 Self-styled experts, online, pander to victims of narcissistic abuse. They tell victims what they want to hear. They tell victims you're angelic, you're perfect, you're blameless, you're not responsible for what had happened to you, you had no contribution into your predicament. The narcissist is demonic and you should seek to destroy the narcissist in every way possible. This is of course a splitting mechanism. You, all good, the narcissist is all bad. And why do they do this? Why do they lie to you? They do it because the victimhood market is huge. There's a lot of money to be made and they're laughing all the way to the bank. You get to hear what validates you and feels good. It's a feel-good factor. And they get richer by the day. Everyone is happy. So why am I pooping and bursting the bubble? Why am I the party pooper? Why do I seek repeatedly to confront you with your own role and contribution and responsibility and sometimes guilt and shame in what has happened to you? Because it's the only path to healing. Self-styled experts want to keep you in a state of victimhood because the state of victimhood is the golden eggs. You're the goose and you lay golden eggs as long as you're victims. Okay, so today we are going to discuss yet another controversial topic. Why do you stay with the narcissist? Why don't you immediately abandon the narcissist? Why don't you exit the relationship? Of course, many self-styled experts would tell you that you are staying with the narcissist, that you do not break up with the narcissist, that you continue the relationship and try to somehow ameliorate and mitigate and control the adverse circumstances in which you find yourself. You're doing all this because you're moral or because you have a conscience, you're conscientious or because you're kind or because you're empathic or because you're caring and loving and accepting and non-judgmental and supportive and you may well be all these things but these have nothing to do with the fact that you find yourself embedded in a relationship which you cannot exit. Never mind how much you want to and how hard you try. You are staying with the narcissist for selfish reasons. We all do things for selfish reasons. We act for selfish reasons. We are selfish creatures. It's the only guarantee of survival, long-term survival. The narcissist caters to your needs, psychological needs, physical needs. He is there as a supplier, as a pusher if you wish. It's a bit of an addiction. It's known euphemistically as trauma bonding. Might as well be called trauma addiction. But let me review some of the reasons, the real reasons why you stay with the narcissist. It's nothing to do with your morality or your developed, overdeveloped conscience or your kindness and empathy or any of these nonsense. What are the real reasons you're staying with the narcissist? The number one reason is that you are a big narcissistic and you love to behold yourself. You love to see yourself, your idealized self through the narcissist gaze. The narcissist idealizes you and then gives you access to this idealized internal object. You see yourself through the narcissist eyes as perfect, drop-dead, gorgeous, hyper-intelligent, amazingly talented. And this image of yourself is irresistible. It's addictive. You want more and more frequently. You need this access. You need this self-infatuation and self-limerence. Only the narcissist can provide you with it because it's the only one who is idealizing you. It caters to your narcissistic defenses. It creates narcissistic gratification or elation. In short, it's narcissistic supply. This is by far the most common reason for staying with the narcissist in my experience. 30 years, not small. Next, you need to be needed. That is, Lydia Langevsky's contribution. You need to be needed either as a maternal figure. The narcissist becomes a child substitute. You see the inner child in the narcissist. You become protective and you become helpful and supportive. You want to nurture this child. You want to help this child survive and thrive. You want to somehow solve the wounds of this traumatized, abused child. Having gained access to the narcissist in a child or so you believe, you become, your maternal reflexes are triggered. And by the way, when I say maternal, it doesn't matter if you're a male. It doesn't matter. Maternal instincts are protective instincts. The instinct to bring someone to fruition, to thriving, to prosperity. So the narcissist acts or gives you access to the part of him that is immature, that is in need. And then you need to be needed and it becomes highly addictive. Because again, it caters to some extent to your grandiosity. Being needed means that you are powerful. You are special. You are chosen. These are all narcissistic hallmarks. Next thing is, victimhood makes you feel good. Now, I want to make something clear. Intimate partners of narcissists remain embedded in the narcissist shared fantasy in relationships with narcissists for a variety of reasons. I'm not saying that all the reasons I'm about to give apply to each and every individual, each and every partner, each and every spouse of a narcissist, each and every child of a narcissist. No. Each and every friend of a narcissist. What I'm saying is each person who finds himself gravitating towards a narcissist and unable to develop escape velocity, each person who finds himself a figment in the narcissist shared fantasy, unable to regain the previous, the erstwhile three dimensional existence that he has had before having met the narcissist. Each person who is subjected to the narcissist's internal voice, the introject, the entrained introject of the narcissist, each of these, each of these potential sources of supply, potential intimate partners, potential spouses, girlfriends or boyfriends or children or friends or whatever. Each of these people has one of these or a few of these reasons, reasons to stay. These reasons are selfish. They have nothing to do with your better part with your morality or consciousness or niceness, empathy or kindness or generosity or any of this. Okay. So the first reason is you see yourself idealized through the narcissist's eyes and it's addictive, it's irresistible. Reason number two, you need to be needed. The narcissist is a child and it triggers in you the maternal instincts. Reason number three, victimhood makes you feel good. You like to be a victim because it makes you feel entitled. When you're a victim, you're entitled to special treatment. Your victimhood imposes duties and obligations on other people. It gives you power. Victimhood empowers. That's why we are today in a victimhood era, a period of victimhood. Everyone and his dog is someone's victim. So victimhood is empowerment. It's almost Orwellian. It's almost 1984. Newspeak, you know, war is peace. Victimhood is empowerment and you like to be a victim. Of course, in a small minority of cases, you like to be a victim because you're self-destructive. Trauma bonding is a form of self-harming, self-trushing. It's masochistic. So sometimes you team up with the narcissist because you want the narcissist to destroy you. You want the narcissist to devastate you. You're wanting to obliterate you. You're trying to commit suicide by narcissists. That's another reason to stay with the narcissist. But more commonly, victimhood status is a form of virtual signaling. Look how long suffering I am. You say to one and sundry. Look how patient I am. Look how virtuous I am. How empathic, how generous, how kind, how moral, how conscientious, et cetera, et cetera. It's a form of virtual signaling. Virtual signaling, of course, has to do with competitive victimhood, which is a narcissistic behavior. Next, you may end up controlling the narcissist from the bottom by feigning helplessness, clinging neediness, emotional blackmail. You end up being on top. You control from the bottom. You manipulate the narcissist. You make him do your wish. He adheres to the narrative or the script in which he is a savior and a rescuer and a messiah. And you are the damsel in distress. It's a very common shared fantasy with narcissism and co-dependence, for example, in many borderlines, adhere to this piece of fiction, to this movie script, where they are flawed and broken and damaged. The narcissist is there to fix them, to heal them, to rescue them, to save them, to cure them, and generally to serve as a rock in an otherwise turbulent ocean. Next thing is more unpleasant. You're gold digger. Narcissists, some narcissists, are accomplished. They're rich. They're famous. And so you cling to them because you want their money. Or you want to be famous vicariously by proxy. And this is known as inverted narcissism. You want to bask in the glow of the narcissist's celebrity. You want to derive narcissistic supply indirectly through the narcissist's accomplishments. You are in effect a covert narcissist. And sometimes a psychopath. Many gold diggers are actually psychopaths. The narcissist becomes a sugar daddy or a sponsor of some kind. Next thing is many narcissists, especially cerebral ones, couldn't care less if you were to have sex or even romance with other men, fewer women or with other women, fewer men. In short, the shared fantasy often devolves or degenerates into an open relationship or an open marriage. And it's the best of both worlds. You benefit from the relationship, which is a rigid structure with its own rules and its own benefits. There's money, the stability, the safety, the security, there's determinacy, the certainty and so on and so forth that comes with the territory of having a long-term relationship. And on the other hand, you can have a lot of fun. If you have a lot of fun with others, sex, trips, the narcissist couldn't care less. Of course, narcissists become romantically jealous and possessive at the first sign of having lost you. They fear loss like everybody else. But actually, many narcissists drive you to infidelity. And this is known as the betrayal fantasy. And I encourage you to watch videos on this channel regarding the betrayal fantasy. Many women and many men like this form of benign neglect. As long as you provide the four S's, two of the four S's, sex, services, supply, sadistic and narcissistic and safety. As long as you provide two of these four S's, what you do in your free time is your problem. It's none of the narcissist business. It's, I call it benign neglect. The narcissist couldn't care less about you. And so now the narcissist is often alarmed when your personal autonomy and your agency and your self-efficacy evolve to the point of challenging the internal object that represents you in the narcissist's mind. When you're independent, threatened to get out of control when you are about to exit the narcissist's gravitational field somehow. In short, when the narcissist reaches a conclusion that is about to lose you, not having had the chance to devalue and discard you yet in the initial phases of the shared fantasy, he becomes romantically jealous and possessive and restricting and controlling. And then of course, it's not pleasant. But as the shared fantasy progresses, in time, it becomes more and more lax and open and flexible. And you can do anything you wish to your heart's content as long as you conform to the internal object in the narcissist's mind and provide him with the aforementioned four S's. Another reason to be with the narcissist is that you beat him. He makes you feel superior to him. Here he is mired in envy and anger and hatred and negative affectivity, while you are capable of love and positive emotions. Here he is a constant failure, constantly self-subotaging, self-defeating, and you capable of growth and accomplishments. Here he is delusional and trapped in a fantastic paracosm, and you are able to explore the world and through your exploration of the world, transform yourself for the better. The narcissist is incapable of learning and change. The narcissist is pitiful. And pity is a stronger motion because it makes you feel superior. Another narcissistic element. Next thing, you actually feel safe with the narcissist because even the abuse is predictable. And the narcissist is always confident, authoritative. The narcissist is a parental, parental figure. That's a key feature of the dual mothership concept in the shared fantasy. He's a parent. And as a parent, he serves as kind of a secure base, feel safe and stable and secure with the narcissist. And I repeat, even the abuse, even the maltreatment, even the trauma are predictable, recurrent. The intermittent reinforcement becomes habituated and you develop a comfort zone. And within this comfort zone, you're willing to tolerate the narcissist idiosyncrasies in return for the safety and security and sense of engulfment and encompassment that the parental figure provides. The next reason for staying with the narcissist is you have no other preferable alternative. Maybe you have tried and failed and maybe you haven't tried. But the fact is, you can conceive of no other universe, no other relationship, no other diet and no other couple and no other mode of existence without the narcissist. The narcissist has become an integral part and a determinant of your identity, of who you are. You define yourself through your interactions and relationship with the narcissist. It's difficult for you to abandon yourself. And it's doubly difficult to imagine yourself with someone else in some other environment, subject to some other rules of game and embedded in yet another fantasy. The next thing is if you're codependent, you believe that your neediness and helplessness guarantee your partner's presence in your life and interest in your well-being. In short, the narcissist is the perfect mate for the borderline, the codependent and other types, by the way, not only the borderline and the codependent, because the narcissist reacts in a very rigid, automatic way to signals that elevate or buttresses grandiosity. When you signal to the narcissist's neediness, for example, the narcissist is likely to react as a savior or rescuer, is likely to stick around. There are essentially two ways to keep the narcissist tethered to you and addicted to the shared fantasy. You either tell him that he's great and unique or you tell him how needed and indispensable he is. In this sense, the narcissist needs to be needed as much as you do. As I said, as long as you conform to the internal object that represents you in the narcissist's mind, the introject, things are going to go swimmingly well. The narcissist is going to let you have a lot of freedom. Actually, it's going to push you away because your existence as an external object destabilizes and undermines the validity and cohesion of the internal object. The narcissist much prefers to interact with your introject, with your avatar in his mind than he does with you. He would like you to let him be, to not become a nuisance or an annoyance. But the minute you drift away from the introject, from the avatar, the minute you begin to disagree with the narcissist, criticize him, offer him advice, present an alternative point of view, etc. The narcissist begins to fear your personal autonomy and agency. So there's no winning strategy with the narcissist because the narcissist either fears your personal autonomy and agency and then he devalues you and discards you. He converts you into an enemy and a persecutory object within his mind. Or if you are not challenging, if you're not critical, if you're submissive and obedient, the narcissist disdains your dependency and emotionality. He holds you in contempt. So you can't win. You are either an enemy to be eradicated and destroyed and obliterated and ruined or you are non-entity. An amoeba-like creature with no boundaries, with no spine, with no identity. We're the only of contempt. So there's no viable long-term strategy to surviving the shared fantasy. The valuation and discard are built-in features of the shared fantasy. There's nothing you can do about it. You may wish to remain in the relationship for your own selfish reasons. You may wish to stay, to never break up with the narcissist. I call it self-hoovering. You may overlook the narcissist's transgressions, misbehavior, abuse, trauma. You may self-harm via the relationship. You may feel needed and maternal. You may feel idealized and idolized and pedestalized. There's a multiplicity of psychodynamic pathways to remaining in such a relationship. But this has nothing to do with your traits. Your traits such as empathy or kindness or niceness or narcissists are oblivious to all this. Narcissist is a relationship not with who you are, but with what you can give him.