Don’t worry if you missed the signs and dated or even married one, there is life after love with a narcissist.
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Narcissists are getting a bad rap in social media lately, and if you happened to fall in love with or marry one, you might find yourself flooded with self-doubt.
Actually, for me, it goes much more like this — there is a part of me that feels deeply flawed and there is some redemption, some saving of my soul, that happens when a seemingly unflawed person finds me to be perfect.
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You are in good company. I myself have fallen head over heels for a narcissist more than once, and afterwards, I felt wracked with guilt. Why didn’t I see the signs? The waving of the narcissist’s red flag? The selfies, the endless Facebook posts, the flawless CV? Well, because it’s often not that obvious. And, narcissists are really charming and alluring and usually they have no flaws or faults, or at least they are great at leading you to believe they don’t. They often give the most amazing gifts. They can be pretty decent at making money, so they take you on good dates. They will rescue you from locking your keys in your car, and sometimes, they even wear capes.
(This, by all means should absolutely not be confused with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is a diagnosis of a personality disorder! Not the same thing. Much more troublesome. I’m just talking about garden variety narcissism.)
If you think you married or are dating a narcissist, you probably are. I’m not talking about the wicked Queen in Snow White. I’m just talking about someone who thinks she is all that and a side of fries. If you think this means you need to break up with said lovely narcissist, or even maybe divorce them, whoa there. Take a closer look before jumping to conclusions. If, heaven help all of us, your therapist has diagnosed your significant other with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, that’s really not fair unless your therapist has dated her also.
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When an unflawed person chooses you it is pretty damn exciting. It means, of course, that there is something so wonderful about you that a perfect person would select you. Congratulations! You must be pretty damn close to perfect yourself! (You think for a split second.) Actually, for me, it goes much more like this — there is a part of me that feels deeply flawed and there is some redemption, some saving of my soul, that happens when a seemingly unflawed person finds me to be perfect. I really wish it wasn’t so.
I have steeped myself in guilt for being attracted to this dynamic. I have questioned my upbringing and my family dog. I have blamed my high school boyfriend and my cheerleading coach for always comparing me to Sarah C. (who had beautiful hair). But then, I forgive myself, and that’s what you’ll need to do as well.
The dynamic of being totally worshiped by an awesome person is super attractive. And, let me just say also, that narcissists are particularly good at adoring. Once they choose you, you are a reflection of them, and they adore each one of your ten little toenails and the curve of your ear and the quiet brilliance of your witty mind.
But narcissists are the porcupines of the wounded. They are so wounded they are covered in spines of self-confidence and they are not going to become self-aware, probably.
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Except when they don’t. When you don’t reflect well on a narcissist, or when you shame a narcissist, you may live forever in a dark shadow of their rage. That, my friend, totally sucks. I have been there. The best thing you can do is move out of town. Or at the very least, unfriend them on Facebook. If you cheat on a narcissist, God help you, you will probably be banished to the underworld. It is kind of like cheating on Zeus. You might be turned to frozen stone.
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Narcissists are wounded. We are all wounded and our woundedness is so common that it is now a cliché. Thank God— we can finally all relax in our mutual pain. But narcissists are the porcupines of the wounded. They are so wounded they are covered in spines of self-confidence and they are not going to become self-aware, probably. It is not a part of the deal they made with the devil when he turned them into porcupines. You cannot point out to a narcissist that he or she might be a narcissist. They will quickly diagnose you as mentally ill and possibly have you involuntarily committed.
We are all attracted to woundedness. Some of us more than others. This is a beautiful part of our humanity that I think we all need to forgive ourselves for. When we get out of a relationship that put the cray-cray in crazy and we find ourselves reeling for a year, and then really can’t figure out why we were in that thing in the first place, we were probably drawn to a wound of some form (okay, well maybe that was just me). We shouldn’t guilt or shame ourselves for that.
Sometimes narcissism is a youthful state of being that someone matures out of. Sometimes narcissism is a Facebook persona we all try on.
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It is lovely to want to heal others, to want to be a safe place for someone, to see our own hurt reflected in someone else and want to ease their suffering. This can lead us into something that we get lost in once we realize the pain is larger than us, and doesn’t belong to us to heal. The pain a narcissist holds is huge and deep and because it is not likely to be known by them, in this way it is dangerous. If you ever see the narcissist as flawed, this pain is likely to be projected onto you and they will want to make you feel the suffering that is too deep within them to be made truly conscious. This is when marrying or partnering with a narcissist is possibly scary, sad, devastating, and maybe intolerable. This is when you decide to become a therapist.
Don’t despair if you are staring across from your iPhone as you read this and thinking that the beautific bedhead across the table belongs to a narcissist. If your narcissist hasn’t turned against you, there is no emergency. Sometimes narcissism is a youthful state of being that someone matures out of. Sometimes narcissism is a Facebook persona we all try on. Sometimes, it’s more serious and it will wreak havoc on a relationship. The thing is, I have learned that we have to trust ourselves to know. If your relationship is more like a martini than a beautiful snow globe (usually shaken versus semi-annually shaken), I invite you to reflect deeply. I did.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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