 The more observant of you may have noticed that Mini is back. Last night we had a piercing discussion about our relationship and Mini said, I really am sorry that I cannot offer you intimacy, but I can offer you intermagsy, intermagsy instead of intimacy. I said Mini, I have two problems with you. One, you're not transparent and second thing, your dark side is to emphasize. So I'm going to take one sip and discard you as all narcissists do and instead I'm going to have me a new transparent and stimulating relationship. Wunderbar. And now to the topic of today's convo conversation. I'm going to discuss narcissists and borderline and how they conspire and collude to destroy all intimacy in a relationship. Why do they do that? How do they do that? And what are the very surprising outcomes? So stick with it with me throughout this video and you will be unpleasantly surprised at the end. For those of you who don't know me luckily for you, my name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love Narcissism Revisited and a professor of psychology in several universities on several continents Antarctica not included yet. But give me time. I'm still young and handsome and flourishing in this time of pandemic. Okay, enough with the banter. Let's get to business you all say and to business we shall get. Nothing terrifies the borderline more than abandonment and rejection. Abandonment and rejection by anyone by the way not only an intimate partner but especially by the intimate partner. The reason is simple. The intimate partner regulates the borderline's internal landscape, regulates her ego functions and so without the intimate partner the borderline feels empty, denuded and it's annoying and annoying feeling and we'll see in a few minutes how she copes with it. Now abandonment or separation insecurity the clinical term is separation insecurity by the way. Abandonment anxiety or separation anxiety fear of rejection they're actually one of the they are part of the diagnostic criteria of borderline personality disorder in the fourth edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual text revision but they are also included in the alternative model of borderline personality disorder which is the future model the model that will take over once the DSM six is published. So it seems that abandonment and rejection separation insecurity and anxiety these are at the core of borderline personality disorder and it doesn't have to be a real abandonment it can be anticipated abandonment imagined abandonment many many innocuous acts decisions and choices are often misinterpreted by the borderline to mean abandonment and rejection and in the wake of such of repeated such harrowing experiences because for the borderline to be abandoned and to be rejected is to be annihilated is a small small death it's a process of dying and resurrecting time and again so in the wake of repeated such harrowing experiences borderlines react in two ways and they often alternate between the two solutions number one some borderlines avoid all contact with potential intimate partners they constrict their lives to their career or to the workplace they become schizoid and avoidant they stay at home many of them misinterpret this state or condition is shyness they will tell you I'm shy many of them mislabel they're newly found schizoid tendencies and they say I'm introverted but they're not shy and they're not introverted and there's not such thing as a shy or quiet borderline it's another nonsensical invention akin to empath they're not shy and they're not introverted they are simply avoidant they are fearful of pain the pain of rejection and abandonment so that's solution number one and you can see millions of borderlines cocooned at home never living home if they can if they can afford it and just staying in the nest occupying or busying themselves to the best of their ability because borderline suffer from boredom and from loneliness and that's it that's solution number one solution number two as is usually the case with borderlines is exactly the opposite of solution number one diametrically opposed actually solution of the two is sexual self-trashing some borderlines in the wake of rejection or humiliation or abandonment real anticipated or imagined sexually self-trash in casual random sex exclusively with strangers which they pick up somewhere in a bar in a party on a dating app this way by limiting their sexual encounters to random total strangers these borderlines avoid experiencing heartbreak they never experience heartbreak they mitigate the pain of having been rejected so they experience pain having been rejected and abandoned and they kind of solve or or use sex with strangers to feel better they restore their wounded grandiosity with their conquest they call it validation it's it enhances their self-esteem attention and sex are the two main staples in the borderlines medicine medicine cupboard so they self soothe it's a form of self soothing similar for example to compulsive eating so it's an addictive behavior the second solution is an addictive behavior of sexual self-trashing and when I say sexual self-trashing I mean total self-trashing I describe self-trashing in other videos so you may wish to to listen to them and to make the distinction between self-trashing and promiscuity promiscuity is agentic promiscuity is empowering self-trashing is about self-degradation self-punishment borderlines self-medicate with anxiolytic predatory men now the word anxiolytic is crucial here because when they have random self-trashing sex their anxiety level goes down so these men these predatory men they're the equivalent of anxiolytics anti-anxiety medications and these men often victimize the borderline they mistreat the borderline egregiously even in one night stands and so this creates a dissonance in both cases in both solutions there's a dissonance in the first case the borderline has to explain to herself why is she isolating herself socially why is she avoiding contact with other people why is she cocooned at home why is she why is she so afraid to step out of the door it's a form of attenuated agoraphobia if you wish and she has to explain this to herself to herself because it creates a dissonance the borderline regards herself as an emancipated liberated empowering person and this kind of behavior this kind of avoidant fearful shy behavior is runs counter through the borderline's self-narrative and self-image so she has to explain to her why she's doing this and she casts it cast it in the terms of a choice she says i'm choosing to do this because i'm strong because i'm empowering because i'm agentic i'm choosing this i'm choosing this i'm saying goodbye to the world the world doesn't deserve me of course it's a manifestation of grandiosity narcissists do exactly the same they go into a schizoid phase when they cannot obtain narcissistic supply similarly with the second solution which is random self-trashing sex with predatory abusive strangers in this second solution there's also a dissonance because truly empowered liberated and emancipated women don't do that they don't render themselves trashy they don't make themselves available to partners who are inappropriate to use another statement they don't expose themselves to abuse they don't court and seek maltreatment they don't self-punish they don't self destroy and self-defeat so there's a dissonance there between the behavior and the self-image and in this case in the second solution the defense is fantasy as a defense against the modification the shame and the guilt involved in acting out involved in being maltreated contemptuously by predatory men to avoid the dissonance between reality harsh reality and elevated grandiose inflated self-image to avoid this dissonance to avoid modification and the shame and guilt that come after these misbehaviors the borderline immediately imposes a romantic or defiant fantasy on the stranger that she's with or and on the unfolding unsavory proceedings so she finds herself in a hotel room with a total stranger she's just met and she's forced or she acts in ways which are considered to be unusual for the event extremely intimate or socially unacceptable she has to explain this to herself and this stranger is mistreating her in many ways he gets her drunk he expels her from the hotel room after the proceedings she has to tell us some story and the story is a fantasy the fantasy is i was infatuated with him there was something going on between us there was a possible future there he could have been my boyfriend actually i felt that he is my boyfriend for the night this is a fantasy defense and this fantasy defense is used by borderlines not only in sexual self-trashing but in all other forms of self-trashing for example substance abuse they they say i choose to drink i choose to drink because it makes me function better it makes me more sexual it makes me more sociable so they justify they have self-justifying narratives which are founded on counterfactual claims and fantasies that has to do with all self-harming and self-trashing behaviors similarly borderline justify cutting muted self-mutilation burning with the same fantasies or self-justifying claims so let's recap this part the borderline dreads rejection and and the humiliation of abandonment when she loses her intimate partner she loses the capacity to regulate herself she becomes dysregulated so she's terrified of this ultimate condition when she anticipates abandonment when she is abandoned or when there is imaginary abandon doesn't matter she acts in two ways either she withdraws and avoids the world and the intimate partner and justifies this by saying that it's a choice an agentic choice or she self-trashes sexually she self-trashes via substance abuse she self-trashes financially she causes the self-harm she self-harm it's a form of self-mutilation she self-harm with men she self-harm with with alcohol but she self-harm and to justify this self-harm to reconcile the self-harming acts with the empowered strong emancipated liberated agentic me this self-image to reconcile this to the borderline imposes a fantasy on what is happening so if she for example is sexually self-trushing she would say that she is not sexually self-trushing the stranger is not really a stranger he's a potential intimate partner and what the stranger is doing to her which is egregious mistreatment and maltreatment what he's doing to her is consensual she's doing it because she wants it not because he wants it borderlines react with derision and hostility to any attempt to undo or challenge the fantasy they cast well-meaning and caring therapies friends intimate partners and family members as persecutory objects almost as enemies you dare to challenge the borderline's fantasy self just self-justifying alloplastic defenses it's not my fault you dare to challenge any of this and you become the enemy and the borderline splits you borderline has a splitting defense mechanism decotonous thinking black and white right and wrong all good or evil you switch you can you you she switches you from one camp to the other within a split second you dare to challenge your fantasy you transition from being her best friend to her worst enemy to being her worst enemy unfortunately for borderlines they tend to pick narcissists as intimate partners and mates narcissists abhor and dread to true intimacy they regard intimacy as a threat a permanent challenge to their grandiosity narcissists are terrified of intimacy even the few narcissists for example compensatory narcissists some covert narcissists even the few narcissists who seek intimacy actively they are approach avoidant they seek it and then they flee away from it so this approach avoidance repetition compulsion this avoidant insecure attachment style so is very characteristic of narcissists so now you have an internet partner who is afraid of intimacy regards it as demeaning humiliating and to be avoided at all costs and on the other hand you have the borderline who seeks intimacy almost as a form of medicine she needs intimacy to regulate her internal environment she needs intimacy to survive the absence of intimacy or the cessation of intimacy a threat to her survival to her functioning to her life but at the same time borderlines equally undermine intimacy because they are afraid of being engulfed or enmeshed they are afraid to disappear borderlines are afraid to disappear because they don't exist there's an emptiness an empty schizoid core where a human being should have been both narcissists and borderlines are incarnations ramifications of emptiness these are like two black holes meeting and merging both of them would repel each other because of the intense gravitational fields the narcissism and the borderline seek intimacy plunge into intimacy almost instantaneously in the love-bombing and grooming phases they their affairs are intense like supernovas giant explosions and irresistible to both parties but both of them each for his own reasons or her own reasons are terrified of intimacy as richard grannell says intimacy is a narcissist kryptonite and the borderlines kryptonite so borderlines are terrified of intimacy because they feel that intimacy will devour them intimacy will assimilate them and digest them they feel that intimacy will remove all the outer layers and leave only the emptiness it's like an onion they feel they're being peeled by intimacy to leave nothing behind but the smell and narcissists are terrified of intimacy because they regard intimacy as the common men's thing something that makes them commoners average normal and they don't want to be common average and normal they want to be special and unique so both parties fight each other fight each other the more they become intimate the more conflictive or conflictual the relationship becomes the more adversarial the more they become intimate the more they seek to destroy the intimacy to undermine it to challenge it the more they act in ways which render intimacy impossible for example they lie to each other or they cheat on each other or they betray each other all in order to destroy the intimacy the two parties abuse each other as they attempt to cause their partners to decompensate and to act out in other words to misbehave this is projective identification the parties push each other to abuse them so the borderline pushes the narcissist to abuse her and the narcissist pushes the borderlines buttons to make sure that she abuses him and they want the abuse because the abuse is an excuse they they now can legitimately cheat they can they can stray they can betray they can lie they can walk away they can destroy the relationship they can break up it's all legitimate because they had been abused projective identification is about pushing your partner to behave or to misbehave in ways which restore your comfort zone and the comfort zone of the borderline is actually a lack of intimacy that's why borderlines are very comfortable with casual sex where there's minimal to no intimacy they they're in their fantasy even casual sex is imbued with intimacy but in reality of course there's no intimacy or no intimacy to speak of so the abuse in the relationship between narcissism borderline is induced by both parties affording them an excuse to break up and start all over again because if you break up with your intimate partner he cannot reject you he cannot abandon you anymore breaking up is the ultimate solution to abandonment anxiety separation insecurity you're alone you're safe you're with a stranger you're safe stranger can't break your heart