The Love Triangle
Triangulation is a devastating weapon in our arsenal. Whether we are triangulating you as our primary source with another potential love interest (real or imagined), you with family and friends in terms of loyalties and spending time together or even triangulating you with an object (our mobile ‘phone or our flash new car) you will always be triangulated when you entangle with our kind.
Triangulation comes in many guises but has two broad categories. Firstly, there is the triangulation which is taking place but you do not even witness it. This is where we may be conducting an affair behind your back and you have no knowledge of it at all. This is still triangulation because we are involving three people in our intimate relationship but you do not witness it and the third party may not know about you either. The second category is where you witness the behaviour.
For instance, we spend more time jabbing our mobile ‘phone and talking on it than spending time with you. We may make mention of a particular person (usually of the opposite sex) a lot of the time. We may even tell you that we have been carrying on with someone else because you do not show us enough admiration and appreciation. In such instances, you witness the triangulating behaviour but often you will not actually realise that it is taking place.
This is hiding in plain sight. You dismiss it by trying to convince yourself that there is nothing to be concerned about or we may assuage your fears through our usual charm and persuasion. One thing that you can be assured of however is that you will be triangulated during your entanglement with us and it will not just happen the once.
This reliance on triangulation as part of our manipulations is because it is so effective at achieving many things for us. What then, does triangulation achieve?
– It is often easy to implement, e.g. making mention of someone, spending our time playing video games, meeting someone frequently, perking up when a certain person calls round or telephones;
– We gain fuel from two sources out of the same circumstances;
– It underlines our notion of omnipotence since we are able to orchestrate the actions of two people so they compete with one another over us, we are the puppet master jerking the strings of two love rivals;
– It creates uncertainty in one or more of the parties which makes it easier for us to exert control and harder for the party or parties to see clearly;
– It causes the participants to focus on defeating one another in order to win us as the prize and thus they do not realise that we are really the problem;
– It allows a discarded primary source to be smeared with ease;
– It assists the maintenance of our façade.
Accordingly, the act of triangulation serves many purposes which accord with our malevolent agenda.
Why then is it so effective? Again, there are several reasons behind this.
– The addictive quality of our seduction and the golden period is so powerful that it is truly regarded as a prize worth winning;
– The fear of losing someone so (apparently) wonderful, loving and magnificent is too great to bear;
– The fear that someone else might actually succeed with the relationship when you are trying to reach that point. You do not want someone to reap the reward of your hard work and instead you want to win the day, continue to deal with the hardships in order to restore the golden period;
– You feel that you know us far better than the other person;
– You feel that it is your right. You have given everything to the relationship and therefore it is only just and fair that you get to have the relationship. You may have borne our children, helped us through difficulties, lent us money, housed us, dealt with problems for us and you are damned if some Jane-Come-Lately is going to profit from all your hard work.
These are all valid factors as to why the act of triangulation is so powerful and an effective. Yet, let me provide you with another reason, one which is possibly just as powerful as the addictive quality of the golden period. That reason is conditioning.
You are conditioned to think that love triangles are not only fairly common and something that is part of life, but you have been conditioned to think that they are actually rather wonderful and special. This may seem somewhat perverted thinking when you consider the agony and anxiety you experienced or you are experiencing when you are being triangulated, especially with a love rival, but it is a fact. Why is the love triangle scenario seen as something wonderful?
– It gives you the opportunity to prove you love us better and deeper than anybody else and with that comes a powerful sense of self and validation;
– It accords with your belief in the maxim that love can conquer all. You are a love devotee and therefore you believe in and want to see love triumph. When your love sees off a rival, that is the power of true love.
– The love rival is the enemy. This just isn’t you against her in order to win our hearts, it is light versus darkness, good against evil, love versus lust. You are a representative of the powers of light and goodness and you will overcome your dark nemesis. Of course, what you do not realise at the time is that the person you are fighting over is actually your nemesis and we are not going to remove that notion from you.
– It is actually pretty damn hot and exciting. Your senses are alive, you are going to keep our heart/win it back, the tug-of-love although worrying at times also provides you with high-octane excitement, the rush of adrenaline when you score a victory, the elation at seeing us choose to spend time with you and not the other person. This back and forth, push and pull, is regarded as thrilling.
Why then are you conditioned to think and feel in the ways that I have described? Simple. You are surrounded by love triangles. They are throughout history, they are in film, in literature, you see them in the celebrity gossip sections of newspapers, they are commented on in internet forums, they feature on the news, you watch them unfold in soap operas on television and you bought the t-shirt supporting Team Jacob or Team Edward. Or was it Peeta or Gale?
You cannot get through the day without seeing or hearing about some kind of love triangle and it is always portrayed in a salacious, exciting, mesmerising and romantic way. Who will triumph? How noble to fight over one person’s heart? However much you may not want to admit it, you know that the concept of a love triangle is alluring and fascinating. You do not often hear somebody declare,
“All three people need to take a long look at themselves, stay away from another and evaluate what is really going on before they continue to hurt themselves and others.”
Of course you don’t. Where is the excitement in that?
You have been fed a daily diet of triangulation throughout your life so you actually regard it as something to be expected and something that excites. In order to prove this point, I have compiled, off the top of my head, as many love triangles as I could think of in literature, film and real-life in just five minutes. Consider the following: –
Literature
Twelfth Night, Dr Zhivago, Dangerous Liaisons, Tale of Two Cities, Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Atonement, The Talented Mr Ripley, Don Quixote, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Age of Innocence, The Phantom of the Opera, The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games Trilogy, Harry Potter and my favourite Wuthering Heights
Film
Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, His Girl Friday, The Graduate, Oklahoma! Damage, Titanic, Bridget Jones, Closer, Vanilla Sky, Sabrina, Grifters, She’s The Man (Twelfth Night), Indecent Proposal, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club (imagine being triangulated by an imaginary person created by yourself!)
Real Life
Cleopatra, Mark Antony and Julius Caesar (which actually went further as Mark Antony had two wives already)
Helen of Sparta, Menelaus and Paris of Troy
Meg Ryan, Dennis Quaid and Russell Crowe
Bill Clinton, Hilary Clinton and Monica Lewinsky
Liz Taylor, Richard Burton and Eddie Fisher (Taylor and Burton met whilst filming Cleopatra – triangles within triangles!)
Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattison and Rubert Sanders (not only did Sanders also have a wife and kids but Stewart seemingly though her fictional triangulation was not enough and wanted a real-life version too!)
I would be interested to know if you think that any of our kind exist in those love triangles and who it is.
I am sure you can think of many others and please do make those suggestions. This is what I came up with in a short time and it does not end there. You are triangulated by products and advertisers – are you an Xbox player or PlayStation, red or brown sauce on your bacon sandwich, Pepsi or Coca-Cola – on it goes. With such a backdrop of triangulation across society, thrust in your face every day you are consequently conditioned in the way that I have described. You have no chance but to be affected in this way. Accordingly, when our kind comes along, the master practitioners of triangulation, you do not stand a chance.
33 thoughts on “The Love Triangle”
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Ex suspected N triangulated me subtly with other women in the course of conversation and less subtly/more overtly with his device/phone. He was constantly shifting attention to said device and smirked at my discomfit/offence quite openly. Actually the triangulation with the phone may have been an extension of the other women facet as it often, I believe, involved looking at online material posted by inner and outer members of his fuel matrix, I to this day don’t really know the extent of this matrix, other than it was large. Ex susN was an expert puppet master of what I now understand as his fuel matrix (since my education commenced here). As my disengagement from the formal relationship occurred two years ago, it is taking me a while to complete the Narc detector. I find I can only cope with a question or two every few days. The process is taxing and emotionally painful.
HG , I have not seen you commenting on this site for a few days? HG , are you in politics ?
Hello Mollyb5,
I have some involvement yes. I have been away dealing with various matters. I was going to be completely absent from the blog but I decided to moderate as much as I could but have not been commenting because I have not been in a position to do so. I allowed comments through (there are still a lot in moderation though as time was short each day for moderation) as far as possible to allow conversations to continue, but the normal level of moderation could not be adhered to owing to my professional and personal commitments. I am still away but have more accessibility, you lucky people!
HG. Thank you .
HG. Missed your humble self. Was a scarier place without you
Most kind Kim E. Worry not, The Boss is back.
Lady Diana
Prince Charles
Camilla
“The fear of losing someone so (apparently) wonderful, loving and magnificent is too great to bear”.
Well, if they are really so wonderful and loving , they will not triangulate.
“ The fear that someone else might actually succeed with the relationship when you are trying to reach that point. You do not want someone to reap the reward of your hard work and instead you want to win the day, continue to deal with the hardships in order to restore the golden period”
Let’ em reap the rewards, let me be generous . I don’t faith a losing battle, I don’t want a Pyrrhic victory. I don’t trade my dignity and sanity.
“It is actually pretty damn hot and exciting. Your senses are alive, you are going to keep our heart/win it back, the tug-of-love although worrying at times also provides you with high-octane excitement, the rush of adrenaline when you score a victory”
It is actually f **** exhausting, annoying, degenerative and self destroying .
Hands down, it is exiting and hot to give the Narc a taste of their own medicine. Not proud of myself but happened long time ago, before meeting the most significant Narc , aka my ex husband.
Life is too short and magnificent to waste time and energy fighting for a man.
Nor I am an ego boost for beta males .
In summary – if I am triangulated with another person , like Narc 2 did, my response is very simple – kick the cheater / f***boy out of your life . Returns and second chances are not applicable.
Ex Narc triangulated me with objects – desktop computers , laptops, his car .
No idea if we had a visitor/ guest/ in our marriage or if he had ONS.
It is over anyway .
Pretty much any ‘romcom’ has some sort of triangulation, as if we have to have it beaten into our heads to compete with a thing or a person to gain someone’s loyalty or love. In TV, as well. In the US, ‘Friends’ was a hotbed of triangulation; ‘The Office’, and ‘Cheers’, the latter 2 were direct imports from the original series in the UK. The programing of accepting this type of behavior as ‘normal’ in a relationship is stunning; but we all seem to fall for it. Before finding HG’s blog, of course. And then all that nonsense becomes ridiculously obvious.
It really does seem obvious now, Caity!
I really can’t watch or read any of that crap anymore. It’s all so exhausting observing that stupidity.
It feels good to be deprogrammed.
Of course Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff such a narc. When my narc didn’t come home one night and then revealed the new woman/triangle the next day I did not respond as conditioned. I attacked him. I told him to get out or I would kill him. I did not fight to win him back. I discarded him. The last 2 years I had been ignoring him and mirroring his behavior. He had the audacity of blaming me, that night. I was not meeting his needs. I fired back, what about my needs which you have not met in 10 years, you coward. And that is what a midranger is, a cowardly passive aggressive child in a temper tantrum. They really can’t take the truth of a righteous woman with intelligence and verbal acuity. They really need someone lesser and that is what he got.
Wendy,
Spot on ! Sounds just like my narc.
In the past hitting him back hard with consequences and telling him to get out like you did worked for me. But then he’d just do it again. He knows damn well I will never do the pick me dance with a OW , I’ve always told him to use the door if he’s not happy here. He’s a passive aggressive coward.
I haven’t let him know I am aware of his DLS this time, YET. I am preparing myself for a possible future without him first . The older he gets , the worse he gets. I can’t live my life with this constant upset anymore.
Lamb,
I love that you’re not letting on that you know.
I hope you’re able to get out clean, without him knowing what hit him.
Lisk,
You have no idea how difficult it has been for me to keep my mouth shut and have a smile on my face when he walks through the door . I don’t know how much more I can take before I confront him and tell him to get the fuck out.
In my current emotional state over all of it I am trying my best to get my ducks in a row before that happens.
Yes, I am shooting for completely blindsiding him so he doesn’t know what hit him, just like he’s done to me. I wouldn’t want the OW to feel left out, so I’ve got a little surprise in store for her too!
He couldn’t use people with me, as he was pretending I was his ‘only’. HG set me straight on that whopper. I was however triangulated with a parquet floor, a lap top, a leaking roof, a Porsche, an apartment requiring renovation and a classic motorbike. They really are tedious feckers!
Suppose I’m in the “ I’ll be damned if this tart is going to reap the rewards of everything I’ve worked for “ camp.
At the time of my life when all I ( we) should be thinking about is looking forward to retirement , instead i’m being forced to think about how I will be able to support myself if we divorce . I vacillate between anger, resentment, sadness Etc-.
So very sorry you’re going through this, Lamb. I hope you’re getting all the support you need in this situation. The divorce is not yet fully on the table for you, if I understand correctly?
Dolores,
Thank you. I have my family’s support, they tell me to leave him.
The actual word “ divorce “ has not been said by my narc. He thinks I’m sitting here clueless about what’s going on behind my back, I’m trying to use that to my advantage to figure things out.
I cannot live the rest of my life like this.
I predict my narc will die alone someday. My children have told me they intend to cut him out of their lives if he follows through with what he’s telling his DLS .
My children know what I’ve been through all these years, they’re completely repulsed by his behavior.
Lamb , have you been married long …over ten years …?
Molly,
Yes, I’ve been married for 30 years.
Why do you ask ?
Have you talked with a good lawyer ? If you have been married at least 10 years you will be entitled to money. Hopefully he has been making an income ? Make sure you have a lawyer who doesn’t want women to be taken advantage of .
Since there are arguably two triangles in Wuthering Heights:
Heathcliff – Narcissist
Catherine – Narcissist
Edgar – Co-Dependent
Isabella – Standard Empath
Spot on, methinks. What about Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes? And, since we’re at it, Humbert Humbert, Dolores “Lolita” Haze-Schiller and Charlotte Haze-Humbert?
I hated the Narc’s stupid nonstop triangulation. It wasn’t thrilling at all. Sometimes I won’t talk to him a while, but when I do, he always throws some triangulation in. In fact once I said that “just sounds like a bunch of triangulation to me”. It’s gotten boring. Acting like a man, now that would be thrilling, lol
When you said that to him, did he need to go and look up “triangulation” in the dictionary?
Hahaha 😂! I wondered too. He was probably googling frantically. He said he understood, then did it again. It’s such ingrained behavior at this point, he can’t even see
You did forget to mention Dr. O vs. Shield Maiden, although I don’t know if that belongs under “literature” or “real life”.
Divide and conquer and keep the masses occupied with bread and circuses.
By the way, when is part three coming out?
haha, good point Filly although to be fair, we don’t yet know anything about the nature of that particular triangulation, it might not be romantic. There’s endless possibilities of how to triangulate and with whom or what, inanimate objects are also a possibility! So much fun
Yes, I agree. We don’t know yet.
I feel bad for Shield Maiden. She is a viking, after all, and I like vikings (I mentioned that in another comment).
Yes, with hindsight I can say that he triangulated me with his friends, his narc boss and even his tractors. So pathetic.
njfilly, so astute. We have been controlled by the ruling elite, narcs that they are, for millennium. Bread and circus indeed. Walmart trinkets and cheap processed food. Football, beer, netflix. You name it.
Wendy,
I’m offended by your attitude towards beer. (just kidding 🙂
Wendy: You call them the ruling Elite. Sure: They are the Elite, when it comes to doing things that are bad for the people. They are Elite to do bad. But, to do good, they know not. They are even less than Dregs, when it comes to doing good. They love being called the Elite. The word has positive connotations. They spread that classification of themselves. I do not call them the Elite, unless it is to point out their wrong-doings. Such as, the Elite have sunk the youth with unending debts, for example. Or, the Elite sourced out to other countries the people`s jobs over the decades. Or, the Elite is responsible for destroying the earth with pollution and radiation and Genetically Modified food, while the Elite then tell regular persons to not take cleansing baths, because it uses up too much water, from the planet earth. And that they should only take showers while closely monitoring and using a timer. Those Hypocrites. Hahaha.