Attachment Is The Seat of Misery
This is a capricious, arbitrary and hostile world. It must be brought to heel, tamed and subjected to the exertion of control. My control.
This is why I must cause every appliance that I come across to become attached to me. From my next door neighbour who I say hello to and exchange banal pleasantries with for the sake of my façade (even though I would readily drive a rusty meat hook through his malformed cranium if he tells me again about the refurbishment details of his latest property acquisition) through to my friends who join me for drinks on a Friday evening through to the latest girlfriend that I parade, all of them must be attached to me.
The creation of my construct is the device which causes these individuals to become attached to me. That magnificent edifice which is created from the mirrors which I show towards those whose paths I cross. Make the ticket inspector smile on the train by supporting him dealing with a obstreperous teenage passenger, encourage a friend in his plans to lose weight, show that prospective IPPS her own hopes and desires so she begins to fall in love. All of that is the work of the construct which is designed to draw each and every source – from the tertiary through to the ever-so-crucial Intimate Partner Primary Source – to me and cause them to attach to me.
Whether the barista thinks I am a pleasant and loyal customer, a junior colleague considers me an inspirational boss, the lady I pass every other day whilst out running gives me a smile of acknowledgement and admiration, whether a friend considers me someone he can turn to for advice, whether she falls hopelessly in love with me; there are thousands of different ways for these appliances to attach to me.
It might be a jealous co-worker who seethes at my arrogance, the nervous supplier who dreads my call demanding what is behind his company’s latest cock-up, the weeping cast off who was once the apple of my eye but is now a maggot-infested windfall, all of them remain attached to me.
It is through causing these appliances to be attached to me that I can exert control as I assimilate them into my world. They are mine to control, to utilise, to extract from and through this I can then control my environment. By controlling my environment I aim to minimise the traitorous ambush or the treacherous mutiny. Keeping everything in its place, subject to my control and functioning as I require it, means I drive forward and order is maintained.
Attachment is the key to achieving this. I have to draw you in, hook you, grip you, I have to bond you to me, bind you so you do not escape me, clamp you in place, tie you down and secure the attachment. I will give you the illusion of the golden period, I will lie to you, I will give you generosity, I will show you largesse, I will even exhibit some form of manufactured intimacy, kindness and support, the promise of fuel and the years of practised scrutiny enabling me to give you what you want so I secure your attachment.
Yet for all these fuel pipelines that are connected to me, for all of the bridges that have been built, the links which have been carefully constructed, they are all one-way. It is you being attached to me. I feel no attachment to you.
That is why I am so able to turn on the person that I supposedly love and watch as the tears trickle down the disbelieving face as I lambast her for wearing the wrong shade of red or turning up two minutes late. That is why I can lie between the silken thighs of another and promise her the world whilst you lie awake wondering where I am and praying that I have not been involved in a road accident. That is why I can assure you that you will be promoted by year end and in the next meeting offer it to somebody else instead. That is why I can decide not to turn up to the dinner party you have spent a month planning and go and watch a film elsewhere. That is why I can smash your grandmother’s watch with a ballpein hammer as you observe, in a fit of hysterics.
My lack of attachment allows me to disappoint, renege, cheat, lie, provoke, hurt, torture and abuse. It gives me fluidity, mobility and efficiency. I am not hampered by guilt, nor remorse or a sense of obligation. I form no attachment with you. I do not feel it.
You may ask me what I might think of those who I interact with and I can conjure up the tributes and platitudes in an instant:-
“John? Excellent worker, never lets the company down, a key member of the team.”
“She is a wonderful woman, I do not know what I would do without her. She is my world.”
“He is amazing. First name on the team sheet every week.”
“NarcSide Inc? Fucking brilliant. Use them. I did once. Never gone anywhere else.”
But for all of this I feel nothing by way of attachment. I bolt you on to me, but I will not attach to you. What does attachment bring? Nothing but misery. Look around and you will see the woe and pain that being attached brings for people.
You become attached to a pet dog which will die in 10 years’ time and you cry for the loss of your furry friend. Why? Why attach to something that is only going to leave you?
You are attached to your employer and show loyalty? What for? So they can bend you over and shaft you by making you redundant and show you the door without even a tub of lube to ease the pain of the experience?
You are attached to your house, but you have to sell it, or it burns down, or it is flooded, or someone breaks in and yet more pain is dumped on you.
You are attached to your friend and share everything with that person and then one day he is mowed down by an articulated lorry and is left nothing but a smear on the road. You are distraught, besides yourself with grief because of your attachment.
You attach yourself to a lover, a girlfriend, a husband, a partner only for them to cheat on you, to leave you for someone else, to shuffle off this mortal coil pumped full of morphine or grasping their chest as a heart attack takes them from you. Your world comes crashing in, you are shattered, besides yourself with grief and it is all because of your attachment.
You attach yourself to offspring only for them to disappoint you, leech from you, turn to an unsavoury lifestyle which embarrasses you and dismays you because you are attached to them. Or you are always worrying how they are getting on at school, will they secure that job, pass their driving test, find a good man or woman? Your feelings are put through the mill owing to this attachment.
Oh I know you will tell me that you gain so much from these attachments, love, happiness, support, understanding, companionship, joy, loyalty, a sense of achievement and more besides. I have heard it before, but I see over and over again the misery that always arises from these attachments. It is not worth it.
It is far better to never become attached in the first place. I cannot trust. How can I when I was given a salutary and compelling lesson that if you try to attach all you receive in return is rejection and misery. Better not to bother. Build the wall, dig the moat, put up the barriers, do not allow anybody in and in so doing you prevent these weakening attachments from occurring and you save yourself the inevitable, and it is always inevitable, misery that is waiting around the corner.
Yet for me, I do not even have to contemplate creating that tower or ensuring that the ditch is dug deep. I do not have to roll out the figurative barbed wire and electric fences to keep people out. This is all done for me because I do not know how to connect with someone. I have no idea how it is done.
I can attach them to me. That is easy. I have been doing it for as long as I can remember. A combination of brilliance, charm, magnetism, manipulation and the identification of those from the strong to the weak and back again who are the best for succumbing to being attached to me. I can bring that about through all of the various seduction techniques I have described before.
Yet for all of that power of attraction, which few can resist, from tertiary to secondary to primary source, I do not know how to form an emotional attachment with someone. I may align interests and outcomes and sense a mutuality of purpose but I feel nothing for these appliances. There is no bond. There is nothing attaching me to them. The emptiness within me, the void which I seek to fill with fuel from all those in my fuel matrix pervades my relationship with those in that matrix. I am hollow and that echoes in my relationships with all those around me.
Whatever it is that compels you to feel connected to somebody else, whatever you describe it as and I have heard people do so on many occasions, I remain unable to sense and experience it myself.
There is just nothing there.
Does this trouble me? No. I see the misery that comes with attachment and I see my inability to connect to anybody as an advantage so I am spared what happens to so many others.
The Creature had all of that and it can keep it.
I rose from the seat of misery and I found a new throne.
13 thoughts on “Attachment Is The Seat of Misery”
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HG,
I don’t understand how the narc can marry and have children if this is what they feel. I understand because you’ve explained why, but I still don’t understand. Does that make sense?
Why don’t they stay single? It’s cruel to put a spouse ( and children) through what they do , especially in a very long term marriage.
I get ill when I think of the retirement we should be enjoying soon. I didn’t mind the sacrifices along the way because I stayed for the children, but I always thought that once they were grown I would be able to start doing things for me .
When the children moved out it was like a switch flipped, he began to become distant. It was never like this before, he was difficult sometimes over the years, but absolutely nothing like he became after the children were gone, especially the past year, just plain nasty.
Hopes dashed now and wondering how I will support myself in the future with a severely reduced income. He played me all these years, manipulated and controlled me, left me completely vulnerable, never dreaming he’d want to throw me away like garbage. Cold, calculating. It was done in small increments through the years and I didn’t realise what was happening, until I started reading about narcs the past few months.
If I knew this was his plan I would have been saving money so I’d have a little nest egg , I have nothing now. I never saw this coming.
It’s sick, twisted, and brutal.
I’m still unsure about what he’s doing with his DLS , what his intentions are where she’s concerned, they’re still doing the whole push pull thing.
I’m trying so hard to detach and let go , but then he’ll do or say something that sends me into a panic again. His substance abuse problem intensifies it all.
I think about how vicious a divorce will be with him and I shudder, I’m nowhere near emotionally prepared for that.
I know one thing, If we divorce he will die alone. He has no one, and never had a single mate as long as I’ve known him. He has never done well socializing, very awkward unless it was a business function, but couldn’t even manage to make a friend that way in decades. That was one red flag when we were dating, I thought it odd he didn’t have any mates.
Our eldest son predicts if we divorce his substance abuse will increase and he’ll be dead not long after. What a waste of a life, I feel no pity for him, not anymore. Neither do our children.
Please write more about married narcs , specifically long term marriage if you can . I don’t find a lot on the web about that subject. Are we a rarity, the long term marriage?
Thank you.
No, long-term marriages are not rare, it means you have not escaped and one of the five disengagement triggers has not occurred.
Remember, what I describe is what is going on unconsciously, the marriage and having children is done for reasons of control, facade management, to fit in – see Impregnated for more information.
I also recommend that you organise an audio consultation with me so that I can address this in greater detail for you.
HG, ( and anyone reading who can offer insight)
Thank you. I am definitely going to do a consult with you. This fucker needs to go back to work first, and get out from under my feet.
Since I wrote that original comment things have changed, as I’ve written in another comment somewhere, don’t know if it’s been moderated yet.
I’m getting a rosy respite period and the DLS is being completely ignored. I don’t understand why, but I’m delighted the DLS is going mad not hearing from him since we are in lockdown.
Judging from her past behaviors towards me, if she continues to be ignored it’s only a matter of time before she jumps off the ledge and lashes out at me. She’s a psycho stalker nutter.
I’ve suspected she is also a narc. Driving past our home, damaging our personal property, amongst other things. Her past behavior required legal intervention.
1)Does she sound like a narcissist?
2) why would my husband risk her telling everyone, including me about them when he knows what she’s been capable of in the past? Is he THAT stupid?!
She certainly has enough proof to bury him personally, and professionally, as do I.
It boggles my mind to think he trusts her to keep her mouth shut.
It boggles my mind that he would contact her yet again knowing what she did to me last time.
The pair of them are a match made in Heaven. The ultimate revenge would be watching them cannibalize each other.
1. Use the Narc Detector Consultation.
2. What is he risking, you already know? He may be aware of this and you are being triangulated. If he does not know, that you know about her, he in effect is unconcerned by the risk at this point, which could be for a variety of reasons, but more information is needed which can only be addressed through consultation.
Your observations demonstrate that you are making the common error of imposing your worldview on that of the narcissist and assuming that he thinks like you, he does not. This common error arises from a lack of expertise and the obscuring impact of emotional thinking. You are in a position to address both, but remaining in the relationship and doing nothing about it, will not address either and will keep you asking questions over and over.
HG,
Thank you.
I don’t know her well enough to do a narc detector for her, wouldn’t waste the money on her anyway. Prefer to spend it on empath detector for myself.
I am certain my narc doesn’t know I know about the DLS.
He has done the same EXACT things with women in the past, took the same risks. I forgave those past transgressions, only because I knew there was no physical contact. No way I could stay married if I knew he had sex with someone else. I always concluded he was just after some ego stroking.
Those past DLS’s didn’t bother me like this one does, because this one has come after me personally in the past. She’s desperate to have him.
This one is not mentally stable. I’ll expand on that during our audio consult.
THE single most upsetting thing for me about all this is that I know now he’s a narc. I always thought the behavior was because of the substance abuse.
The things you write about narcs , the why’s And why nots , it’s so painful to read.
Tired,
“I think about how vicious a divorce will be with him and I shudder, I’m nowhere near emotionally prepared for that.”
I hear your pain and know that I am in a similar situation and live for the brief periods of respite as well. I have learned that my ET is my biggest enemy but by reading everything I can and consulting with HG, it is slowly reducing and in turn I am getting stronger. I have to leave and “run errands” to speak with HG in a parking lot but it is so worth it. Compared to the shock of finding out I have been married to a narc for 29, years just 6 months ago, I have come light years from where I was and you will too.
He is doing a horrible thing and has no regard for your feelings, hence a narc. Do the narc detector if you can AND the empath detector. Dare I say HG knows you better than you know yourself and when you understand what type of narc you are married to and why you feel the way you do it will help tremendously.
Take HG’s advice to heart and that of those who have been where you are, that is the best way to overcome this and move forward. One step at a time, and sometimes one hour at a time but do not give up. You are in the best place possible because HG can provide you with knowledge that you will not find anywhere else. Keep reading, it will come, I promise.
Kristen,
Thank you for your words of encouragement.
Yes, it’s quite the shock finding out you’re married to a narc , especially after being together decades. I was sick to my stomach when I started reading here and saw my narcs behavior in print.
I have a long way to go in understanding and reducing my ET , but I’m feeling better now.
I plan on doing a consultation with HG, definitely.
Tired,
I am so happy to hear that you are feeling better! Your ET will fluctuate but I guarantee that you will feel so much better after you consult with HG! 😊
But you are attached. Oh so attached.
No, we are not.
What a dichotomy for the Narc – like a lemonade stand in a war zone.
To habitually obsess to find new supply yet abore its very existence!
From a seat of misery to a throne of mental suicide.
When I read this, it brought me so much understanding about personalities that I have dealt with previously. It is spot on as usual, H.G. Always a pleasure to read your insightful articles.
Thank you.