My name is Sam Vaknin, and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
This morning, I did a Trump on Minnie. You're fired.
The reason is, she disagreed with me. She told me that I should take off my glasses and smile more often, and I explained to her that this would have three consequences.
The female half of the audience will probably puke. The male half of the audience will reach for their guns, and YouTube will ban or delete my channel for obscene online material.
And then she dared to say, I disagree with you. Minnie is one woman I would never devalue and discard, and here she is.
Earlier today, I uploaded a video to my YouTube channel, a video that was intended to demonstrate to you the power of cognitive dissonance. The video is a 1974 rendition of my Bar Mitzvah. There was a videographer there, and he recorded the entire Jewish ritual. The Bar Mitzvah takes place when a Jewish boy is 13 years old and transitions from childhood to adulthood. This is a rite of passage, in a way, and the whole thing has been recorded. I gave a half an hour speech, and there were hundreds of people in the audience, and so on and so forth, and I uploaded the video.
This created, in many of you, cognitive dissonance, because you are supposed to hate narcissists. You are supposed to despise them. You are supposed to consider every aspect of their personality and conduct and even appearance to be repulsive, off-putting, hateful.
And here I am, on this Bar Mitzvah video. Pretty cute, even if I say so. Very self-assured, very, well, relatively well-dressed, addressing the public very confidently, and so on and so forth.
There are almost non-negative aspects in this video. Most of you could not reconcile these two elements, the hatred and contempt you feel towards narcissists. And the fact that he was a narcissist, a humanized narcissist, a narcissist, I gave you access to my childhood. I showed you that I haven't been such a monster when I was 13 years old, and you couldn't put the two things together.
This created an avalanche of hate speech. I received hundreds of hateful, deriding, contemptuous, violent, aggressive comments. There were very few positive comments. A vast majority of people found it very unsettling, this contradiction.
And this is a perfect example of intermittent reinforcement. The narcissist is never constant, never stable. One minute is a monster, and the next minute he's a kind, gregarious, generous, even altruistic person, charitable in a way. He's a giver. One minute he is a buffoon, full of himself, full, pompous, grandiose, verbose. And the next minute is actually sagacious and perspicacious. Look these words up in the dictionary.
So it's very difficult to reconcile the narcissist. It's very difficult to establish a single position with regards to the narcissist because the narcissism is a case, as I've been saying for well over 25 years, narcissism is a case, in my view, a private case of multiple personality disorder. It's a private case of dissociative identity disorder being a post-traumatic condition.
And my Bar Mitzvah video only proves this.
When you're confronted with conflicting aspects and dimensions of the narcissist's personality, traits, behaviors, you can't put them together.
And this creates in you an inner conflict known as a dissonance, in this case, cognitive dissonance.
And there's nothing more anxiety producing, anxiety inducing than a dissonance.
So being with a narcissist is a constant state of anxiety. And a lot of this anxiety doesn't emanate from the narcissist actually. It emanates from your inner dialogue, your inner dialogue.
He's a monster, but he's cute. He's an ugly person, but actually sometimes he's handsome. Look at him. He is devilish. Look at him. He's a cutie pie.
How do you put these two things together? You don't, because both of them exist in the narcissist.
This is not today's topic, as Mimi keeps reminding me. Today's topic is the way the narcissist goes through three phases, three phases in his relationships.
You remember yesterday, we discussed the three roles that the narcissist assigns to women in his life, admirer, fan, and then playmate, and then mother.
Now these three roles correspond to three phases in the evolution of every relationship with the narcissist.
By the way, not only with women, but today we confine ourselves to romantic relationships or intimate relationships, but actually this applies to business, workplace, any other environment where narcissists reach a modicum of intimacy with people.
Still, again, today we're going to discuss women and the narcissist in his relationships goes through three phases, the shared fantasy, the interstitial phase, and anti-fantasy.
Now before we go there, we need to ask ourselves, why do narcissists make promises they cannot keep? Why do they lie about the depth and intensity of their alleged ostensible emotions? Why do they mislead women? Why do they deceive them into believing that they are open to long-term relationships and so on and so forth.
First of all, because many narcissists cannot obtain sex. They are not the material for casual sex. They are all, they are unattractive, and frankly they are narcissistic. Even the most good looking narcissist at some phase, the mask falls and you see that it's a jerk. It's an obnoxious person, not very conducive to sex.
There's a problem with casual sex, but there is an even deeper problem.
Contrary to misinformation online, and most of the so-called information online is misinformation, there is heterosexual psychopathic narcissist usually shun casual sex and one might stand because they feel objectified by the women counterparts and they abhor the equipotence. They abhor the fact that in casual sex, there's a power symmetry. Both men and women have equal power. They hate to be in a situation where they have equal power.
Sacrepati narcissists are mildly sadistic. They need to dominate the female, reduce her to unthinking submission. This can be brought on only by unrequited or tantalizing craving. Once they have reduced her to this state of submission, they make the woman act in ways that she would find normally shameful, hurtful, denigrating, guilt inducing. They make her trash herself. It's faintly sadistic and sometimes not so faintly.
To reach this state, it's very rare to reach this state in casual sex. None of these can be accomplished in brief anonymous encounters.
Grooming takes time, effort, careful planning and preparations and repeated exposure to the psychopathic narcissist.
On the other hand, psychopathic narcissists and narcissists with psychopaths, they're not made for love affairs. They lack basic courting skills and intersex or intergender protocols. They are bored by other people. They are not really into companionship. They are very childlike in this sense.
What they want to have is what I call the three S's. They want to have supply, narcissistic supply. They want to have sex and it's usually childlike sex. It's childish. It's kind of a fucking fun if you wish. They want to have services. They want to be served. They can't have casual sex or casual sex doesn't fit them that well because they're not in sadistic domination in casual sex. They can't really have love affair because they have no access to their emotions. They're not really interested in the other party. They have no empathy. They don't grasp intimacy in all its intricacies. They're afraid actually. They feel threatened by intimacy and so on.
So love is out of the window. Casual sex is out of the other window of the door.
What's left? What's left is pretension. Narcissists and psychopaths pretend that they're interested in long term committed adult relationships and they do this in order to get women to date them and have sex with them. This deception is what I call the shared fantasy.
At some point it backfires in a second stage which I call the interstitial phase.
We're going to discuss all these phases in great detail. That's a long video. One of the videos you love to hate. So there's a deception, shared fantasy, then it backfires into interstitial phase where women try to, so to speak, catch the check.
And then it leads to a cremonious breakups brought on usually by cheating and triangulation and heartbreak all around.
And that's in the anti-fantasy stage, the third stage.
Of course, narcissists and psychopaths are not interested in women. They're not interested in people. They're not able to grasp the distinctiveness, the separateness, the individuality, the autonomy, the agency of other people.
They regard other people as 2D, 2D contraptions, this kind of animated functions. They internalize people, as I said yesterday, and they interact with the internal object. They interact with the snapshots for them.
Narcissists and psychopaths live in a world of shadows where when people move around them, when someone touches them and so on, it's like a shadow would.
Very often you would see a recoil, a physical recoil. When you touch a narcissist or psychopath, they recoil. It's like a startled reaction.
And it is technically a startled reaction, a part of post-traumatic condition.
So narcissists and psychopaths use sex and they use love bombing to groom and secure a woman, to provide them with any two of the three aforementioned essays. Remember, supply, sex, services? And they do all this within the stage called share fantasy, which I will describe shortly.
But even as they are inside the deception, even as they share the fantasy with a female candidate, so to speak, they anticipate the next phases.
They anticipate the interstitial phase and the anti-fantasy. They know that it's going to culminate in cheating, triagulation, abandonment, loss.
So they keep the relationship provisional and at a later stage, sexless and definitely emotionally uninvolved.
So sometimes they are able to reach an accommodation with their so-called intimate partner. So they have open relationships or open marriages where they receive one of the essays from the intimate partner and another is from another woman and so on and so forth.
So these become like herons, herons of women, each one providing one of the essays.
And in such arrangements, open marriages and open relationships, of course, the intimate partner, the narcissists and psychopaths intimate partner is also allowed to outsource her needs, to be with other men, to cheat consensually. And there's no hurting vote. There are no emotional repercussions to this kind of arrangement.
But this is a minority of the cases. According to latest statistics, it's about 3% of the cases. In 97% of the cases, both parties, psychopathic narcissist and his intimate partner, go through all three phases inexorably, repeatedly, again and again, like some kind of perpetual mobility, deranged perpetual mobility.
Let's start with the shared fantasy phase.
The shared fantasy phase, also known as love bombing, phase of infatuation, lust, it's a honeymoon phase. And the sexuality in this phase is either remote virtual, so a lot of sexting and so on, or it is sadistic, sadistic humiliation and kinky, which is the typical sexuality of psychopaths and narcissists.
So they co-opt, they don't coerce, but they co-opt, they get the woman to collaborate with this kind of sexuality.
And usually in the shared fantasy phase, there is sexual exclusivity.
Now, the narcissist and psychopaths, psychopath in this phase, he suspends judgment. He realizes that he has to play into the delusions of the intimate partner. And he can't do that if there is constant analysis and control of the information. So he intentionally suspends judgment and he renders himself, psychopathic narcissist, renders himself gullible and delusional.
But only when it comes to emotions, intimacy, the capacity and intent to be, to hurt him and the nature and intensity of the relationship. When it comes to these issues, the psychopathic narcissist says, I'm going to turn off my hypervigilance. I'm not going to scam for threats and I'm going to let go. I'm going to flow into the territory of my intimate partner.
There's no other way to do it because with a psychopathic narcissist, there is a process of merger and fusion, very similar to the merger of fusion with borderlines or with codependence.
Psychopathic narcissist idealizes the partner and at the same time uses primitive defense mechanisms like splitting, denial, confirmation bias. He assumes the role of a rescuer or a wizard, a messianic role.
And some of them, if it's rebel ones, they were the wunderkind, the musk of a child genius and their grandiose.
So all this is in play. The narcissist presents to his potential intimate partner a kind of a narrative, a story where he is a genius, a wizard. He can rescue her. He can solve all her problems. He can heal her wounds. He can solve her pain. He is the answer to everything she had ever hoped for, wanted or dreamt of.
Even so, the psychopathic narcissist is very careful to separate the shared fantasy from the rest of his life.
It's like when he is scouting for and grooming an intimate partner, it's a safe and unreal realm, an unreal kingdom. It's roleplay. It's a little like video, a video game. It's not entirely, I mean, when you're in a video game, when you're playing a video game, when you're role playing, or even when you're inside a fantasy, of course you're there.
There's a process of dissociation. You detach from the world and you enter the, even when you're watching, when you're watching a movie, I mean, watching a movie is a process of dissociation, cut off 99% of the world when you're in the movie.
So it's the same feeling in the shared fantasy phase. It's like the psychopath goes to work and the narcissist comes back from work and everything. And then he switches off reality and he enters the online game. He enters this fantastic Disney-like castle kingdom. And it's like a multiplayer game where he's one of the players, the intimate partner is another, and they both pretend to be, to inhabit together some kind of kingdom, some kind of territory, some kind of country, which they both know doesn't exist.
The only difference is that at some stage, the emotional neediness of the intimate partner, many of these intimate partners are borderline codependent or otherwise wounded, broken and damaged women who were subjected to very extended abuse and they're in the throes of CPTSD, complex PTSD.
And so these women are amenable to blur the boundaries, to blur the borders, to blur the distinctions between reality and fantasy.
Gradually, the psychopathic narcissist somehow convinces his potential intimate partner that the shared fantasy is shared, but not fantasy.
But it'sthe difference between the fantasy and reality that's a small. It's just up to her. If she just takes the extra step, the fantasy could become reality.
It's very tempting. It's irresistible, actually.
These intimate partners, they gradually acquired the conviction, they gradually become convinced that, you know, they don't have to do much to suddenly live in the magical kingdom in which all problems are solved, all pains are assuaged, all damages are fixed, and one's brokenness is put together. It's like humpty dumpty, you know, put it back together.
And it's as real. And so, but you can ask, how does the psychopathic narcissist allow himself to be so vulnerable? How does he allow himself to be gullible, to open himself up to potentially hurt, potential abuse, exploitation and so on?
It's because he doesn't feel threatened. He doesn't feel threatened because it's like virtual reality. There are no repercussions or outcomes in the real world. It's a game. It's an online multiplayer game. The shared fantasy allows the psychopathic narcissist to avoid true intimacy, true commitment. It's his way of shirking, of avoiding, of shunning adult responsibilities and chores. He gets in the shared fantasy, he gets companionship.
If there's a physical compliment, then he gets to have sex and fun and adventures. And on the other hand, he invests only the minimum necessary to maintain the fantasy going. There is no real risk in the shared fantasy phase, nor in risk because it never spills over into reality.
And in this particular phase, the psychopathic narcissist usually presents a fallacious, fallacious facade. He gives the wrong information. He prevaricates, he lies, he confabulates. He doesn't give the potential intimate partner any hold on him, any way to, for example, black maybe, or to somehow impact his life.
It's like he creates an avatar. He creates a virtual figure, a virtual character in an animated video game with which or with whom the intimate partner interacts and behind, is hiding behind this virtual character. And if he's married, he's also using his marriage as a protective shield and as an excuse not to get too committed, too involved, too present or too forthcoming with information. He also constantly maintains the tension because there's a disappearing act. He appears, he disappears. It's not silent treatment. It's not an aggressive form of communicating displeasure. It's simply here I am, here I'm not.
It's like he's ephemeral. He's an apparition, he's a ghost and no wonder we're using the term ghosting.
The fantasy phase feels like a role-playing game, I said that, or like a movie set.
And a psychopathic narcissist is an actor following an unpredictable, thrilling, unfolding script.
Remember that psychopathic narcissists are novelty-seeking. They are risk-takers. They're reckless. They are very impulsive. And in this sense, they are like children in a sandbox.
So here's this child in a sandbox and he wants another child to join him. Share the sandbox. Play a little. Let's pretend that the sandbox is a tank or a kingdom or a castle. That's the shared psychosis. It feels safe.
The shared fantasy, I'm sorry. It feels safe because it's not real.
The shared fantasy usually includes elements of intermittent sex, fun, companionship, supply, adventure, money, and money-making.
On the psychopathic narcissist side, on the potential partner side, usually the shared fantasy includes elements like marriage, or children, or home, or becoming a couple, or even love.
So to start with, the seeds of its own destruction and annihilation exist in the shared fantasy because shared fantasy is incompatible. The two fantasies are incompatible. The psychopathic narcissist would lie to the intimate partner. She wants love. He will tell her he loves her. She wants to become a couple. He says, of course, we are a couple. Marriage. Yeah, sure. I'm divorcing my wife. Children at some point. A home.
So he would go along. He would go along with the intimate partner's fantasy. He would even leverage this fantasy. He would sometimes enhance or amplify some of his aspects, sending titillating hints and messages, kind of clues.
But he doesn't really believe in that. It's of his fantasy. His fantasy is fun, sex, supply, adventure, money. It's a puerile fantasy.
The psychopath is what used to be called puer etemus, permanent or eternal adolescent.
And much later, there was a wonderful book by a psychotherapist, Dan Kiley, and he wrote the book The Peter Pan Syndrome.
The Peter Pan Syndrome. Peter Pan was a fictitious character written by a chap called Barry in the 19th century. Peter Pan refused to grow up. Peter Pan has this in the 20th century, I'm sorry. Peter Pan has these constant dialogues with women. His dialogues with Tinkerbell, which is not a real woman, it's a virtual woman, it's a fairy. He has dialogues with real women, like Wendy, her mother. He has dialogues even with promiscuous women, women who are out to get him sexually. They want him. They desire him sexually.
And the book is amazing because it's a perfect depiction of the inner world of the psychopathic narcissist. The dialogues as a very adult, very mature for a children's book, it's shocking how adult, mature, overt, I would even say sometimes pornographic, the material is.
And Peter Pan says clearly, multiple, numerous times, I don't want to grow up. I don't want to grow up. I don't want to become an adult. I don't want to get a home. I don't want to have money. I just want to play. I want to have fun. This is a shared fantasy of Peter Pan. And he develops a shared fantasy with Wendy. Wendy's a girl. He invades a home through an open window, very, very apt metaphor.
And they're beginning to have a relationship, actually. She tries to be a mature woman. She wants a home, probably children. She loves him. But he insists to remain a child. He refuses to grow up. And so she accommodates him. She becomes his mother.
I'll propose yesterday's movie. I've been asked several questions pertaining to yesterday's movie and I'll attempt to answer some of them now.
The narcissist can return to a woman he had devalued and discarded. Actually, it happens very often. At the time I coined the word hoovering. So he hovers them. He reacquires them.
But the narcissist cannot return to a woman who betrayed the shared fantasy. The narcissist and the psychopath co-author the shared fantasy. There's a co-authorship. The shared fantasy is co-written and he has the exclusive right, only he has the right, to discard the other party. But the other party doesn't have a right to discard him. And if she betrays the shared fantasy, he will never go back to it.
Betraying the shared fantasy means exiting the shared fantasy. And usually this is done via triagulation and cheating, introducing another man into the picture and bonding with that other man for one night or for one year. A love affair or casual sex. It doesn't matter. Bonding physically, bonding emotionally. It's exiting the shared fantasy.
It's like waking up.
And so this, the psychopathic narcissist cannot forgive and will never return to a partner who had betrayed the shared fantasy.
It's also very important how the partner exists the shared fantasy. If the exit is aggressive and malicious, and vindictive and malevolent, and angry and violent, then this would add another incentive to never revisit the shared fantasy.
And the psychopathic narcissist cannot relate to a woman except via these phases. Whenever the psychopathic narcissist approaches a woman, it's via a shared fantasy. Even if this woman used to be in his life, his ex-wife, the second time around when he hovers her, when he tries to reenter her life, it would be again via the shared fantasy. There's no other way.
But if she exited the shared fantasy before, there is no possibility to reestablish a shared fantasy. She blocked the way to a shared fantasy because he cannot relate to her as an adult. He cannot relate to her. End of story.
So a woman can be discarded, can be devalued, and the narcissist and psychopathic will come back, will return to that very woman and will try to reestablish shared fantasy.
But if she exited the shared fantasy by betraying the shared fantasy, by annulling the shared fantasy, by contradicting the shared fantasy, by waking the psychopathic narcissist up in the middle of the dream, this dream, then he can never go back to her.
Some women keep disrupting the formation and maturation of the shared fantasy. And when this happens, the psychopathic narcissist is doubly energized.
He tries to coerce this kind of woman to accept the shared fantasy. And if he fails in this, then she becomes a source of a fling or a partner for casual sex. So it's the only case where casual sex is acceptable to the psychopathic narcissist.
These are women who stop and start, stop and start, approach and avoid this approach, avoidance, repetition, compulsion. They start a shared fantasy and then they recoil, they disrupt the fantasy. And so the fantasy is never fully formed, but there's sufficient elements of the shared fantasy with such a woman to enable sex.
But actually it's casual sex because there's no shared fantasy and usually no exclusivity as well.
Another case is when there is a transition from shared fantasy to anti fantasy without going through the interstitial phase. And this leads to trauma. It's among the very, very few cases where psychopathic narcissists are traumatized, seriously traumatized.
They have what would in other people pass or be considered emotional reaction. It's when they are in the middle of a shared fantasy and then the woman exits abruptly without allowing them to prefer themselves mentally for the exit. So they're in the middle of this love story, they're in the middle of this video game, they're in the middle of this virtual reality, augmented reality, whatever you want to call it. And then suddenly the woman cheats, maybe vindictively, maybe ostentatiously. Maybe she rubs the narcissist's face in it. It's an in your face kind of thing. Maybe she breaks up the shared fantasy in some other way. He discovers that she had lied to him about everything. Whatever the case may be, if there is a rapid and abrupt transition from the middle, from within the shared fantasy into a breakup without going through the middle phase, the interstitial phase, the psychopathic narcissist is heavily traumatized.
We'll discuss this in our next video.
So the shared fantasy continues and so on and so forth.
But the intimate part, the psychopathic narcissist is happy as a luck. He's happy-go-lucky because everything he wants, he gets. He wants sex, he gets sex, fun, adventure, sometimes money.
His shared fantasy is alive and well, thank you. But it is the intimate partner who gets increasingly more frustrated with her expectations and more institutional and more conformist.
Even the wildest, most promiscuous, utterly dysregulated and disco-bopulated woman out there expects as a minimum, at the very least, some kind of structured quasi-committed relationship.
We are not talking casual sex. Women, of course, engage in casual sex, as do men. It's not casual sex, it's a relationship. The transmission, the message from the psychopathic narcissist in the shared fantasy is that this is a relationship. He doesn't come out honestly and say, listen, all I'm looking for is sex. Are you in? Because he's likely to be rebuffed, owing to his personality and so on. So instead, he's lying. He's deceiving the intimate part, telling her that, yeah, it's a relationship. It's serious. He's getting more and more serious by the day and who knows where it might lead?
Too many months.
So the partner becomes more and more frustrated. And the first thing she does usually is deny him the sadistic and kinky elements in the sex. She becomes much more conventional. Exclusivity is still maintained. If she survived the first phase without triangulating and cheating, then at this stage, she's not cheating.
But what happens is she is much less accommodating of the special sexual needs of the psychopathic narcissist, and she's much less adventurous. She's much less open to his wishes. She's normally, she's not getting what she wants. She's not giving him what he wants. He's looking for fun adventure these days. No way. He's looking for faint sadism, kinkiness and so on.
Well, sorry, pal. I didn't get what you had promised. I'm going to give you what I had promised.
So sexuality becomes highly regimented and conventional and boring, frankly. It's because the internet partners of psychopathic narcissists mistake the shared fantasy phase. They think it's a passing. They think it's temporary love bombing. They think it's infatuation. And they think that once both parties go through this phase, then it's time for realistic plans.
It's like, okay, we have to go through this, you know, infatuation, love bombing is that last, last, you know. And, but at some point we have to settle down. We are done. So we have to say, okay, you know, how do we go? Where do we go from here? What are we going to do? What's the next stage? It's the next step.
But for the psychopathic narcissist, there is no next step. Shared fantasy is it end of story. It's nothing beyond it.
So when the internet partner discovers this, she's utterly shocked. Because narcissists and psychopaths hunt prey on women in settings that are reserved usually for long term relationships.
If you want, if you want to have casual sex, you go to a bar, I don't know, you go to a club, including a sex club. You go on certain dating apps and you're honest about what you're looking for. You go, you go to parties, you know, all night parties, all lighters with MDMA and God knows what else. I mean, there are ways, I mean, there are places, venues, ways where people go to have casual sex. Both men and women go there knowing full well that they're going there to pick up a one night partner.
But the narcissist and psychopaths, narcissists and psychopaths pick up intimate partners in ways and in venues and in places that are reserved for serious long term relationships.
So on the one hand, they give the distinct impression that they're looking for something serious and long term. And on the other hand, their behavior reveals that they're actually looking only for a playmate.
Here I'm connecting this video to the previous one. They're looking for a playmate in a shared fantasy. And they withhold. They don't fully belong. It's clear that their heart is not in it.
They're like, it's like, it's like the entertainment part of the movie. It's like recreation. The relationship, the social relationship is recreational. It's like, well, shall we see a movie? No, let me have a relationship. Let me have a shared fantasy.
So of course, the intimate partner feels disappointed. She feels angry. She feels, pardon, vulgarity, totally fucked. She was deceived.
And it leads these women to cheat or to triangulate as a way to terminate the relationship.
The relationship with narcissistic psychopaths are very addictive because the carrot is there dangly. It's very titillating. It's like a teasing relationship. It's like you don't really, as an intimate partner of a psychopathic narcissist, there's no really good time to finish off the relationship, to break up. Because you always say to yourself, maybe if I wait another day, maybe if I wait another week, maybe if I wait another month, it's going to get better. Maybe then I'm going to get what I want.
So like, there's no good time to break up. And this is becoming very addictive.
This intermittent reinforcement creates addiction. So these relationships are very addictive.
So women in these relationships find it very difficult to let go, very difficult to break up and say goodbye. And what they usually do, they pick up the first men, the men, first men days, they see and they cheat, or they triangulate egregiously.
And the aim is actually to get rid of the psychopathic narcissist to terminate the relationship.
The men they cheat with are utterly irrelevant. They're nobodies. They are like dispensable, disposable utensils. Usually, we're talking about one night sense.
And so the main aim, the main message is, I can't survive in this relationship anymore. I can't survive in this in your shared fantasy. I can't be a figment of your dream anymore. I want to have a real three-dimensional existence.
And by teaming up with the first men I see, however inappropriate, whatever scum, low-life, chunky loser, whoever he is, at least he's going to give me the feeling, the sensation that I exist if nothing else. Exists, maybe even desire.
So they restore themselves. These women restore themselves emotionally, elevate their self-esteem and get rid of the psychopathic narcissist, usually via triangulation or cheating.
And of course, there's always the bonus of hurting the psychopathic narcissist in the process.
You see, narcissists reify and body object in constancy. They delete online material. They delete messages, photos, videos. They're married, so they're unavailable or they are unavailable in other ways. They are in constant touch with multiple women. They triangulate. They constantly broadcast messages. I'm here, it's a touch and go. I'm here and I'm not really here. Now you see me, now you don't. It's like a sleight of hand. It's like a magic show.
And many of these women already have very serious problems with object constancy, for example, borderlines. Borderlines have no object constancy. They're terrified of abandonment and rejection. Same with co-dependence. And they have very dysfunctional ways of coping with objecting constancy.
And what the psychopathic narcissist does, he kind of amplifies these fears, these fissures, these breaks in the personality of these women, and they can't tolerate it.
Many of them say that they feel dead when the psychopathic narcissist's way, and they don't know what he's doing or if he's ever coming back. They feel annihilated. They feel dead, as though he had dismembered them all, as though they had dissolved, diluted in some invisible fluid.
And of course, these women have tremendous abandonment anxiety and fear of loss. And so sometimes it becomes so unbearable, so intolerable, this constant giving and taking, giving and taking, that these women counter-triangulate, the psychopathic narcissist triangulates, they counter-triangulate. They think he's cheating.
Many of these women are very jealous because of this object inconsistency. So they cheat preemptively, preemptive abandonment. They abandon him before he abandons them.
But throughout the shared fantasy, long before this face, or long before the interstitial face, long before this face of frustration, disappointment, and rage, long before this, the potential intimate partners, the women who participate in the shared fantasy, these women reject their permanent role as sex slaves, fuckbodies, playmates, toys, co-fantasies. These women want more and they want exclusivity.
And as long as... So I would call the interstitial face to borrow from someone whose writings are almost as good as mine. I would call this interstitial face a winter of discontent. But as long as this discontent is not translated to specific demands, ultimatums, withholding, conflict, betrayal, cheating, triangulation, as long as the discontent is ambient, it's just in the air, the psychopathic narcissist continues to pretend, continues to act as though they are all on the same shared fantasy page. As long as the woman doesn't come openly, demands, threatens, gives an ultimatum, withholds, creates conflict, betrays, cheats, triangulates, the psychopathic narcissist would continue to pretend like nothing's happening, like there's no problem whatsoever.
But he already feels, he already...
This content is in the air, it's in small gestures, it's in body language, it's in freaking remarks, it's in derogatory comments, it's in...
So he has a radar, he has called empathy, and he picks up thismusic, these off-key sequences, and he begins to prepare mentally for the third phase, which is the anti-fantasy phase.
And what he does in the interstitial phase, to prepare for the anti-fantasy phase, the next phase, is the first thing he does, iti katheks.
Katheksis is an investment of emotional energy, so to speak, investment of emotions in an object, usually a human object. So this is katheksis, so katheksis takes back, takes back his emotions, his hopes, his wishes, his dreams, his fantasies, he takes them back from the intimate partner.
He no longer... He begins to no longer see her as a potential. He begins to realize that it's about to enter the endgame, and she's about to cheat, triangulate, or simply dump him, or break up.
So he takes away his emotions. He begins to grieve.
There's a process of grieving, Kubler-Ross, the five stages of grieving comes. He denies, and he becomes angry, and he becomes depressed, and you know, grieving goes on.
And he immediately begins to seek alternatives.
And this is what women feel. When women describe the bad parts of their relationships, they describe this, they're describing the interstitial phase. They're describing the part of the relationship, period in the relationship, when the narcissist withdraws, withholds, grieves, and actively seeks six alternatives.
And so at this stage, usually women are also making a transition.
So on the one hand, the psychopathic narcissist begins to detach, and women become much more demanding.
And if they're codependent to borderline, they become much more clinging.
So they begin to demand more sex, more emotions, more time, more attention, more intimacy, more commitment, more sharing, more investment, etc. Women become very demanding.
And these demands, these overtly expressed verbalized demands inexorably and ineluctably lead to the anti fantasy phase, which is the third phase of every relationship, psychopathic narcissist has with a woman.
And that's the phase of decoupling, decoupling, breaking up the couple.
Indeed, there is no real couple, of course, because the intimate partner never receives any of the elements of the shared fantasy that were her elements.
So there's no real couple here. There's only take and take, no give and take.
The last psychopathic narcissist takes all the time, takes all the time and dangles the promise of giving.
So the intimate partner has a promise of giving while the psychopathic narcissist has a reality of taking.
So there's no real couple, at least not reciprocity or reciprocal couple.
But in the narcissist's mind, he had given, he had given what himself, his presence is the greatest gift to humanity.
And so here he is stooping to the level of his intimate partner. She should be eternally minimum grateful that he is in her life.
It's the adventure of a lifetime. It's the most amazing thing that has ever happened to her and will ever happen to her.
So this in itself is sufficient. It's enough. He doesn't need to give anything beyond his near cosmically significant presence.
So in his mind, there is an active couple where he gives his presence and blessings and gifts, and she gives whatever she gives.
So there's a couple.
And the underfed fantasy phase is a decoupling in the psychopathic narcissist's mind.
At this stage, he cuts off all sex and it's a stage of celibacy, abstinence.
The psychopathic narcissist becomes asexual and the relationship becomes sexless. Or the partners agree on an open relationship, open marriage, and then they each pursue sex elsewhere.
But as I said, this is extremely rare. The minute the partner tries to transition from simulation to reality, the miniature refuses to participate in the shared fantasy.
The miniature tries to convert the shared fantasy into reality. One way or another, the minister, for example, if she attempts to extract what the narcissist perceives to be unilateral benefits, material benefits, other benefits, which she demands sex, she demands his time, she demands his attention, she wants to share with him, which he finds oppressively boring, or she obstructs his work, his own important work, or she makes any demands or ultimatums of any kind. Or, of course, if she verbally abuses him, if she narcissistically injures him, and ultimately if she cheats on him or betrays him in any way, all these lead to the decoupling, to the anti-fantasy phase.
But with some psychopathic narcissists, extreme on the extreme end of the spectrum, it's enough if the partner questions them, like remember Minnie Mouse, she disagreed with me, I almost fired her. So it's enough if the partner questions them, if she disagrees with them, criticizes, mocks, shows disappointment. It's enough if she withholds any of the three assets, sex, supply, services, or if it's enough, any combination of the above is enough to convince a psychopathic narcissist that the shared fantasy is over, shared fantasy dissipates, and the cool head headed, unflinching, callous, ruthless, heartless, dispassionate, dysempathic psychopathic narcissist takes over, and this is coupled with impulsivity, vindictiveness, defiance, and other wonderful traits of the psychopath.
The psychopathic narcissist's dead point, instantly and totally gives up on the partner emotionally, he dictates. He discards the fantasy like it had never existed, the roleplay, the game, over. It's exactly like, you know, slipping the computer.
The narcissist's psychopath then wakes up, and he fully reverses the reality.
And the first thing he does, he absents himself, he withdraws himself, takes himself out of the equation.
He suddenly is not present, it's difficult to reach him, he's impatient, and so on, sometimes physically, but always mentally.
And if he's in a marriage, for example, he becomes a roommate, a very disinterested, cold, dispassionate, and mildly, a, you know, offensive roommate, nothing much more.
And if the intimate partner insists on preserving the shared fantasy, after she had demanded things, after she had presented ultimatums, after the interstitial things, if she insists to continue to perpetuate, to propagate the shared fantasy, the narcissist's psychopath becomes egregiously, verbally abusive, withering, annihilating.
And if this doesn't work, then the narcissist's psychopath pushes the partner to cheat on him with others in order to terminate the relationship without repercussions, or to guilt trip the intimate partner into submission.
And this instantaneous transition from shared fantasy to transactional reality is, I mean, this is what ruins the narcissist's intimate partner, how he switches off, how she ceases to exist, not overnight, but over a minute, how replaceable, interchangeable, and dispensable she had proven to be in his life.
And at that point, the narcissist loses all visible and invisible interest, hidden interest in the partner. The partner can triangulate, she can go with men, she can come back, he doesn't care at all. He doesn't even monitor or record what's happening, the happenings.
He doesn't regard, for example, other men as competitors. He redirects all his energies and attention and focus on other tasks, not the least of which is creating another shared fantasy with another target.
The partner is erased emotionally.
The psychopathic narcissist, exactly like the borderline, has no object constancy, but as opposed to the borderline.
The psychopathic narcissist can turn object constancy on and off. He can decide, this object is present in my life, I will think about her constantly, I will love bomb her, I will promise her, she will become an integral and important part of my recreational life. And then he can switch it off. And she doesn't give her even a passing thought.
The woman who had been the most important thing in the psychopathic narcissist's life on Wednesday means utterly nothing to him on Thursday. Not only means nothing to him, he has no existence. I'm saying not a passing thought.
At that stage, the narcissist and psychopath reads all cues perfectly in order to affirm whether the partner is still respectful, disrespectful, unfaithful, disloyal, a liar, and so on. If the partner becomes, is gradually transformed into a persecutory object, a potential enemy, hostile.
And this helps the narcissist to move on to the next fantasy role play with the next idealized partner, even when he chooses to.
He also alerts the narcissist to any dangers or risks inherent in the situation.
So narcissists are not idiots and they know that some women are going to react very badly to this kind of treatment. And I'm going to lash back and I'm going to do to blackmail or to threaten or to, you know, the risks inherent in treating people this way.
And so the narcissist becomes hypervigilant once again.
And to dig a thick, to remove his emotional investment in the original object of the shared fantasy, the narcissist uses splitting to switch from shared fantasy to anti fantasy. He splits his erstwhile intimate partner.
Now she is no longer a delightful, cute, amazing, intelligent, breathtaking, captivating, irresistible, sexy thing. Now she is a witch, cruel, sadistic, withholding, abusive, frustrating, deceitful and cheating.
So he splits, he moves from white to black, from right to wrong, from all good to all bad.
This dichotomous thinking is a primitive defense mechanism, typically before the age of two years old. It's a baby mechanism and borderlines have it, psychopathic narcissists have it. And they use it to allow them to peacefully, to preserve internal equilibrium, to peacefully transition from one view of the intimate partner to another, thereby letting them discard the previous shared fantasy in favor of the next one.
But that's not enough because the psychopathic narcissist needs his partner to confirm with her behavior, the new view of her. So if he regards her as a bad mother now, because it's all about mother, of course, motherhood is, she is a maternal figure. We established that yesterday.
At this stage in the anti fantasy, interstitial and anti fantasy phases, the last two phases, she had become a mother and he's switching from a good mother to a bad mother.
But he needs a partner to act the bad mother. And he does that via a psychological defense mechanism known as projective identification.
Projective identification is when we force other people to behave in ways that confirm our view of the world, our theory of mind and our comfort zone.
So if the psychopathic narcissist expects or has a new view of his previous intimate partner as bad mother, he would behave in ways that force her to behave as a bad mother. He would, he would create projective identification and projective interjection.
So he would resonate with her. He would, for example, reject her, he would abuse her, he would withhold, he would become passive aggressive, it would become frustrating.
And he knows that by misbehaving this way, he will render her, he will make her aggressive, violent, disempathic. And then he will say, you see, I told you she's a witch. So he provokes her to act the part.
His misconduct provokes the partner to flee, of course, and to seek a core or to retaliate with another safe man. This man could be inferior to the psychopathic narcissist. Actually, in most cases, it's someone who is inferior to the psychopathic narcissist, because the intimate partner cannot risk a second rejection. A safe man, someone who is inferior to her and to the psychopathic narcissist, would never reject her, would never abuse her, would never compound her injury.
So there's always a kind of deterioration in quality control. The intimate partner selects the psychopathic narcissist because he's dominant, he's charismatic, he's interesting, he's fascinating, he's adventurous, he's sex, sexual.
But then her next choice, intended to triangulate and break the spell, exit the shared fantasy. Her next choice is bound to be the exact opposite of the narcissist, is bound to be a loser, better, mild, modest, unassuming, meek even, and possibly physical infill.
The cheating does get to the narcissist and the psychopath, but only if it is done within the shared fantasy. In other words, cheating during the interstitial phase and the anti-fantasy is utterly meaningless. That's what women don't understand.
Triangulation, cheating, trying to get to the psychopathic narcissist to be jealous, or to get a rise out of him, or to get him to react somehow, to get him to require the partner, or to get him to try to restore the relation. I mean, it's all hopeless in the interstitial and the anti-fantasy phase.
Because then the narcissist is de-affected, he took away his emotions, he doesn't care anymore what the partner is doing.
And in the shared fantasy, any triangulation or cheating will traumatize the psychopathic narcissist, but also will end any connection with one.
So the women can't win. It's a no-win game with a psychopathic narcissist. There's no way in the shared fantasy to cheat, or to triangulate, or to otherwise call for help, cry for help.
Because if the woman does this, there's an immediate transition to the interstitial and anti-fantasy phase, end of shared fantasy, bye-bye. The narcissist doesn't want to see her ever again. If she waits until the interstitial phase, or the anti-fantasy phase, he doesn't care. He doesn't care what she does.
There's no strategy to coerce the narcissist or the psychopath to transition from shared fantasy to reality. And even when they do, for example, I don't know, they set up a family, they have children, they get married. It's still a shared fantasy.
And this is what the partners, this is why intimate partners, spouses, mates of psychopathic narcissists, they keep saying that the whole thing was not real, was a lie. And in many respects it is, it's a confabulation, it's a script, it's a narrative, it's a piece of fiction.
The narcissist is an observer of his life, so he's kind of acting the part. It's a theater production. He never really is into emotionally, he has no access to emotions, he's not really into his part or even into his children. He's kind of a spectator, mildly interested spectator, mind you, but you know, he has seen better shows than his own life.
Only when it comes to his grandiosity, he's animated. He's animated, he's invested, he's protective, he's hypervigilant. You want to see a psychopathic narcissist in his full panoply of the limited emotions he has challenges grandiosity or buttresses grandiosity, do something with his grandiosity.
The family, the family has nothing to do with grandiosity. This is a language he does not understand, unless of course the children somehow or his wife somehow support his grandiosity.
So we have the Jackson Five, we have Michael Jackson. He supported his father's grandiosity, so he became meaningful and there was an emotional investment in Michael Jackson. Look where it got him.
But otherwise, no way.
The problem with cheating, triangulation or any other form of brinkmanship, any other form of cry for hell that brings the relationship or the shared fantasy to the brink of make or break, the brink of do or die.
The problem with this kind of brinkmanship tactics, cheating, triangulation and so on, is that first of all, the internet partner who engages in this kind of behaviors, she becomes a bad object. The splitting.
And also it makes it impossible for the psychopathic narcissist to entertain counterfactual, what if, ego-dystonic fantasies.
In other words, if you want the psychopathic narcissist to sit with himself one evening and say, I think I failed, I failed you, I misbehaved you, or what if I had behaved differently?
If you want him to contemplate alternative scenarios, counterfactual, if you want him to improve his ways or to become more efficient in managing the shared fantasy, if you want him to re-affect you as an intimate father, you want him to reinvest in you, want him to rejuvenate or revive what used to be between you, want a second animal.
The worst possible way is brinkmanship because it doesn't allow him to entertain this counterfactual, what if scenarios, and he cannot re-affect you. By betraying or cheating or triangulating or acting aggressively or you exited the shared fantasy, you can never re-enter.
It's not a shame. Betraying the shared fantasy is the worst thing ever possible within the shared fantasy.
The intimate partner has much more power than outside the shared fantasy. Exiting the shared fantasy is the ultimate betrayal. It's possible for the narcissists to have in the future motionless sex or ad-hoc collaboration with such a woman, but never another shared fantasy.
Within the shared fantasy, there are cycles of idealization, devaluation, discard, losses, fines, replacements, but there's always a potential of a second shared fantasy in the future, in one year, in half a year, in two months, in two years, in 20 years. The potential for shared fantasy, another one, second one, third one, fourth one, exists if you hadn't exited the shared fantasy overtly, obtrusively, openly, ostentatiously, conspicuously. If you exited the shared fantasy in any way, shape, or form, even, for example, by making demands, challenging the fantasy element in the shared, in the shared space, I mean, you're finished. You're lost.
Marxists will never take a chance with you again because his entire equilibrium and homeostasis inside subsists of fantasy.
How does the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual define narcissistic personality disorder?
Grandiose fantasy. The narcissist's life is a fantasy life. When you're challenging this fantasy, you're challenging his life. You become a life threat, and who wants to be with the life threat?
Not you, evidently, but also not the psychopathic narcissist.
Everheart, will you? Says Mini.
Everheart.
I'm putting my losses back to define Mini.