Many of you were taken by the idea of the Narcissist Betrayal Fantasy.
Watch the video I posted a few days ago.
But the video I've just mentioned described merely the psychodynamics behind the Betrayal Fantasy, what goes on in the Narcissist's mind when he re-enacts and plays out the Betrayal Fantasy in his relationships.
And before we proceed, because today's video we are going to discuss how the Betrayal Fantasy is actually implemented in reality, the brass tacks, all the moves and the counter moves when the Narcissist tries to impose the Betrayal Fantasy on his nearest and dearest.
And of a poor Betrayal Fantasy.
My former fake friend, that's the F word, used to look me in the eye, smile smugly and say "I'm plagiarizing you again".
I didn't mind being plagiarized as long as I was by his side, compensating somehow for his rather limited intelligence.
But now poor thing is all alone.
Dude, get it right at least.
Algebraize me by all means, but get it right.
I know I understand your limitations, but try harder.
Consult someone regarding the ten dollar words.
I mean transcend your limitations with the help of others.
Poor you.
OK, Shoshanim.
Today's video, as I said, is about the Betrayal Fantasy.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. I'm also a professor of psychology in SIAS-CIAPS Center for International Advanced and Professional Studies, an outreach program of the CIAPS consortium of universities.
Some of you asked me what if I had another position or previous position as a professor.
Yes, I was professor of psychology in Southern Federal University in Rostov-Onda, a Russian Federation. Not a very popular destination lately.
Let's delve right in into another unpopular destination, the Narcissist Mind.
The previous video was about the etiology of the Betrayal Fantasy, the roots and the internal processes that accompany the Betrayal Fantasy as it unfolds.
What about the mechanics of the Betrayal Fantasy? How does it operate?
First of all, it's crucial to understand that the Narcissist breaks up with his intimate partners.
I'm going to use, sorry, before I proceed, I'm going to use he. I'm going to use the male gender pronoun.
But of course, it's utterly interchangeable with a female gender pronoun. About 50% of all people diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder nowadays are women.
Okay, this disclaimer out of the way. Let us forge ahead.
The Narcissist breaks up with women and he does this by pushing them to cheat with other men.
Why would he do that?
To avoid future stalking. The Narcissist is terrified of intimacy. He abhors demands on his time, resources, exclusivity, behavior. He doesn't want people in his life. The Narcissist is a solipsist. He's a loner. He's a lone wolf.
And the reason for that is that the Narcissist cannot comprehend external objects. The Narcissist interacts only exclusively with objects inside his mind, also known as internal objects with introjects, voices in his mind.
In this sense, the Narcissist is very close to psychosis, as I've been saying for yearsin the footsteps of Otto Könberg.
So the Narcissist is a loner.
And then suddenly there's another person there, an intimate partner. This intimate partner becomes a nuisance, an annoyance taking over the Narcissist's life.
Gradually and incrementally, the Narcissist resents this. He wants his intimate partner out and away, one way or another.
In short, he wants to get rid of the woman in his life. So he pushes her to cheat with another manbecause once she cheats with another man, she would feel guilty. She would have no claim on him. She could make no demands. And she would vanish. This would prevent future stalking.
Some of the women the Narcissist breaks up with when cheating is not involved do become stalkers or just bitter, resentful and hateful.
The Narcissist lesson is if I just break up with a woman normally, as other people do, I'm going to be haunted and hunted for the rest of my life.
Now don't misunderstand. The cheating causes the Narcissist excruciating pain for a few weeks, but it is far preferable to stalking and to charges of unfulfilled promises.
Now before we proceed, I'm using the example of cheating, but this applies to any type of betrayal, any type of knife in the back, any type of backstabbing, any type of bedmouthing, any type of breakdown of trust.
I selected cheating because it is the most extreme form of betrayal. It's a total rejection of the cheater, don't.
And because in the previous video, I've used the example of cheating, but as I say, it applies to all types of betrayal.
And at the end of this video, I will briefly review other types of relationships, not intimate relationships, but other types, for example, workplace, collaborations, friendships, and so on and so forth.
At this stage, let us stay with cheating as an example of the principle of betrayal, as a reification of betrayal.
So the Narcissist wants to get rid of an over demanding, over present intimate partner. He's afraid of being confronted with demands, pain, the partner's pain, fighting, stalking. He doesn't want any of this.
So he pushes the partner to cheat so that she feels guilty, so that she vanishes on her own accord.
This causes the Narcissist pain.
In a minute, I will explain which kind of pain. It's not the kind of pain that you imagine, because Narcissists are not the kind of people that you imagine. They're not healthy. They're not neurotypical. They're not normal.
So even their pain is highly idiosyncratic, highly unusual. We'll come to it in a minute.
But let us dispel two misconceptions.
The Narcissist is not a masochist. He doesn't seek pain for pain's sake. He doesn't like pain. He hates to experience cheating. He's devastated. And he detests having to go through this cycle again and again.
So when the Narcissist pushes women, dates, girlfriends, intimate partners to be with other men, when he often orchestrates the cheating, he orchestrates the betrayal, the extramarital affairs, the extra-diadic affairs, he very often puts his intimate partner in touch with the cheating partner.
When he does all this, it is not because he seeks pain. It's not because he's a masochist.
I will read at the end of this video. I'm going to read a few segments, a few sections from a book by Theodore Millon about the similarities and dissimilarities between narcissism and masochism.
In this particular case, it's not about masochism because the Narcissist truly experiences agony and he hates it. It's also not cuckoldry. The Narcissist is not sexually aroused by the fact that his intimate partner is with another man. On the contrary, it depresses him and reduces his libido to zero. It has the opposite effect to sexual arousal.
Narcissists are not masochists. They don't seek pain. They are not cuckolds. They are not aroused by extramarital or extra-diadic affairs with all kinds of bulls. They just use cheating to get rid of the intimate partner altogether or at the very least to minimize her footprint in the Narcissist's life.
Unconsciously though, there is another layer.
The Narcissist catastrophizes. He believes that the world is hostile. Bad things are going to happen. People are not trustworthy. Everyone is out to get him. There's a lot of paranoia involved in Narcissism, the Secretary Delusions.
Indeed, I'm trying to recast paranoia as a variant of Narcissism because the paranoid believes that he is the de-center of some conspiracy, center of attention, however malign.
So unconsciously with the Narcissist, this strategy of "I'm going to push my partner to cheat on me so that I can get rid of herso that she feels guilty, so that she doesn't bother me again", this strategy is intended to control. Control what?
To control who? To control the inevitable, inevitableabandonment, rejection, cheating, betrayal and humiliation.
The Narcissist believes that these things are inevitable. That his intimate partner is going to anyhow cheat on him, anyhow betray him, anyhow humiliate him. It's going to happen ineluctably.
Better to be on top. Better to surf the wave. Better to control the outcomes by orchestrating the antecedents. Better to engineer the cheating so that you can tell yourself as a Narcissist "It was all my doing, I'm a puppet master, I'm in control, I'm omnipotent, I'm godlike, I play with people's destinies and minds".
And so this satisfies grandiosity, the grandiosity of cognitive distortion. It satisfies the Narcissist's inherent and all pervasive belief that he is the center of the world, everything revolves around him and he is pivotal. He's a pivot. He's the axis around which everyone's lives and minds and wishes and dreams and everything. It's around him. So is around him.
So even cheating should be actually an extension of him. Even cheating should be his doing and no one else's.
So this is the first unconscious motivation.
There is a second unconscious motivation.
The Narcissist feels the need to sadistically punish his partners.
He has to satisfy this need and he wants to sadistically punish his partners because he perceives them as frustrating objects. He perceives them as sadistically punishing him.
Projection.
He believes that his intimate partner's everlasting presence, her demands, her inquiries, her complaints, her wishes, her hopes, these are forms of encroachment. It's a form of imprisonment, enshacklement, incarceration, suffocation and smothering that the Narcissist resents.
He wants to punish his partner for inflicting all these on him. He wants to punish her sadistically, cruelly. He does this by withdrawing from the relationship, absenting himself emotionally and sometimes physically.
And when these don't work, when the intimate partner doesn't get the message, doesn't understand the signal, stay away from me, leave me alone, let me be, let me have my life, I need my space, I need my time, infinite space, an infinite time, you're just here to serve me when and if I need, etc.
When she doesn't get this message, he coerces her, he pushes her, he cajoles her, he forces her to self-trash, sexually self-trash with another man by cheating on him or axiologically self-trash, in other words, betray her own values.
When the two go together, the intimate partner of the Narcissist don't want to cheat on him. It goes against their values, their beliefs. It's not ingrained in them, inculcated in them, it's not who they are.
But the Narcissist forces them to transform themselves and to betray their values and to act in a way which is atypical, unusual. Very often, the intimate partners of the Narcissist, having cheated on the Narcissist, are absolutely shocked, ego-distonic, devastated, sad, heartbroken that they have done it.
And so, the Narcissist has this need to also punish his partner by forcing her to become someone else, by kind of taking over her mind and playing with it. It's a mind game and a power play.
"Okay," you ask.
The Narcissist needs to get rid of his intimate partner and his way of doing this is pushing her to another man and then he has the upper hand, he's the moral victim and he can tell her to go.
And she has no claim on him because she misbehaved. Her misconduct rules out any further negotiation.
Great.
But doesn't he care? Doesn't the Narcissist care that his wife, that his girlfriend, that his date is with another man?
And the shocking answer is no.
He actually couldn't care less that the woman in his life is with another man, regardless of what it is they're doing, sex included.
The Narcissist feels relieved, released, free that she's gone.
The Narcissist suddenly feels unshackled. She will not be making any further demands on me. She will not stop me. I'm a free man.
So no, the Narcissist doesn't care what the woman in his life does with other men at all. And I mean at all, not even minimally.
On the contrary, he has positive affectivity. He reacts positively.
But then you say, wait a minute, didn't you say a few sentences ago when we were all much younger that the Narcissist experiences pain, excruciating pain when this happens?
Yes, I did.
But it's not the kind of pain you think it should be. It's another kind of painand I'm coming to it in a second.
The Narcissist doesn't care, doesn't react emotionally in any way, shape or form, definitely not negative to the fact that the woman in his life is with another man.
He's actually angry.
If an intimate partner resists his prodding, his pushing, his interpolation, describes a situation where people adopt others' expectations as their own. They internalize other people's expectations, that's interpolation.
When the intimate partner of the Narcissist refuses to be played with, refuses to succumb, refuses to give in, refuses to collaborate and collude in the Narcissist's crude maneuver to push her to cheat on him or to betray him in some other way, the Narcissist becomes angry.
He is actually angry at intimate partners who resist the manipulation and survive in the relationship.
When he pushes a woman in his life, his girlfriend, his date, his wife, to go out to a specific man and have sex with him and she doesn't, it makes him furious, makes him angry because these intimate partners are perceived as clingy, needy, threatening.
What's the threat?
The ultimate cheating, the ultimate betrayal because remember the Narcissist believes that sooner or later the other shoe will drop. So sooner or later the intimate partner will cheat on him.
So why not now?
It's as if the intimate partner says, "I'm going to cheat on you in my own good time. I'm not going to obey your script. I'm going to choose who to cheat with and when to cheat."
And the Narcissist is furious. He says, "Yo, intimate partner, if you want to cheat on me, why don't you do it right now with this guy that I've selected for you and I've put you in touch with? Why don't you obey my script? Why do you have to do it independently and then cause me horrible pain? I know you're going to do it in any case. I know you're going to do it in any case, so why not do it now? Why shock me and surprise me and traumatize me in the future when you could do it right now and release me and make me feel good so he becomes angry?"
Okay, I did say several times in this video that the implementation of this strategy, the only way to get rid of my intimate partner is to force her to cheat on me. Get rid of her for good. Get rid of her for real. Get rid of her with no trace.
The only way to accomplish this, to accomplish this, is to push her to cheat.
But I did say that this strategy causes excruciating pain.
How come? What kind of pain?
The pain that a narcissist experiences is not romantic jealousy. It is not possessiveness. He couldn't care less what his intimate partner is doing with other men. None whatsoever.
The pain that a narcissist experiences is narcissistic injuryand if the betrayal or the cheating is public, then it's narcissistic mortification. That's the pain.
Injury or mortification.
The pain, in other words, that the narcissist experiences when his wife cheats on him or his girlfriend cheats on him or his date cheats on him, the pain the narcissist experiences has nothing to do with her. It has nothing to do with the other guy.
The pain that a narcissist experiences has to do with himself, of course. He has been narcissistically injured. He has been narcissistically mortified.
Why?
What causes this injury or this mortification?
It is about and solely about, only about, being disrespected and humiliated by other men.
Other men, when they see the narcissist pushing his partner, when they see the narcissist pushing his women to cheat with other men, they think of him as a doormat, a cuckold, or a coward who is unable to restrain his women folk or unable to protect his women.
In other words, the narcissist's strategy to get rid of his intimate partner generates derision and mockery among his peers.
Observers of his behaviormisinterpret the dynamic. They think he's a masochist. They think he's submissive. They think he's a cuckold. They think he's a coward. He's none of the above. He's actually cold-blooded and calculated. Engineering the whole situation from A to Z to obtain a very selfish goal is being self-efficacious, the exact opposite of a doormat or a cuckold or a coward.
But people can't wrap their heads. They can't grasp this strategy. It is so alien, so counterintuitive, so crazy-making that they can't believe it's true.
They say, "Oh, nonsense. It's a cognitive dissonance. His girlfriend cheated on him, so he invented a story that he made it happen, that he pushed her to cheat, that people don't believe this. They say, "Oh, he's just trying to show that he was in control. He was actually deeply hurt, and he wanted her to not do it, so he was testing her. Maybe he was just testing her.
It's none of the above. It's not a test. It doesn't involve romantic jealousy or possessiveness. It does not hurt the narcissist. There's no pain, this kind of pain. It's none of the above. It's a maneuver. It's a tactic. It's a strategy of reading oneself of undesired and undesirable intimate partners. End of story. It's absolutely cold-blooded.
But again, the peers of the narcissist misinterpret his behavior, and this misinterpretation causes him narcissistic injury and narcissistic mortification. It feels humiliated by the misunderstanding of his motivation.
At the same time, when he pushes his intimate partner to cheat, and she does ultimately, this is automatically perceived by the narcissist as rejection and humiliation, as a kind of criticism, as if he were inadequate, mentally ill, incapacitated, not good enough.
In other words, unworthy.
In other words, as if he is less than perfect.
So this is the irony of the situation.
The narcissist pushes his intimate partner to cheat on him in order to get rid of her.
He pushes really hard. He pushes really hard. It's like hard work.
Then it happens, of course, because if you push anything hard enough, it happens.
Then it happens.
And then once it happens, the good news is the silver lining, he does succeed to get rid of the intimate partner.
But the cloud is societal reaction, the action of everyone around him.
The peers, his peers, his colleagues, his family, everyone thinks that he's a doormat, a cuckold, a coward, etc., not protective enough, etc.
So this hurts.
This is narcissistic injury or mortification.
Similarly, unconsciously, he perceives the act of cheating as a kind of rejection and humiliation, an indication that he is less than perfect.
Never mind that he engineered everything. Never mind that he controlled everything. Never mind that he puppeteered everyone involved, or at least he tells himself this. Never mind all that.
There's still this element of she went ahead with it. She actually went ahead with it.
That means that I wasn't good enough. That's the bad object speaking.
And if you revert, if you go back to the previous video I posted about the betrayal fantasy, I talk a lot about the bad object.
Because what happens is, when the narcissist is exposed to this point of view, you're a coward, you're a cuckold, you're a doormat, you're not protective, you're not a man, you're inadequate, you're not good enough, you're unworthy of love, you're not lovable. When he's exposed to these messages from the environment, even though these messages are a misinterpretation of what had happened, these messages are wrong. People don't realize that the narcissist had acted in his own best self-interest. People don't understand because they can't grasp the narcissistic world. It's so not human, it's so alien.
But then, because the narcissist is crucially dependent on input and feedback from the outside, because he's subject to internal regulation of his sense of self-worth, for example, because he builds his identity on the fly from narcissistic supply and beatific attention, because he's a kaleidoscope of other people's gazes, because of all this, he willy-nilly, unwillinglyinternalizes their fallacious, wrong point of view and comes to regard himself as inefficacious, helpless, unlovable, obsequious, unworthy, ugly, craven, doormat, coward, etc.
Actually, in his own mind, he had been cuckolded. He knows it's not true, because he knows that he has done everything intentionally with a plan in mind. He knows that all the steps that led to the cheating were his own doing, 100%. So he knows that he's the mastermind. He knows that he's the puppet master, and yet, because the narcissist always internalizes other people's gaze, other people's point of view, he is forced, he has no defenses, against the alternative, fallacious, wrong view of what he had done, and he internalizes it.
And then it feeds into his harsh inner critic. It kind of fuels his sadistic superego, or bad object, in projects. It amplifies the shame that underlies narcissism, because narcissism is the outcome of shame.
You should read work by Masterson and Lydia Wiegalowska and so on. It's intimately connected to shame.
So narcissism is a reaction to shame, a defense against shame.
And the whole process of forcing his intimate partner to cheat, and then being exposed to ridicule, mockery, and derision, and pity, and contempt, this whole process, having internalized this input, feeds the narcissist's shame.
The furnace in which the narcissist burns eternally, his own inner hell and inferno.
The shame then erupts out of control, like so much magma or lava out of a volcano.
The shame consumes the narcissist to life- threatening proportions.
The narcissist could easily become suicidal.
So it is so bizarre, because the narcissist, to recap, to recap, see how strange, how mind-bending this is.
The narcissist wants to get rid of his intimate partner. He pushes her to cheat. It's all he's doing. It's all his plan. He's utterly in control. He pushes her to cheat. Then she cheats. Then other people mock the narcissist.
Then instead of saying to himself, they don't know what they're talking about. This is not true. I know what happened. I made it happen.
Instead of doing this, he internalizes the point of view of other people. Their gaze, their ridicule, and mockery, and derision internalizes it.
He internalizes all these, because he is used to feeding off the feedback and input of other people. He is used to reconstitute himself on the fly based on other people's input and feedback. He can't help it. It's a reflex. It's out of control.
So he internalizes this point of view, and then he's flooded with shame and becomes suicidal.
Okay, you see. Great. Thank you, Vaknin.
Now we understand much more that we understand much less.
Why?
Why not change the strategy?
Why continue with this potentially life-threatening game, mind-play and power play?
I mean, why?
Mind game and power play? Why?
Why not learn from experience and never ever do it again?
And the answer is the shared fantasy.
The narcissist's only meaningful relationships are within a shared fantastic space.
It's known as a shared fantasy.
It was first described in 1989.
The shared fantasy of the narcissist is highly addictive. I've described it in previous videos, including interviews with the aforementioned fake friend.
The shared fantasy is highly addictive. The partner gets addicted to the shared fantasy.
And when the partner is cut off, this generates stalking behaviors. Stalking behaviors.
The intimate partner cannot let go of the shared fantasy and of the narcissist.
And if the intimate partner is pushed away violently and aggressively, being blocked, or I don't know what, threatened, the intimate, the erstwhile intimate partner becomes hateful.
This virulent hatred, in spurned women anyhow.
But refugees of the shared fantasy, intimate partners who have been cast out of the shared fantasy, out of paradise, out of the Garden of Eden, they resenthate, detest the narcissist. They want him dead.
So the shared fantasy is highly addictive. It generates stalking behaviors and virulent hatred and the wish to destroy the frustrating object.
The narcissist, these women mobilize and attempt literally to ruin the narcissist, get him, you know, punish him somehow.
But once these women cheat at the narcissist's behest, if he succeeds to force them to cheat, they are a disadvantage.
Whenever they even contemplate approaching the narcissist, he can point to the cheating. He can emotionally blackmail them. He can silence their vocal complaints. He can get rid of them for good. He can say, it's all your fault. You cheated. You shouldn't have. Why did you do that?
Now it's all over. Now it's a point of no return. Now I owe you nothing.
And the intimate, the former intimate partner accepts it because cheating is wrong. Nevermind the circumstances. Cheating is always wrong. End of story, period, another period and another end of story.
There's no justification for cheating. None whatsoever.
So once you have cheated, once you have cheated, you're morally compromised. You're not in the position to make demands. You're not in the position to require the fulfillment of promises.
However broken they may be, you are not, you cannot complain.
So the cheating puts a Chinese wall, a firewall between the narcissist and his former partner, protects him. It's a defense.
So this is not about masochism. It is just the effective dissolution of the shared fantasy.
To effectively dissolve the shared fantasy, you need to force your intimate partner to cheat. And this requires the endurance of a narcissistic injury or narcissistic mortification because everyone perceives you as a cuckold.
The effective dissolution of the shared fantasy requires narcissistic injury or mortification by posing as a cuckolded partner in full view of everyone. That's the cost of dissolving the shared fantasy permanently and irreversibly.
It's like the narcissist is faced with two unpalatable choices. Break up with your intimate partner the way normal people do.
You can do that, but because the partner has been enmeshed in a shared fantasy, she's not likely to take to it kindly. She's likely to become a stalker, a haterand an underminer of the narcissist's life for years to come.
So that's one option.
Not very appetizing, you must admit.
The other option, push her to cheat, force her to cheat. Engineer the situations which will be irresistible to her. She will fall into temptation.
And then once she has succumbed, once she has cheated, you can dissolve the shared fantasy with impunity and safety because she will have no claim on you or on the discarded fantasy and dream. She has wronged you as a narcissist.
And so the narcissist can say to himself, "She misbehaved, it's all her fault." And she says to herself, "I misbehaved, it's all my fault." They're on the same page, way to go. It's not about masochism. It's not. It's not about cuckoldry. It's simply the only way open to the narcissist to dissolve a shared fantasy.
In the long run, this posture benefits the narcissist because he retains the high moral ground. He can pose as a victim. Even as he devalues and discards his partners callously and cruelly, he can still point to the cheating incident and say, "Yeah, I may have been cruel. Yeah, I may have been ruthless. Yeah, I may have been callous. Yeah, I may have been abusive." But she had it coming. She deserved it. She cheated on me.
And you know what? 90% of people will knock their heads in assent. They will agree. Cheaters deserve the worst.
So the short term costs, the short term costs of narcissistic injury and even life threatening narcissistic mortification, the short term cost is way outweighed by the long term benefits of a victimhood narrative.
Now I promised you that I will apply it to other areas of life of the narcissist.
I chose an example of cheating. The example of cheating is a form of betrayal.
But everything I've just said applies to other forms of betrayal.
The narcissist uses a variant of this strategy in all intimate settings, for example, in friendships. In all interpersonal relations, for example, with colleagues or collaborators, one's a narcissist deems someone undesirable. For example, the narcissist thinks that he has been mistreated somehow. Or the narcissist thinks that the usefulness of someone is over, it's become a burden.
Once the narcissist decides that someone is undesirable, the narcissist entraps them. He creates a trap. He introduces irresistible temptation.
In Hebrew we say, "You shall not put an obstacle ahead of a blind man."
B'fnei iver, lotasim michshol.
So this is what the narcissist does. He spots the vulnerability of the person he wants to get rid ofand then he interposes, he presents an irresistible temptation. He entraps the person.
And so then the person fails, having succumbed to the temptation, and the narcissist can say, "You know, you see what is done? You see what is done? No way. I'm in the right. I'm on the high moral ground. I was the victim."
So the narcissist applies this strategy in all his relationships. He engineers situations which set people up for failure, people he wants to get rid of, he sets them up for failure, and then they fail inevitably because he knows exactly which buttons to push. They fail inevitably.
And the narcissist causes people to betray him ostentatiously in full view so that they have no refuge or sanctuary. They cannot even explain themselves. They simply acted wrongly. What can they say? "I didn't have free will. I was hypnotized. I was in a trance.
The narcissist is a puppet master and I'm his puppet."
The misbehavior is spectacular. It's conspicuous. It's ostentatious. There's nothing that can be said in the defense of such misconduct.
So the narcissist engineers situations to get rid of people by pushing them to behave in immoral ways against the rules of society, against the morals of society. He pushes them to become antisocial. He pushes them to ignore codes like you should not poach the mate of your friend. He pushes them to steal. He pushes them to do things which are egodystonic, cause them a lot of distress afterwards, a lot of shame and a lot of guilt, cause them to doubt themselves.
And then he can point at their behavior. That's the reason I broke up with her. She cheated on me. That's the reason I broke up with him. He poached my girlfriend.
Yeah, but who made it happen and for which purpose?
The narcissist accomplishes all this by playing on the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of people he wants to get rid of.
And then he gets mortified or narcissistically injured. He becomes morally indignant and righteous because he feels that he had been compelled to get rid of them. There's always a good reason why to get rid of them.
But he feels that he had been compelled. It wasn't his choice.
And the narcissistic injury and the pain of mortification and the pain of the mortification and the life threatening suicidality, they're all an inevitable cost of doing business. It's the only way the narcissist can get rid of people in his life because he enmeshes everyone in a shared fantasy, even in business, even in friendships, even in marriages, even with girlfriends, even on dates.
The narcissist creates impromptu shared fantasy light.
And so the only way to exit the shared fantasy is if the other guy or the other girl misbehave. If they do something so horrible that they have no claim on the narcissist anymore, they can't ask to return to the shared fantasy. The gates of Eden have closed and there is an angel with the turning sword of fire, the fire of entrapment, the fire of entraining, the fire of brainwashing.
People often describe this experience as having lost their minds, as having been zombified, as having been in a state of trance, as having dissociated massively. The narcissist enters their minds and makes them do things which defy their own beliefs about themselves.
Thank you for listening. I hope I haven't entrained you too much.