying me fuel until the old stale trickle was switched off and dumped. In my mind you never existed. My fixation with the new prospect and her golden, delicious, potent fuel means that everything is focussed on her. Her seduction and the maintenance of supply dominates my mind save when I am extracting my fuel from the range of supplementary sources that I interact with throughout the day. I may drink from the mug you once bought me to recognise I support a particular football team but there is no flicker of recognition about you. I do not halt, cup in hand, halfway to my mouth and smile at that trip to the stadium when you insisted on buying half the contents in order to please me. It is just a mug to me but the tea contained in it and prepared by my new prospect is delicious and I tell her so. Her beaming smile provides me with that dollop of fuel as expected. To me it is just a mug bearing the crest of my football team. The link you had to that piece of ceramic has been severed and cast into the abyss. The narcissism demands that must be the case – your replacement governs our thoughts and actions now and therefore there is no need to be reminded of you, that is redundant and as effective and efficient machines, we reject the redundant, jettison the unnecessary and remove the failed.
I may still wear the jumper you bought me but I never consider that weekend away in the highlands when I complained about being cold so you purchased it for me. I may walk past someone who wears the same fragrance as you. I do not remember you as I smell it, not the way you remember me when you smell my cologne and you remember me next to you and that emptiness washes over you once again. I just think that it is a pleasant scent and carry on walking by. It is as if I have pressed delete and you have been erased. You never existed, your thoughts, words and actions all melt away. Your connections to me are severed, your presence eradicated and your memory denied. I have switched off that appliance and everything associated with it has been obliterated. We do not think of you because at this point we have no need to think of you. You serve no purpose to us and therefore remembering you and I is a redundant exercise and a waste of our time and energy. We must not waste anything and thus the instinctive impact of our narcissism ensures you are not thought of.
When we have disengaged from you and we have done so because we have a new Intimate Partner Primary Source we do not think about you. If you enter our spheres of influence by messaging us, ringing us, walking by us or even coming to see us, you can expect at best a cold and polite short moment of recognition before we move on and at worst a malign response to send you away in hurt and pain. You failed us – we no longer want or need you. You have been replaced and therefore you are stricken from our thoughts and should you ever invade our sphere of influences in another way, we maintain this rejection of you.
However, once the new IPPS enters devaluation (and this person will – that is a guarantee – it is just a question of time) well, then you become useful to us once again and our narcissism alters the record once again. This time you will be remembered, although if truth be told you ought to prefer that you remain cast into obscurity because in all likelihood we will be coming back for you in some form of other to draw again on our investment, to seize our property once again but solely for our benefit.
41 thoughts on “Does The Narcissist Think About the Disengaged IPPS?”
Vent Your Spleen! (Please see the Rules in Formal Info)
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Is the disengagement always to be expected, no matter how flawlessly the Intimate Partner walks on eggshells?
Read “5 Reasons Why We Disengage From You”
Good Morning Sir,
I know I’ve read this previous article before, but as time progresses and my healing and recovery is embedded, I start to see your articles in a different light, compared to when first reading it early in my recovery.
My automatic answer to the title question is – I really couldn’t give a rats batootie what he thinks anymore!
But from a scientific point of view, does the Narc think about the IPPS when the IPPS has caused a massive injury by abandoning them when they least expected it?
I was the IPPS and I walked away and changed all contact information whilst he was punishing me, by giving me the silent treatment. He must have got the shock of his life when he tried to contact me again, as he always did when he thought I’d suffered enough, then found all phone contact details disconnected.
I’ve been NC ever since, 18 months now.
Do you mean this
The IPPS escaped thus causing significant wounding. The narcissist tried and failed to ensnare the IPPS through an Initial Grand Hoover. Will the narcissist think about the narcissist at some future point after these events?
If that is your question MG, the answer is yes.
Well done on your NC.
Thanks HG. That is ‘sort of’ the question I was asking.
The narc never made any grand hoovering gestures, well, not as far as I know. He had no way to contact me, other than driving 2 hours to get to my home and I haven’t seen him since I walked away. For all intents and purposes, I just fell off the face of the Earth…..I disappeared without a trace.
Again, not that I care, but with an injury as large as that, does the anger stick in his throat ( 😀 ) leaving him with intermittent thoughts of me, even if it is only rage filled thoughts?
On second thoughts, I think I know the answer to that question…… A big fat ‘YES’.
I was double-damned if I was going to let him spoil one of my favorite bands. So I put some of their songs on a mix for a long road trip with a friend, and now if I hear one of those songs, I still associate it somewhat with him, but I also think of the car trip. He won’t have that Everpresence all to himself, anyway.
Violetta,
I did something similar after escaping a Somatic narc. I forced myself to listen to “our” songs until they became “my” songs.
It was painful in the beginning but I was committed to riding out that pain. The process not only helped me establish “ownership” of the songs, but also allowed me to extinguish longing for the Somatic.
When I did this, it was long before HG. These actions were instinctive on my part
What pisses me off about recalling this is that I see that I lost that instinct when it came to Narcx. I almost escaped within the first three months—he was able to keep me around for eight years until he discarded me a year ago.
I no longer long for him, but I am still working on reclaiming my songs.
I also did a number of things instinctively, but I wish there had been an HG to read at the time I was going through things. I’ve learned so much just from reading about what happened, but I’m still working on avoiding it in future. HG has said that we neither can nor should stop being empaths, but I want to stop attracting the attention of these people like blood attracting sharks.
I can think back to everyone from professors to horrible bosses, and even though they were generally resented, I definitely got more of it than people who were more phlegmatic. Ironic: what could that brilliant, renowned academic have in common with that ignorant, semi-literate middle manager? Um, let’s see: complete lack of sympathy for people who were injured or even pregnant; criticizing people for flaws which they pretty well exemplified; a habit of changing their view of someone from the Golden Child to Emmanuel Goldstein (the official villain of 1984’s totalitarian society, with his own daily “2 Minutes Hate” ritual) in the space of a second, if they decide that person made them look bad or appeared to call their perfection into doubt. Of course when I left those jobs or graduated, they found other targets, but how do I stop smelling like blood so the sharks don’t circle in on me? There are narcs everywhere: you can’t flit from job to job, or from university to university, every time you encounter one. At least temporarily, you may have to deal with one for a time.
The second thing I do if I get a better job–after thanking God and Sts. Joseph the Worker, Jude, Dymphna, and Theresa the Little Flower–is use my first paycheck to do a consult.
HG approves.
I purchased my How to Handle a Narc in the Workplace Assistance Package just this morning.
I’m listening to it—and loving it—in the workplace today.
HG approves.
Lisk
I love it you little multi-tasker. Making them pay you to find out how to deal with them. Haha.
Lisk, this is funny! I just finished a session of running and other exercises while listening to a track my narc shared with me (and possibly with other IPSSs, though, of course, he said he thought of me when he listened to it). It used to make me sad to listen to it post-escape, although I liked it a lot so I didn’t listen to it in a whole year. But like you, I recently forced myself to pull through it. I have reclaimed that track as mine now, and all I think is the abs sequence that’s coming up. No thoughts of narc at all!
And better abs, to boot!
Hmmm, HG… master of words. Astutely accurate popped into my mind. Could those two words be used interchangeably as a possessive noun?
“experiencing that bitter sweet sensation of both delight and agony – of course this is being driven by your emotional thinking which is wanting to feed your addiction to me.”
So spot on. The entire post really!
You are astutely accurate.
Thank you.
LEARN TO SWIM
KP here again. What ooes all of this matter? Who cares about the Ex Narcy? Now I have you. 🙂
It hurts that he never thought about me again. It’s been years since I’ve seen him but I still think of him every day. Today I heard that his family closed their business. I know I shouldn’t care anymore but every time I hear something about him, his family or anything associated with him I start shaking and sweating, my heart races, I can feel myself go white and I start to dissociate. I still live with the trauma every day, meanwhile to him I never existed.
@kaydiva
It sounds like your experiencing PTSD like symptoms. You may be thinking about him everyday because your mind and nervous system is hyperviligant and on the look out for signs of danger.
I still on occasion have paranoid thoughts that the narc has put spyware in my flat and I’m being “watched.”
Do you do anything active/physical?
@Witch Thank you. Yes I have been diagnosed with PTSD. I try to walk 2 or 3 miles a day and sometimes go to the gym at my workplace. Has physical activity helped you?
HG approves of physical exercise. Very important.
I am walking my dog as I am typing HG he is barking he says Hi!
He is dog, he cannot speak, Pati.
I aware but it is dog language. I can understand him more than my Narc. I can bring him over HG he is good a sniffing empaths lol
HG, Pati, re: comprehension dog. Dogs can’t word their thoughts due to their vocal cords not being able to. They are fully capable of understanding your words, and interpreting your body gestures. They are even capable of expressing vocally their desires or feelings (barking, moaning, etc). And guess what: they are more empathic to other humans’ feelings and moods than narcs actually are, not to mention I have never met a narcissistic dog. My dog, by the way, answers to 4 languages. My narc didn’t even understand me in his own language.
SP, you are so right, dogs are very smart animals. It’s how you train them as well.
My friends dog would bark everytime his owner went to pee,and guess what the owner had prostate cancer .Also my dog answers in 2 different languages too.
He is always there for me, never manipulates me,never puts me down ,and appreciates when I take him out for a walk,feed him and give him treats. There is never fuel involved, no silent treatments and always affectionate. What more can I a person ask for .
Hugs SP !
Well Pati, my dog manipulates me a little; he forces me to walk the way he wants to go (he doesn’t do that with my husband therefore, he knows I’m weak). He also hides some of my things to make me chase him but I find that adorable. But he adores me and he starts crying when he sees my suitcase near the door because I’m about to travel. He hates that suitcase when I’m leaving, though he loves it when I’m back because there’s always something inside for him. I love my goofy little pony.
SP, your dog sounds funny and cute . When I travel he does the same. Even when I am leaving for the day he gives me this look.
Enjoy him ,mine is getting old (13 years ) I hope he lives longer I will be devastated to put him down.
Hugs SP xoxo
My neighbor’s dog decided I was part of his flock, so he had different barks for “I heard you go in/out, come back and wave to me or I will keep barking until you do,” a standard “Good morning,” and “Use your inhaler.” I clear my throat all the time, so I don’t pay much attention to it, but he knew when it was turning into a real attack before I did.
And that’s not even going into detail about the time I had flu, the time I was so depressed, I couldn’t cry, or the time period I was moving locally and gradually emptied out the apartment.
@kay
Yes I find it helps get me out of my head. As I’m concentrating on the exercise (meaning I’m in physical pain, struggling, dying!) I am not able to overthink or worry.
I’m lazy and a wimp and a cry baby but I’m trying to get a 6 pack and I do feel better after a session. Also having the routine helps me feel safer because it’s predictable.
I also recommend listening to socca music when you’re feeling down lol I used to listen to it every morning and it helped to lift my spirits.
What also helped was trying things that scared me (such as exercise) and reciting my poetry to an audience (still scares me.) I’m still the runt of the litter but it helped me be less so.
Punk and grunge always helped me. Pixies’ “U-Mass,” Anti-Nowhere League’s “So What” (or the Metallica cover), anything by the Ramones or Sex Pistols.
There’s a scene in “Stealing Beauty” where Liv Tyler is bouncing around the room and screaming along with Courtney Love’s “Olympia.” It is the most cathartic thing ever.
Kaydiva, I started power-walking and then eventually running at least 5 days/ week; then I slowly added other activities like abs and butt workout. It helps tremendously, not to mention the satisfaction when you see the results, but the endorphins you release help you feel better. I also sleep like a baby. I may be becoming the fucking somatic I escaped, only that I have a soul and he is like an onion, layer over layer with no core. Good for you for the walking routine, keep it on, it truly helps!!
The cold, brutal honesty here is so triggering.
Indeed but it is the road to freedom.
Ok. Yet it is so mind blowing. The games. And our emotional thought process… we so think (many of us) that it is calculated. The hardest reality is to know and grasp and understand “the instinctive” mind behind our narcissists.
When you delete your victims have you ever reinstated them?
Not as the IPPS.
You put them on the shelf for future use ?