LEARNING OF THE NARCISSIST´S LIFE CYCLE!

THE NARCISSIST LIVES IN CONTINUAL CYCLES, WHICH AS EACH ONE GOES ROUND AND ROUND RIGHT BACK TO THE BEGINNING AGAIN, THEY DIG THEMSELVES DEEPER AND DEEPER DOWN! AND THEY WILL TAKE YOU DOWN WITH THEM TOO! POST NO.23/N (An 11 minute read)

Between my sister and NARCISSIST, I had just been witness to a full NARCISSISTIC life cycle. The LOVE-BOMBING phase, when two people as yet unknown to each other meet and try to impress the other by being charming, flirty, funny and amenable. That I clearly saw both my sister and NARCISSIST do.

They were both showing their FALSE-SELVES of course, but they were testing each other. Next comes the preparation for the DISCARD/REJECT phase, which is the DEVALUATION phase. When those FALSE-SELVES turn and you see the REAL-SELVES in all their true NARCISSISTIC ugliness. This was triggered by my sister´s request to turn the volume down on the TV, which was perceived as an attempt at dominance.

Therefore, she had to be put in her place, which of course, had to be beneath him! That is what the DEVALUATION is about; putting someone down deliberately as a backlash REACTION to the inferiority complex rising all of a sudden. What maybe he was not expecting was my sister´s REACTION in return!

She instantly DEVALUED him too and told him what she REALLY thought of him, not what the FAWNING FALSE-SELF had apparently thought! They both DISCARDED/REJECTED each other simultaneously both being NARCISSIST, though normally it is the NARCISSIST´S victim who is DEVALUED and DISCARDED.

From his side, well, he withdrew his welcome to her and told her that she should not come again. "You´re not wanted here!" From her side, well, "Like I could ever want to see you again, mate!" Mutual DEVALUATION and DISCARD. Next comes the fourth and final phase of the NARCISSIST´S life cycle!

The SILENT treatment! IGNORING you totally; you have ceased to exist in their eyes. They STONE-WALL you and will not even answer you if you speak to them. This period of SILENCE is designed to let you stew in your misery, really wallow in your sorrow and give you time to lick your wounds.

Then forseeing a use for you coming up soon, its back to the beginning of a new cycle of nice behaviour again. Not the passionate, heady, full-on LOVE-BOMBING that you had at the beginning of the very first spin around the NARCISSISTIC life-cycle, OH, NO! They will never make that much effort for your approval again!

They don´t need to because they can now see how you are fixed! If my sister wanted to see me and her son, she would also have to see him and unless she got her act together and behaved like a responsible mother, that would have to be the way of things: would it not? She was over a barrel but so was he! 

She had stood her ground and had not been INTIMIDATED! That meant that she had stronger boundaries than me then and so she could be a potential threat to him. And so, two days later and he is being really nice to us all again. No apologies, no mention of the aggressive and violent outbursts, as if none of that had ever happened.

I was sadly familiar with this pattern in my own family home. It was my elder sister and my mother who would repeat this pattern over and over again. But their outbursts of NARCISSISTIC rage were never referred to again. My father and I would just think, "Let´s hope that doesn´t happen again!" But of course, it would, it is the life-cycle of the NARCISSIST unfortunately.

Get two NARCISSISTS under the same roof and it will be a very volatile place to live until one of them leaves. The difference to the atmosphere in my family home after my elder sister left was incredible. A very different kind of PEACE descended on the home and in all honesty; it FELT better that way.

HOOVERING, that is what he is doing now, HOOVERING you! Trying to suck you back into his game of playing FALSE-SELVES and all being friends! It was a total FARCE then and it still is now! The LOVE-BOMBING only happens once and that is at the beginning of every relationship. 

Once you are completely ENMESHED, the LOVE-BOMBING is replaced by HOOVERING which requires a lot less effort. He paid so much attention to you in the early days that he knows full well how to make you happy and so he decides to do a few things to make you FEEL happier again and return to the beginning of what will now be YOUR life-cycle too!

LETTING THE DUST SETTLE AFTER THE NARCISSISTIC CLASH!

I was very tearful saying "Goodbye" to my sister. She said that she would really get moving on the home and school front now when she got back, I think she could see that it was not a good idea to stay here with the NARCISSIST. No more was said regarding the outbursts and the dust settled once more.

The NARCISSIST´S brother, who was a window fitter, came and replaced the broken glass window. He looked remarkably like the NARCISSIST physically but did not seem quite so aggressive and he was very polite, friendly and pleasant to me and Puppy.

Our routine carried on in the same way until the end of June when the spring/summer school term came to its end. For the first few weeks, Puppy came to the office with me but then the NARCISSIST said that as he didn´t have too much work on, "I didn´t really need to come in every day!"

It was nearing a year since we had left England and I was wanting to go back. Could I convince the NARCISSIST to go? I was amazed when he said how much he had wanted to go to England and so we began planning our first Summer Holiday. If only I had known how things sat economically, I would never had suggested this trip at all!

We had borrowed a tent from a contact and had the car packed up. We were going to drive across Spain from east to west, then up the western French coastline and take a ferry over to England. From there we would spend some days down in the south of my home island, before heading up to my home city to see my family!

I was overjoyed. The NARCISSIST seemed so enthusiastic and I was really wanting to show Puppy some of our beautiful birth island. I was missing my home and it was now two years since I had been back. It was moving towards two years since our father died and we were a long way from fully healing from that loss.

I was still doing a lot of crying and my NARCISSIST was still doing a lot of comforting. This is what I remember him for most when I think back to this particular year of 1995. I was an emotional wreck, I was grieving so heavily that he really did see the depth of my capacity to FEEL love, as well as my ability to express all of my FEELINGS! 

LAND´S END, CORNWALL, UK. Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash.

MY FIRST TRIP TO MY HOME ISLAND WITH A MALE NARCISSIST!

The trip went absolutely fine for the first few days, until we arrived on English soil actually. In spite of having wanted all his life to go to England, suddenly he was all tension. FEAR, that FEAR of the unknown. The FEAR of not being able to cope but why did he need to be AFRAID, he was with me?

None of this was unknown to me! I had been camping before, I had travelled down here before, therefore, I was the natural leader of this expedition. I am a natural leader full stop and therein the NARCISSIST´S big problem. That damned INFERIORITY COMPLEX. 

She knows so much more than me! She has so much more experience and knowledge of the world than me! She is so much more SELF-ASSURED and CONFIDENT than me! Shouldn´t those all be considered positive attributes? Well, of course, the NARCISSIST can see all these qualities of your´s, that is what makes you such a great deal!

Why does he have to DEVALUE and DISCARD/REJECT you, instead of EVALUATING you as any NORMAL person would? ENVY and SHAME lie at the root of this systematic process of DEVALUATION and DISCARDING/REJECTING anyone who knows more than him, or who is a more competent person than him!

You make him FEEL his littleness so accutely and he processes that as a NARCISSISTIC INJURY and he does not like being injured by you! You have to be PUNISHED for being a competent, confident, self-assured person. "You have no right to be that way and get any approval for it. No one has even given me any approval!"

Maybe not surprisingly, approval is most surely lacking in a NARCISSIST´S life, so lacking in fact, that they only seek the approval of those who can benefit them in some way. They will certainly not waste any time or energy on trying to impress those closer to them either, except when in HOOVERING phase.

Having touched down on home soil, I was very apprehensive and with good reason. We pulled into a camp site and were shown where we could "pitch" our tent. Meantime I go into the office to pay up as we wanted to leave early in the morning.

On the way across to our pitch I can hear an aggressive, raised voice whose words fortunately only I understood! I could not believe it. It was late and the man from the neighbouring pitch had come out and offered to help the NARCISSIST put up the tent!

I know that the NARCISSIST did not speak English but this man was so polite and unaggressive that I just could not understand how the NARCISSIST was misinterpreting this kind gesture. "Keep your nose out of my business! Who the hell do you think you are to come telling me what to do? Get lost!"

That is me putting it politely!! I was so relieved that no one understood his ugly words. Straight away I apologized profusely to this man which of course back-fired in the following way! "No sooner have you got your foot on home soil and your lining up your next conquest!"

He was disturbing the sleeping campers and I told him curtly that the "GENTLEMAN" who had come over had been offering to help him put the tent up! His REACTION to that? I won´t repeat his words but suffice to say, they bore no goodwill towards the afore mentioned gentleman. 

I was grateful that we slipped out very early in the morning and I did not have to see his face in daylight! This trip was shaping up badly now and I was regretting bringing the NARCISSIST. I was beginning to see that I could not go anywhere with him and FEEL fully at ease. I just never knew how he would behave!

PARANOIA and HYPER-VIGILANCE are NARCISSIST RED FLAGS, without knowing exactly how or why, you are already beginning to pre-meditate the behaviour patterns of the NARCISSIST. You are seeing how difficult he finds it to cope with anything or anyone new! Can I take him anywhere?

Thank you ALL over in Hong Kong for your company! It makes for painful reading at the moment I am sad to say but I have to see my reality as it REALLY is. In the next post I will continue with this trip and I will get my first (or at least I thought it was my first!), severe DEVALUATION and DISCARD. And the PARANOIA and HYPER-VIGILANCE become my norm!

Any comments would be very welcome. Do have a great day, hopefully NARCISSIST free!