You Are The Competition
Should you ever ask certain people what the secret of their success is ,those asked may often reply,
“We are a partnership.”
This applies to a happily married couple, to a duo who run a burgeoning advertising agency, to the group of people who deliver excellent professional services and to the champion sportsmen and women. Think Lennon and McCartney, Laurel and Hardy, Abercrombie and Fitch, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers , Bill and Ted, Batman and Robin and Marks and Spencer. Even those who might be regarded as having achieved their success as an individual will be keen to share the glory and attribute that their success has been as a consequence of a collaboration. The pro golfer who acknowledges his Masters win was down to a joint effort between him and his caddy. The formula one driver who thanks his pit team for their expertise and lightning fast tyre changes and refuels. The Olympic diving champion who thanks his father for all the support over the years in taking him to competitions and training.
The world is geared to encouraging collaboration and driving people to come together for the greater good. It wants people to co-operate, to work together, to support one another and share. It recognises that many things become better when they are combined, joined and complemented. Consider, for example phrases such as
“Two heads are better than one.”
“The more the merrier.”
“A problem shared is a problem halved.”
“Greater than the sum of its parts.”
Look around and everywhere you will see that the world believes that combining is desirable. Gin and tonic, burger and fries, ying and yang, fife and drum, the two Steves in a garage (Jobs and Wozniak), the Owl and the Pussycat and even M & Ms. The message is simple; together we are better.
We hate it.
We do not want to share or pool our resources. What belongs to us always remains with us. We take from others. There is no sense in working together. Not only do we jealously guard what we regard as ours, we fail to see the benefit of partnership. It is an alien concept. If we are to work and live in tandem with others this means that we have to share. We have to share the attention, the credit, the congratulations, the workload and the burden. We find this offends us mightily.
There is no sense in sharing the credit with you, that means there is less for us. Less credit equates to less fuel and those are words which strike a sense of dread into our being. Nor will we share the workload by helping, we will not even share by dividing our burden with you, so we each play a part in making the task or problem easier. No, we will dump the lot on you and divest ourselves of any burden whatsoever. Should you solve the problem having been left marooned with it by us and there is the scent of praise in the air, watch how quickly we return to claim it.
Yes, the situation was resolved by our quick thinking in delegating to a particular colleague. It was our decisive behaviour and keen leadership qualities which saved the day as we elbow you aside and bask in the congratulatory comments from a higher-up.
Not only will we not work together or share, even in circumstances where normal people would expect that to happen, we regard you as our competition. A couple in a relationship are ordinarily expected to bring different things to the party, support one another, look out for the other, give and take and a fruitful partnership evolves to apparent mutual benefit. That is not the case with us, We regard you as only there to be our appliance and supply us with fuel.
We are not designed to do things for you (unless we can see a greater benefit arising for us). You are the enemy. You are trying to hog the limelight that we need. You question us and seek to unseat us from our position of power. Oh yes, we know your game. When you dress up elegantly all you are trying to do is make us look less desirable and shift the focus of everyone’s attention at the party on to you and accordingly you deny us the attention we desperately want. By keeping fit and in shape you are wanting people to be drawn to you, rather than us.
Furthermore, you are trying to heighten your desirability so that you can acquire a new partner and leave us. We already have you worked out. You sit and read a lot. We have sussed you out again, You are doing it in the hope that you can gain more knowledge and appear superior to us. You want to belittle us. You want to be able to defeat us in an argument and make us feel small. The cooking class you have signed up for is a ruse by you to demonstrate you are the better cook at home (even though we never do any cooking) but you want to show you are superior to us. Why are you doing this? We are meant to work together aren’t we? You keep doing all these things to try and outshine us, make us look bad and exceed our abilities and we hate this.
Of course we are perfectly entitled to do anything we like to show we are better than you because we are well, better than you. It is also legitimate on our part to keep you browbeaten and under our control. We must not have you competing with us in any way as otherwise you will take away the attention and admiration of others and in turn you will remove the fuel that we need. Like any successful and domineering business (and that is what we are, a business, one that is established for the detection and extraction of fuel) the competition must be diminished and extinguished. That means you.
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He’s always complaining (about everything I do) that I like to involve myself in matters that aren’t my place and I can see his point. He makes me out to be this nosey busy-body (I can be at times) and what I’ve noticed with him and all the others prior to him is his reasoning as to why I do this vs the actual reason I do what I do. His thinking is what HG outlined above: I’m trying to upstage him, whereas the actual reason could be anything from me trying to plan something nice for him or me trying to not let the last 10 lbs I’ve gained show or I’m just a friendly, decent person who’s trying to help someone he’s close to out. His reasons are sinister and mean, whereas mine are more often than not just me trying to help someone out by doing them a solid. I’ve gone overboard here though and I haven’t yet figured out why but it was never to throw someone in his face or make him feel uncomfortable. Lord knows I’m aware of how that treatment feels. It’s been interesting to be in the know for the first time about what I’m dealing with instead of how I was in the past when I was unaware of what was going on. Now, when I’m blindsided, I know (for the most part) why this occurred. And, I’m not sure what’s worse: being in it and clueless or knowing what’s up and still allowing it to continue. I’ve become such a glutton for punishment, I swear. Considering I’ve dealt with more narcs in my 50 yrs than I’ve seen others deal with, it comes as no surprise that I’ve made it my norm to be treated badly. I just wish I wasn’t so damn sensitive and had the skin of an elephant and this shit didn’t hurt so damn much.
Monie Burns, thank you for sharing your comment. RE: “Considering I’ve dealt with more narcs in my 50 yrs than I’ve seen others deal with, it comes as no surprise that I’ve made it my norm to be treated badly. I just wish I wasn’t so damn sensitive and had the skin of an elephant and this shit didn’t hurt so damn much”
I can relate to. Interesting in how ‘conditioning’ can program the mind and then after a whole life-time, having to ‘re-program’ the ‘conditioning’ to almost the ‘opposite’ way of thinking in a matter of within a year. Maybe the emotional side of the effects take longer to ‘digest’ despite the mind (logical thinking) having ‘processed’ it. I suppose it varies and depends on the type of person someone is.
HG
I don’t know what you see on your end but the entire last paragraph of the article is missing on my end.
Lennon and McCartney were at each other’s throats toward the end of the partnership, but apparently, Simon and Garfunkel were even worse. Well after the Beatles broke up, John Lennon witnessed S&G squabbling, and was genuinely shocked.
in the begining he seemed realy ok with working together and we had real good times sharing new informations it was verry stimulating but the more it goes on, the more he was sulking whenever i did something good, and i felt that in order to have a good grad for exemple i had to make sure before the exam that he can do good himself.
he’d say that he likes hearing me play music, but whenever i play something for him he would finde reason for it to not be as good has he would like it , either not the good version, either the piano was no accorded correctly, or that i have old men tastes and i don’t play anything fresh and cool, and when his firends ask me to play he’d say that i show of, how could i? he was the one telling them about what i do or not do, i found that some of them knew all about my life when it was the first time i see them. even when i know that i did nothing bad he always manages to phrase it in a way so i end up feling guilty.
it was the more frustrating because i was feeling the contrary, he was verry good at sport and does it at competition level, i was really proud of him, my narcissistic side thinks more in terms ” you can’t be mediocre, i love you”. even after disengagment, when i heard that he was not doing good with his memoir, it was a blow to my pride, i was thinking “you can’t afford to fail i was associated with you”. it like when you lost to a team in fotball, you want them to win because whenever they lose to someone else, it somehow means that you would have lost to them as well.
as for the dressing part, as a generality i dress verry casualy and my friend said that i should do some effort
sometimes for him, since make up was out of question i can’t stand the greassy feeling of it, i wore a dress, and it was horrible, when i’m wearing my one piece t-shirts he’d spend the day saying that i’m cute till i become unconfortable, but when i actually made the effort the be cute for him, he was cold during all the pic-nic and the only remarks he made were about shaming me for the palness of my legs and that the sun reflects on them ect…
god, i talk too much, it is a part that frustated me a lote, because i actually played along and alowed it.
Liza, re: playing along and allowing it…
Did you know that you were doing so at the time? Or is this your educated hindsight speaking?
lisk,
at the moment i was canstantly confused and never took the time to look at the whole picture, in evry situation, when i see him sulking or seem sade i was only obssesed with the idea to prove to him that i’m not disregarding him, he never tells me directly that he doesn’t want me to do this or that, and when i ask he says that i worry too much, or he is either tired or just in a bad mood, with time i started to feel ashamed to even ask, i was afraid to apear like a paranoide person, i was just adjusting my behaviour by my own just to avoid having him look sade. he was adorable 90% of the time so i always tend to think that i can’t ask him to be perfect, i knew that i didn’t like what i was doing but, if by doing so he will be happy, than it was ok for me.
You can’t win with narcs. If you’re not good enough, you embarrass them, but if you’re too good, you outshine them. We’re brought up to want to please those we care about, and girls still get more of this than guys do. There’s an old sixties song with the lines, “Show him that you care just for him, Do the things he likes to do, Wear your hair just for him.” Feminism hasn’t changed certain things that much.
If you are not good enough, you challenge and thus threaten control. It may appear as embarrassment to you, but it is not.
If you are too good, you challenge and thus threaten control. You may regard it as outshining us, it is not.
That song, most likely written by a narcissist or by a misguided normal.
Please could you provide an example of not being good enough and this being a challenge HG?
Somebody not being up to the task and pleading with the narcissist for help.
So this gives you fuel as you see the person as weak?
No, the emotional response is the fuel.
We are weak we show it in our emotions then you can go ahead and help us when we need help
E.g. take care of us when we are sick,help us lift something heavy etc.
My question wasn’t a challenge. It was just to help my teeny brain process it
gaaaagh! okay – lucky I don’t feel embarrassed then
Oh Alexis, you are to much! 🙃🥰
Violetta,
actually since i was a child i’v been told to thoughten up, i just couldn’t achieve it, i learned how to hide my emotivity but it didn’t disappear.
he seemed to do many things to please me, so i felt that it only faire to do the same, and wearing a dress wasn’t really torturous, in reality i like the cute stuff, just in my day to day life i don’t like to show it, i’m prety short and surounded by guys, so i don’t want to be treated like a girl.
It’s a pity we sometimes have to hide it to stay safe, but there’s no reason to make it disappear entirely, if that were even possible. We just have to get better at reading which people we should keep at a distance, if we can’t avoid them entirely, and which ones we can open up to.
haha in my case even myself is a problem, there is a version of me that is a definitely a girl, and an other one who is shouting at her to act like man and stop ofenfing his virility.
no seriously it just more practical, i don’t have major problems, i just prefere to keep the focus on my abilities, not my gender, and i’m horribly lazy, in the morning i have just enaugh energy to take a shower, choosing an outfit is just too much trouble.
I am severely not good enough and I see why I got devalued so quickly… at the weekends I wake up at 11am and lay in my own fart shroud for another hour expecting the narcissist to clean up after me
“We hate it.”
I hate it, too. I think it’s a bunch of crap. There are so many things, events, etc., that could not happen without the impetus of the individual.
Often I publicly acknowledge support of others on my team when there is a success. I mainly do that because I know that’s what’s expected of me to say. But I know it would not have happened without my vision or motivation or expertise.
If that makes me a narc, so be it.
Lisk,
haha the honest acknowledments would sound more like:
” i’d like to thank google, wikipedia, the indian guy on youtube, and the insomnia”.
Of course. (Who is the Indian guy on YouTube?)
haha, whenever you are searching in youtube tutorials about programing or any computer science related thing the first videos that appear are always done by an indian person, and when you don’t have the time (or are too lazey) to read a book, they are realy helpfull.
There’s a really good Indian guy on youtube (or maybe he’s Middle Eastern) doing PowerPoint presentations.
Yeah the one with the blue eyes.
Meant to work together but not be in partnership? Fuel wants the cake and eat it to. Is this the case?