Jamel was a covert narcissist I dated for three years whose abuse was so well-masked that it took me nearly a year to realize I was even in an abuse cycle.
Looking back the earliest signs of the type of abuse Jamel liked to administer were actually always present — in the bedroom.
There was an incident that took place eight months into our relationship that I’ve never spoken about until now because of the rage and shame it caused me.
Facing this sexual trauma has been hard because it was intentionally implemented in a way that would allow Jamel to keep his mask on while devaluing and conditioning me, as his supply.
Using complete silence.
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This Strategy Was Implemented Immediately
Jamel and I met on Tumblr in September 2016.
We met in person ten months later in August 2017 and we slept together that same night. Foreplay involved me giving him oral and then it led right into sex. The relationship began immediately from there and our sex life was very active and consistent except for one area.
Oral sex.
Jamel always wanted, requested, asked for, and received oral. But I never did. Despite our sex life being very explosive, Jamel seemed avoidant of giving me oral, and it felt unfair. Why did he get to receive whether he asked for it or not and I didn’t get to have shit?
As the weeks turned into months, it began to feel insulting and targeted because, in previous conversations, Jamel made it very clear that oral sex was something he engaged in. He even made references to how “good” and “juicy” he was sure I tasted.
Before we met in person.
So, this avoidance of Jamel giving me oral was confusing, frustrating, and damaging as it started taking a toll on my self-esteem.
I started wondering if there was something wrong with my body. Despite my good hygiene, I questioned if he was turned off by something he didn’t like about me that he might not have wanted to verbalize.
I didn’t feel safe enough to talk to him because Jamel had conditioned me to be afraid to speak up with “silent treatments” much earlier on so I didn’t know how to approach him with this topic and he wasn’t bringing anything up to me.
All that was left was to assume and eventually, I started assuming that he just didn’t want me because maybe I wasn’t pretty enough.
I did all sorts of things to make myself look better, to be better, to earn oral sex but nothing made a difference.
This strive to get my needs met is a key feature in all narcissistic abuse cycles because:
This demand-withdraw pattern in relationships can cause victims to exert their efforts in trying to make their partner behave differently, only leading to fruitless efforts and further frustration (Schrodt, 2014).
It took a little while for me to realize that I was being breadcrumbed by being intimately dismissed by Jamel, and he was doing it using a classic tactic that covert narcissists favor the most.
Withholding.
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The Covert Narcissist Withholds To Win
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It’s no secret that narcissists use withholding to manipulate and control their victims. However, it’s the covert narcissist who tends to use this in the most effective way because of how subtle their implementation of it is.
The reason for the subtlety is because:
- The overt narcissist is so arrogant that you can see them coming from a mile away because they wear their narcissism like cheap cologne.
- The malignant narcissist is subtler but ultimately so void of empathy that it tends to be their high level of cruelty and sadism that does them when it comes to being identified.
Covert narcissists, however, know this.
They understand how bad it is to be seen as a ‘narcissist’ which is why they go above and beyond to quite literally ‘cover’ their narcissism up.
(Hence their literal name, COVERt narcissist.)
This is why everything they do tends to be underhanded but dangerously thought out.
See: This Is the Covert Narcissist’s Discard Process
This is also why Jamel’s method of withholding was so traumatic.
Although there are many ways to withhold, including —
stonewalling (the shutting down of conversations before they’ve even begun), the silent treatment, a sudden withdrawal of affection and physical intimacy without reason, and unexplained disappearances where they refuse to contact you or engage with you at all, even while they interact with others with enthusiasm as a way to rub salt on the wound.
Jamel’s form of withholding involved him dismissing me by using a passive form of rejection. However, his strategy didn’t involve him rejecting me in a way that could be identified at all.
This was because Jamel was having sex with me and doing many other things in the bedroom with me, despite not giving me oral. This is why it’s commonly used by covert narcissists.
It allows them to keep their masks on while abusing their supply under the false pretense of ‘consent’.
It also gives leeway for gaslighting once the victims point out what they can sense but can’t see. This is exactly what happened when I finally broke down, eight months into the relationship.
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March 2018
I don’t know how or why but on that day I’d just had enough and started crying. Jamel and I had just finished having sex; which, of course, included him getting oral and me not receiving any at all.
When he asked me what was wrong I broke down and let all of the words flow. At this point, I was too fed up and traumatized to be afraid of any of his possible responses.
I told him I was tired of being the only one engaging in oral sex; it had been eight months of him requesting and receiving it from me but never making a move on his end to offer me the same pleasure in return.
I didn’t want to believe it at the time but he actually smirked.
It wasn’t as overt as it would be later on in the relationship but it was visible (to me, at least). He never stopped smirking as he came over to me to “comfort” me and tell me that all I ever had to do was ask him.
From that very day onward Jamel gave me oral with no problems but from that day forward this incident never sat right with me because I understood something that was too painful to face at the time.
Jamel had been weaponizing sex and using it as a powerplay by specifically withholding oral sex.
Jamel using this strategy, in particular, was intentional because he knew I was scared to stand up to him or speak up for myself.
Meaning, it would eventually get to the point of me breaking down and essentially, begging for my needs to be met. Which is exactly what he wanted.
Jamel waited for me to break down before he gave me oral on purpose. He held off doing it just so I could ask for it. And I know this because of something he did within the first week of our dating.
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Withholding Isn’t About Consent — It’s About Power
In the very beginning, Jamel and I would go to his house and out to eat. We genuinely hung out. He would then drop me off at my apartment building but sit with me out front to talk for a bit.
One night, as I was about to get out of his car, he asked me why I never asked him to come upstairs.
The question came off more paranoid than curious. It also caught me off guard because up to that point, he never expressed any interest in coming upstairs nor did he initiate simply getting out of his car to come up with me, and he could have. And I told him this.
His response was:
No. You have to invite me in. I won’t come up until you ask me. So, invite me in. Ask me to come upstairs. You have to ask me.
This came off weird.
To most people it sounds like Jamel just said he needed my consent to come upstairs, which would seem chivalrous. But I’m a wordsmith and was extensively trained in word choice.
The fact that Jamel said he wouldn’t come up ‘until’ I asked him and not ‘unless’ I asked him was where the intent was hiding.
- Unless would’ve meant he was waiting for consent; it would’ve meant that he couldn’t do it unless I was comfortable enough for him to be there which he would only know I was if I actually asked.
- Until meant he was waiting for the power of my permission; it meant he was aware he had permission (and could’ve come up if he wanted) but wouldn’t do it because he needed to gage how codependent I was becoming on him by having me express a greater level of attachment to him. Again, he would have only known this was the case if I had finally asked him to come upstairs, into my house.
(What bothers me about this now is knowing how evil he really was and understanding, on a spiritual level, that evil requires permission to enter your home or your life. He was asking for exactly that and I gave it to him.)
Coming from a covert narcissist, this strategy makes perfect sense.
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The Covert Narcissist’s Pathological Need for Power
I didn’t realize it at the time but Jamel was taking my refusal to invite him to my house as a rejection. He felt he should’ve had the power over my emotions and desire for him by then to have influenced me to do so already.
When things hadn’t panned out as he had estimated he initiated the conversation in his conversation to speed things along. But it was the fact that he even had to initiate the conversation that was the problem.
In the mind of this covert narcissist, all that love-bombing should’ve given me enough dopamine to get me hooked on him enough to want him at my house. Especially since it was enough to get me to sleep with him so quickly. No invite meant it wasn’t enough.
But the reason why it was blowing up in his face was because of the fact that I genuinely wasn’t aware of the tactic being used and because I genuinely needed a break from my rough neighborhood.
I thought he wanted me in his space but he just wanted the power of knowing that I wanted him in my personal space and the power of withholding and avoiding long enough for me to ask for it.
He withheld in order for me to place the power of choice in his hands.
All of this was done without words — meaning all of this was being done covertly. When I never asked, I injured him. Covert narcissists are lethal when it comes to retribution.
This would make sense as to why he would attack me in a much more vulnerable manner, using sex as a weapon to literally withhold oral sex long enough for me to get frustrated enough to break down and practically beg for it.
Because the issue wasn’t that he didn’t want to do it nor was it something that was against his beliefs. He just wanted me to ask for it — to beg for it — in order to give him the power of choosing whether or not I would receive it. But my breakdown was good enough.
Maybe more than what he anticipated.
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Here’s Why Withholding Works in the Bedroom
Withholding is an abuse tactic that strengthens the addiction narcissist victims have to their abusers.
In fact:
intermittent reinforcement of positive behaviors throughout the abuse cycle is a tactic that allows dopamine to flow more readily in the brain, creating reward circuits in the brain associated with the abuser, and ultimately strengthening the addictive “trauma bond” between abuser and victim (Carnell, 2012; Fisher, 2016).
In my case, sex, itself, was the positive reinforcement because even though he wasn’t giving me oral he was still touching me. It left room for hope.
And disappointment.
This is how I was being conditioned and didn’t even realize it because Jamel’s strategy of withholding didn’t involve him outwardly shaming me or saying anything at all negative about my body, my hygiene, or my performance in bed; or even his desire for me based on all three components.
(All of the things that I felt could explain his avoidance of that one area of my body.)
In fact, it involved him not saying — or literally, doing — anything at all. Yet, all four of these intimate areas of my self-esteem and self-worth were attacked because of his inactivity. It was this silence in his actions and his words that kept speaking volumes, and he knew it.
What was leaving me somewhat satisfied, while grasping at straws, was the fact that he was still having sex with me in the bedroom despite never giving me oral. Therefore, it left room for hope. And he knew that.
This was a covert devaluation technique Jamel was using to wound me intimately. He prolonged the use of it long enough to trigger me into basically breaking down.
He did this with the intention of establishing a power dynamic between us in the bedroom where I would give but wait to receive. He knew he had gotten what he wanted the moment I begged for the bare minimum.
Now, it was clear that I had successfully been conditioned to believe that the power of my sexual reciprocity was left solely in his hands.
Conditioning me to understand this was important because this stigma was likely to spill over into other areas of the relationship, leaving me in the illusion of being powerless to experience the dopamine I was now hooked on without him.
See: Dopamine: The Narcissist’s Greatest Weapon Against You
This made me easier to control and manipulate while turning me into a reliable source of supply. And it all started in the bedroom.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean? | My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence |
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Photo credit: Mike Lloyd on Unsplash