Your experience with a Narcissist is dependent on the role YOU play in their life.
You can spend as little as a month or as long as multiple decades before you find out whats really going on around you…if you ever do.
You could spend your whole life in complete oblivion.
That is one reason why people find it difficult to believe what you experienced…and you yourself will find it difficult to believe what you experienced.
The other noteworthy reason…is that they behave differently for EVERYONE.
They are shape shifters and very perceptive…they contort themselves to mirror back to you what they perceive you are looking for…so you find them very appealing at first…because they are mirroring YOU back to YOU.
You feel like you have found someone ‘special’…because people love to see themselves in others.
Plus that kind of breadcrumbing love feels ‘familiar’ to you.
Soon…YOU get to experience their REAL self…because their mask drops with time and familiarity…and how accommodating YOU are to their many insecurities…and you still will question your role.
If you give in to EVERYTHING a narcissist wants, you can live a very ‘content’ life.
I did for a very long time in my marriage. We were together for almost 23 years…almost 28 until death do us part.
I think by year 15…I started getting restless…I started to realize none of my needs were getting fulfilled…and if I voiced my opinion…it was creating a turbulence in our life.
Not a solution…but a turbulence.
He was never violent or rude to me…never cheated or abused me in cycles…he was just very selfish and self absorbed.
If things didn’t go his way…there was NO compromise.
Even his ‘compromises’ were slanted his way.
It’s not that bad…
It’s not that important…
It’s not such a big deal….
Was how I justified me giving in to such an arrangement…for peace…white knuckling through life.
You have to make yourself ‘small’ to accommodate them and live in peace…
THAT is not a recipe for peace of mind.
I was groomed to adapt to Narcissists by Narcissists.
My threshold for tolerance of nonsense WAS very high…for the same reason.
I may have lived my whole life unaware if it wasn’t for that last experience.
I’ve had different experiences with different degrees of the same kind of person. Most of them were pretty ‘smooth sailing’ until I stopped conforming to accommodate their insecurities.
Narcissism is a spectrum…
People with Narcissistic traits to NPD to full blown Psychopath.
I was groomed slowly as the narcissists I experienced grew worse.
Until I experienced a greater narcissist.
They are called greater…not because they are great but because and they are completely aware of what they are doing…because they have done this so many times…they have perfected their ‘role’.
As with EVERYTHING…practice makes perfect!
Ironically…I was subsequently groomed by a Narcissist to have really strong boundaries with narcissists.
He was the perpetrator as well as the perfect exemplar specimen…a teaching tool.
I have been lucky to experience a wide range of them.
Practice makes perfect!
And of course, a familial or a platonic narcissistic experience plays out differently depending on YOUR role in that relationship as well.
Basically…YOUR role determines how ‘successful’ the relationship will be.
And I use the word ‘successful’ loosely…
These are not successful relationships by any means…
These are ALL very uncomfortable relationships…depending on your participation or I should say non-participation.
The world is full of scammers, users and abusers…
YOU are the required necessary element…
Narcissim does not occur in a vacuum…it requires participants…YOU are that participant…
There is no abuse without YOUR participation…
YOU have a choice to not participate…
Unknowingly YOU ‘chose’ to stay stuck in an uncomfortable situation…because of a lifelong faulty programming…grooming.
At some point in your life, someone put the chains around your neck and you chose to swallow the key to those chains…and stay put.
And that’s why you think you are stuck in this position of ‘no choice’.
***Always remember you have a choice and the choice is always yours…Not his hers or theirs***
Even though we loved ALL these people your love was not reciprocated kindly…in the way you deserved.
Your love is REAL and YOURS…you can take it with you.
You loved them at the risk and to the extent of unloving YOURSELF.
YOUR role that you play is what determines the severity or the longevity of this experience.
The longer you ignore and deny the reality…the worse it gets…the longer you will ignore and deny the reality!
