Communication from narcissism land
What follows is an email from PrettyMeBoy-an emotional disaster from my past-with my comments. I offer it as an educational experience.
He begins, responding to a terse email from me that he had failed to live up to his promise to get back to me:
I guess my silence is making you tetchy. Please understand that this is a delicate issue and that the majority of the advice I've had has recommended that I don't respond at all.
Having established that I have to be talked down to and anything that follows is a grand concession on his part, he continues:
Please, just leave me alone.
So, nothing substantive is on offer then and his convenience remains what really counts.
I'm sorry for hurting you. I'm sorry I was too stupid, naive and selfish to realise that I was going to hurt you so badly. I'm sorry I couldn't stop the fight between you and [MeMeMeGirl] from escalating.
Keep things in generalities and cast yourself as the poor boy in the middle, that is safe.
I'm sorry I forgot the day of our night away. I'm sorry for any hurt I caused you and I'm sorry to anyone else that's been hurt by my faults.
That is right, apologise to the world. But it includes something specific at last, that is good. [Though acting as if that one event was the only issue when it was the continuing pattern of behaviour that did the real damage is belittling to me and exculpatory to him.]
I'm sorry I chose [MeMeMeGirl] over you.
Then move into the really offensive. It was not an “either or” situation, her or me. I was not a potential lover in any serious sense, and I realised that. If the relationship between the two of them was a mistake, it was a mistake for its own reasons. But implying it was really about jealous competition flatters him and belittles me.
I was sorry then, though I wasn't willing to concede it to you.
A “being sorry” that you do not convey to the person in question and does not affect your behaviour is no “sorry” at all. When, as things were spiralling down, I tried to explain to him how hurt I was about his behaviour, PrettyMeBoy cursorily said about our disastrous night away that, although “he shouldn’t have been late”, I had entirely the wrong response. The perfect moment to say how sorry he was, and I got a lecture about my flaws.
In his subsequent email response at the time, he took no responsibility for the effect of any of his actions towards me whatsoever. Instead, he took the view that he had gone off to get counselling, so that was all fixed then.
The problem with dealing with someone with a personality disorder is that “feelings make facts”. Then it was convenient not to be sorry. Now, it is convenient to remember himself as being sorry back then. It is not a lie in the conventional sense, since he has, I am sure, convinced himself that’s how it was.
I'm still sorry.
Yes, just as sorry as he was then, and to as much practical effect.
You have it in your head that I have a narcissistic personality disorder. I don't.
Too bad about all his behaviour then: it was only once I started reading about narcissism that I could make sense of PrettyMeBoy’s behaviour. Notice also the belittling phrase about me, straight after that terribly sincere apology.
When I post about narcissism, people comment about how well I understand it. Now, I wonder why that is?
I have a mild anxiety disorder, dyspraxia and a tendency towards depression. I've been through therapy at various levels and it really helped.
Oh yes, I can really tell. He is much more glib.
When I emailed him at the time of the collapse in our friendship, he told me he had gone to counselling, so clearly the problem was fixed. This was, in fact, the first clue I was dealing with a narcissist, since any reasonable person would have gone: problems → see counsellor → probably means there might have been issues in my behaviour→that is why my friend is so upset. For PrettyMeBoy, the only issue was what affected him.
Counselling tends to make narcissists worse: the counsellor is likely not to have any real check on the narcissist’s utterly sincere lies; the counselling tends to validate the narcissist’s emotional concerns; it gives them improved techniques and better language to engage in self-justification, so allows their fundamental reality principle (their convenience comes first) to operate even more strongly.
Besides, I got over my anxiety attacks and depression without seeing a counsellor. And, somehow, I suspect I understand myself rather better than he understands himself. Indeed, I suspect I understand him better than he understands me.
When I suggested you see a counseller, it was with your best interests at heart. I'm sure you don't believe that, but it was. It took a lot of courage for me to say it at the time and it upset me that it blew up in my face so badly.
If he could manage the advice without being belittling, it would be all so much more believable. But let us go through what he says here.
It is quite an experience, having the person whose untrustworthy selfishness has hurt you so badly telling you that you should see a counsellor. What responsibility did this involve taking for his actions? None. What effort did it require him to undertake? None. Who did it construct as the real problem? Me. It “blew up in his face” because I saw it at the time as a refusal to take any responsibility for his actions and said so forcefully. Which is precisely what it remains.
I guess this is where you expect me to choose one of your options.
Or make a counter-offer perhaps?
Well, I would do what I could to make this up to you but that would presumably involve contact and prolonged communication. I don't want to have to see you or read your writing again.
Because that would involve facing and taking responsibility for his actions, wouldn’t it?
I don't want to say "Fuck you" or do anything to upset you further, but I don't want anything to do with you
either.
Because the fundamental principle is the same as it has always been, his convenience comes first.
It's been about 8 years since I've seen you in person so I don't think it's that hard for us to avoid each other.
Convenient that.
If there is anything I can do without compromising myself I will gladly.
Don’t you love that phrase ‘without compromising myself’? Just the right touch of me being so unreasonable and threatening and him being so put upon and all.
So I emailed him in response to this. Twice. No response. What sort of person-having been so hurtful through being serially untrustworthy-offers yet another promise he patently did not mean? A “feelings makes facts” sort of person.
I assume you were referring to my last relationship on your livejournal, but your sources are obviously unreliable as that is simply not what happened. I will ask you out of good faith, to delete that entry or at least the parts you got wrong.
Got wrong how? When I asked, no answer was the stern reply. It is the behaviour of an emotional 8 year old: “it’s wrong, so there!”
I'm sorry if this isn't the response you wanted.
But not sorry enough to do anything about it: that word ‘sorry’, I do not think it means what you think it means.
I hope you can find the happiness you crave and can get past the events that upset you so much.
Good luck,
[PrettyMeBoy].
Don’t you love the nicely belittling characterisation of poor craving me?
A friend who has had her own experience with a personality disorder person in her life, made an excellent comment:
I found it remarkable just how similar the email from [PrettyMeBoy] was to correspondence I've received from [HerEx] in the last sixth months.
Particularly in the attitude of "I've said sorry, you must forgive me now". The transferrence of the responsibility is paramount as you describe below.
One sure-fire sign of dealing with a narcissist: no matter how badly they hurt you, fixing it always turns into entirely your responsibility. (And any problems are, as much as possible, your fault really. For the more you are to blame for being hurt, the less they are responsible for.)
For PrettyMeBoy, he gets to be judge of everything: his actions, my actions, my feelings, whatever. I do not get to be judge of anything. This is, of course, profoundly narcissistic: his convenience is the (only) operating reality principle
PrettyMeBoy’s email does not disprove his narcissism, it demonstrates it. “Being sorry” simply means he is sorry he feels at all bad over it and takes whatever steps he can so he won’t anymore.
A little while ago, I read a letter of genuine apology, where one brother was apologising to another. It included the sentence “I hope you can forgive me”. A genuine apology is not presented as a fait accompli.
Another friend who has had to deal with narcissism in her family commented:
The "apology" [PrettyMeBoy] gives you is not sincere. It's actually designed to sound world-weary and long suffering - or he's not much good at written communication. I think aggrieved is the tone I am picking up. Basically, he's still sorry YOU don't get it. And, my dear, he isn't going to get it.
PrettyMeBoy is acting narcissistically: having offered his (patently insincere) apology, having emphasised what a huge concession it is that he has even been good enough to offer any apology at all, there is no issue whatsoever about whether I have any say in the apology. It is now entirely my responsibility to simply accept his munificent apology.
I never saw PrettyMeBoy display a classic symptom of narcissism, the thwarted rage. But, as a friend pointed out, that just makes him an elusive “I will move to that mirror over there” sort of narcissist, not a “smash the mirror” narcissist. Unless, of course, you “force” him to it.
I also showed PrettyMeBoy’s response to ItsAPhaseLad, who had also hurt me very badly but had, off his own bat, did what he could to make it up to me. ItsAPhaseLad was inclined to take PrettyMeBoy’s apology at face failure. When I queried this, his response included:
To some extent, perhaps you do have do make allowances for the fact that if you fall for young, stupid people, they will behave in predictable ways.
This was less than helpful. This implies that I not only have the emotional burden for what he, PrettyMeBoy and MeMeMeGirl did, I also bear moral responsibility for what they did. If you betray someone who trusts you, that is your fault for trusting them! What a wonderful license for bad behaviour.
To be fair, ItsAPhaseLad did explain that what he meant is that I have to forgive myself.
Still, morality-good behaviour-is not needed because of our strengths and our robustness, it is needed because of our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. It is precisely because people not only have known vulnerabilities, but also may have unknown vulnerabilities (including unknown to themselves) that we should act decently towards each other. We are all wounded souls in some way or another.
To blame someone for having vulnerabilities they did not choose to have-indeed, may not be fully aware of themselves-is both unfair (indeed, can be monstrously unfair: a case of “blaming the victim”) and an attack on moral behaviour that we all rely on. If made to the vulnerable person, it is likely to exacerbate their vulnerabilities since it further undermines any already done damage to their self-confidence in their ability to judge matters and to act. If made to them by someone who hurt them by behaving badly, it is blaming the victim to minimise your own responsibility.
ItsAPhaseLad’s later response was more helpful. Among other things, he said:
I think what I'm trying to say is that you've invested so much of yourself in making this about him (and it is, in the sense of him wronging you) that it's no longer about you. And it should be. All the good in you, all the kindness in you, all the strength in you. All of that poisoned, by one guy {} years ago.
You're more than that. I believe in you.
But that is the problem of finding hidden damage that suddenly wells up when you think you are making a new start. You look for some way of putting it all in a safe box so there are no new nasty surprises and where one can deal with the past nasty surprises: and then some unexpected delayed reaction hits you.
What it also does, of course, is just shows what a vast emotional and moral gulf separates ItsAPhaseLad from PrettyMeBoy. The former is an emotional adult who understands moral responsibility and the latter really, really is not and really does not.
But that is what makes narcissists such a trap. They look, and superficially act, like adults but, really, you are dealing with an emotional 8 year old in an apparently (but only apparently) adult package. Learning that they really do not think like the rest of us makes you distrust yourself and whether what people appear to be offering is real or not. The whole language (verbal and non-verbal) of intimacy-at least beyond friendship-is smeared.
And my grip on such things was fragile in the first place. I continue to work at it, but while I no longer suffer from anxiety attacks (except if I over-sugar and then immediately exercise, but they are minor) or depression, it is very likely that I will remain single. I do not trust expressions of affection with any sexual content to them. I do not trust other people erotically. I do not trust myself. Which leaves no one to trust in such matters.
But, hey, I can recognise narcissism when I see it.
He begins, responding to a terse email from me that he had failed to live up to his promise to get back to me:
I guess my silence is making you tetchy. Please understand that this is a delicate issue and that the majority of the advice I've had has recommended that I don't respond at all.
Having established that I have to be talked down to and anything that follows is a grand concession on his part, he continues:
Please, just leave me alone.
So, nothing substantive is on offer then and his convenience remains what really counts.
I'm sorry for hurting you. I'm sorry I was too stupid, naive and selfish to realise that I was going to hurt you so badly. I'm sorry I couldn't stop the fight between you and [MeMeMeGirl] from escalating.
Keep things in generalities and cast yourself as the poor boy in the middle, that is safe.
I'm sorry I forgot the day of our night away. I'm sorry for any hurt I caused you and I'm sorry to anyone else that's been hurt by my faults.
That is right, apologise to the world. But it includes something specific at last, that is good. [Though acting as if that one event was the only issue when it was the continuing pattern of behaviour that did the real damage is belittling to me and exculpatory to him.]
I'm sorry I chose [MeMeMeGirl] over you.
Then move into the really offensive. It was not an “either or” situation, her or me. I was not a potential lover in any serious sense, and I realised that. If the relationship between the two of them was a mistake, it was a mistake for its own reasons. But implying it was really about jealous competition flatters him and belittles me.
I was sorry then, though I wasn't willing to concede it to you.
A “being sorry” that you do not convey to the person in question and does not affect your behaviour is no “sorry” at all. When, as things were spiralling down, I tried to explain to him how hurt I was about his behaviour, PrettyMeBoy cursorily said about our disastrous night away that, although “he shouldn’t have been late”, I had entirely the wrong response. The perfect moment to say how sorry he was, and I got a lecture about my flaws.
In his subsequent email response at the time, he took no responsibility for the effect of any of his actions towards me whatsoever. Instead, he took the view that he had gone off to get counselling, so that was all fixed then.
The problem with dealing with someone with a personality disorder is that “feelings make facts”. Then it was convenient not to be sorry. Now, it is convenient to remember himself as being sorry back then. It is not a lie in the conventional sense, since he has, I am sure, convinced himself that’s how it was.
I'm still sorry.
Yes, just as sorry as he was then, and to as much practical effect.
You have it in your head that I have a narcissistic personality disorder. I don't.
Too bad about all his behaviour then: it was only once I started reading about narcissism that I could make sense of PrettyMeBoy’s behaviour. Notice also the belittling phrase about me, straight after that terribly sincere apology.
When I post about narcissism, people comment about how well I understand it. Now, I wonder why that is?
I have a mild anxiety disorder, dyspraxia and a tendency towards depression. I've been through therapy at various levels and it really helped.
Oh yes, I can really tell. He is much more glib.
When I emailed him at the time of the collapse in our friendship, he told me he had gone to counselling, so clearly the problem was fixed. This was, in fact, the first clue I was dealing with a narcissist, since any reasonable person would have gone: problems → see counsellor → probably means there might have been issues in my behaviour→that is why my friend is so upset. For PrettyMeBoy, the only issue was what affected him.
Counselling tends to make narcissists worse: the counsellor is likely not to have any real check on the narcissist’s utterly sincere lies; the counselling tends to validate the narcissist’s emotional concerns; it gives them improved techniques and better language to engage in self-justification, so allows their fundamental reality principle (their convenience comes first) to operate even more strongly.
Besides, I got over my anxiety attacks and depression without seeing a counsellor. And, somehow, I suspect I understand myself rather better than he understands himself. Indeed, I suspect I understand him better than he understands me.
When I suggested you see a counseller, it was with your best interests at heart. I'm sure you don't believe that, but it was. It took a lot of courage for me to say it at the time and it upset me that it blew up in my face so badly.
If he could manage the advice without being belittling, it would be all so much more believable. But let us go through what he says here.
It is quite an experience, having the person whose untrustworthy selfishness has hurt you so badly telling you that you should see a counsellor. What responsibility did this involve taking for his actions? None. What effort did it require him to undertake? None. Who did it construct as the real problem? Me. It “blew up in his face” because I saw it at the time as a refusal to take any responsibility for his actions and said so forcefully. Which is precisely what it remains.
I guess this is where you expect me to choose one of your options.
Or make a counter-offer perhaps?
Well, I would do what I could to make this up to you but that would presumably involve contact and prolonged communication. I don't want to have to see you or read your writing again.
Because that would involve facing and taking responsibility for his actions, wouldn’t it?
I don't want to say "Fuck you" or do anything to upset you further, but I don't want anything to do with you
either.
Because the fundamental principle is the same as it has always been, his convenience comes first.
It's been about 8 years since I've seen you in person so I don't think it's that hard for us to avoid each other.
Convenient that.
If there is anything I can do without compromising myself I will gladly.
Don’t you love that phrase ‘without compromising myself’? Just the right touch of me being so unreasonable and threatening and him being so put upon and all.
So I emailed him in response to this. Twice. No response. What sort of person-having been so hurtful through being serially untrustworthy-offers yet another promise he patently did not mean? A “feelings makes facts” sort of person.
I assume you were referring to my last relationship on your livejournal, but your sources are obviously unreliable as that is simply not what happened. I will ask you out of good faith, to delete that entry or at least the parts you got wrong.
Got wrong how? When I asked, no answer was the stern reply. It is the behaviour of an emotional 8 year old: “it’s wrong, so there!”
I'm sorry if this isn't the response you wanted.
But not sorry enough to do anything about it: that word ‘sorry’, I do not think it means what you think it means.
I hope you can find the happiness you crave and can get past the events that upset you so much.
Good luck,
[PrettyMeBoy].
Don’t you love the nicely belittling characterisation of poor craving me?
A friend who has had her own experience with a personality disorder person in her life, made an excellent comment:
I found it remarkable just how similar the email from [PrettyMeBoy] was to correspondence I've received from [HerEx] in the last sixth months.
Particularly in the attitude of "I've said sorry, you must forgive me now". The transferrence of the responsibility is paramount as you describe below.
One sure-fire sign of dealing with a narcissist: no matter how badly they hurt you, fixing it always turns into entirely your responsibility. (And any problems are, as much as possible, your fault really. For the more you are to blame for being hurt, the less they are responsible for.)
For PrettyMeBoy, he gets to be judge of everything: his actions, my actions, my feelings, whatever. I do not get to be judge of anything. This is, of course, profoundly narcissistic: his convenience is the (only) operating reality principle
PrettyMeBoy’s email does not disprove his narcissism, it demonstrates it. “Being sorry” simply means he is sorry he feels at all bad over it and takes whatever steps he can so he won’t anymore.
A little while ago, I read a letter of genuine apology, where one brother was apologising to another. It included the sentence “I hope you can forgive me”. A genuine apology is not presented as a fait accompli.
Another friend who has had to deal with narcissism in her family commented:
The "apology" [PrettyMeBoy] gives you is not sincere. It's actually designed to sound world-weary and long suffering - or he's not much good at written communication. I think aggrieved is the tone I am picking up. Basically, he's still sorry YOU don't get it. And, my dear, he isn't going to get it.
PrettyMeBoy is acting narcissistically: having offered his (patently insincere) apology, having emphasised what a huge concession it is that he has even been good enough to offer any apology at all, there is no issue whatsoever about whether I have any say in the apology. It is now entirely my responsibility to simply accept his munificent apology.
I never saw PrettyMeBoy display a classic symptom of narcissism, the thwarted rage. But, as a friend pointed out, that just makes him an elusive “I will move to that mirror over there” sort of narcissist, not a “smash the mirror” narcissist. Unless, of course, you “force” him to it.
I also showed PrettyMeBoy’s response to ItsAPhaseLad, who had also hurt me very badly but had, off his own bat, did what he could to make it up to me. ItsAPhaseLad was inclined to take PrettyMeBoy’s apology at face failure. When I queried this, his response included:
To some extent, perhaps you do have do make allowances for the fact that if you fall for young, stupid people, they will behave in predictable ways.
This was less than helpful. This implies that I not only have the emotional burden for what he, PrettyMeBoy and MeMeMeGirl did, I also bear moral responsibility for what they did. If you betray someone who trusts you, that is your fault for trusting them! What a wonderful license for bad behaviour.
To be fair, ItsAPhaseLad did explain that what he meant is that I have to forgive myself.
Still, morality-good behaviour-is not needed because of our strengths and our robustness, it is needed because of our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. It is precisely because people not only have known vulnerabilities, but also may have unknown vulnerabilities (including unknown to themselves) that we should act decently towards each other. We are all wounded souls in some way or another.
To blame someone for having vulnerabilities they did not choose to have-indeed, may not be fully aware of themselves-is both unfair (indeed, can be monstrously unfair: a case of “blaming the victim”) and an attack on moral behaviour that we all rely on. If made to the vulnerable person, it is likely to exacerbate their vulnerabilities since it further undermines any already done damage to their self-confidence in their ability to judge matters and to act. If made to them by someone who hurt them by behaving badly, it is blaming the victim to minimise your own responsibility.
ItsAPhaseLad’s later response was more helpful. Among other things, he said:
I think what I'm trying to say is that you've invested so much of yourself in making this about him (and it is, in the sense of him wronging you) that it's no longer about you. And it should be. All the good in you, all the kindness in you, all the strength in you. All of that poisoned, by one guy {} years ago.
You're more than that. I believe in you.
But that is the problem of finding hidden damage that suddenly wells up when you think you are making a new start. You look for some way of putting it all in a safe box so there are no new nasty surprises and where one can deal with the past nasty surprises: and then some unexpected delayed reaction hits you.
What it also does, of course, is just shows what a vast emotional and moral gulf separates ItsAPhaseLad from PrettyMeBoy. The former is an emotional adult who understands moral responsibility and the latter really, really is not and really does not.
But that is what makes narcissists such a trap. They look, and superficially act, like adults but, really, you are dealing with an emotional 8 year old in an apparently (but only apparently) adult package. Learning that they really do not think like the rest of us makes you distrust yourself and whether what people appear to be offering is real or not. The whole language (verbal and non-verbal) of intimacy-at least beyond friendship-is smeared.
And my grip on such things was fragile in the first place. I continue to work at it, but while I no longer suffer from anxiety attacks (except if I over-sugar and then immediately exercise, but they are minor) or depression, it is very likely that I will remain single. I do not trust expressions of affection with any sexual content to them. I do not trust other people erotically. I do not trust myself. Which leaves no one to trust in such matters.
But, hey, I can recognise narcissism when I see it.