Psychopath and Narcissist Survivors Support Group

penbat · Joined: 08 Mar 2007 Posts: 11

Hello Sam

I think this is more in the realm of Borderline Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka Multiple Personality Disorder) than N or P but I would still be interested in your opinion.

My parents were friends of a nearby middle aged woman but that woman died of cancer about 10 years ago. That woman had a daughter (who I shall call Mary). Mary knows my parents slightly and knows who I am. My parents told me that Mary (now aged about 40) was originally married to a gambling addict who squandered almost everying they owned on gambing. Mary has now moved to another property and has divorced.

Anyway about two years ago Mary bumped into me at a bus stop and for the first time ever had a conversation directly with me. She had a very flirtatious and sexually charged manner. Within no time at all she was asking quite intimate and personal questions about me and my parents but saying little about herself. I had a second similar conversation with her and as she seemed to be a nice person and it was running up to Christmas I sent her a Christmas card saying "Happy Christmas" and "Hope to see you again soon".

Every since then Mary seemed to be studiously avoiding me. However about a year later we bumped into each other in the street and she said "Thank you for the card but I am seeing someone". This is a bizarre response because not being attached isnt a prerequisite to accept a Christmas card but she was strangely obviously offended by my Christmas Card. Even if I was asking her out for a date I don't see that it was anything to feel offended by - she could have just politely declined. The card itself was bland and inoffensive.

On a later occasion we exchanged a very brief conversation in the street and she herself used almost the same words to me that I used in the Christmas card, she said to me "See you again soon" but the next time she saw me she just gave me a frosty glare.

It is obviously best for me to completely avoid this woman but it is a bit difficult because we bump into each other quite often in the street.

I recently noticed that she was using the same flirtatious sexually-charged manner to a bus driver so she obviously does it to everyone.

It seems completely bizarre that she is sexual and flirtatious to many people but at the same time she apparently has a possessive partner who takes offense if anyone even sends her a Christmas card.

I am wondering if her ex-gambling addict husband emotionally scarred her. As i understand it, people with Borderline Personality Disorder are often abuse victims.

Thanks

David

samvaknin · Joined: 15 Feb 2007 Posts: 2230

Dear David,

I advise to leave mental health diagnoses to professionals and not to pathologize people you know without having the necessary professional qualifications to do so.

Narcissists are afraid of intimacy and commitment.

Click on these links are read the articles:

It is an established fact that abuse – verbal, psychological, emotional, physical, and sexual – co-occurs with intimacy. Most reported offenses are between intimate partners and between parents and children. This defies common sense. Emotionally, it should be easier to batter, molest, assault, or humiliate a total stranger. It's as if intimacy CAUSES abuse, incubates and nurtures it.

Continue to read this article here (click on this link):

http://samvak.tripod.com/intimacyabuse.html

Intimacy Retarding Paranoia

Paranoia is use by the narcissist to ward off or reverse intimacy. The narcissist is threatened by intimacy because it reduces him to ordinariness by exposing his weaknesses and shortcomings and by causing him to act "normally". The narcissist also dreads the encounter with his deep buried emotions - hurt, envy, anger, aggression - likely to be foisted on him in an intimate relationship.

The paranoid narrative legitimizes intimacy repelling behaviours such as keeping one's distance, secrecy, aloofness, reclusion, aggression, intrusion on privacy, lying, desultoriness, itinerancy, unpredictability, and idiosyncratic or eccentric reactions. Gradually, the narcissist succeeds to alienate and wear down all his friends, colleagues, well-wishers, and mates.

Continue to read this article here (click on this link):

http://samvak.tripod.com/journal60.html

The narcissist does his damnedest to avoid intimacy. He constantly lies about every aspect of his life: his self, his history, his vocations and avocations, and his emotions. This false data guarantee his informative lead, asymmetry, or "advantage" in his relationships. It fosters disintimisation. It casts a pall of cover up, separateness, mystery over the narcissist's affairs.

Continue to read this article here (click on this link):

http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissismintimacy.html

The narcissist divides all women to saints and whores. He finds it difficult to have sex ("dirty", "forbidden", "punishable", "degrading") with feminine significant others (spouse, intimate girlfriend). To him, sex and intimacy are mutually exclusive rather than mutually expressive propositions.

Continue to read this article here (click on this link):

http://samvak.tripod.com/faq79.html

People with Personality Disorders (PDs) are very afraid of real, mature, intimacy. Intimacy is formed not only within a couple, but also in a workplace, in a neighborhood, with friends, while collaborating on a project. Intimacy is another word for emotional involvement, which is the result of interactions with others in constant and predictable (safe) propinquity.

Continue to read this article here (click on this link):

http://samvak.tripod.com/faq69.html

Narcissists have no interest in emotional or even intellectual stimulation by significant others. Such feedback is perceived as a threat. Significant others in the narcissist's life have very clear roles: the accumulation and dispensation of past Primary Narcissistic Supply in order to regulate current Narcissistic Supply. Nothing less but definitely nothing more. Proximity and intimacy breed contempt. A process of devaluation is in full operation throughout the life of the relationship.

Continue to read this article here (click on this link):

http://samvak.tripod.com/faq80.html

Inevitably, the sexuality of patients with personality disorders is thwarted and stunted. In the Paranoid Personality Disorder, sex is depersonalized and the sexual partner is dehumanized. The paranoid is besieged by persecutory delusions and equates intimacy with life-threatening vulnerability, a "breach in the defenses" as it were. the paranoid uses sex to reassure himself that he is still in control and to quell is anxiety.

Continue to read this article here (click on this link):

http://samvak.tripod.com/personalitydisorders47.html

http://samvak.tripod.master.com/texis/master/search/?q=approach-avoidance

Question:

What is the mechanism behind the cycles of over-valuation (idealization) and devaluation in the narcissist's life?

Answer:

Continue to read this article here (click on this link):

http://samvak.tripod.com/devaluationidealization.html

Thus, paradoxically, the worst his anguish and unhappiness, the more relieved and elated such an abuser feels! He is "liberated" and "unshackled" by his own self-initiated abandonment, he insists. He never really wanted this commitment, he tells any willing (or buttonholed) listener – and anyhow, the relationship was doomed from the beginning by the egregious excesses and exploits of his wife (or partner or friend or boss).

Continue to read this article here (click on this link):

http://samvak.tripod.com/abuse14.html

Thus, on the one hand, the narcissist feels that his freedom depends upon re-enacting these early experiences. On the other hand, he is terrified by this prospect. Realizing that he is doomed to go through the same traumas over and over again, the narcissist distances himself by using his aggression to alienate, to humiliate and in general, to be emotionally absent.

This behavior brings about the very consequence that the narcissist so fears - abandonment. But, this way, at least, the narcissist is able to tell himself (and others) that HE was the one who fostered the separation, that it was fully his choice and that he was not surprised. The truth is that, governed by his internal demons, the narcissist has no real choice. The dismal future of his relationships is preordained.

Continue to read this article here (click on this link):

http://samvak.tripod.com/faq4.html

In his quest to find new sources, he again embarks on ego-mending bouts of sex, followed by the selection of a spouse or a mate (a Secondary Narcissistic Supply Source). Then the cycle re-commence: a sharp drop in sexual activity, emotional absence and cruel detachment leading to abandonment.

Continue to read this article here (click on this link):

http://samvak.tripod.com/faq29.html

Take care.

Sam