THE NARCISSIST BUILDS A FALSE-SELF!

YOU MET AN ACTOR WHO PLAYED THE PART THAT YOU NEEDED HIM TO PLAY WHEN YOU FIRST CROSSED PATHS WITH HIM! POST NO.15/N (A 12 minute read)

Every NARCISSIST hides their real self from daily view and indeed, there will be very few people who will have even the tiniest idea that this person in front of them is so dramatically psychologically traumatized. So terribly traumatized in fact, that they enact the same scenarios that caused their trauma originally, over and over again.

Though now with other people being unwittingly duped into becoming part of this unstable and unhealthy attempt at living, that marks the MALIGNANT NARCISSIST´S whole life. In my NARCISSIST partner´s case, it was his father who caused all the trauma and his mother was his saviour, his life-support machine if you like!

He was not properly prepared for life as an independent young male. He had been given little access to academic learning and no access to skills training by his parents. He had to pick his own way in the adult working world by himself as a 14-year-old. With no help or encouragement from his father of course.

On the contrary sadly, being NARCISSIST, his father would sneer, jeer, belittle and rubbish the attempts of his sons to find employment. He was anything but supportive, although he had no qualms at all in extracting money from his sons for their board and keep. "Now that they had their own money, they could all find themselves somewhere else to live!" He had done his bit by them as father; as he saw things!

ASHAMED OF WHO YOUR PARENTS ARE AND HOW THEY REFLECT ON YOU!

Well, YES! I can well understand why my NARCISSIST partner was so ashamed of his father; I would have been. Worse still, his father was well known for being a foul-mouthed, belligerent, aggressive type in their neighbourhood and they were known as HIS sons!!! They were associated with HIM at every step of their childhood and early teenage years.

They were not associated with their mother; NO! Who was she? She could have been a goddess but as her husband was a demonic NARCISSIST, it was HE who the whole neighbourhood could not help but know. She was HIS chattel and they were HIS sons. They were not allowed, even by the wider society, to be considered as separate from HIM!

HE was the domineering King of their miserable castle, though it resembled more the dungeons of a castle. The mother was dressed in rags and spent her days trying to bring a speck of decency into their tragically humble abode! HE might have been proud of HIS castle and HIS chattel but HIS sons were totally ashamed of HIM and HIS castle.

In truth, the sons were ashamed of their mother too. She tried to excuse their father and give HIM the reason! She comforted them but did not support them. Worst of all though maybe, was her failure to teach them any independence skills at all. She treated them as she treated her MASTER. She was subservient to her sons too.

Herein I believe, the IDEALIZATION of the mother and the need to convert you into one and the same as the mother! More on that further on!

NO! Their childhood was all, NO, NO, NO and once again, NO! My NARCISSIST partner and his brothers did not have as much as one toy ever between the four of them. They never had as much as one book between them, they had no games at all and they certainly did not have a garden space to play in either.

We like to say that these children come from UNDERPRIVILEGED backgrounds and that would be absolutely true. They have had nothing given to them by their father´s other than the bare minimum of food to keep them  alive. They never had enough to eat as both my partner and my mother-in-law have told me.

Clothes were passed down from one brother to another and patched up. Only the elder brother knew what it was to have clothes bought for you personally! Always wearing shabby, second-hand clothes and just a few changes of clothes too. So, always ashamed of their personal appearance as well as their home and parents. They were known as the poor kids of a lazy, good-for-nothing B*****D! Which is what they were, sadly for the four of them!

THE CHAMELEON; THE MASTER OF DISGUISE! Photo by Michael Held on Unsplash.

ENTER THE NEW ME, MY FALSE-SELF!

I can see and readily understand how and why a person who has had to bear so much shame and embarrassment, which is being heaped on them by their own father at such a young age, needs to escape from their own reality; I really can. No, I would not want anyone to know that my father was a wife-beating, child-beating, abusive monster who was so awful that he could not keep a job for many weeks at a time.

Hence they were always penniless. Always going without all that they could have wanted and also going without nine tenths of what they needed too. They had no options of music classes or swimming lessons! They could not even go on the yearly school day trip! Their family poverty being their daily cross to bear!

Society being what it is, as children we are terribly cruel and the shabbily dressed have always been singled out for criticism. Was my partner the only one in the neighbourhood? No, not at all! The Spanish society has long been completely NARCISSIST. Far too many NARCISSIST males have dragged good women and good children down into their miserable mire of poverty! 

Would you want anyone to know your REAL TRUTH? Of course you would not and so, the lies and the covering up begin. The life of the PRETEND person kicks off. This new PRETEND person is everything that the REAL person is not. Maybe most importantly, is that this new FALSE-SELF FEELS no pain!!!!

This new FALSE-SELF FEELS no shame. This new FALSE-SELF is tough and strong, he does not need love and affection, of course not!! This new FALSE-SELF could barely wait to leave home and become independent of his mother and father!! This new FALSE-SELF did not need parents, he was OMNI-POTENT, he could fend for himself!

And so it is that a sad, traumatized male child leaves the parental home at just 17 years of age, with the solid intention of never giving his father the satisfaction of knowing that he was struggling out in the cold, cruel, working world of man-kind. Whatever he had to do to survive, he would do but he would never, ever let his father know that he was doing poorly.

SHORT-LIVED DAYS OF INDEPENDENCE

Oh, no! Males like my NARCISSIST partner were not taught independence skills! No, their only hope of life without their mother and father´s protection (humble as that may have been), was in latching on to a woman who could provide some useful leverage to that already failing young man.

And so it was that at 21 years of age, my male NARCISSIST partner got married and began life as a couple! The single life for him, had lasted no more than 4 years. But his version of events had him sell me a story that I can now, in retrospect see, was exactly the opposite to the REAL TRUTH of his failed marriage.

I can also see in retrospect how he saw me as another one of her and yes, I can see that we came from similar families and backgrounds. We both had completely normal (as we saw things then) lives and relationships prior to meeting a male NARCISSIST. Whether he was her first NARCISSIST or not; I cannot know. As told already though; he was not my first one!!

According to him, by virtue of her becoming pregnant she had cajoled him into "doing the right thing" and marrying her. Not withstanding, a termination of the pregnancy was sought as he discovered that he was not the father of the pregnant wife. The relationship therefore, began with her deception, as was his version of events.

A period of 8 years passed before she became pregnant again, now by HIS choice! But I have always doubted that my NARCISSIST male partner was this child´s biological father. That aside, he acted (of course), as though he were the perfect father and husband.

MOVING UP IN THE WORLD!

Having managed to get the Princess married to you, you had to now work on her family and ingratiate yourself with them. After all, it was her grand-father and father who had the access to finances. They literally propped him up financially and he set up his own business. From thereon he lapsed into the life of a single, independent male!

The perfect father and husband image was all for show. I know myself how well he can play that part. Others really would not believe us if we were ever to tell them all that has been said and done to us and our children by these NARCISSIST males. He had seen the leverage that he could get through this relationship and had schemed his way to becoming his own boss!

He did not need the wife beyond the cleaning, cooking, shit absorbing and venom absorbing. He had money of his own now and he could sexually amuse himself independently from her. The son was just another burden, who was quite severely traumatized by these two people, his parents! 

Apparently, he wanted out but she refused to accept his wishes and deliberately became pregnant again, the first child now being 6 years old. This was according to him. Now this daughter was unmistakably his biological child. She was identical and sadly, in character too.

None the less, it was from her that I learnt the REAL truth even though I did not see it as such at the time. She would repeat what her mother would say and her mother was not poisoning her children against their father, oh, no! She was revealing him for what he really was lest they, in his absence from their lives, got any ideas that he was a wronged Prince Charming.

Which was exactly the story that he sold to me when we first met. In truth, the wife had been trying to get him out of her life for a long time. She had finally succeeded! But could she get him to accept a divorce and payments for the children. In his version of the truth, it was she who would not concede to a divorce and free him up.

We had been together for some 8 years ourselves when he finally dealt with their divorce settlement and he was furious that he had to pay contributions for his children. He hated doing that! He FELT nothing for them or the wife, except HATRED at being cut off from his excellent supply of NARCISSISTIC feed.

Even as I met him, he was embroiled in a very nasty, bitter, aftermath of a NARCISSISTICALLY ABUSIVE MARRIAGE. She became aware that he was what he was. He and his brothers had stolen from her family, lied and cheated. They had shown themselves as a family to be way beneath those of the wife.

Well done to her for having managed to shake him off after just 14 years of HELL and for managing to get her legal divorce and contributions for the children. It was I, myself, who had to go and pay those monies into the mother´s bank account every month until they were both 21 years of age; he could not bring himself to do so. He hated her that much for cutting off his good deal! He gave no other thought to the children.

This therefore, is who I met. A traumatized child who had been forced to SEPARATE from his mother (his permanent carer) and become a totally SEPARATE entity from his father. He had been forced to SEPARATE and INDIVIDUATE before he had developed a full individual, independent character. He was flailing from day one of SOLO life.

Just as every other traumatized child who has not been prepared adequately for independent, adult living. Hence the male ambition of finding a suitable candidate to latch on to. They become PARASITIC, they know that SOLO they cannot survive well, they need help, they need to be DEPENDENT on an adult who can guide them and there lies much of the NARCISSIST´S shame.

He needs CO-DEPENDENCY! By himself, he is nothing. In the next post I will continue to explore the CO-DEPENDENCY strategies of the NARCISSIST male. If anyone has been wondering why the break in writing, please do not forget that I live with a NARCISSIST who is now retired and I have around me 24 hours a day.

He is, as a retired NARCISSIST, almost completely DEPENDENT on me. How is that you may well ask? YES! It took me 28 years to see that it was so, sadly though, I knew that he had forced me to become DEPENDENT on him. But I did not see this as a case of a dual CO-DEPENDENT relationship until very recently.

Thank you all for reading me today and do check back in a few days time for the following post. Have yourselves a great afternoon.