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This Is What It’s Like To Date An Actual Narcissist (And You Never Want To Do It)

Originally posted at: http://thoughtcatalog.com/%tc-coauthor%/2016/07/this-is-what-its-like-to-date-an-actual-narcissist-and-you-never-want-to-do-it/

Last winter, I ended a relationship with a man who I came to realize was narcissistically abusive.

Our six-month partnership began with the “love bombing” that characterizes any relationship with a narcissist. He lavished me with constant attention, meals, and gifts. Within a matter of weeks, we developed an emotional connection that made me feel as if I had known him forever.

Although I had always been a skeptic when it came to romance and relationships, he insisted we were soul mates.

But in textbook fashion, the love-bombing phase ultimately gave way to one of gradual and inevitable “devaluation.”

When disagreements arose, he would increasingly erupt in anger, unleashing a torrent of often alcohol-fuelled verbal abuse against me.

During one argument, I remember realizing with matter-of-fact detachment that the man who claimed to care so much about me was willing to say absolutely anything – maybe even do anything – in order to hurt me, in order to “win.”

Yet I struggled to reconcile this behavior with the person I believed I had fallen in love with.

How could such a charismatic and compassionate man – a health care professional who presented himself as a “healer” – become so angry and hurtful behind closed doors?

This cognitive dissonance ultimately made me doubt my own perception and even my memory of what had happened.

Besides, he would always apologize – sometimes even breaking down in tears – blaming the verbal assaults on his ADHD medication or the alcohol. Then he would accuse me of not being “supportive” enough.

I became convinced that if I just tried harder, things would go back to the way they were.

But, eventually, it seemed as if any perceived slight would upset him and even enrage him, especially if he had been drinking: a flat tire, misplaced keys, a client cancelling, the barista making his latte too slowly.

I walked on daily trails of eggshells, praying that nothing would happen to ruin his fragile mood.

I stopped confronting him with things I was unhappy about, knowing that he would either explode in anger or stonewall me by emotionally withdrawing or leaving his own apartment – once for hours.

By this point, we were practically living together, and I had become consumed with the relationship. I worked from home more often now (his home). I rarely saw friends or colleagues.

But the constant waiting for the other shoe to drop, the persistent feeling that things were never completely stable began to far outweigh the intermittent reinforcement that kept me tethered to him. I was finally able to end the relationship — on the third try.

Characteristically, he made more excuses and insisted I was to blame.
I should have made him give up alcohol. I should have spent more time with him instead of working on my damn Ph.D. I was too cold and heartless to “fight for love.”

But, the important thing was: I was free. Or so I thought.

As I entered therapy and began to pick up the pieces of my self-esteem and my heart, I naively expected everything to fall back into place.

Thus, it was especially painful for me to realize the first hard truth about narcissistic abuse: that an abuser will never, ever acknowledge or take responsibility for the pain they have caused you. Especially if they are a narcissist.

Although you thought you had left the crazy-making and emotional invalidation of the relationship behind, you get to experience it all over again once the relationship is over.

Because the only other individual in your toxic relationship – the only other person in the world who was “there” and saw it all unfold – absolutely refuses to accept your version of events.

Instead, they continue to make excuses and minimize their behavior, attempting to “hoover” you back into the relationship.

Despite blocking the narcissist from my phone and Facebook and never once responding, he continued to contact me for months after the relationship had ended – by email, letter, a different phone number, and even online sites it hadn’t occurred to me to protect, such as LinkedIn and Pandora.

But most insidiously of all? Eventually, the abuser pretends as if nothing ever happened.

Five months after the break-up, the narcissist announced in an email that he would finally leave me alone. He ended the message with: I love you.

Basically, it didn’t matter that this man’s behavior had constantly made me feel unstable and unsafe because he “loved” me.

And now he had finally decided to stop months of unwanted and unreciprocated contact…because he felt like it.

That is when I learned a second hard truth about narcissistic abuse: that the abuser always gets the last word. That the abuser is the one who gets to decide when the abuse stops.

Only they get to carry out the ultimate “discard.” Because they don’t just require the upper hand during the relationship, but all the way until its bitter end.

I wish I could say that I have moved past all of this, but I am still coming to terms with the realities of narcissistic abuse. And yet, I still have hope.

Just as I am a bit of a skeptic, I am also a rather stubborn optimist.

I am hopeful that someday, it really won’t matter that my abuser will never take responsibility and acknowledge the pain he caused – because I will be able to validate my feelings and perception of reality, for myself.

I am hopeful that someday I will get to the point where I get to decide that the abuse is over. That eventually it will all just be a memory, as will the constant fear of him unexpectedly showing up at my door.

I am hopeful that someday I will be able to trust people again.

Because, hard as it is, simply knowing the truth can also be beautifully freeing. And, for now, that will have to be enough freedom for me.

 

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Our Forgetful Father

“As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:12 NIV).

“You can’t teach a Bible class with your background.” … “You, a missionary?” … “How dare you ask him to come to church. What if he finds out about the time you fell away?” … “Who are you to offer help?”

The ghost spews waspish words of accusation, deafening your ears to the promises of the cross. And it flaunts your failures in your face, blocking your vision of the Son and leaving you the shadow of a doubt.

Now, honestly. Do you think God sent that ghost? Do you think God is the voice that reminds you of the putridness of your past? Do you think God was teasing when he said, “I will remember your sins no more”? Was he exaggerating when he said he would cast our sins as far as the east is from the west? Do you actually believe he would make a statement like “I will not hold their iniquities against them” and then rub our noses in them whenever we ask for help?

Of course you don’t. You and I just need an occasional reminder of God’s nature, his forgetful nature. To love conditionally is against God’s nature. Just as it’s against your nature to eat trees and against mine to grow wings, it’s against God’s nature to remember forgiven sins.

You see, God is either the God of perfect grace … or he is not God. Grace forgets. Period. He who is perfect love cannot hold grudges. If he does, then he isn’t perfect love. And if he isn’t perfect love, you might as well put this book down and go fishing because both of us are chasing fairy tales.

But I believe in his loving forgetfulness. And I believe he has a graciously terrible memory.

Think about this. If he didn’t forget, how could we pray? How could we sing to him? How could we dare enter into his presence if the moment he saw us he remembered all our pitiful past? How could we enter his throne room wearing the rags of our selfishness and gluttony? We couldn’t.

And we don’t. Read this powerful passage from Paul’s letter to the Galatians and watch your pulse rate. You’re in for a thrill. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal.3:27 RSC).

You read it right. We have “put on” Christ. When God looks at us he doesn’t see us; he sees Christ. We “wear” him. We are hidden in him; we are covered by him. As the song says, “Dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.”

Presumptuous, you say? Sacrilegious? It would be if it were my idea. But it isn’t; it’s his. We are presumptuous not when we marvel at his grace, but when we reject it. And we’re sacrilegious not when we claim his forgiveness, but when we allow the haunting sins of yesterday to convince us that God forgives but he doesn’t forget.

Do yourself a favor. Purge your cellar. Exorcise your basement. Take the Roman nails of Calvary and board up the door.

And remember … he forgot.

Today’s devotional is drawn from Max Lucado’s Second Chances.

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From Salads to Casseroles

Originally posted at: https://applyingmybeliefs.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/from-salads-to-casseroles/

by applyingmybeliefs

For those that don’t know, there is an organization called “The American Society of Addiction Medicine” (ASAM).  This organization and their website are primarily for physicians of course, but does have some useful and interesting information for us non-medical people.  They have a short and a long definition of addiction on their website:

Here is the short version:

Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors.

Addiction is characterized by inability to consistently abstain, impairment in behavioral control, craving, diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors and interpersonal relationships, and a dysfunctional emotional response. Like other chronic diseases, addiction often involves cycles of relapse and remission. Without treatment or engagement in recovery activities, addiction is progressive and can result in disability or premature death.

This and the long version can be found here:

http://www.asam.org/quality-practice/definition-of-addiction

As I read this something quite odd struck me.  This definition calls addiction a chronic disease, which I had heard before, but I had a new thought.  I thought, “Why don’t churches look at this the same way they look at cancer, or heart disease or other significant chronic illnesses?”  What is different?

As I pondered this, I came to a place I had come to before.  At some level we in the church, mostly silently, believe that addiction is caused by sin, or even if we don’t struggle with that we are just plain uncomfortable with talking about glue sniffing or porn or hoarding or the many other addictions that are within our culture.  And I also thought this, “Why don’t we also assume that heart disease or cancer are caused by sin?”  There is much evidence that diseases like these are linked to the actions of our lifetime, for example colon cancer is linked to eating too much red meat to a certain extent; is this a product of the sin of gluttony at some level?

Anyway, my musing took me in a direction I didn’t expect, but felt the need to share.

In the church we care for each other.  One of the great things churches do is to provide meals for those who have significant temporary troubles, including illnesses.  We get a care calendar together and families volunteer to provide meals for a defined period of time.  I was fortunate to be on the receiving end of this one time, as my wife recovered from some surgery.  We had salads, and pasta dishes and chicken cooked many ways and of course the casseroles.

As I pondered this, I realized I had never heard of a church providing meals to a family who had put their son in a drug rehab.  In cases of the major disease of addiction, which can devastate a family as deeply a cancer diagnosis can, the church doesn’t seem to provide care in this way.  This could of course be partly due to that hidden thinking about addiction and sin from both the family affected and the church body.

Is this one of the reasons addicts and their families don’t recognize churches as caring places?  Should churches endeavor to develop a care calendar for families affected by addiction?

What do you think?

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The conversation we’re not having about porn

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/05/26/the-conversation-were-not-having-about-porn

By Alexander Rhodes

Alexander Rhodes is the founder of NoFap, a platform dedicated to providing tools and support for people who want to quit porn.

Recently, a nonbinding resolution declaring pornography a “public health crisis” passed by unanimous vote through Utah’s state House and Senate, and was signed by Gov. Gary Herbert. In response, droves of Internet commenters tore into the legislators and the activists who pushed for its passage. Often, they discounted the resolution as theocracy or moral policing masquerading as public health policy, ignoring any evidence-based merit it might have.

While people are entitled to their skepticism regarding the backgrounds or motivations of those behind the resolution, this does not address the reasoning behind its arguments. In reality, criticisms of pornography transcend religion and morality.

Internet pornography is a very recent development, especially when compared with humans’ evolutionary timeline — and our brains have yet to adapt. Porn producers are hard at work each day developing audiovisual experiences that are ever more abundant, ubiquitous, novel and stimulating. Just as fast food franchises hacked our appetites by developing synthetic flavors, aromas and textures that target our brain’s reward system — leaving us with an obesity epidemic — porn producers are learning to hack our libidos with new technologies like HD video and virtual reality. It’s not unreasonable to pause and ask ourselves how their handiwork might be affecting our lives.

The negative effects of over-consuming Internet pornography is a well-documented phenomenon. Combine this with porn’s wild popularity and you have a recipe for a genuine public health concern. Individuals with porn problems are members of relationships, families, workplaces and communities, so individual porn problems trickle up to become societal problems. After all, we treat drugs, alcohol and gambling as serious issues not because everyone who partakes in them has an addiction but because the problematic few have a deleterious effect on our communities as a whole.

In recent years, discussions on pornography’s effects have been popping up throughout the Internet. The frequency of these conversations has escalated as the first generation of people raised on Internet porn is reaching adulthood and beginning to experience the detrimental effects of going through puberty using porn.

Thousands of individuals, often young and male, are reporting that using porn multiple times per day trained their brains to associate their sexualities with pixels on their computer screens, rather than sexual activity with human beings. They are reporting that they have a decreased interest in seeking out human partners, and if they do so, they often cannot achieve sexual arousal during partnered sex, have a decreased sensitivity to pleasure or cannot experience an orgasm without porn or porn fantasy. Interestingly enough, when these people remove one variable from their lives — using porn — most of the time their symptoms are reduced or reversed.

Their discussions have finally drawn the interest of researchers, clinicians and journalists. In reaction to their complaints, some good research is underway on the effects of porn addiction, such as the 2014 University of Cambridge study that used brain imaging to show that the porn-addicted brain reacts to porn cues the same way the drug-addicted brain reacts to drug cues. Yet some critics say there’s not enough evidence to support the idea that porn addiction is a public health problem, or even a real disorder. While there is already plenty of research available that confirms the existence of porn addiction, further research will require funding, ethics committee approval and willing test subjects.

These things require public interest, which requires open discussion about the subject — discussion that has been previously restricted to online forums and confidential sessions between clinicians and porn-addicted clients. If “Internet gaming disorder” is documented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, why not “Internet pornography addiction”?

Utah’s resolution doesn’t call for an explicit ban on porn, but the open language calling for “policy change” is sufficiently vague to leave us all wondering. Is the best approach to porn addiction through legislation? Certainly not, if that legislation leads to outlawing people’s right to consume pornography. Intimacy, sex, love and what we do with our genitals during our free time aren’t areas for a government to regulate. However, legislation aimed at raising awareness, facilitating open discussion and enabling research is worth exploring.

Pragmatically, the resolution in Utah is great for the porn-recovery community. It served its purpose of sparking discussion about this under-discussed topic. While Utah’s declaration may cause disagreement, at the end of the day we don’t serve society when we avoid complicated, taboo subjects for the sake of comfort. We need to talk about these things openly to solve problems and progress as a species. And yes, that includes porn.

 

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Pornography ‘desensitising young people’

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-36527681

By Katherine Sellgren
 BBC News education and family reporter

Most children are exposed to online pornography by their early teenage years, a study warns.

About 53% of 11- to 16-year-olds have seen explicit material online, nearly all of whom (94%) had seen it by 14, the Middlesex University study says.

The research, commissioned by the NSPCC and the children’s commissioner for England, said many teenagers were at risk of becoming desensitised to porn.

The government said keeping children safe online was a key priority.

Naked images

The researchers questioned 1,001 children aged 11 to 16 and found 65% of 15- to 16-year-olds reported seeing pornography, as did 28% of 11- to 12-year-olds.

They also discovered that it was more likely for the youngsters to find material accidentally (28%), for example via a pop-up advertisement, than to specifically seek it out (19%).

More than three-quarters of the children surveyed – 87% of the boys and 77% of the girls – felt pornography failed to help them understand consent, but most of the boys (53%) and 39% of girls saw it as a realistic depiction of sex.

Some of the children’s approach to sex was also informed by pornographic scenes, with more than a third (39%) of the 13- to 14-year-olds and a fifth of the 11- to 12-year-olds boys saying they wanted to copy the behaviour they had seen.

The report also found:

  • More boys than girls had viewed online pornography through choice
  • 135 (14%) of the young people who responded had taken naked and/or semi-naked images of themselves, and just over half of these (7% overall) had shared these images
  • Of those children who reported seeing online pornography, the greatest proportion (38%) had first seen it on a portable laptop, 33% through a mobile phone and just under a quarter (24%) on a desktop computer
  • Nearly 60% of the children and young people surveyed who had seen online pornography reported seeing it for the first time at home, followed by 29% who reported doing so at a friend’s house

The report is published a week after expert witnesses told the Women and Equalities Committee that girls were wearing shorts under their school skirts to avoid sexual harassment and warned that online pornography was giving children unacceptable messages about sex and intimacy.

Young people’s concerns

One 11-year-old girl told researchers: “I didn’t like it because it came on by accident and I don’t want my parents to find out and the man looked like he was hurting her. He was holding her down and she was screaming and swearing.”

A 13-year-old boy said: “One of my friends has started treating women like he sees on the videos – not major – just a slap here or there.”

“It can make a boy not look for love, just look for sex, and it can pressure us girls to act and look and behave in a certain way before we might be ready for it,” said one 13-year-old girl.

Another 13-year-old girl said: “A few of my friends have used it for guidance about sex and are getting the wrong image of relationships.”

Dr Elena Martellozzo, who co-led the research, said: “Although many children did not report seeing online pornography, it is worrying that some children came across it accidentally and could be sent it without seeking it.

“If boys believe that online pornography provides a realistic view of sexual relationships, then this may lead to inappropriate expectations of girls and women.

“Girls too may feel pressured to live up to these unrealistic, and perhaps non-consensual, interpretations of sex.

“There is a huge task ahead for parents, teachers and policymakers.

“We found that children and young people need safe spaces where they can freely discuss the full range of issues related to sex, relationships and the accessibility of online porn in the digital age.”

Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England, said it was worrying that many children were exposed to pornography.

“Only now are we beginning to understand its impact on ‘smartphone kids’ – the first generation to have been raised with technology that’s taken the internet from the front room, where parents can monitor use, to their bedrooms or the playground, where they can’t,” she said.

“We know from the research that very many children are shocked, confused or disgusted by what they see, and it is our duty to help them to question, challenge and make sense of it.”

NSPCC chief executive Peter Wanless said: “A generation of children are in danger of being stripped of their childhoods at a young age by stumbling across extreme and violent porn online.

“Industry and government need to take more responsibility to ensure that young people are protected.

“Some companies have taken the initiative when it comes to online safety, and we will continue to put pressure on those that have not yet done so.

“Age-appropriate sex and relationship education in schools, dealing with issues such as online pornography and children sending indecent images, are crucial.”

A Department for Culture, Media and Sport spokeswoman said: “Keeping children safe online is one of government’s key priorities.

“Just as we do offline, we want to make sure children are prevented from accessing pornographic content online, which should only be viewed by adults.

“In the forthcoming Digital Economy Bill, we will bring in legislation that will require companies providing pornographic material online to make sure they have a robust age-verification system in place, so that those accessing their websites are over 18.”