It was the query that I couldn’t reply: Did he ever care about me? Can narcissists love you?
I’d lie awake at evening and surprise how he might have checked out me the best way he had if he didn’t love me.
When love is a lie, can individuals faux enlarged pupils and do they have a look at you with their lips barely parted, as if they’re dying of thirst and you’re a pool of countless water?
Do you look into their eyes and see your self mirrored again like rays of gold illuminating a forgotten darkness?
Do you catch them watching you want possibly you might be made from magic?
May I actually have been so improper? May I’ve misinterpret him so utterly? Was all of it only a recreation to him then, and was he simply pretending?
And but if he liked me that a lot, how might he have betrayed me so deeply and on so many ranges, repeatedly.
And the way might he, after I confronted him, say the chilly, merciless issues to me about his betrayals?
How might he shut me out so many occasions as if I meant nothing and discard me to be with another person, when all I ever wished to do was be his girlfriend?
I spent hours out of evenings, that amounted first to days, after which, finally, weeks, turning this query over repeatedly in my thoughts.
For 2 years, I went over the small print, placing every one I might recall in an imaginary “sure” or a “no” column. The place does this incident go? What about this one?
I’d have myself satisfied that he did love me. I’d keep in mind issues I’d found by chance that he’d by no means supposed me to know that appeared to point that he did– textual content conversations he’d had with different individuals, photos of him carrying my bracelet on his marriage ceremony day. [Read: 5 Reasons Lovebombing is a Stealth Danger]
Why would he have taken these actions or had these conversations until he liked me? He couldn’t use them to impress me if he had not supposed for me to seek out out about them.
Then I’d additionally keep in mind the key issues he had accomplished to betray me that he’d additionally by no means supposed me to seek out out about, the issues he’d by no means meant to indicate me as a result of they might have tampered with the picture he wished to current to me: all the opposite ladies he’d mentioned he liked, all of the horrible issues he’d mentioned about me to them.
None of it made any sense.
Whereas we had been nonetheless collectively, I requested him if he liked me dozens of occasions, ready to listen to one thing that will make the world he had known as love when he constructed it cease circling me so I might cease feeling loopy.
His responses ranged from loving (“In fact I did. You’re the love of my life”) to enraged (“If you happen to can’t see my love for you, then nothing I did was ever adequate for you”). Neither of these responses, nor the rest he ever mentioned that fell in between these extremes, put the items in place. [Read: Things Narcissists Say to Give Themselves Away]
Did he or didn’t he?
Selecting love/not love as the ultimate reply was the puzzle I might by no means clear up.
In all honesty, I do know that he’s the one one who will ever actually know whether or not he liked me or not. Nobody can learn his thoughts, and it doesn’t matter what he says, nobody will ever know whether or not it’s the reality when a lot of what he does and says is a lie.
But, it’s not regular to come back away from a relationship unclear about whether or not or not you had been even liked. What I wished was a method to fairly reconcile his contradictory behaviors in a manner that made sense in the best way that I had skilled them.
There needed to be a method to clarify the way it was potential that he might interact in acts of affection and acts of betrayal almost concurrently. Even when I didn’t like the reply, I wanted to grasp how that was potential so as to make sense of my previous.
Studying most books and articles on narcissists had been no assist.
Virtually all the things I learn mentioned that narcissists had been incapable of affection. In different phrases, he meant solely the acts of betrayal and his acts of affection had been false– meant to elicit what he might get from me.
This rationalization appeared incomplete and incompatible with what I’d skilled, nonetheless. It additionally appeared like a blanket assertion, on condition that the literature doesn’t even agree on what causes narcissism. [Read: The Unlucky 13 Different Types of Narcissism]
I continued to analysis to seek out out whether or not it was even potential for narcissists to like, which might point out an expertise extra consistent with the one I had had.
I did certainly discover some analysis to help this concept. All of it said, nonetheless, that there are limitations on that love. [Read: Can a Narcissist Love? It’s Complicated]
They’ll love you so long as you don’t criticize them– and so they understand mentioning any of their wrongdoing, regardless of how gently– as criticism.
They’ll love you so long as you retain supplying no matter it’s that brings them happiness.
They’ll love you so long as you might be completely satisfied and so long as the main target of consideration is totally on them.
They’ll love you so long as you allow them to management sufficient features of your life in order that they don’t really feel threatened.
If you happen to do carry up how you may have been harm or don’t present them with sufficient consideration or do something that feels threatening, they really feel wounded, as if you are the one who doesn’t love them, and may interact in horrendous acts of “revenge.”
They lack one thing known as “object fidelity,” and are unable to stay a constant, reliable individual when you may have an argument or do one thing they don’t like. You stop to be “good” of their eyes. [See: The Ultimate Narcissistic Abuse Dictionary]
I stored looking for extra solutions. One of many major underpinnings of Dialectical Behavioral Remedy is that two seemingly contradictory concepts will be true on the similar time.
For instance, I can settle for myself the best way I’m at this second and I can even know I would like to vary one thing about myself. By means of acceptance of those concepts, we are able to validate the place we are actually and in addition empower ourselves to do one thing otherwise.
May this concept be utilized to a narcissistic relationship? Did he have to like me or hate me?
With this concept in thoughts, over time, my query modified.
I not wished to know if he liked me or not. I started to suppose philosophically about what love actually is and who will get to outline it. Is that this actually love? If I’m not allowed to be an entire individual with my very own considerations and wishes and nonetheless have him love me, is it love? If he felt it as love, does that make it love? [Read: Getting Over a Narcissist Means Reflecting on Love]
“I by no means lied to you about my love for you,” he mentioned to me many occasions.
I imagine that he believes that. And but the energy of that love might solely ever be as highly effective because the worst of the issues he ever did to me all these occasions he couldn’t faux to be blind anymore, and, nonetheless, he did them anyway.
His incapability to grasp that is what so clearly illuminates him as a narcissist. [Read: When Did I Realize He Was a Narcissist?]
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