Constant Companion
The narcissist in your life may have turned to you and said,
“You are the one true constant in my life,” or words to that effect. Of course, when this sentence was said to you with faux sincerity shining in our eyes it was intended as another love bomb that rained down on you from up on high. What we were actually doing was engaging in a rare moment of truth.
We require a constant in our lives for a variety of reasons. To begin with it is because when we are seducing you, you provide us with all that delicious positive fuel and we cannot get enough of it. You are shiny and sparkling and that fuel tastes so glorious. We want to be with you all of the time to drink deep of your fuel but also to ensure that you become addicted to us as we love bomb you. We want you constantly with us so that you are exposed all the time to our charm, our wit and our affection so that as we drink up your fuel, you become addicted to the euphoria you feel by being with someone so wonderful as us. We also want you constantly by our side to isolate you from anyone who may just have the knowledge and temerity to shatter the fantasy world that we have created so you wriggle free from our grip. After expending time and energy in trapping you and clamping our jaws around you, the last thing we want is for you to be able to escape us.
Inevitably you let us down and your supply of positive fuel lessens in quality and quantity. Your dereliction of duty means we must draw fuel from other appliances. A normal and healthy person might think that if a person tires of the other in the relationship one might look at ways of rekindling what first drew those people together. Well, you know what? We do that, only we do it in our skewed manner. We have no interest in working at the relationship, that requires too much effort. We will however rekindle the golden period in order to enable our vacillating between devaluing and idealising to have the maximum effect.
You may also consider that if someone no longer has any interest in the other person in the relationship and especially if that person is looking elsewhere then he or she would do the decent thing and end the relationship and move on. Not us. We need you. You might question why that should be the case since if we are treating you so badly, why on earth would we want to remain with you? If we are committing acts of infidelity with other people, why do we remain in a relationship with you? The answer is because we need a constant appliance. You are that constant appliance.
We have decided that you would supply us with delicious positive fuel and although you would let us down and reduce that supply, we could keep you around as we drew negative fuel from you. You are the mainstay. There is no logic to us in having a relationship then ending it and moving on to another person some time later. That would not provide us with enough fuel, nowhere near enough. We need someone who will always be there so that he or she:-
- Provides positive fuel to being with;
- Provides negative fuel thereafter;
- Represents a good return on our investment (we are not going to throw away such an asset that readily);
- As a constant enables us to use others in our manipulation to draw more fuel from the constant and the other people (triangulation, smear campaigns and so on)
12 thoughts on “Constant Companion”
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Fuel is just a misleading word for validation.
No, it’s not. Read Fuel.
Yep. I was the constant. The one he dumped all the time. Ugh. I eventually got fed up with the behaviour and was so angry there was no way out for me but to end the so-called fake relationship. There was never a relationship and I was just the base camp while he carried on with his charades and cheating.
“Much of what we do generates chaos – the affairs, the gambling, the driving offences, the cheating and the lying – it is therefore a source of great comfort to us that we can return to you and find you waiting as usual. We have experienced so much upheaval and chaos when we were younger that this constant presence on your part provides us with a degree of reassurance. Of course, we abuse this by unleashing our chaotic nature on you as well, but we know you are not going to go and leave us and that is of great importance to us. Not only does this show the world somebody wants us …”
I thought I was the one needing reassurance in the relationship and he generated that by being there (more or less) every. single. day. It made a difference to me. No one had ever been there for me in the way he had.
LOL to the notion I could be his ‘ball and chain’ when he was really mine.
But, this post got me thinking about his past and how he seemed to rush back to me for reassurance, or seek me out when we were apart, even if he’d given me notice of any kind of lack of communication.
ET running a little high on this one today.
And how sad that the one person who wants you, you constantly turn away.
It is sad Lickemtomorrow.
The hoovers and circling back do feel like underneath it all it’s us that they cant be without despite their behaviour. I think that’s wishful thinking on our part. We want to be loved unconditionally and can’t understand why when we ourselves offer that unconditional love, that it isn’t accepted. Your narc will have associated you with feeling good. Feeling better, as he fed off your fuel. It’s not surprising he kept circling.
You trusted, which is why you confided, which is why it felt like he was the one who understood you best. Someone who was on your side, who got you.
It’s very sad how the dynamic works between empath and narcissist. They are suited in many ways. What better way to fill an emotional void than to be with someone who radiates emotion as we do? The perfect solution. I even said that to my narc, “You don’t feel what I feel, and you are drawn to the huge bundle of emotion that’s me. Have it, I’ll lend you some if you like? Just do that thing you do. Put up your shield and give me some calm.” I was so close, I just didn’t call it by it’s name. I honestly think that that calm feeling when I was with him, the quiet feeling, was me reaching, and there being nothing there. People are noisy, he was not.
It is incredibly unfair that a neglectful start in life creates a person whose self preservation mechanism results in the suspension of the positive emotions. It makes me angry to read HG’s story. I’d slap matrinarc’s face for her if I got a chance. I don’t get angry too often, but the abuse of the gift of a child is unforgivable. The fact is, he is no longer that child and neither is your narc. Your narc is set as he is. No fixing, no healing, no amount of unconditional love will teach him that emotional empathy he lacks. We come off worst. Every time, no exceptions. Push me hard enough and my own self preservation kicks in. As sad as it is, if it comes down to him or me, I will always choose me. So should we all.
Years ago, before cell phones were generally available (some rich people had them), I was in a dodgy area. A very young mother, probably in her teens had one baby in a stroller (push chair to Brits) and a toddler (no older than 18 months) holding on to the side of the stroller. She barked at the toddler to hold on, then went too fast for his short little legs to keep up. He fell sideways on his head.
And did not cry.
“I told you to hold on!” she bellowed. And smacked him upside the head, making him fall sideways on his head.
He did not cry.
I look for a cop car . There isn’t one. I look for a pay phone. There isn’t one. I consider following her home to get an address, but realize that if I walk farther into that neighborhood, I will probably be killed, and thus unable to report her to the authorities.
I know that if that child survives, he will probably grow up to be a wife-beater or rapist, and the repeated concussions won’t ameliorate the psychological abuse.
If I say anything, she will take it out on the kid.
And suddenly I realize that I am frozen. I can’t say anything, I can’t move. Because if I do, the dam will open. I will rush over and start giving her worse than she ever gave that kid. I will slam her head against something solid. If she cries, I will tell her to stop crying or I will kill get, and slam her head again for punctuation. I will bellow too: “Shirrup you little shite, or I’ll crack your head open like a coconut!”
They’ll be orphans, passed to relatives or a foster home that may be worse than Mommie Dearest, I’ll be in prison for murder, and worst of all, I will have become Daddy.
My stomach still churns every time I think about it.
What a God awful story, Violetta 🙁 There’s nothing more distressing than seeing a child in that situation and feeling helpless to change the course of it. And I see how your thought pattern went which I imagine would be the same for any one of us. I’ll guarantee if there was something you could have done to make it better rather than worse you would have done it. Unfortunately, some things are just out of our hands.
I was living in Ireland at one stage and was walking in a small town square when an older woman with a child of about two or three in a buggy/pram/pusher approached from the other direction. The little girl had lovely long curly black hair and I believe they were Romanian gypsies with the older woman probably being the grandmother. The little girl was crying and I saw the woman viciously grab her by the hair and yank it quite forcefully two or three times telling her to shut up. I was outraged! That she should assault the child in public and think nothing of it … I don’t care how frustrated she was. I went straight across to her, not knowing if she could even understand me, and told her in no uncertain terms to stop! I let her know the behaviour was not acceptable, it was against the law, akin to assault and that I could report her for it. I looked around for any Gardai who might be on foot, but there were none in sight. I literally said ‘you are not to do that again’ and that if I ever saw her do it again I would have her arrested. I was beside myself and there were other people in the street who were also witness to what she had done. None others approached, but I would have had back up if needed. I had no fear in approaching her and calling her out on it. Of course, this was in broad daylight in the town centre with other passers by. But I am fierce about child protection.
Oh Violetta, that’s just awful.
I think, given the circumstances and where you were you made the right choice. If you had lost control as you feared you were in the wrong place to do it and as you say would only have made matters worse.
Something similar happened to me in KY and it has happened here too. Both were in broad daylight though and in public places so there was no issue in my being able to act. I was more cutting with the mother concerned in both instances (I can turn very cold) but focussed my attention on the child.
I could see the incident as you described it. Truly heartbreaking and it does stay with you. X
Thank you for that beautiful and loving reply, TS. Your empathy is shining out of you again today and you also have a way of putting things into words which often penetrates deeply. Partly because it makes sense. And in some ways I wish it didn’t.
I don’t know all the cruelties of his past, but I know they played out on me. And part of that was the withholding of what we both needed most. And the fact it wasn’t a withholding on his part. It was a denial which was rooted deep in his past and a rejection of the very thing that makes us human. The need for love.
What appears to take its place is usury. A means of trying to gain what was lost and is now to forever be rejected. It has none of the hallmarks of a sacrificial love. Just a con, as you say.
The issue of matrinarc and the damage she has done is one that looms large here . Every one of us, I’m sure, wants to take that little boy that was HG was and love him the way he ought to have been loved. He was deserving of it, as are all children. In all honesty, I have a bone to pick with HGs father as well. It does seem that HG was the sacrificial lamb in that situation. I’ll not go there now as this one creates a very high sense of ET in me.
The part of HGs post which I quoted reminded me of a child returning to the comfort and safety of its mother. The ‘circling’ is something children naturally do as they begin to test their independence. Oh yes, mother is still here, she is waiting for me. I am comforted, reassured, all is right with the world, now I can go and explore some more. This is the mindset of a young child and relates to attachment.
Perhaps, deep down in a narcissist there continues to be this longing for attachment, but in their case it is an oft repeated cycle because they are never able to secure it fully. They want to attach, but are unable to do so and therefore they must punish the one who can now be seen to be at fault for that lack of provision. Even though the narcissist themselves is unable ultimately to avail of it. It cannot be their fault, therefore it must be yours. Hence, devaluation. You are painted black. Down off the pedestal you go.
Only HG knows why he would share such a thought as I quoted. It must be there, somewhere.
Lickemtomorrow,
We see things very similarly you and I. I have thought the same as you on many things especially with regards to your last statement here.
The circling that children do when testing their independence is a great point also.That little look back to check you are still there watching over them and we are, we were.
What happens to the child who looks back and no one is there? You’re right, to think about these men as children does raise our ET and it does make us want to make it all better. We can’t. Some situations are simply beyond our ability to fix and we just can’t allow ourselves to be the sacrificial lamb to their slaughter. X
xox
We’ve both paid the price, TS, and it can be soul destroying.
To think on what can’t be changed is even worse.
Better to focus on the things we can change x
Sounds absolutely wonderful.
BUT……
Neither party wins in any way. Not really. One is always seeking for more. The other gets bled dry. It’s a game for one, soul destroying for the other. That’s why we end up going (if we have the strength to go) or simply given up cos nothing left to give….. it’s life for one, ‘death’ for another.