I take a very wishy-washy view of the idea that a narcissist 'never' loved his family/partner. You can get into these semantic arguments with people who proceed to define love based on their definitions and that can feel extremely invalidating to someone who experienced 'love'. Or even worse, they tell you that what "YOU" called love was toxic immaturity or co-dependence or trauma bonding or any other means they have of saying their definition is superior to your 'inferior' concept of love you big idiot don't you read books like they do. I find this utterly disgusting.
And perhaps a narcissist has a distorted sense of love because he or she is excessively self-focused but that does not mean they have not loved you or their family. Narcissists are capable of loyalty which to me, suggest they are capable of love...probably not in the Perfect Definition of Love but 'good enough' definition of love. There is most definitely, a difference between a roving narcissist who is not capable of a long-term relationship and those that are. Narcissism can increase in severity as a person ages so I do not believe narcissists have never 'loved' their family or partner. They change overtime and their pathology becomes pronounced, even entrenched.
Usually though, people find some consolation in the idea that narcissists never ever loved them. It's almost easier to end the relationship if you believe that, though it insults your integrity and self-worth to the very core to believe you were nothing more than a serviceable object. Perhaps our perceptions of the relationship also change during a grieving process? AT first, I couldn't afford to believe my X loved me because i kept waiting for him to 'wake up' and in the meantime, I was STUCK in limbo and hurting myself (and my family).
Thanks, CZ. I am doing much better today. My stbxnh called this morning--we haven't been in contact much--and he was so blatantly condescending and manipulative that I thought, THIS? I missed THIS? Kinda snapped me out of it.
But truthfully, I think my stbxnh did love me at one time. He could be kind and did a lot to boost my self esteem when he wasn't tearing it down! My relationship with him was better than anything else I had ever experienced in my FOO. Compared to my parents, we were Ward and June Cleaver. He let me know he enjoyed my company and mostly respected me. We had fun together. Sometimes, especially when the kids were very little, he could be very sweet with them. He got sober for me. Well, actually, he pretended to get sober for me, and he didn't actually get sober until he decided he wanted it for himself. He just could never, ever be wrong, and the balance of good stuff always had to tilt in his direction. I had to give 65% to get my 35%. And of course, when the d and d happened, I was shocked to see how contemptuous he was towards me. And how resentful he was about a lot of things that I never knew bothered him. He kept a lot of ugly secrets.
He loved me as much as was capable of at the time. But he sacrificed his love for me to serve his narcissism.
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Topic: having a hard day, actually missing things about the N (Read 1421 times)
