OK, let’s get down to brass tacks shall we? You and others here seem to think I am attacking you only for the sport of competition, as a means to boosting my self esteem. That is not the case. I see something very troubling in your posts. Others seem to sense it but I’m not sure anyone has put their finger on it.
First let me say in response to GEL’s comments that I should NOT say you are a true narcissist. I know better than to make such a claim, as I think there are relatively few of them around. But I do believe you have quite a few of these tendencies. And I agree that we all have some of this. A good dose of confidence and self esteem is essential to a healthy persona. So why do I see a problem? I interpret your suggestions as falling into two camps, what I will call tactics and overall strategy.
By tactics I am thinking of how someone would approach a particular issue, how to get a point across, how to resolve a particular habit, a point in time action. Here I think your words are particularly effective, and I have praised you for this. It is the area I need the most work in. I should have been more tactful in my approach to Globule, but I had my reasons.
By overall strategy, I mean the lifestyle approach taken in dealing with another person. It is here that I think you methods can be dangerous to a relationship. True compatibility in a healthy relationship depends on honesty, openness, good communication, and a thorough understanding of you and your partner’s issues (I’m sure I’m missing other important things). Leave any one of these elements out and problems will begin to crop up. What I see in your comments is an overall strategy to work your partner in ways that appeal to their ego but ultimately serve as manipulation. Once they become aware of this, and cannot get you to acknowledge or change what you are doing, they have no choice but to leave the relationship.
I can speak with some authority on this subject because as I mentioned before, my mother has these same traits. As a child, I can recall her being very controlling and shaming when angry. But like most people, when things are going well, she is a delight to be around, the proverbial life of the party. Her friends adore her and people seem to be attracted to her by some magnetic pull. She firmly believes she was a great mother and sacrificed for my brothers and I. But when I speak to her of the damage done from her angry spells, the toxic shaming she would put forth, the fights with my father, she will not accept any responsibility. She becomes very defensive and angry about it. The lethality comes about when she has to deal with stress.
The sad part is that she truly wants to help others. But her childhood trauma is more than she can overcome. She was born into in a high class family in Japan before the war, raised mostly by a nanny. So she had little maternal affection. They lived in Hiroshima and lost everything in the atomic bomb. Her family survived, but the emotional scars were permanent. Actually, I think the maternal bonds are her biggest problem, and to protect herself from her mother’s “abandonment” she built very strong walls and denials. She maintains fantasies on how people should behave toward outsiders and within the family. Her effect is very dysfunctional and toxic. I am trying to get her to understand where this originates and how it affects her, so she can acknowledge it and change.
Why is my mother relevant here? Because I see some of the same issues in Blackfoot. This is a board to deal with our emotional issues. Blackfoot is still young, without children and unaware of the damage that can be wrought on such vulnerable minds. I believe that following his advice carte blanche can become toxic to a family, but may not be apparent for years to come. Manipulation and control of others is never healthy. This is my agenda, nothing more. I see something in his posts that others do not. Should I stay quiet about it? I don’t think so. We are here to learn. I have this knowledge from hard experience. My greatest good can come from sharing that knowledge.
Blackfoot, you should think about this because from what I recall, you lost a marriage using your overall strategy. I know you do not see what I am saying, but try this. If you are still communicating with your ex, bring this very subject up to her and see what she says. I suspect that at some point she became aware of your strategy, understood the futility in trying to change you and left. If she will talk about it, I would be very interested to hear what she says. Your tactics for dealing with single point in time issues are good and there is a lot of appeal in them for those who you target. But the pattern, the overall strategy, becomes one of manipulation and control. It can be lethal for a marriage, especially for someone who is intelligent enough (as you say she is) to understand what is going.
I know you have had considerable pain over your breakup. But in my mind you still seem to have some confusion over what went wrong. My take is that during the days after she left, your “crazy making” was from not being able to reconcile her actions when the sincere intentions and efforts you had been making. You could not find a rational explanation for why she left. This would drive anyone crazy. But I think that subconsciously (and possibly consciously) you are aware of your manipulations and that you had lost control of her. For someone with narcissistic tendencies, this is where the panic sets in. The fear of abandonment I speak about is that of reliving hurts from the past, when as a child you felt alone, scared and therefore abandoned, whether you were physically alone or not. This is not from me, it is consistently stated in all the books I read.
Take a new perspective on what happened. This is hard medicine, I know. I honestly believe you are sincere in you desire to help others, to “help” your wife, to reconcile and find happiness. But like my mother, you cannot fix what you do not or will not see. Just think about it.
