Prepare to be tortured: - the price you will pay for dating a narcissist by A B Jamieson

Author:A B Jamieson [Jamieson, A B]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2018-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6 Narcissists and control

They say that if you wonder if you're a narcissist, you're not a narcissist. But even the most ardent of narcissist spotters (such as myself) can still have our doubts. We all possess narcissistic personality traits to varying degrees. If 16% of the population are narcissistic, then that equates to a 1 in 6 chance that either you, me, or someone very close by, will indeed be a narcissist.

So, what were the alarm bells that fueled my paranoia? For starters, I have a terrible attention span. This in itself is not a defining character trait, but the tendency to become bored very easily usually follows on, and that certainly is. This could explain my frequent career changes, another defining character trait, alongside the tendency to be a bit obsessive. And quite high up on the OCD scale. Not, I hasten to add, in an all-the-tins-in-the-kitchen-cupboard-have-to-be-facing-the-same-way, kind of way, just more embarrassing little things that I have to do in a particular order, or else I believe I'll come a cropper. So far, so bad, right? Add in the odd white lie now and again (minor manipulation) and an occasional touch of arrogance and you appreciate more why I've had my doubts. So what's the saving grace? Lack of vanity? Hardly. How can you be vain at my age, with a bald head, and designer stubble that's become a darker shade of grey? If I succumbed to a hair transplant, and then bought a beard dye, that would be a different story, right? No, I'll tell you where my saviour lies, being well outside the danger zone for the top two defining characteristics of narcissism, i.e. attention and control. Without those two characteristics, you may, like me, occasionally think you are narcissistic, but chances are, you won't even come close. I do not know of anyone with an abundance of one of these traits who does not have an equal measure of the other. Understandably, it's the attention-seeking charisma from the narcissist that hooks you in the first place. But that's just to soften you up before the control tactics start with a vengeance. Scoring myself so poorly on the attention front, I'll go even lower on control. Heck, with my people-pleasing tendencies, I am so far the other way, I'm not sure I would even make it onto the point’s ladder. I have more experience of being controlled than being the controller. Attention has been covered, so let's now look at Control.

From any victim coming out of a toxic relationship, it's not uncommon to hear claims of the abusive partner being overbearing or controlling. It's sometimes difficult to comprehend just how anyone could tolerate a partner behaving this way, and I can only explain this by saying that unless you have been there, you will never quite know.

Half the time, being so eager to please the narcissistic partner since they are so cunning and plausible, you become so conditioned that you are actually unaware of being controlled in the first place.

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