A Stolen Love

Our victims have many things in common. Those shared traits are why they are chosen and why they become subjected to our incessant manipulations. The evidence of considerable empathic traits is of course one of the pre-requisites to gaining the attention of the narcissist. Exhibit a tendency to care, an ability to see another person’s point of view and a desire to help and you are issuing a neon-lit “Come and get me” to our kind. Your high-scoring on the empathic scale is naturally of considerable value to us. There is, however, another core principle that you all share which is irresistibly attractive to us.

This is your devotion to love. You believe in love, you are advocates of the act of loving, you give love and (although not always) you want to be loved in return. Love is all you need, love conquers all and love is a many splendored thing. Love matters. You see that the world can and will be a better place if more love is exhibited. You love with a depth that is beyond many people.

You truly give your all. Your love is perfect, selfless and based on a deep-seated notion that loving someone is the best and most wonderful thing one person can do for another. Such noble and laudable sentiments. Your status as a devotee to love means that you will strive to maintain that love once it has been gained. Love may give the appearance of having departed but you know, you believe, you always believe that it can be found and resurrected. That which has become dulled and blunted will be polished and returned to sharpness.

That beautiful golden glow will shine again and you are the person to make it happen. You are the healer and the fixer. That which is broken shall be mended by the application of your burgeoning heart. You are a disciple of love and as such there is nothing you can do but act in accordance with the principles of loving. It is second nature to you. You are so full of love you must find ways of allowing it to manifest in the world and of course the pinnacle of doing so is to find that special someone. You want to find the one so that all of this marvellous love can find its true home.

You are compelled to find your soul mate, your life partner and your best friend. Only then can your obligation to provide this amazing love be fulfilled and we thank you for being this way. On a daily basis we give thanks that you delicious and beautiful empathic individuals are committed to the promotion, promulgation and practice of love.

We come with the appearance of being that one special person who you can lay all your love upon. That person who will readily accept all of the love you have to offer and we will return it. Some of you would happily give this love in order to ensure there is an elated recipient and amazingly it would not matter to you whether that love was returned or not. Your sacrificial nature is stunning yet even more welcome.

We are of course content to reflect your love in order to bring about yet more from you. We understand the transaction and we are happy to oblige because we are giving you absolutely nothing. We have come to take. We have descended on you ready to strip you of every ounce of love that you can provide. We will slurp it from you, nibble it from your straining frame and gulp it down as we devour your love. We will take it away from you time and time again. Do not be mistaken and think that you are providing this love based on a reality.

You are doing so on a false premise. You have been conned into giving this love to us because we make you think we are the very thing you want when in reality we are anything but. We are fraudsters and we have come to take your love. If you knew what we truly were you would not offer your perfect love to us but we want it. We want it so much and we always take it. We make you unknown martyrs to the provision of love. We come without warning even though we appear with an explosion, all of it aimed to distract and misdirect so that we may pilfer your love.

Our thieving knows no limits or bounds as we take what does not belong to us and use it for our own warped purposes. We keep on stealing your love until you are left spent and wretched, sat amidst the ruins of the relationship which once seemed impregnable and infinite and now is little more than ash streaked across blunted stone. We gorge on your love, gluttons that feed at the banqueting table as you slowly realise that the sumptuous love we appeared to return to you is in fact empty, a puff of air and without any substance.

Yet this realisation comes far too late for by then the damage is done. Not only have we helped ourselves to all of your love we have, invariably ripped away and stolen your capacity for further love. Once you finally extricate yourself from our grip and eventually make sense of what has happened to you, even though it may take some considerable time, how often have your kind uttered the sentence,

“I do not think I will ever love any again, how can I after that?”

Words similar to such a question are regularly uttered by those who have been sucked into our malevolent maelstrom.

We are the love thieves.

We come and take the love to which we are not entitled but we are not done with that. Oh no. We rip out your heart in order to leave you so bereft that you can never love again.

We steal your love.

We are the love thieves of your past, your present and your future love.