RED FLAG! WATCH OUT; NARCISSIST ABOUT!!!!

COULD WE SEE THE NARCISSIST´S STRATEGIES? MAYBE WE COULD NOT SEE THEM YET WE COULD CERTAINLY FEEL THEM! POST NO.18/N  (A 13 minute read)

Hello again and here we are in the month of March already. I have barely noticed the months of January or February, immersed as I am in my HEALING from NARCISSISTIC abuse. Even though I am still ENMESHED and ENTANGLED with my NARCISSIST male partner, I FEEL that I am making some significant progress in this long, hard process.

WATCH OUT FOR THE RED FLAGS THAT TRIGGER THE RED FLASHING WARNING LIGHTS IN YOU! LISTEN TO YOUR BODY; IT IS RIGHT!

In the last post I began this ill-fated relationship again from our first meeting and pointed out the first NARCISSIST RED FLAG that yes, triggered a REACTIVE SENSATION in me that was not a positive one. Please note that I use the words REACTIVE  SENSATION and it was a negative REACTIVE SENSATION. As opposed to a positive RESPONSIVE SENSATION! 

I tried to say "NO!" to meeting this man later on but he was not prepared to take "NO!" for an answer and that is the first and most crucial RED FLAG to be looking out for if you wish to avoid NARCISSISTS! Even the fact that he did not accept my first few "NOs", made me FEEL intimidated.

That is just what they are intending to do; they are testing your boundaries! Literally seeing if you can withstand their strong, over-bearing, come-on and walk away from them as a free person! The RED FLAGS are there if you will see them and I knew this one; oh, yes, I knew this one!

I had to get back to work! I couldn´t shake him off and finally I capitulated and said "YES!" He had won his first round of his game and as I said, I was in two minds as to whether to leave him asleep in the car and avoid him but I also had the strong FEELING that he would appear again where I was working. This NARCISSIST´S voice was already talking to me when I was away from him!!

The fact that he, a 35 year-old male, sat in his car and waited another three hours for me to finish work rather than have set another time and day to meet, should also have been seen by me as exceptionally suspiscious! So much effort being put into a female that you met one and a half hours ago???? I finished at 2am!

What I can see now today, in this period of retrospective mental torture that I am systematically pushing myself through, is just how much effort he was prepared to put into trapping me and CONVERTING me into his IDEALIZED MOTHER. It almost beggars belief; it really does. I think this is why I need to write it down and see it all lined up.

Like one of those phenomenal domino runs that with one tap, will send thousands of immaculately lined up dominoes all toppling one after the other. That is why it is so necessary to start right at the beginning and see how you and your life has been set up. I am trapped in this life but finally I can see how this HELL has become mine.

THE SECOND NARCISSIST RED FLAG!

SPEED - the breakneck SPEED of the NARCISSIST male when you first meet. As outlined above, the NARCISSIST is prepared to literally drop everything that may be his life; for YOU! That is one of the prime reasons that we FALL for these NARCISSIST male types! 

YES, I know that may sound contradictory but we as females,  mistake this INSISTENCE and PERSISTENCE as ARDOUR because that is what we have been taught to believe. We have been taught as females in our society that it is the male who gives chase after the female.

Indeed, we have been taught that we should not go chasing after men, if we do that we are LOOSE women, whores, tarts, sluts, slags, floosies! The list of names given to a female who should make advances towards a male of her choosing; is long!

That is one of the greatest TABOOS that we have in our western society. It MUST be the male who comes after the female. Well, let me tell you females of this world that this is exactly why there are so many of us killed in our own homes that we share with our NARCISSIST male partner! THEY chose US; WE did not choose THEM!

Back to the SPEED at which the NARCISSIST moves because yes, it is not normal for a mature, adult male to behave in quite the same way. From the first moment onwards, you are trying to set your boundaries and he is continually challenging them until you give in.

When he left the first and only time, I had said we could meet again on the Friday, another five days away. I had a life going on which had a series of obligations and a time schedule. I couldn´t just drop everything. But it seemed that he was ready to do just that, in spite of having his own business!! 

THE NARCISSIST COMES WITH RED FLAGS FLYING! TAKE NOTE!! Photo by Bruno Neurath Wilson on Unsplash.

RED FLAG WARNINGS COMING THICK AND FAST IN THE VERY FIRST WEEK!

Yes, they were all there; listen! That same Monday evening I had arranged to meet the sister of a Moroccan friend who had proposed her as baby-sitter for my nephew. I had explained that my au pair was leaving soon (having suffered a close family death) and she was not going to return.

It had taken so much hard work to get settled initially with her on the paperwork level. She herself was a lovely young French female who both my nephew and I appreciated very much. Up to that point, we had been going out at the weekends together and doing some exploring which was why she had come to Spain.

I could not have lacked sensitivity and pressurized her into staying or returning. NO! I had to accept her decision and support her in it, so I had bought her flight ticket and we were ticking off the days in which she was needing my emotional support very much being away from home as she was. Of course, I gave her all that support even though I was only six years older than her.

Therefore I would have to make alternative arrangements, hence the visit the Monday evening by my male Moroccan friend and his sister. Obviously I had not counted on this new NARCISSIST male´s prescence but what I saw should have been sufficient for me to back-off.

Even as these two people came into my lounge, the NARCISSIST began to bristle. Now in our conversations thus far, I had shared with him some of my thoughts and doings, he had listened quietly and then said that yes, he FELT like that too. 

Racism and prejudging being two of the attributes that I most despise in a person and well, I was aware of his bristling at every moment. I FELT intimidated by his prescence even then though I did not let him know that. Once again, that sensation of INTIMIDATION. NARCISSISTS INTIMIDATE you into SUBMISSION! That is a big NARCISSIST RED FLAG; their INTIMIDATORY tactics.

On leaving I accompanied them to the front door and stood talking in a low voice with my friend."He is a bad sort Gillian! He is no good, I can FEEL it. You don´t want to get mixed up with him!" That is what my friend was saying to me. In twenty minutes he could FEEL that, well, so could I if I am honest with myself.

I was tarrying so long at the door that he came after me. "What´s with all the hushed voices and secrecy?" On the very first occasion of meeting a friend in his prescence, after knowing this male NARCISSIST for less than 72 hours, he has had an issue with that.

POSSESSION - Already he has perceived that he has his foot in my door and that makes me HIS POSSESSION. But also it is the act of making you FEEL so GUILTY for having those particular contacts, talking down those contacts and rubbishing them.

The DOMINATORY tactics are becoming visible. The CONTROLLING of who you speak to. This is the phase where all of your boundaries are being explored and challenged. This was my second contact introduction, the first being the au pair but as HE knew that she was leaving imminently, SHE presented no threat to HIS POSSESSSION and DOMINATION campaign.

That campaign is embarked upon in order to create the NARCISSIST´S FANTASY but sadly his fantasy is to PLAY the role of HIS NARCISSIST father and have me (you) PLAY the role of HIS victimized but still IDEALIZED mother. That was his SHARED FANTASY.

No right minded female would ever want to be part of a SHARED FANTASY that involved them having to become another person (the NARCISSIST´S mother in this case), with whom you have absolutely nothing in common. I think the only things that me and his mother had in common were that we were both female and we had both suffered from parental NARCISSISTIC abuse.

She had been forced into marrying another NARCISSIST male and her fate was sealed. I was now sealing my fate by becoming embued in this sick, twisted, SHARED FANTASY of this hideous male NARCISSIST (her son), who is my partner in life! Whilst I did not have much in common with her previously, I was certainly to SHARE much with her later on!!

Already I could see something that I had seen with many other males before, both NARCISSISTS and non-NARCISSIST, which was that they seemed to deem it necessary to SEPARATE you from your friends, family and contacts. That is the next NARCISSIST RED FLAG. Rubbishing all your contacts, behaving rudely and belligerently with them.

Making you FEEL so uncomfortable for your friends and family because you do not know initially just how UGLY this male NARCISSIST can be. But this was not the first NARCISSIST male that I had known; was it? No, I had seen with two previous NARCISSIST partners just how violent and aggressive they could be towards me and my contacts. 

Eventually you avoid meeting your contacts to PROTECT them from your NARCISSIST´S toxicity! No, I had been here before, but I was a single female who could get up and go before as well! I was still a single female but I was being unwillingly turned into a single mother as well now by my errant NARCISSIST sister and that made all the difference.

CIRCUMSTANCES SO OFTEN FORCE YOUR HAND??!!

I had one sole objective and that was my nephew´s well-being and his emotional stability. He was already clearly suffering from ABANDONMENT trauma, quite understandably so and I was trying my level best to be his substitute EVERYONE and EVERYTHING. He was my reason for existing at that terribly traumatic time of my life.

My father was no more and my elder sister was now in the process of completely SEPARATING herself from her son and INDIVIDUATING herself from being a single-mother who had got her plans all wrong and going back to being the single woman who could just live for herself. 

She thought so like my NARCISSIST male partner did. They just cut off from people. They leave them, go away somewhere new and literally forget about them. Or so it seems! My late elder sister was riddled with GUILT. That GUILT prevented her from being happy at anytime of her life from here on.

But as I have now learnt, just as I have learnt this from my NARCISSIST male partner and his SEPARATION from his children too, is that the GUILT was not caused by their ABANDONMENT of their own biological children. No, the GUILT stemmed initially from the recognition of the reasons why those children existed. 

None of those children had been conceived in honest circumstances. They had all been conceived for calculated reasons. This father (my NARCISSIST) and the mother who was my sister, neither of them wanted parenthood. Neither of them had become ADULT themselves as yet. They were both still trauma bonded to their mother´s!

These were two people who lived DOUBLE lives. I knew and know both of them so closely that I can see the FALSE SELVES of them both. Oddly enough, I used to think that she and he were actually far more compatible than he and I. I could FEEL that they were very similar. Notice I say FEEL because I am INFJ type and I live through my FEELINGS.

When they were both being their FALSE SELVES, they seemed like a perfect couple as I saw things. Two fully ADULT, INDEPENDENT, MATURE people who both made me FEEL like their inferior but they loved me none the less. I was so lucky to have their love.

I have been GUILTY of IDEALIZING all of my close NARCISSIST contacts. My mother, my elder sister and this male who I live with. Just how these three people have CAST their true image of theirselves onto me, is flabbergasting.

It was I who was SEPARATED by the ABANDONMENT of my mother but my elder sister then took on the role of my female mentor. My sister became my substitute mother in my childhood. Any who have read my first book will know of the close relationship that I thought I had shared with my late sister.

Did she use me and take advantage of me? YES, YES, YES, YES and many more times YES. I loved her and I still do because even though I now know that everything she ever did and said was PRE-MEDITATED, she was a wonderful sister to me. She was so much more than a sister to me, she was my mother too!

But I was able to SEPARATE from her in young adulthood and I did INDIVIDUATE though I recognize and clearly talk about this in my first book ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN, that full INDEPENDENCE was a long way off for me still. It had still been a long way off when my father died.

I had become CO-DEPENDENT on my sister again and that was FEELING uncomfortable. I so needed to be INDEPENDENT of her and she INDEPENDENT of her child. I had lost my sense of self when my father died and now my only reason for living was my nephew.

Next post I will continue this first week spent with my male NARCISSIST partner and point out some more red flags which I did recognize but so foolishly, ignored!!

Thank you for reading today! Any comments would be welcome. Are you understanding NARCISSISM even as I am spelling it out? Have you been here yourself? Share please because that is what all victims need to do; SHARE! We were only ever GUILTY of loving UNCONDITIONALLY those who CONDITIONED everything that we said, did, FELT and thought! They were never WORTHY of our love!