Pointless Platitudes
You will have seen the Pointless Platitudes. They are invariably plastered over somebody’s social media feed and keep popping up in your own. There will be some dreamy picture, some gaudy sparkling image which is meant to conjure up a belonging to some ethereal, higher plane and alongside this meaningless image comes the meaningless words.
Useless. Unhelpful. Dangerous.
Not only do these Pointless Platitudes invariably irritate you with the vapid sentimentality they pose a greater problem. They are often written with regard to love and relationships and as you all know, where love and relationships exist, then so do our kind.
These amorphous comments serve only to provide people with false hope and misunderstanding. They cover up what is really going on and keep people stuck believing that if they only “follow their heart” everything will work out. No. It will not.
These Pointless Platitudes mask the reality of what is happening to hundreds of millions of peoples around the world who are caught in our grasp. They euphemism, they dilute and obscure the actuality of ensnarement with a narcissist.
It goes further however. It is the peddling of such tripe which means that the dangerous behaviours are ascribed to something else, something regarded as far less problematic which can apparently be overcome with some trite comment, a liberal application of hope and some glitter. This means that the people who need to understand, the people who need enlightenment and who need to reduce the fog of emotional thinking are completely misled.
These Pointless Platitudes need to be shattered and who better than me to take them apart. I want you to provide me with the examples of these Pointless Platitudes (and feel free to explain what really gets your goat about them) so that I can select the most misleading, the ones used the most often and the most dangerous ones to ensure they are picked apart so this information can be then used to reach new shores.
So, over to you good readers. Provide your examples in the comments and let’s shatter the Pointless Platitudes and inject some cold, hard logic into the world.
78 thoughts on “Pointless Platitudes”
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No more of this rosy platitude BS!
I just affixed my Logic Defenses On sticker to my car. 🙂
HG approves
Hi HG,
did you write about Jeffrey Epstein?
Such a classical example that even other people got that right about him, no?
And what about the Irish Toiseach sunbathing, and his narc psychopath health advisor (not the minister, but Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan)?
And did u write about Bill Gates, while we’re at it?
No, to all.
Would be nice / interesting to read your perspective on these people. And also on country leaders in the current self made ‘crisis’.
Did u watch the Netflix mini series on J. Epstein?
Thank you Ava101, I doubt I will have time to do so.
No, I did not see that mini series, I daresay it was interesting.
Epstein was no doubt a psychopathic narcissist predator of the lowest kind — literally the direct opposite of HG and what he does in real life.
HG, I thank you so much for all you are doing on many levels to prevent scumbags like him from thriving.
“Hang in there”
Good call. If you ever hear or see that, just fire back a GOSO.
Perfect!
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
That’s a zinger right there.
Friend I had not spoken to in a year contacted me recently. She didn’t know my ex bf left me because I never put my personal business out there. She would’ve thought all was the same. So of course she asks about him. I say he ghosted me, found out he’s a narcissist & I do not want to discuss it further please, because although I’ve come a long way, one little thing could possibly ‘take me back.’ She disregards my request & talks about it. Said a bunch of nonsense like just because he’s a narcissist doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. Maybe he ghosted you to protect you from all he has going on. Let’s assume he had good intentions, let’s send him love. He is a wealthy man so his pride doesn’t want you to see him weak – he did it because he loves you. All this complete BS. People mean well but have NO idea. If I listened to her stuff, whenever he tries to come around & find me, she’d advise me to say to him, “Yes sweetheart it’s fine I understand, you were just going through a time, I’ll make everything perfect again.” 😃
I thought it really speaks to the misinformation that is out there.
Accurate Ashley and well done for resisting. You may wish to put some distance between you and the friend again.
Thank you & definitely!!
Some friend.
Ashley,
Could this have been a hoover by proxy? Did your ex and her know each other well?
Nope, fortunately not! 💖 If he decides to do a hoover by proxy, it will be via his (formerly) close friend. He ghosted him around the same time as me. It was very strange that he ghosted his friend because his friend is an attorney & was working on extremely confidential financial/business matters for him. One would think he would put him on the shelf after the matters were concluded, but no. It was so bizarre. My ex compartmentalized people in his life so much. Every day it seemed like he would tell me all the details of his day, yet there was so much I have no knowledge of with regard to his fuel matrix. He set it up so that I was like a doll in a dollhouse. He wanted the only things on my mind to be what will I cook for him, what will I do sexually, what will I decorate, & my physical appearance. He didn’t want me to know people or information, yet when it was actually happening, he made it feel as though I knew everything. The positive part for me now about his compartmentlization is there is only one person he would do the hoover by proxy with if he were going to.
Ashley
Not sure I agree. He could use anyone for a proxy hoover.
But good luck and be careful. All narcs compartmentalize. And his friend could be on the shelf. Being shelved could appear being ghosted
Kim e,
The reason I say that is he doesn’t keep in touch with people or keep their contact information unless they’re business related. One of the many things about him that is very very strange haha. Bere’s an example. Back in the day he was friends with a beautiful actress. Years & years went by & he never kept in touch with her. When I found this out, I’m like haha what??! Why wouldn’t you at least talk to her once a year, are you crazy?! 🤣 I just couldn’t imagine a man not maintaining a friendship with that knockout! But he didn’t, had no contact info at all. He is just so damn weird to me. The whole family of his is extremely weird. He & his siblings were all Ivy League educated, all weird in their own ways that one would not think. His younger brother is also a narcissist but a very very obvious one.
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” (You know better than I where that one comes from)
“Love recognises no barries”
Dr Sues “You know you are in love when you can’t fall asleep because your reality is better than your dreams”
Ed Sheeran “All that you are is all that I will ever need” (puke!)
This has to be the worst thing to say to someone who is in a relationship with a narcissist:
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” From the New Testament (Corinthians).
On point.
A pointless platitude: if I get this correctly, it would have been anything pleasant the narcissist ever said, HG?
I understand why you arrive at that conclusion but that is actually a benign manipulation. A pointless platitude is something said or written by individuals appertaining to love and relationships which actually falls into the trap of masking, euphemising and diluting narcissism or is something so banal as to be meaningless and unhelpful.
Heloiseandabelard, a good example of a pointless platitude is, “If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, they were yours. If they don’t. they never were.” Its pointless because the narcissist ALWAYS returns and they are NEVER yours but this platitude makes us believe its possible. It gives us hope and having hope, is pointless.
How’d I do, Mr. Tudor? I think I’m learning.
Gold star for you.
Yay me!
I once read a take on this one that I found quite funny (and scarily -in some cases – true):
“If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, you gave birth to them.”
Amusing.
Fiddleress,
So true about giving birth. Both mine came back.
Another favorite………….
“If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, slam the door.”
“If you set someone free and they come back, it means no one else wanted them either. Throw them back!”
There was a parody version for a while going, “If you love someone, set them free. If they don’t come back, hunt them down and shoot them.”
Violetta,
Wipe down the gun after use……………….
During the latest hoover, it was announced that “I am preparing to spend the rest of my life with you.” Perhaps at one time that might have felt warm and fuzzy, but at this point I didn’t see much hope in it, so it was a platitude…
A physician once said “the best medicine is love” someone asked “what if it doesn’t work”? He smiled & said “increase the dose”
Good example, Summer.
I fell in love twice just today. One is fixing my garage door and the other is just brilliance.
Dangerous platitudes for relationships with a Ns:
“The more you give, the more you will receive in return.”
“Love concours all.”
“Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” – Lord Byron
“No matter how things end, your love will last for eternity.”
“Love never fails.”
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” – Aristotle
“Turn the other cheek.”
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Henry David Thoreau
“If you put your intentions out into the Universe all your needs and desires will return to you a hundred fold.”
“If you love something, set it free, if it comes it’s yours, if not, it was never never meant to be.”
“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”– William Faulkner
“It only takes one person’s change to change a relationship.”
“Love leads some to ruin.” Wait, that one is true!!
Some belters there, FYC.
Haha, thank you, HG. The list could have been much longer without difficulty — so many to choose from.
FYC, great examples!
But Lord Byron… I love Lord Byron. I love him and I always will, so there, haha! Well, his poetry at least, because I don’t think I would have liked to know him as an intimate partner, from the way he treated his wife and other IPs apparently. Maybe the trick is to be able to ‘compartmentalise’ between (admirable) poetry and real life.
Byron also provided me with one of my coping mechanisms: “Death laughs at all you weep for.”
Thoreau on the other hand was not a poet, and his saying ‘there is no remedy for love but to love more’ was probably something he thought was applicable. It makes me mad because it is precisely this very quote that was on my mind when things started going to the dogs with N.
Ok, so Thoreau was a poet some of the time, but I don’t think of him as a poet first.
Was that a line from one of his poems, about ‘no remedy to love…’?
Hi Fiddleress, I am sure Claire Clairmont would agree with you! I think Lord Byron would be in trouble under the Tudorscope. It just goes to show that some of the most beautiful words put together were formed by Ns.
FYC, I agree with you about Byron re Claire Clairmont, and the Tudorscope!
He is another famous person who has been diagnosed with hindsight by some psychiatrists with bipolar. More likely a N, I agree.
Fiddleress, I did a quick google after your comment and noted that different groups have claimed different personality issues including: NPD, psychopath, sociopath, bipolar and schizophrenic and depression. Quite the spectrum. I also note he had an affair with a half sibling. In general he demonstrates N behavior across the board. I don’t know enough about him to guess if he was also APD. If you were to guess, what school and cadre would you place him in?
Byron apparently slept with his half-sister Augusta Leigh, and may even be the father of one of her children. He said she was the only person or woman he had ever loved (I read all I could by and about Byron as a student…).
I am really not good at placing Ns in schools and cadres. I would say Greater Elite as far as he is concerned?
Fiddleress, I did not know that. Interesting. I know far less than you do about Lord Byron, so I cannot offer much help on his classification, but with what I do know about his attributes (creatively competent/cognitive skill, evaded accountability with success, profited from works of others, had many lovers, etc.), he could have been an EGN. I don’t know if he was self aware, but he was at least UMRE. I appreciate you sharing your views.
Oh, and there is more! I heard only two or three years ago that Byron’s only ‘legitimate’ child, Augusta Ada, became a great mathematician who ‘discovered’ the algorithm and the programming of a computer!
I find it mind-blowing : Lord Byron, probably a narcissist, fathered the inventor, so to speak, of the computer, thanks to which we can benefit from HG’s work today to have our lives and sanity saved !
Narcs do rule the world, there is no way around it.
You are welcome, FYC. I always greatly appreciate your comments.
You may well be right about UMRE. He may not have been self-aware, and he was chased out of England; he had to leave anyway.
Lady Caroline Lamb was dismissed as a loony for her obsession with Byron, but it’s entirely possibly he played her, knowing she was vulnerable.
The fact that, in that society, she’d catch more flak for cheating on her husband (who.seemed quite lovable in Victoria— who knows what he was like in real life) than Byron would get for cheating on his wife did not help her.
Byron’s charm was legendary. That sounds pretty narcy all by itself.
He certainly managed to charm me beyond the grave !
Ohh! A fascinating discussion! Funny that I’ve only been talking myself today about certain historical characters!
Not aware. Too obvious in his manner. This places him in only one. Upper Middle. Wouldnt have been able to function if he was an Upper Lesser
Cadre. Ahh. Not V. Could be an E. Was certainly well read enough. Never met an S who didnt have his peepers in a copy of Razzle 24/7. But at least Byron bored us silly with his endless poetry
I think the spotlight now needs to be placed on Shelley. His bum chum. Very possibly a factor in his unfortunate death.
Whatever happened on that night on the shores of Lake Geneva which resulted in Frankenstein is extremely intresting. Extremely.
You are most kind and appreciated, Fiddleress. Thank you. I really am not that good at classifications yet. I use more of a process of elimination. I just don’t know enough about Lord Byron to say, but I think it’s better than even odds that he was a narcissist. If a N, his written words are beautiful, but any truth to them is likely another matter!
‘If you love something, set it free’ … definitely got caught on the horns of that one.
Obviously not aware of the narcissist’s tendency to hoover … ‘if it comes back, it’s yours’.
“Everything changes, but nothing is stronger than love.” – Smithereens
Nothing is indeed stronger than love, nothing makes me do all manner of things.
I see what you did there. lol
The full lyrics are even creepier, now that I know what to look for:
Listen to me, everything will work out fine
There’s a time in your life when you’re losing your mind
Just come with me something different this time.*
I don’t want to know where you intend to go
Everything changes, but nothing is stronger than love.
Listen to me, everybody wins some day
And in time you will find every dog has his day
Nothing should matter or stand in your way.
I don’t want to know where you intend to go**
Everything changes, but nothing is stronger than love.
Everything changes, but nothing is stronger than love.
*It will not be different, no matter what I promise
**Because I can find you anyway for the next hoover
Puts it up there with “The More You Ignore Me” and “Two Steps Behind” as a stalker anthem.
Hahahahaha so as to platitudes:
“Love makes the world go round”
“Love will see us through” (Grateful Dead)
“Why else would I be here right now” (Todd Rundgren)
“Heartbreak’s never easy to take, but can’t we please be friends” (Rundgren)
“You can’t stop love in action” (Rundgren)
“I can love you totally, but I”ll never be your property” (Rundgren)
“Walk through fire for you, just let me adore you” (Harry Styles)
“Girle of my dreams I adore you, nothing I wouldn’t do for you”
“Love don’t come easy” (Supremes)
don’t know, keep coming up with the opposite sort of thing:
“my mama told me, you’d better shop around”
“needed to hate you to love me” (Selena Gomez about Justin Bieber)
“and I’m here, to remind you, of the mess you left when you went away” (Alanis Morisette)
‘said I’d catch you if you fall, and if they laugh then f*ck em all, found you on your knees, put you right back on your feet, so you could take advantage of me” (Halsey)
We own the world of lyrics.
heloiseandabelarde:
(And boy, wasn’t Abelarde narcy! Ever read his Calamitatum?)
The Supremes had to have the most masochistic lyrics ever.
I love Halsey and I miss singing pre-COVID.
I am so on this page with you right now, HG, and have read other readers comments where they trusted other people’s words (pointless platitudes as you so rightly point out) against their own instincts.
Worst part is I’m pretty sure I had some of these running through my head and didn’t need any one to offer them.
“He’ll come around, he always does” – he’s being childish, selfish and ignorant. I should not want him to ‘come around’. I should want him to leave and take his bad attitude with him. I shouldn’t put up with that sh*t!
“You guys can work it out. You always do” – We should not work it out. We have tried and tried and tried. I have given and given and given. The potential only exists for the situation to get worse, not better. It’s time to come to my senses and realize that I’m on a merry go round and need to get off.
Great post and idea, HG.
Thank you
“It’s never…really…over”…Katy Perry (and check out her “Dark Horse”
“The conversation is never over”…my exnarc hoovering after no contact
“We are all together one soul”…ditto
“Long distance runner, what you standing there for,
Get up get out, get out of the door
You play cold music on the barroom floor
You gave all you had, why you wanna give more
The more that you give, the more it will take
There’s a thin line beyond which, you really can’t fake–
Fire! Fire on the Mountain”. Grateful Dead (Robert Hunter)
–my theory this was Hunter telling Jerry Garcia to clean up his act but if the shoe fits…a lyric for ensnared empaths
Katy Perry has reproduced!
My favorite one is, “If you love something set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.” That may be true in certain circumstances but regarding the narcissist, it just serves to compel the empath/victim to accept the narcissist back when he or she returns for the Hoover. When, in reality, the victim should be running the other way and employing no contact.
This is less of a platitude. But it did make me doubt my decision at the time. I ended a relationship with my best friend. Maid of honour at my wedding etc etc. Best way to describe it, she was bleeding my dry emotionally, yet the one time I needed her support, it was still all about her. It had been one sided for yrs and I did not take the decision lightly. She posted this on her Facebook.
‘ This is for you ( my name)’
Picture of a snow capped mountain, covered by the words. ‘People don’t abandon people they love. They abandon people they were using.’
It caused a wobble. I didn’t contact her. I still feel guilty though.
A little projection there?
How DARE you abandon her! SHE’S the one who decides when the friendship is over!
Well, that one sounds like a ‘user’ right out of the gate, so I’ll second your decision and suggest she didn’t like losing her source of supply. So, you did abandon her, but for all the right reasons. She was using you, and added a nice pity play so you would feel guilty. She’s good, but you’re better. You dumped her ass.
Thank you LET and Violetta. The irony is I moved from this post and then read the one HG posted earlier all about guilt. Guilt is a killer, we are never 100% sure we did or are doing the right thing are we? We should be. We will be. Friends and family do make comments trying to be encouraging I think LET. Only you know, what it’s like to be in that relationship though. Trust your instincts. I think I’m going to trust mine a bit more going forward 🙂 Thank you both for reading and supporting. X
That’s true, TS6157. Only you can know what that relationship meant to you.
And I’ve reread your post, so I can see now how close that relationship was.
It’s bound to leave some residual feelings. Glad your family and friends are offering support and thank you for taking my post in the same vein. Hopefully time will help you heal x
Truth seeker—did you read the description of the middle lesser in the COVID material? It was a woman griping about her kids or kid. Can’t recall details. It was spot on for my post college roommate that was my maid of honor. (How she talks about her daughter) She never was smart—gorgeous but dumb as a box of rocks. She had a diva fit at my wedding after trying to sleep with someone in the grooms party the night before! I totally cut her off. She came to mom’s funeral and I swear it was just a Hoover. She’s a nasty swine. She’s also wrinkled now from the sun. Beauty is skin deep. Now she’s losing that too. ##winning. She is disgusting and she’s a horrible mother.
TS6157
Haha. I would have been tempted to respond with: Agreed, but I forgive you.
You did the better thing not responding though.
truthseeker6157
Don’t feel guilty, I see red flags in your comment re: her behavior.
TS6157, Wow! Said like a true manipulator. Thank goodness you cut your losses. You deserve a true friend. I understand the guilt though, after finding HG, I decided to cut loose a couple of ‘friends’ that were not really friends (most probably Ns). They tried very hard to get me to change my mind (false contrition, flattery, pleading and bribes), but I was done. They had shown their true colors far too many times. One of them continues to hoover two years later to no avail. So expect this to continue for a bit. I recommend blocking her so she cannot put that crap. I love NA’s response. Spot on! Kick any guilt to the curb, you made a very wise choice.