Abuser-Victim Bond: Emotional Processing and Object Inconstancy
Victims of narcissistic abuse keep falling for it because they are the spitting image of their abusers in terms of psychodynamic processes. Victims and abusers have unusual ways of processing information, and they share impaired object constancy. Victims and abusers bond via their resonating pathologies, and this bonding is an addiction. Abusers and victims fulfill each other’s voids, and traumatic bonding is extremely difficult to break.
Narcissism Evolving: 3 Disturbing Trends
Women have become as narcissistic as men, if not more so, as gender roles shift and women try to emulate men. Narcissists are becoming more dangerous, leveraging their cold empathy more sinisterly and becoming more malignantly grandiose and even criminalized. People, even narcissists, no longer have role models and everyone claims superiority, leading to pathological envy and a society where no one can be better than anyone else. This narcissism is going to kill and destroy us as a species.
“Sexual Perversion”? No Such Thing in Psychology
There is no such thing as sexual perversion, as long as the sexual behavior is consensual between consenting adults and does not harm anyone, including oneself. Psychologists and psychiatrists consider such behavior to be healthy and normal. Even pedophilia and coprophagia are not considered perversions, but rather paraphilias, which are unusual sex practices. Perversion is a societal and cultural value judgment that is dependent on the period.
The Four Mantras of Victims of Abuse
Victims of abusive relationships often stay in them due to negative automatic thoughts that they have adopted from their abuser. These thoughts include “I am lucky to be with my abuser,” “life doesn’t get much better than this,” “my partner is not worse than others,” and “life is a serious business.” These thoughts are more common in non-Western societies, where the pursuit of happiness is considered selfish and risky, and the family is centered around procreation and property. Women in these societies often tolerate abuse and domestic violence and act meek and subservient to accommodate their bullying husbands.
Sexual Arousal? Only When Cheating on the Spouse
Some people only enjoy sex when they cheat on their spouses. These individuals were conditioned in their formative years to associate intimacy with risk, deception, and adrenaline. They require a narrative or script to become sexually aroused and often assume the role of a promiscuous and treacherous prostitute. Ironically, they are inordinately attached to their emotionally thwarted, co-dependent, and enabling spouses and need them to remain married to fully enjoy sex.
Missing Persons: Psychopathic Narcissist and Borderline Histrionic
Psychopathic narcissists and histrionic and borderline women are driven by primitive urges, raw negative impulses, and psychological defense mechanisms. They are not sadists, but they will not hesitate to hurt you fatally if it gratifies the triflest of their wishes. These people have no real spouses, know no children, maintain no friendships, and keep no families. They swing apathetically between compulsions and obsessions, and they have an ever more dimming awareness of the stirrings that pass for their consciousness.
Narcissist No Toilet Paper: Aggressive and Brittle, Not Soft and Strong
Narcissists have restricted access to positive emotions and rampant negative emotions, leading them to compensate with dominance and abuse. They often call themselves alpha males but are actually bullies. Their mistreatment of others does not make them strong, but rather obnoxious and clownish. They are not capable of true intimacy or emoting, as they are empty inside.
Loser Narcissist: Failure as Success
Narcissists are often anxious about their performance and feel like frauds, which leads them to be comfortable in their failures. They become experts at floundering and are adept at the art of blundering. They use projective identification to coerce people around them to help them fail and recreate their spectacular downfalls. Being a loser becomes an identity, and they are proud of their mishaps with fortune and institutions.
Why Do We Stay in Abusive Relationships? The Sunk Cost Fallacy or Bias
The sunk-cost bias or sunk-cost fallacy or the concord fallacy is the tendency to remain in bad relationships, even if they are abusive, sexless, loveless, or doomed. This bias is motivated by malignant optimism, an over-estimation of the probabilities of positive outcomes if we just keep going or keep doing something differently. It is a particularly pernicious brand of loss aversion, the proclivity to avoid waste. The rational thing to do is to cut your losses and abandon the dysfunctional relationship, but surprisingly few people do so in time, resulting in wrecked marriages, hateful exes, bruised children, and crumbling enterprises.
The Mentally Ill Form Couples
Mentally ill individuals often form couples or dyads, which can lead to fused relationships and trauma bonding. Coping strategies include active denial, enabling, and avoidance. Avoidance can lead to extreme estrangement and cruel disengagement, causing the mentally ill partner to act out in provocative or reckless ways. In extreme cases, the significant other can become a superego replacement, leading to major depressive attitudes, psychotic disorders, and even suicide.