How do I get drawn to narcissistic woman, and walk away from the ones that are not?
First off, this word narcissist is used so frequently nowadays, I think the definition needs to be stated. One “AI” definition from Google says, “someone who has a personality style or mental health condition that is characterized by an excessive sense of self-importance and a lack of empathy for others.” Another one say’s, “a pattern of self-centered, arrogant thinking and behavior, a lack of empathy and consideration for other people, and an excessive need for admiration.” Unbeknownst to me researchers have found subtypes to NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) and those are, overt narcissism, covert narcissism, antagonistic narcissism, communal narcissism, and malignant narcissism. Going into subcategories is a little too deep in the weeds for me, I need not put that much thought into the subcategories of how narcissistic one is.
I’ve dated a plethora of woman, which makes me sound like a man whore, and maybe I was at one time. That aside, I’ve had many opportunities to go long term with different woman and the ones I’ve chosen to do so with, have all been woman who fit the description of a narcissist or have most of the traits. I’m not a psychologist by any means, this is just my assessment in leu of the definitions above and what I experienced. And truth be told, I am guilty of living in this character defect. After my ex-wife and I split up, in one of our many arguments she had called me something that resembles narcissist. I can’t really remember what it was though...
Anyways, when she said this, and I was taken aback, I thought, “there was no way I am such a thing!” I was so sure of it. I could empathize with people’s pains and sadness; I wasn’t self-centered or judgmental. All I could see that I portrayed from the definition was the need to be admired. Fact is though, once I started to do some self-evaluating work, I was truly able to see my behaviors and actions. I was all of those things and more in some manner. Not all the characteristics were glaring to the public or myself, but the woman who knew me best could see them all.
In all my arrogance and self-righteousness, I couldn’t see who I truly was, like most humans. Self-awareness is not something we are born with, and it’s not something taught in school or at work. It needs to be sought out and learned, most likely from religious or spiritual teachings or through working a set of steps, maybe some therapy. In all my arrogance, an arrogant bastard, that is what she called me! In all my arrogance, I thought I was so self-aware, because I saw everything I wasn’t getting in life.
Now since my divorce I have curbed that arrogant bastard behavior, although at times I still do have flare ups of the narcissism, but they die quickly if I am on top of my spiritual practice. Like just the other day for instance. I was riding my bike down Higuera and some guy in a truck cut me off. I slapped the bed of his truck, he got out screaming, I yelled back and next thing you know I’m in the middle of the road squaring up with this guy. Then his buddy gets out the truck and now I’m willing to fight them both, how stupid can I be? Self-righteous, arrogant, egotistical – I was acting in most of the traits of a narcissist. I had no empathy for this man who was obviously in a hurry or that’s so emotionally screwed up and angry at the world that cutting me off was his way of acting out his pain and misery.
As of late, it’s felt like I have lost touch with the one thing that makes me proud of myself, that gives me self-esteem and self-worth, the ability to have empathy, to be compassionate, to take the higher road. My business, home, bank account, clothes, vacations, bikes and so on, all that gives me nothing of merit, nothing of virtue. I see these things and I am grateful for them, I worked hard to acquire it all and to keep it, but these things are not what truly makes me happy within. That happiness comes from the person I am in life, the person I am when no one is looking, how I act and hold myself, how I treat others and how I treat myself.
In thinking about it, I’ve known for a couple months now that I was missing a huge part of me. I got lost yet again in self, in ego, in envy, in resentment, in fear. It’s so easy to slip right back into that person that is so familiar to my disease. I could feel the weight of concern for everything that doesn’t hold value, the obsessive thoughts of self and how I should be looked upon and treated, what I should have. Sadly, it took me almost getting my ass kicked by two guys in the middle of the street to see this. It wasn’t fear that woke me up, going to jail or to the hospital, it was getting out of myself and looking at how all those people driving by saw me, how ugly and childish I was acting. That woke me to seeing I wasn’t even thinking about this guy and the pains he is living with to be so angry, the self-centeredness to drive so recklessly. It made me realize that just because I have the right of way on my bike, or in life, doesn’t mean I should always get it.
Funny how this started with other people’s narcissism, and then goes into how I have been acting in such a manner. I think most of my complaints about people end up going in this direction. I evaluate and judge, but soon after look at myself to see I have lived in or I am presently living in such ways, and then I turn to focusing on the change I need to make. I think looking at why I have been drawn to partners that exhibit these traits is fine, I guess, if I’m working at learning how to change my patterns of it. But if I’m just looking to complain or victimize myself or take no ownership, then I need to shut the… well you know what I need to do.
We are given all the information about someone early on when we meet. Platonic or not, we show people who we are fairly quickly in a close relationship, within a couple months most times. I should have no complaint as to who acts in such ways if I choose to be a part of it. And I know, a question was framed at the beginning, why do I choose these partners? It was not a statement of judgement about them, it was a question. And I know why, and I don’t know why, all at the same time.
It’s frustrating, it seems like I always make the same choices. Some have the opinion that its from my old habit of saving damsels in distress, the needy. But just because someone is in need does not make them a narcissist. Some blame it on the way I was loved as a child, as that is what I know love to be. You could only imagine what that mental warfare was like with 2 drug addict/alcoholic parents. But yet many a people I know from similar backgrounds do not end up with narcissistic partners, my sister for instance.
Is it a pattern I created while living in character defects? Which really started when I was a child, the need to chase someone down to love and treat me with kindness and compassion, and then when they don’t I wait around to be treated so. I’m not sure what it is, maybe it’s all of it. Maybe this is just what I am to experience right now, maybe I am a tool for others to learn with and it has nothing to do with me. Not everything is about me.
I look at the woman I walked away from, saying there was something missing, a spark of some sort. I can think of one woman in particular that would have been an amazing long-term partner, yet I broke it off with her. And that’s the battle right, on paper they are perfect, but there is that “thing” missing, then what? Go forth anyways and settle? But what if there wasn’t that one thing missing, and I just wasn’t used to such a serene and healthy relationship, I wasn’t used to simple and calm. We speak this to the newly clean, “Your uncomfortable because you are not used to something so serene and a life so simple.”
It's draining to go over all this, it clouds my present view, mainly being because I am not being present. I wonder what it’s like for the people who do not self-evaluate, who don’t question their ideas or motives, their choices or perceptions. Do they question them and then just accept them as they are? If I could be so lucky, or is it unlucky, I’m not quite sure. Maybe me doing all this combing through the old files of my life, I will find an insight of some sort into myself and learn from it. Maybe I will listen to what someone is telling me through actions and behaviors and not dismiss them. Or maybe I am just filling idol time right now by looking at all this, I doubt it, but maybe.
I think to say, “In the future I hope I do not choose the same sort of woman to be with” but hope like that is for people who have desires and live in fear. I want to be in total acceptance of whatever comes my way, not wishing or hoping, just surrendering to it all. I think the next time I go to get serious with someone I will move even slower, be ever so more aware and not get caught up in their pretty eyes and long lovely kisses. I guess that would mean I need to go deeper at being ok with being alone, so I’m able to walk away from such pleasantries. I must be vigilant with the work I do on myself; I must stay aware of everyone’s suffering in the ocean of existence, I need to remember that no one is perfect, and I am as flawed as the next. I need to live with more compassion and forgiveness, kindness and love in my heart. The more I am of this for you, the more I will be of it for myself.
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Of course, I set this down a week ago and never stopped thinking about it. At work, driving, riding trails, I kept going back to it. I kept asking myself if I’ve even the right to see people (particularly woman I choose in this instance) with this flaw of self-serving, egotistical, apathetic behavior. Do I even have the right to judge someone like this? I am or have I not been most all the bad things one could be. Maybe what I am seeing as narcissistic is really just a vision of me in them. I think from the loftiest of spiritual positions it would be seen as, “everyone is as they are, not right or wrong, just being as they are right now”. From that perch you love them unconditionally and have empathy and compassion for the pain and sadness they are living in. But is that still not judging who someone is. Maybe there is no way around that.
And maybe these women, this idea I have of them, and this word I tie to them is not true at all. Should the word narcissist only hang around someone’s neck who is fully engulfed in the behavior and not just showing signs of it at random times? I’m sure I can easily be seen as an asshole for even going down this road, but who would be seeing me this way, the culprits of such behavior? The victims to it would only agree and ruminate in my assertions here. And yes, I know, no victims, only volunteers.
Is it that just because you only act in an occasional disfunction you are not really defined as that type of person? That because most of the time you are kind and compassionate and understanding and forgiving and selfless and all the things baby Jesus wants you to be, that your missteps into dysfunctional behavior are let go of as mistakes? And if this was all true, where is the line that differentiates being and occasionally acting out? Is it two times a month, a week, a day? What if you are this self-serving asshat but at the same time you give your time to those in need.
Everything we do is a past experience, a past action. All the thought that went into that last paragraph, a past thought. The way I reacted in the street a couple weeks back, past reaction, now it is just a memory. If it’s not happening anymore, is it still me? Do my past actions still define my present state of being? I know, it’s not old behavior if you are still acting in it. But what if we let everything go after it happened and didn’t carry it with us. Can I steal something and then not steal the next day and say I was no longer a thief? Then 3 days later steal again and recognize that I am a thief in that moment? Do you think that if we let go like this labeling that maybe one wouldn’t be hung up on their past digressions and possibly have a better shot at growing from a behavior or situation, being that the label of what they did is no longer sewn into their shirt like a scarlet letter? How else do we live in the now and not let the then affect us today?
And the final question in this rabbit hole, does it matter who these women were to me, or how I was treated? It’s all in the past and I have been who they were, and that aside, like do I need to put this much thought into it all? Like yeah, I do, to find a way to change the pattern of my picking and choosing, but beyond that? Does any of what was, really matter that much? The neglect, the abuse, the love, the joy, all of that was what was at one time. As I hang on to the past of how I was negatively treated, it’s just as bad as hanging on to the past of how I was positively treated. Carrying past experiences with us into today does nothing but clutter the now with hopes, desires, fears and longing for what was or wasn’t.
Let us make no bones about it, I am old now, I am seasoned and well-cooked by love, pain, longing and desire. I have chased time and again, sticking around for the high and bailing when that dissipated. I fornicated my way through my 40’s like as if I was in my 20’s. I’ve met the love of my life 3 times, and my soulmate twice. I’ve been the selfish and the kind, the mean and the loving. I can’t say I am giving up on relationshiping, but I have definitely changed my perception of it. I’ve more work to do on myself than I do on a relationship that doesn’t easily make its way through my life. I can’t pick a narcissistic woman if I choose not to choose, I can’t pick one if I see it as they don’t exist, and only dysfunctional acts do. We are not the things we do, our actions speak volumes, but they do not define our person.
I don’t know where this ended up, it’s long and drawn out and when I think back to how this started and what it turned into, I’m lost. Maybe reading it would make more sense than to try and remember all the thoughts I’ve come across. I fear I’ve sounded judgmental and arrogant, and maybe I did/do. I know that there are some past girlfriends and women I have dated that would read this and have a mouth full for curse words for me, and I would hear them out at length if that soothed my trespasses against them – whether I was or was not in the wrong.
I wish I would have never started this thought, I really don’t like seeing anyone in a negative light, no matter who they are. We were not born of negativity or aggression, selfishness or ego. We were so close to our maker when we were born, we had nothing but love, compassion and joy in us. Our hearts and feelings had not been trampled on, abused and cut to pieces. When we hang on to these scars and bruises of living life, it clouds our true nature with anger, resentment and fear. We could be hurt in some fashion every day and still wake the following with joy and love in our hearts, if we would just let go of what was.
One would think that with all the processing I do, all the writing, that I would be well by now, but that is far from the truth. And truth is, if this is sick, then I wish to never be well.
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