The next narcissist would be better. I learned my lesson. I know now to identify the warning signs and the red flags. I will avoid this. I will modify this. I will not provoke him. He will not provoke me. I will control him. I will modify him. I will manipulate him. I will be different.
Self-deception, of course. Self-deception.
And you end up with a narcissist again. And again, and again, it's not uncommon to find victims of narcissism with eight partners, ten partners. Not uncommon at all.
All of them, without exception, psychopaths and narcissists. Not uncommon. It's an addiction. I can't call you.
Can you not even hear a part of this?
Lack with a narcissist, you need to get rock bottom. You need to have your life finished. You need to really be under the carpet for any meaningful transformation to have.
But for example, if your career is good, you're not at rock bottom and you will continue to date narcissists. You need everything in your life simultaneously to collapse, die, disappear. You need post-apocalyptic nuclear war for you to be able to transform yourself.
If there's any area or part of your life that is still functioning, still successful, still okay, you will derive energy from that part and you will put it into the relationship.
You need to be in a state where you have no source of energy. You have no access to energy.
Well, then maybe. But if you're very successful at your career, you're making a lot of money, it gives you energy.
You take this energy, you put it in a narcissist. In a narcissist, of course. Sucks it up.
Can it develop again?
I mean, if, for example, if you hit rock bottom and you kind of put yourself together piece by piece and then you seek for a non-narcissistic relationship, can it occur again in your life that for some reason you start to be attracted again?
We don't know. There's not enough experience.
The victims of abuse as a syndrome. I suggested it as a syndrome in 95. 95 is nothing. 95 is 24 years.
We don't have enough cracker. We don't know what's happening to victims. We need 50 years, 100 years.
Okay.
Why is it so strong, the BDSM, between the narcissist and the victim?
The BDSM. Sexual fiction, why is it so common between them?
Does Barbara mean what I have just described or does she mean sexual practices?
In her practice, she usually meets a lot of clients when BDSM and fetishism is a thing that kind of keeps these couples together as a clue. What does it have to do with their whole story? What is behind?
Well, I think we should make a distinction between BDSM, which is a consensual activity with very strict codes of starting and ending what is allowed, what is not allowed. Red flags, keywords and also there is aftercare.
After the sexual session of BDSM, you take care of your partner. You hurt your partner at his or her request or her request and you need to show her that you hurt her because you love her, not because you will.
So BDSM is a highly structured, highly ritualistic activity, which involves code words, coded communication, non-coded communication, before and after phases and so on.
I'm not sure if Barbara is talking about this because this is a non-narcissistic practice.
Actually, if you're a narcissist in BDSM, it will not work. It will be a mess and it will be blacklisted and no one will come close to you.
In BDSM, you need to be highly non-narcissistic because you need to listen to your partner. Your partner has the control, the submissive party has control, can communicate her wishes, when to stop, when to start.
So it's a lot of cooperation, a lot of communication. These are non-narcissistic traits.
I think what Barbara means is simply sadism, not as structured, ritualistic sexual preferences and practices, but as simply torturing each other or causing pain.
Now, this has to do with two things.
First of all, the narcissist needs, if it's a man, a male, but increasingly also all females, the narcissist needs to humiliate his sexual partner. He needs to control her via extreme objectification. So, humiliation means that you objectify the partner through totality.
And so there's a lot of sadism going on as an expression of women hatred, misogynism, and all narcissists are misogynists, and increasingly all female narcissists are androgynists. They hate men.
So there's hatred of the other sex, or hatred of sex, sex, it doesn't matter, but hatred of the sexual persons.
And so there's a need to humiliate and objectify.
The second thing, usually the other party believes that she can exert some control by satisfying her, her partner.
So she tries to regain power or retake some of the power, small amount of power, by providing sexual services to her partner, so that he becomes dependent on her in some way.
So there's an attempt to create dependence via total submissiveness. So there's a sadistic element, and there is an element of submissiveness, but submissiveness intended to create control, actually.
Like, where will you find someone like me who will do anything that you want.
So, this is the first complex of behaviors.
More profoundly, sadomasicism and especially fetishism, fetishism in the sense of objects or body parts, which are the targets of sexual energy. More profoundly, it's a language. The narcissist uses sex and sexual preferences to communicate.
So very frequently, narcissist would use sex to tell the partner, I'm not happy with you. So that would be brutal, painful, or humiliating sex. Or the narcissist would tell the partner, communicate to the partner via sexual practices. You are, for me, a collection of parts. You are not a real full-fledged integrated human being. But you're like in the butcher, you are a collection of parts.
I will now focus on your feet. That's it. Not paying attention to any other part of you, focusing on your feet.
It's a tactic to inform the partner that she is not a human being. She's not integrated. She doesn't exist in a totality, but she is slices of meat.
So, it's also a very frightening, harrowing message.
Sex is used to communicate these messages of, I'm in control, I have the power, I can do anything to you, I'll objectify you, I'll humiliate you, I will show my hatred of, for example, your sex, your gender, hatred of women, through you, and so on.
More generally, now, narcissists have severe problems with sexual identity and sex differentiation.
At a very early stage of life, their sexual differentiation and sexual identity have been disrupted.
So, for example, many narcissists had a very domineering mother, very overwhelming mother, a mother who refused to let them go, refused to let them separate, used them as an extension or instrument, triangulated with them against the father, etc.
This disrupts the proper development of sex differentiation and sexual identity, because as far as sex differentiation, if you're an extension of a woman, you cannot be a man, by definition.
Think about it. If you're an extension of a woman, you cannot be a man. It disrupts the development of masculinity in men.
Similarly, when it comes to sexual identity, if she, for example...