 The next narcissist will be better. I learned my lesson, I know now to identify the warning signs and the red flags. I will avoid this, I will modify this, I will not provoke him, he will not provoke me. I will control him, I will modify him, I will manipulate him, I will be there. Self-deception, of course. Self-deception. And you end up with a narcissist again. And again. And again. It's not uncommon to find victims of narcissists with eight partners, ten partners. Not uncommon at all. All of them without exception. Psychopaths and narcissists. Not uncommon. It's an addiction. I can't call it. Can you not even hear how to press? Like with a narcissist, you need to hit rock bottom. You need to have your life finished. You need to really be under the carpet for any meaningful transformation to have. But for example, if your career is good, you're not at rock bottom and you will continue to date narcissists. You need everything in your life simultaneously to collapse, die, disappear. You need post-apocalyptic nuclear war for you to be able to transform yourself. If there's any area or part of your life that is still functioning, still successful, still okay, you will derive energy from that part and you will put it into the relationship. You need to be in a state where you have no source of energy. You have no access to energy. Well then, maybe. But if you are very successful with your career and making a lot of money, it gives you energy. You take this energy, you put it in the narcissist. In the narcissist, of course, sucks it out. Can it develop again? I mean, for example, if you hit rock bottom and you kind of put yourself together piece by piece and then you seek for a non-narcistic relationship, can it occur again in your life that for some reason you... I don't know. There's not enough experience. We don't know. There's not enough experience. The victims of abuse as a syndrome, I mean, I suggested it as a syndrome in 95. 95 is nothing. 95 is 24 years. We don't have enough record. We don't know what's happening to victims. We need 50 years, 100 years. Why is it so strong the BDSM between the narcissistic and the victim? Why is it so strong the BDSM between the narcissistic and the victim? The BDSM. The sexual fetishism. Why is it so common between them? Does Barbara mean what I have just described or does she mean sexual practices? What do you think about the sexual practices? In my practice, in my coaching practice, I meet with couples where my BDSM or some kind of extreme fetishism is present and the couple keeps a constant relationship. In her practice she usually meets a lot of clients when BDSM and fetishism is a thing that kind of keep these couples together as a glue. What does it have to do with their whole story? What is behind? Well, I think we should make a distinction between the BDSM, which is a consensual activity with very strict codes of starting and ending, what is allowed, what is not allowed. Red words, keywords, and also there is aftercare. After the sexual session of the BDSM you take care of your partner. You hurt your partner, it is a request, a request, and you need to show her that you hurt her because you love her, not because you love her. BDSM is a highly structured, highly ritualistic activity which involves codewords, coded communication, non-coded communication, before and after phases and so on. I'm not sure if Barbara is talking about this because this is a non-narcissistic practice. Actually, if you are a narcissist in BDSM it will not work. It will be a mess and you will be blacklisted and no one will come close to you. In BDSM you need to be highly non-narcissistic because you need to listen to your partner. Your partner has the control, the sub, the submissive party has control. You can communicate her wishes, when to stop, when to start watching. So it's a lot of cooperation, a lot of communication. These are not narcissistic traits. I think what Barbara means is simply sadism. Sadism, masochism, fetishism. Not as structured, ritualistic, sexual preferences and practices but as simply torturing each other or causing pain. Now, this has to do with two things. First of all, the narcissist needs, if it's a man, it's a man, but increasingly also more females. The narcissist needs to humiliate his sexual partner. He needs to control her via extreme objectification. So, humiliation means that you objectify the partner to totality. So there's a lot of sadism going on as an expression of women hatred, misogynism. And all narcissists are misogynists. And increasingly all female narcissists are androgynous. They hate misandrists, I'm sorry. They hate men. So there's hatred of the other sex. Or hatred of same sex, doesn't matter, but like hatred of the sexual presence. And so there's a need to humiliate and objectify as the first thing. The second thing, usually the other party believes that she can exert some control by satisfying her partner. So she tries to regain power or retake some of the power, a small amount of the power, by providing sexual services to her partner so that he becomes dependent on her in some way. So there's an attempt to create dependence via total submissiveness. So there's a sadistic element and there is an element of submissiveness, but submissiveness intended to create control, actually. Like, where will you find someone like me who will do anything that you want? Kind of, yes. So this is the first complex of behaviour. More profoundly, sadomasochism and especially fetishism. Fetishism in the sense of objects or body parts, which are the targets of sexual energy. More profoundly, it's a language. The narcissist uses sex and sexual preferences to communicate. So very frequently, the narcissist would use sex to tell the partner, I'm not happy with it. So there would be brutal, painful or humiliating sex. Or the narcissist would tell the partner, communicate to the partner via sexual practices. So for me, a collection of parts. You are not a real, full-fledged, integrated human being, but you are like in the butcher, your collection of parts. I will now focus on your feet. That's it. Don't pay attention to any other part of you, focusing on your feet. It's a tactic to inform the partner that she is not a human being. She's not integrated. She doesn't exist in a totality, but she is slices of meat. It's a very frightening, harrowing message. So sex is used to communicate these messages of I'm in control. I have the power. I can do anything to you. I'll objectify you. I'll humiliate you. I will show my hatred of, for example, your sex, your gender, hatred of women through you, and so on. More generally, now, narcissists have severe problems with sexual identity and sexual sex differentiation. At a very early stage of life, their sexual differentiation and sexual identity have been disrupted. So, for example, many narcissists had a very domineering mother, a very over-winning mother, a mother who refused to let them go, refused to let them separate, used them as an extension of instrument, triangulated with them against the father, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This disrupts the proper development of sex differentiation and sexual identity, because as far as sex differentiation, if you are an extension of a woman, you cannot be a man, by definition. Think about it. If you are an extension of a woman, you cannot be a man. It disrupts the development of masculinity in men. Similarly, when it comes to sexual identity, if she, for example,