"I love you".....what does the N mean?

[JennyWren]

This thread is inspired by the True Love that makes Ns abscond with Little Miss Perfect Knickers...because she is their "Soul Mate"...and they are destined to be together...wrapped as they are in the arms of True Love.

                  

Over and over BigBird would repeat how much he loved me. And for my part I heard the words...and I applied my understanding of love to his words. I was very much mistaken.

What the **** ARE Ns talking about when they use the word "love"? Does anybody know?????

[Proud2B]

I think it means, "Please don't go away, I need supply. and you're the best thing I've got going at the moment but as soon as I find something better, you're totally off the hook".

Seriously?  I think they feel something, but don't know what to call it.  Maybe it's feelings of desperation, or anxiety, or dire need of something.

Or maybe it's just gas.

The exN did not know what the word meant.  When he said he loved me, it meant he wanted to control or possess me.

Snarkily,
Proud2B

[overwhelmed]

He means different things at different times. He means i love that you are what I'm not. I love that you think im great. I love that you are blameable. I love that my. Mind games work. I love that your needy. I love I can walk all over you. I love that I can control you........it goes on down to, I love that you are scared of me. I love that you hate me.....endless. that's my take. Kind of like, "oh I loved that brand new toaster. It broke and I had to trash it because it didn't toast my bread anymore but I smile at the use it served at one faithful time until its use became overused. Even the handle wasn't as easy to push. But its time to try a new brand."

[JennyWren]

Defintiely Control and Possession are HUGE ingredients. Which explains the raging ridiculous jealousy.

But...actually...I think you have it exactly Proud.....

I think it means, "Please don't go away, I need supply. and you're the best thing I've got going at the moment but as soon as I find something better, you're totally off the hook".

So confusing when they are using the same word as us...but mean something entirely different.

[overwhelmed]

I do wonder when they search for a new toaster if they research through consumer reports or just try out different things until they find the one that toasts good. I'd think consumer reports would be easier and we all know they dont like to do the work themselves. Maybe n's secretary researches it for him? But he tried her toast too. Hhmmmmm. Oh, he is so great and toaster shopping beneath him. He flashes his greatness until the right toaster finds him. That's it. He's so desireable that even a small appliance finds him.

[JennyWren]

Overwhelmed....your demented Egg of course is throwing this line at you now. And what a massive mega cognitive dissonance experience to hear the words "I love you"...from a man whose eggish behaviours don`t even bear repeating.

It is really confusing to be told "I love you" from somebody whose actions say not.

I mean....you understand now...but I know I found it really troubling...and I still believed BigBird for the longest time....and explained his other behaviours away, rather than understand the truth...BigBird`s idea of Love is NOT LOVE.

I guess...reading your post...what stands out is that...ONCE AGAIN...it`s all about THEM. Love of all things can not be about your-flaming-self!!!!!

[JennyWren]

Inevitably he ends up with a toaster which is malfunctioning in the most ludicrous ways....and which causes the toaster to toast twice a fast and three times as deliciously just for him. A toaster match made in heaven. True Toast.

And one can only hope that the entwined electrical appliance will end up electrocuting him good and proper.

[alatariel]

perhaps N would like to take a nice long bath with his toaster, while it's plugged in...

I love you = I like the way you make me feel right now
I love you= I like the way that when I say "jump", you ask "how high"
I love you= I like the way you reflect me back to myself
I love you= I like the way I look when I'm seen with you
I love you= I like all the things you do for me

[Rosemary]

they see us just as objects we arent loved in  the traditional sense ,we are tools for his supply to lift him up to make him feel special . He will believe that feeling to be love at first ,as hes ENTITLED to love  my NH said in a letter when off to be with gingerbread GF.

However ,in reality ,it is a drug and will eventually lose its potency ,so he has to go and look for new supply again and you lose the IDEAL love that he is seeking ,so when he says "I love you " he only means hes mirroring what he is looking for ,and this he never finds because he cant love and never will .cos  hes NUTS      arrrhhhhh

[Imogene]

It means, "I'll show her (the ex, his mother, the one who got away) how wrong she was about me.  I am invincible."

It means, "I can have feelings."

It means, "Finally here is someone who says my dick is perfect."

[Chime]

OMG Imogene!
    
my eyes are tearing from laughing so hard!

Chime

[MoreMyself]

With the Hobbit it was a job offer.  It meant that he thought I was suitable to look after his needs, cook, clean, provide sex, good breeding stock (he actually said he had considered, when dating me, that although I was short my brothers were over 6 feet tall so we might have tall children).  Instead of offering me a salary with medical coverage, he just had to say "I love you".  And when I said "I love you too" back it meant I'd accepted the job.

Strange, though, he stopped saying I love you after the first few years.  Anytime I would prod for his recommitment he would get quite snappish and say "You know I love you".  Now what does THAT mean?  Not sure.  Except I was supposed to stop prodding for emotional commitment because he had said it enough in the past and I was just supposed to know. 

[notakennedy]

The first time NH said that he loved me, we were sitting in his car and on the radio came Hootie & The Blowfish, and one line"...I just want to love you, the best that I can", and NH said, "yes, that's right, I just to love you the best that I can". Now had I had experience of N I would have realised that even then he was borrowing words rather than speaking for himself ....... I mean, I thought it was lovely and romantic and of course, I was thrilled that he had said the L word.  Actually, I think he is capable of love of a sort, but it's so messed up along with the peculiar conditioning he received at the hands of N-mother, that he mixes it up with all sorts of other stuff, like control and self-esteem, and supply (to keep his self esteem bolstered up) ... at times he appears downright fragile and I am sure that he is.  Just a great shame that it is accompanied by a deep resentment and anger, which he visits on whoever he is closest to instead of addressing the real issue with Mummy.

[notakennedy]

.. It means, "Finally here is someone who says my dick is perfect." ...

, however Imogene, I am also positive there is an element of this too in NH's case .......

[Legs]

Lordy, Lucifer played (badly) the guitar and sang (Like a banshee that was being tortured) and he played one song "I love you the best I know how"..............and he would say that to me as if it meant something really special.


 I realize now it was code and I was supposed to answer, "your dick is perfect" but I didn't know so that made it ok for him to give money to prostitutes and attempt to flock them in really cheap motels.


AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! it's so weird the things they say............and they way we are..........it's lie a marriage made in HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Legs

[Never again]

Jenny, do you enjoy tying our heads in knots??

What do they mean?? Well, I think everyone has pretty much nailed it ... from the perfect-dick supply to the I own you to the little-boy please don't leave me.

What it never means is 'I see you and appreciate and esteem you for the person you are'.

Yesterday I was innocently spring-cleaning a bookshelf when there languishing between two books I found a piece of squared copy-book paper declaring "Trust me. I love you" surrounded by a badly drawn heart. From him of course. It dates from three years ago when I was moving out of our apartment, and how it ended up where I found it yesterday I haven't the foggiest idea.

I suppose what it meant at the time was "Don't go". I remember wondering why he was asking me to trust him when at that time I didn't actually distrust him ... I just couldn't stand his constant belittling and silent treatments anymore. Only later did I grasp how profoundly dishonest he was.

So he gave me that scrawled declaration (with flowers) and at the same time point-blank refused to have any discussion about the reason I was leaving. So I left. And then (after a few trips to a 'masseuse', as I discovered later), he came to my new home and this time brought the heavy artillery - the marriage proposal, the couples counselling .. But I digress.

Anyway, I ripped it up and threw it in the bin.

I still keep running into traces of him around the place. He was good at giving me meaningless words and things.

Edit P.S. I ripped it up and threw it in the bin and felt sh!tty all evening.

[pearlsb4swine]

When my xnh said he loved me, I think he meant:


I love the sex.

You have a job.

You're kind of cute even if I am not crazy about blondes.

You are easy to tie in knots.

You seem to know about stuff I don't know about and am afraid to ask. 

It's hard for me to really imagine what it's like inside his head.   

One way to look at it is that he is very self-aware, and is just a total scheming manipulative monster.  That he used me and knew full well that he was using me and was always aware that he was wearing a mask.  A con man.  A scam artist, without a shred of sincerity or real feeling.

Or that that self awareness came and went.  That maybe in the beginning, he did have some sincere feelings for me.  But when he got angry, he would start this manipulative stuff, and hide behind the mask.  I know we spent a lot more time in the early years, fighting and then reconciling, talking, talking, talking.  I put so much energy into trying to understand him.  We would sort of come apart and then come back together, in this cycle.    Usually the cycles would be organized around some lies he told me, about his drug use, or about money he had spent.  There would be a period where I was deceived, then a crisis when I found out, and then I would forgive him and we would be close again, until it  happened again. 

There would be this come clean session, usually.  Where he would tell me in this very emotionless voice what he'd done.  And I would be shocked, and kind of underreacting, and just wanting to get all the facts on the table so I could, finally, understand what I was dealing with.  And both of us would be relieved, I think.  And we would talk about where we had gone wrong, with me always taking a hunk of the blame for whatever he'd done. 

huh.  kind of went beyond the question asked there.  I am still trying to understand, really understand what went wrong specifically in my marriage.  I think I cut short the last come clean session--I said, I've heard ENOUGH!!!  And now I am wondering what little tasty nuggets he had saved up for me.

What a  .  Although it's unkind to  to call him a 

Pearls

[CZBZ]

I love you, what does the N mean? Who knows? They create research projects out of questions such as this. 

What DOES the narcissist mean when he or she says, "I love you."

Maybe something like this: "When I'm with you CZ, I love me." The reason their love is of no use to anyone but themselves is because this next sentence is also true: "You don't make me love me. Now I hate you."  A narcissist can switch partners as easily as changing toothpaste brands. I think what happens is that they find someone/something that reflects their grandiosity-------what they REALLY think of themselves, although they may hide their egotism from their present partner, what Campbell calls 'self-presenting'.

"It may be that narcissists self-present during early relationship interactions and that it takes some time for their partners to see past the presentation." ~Research article

I quickly re-read this study in our narcissism library, Does Self-Love Lead to Love for Others? by Campbell, Foster and Finkel. Remember, the people being studied for this 'non-clinical' research article, were college students. It's still informative to compare our experiences to non-clinical studies because in my view, there are notable similarities between non-clinical and clinical narcissists. Plus, the majority of people deal with 'non-clinical' narcissists so articles like this will prove to be useful for the general population.

Narcissists are game-players, according to this study. I also think their higher degree of machiavellianism makes it possible for them to leave one relationship for another if the grass appears to be greener on the other side. And THAT is why their love, whatever they call love, is a selfish endeavor, the antithesis of what most people experience as 'love'.


CZ
 

[Chime]

I was reading an article in the therapists office the other day
It might have been Psych Today... I'll check next time I am there
to get a citation
but it said that narcissists love you like a $300 car
they "love" this car - it looks good and price is right - no deep investment
and when that $300 car isn't working smoothly anymore
they don't work on it
they get another $300 car
and so on and so on

Chime

[Freezer Burned]

I Love You . . . because pretty women are too high-maintenance and demanding, so I'm lowering my expectations.
I Love You . . . because of that sparkle of adoration in your eye when you look at me.
I Love You . . . dammit, what more do you need to be my constantly totally self-sacrificing slave??

The phrase *I Love You* is like a coin that they put in whatever vending machine (target) to get whatever they want out of it.

[Chime]

The phrase *I Love You* is like a coin that they put in whatever vending machine (target) to get whatever they want out of it.

Oh my goodness!  So true...intermittent reward schedules for continued behaviour
it's dog training!
sigh...   

Chime schlumping into her chair

[JennyWren]

Woooah....you lot are GOOD. I shall have to try harder to tie all your heads in knots!!!  It`s only fair...since the contents of what used to pass for my brain are so tangled they resemble a fishing net!

Never again....how HORRIBLE to have found that note. Shudder. "Trust me...I love you". Chilling. And things like that just ping you back in time...and you`re there. But thank you for sharing that...because it seems to me extremely poignant.....for reasons I will come to in a minute.

Maybe something like this: "When I'm with you CZ, I love me." The reason their love is of no use to anyone but themselves is because this next sentence is also true: "You don't make me love me. Now I hate you." 

That makes revolting sense. Our function is to mirror. OK. Yuck.

But Ns MUST understand love on another level...logically at least (shudder...in a Mr Spock-ish way) because they are able to say it in all the right places..and SOUND exactly like they are in harmony with our concept of love.

Moreover....they are able to use the L word for emotional leverage. They KNOW it`s power...though they don`t FEEL it`s power. More yuck.

So....in Never again`s note "Trust me. I love you"...the word Love is present to suggest it has the power to make N trustworthy. To say you Love gives you power over your partner. Yuck yuck shudder blurrrr. 

Or...just as Freezer Burned so beautifully observes...

The phrase *I Love You* is like a coin that they put in whatever vending machine (target) to get whatever they want out of it.

Now then......more brain knots required.....if Ns are using key words like Love with no equivalent meaning in their puny wee minds.....how many other words are they churning out with no concept of their commonally held meaning....but with great understanding of their strategic power?

I will shut up eventually. But these guys freak me out. It`s like I have been living with an undercover alien from the planet Total bazturd. And DIDN`T NOTICE.

[Chime]

uh oh
Jenny's gonna keep bringin' it

and you better Jenny
shut-up indeed - NOT
 

Chime

[Never again]

Thanks for that hand on the shoulder there, Jenny. I needed that :-)

Now then......more brain knots required.....if Ns are using key words like Love with no equivalent meaning in their puny wee minds.....how many other words are they churning out with no concept of their commonally held meaning....but with great understanding of their strategic power?

Sucker for punishment that I am, here we go ... (all taken from el bastardo's bargain-basement Dictionary of Manipulation, of course):

Respect
Common usages: I respect you, I have always respected you
N meaning: Don't really know what it means, but the suckers seem to like hearing it

Sorry
Common usages: I'm sorry, I'm very sorry, I already said I'm sorry, How many times am I supposed to say I'm sorry?
N meaning: This is a highly self-humiliating but potent word and should therefore be used sparingly. "I'm sorry" is usually a good way to get the sucker to kiss me and get off my case

Hurt
Common usages: I will never hurt you, I would never hurt you, You hurt my feelings when you say I hurt you
N meaning: I am the only person in the universe who experiences this feeling

Is that enough to be going on with?

[Chime]

Great stuff Never Again! 
keep it coming!
Chime