 My name is Saint Vaknin and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. When the narcissist first comes across a potential mate, a possible source of narcissistic supply, the narcissist assumes the role of a strict, ostensibly benevolent, but sadistic parent. It's a kind of tough love. I'm going to discipline you. I'm going to put you in your place and we are going to be happy ever after. But then he begins to undulate. He begins to cycle from this strict disciplinarian parent to a hurt, damaged, wounded, petulant, entitled, self-centered, and sadistic child. It's very disorienting. You start to date a narcissist who is parental, who is very serious, who is very accomplished, who is in control of everything, finances, decision-making, and then suddenly there is this unnerving, multiple personality-like transition to a child, not only a child but a spoiled brat as a parent. The narcissist is having sadistic incest. Incest as a child, the narcissist is having masochistic incest. But in both cases, he's having incest. He's sleeping with his mother. I'm talking in this video about the male narcissist, the male heterosexual narcissist. But it equally applies to a female narcissist or to a homosexual narcissist, a lesbian and so on. This dynamic is universal. You only need to change the pronouns of the person involved and the parental figure. So a female narcissist would react this way to her father figure. She would have daddy issues. But this is a crucial insight. A relationship, a romantic relationship, so-called romantic, an intimate relationship, so-called intimate, with a narcissist is a relationship with his parental figures. It is incest. And the narcissist reacts to this incest as any child or father would. Approach avoidance, feeling guilty, feeling ashamed, rebelling, being defined and punishing you for making him do it. You, because of your sexual irresistibility or because you provide him with some psychological needs or because you cater to his insatiable desire for narcissistic supply or because you're just there, you happen to be there. You need to be punished because it had not been for you. He would have not done, he would have not engaged in this highly forbidden behavior. This incest is bad. Incest is wrong. Incest proves to the narcissist that he is the unworthy, corrupted, decadent, evil object that he had been told he is in early childhood. And the inevitable cheating by the partner, which we're going to discuss a bit later, this cheating punishes the parent in the narcissist. It's like the defined act of a teenager. And at the same time, it mortifies the child because it engenders enormous tsunamis of abandonment anxiety. The child feels overwhelmed at risk of being left alone. And ironically, this modification, this abandonment and this punishment, they foster personal development and growth in the narcissist, as well as creative spurts. Narcissists react to such crisis by actually evolving and growing. It is an open question whether narcissists don't initiate, maybe they initiate this crisis. Maybe they want to be in this situation because these are the only windows of opportunity for growth, for development, for creativity. Maybe the narcissist is dead in between these crisis. Maybe he's a zombie. Maybe it's a suspended animation. And only at these moments of crisis, when his partner cheats on him, abscond with another man, abuses him in some way. Some meaningful, some substantial, fundamental way. Maybe only then the narcissist sort of wakes up like the sleeping non-beauty that he is. He wakes up and eyes the world, looks at the world through the eyes of a child, a wandering child. It's maybe these are the only moments that the narcissist is actually alive. And he needs these moments. And he's driving his partner inexorably to provide him with such moments. In the narcissists' relationships of all kinds, romantic relationships, business, so-called friendships, there are five phases in all, all relationships. Grooming, shared fantasy, interstitial one with two options, exitopsis, modification or anti-fantasy and interstitial two. We can discuss each of these phases at length. We have dwelt upon some of these phases. I've dwelt upon some of these phases in previous videos. For example, shared fantasy is explored in several videos. But today I'm going to discuss them much more deeply. I'm going to tie all the loose ends. Now, my advice to you is listen well, rewind if you have to, time and again. Listen well, take notes, position yourself in one of the sub-sub-elements of this cycle. Because if you are able to position yourself properly, you will be able to predict the future. You will be able to foretell the narcissist's conduct, his choices, his decisions. And you'll be able to design pre-emptive coping strategies. So finding yourself, finding your relationship, finding your interaction with the narcissist within this cycle is of crucial importance to you. So a few observations before we go into the cycle itself. In the grooming phase, the narcissist lies. He makes false promises. For example, if it's a woman, he will make false promises for a committed relationship. Why does he lie? If it's a business, he would make promises to deliver some mega deal or his contacts in Tokyo. But why would he lie? He lies in order to acquire a partner for the shared fantasy. And this partner fulfills several functions. An admirer, a playmate, and a mother or a father. And this partner has to provide the three S's. Sex, supply, and services in the case of a woman. And the narcissist expects his woman to provide these three S's in highly specific ways. For example, when he comes to sex, most narcissists are kinky. They expect kinky sex or even sadistic sex. We're going to discuss all this a bit later. We're at the stage of making observations, sharing some observations with you before we dive into the narcissist's cycle of relationship. And so when the woman starts to ask for the pledged commitment, for the intimacy that she had been promised, the narcissist withdraws and abuses. He had lied, but when someone tries to catch the check, he becomes abusive. And so sad and mad, the woman usually reacts by triangulating and by misbehaving with men. And then the narcissist, the sex between the partners becomes conventional and the narcissist can even develop symptoms like erectile dysfunction. At any rate, he begins to de-effect. He begins to withdraw whatever emotional investment he had put into the relationship. He begins to be absent and cold and detached and scheming and calculating. You can see it in his eyes. He becomes a lot more psychopathic. And then he withdraws the sex. So there's emotional absence, sex withdrawal and abuse. And this is essentially the sequence, false promises, which are very convincing and create a shared psychosis, if you wish. Definitely a shared fantasy. Then the partner comes, tries to catch the check, tries to have the promises fulfilled, the narcissist gets very angry, very abusive, becomes emotionally absent, withdraws the sex and so on. The woman feels rejected and abandoned and she cheats. The majority of women end up cheating or end the very least misbehaving with men. And sometimes she even cheats with the narcissist's knowledge and encouragement as a way to get rid of her presence and demands. Even if the narcissist and the woman continue to cohabit. And we come to this variant a bit later. It's not a common variant but it exists. So the narcissist uses women for gratification, as sources of supply, as slaves to provide services and as sex toys in immature, sadistic ways. In the grooming and shared fantasy phases, the woman must become an infatuated admirer in order to give the narcissist the power to sadistically hurt an abuser. After this stage of this part of observations within the video, I'm going to go into the most intricate details of the cycle, where you will be able to position yourself. So bear with me, listen to the observations until we get to the cycle. As a playmate, the woman must act as an extreme sexual and emotional submissive masochist. As the narcissist torches her psychologically and degrades her physically. Yummy. The shared fantasy revolves around love, companionship. These are mislabels of course. The narcissist labels for example, his gratification at receiving narcissistic supply coupled with his abandonment anxiety, he calls this love. When he does things together with his mate, with his spouse, with his partner, these things are usually dictated by the narcissist. It's a narcissist's agenda. It's what the narcissist wants to do. But he calls it companionship. There's a lot of mislabeling going on. And it's all founded on excruciating and agonizing pain and withholding. The woman proves her devotion to the narcissist by accepting such suffering mindlessly. Case in point is mini. The woman secures the narcissist's presence in her life by getting him addicted to both narcissistic and sadistic supply. And in such a reciprocal, very sick arrangement, it is there that the narcissist feels safe, calm, elated, intoxicated by his own grandiosity. The partner is withering and shriveling and dying. Riding on the floor reduced to a shadow of her former self. And at the same time, the narcissist thrives. He is radiant. He is vital. It's because of this that people say that narcissists are like vampires, they take away your vitality. But why does the narcissist needs all these circuitous and convoluted arrangements? Why does it just go straight, acquire the source and get on with it? The main reason is sex. The narcissist is not made for casual sex. Contra to a lot of misinformation online. Men who engage in casual sex and one-night stands habitually as psychopaths and psychopathic narcissists, not narcissists. Narcissists is not made for casual sex because casual sex is very narcissistically injurious. It doesn't allow the narcissist to express his grandiosity, his dominance at the end of the casual sex is discarded. And narcissists recoil from unabashedly promiscuous women, the kind of women who would participate in casual sex, who would initiate it. These kind of women don't fit in well in a shared fantasy because if they're promiscuous, they challenge his uniqueness. If they've had like 20 men before him or 200 men before him, the narcissist is just a number. A statistic is just one of many men is indistinguishable from previous men and future men in this woman's life. So promiscuous women don't sit well with the narcissist. These women are also much likelier to cheat because to them sex is meaningless. They are impulsive and disinhibited and usually broken and damaged to some extent. So narcissists shun and avoid promiscuous women. Again, psychopaths and psychopathic narcissists seek promiscuous women for reasons which I will deal with in another video. But the narcissist is also while avoiding casual sex, while shunning, decrying, deriding promiscuous women as sluts. Yeah, it's not going to be with a slut. At the same time, the narcissist is not cut for a love affair or for a full-fledged and committed loving relationship for a million reasons. Starting with his psychology, but also he doesn't know what to court. He's bored by women and there's an underlying current usually of misogyny, woman hatred. So he's bored with women. He doesn't have a good time with them. He thinks that small talk with women or getting to know women is a waste of his time. He's interested only in the three S's in companionship and childlike sex and fun. And he wants it now. Similar to the psychopath, narcissists also have a problem with delayed gratification, with investing now to reap in the future. They want everything now and they want it without. Any commensurate investment or effort because they are entitled. So to secure a partner, the narcissist must pretend that he's interested in a long-term committed adult relationship, just to get women to date him, let alone sleep with him. And so for example, take the fact that narcissists insist on sexual exclusivity when they kind of spot a promising source of narcissistic supply. A woman who can fit in and provide the three S's. One of the first things the narcissist would discuss with her is sexual exclusivity, your mind, you know. But sexual exclusivity is a hallmark, is a sign of a committed, serious, long-term relationship. It's a signal. The narcissist is sending this signal early on, implying sometimes without saying it explicitly that he's serious. But even so, the narcissist is not willing to court women because wing, wing and courting is tedious adult behavior and he is a child. Also, wing, women and courting them will undermine the shared fantasy in which a narcissist is forever a child, Peter Pan. We, a court team, having to court, having to invest in the woman, having to spend time with her, having to listen to her stories, having to desire her openly, having to give her compliments, having to open doors for her, take away her coat, buy her gifts, inquire as to her whereabouts and all this massive investment of time and effort and attention and diversion of resources from much more productive users. All this also negates the narcissist grandiose entitlement. You see, the narcissist thinks that he is so irresistibly unique and so uniquely irresistible that women should fall at his feet unbidden. He should not have to work for what is his by right. Women should realize what a treasure is, how cosmically significant and what a rare, a rare gem. And they should court him, not the other way. Women who expect to be courted or would or actually expect anything else from the narcissist. Women who let alone if they make it a condition for their availability, these kind of women infuriate him. They threaten the cohesiveness of his false self and he reacts with unbridled aggression and egregious abuse to such demands. And this deception, the shared fantasy backfires in the interstitial phase when women tried, as I said, to cash the check. They come to the narcissist and say, well, you promised us this, you promised us that, a committed relationship, intimacy, children, home, family, you know, cohabitation, something. When they try to cash the check, it leads to acrimonious breakups brought on by cheating, usually the woman's cheating and by heartbreak. And to summarize, the narcissist is not interested in women at all. He just uses sex and love bombing to secure a woman. Any woman would do, they're all the same, dispensable, interchangeable. He's not looking for women, he's looking for what women can give him. By the way, he's not looking for any kind of relationship, he's not looking for friendship, he's a taker. He's just interested in what he can get out of people. The providers of services, the providers of goods, the providers of anything that he sets his mind to, these providers are transparent, two-dimensional and discardable. They are dispensable. And so he creates the shared fantasy, not because he's in love with a woman where he's saturated with her or can't live without her or finds her irresistible or fair in love. He creates a shared fantasy because within the shared fantasy he's able to optimally extract the three S's, sex, supply and services. Still, the narcissist, most narcissists, are not stupid. So he anticipates the interstitial phase, he anticipates the end of the shared fantasy. He anticipates the anti-fantasy, culminating in cheating and abandonment by the woman. So he keeps the relationship provisional and very often transitions to sexlessness. And always there's an ambient, there's an atmosphere in the relationship of it's about to fall apart. It's like on the edge, on the ledge, on the verge. It's teetering, it's a house of cards, it's uncommitted, it's uninvolved. There's always this feeling, even if you spend 20 years with a narcissist or 40 years with a narcissist, you have this feeling every single day of the relationship or so-called relationship because you are in a relationship for him, he is in a relationship for what you can give him. And one day maybe there are things you won't be able to provide anymore, at that moment your history. So let's go into the cycle. I'm going to describe the cycle in very great detail. And I urge you and advise you to position yourself in one of the sub phases so that you know what's coming. The cycle is ineluctable. A follows, B follows, C. It's never changing. It's identical in all the narcissist relationships forever. Narcissus may mislead you. It is very misleading. Narcissus is an inveterate liar. Not liar, but confabulator. Psychopath is an inveterate liar and psychopathic narcissist is an inveterate liar. And their lies and deceptions are built in a way that is very difficult to detect because they always contain a kernel of truth. They are constructed around the kernel of truth and people want to believe other people. It's called the base rate follows. They want to believe other people. And so they want to believe the narcissist and the psychopath. People are malignant optimists. And so listen well. This is the cycle. It starts with a grooming phase. And the role of the partner at this stage is strictly as an admirer. To attract the narcissist to start grooming her, the woman needs to be an admirer. She needs to be eligible for a shared fantasy. She should, for example, know who the narcissist is. She should show signs of being able and willing to provide supply, including admiration and sex. So she should display evident and overt signs of infatuation or admiration or adulation or gratitude. So anything that builds up the narcissist's grandiosity is an indication that she is a good source and eligible for grooming. And the grooming and love bombing are intended to achieve 10 goals. You can identify yourself if you are a partner of a narcissist or you have ever been exposed to a narcissist. Even in a workplace environment, you can immediately identify these signs. So 10 goals. Number one, to establish mastery, a power matrix, power hierarchy and an external locus of control. Number two, to mold the woman, the partner, into a mindless and obedient essentially slut or whore. Number three, to overcome the woman's natural revulsion and anxiety by habituating her and co-opting or hijacking her fantasy life. Number four, to expose the woman to brainwashing messaging and signaling. Number five, to isolate the woman from her family and social networks. And number six, to push the woman to dismantle her boundaries, abrogate her values and morals and violate her own rules of conduct. Number seven, to signal the intensity and persistence of the interlocutors or correspondents of sensible emotions. And to chart and document the growing or pervasive attachment, fake attachment of course. Number eight, virtue signaling to convey the purity and authenticity as well as the good intentions of the love bomber. Number nine, gaslighting to engender, foster and impose on the target an immersive virtual reality bubble within which a cult-like shared fantasy or shared psychosis is established and takes hold. And number ten, to induce the target to enter the hall of mirrors where she is idealized and she becomes infatuated with her own rendition with the way she looks, with the way she appears in the mirrors. It's an addictive experience which results in operant conditioning. When the woman sees herself as the narcissist sees her, totally ideal, perfect, brilliant, irresistible, drop dead gorgeous, stunning etc. She herself gets infatuated with herself, she becomes infatuated with herself, she falls in love with herself. And for many women this is the first experience of self-love and it's very addictive. It grants the love bomber with the power to withhold access to this contraption as a way to modify the target's behavior. And this is called intermittent reinforcement. You don't behave, I will deny your access to my hall of mirrors where you can see yourself. It's narcissism by proxy, it's contagious narcissism. The woman sees herself in the hall of mirrors the same way narcissus, the mythological youth, saw himself in the pond and fell in love with himself, she falls in love with herself. But, but there's a keeper of the mirrors and this keeper has the key and you have to behave to be granted access to this hall of mirrors. Now I dedicated a whole video to love bombing and grooming and if you want more about this topic you can watch this video. So put together this, create a shared psychotic space. I'm saying psychotic because it has no reality testing, it's not real, it's delusional, it's fictitious, it's like a movie. And so within this shared psychotic space the shared fantasy thrives on false promises and false premises. And there's a make-believe role play of both parties. It takes two to tangle, it takes two to tangle. The role play is of both parties. The difference is that the partner's role play is dictated by the narcissists. It's a kind of emergent role play but dictated by the narcissist. And the narcissist role play is determined by the narcissist. The narcissist is in control of the role play. So let's move on from the grooming phase to the shared fantasy phase. This phase involves infatuation, continued love bombing, the honeymoon period. And the sexuality in this phase is usually sadistic, humiliation, kink, and there is sexual exclusivity as a condition. Narcissist at this stage of shared fantasy demands sexual exclusivity. The role of a partner in this phase is a playmate. And so in the first encounters the narcissist assumes the role, as I said, of a strict ostensibly benevolent but sadistic parent. He provides tough love. But then suddenly, shockingly, abruptly, unexpectedly, nightmarishly, he transitions and becomes a wounded, hurt, petulant, entitled, self-centered, and sadistic child. A really evil bed spoiled brat like Henry James' stories. As a parent, the narcissist is having sadistic incest with his partner. As a child is having masochistic incest. And so the inevitable cheating by the partner punishes the parent element and mortifies the child. And as I said before, it pushes the narcissist to evolve, to gain insight, to develop. His arrested development is no longer arrested and he grows a bit and he's even creative in this period. So for the shared fantasy to subsist and to exist, both parties must lie to themselves. The partner must lie to herself that the narcissist means what he says. That he has every intention of carrying out his promises. That he's not maybe a narcissist or a liar. Or if he's a bad guy, or if he's a damaged guy, or even if he's a narcissist, she will be the one to fix him. That's a malignant optimism. It's the messiah, savior complex, inverted. Usually women are looking, some types of women, borderline for example. They are looking for messiah, protector, savior types. But in a shared fantasy, it's a woman that assumes this role. It's a maternal role. And she says, with my love, with my acceptance, with the warmth that I provide, with the home that I will build for him. I will make him feel so safe. I'll make him feel I will solve his wounds. I will heal, I will cure him and he will be able to love me. So it's a savior messiah complex. And the narcissist also participates in this charade by intentionally spending judgment. He renders himself knowingly and intentionally gullible and delusional. But he limits his gullibility and delusionality only to certain elements. The profile of a partner, her emotions towards him, the intimacy they ostensibly have, her capacity and intent to hurt him, to abandon him, her misbehavior with other men, her cheating. He overlooks this and the nature and intensity of their relationship. In all these elements, he on purpose turns the blind eye or pretends to be stupid or gullible. So he allows his partner, in this case the woman, in a romantic relationship, romantic heterosexual relationship. He allows the woman to pull the world over his eyes, to deceive him, to manipulate him, to play with him. But make no mistake, he knows what's happening. He's just allowing it. He's allowing it. He says it's like he's saying to himself, okay, better to live in a dream, which I know is not real, than to wake up to reality. It's escapism. It's his way to escape reality. It's his way to suspend what had become intolerable and unbearable. And as long as a shared fantasy has any spark of life left, the narcissist engages in confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when we ignore, disregard, suppress or even counter information that challenges our perceptions, challenges our prejudices, challenges what we think we know. So this is called confirmation bias. We create a silo, an echo chamber with like-minded people and we hear only what we want to hear. So narcissists in a shared fantasy creates experiences, confirmation bias. And the confirmation bias supports his grandiosity and the idealization of the maternal, safe-based aspects of his partner. In other words, the narcissist convinces himself that the partner will not hurt him, will not abandon him, will not act against his best interests, will not compromise him, will not betray him. And this is called safe-based. Now when the child in a stage called separation, individuation, when the child begins to notice the world, you know, he lets go of money. And he wanders, he walks, he ventures into the world. But then he panics because he perceives this as abandonment. As though by leaving mommy, by letting go of mommy, he actually will never see her again. So he runs back to mommy and hugs her legs, you know. So she is a maternal safe-based. She allows the child to experience and to explore the world safely because she's always there waiting for him. Whatever he does, she's not going to be angry at him. She's going to punish him for walking away, for leaving her for a few minutes. She's going to let him exercise his grandiosity in effect because children explore the world via grandiosity. The world is very risky, very dangerous, very unknown. You have to be grandiose to explore it. So the child leverages his grandiosity to explore the world knowing full well that mommy is behind him, waiting as stable as a pillar, as safe and as loving as anything. And the narcissist's partner provides this maternal safe base and the narcissist idealizes her as a mother. And so she becomes in his mind a safe base, someone who will not punish him and hurt him if he explores the world or when he explores the world. By the way, including explore other women. So it's like the narcissist says, you're my mother and I trust you as a mother. But to do this, he needs to filter out, to ignore, to suppress and to deny a lot of information. Sometimes he needs to ignore overt blatant ostentatious cheating just to maintain this illusion or the illusion of a safe base. And this filtering out and denial of countervailing information leads to suppression of evidence to the contrary, including cheating evidence. We'll come to it a bit later. So the narcissist idealizes the partner to allow her to perform her roles within the shared fantasy. And he also makes use of other defense mechanisms, infantile defense mechanisms, for example, splitting all good or bad, black and white, decotonous thinking. So he converts his partner into an all good object. The rest of the world is all bad, his partner is all good, Madonna or complex. This affects the sex at some stage because if she's all good, she's saintly, she's a divine figure and you don't have sex with divine figures unless they look really good. So splitting denial, I mentioned confirmation bias, I mentioned. He also assumes the role of a rescuer or a wizard, someone who will solve all problems, provide life-transforming insights, if you please the guru, take her by the hand and that is the paternal side, that is his father's side. So you see, the problem with narcissists is this unbelievable admixture, this cocktail, concoction, indescribable solution of chemicals. You know, he is a father one minute, then a child the next minute, he wants the woman to be a mother, provide a safe base, but then he becomes her father and he tells her what to do or who she is, provides her with penetrating insight, psychological insight about herself. He rescues hers, he provides support and support, however simulated and immediately after that he engages in magical thinking and he says if I just think about it, I'm going to help her and heal her, so why is she bothering me? I just need to think, she doesn't need to bother me. It's unbelievably kaleidoscopic, confusing, madly mess. Add to this that most narcissists have something called the Wunderkind Mask, I'm a genius, so most narcissists are not open to learning, not open to improvement or change, they don't evolve, their development had been arrested and they're stuck at a mental age typically of four or six years old, it's like living with a four or six years old in an adult body and of course the grandiosity, but even so the narcissists function this way only for as long as the relationship remains in the safe and unreal realms of shared fantasy, role-playing, gaming, it's a video game and he allows this to himself and he doesn't feel threatened because it is like virtual reality you know, by converting it into a fantasy or a delusion or a video game, the narcissists is actually saying I can play this game safely because even if I lose, there are no repercussions, there are no outcomes in the real world it's not real, it's a bubble, the shared fantasy allows the narcissists to avoid true intimacy, true commitment because it's a dream and he shirks, he avoids, abrogates his other responsibility and chores you see, he gets companionship, he gets sex, he gets fun, but he invests only the minimum necessary to maintain this shared fantasy going and by shining intimacy he also avoids being exposed as the fraud that he is because when you're intimate with someone, intimacy is founded on true information you can have fake intimacy, someone can come to you and share an amazing life story with you and describe the relationship and it's all fake, it's all false, never happened you would still have intimacy with that person, but it would be one-sided intimacy he, by lying, knows that the intimacy is fake, wrong, you don't, so that's also possible but the narcissist doesn't go even for this, he shans intimacy, he avoids it, completely why? because he has this imposter syndrome, this feeling that is a fraud, that is a house of cards, a Potemkin village not real, not fully real, kind of invention, an animated cartoon character, a video game character it's a fraud and he's afraid that if you get too close, he's going to be pixelated when you get too close to him, he suddenly dissolves and disintegrates into numerous points so he's afraid of that, so he keeps, there's kind of an invisible firewall surrounding the narcissist you keep feeling that you can't really get to him, that there's something blocking access and the narcissist is a poor item, he's an eternal adolescent, eternal child and he's a dysfunctional non-man because he has disrupted gender differentiation because he never grew up, he never exceeded the mental age of 4 or 6 where gender is not a very clear construct so he has problems with gender, he has problems with mental age, he has problems with emotions because he has adolescent at best, adolescent emotions, usually not even this he's dysfunctional, he doesn't want his partner to know this so he keeps this invisible barrier, it's like the Stephen King story you bump the dome, you bump against this invisible thing and you can't exit you see the narcissist behind the veil, behind the glass darkly and you want to reach out to him because many narcissists are really, really cute they're really lovable and you see the child in the narcissist and you want to reach out to the child, you want to hug the child, nurture the child but there's this invisible shimmering surface between you and him and it's a surface that the narcissist constructs and maintains assiduously for fear of being exposed the narcissist has a conviction that he is not lovable as he is that if anyone gets to see the real him they will abandon him instantly and with shock and revulsion he's afraid, afraid to be truthful and sometimes the narcissist, the married narcissist uses his marital stuff there's a protective shield in addition to this instinctive shield or reflexive shield so there's this shield, don't get near me, don't touch me don't get too close, don't invade my territory and then there's a second shield, a married, a married, it's a protective status and it's an excuse to not get too committed, involved or present even when the narcissist has a love affair the fantasy phase feels to the narcissist like a role-playing game like a movie set the narcissist is an actor following an unpredictable, thrilling, unfolding script or most narcissists, especially the anti-social ones most narcissists are novelty-seeking they engage in risky recklessness and in this sense they are very similar to psychopaths so the narcissist in his shirt fantasy phase is a child in a sandbox he's playing with animate toys, you you are an animated toy in a theme park adventure, a thrill you're a theme park attraction, you're an attraction your attraction wants to ride you like a roller coaster and I'm not talking only about sex the narcissist shuns anything remotely adult many narcissists don't drive, don't have a driving license some many of them don't have children, don't pay taxes don't own real estate or homes, don't buy gifts these are things adults do, they want to grow up they're Peter Pan's Peter Pan openly says in the book, I strongly, strongly advise you to reread Peter Pan by Barry Peter Pan, a work of fiction ostensibly, allegedly is actually the best description ever of the inner workings of the mind of the narcissist and what he does to women who love him Tinker loves him and Wendy loves him see what he does to these women they love him in different ways Wendy facilitates, co-opts, colludes in the shared fantasy Tinker is a nonsense down-to-earth fairy supposed to be ephemeral and immaterial but she is much more real than Wendy she is much more real because she knows her boundaries she knows exactly what she wants she wants a man and very early on in the book Tinker realizes that Peter Pan is anything but not a man and so the narcissist lies about everything all the time especially about himself but he doesn't perceive these as lies he perceives these as probable or plausible compensations for dissociative gaps and we call this confabulation and he does this in order to avoid intimacy to avoid commitment of course if it's a psychopathic narcissist sadistic narcissist or psychopath they lie they knowingly, advertently, intentionally and in a planned manner lie and one of the main reasons for this is to withhold intimacy and to undermine any commitment and this is why the shared fantasy flourishes mainly in trips on trips and vacations daily life can never amount to shared fantasy fully because it is demanding it exposes the narcissist it inexorably leads to the interstitial phase and the anti-fantasy so narcissists create vacation-like, holiday-like trip or traveling-like bubbles or spaces so if they have a relationship they would construct it in a way that would look much more like spending time in a holiday together, holiday destination, vacation destination staycation if you wish but it's critical to understand that the shared fantasy is the partner's safe base for the narcissist narcissists sees the shared fantasy as the reification, the embodiment the personification of the maternal role of a safe base why? because it's a fantasy it feels safe because it is not real the shared fantasy includes elements such as intermittent sex fun, companionship, supply, adventure easy money, easy gifts narcissists, by the way, identify gifts and money love, being cared for it's what mothers do they give gifts, they give money it's a maternal function but all these elements exist in the shared fantasy but it's still unreal it's still a bit like dreaming these things because it's unreal, it's totally safe because it's safe it allows the narcissist, gives the narcissist the energy to explore the world narcissists is very alive at this stage he feels resuscitated he feels resurrected like Frankenstein, you know it's like the electricity of shared fantasy streams through his hitherto moribund body and he gets up, he wakes up you can see the seams, you can see the different parts it's almost falling apart but it's alive, it's a golem it walks, it talks the partner's shared fantasy usually revolves around marriage, children, home being an intimate couple doing something together and so the shared fantasy of the partner and the shared fantasy of the narcissist are not the same it is this discrepancy this disagreement about the nature of the shared fantasy that undoes it it's the root of its undoing but it's critical to understand that both parties the narcissist and his intimate partner both of them agree to share a fantasy it's not like the partner says this is not a fantasy this is reality and the narcissist says it's not a reality, it's a fantasy no they both agree to create a fantasy each for his or her own reasons they both seek to evade reality they both construct a space where they feel hopeful where they feel fulfilled and when they can look forward to the future it's a fantastic space they both know it but the partner believes that she can introduce elements into the fantasy like children or marriage or home doing something together, whatever traveling she believes she can introduce elements to the fantasy that would not undermine the fantastic nature of the shared space while the narcissist disagrees he thinks that if you introduce to the shared fantasy pedestrian routine average common elements like for example owning a home getting married having children it undermines the very fantastic nature of the space he believes the fantasy is everything that is non-adult this is the core disagreement with the partner then both of them the partner and the narcissist agree to create a fantasy but the partner says let's create an adult fantasy wow, that sounds good let's create an adult fantasy and the narcissist says no, I want my fantasy to be childlike it's exactly like The Little Prince Saint-Exupéry and his book Little Prince if you read there's a second book I advise you to read read Peter Pan and The Little Prince and you know everything you have to know about narcissists in that book it's clear that The Prince has a fantasy and the aviator the aviator who's airplane crashed in the desert, in the Sahara desert also has a fantasy but they disagree about the nature of the fantasy at the beginning in the initial dialogue the narcissist mislabels his shared fantasy and calls it love but it's not of course love is founded on truth reality, crucial real love is reality and real love is never dependence and never fantastic and never creates a merger or a union of two organisms into a single organism with two heads this is co-dependency, it's not love so narcissists mislabels his fantasy and then as tensions because of these disagreements as tensions accumulate within the shared fantasy the parties move inexorably can't stop it into interstitial phase one and in interstitial phase one which is the third phase grooming, shared fantasy interstitial phase one in interstitial phase one they have two options option one is and the first option is exit so now we're talking about interstitial phase one option one, exit this phase involves cheating cheating an aborted attempt to dump each other or actively persisting or cheating to modify let's talk about all these all these things the role of a partner in the interstitial phase one in interstitial phase one is a mother so her role was a playmate in the shared fantasy before that an admirer in the grooming now her role is a mother in this phase interstitial phase one women choose to either exit the shared fantasy option one or to persist in the shared fantasy and to attempt to move to a committed relationship to alter the components on the constituents of the shared fantasy and thereby changing its character on nature so exit or persist and this phase allows analysis to prepare mentally for the last phase which is penultimate phase which is anti-fantasy in other words Nazis realizes that things are shaky and he begins to de-effect he begins to disengage emotionally withdraw his investment he begins to grieve and he definitely begins to seek alternatives because whatever you say about Nazis and psychopaths they are they are optimizing machines there I mean they discard and replace within seconds this is the interstitial phase why would the party the partner usually seek to terminate the shared fantasy whenever the woman tries to exit this common territory this psychotic space she's punished she's punished with sadistic sex egregious abuse, verbal, psychological financial, other withholding including withholding of sex or rejection and that makes her feel very wronged it's unjust why why does she feel that it's not ok to be punished if she tries to exit this space first of all because we are all autonomous independent agents and if we choose to live we should be allowed to but forget that for a minute problem is much deeper when the Nazis meets his women he meets them in settings that imply that he's looking for a serious long-term relationship he dates women he doesn't go to bars or to parties or dating apps that's not how we find these women if you go to a bar and pick up a woman her expectations are pretty minimal pretty basic and they can be fulfilled into ours if you are in a party and you flirt with someone and you end up in bed it's also pretty confined although even there some expectations can be disappointed the disappointment itself would be expected but if you flirt with someone for 6 months or you date them for weeks it's a signal if you demand sexual exclusivity it's a signal if you share very intimate details of your life seek advice it's a signal, these are signals the Nazis gives all these signals and meets his women in settings and behaves in ways that clearly signal I'm looking for a serious long-term relationship but then he reveals later with his behaviors in the Shad Fantasy that he's interested in these women merely as playmates he withholds he doesn't fully belong he's not fully present he makes these women feel transparent non-existent and these behavior patterns make women feel very disappointed angry toyed with they feel deceived which leads them to cheat on the Nazis as a way to terminate their relationship restore themselves emotionally elevate their self-esteem and hurt the Nazis none about them none about the Nazis so this defiant act of independence ending up in bed with another man even if it's one night stand it's a defiant act symbolic severing of the bond the trauma bond the relationship and it's intended to restore women's autonomy and self-efficacy restore her as an agent she's an object she wants to become a human being again an agent and cheating is one way cheating I mean having sex with another man is one way of doing this it's a signal of independence and that's why in many of these cases the women actually inform the Nazis what had happened or they pick up men in the Nazis when the Nazis is present and they make sure the Nazis knows about it so that there's no way back or to force the Nazis to dump them or to empower themselves to make them feel so strong and restored that they will get get the nerve to walk away it's all about trying to sever the sick miasma that the relationship had become because the shared fantasy is so psychotic so detached so unreal that it starts as a dream but invariably ends as a nightmare Nazis is reified object in constancy I don't know he deletes chats and emails or he's married or he's in touch with multiple women or he triangulates available even as he claims to be available and he plays he harps on the partner's own abandonment anxiety and this leads to a dissolution disintegration of the partner and she counter triangulates and cheats very often just as a way to restore herself and to get the hell out of there women reject their permanent role in the shared fantasy as mere sex slaves or sex buddies, playmates toys, co-fantasies women want more from the relationship and they want exclusivity in this phase women refuse to continue to realize the Nazis' sexually sadistic fantasies they revert and transition to conventional vanilla sex and when their demands and expectations are not met they don't feel that they have to meet the demands and expectations of the partner my demands are not met why should I meet your demands and so there's a deterioration a deterioration in the reciprocity of the relationship and the goodwill I would say the goodwill reserves goodwill deposits dwindle and women sometimes deny sex or withhold sex or insist on non-satisfying conventional sex as a manipulative tactic to manipulate the Nazis to wake him up to get a rise out of him for the same reason they triangulate same reason they cheat or because there is no longer a quid pro quo all this happens in the interstitial phase when the woman decides to exit the relationship and the Nazis' reacts to all these maneuvers of interest in the woman and by experiencing sometimes occasional erectile dysfunction let's talk about a bit more about cheating finally the only way open to the Nazis' woman is to resort to another man with whom she can create an alternative sanctuary however fantastic and brief now I can hear the chorus of voices I never cheated on my narcissist I don't cheat, I will never cheat I decide I am not saying that all women all all the partners all the intimate partners female intimate partners or Nazis cheat that's not what I'm saying some of them cheat some of them don't cheat however cheating is an option in the mind of all these women do not believe a woman who would tell you I never thought about cheating on you do not believe that she may because she is inhibited or because she is well socialized or because she has a higher self-esteem for whatever reason she may opt to not cheat but she had considered cheating and considered cheating with specific individuals with candidates just held herself back cheating is the only way open to a woman to kind of escape this madness of the shared fantasy and it fulfills several functions simultaneously and this is why cheating is a gradually becomes an irresistible choice now of course at some point many women would say rather than cheat I prefer to walk away and other women would cheat in a way of walking away but it's there psychodynamically cheating allows the woman to get away from the narcissistic partner safely and protected and rescued by another man to abandon him before he dumps her in the anti-fantasy phase and also to get rid of the narcissist for good since narcissism becomes a source of pain, anger, frustration disappointment, emotional blackmail restriction of freedom and growing fear is also all the time this fear of retribution and stalking after the breakup or the cheating and women come to regard the narcissists severely disturbed or even as evil the secretary object and so there's a lot of incentive to walk away with another man this kind of intuitive feeling that other man is a sort of protection and there's also the thing that it's a symbolic act of defiance dependence and autonomy it's cutting the goading knot the personality of the identity of the other man is very rarely very rarely relevant the other man is also a symbol is also a kind of tool or instrument to exit the relationship and again the cheating doesn't have to be actual there could be emotional affairs or the cheating could take place in the woman's mind and just the fact that she had considered it would be sufficient so the second function of cheating real or conceived is for the woman to restore herself with a man both emotionally and sexually to demonstrate to the narcissist and to herself her attractiveness independence of him and her ability and willingness to experiment sexually and to do whatever else she wants with whoever she wants and finally of course there's always the element of hurting and punishing the narcissist remember this is the interstitial phase exit strategy option one in an active shared fantasy the problem is the discreet cheating will not yield a transition so the woman needs to cheat in order to modify the narcissist she needs to ostentatiously cheat, she needs to humiliate him in the act of cheating she needs him to know what had happened she needs him to witness what had happened to irrevocably undermine the shared fantasy as modification sets in and is fully processed there are four videos on this channel which deal with narcissistic modification to learn more about this topic you need to watch them there's been a serious misunderstanding my fault when I said that once a woman exits a shared fantasy the narcissist will never try to get her back which of course is not what I meant to say narcissism is Hoover Hoover previous sources of supply Hoover ring is a term that I coined sources of supply it's they they come back again and again to women who had who had left them and exited the life so someone is trying to say that under certain conditions the woman lives in a specific way then the narcissist will shun and avoid her because she is a source of danger she's a threat so if a woman lives for example by mortifying then the narcissist would avoid her if a woman lives will come to it a bit later but generally speaking the cheating needs to modify to obtain the goal of interstitial phase one the woman as I said is then perceived as a threat cheating to modify cheating in order to modify allows the woman to de-effect to disengage from the narcissist emotionally at this stage she is disillusioned and she counters her addiction her trauma bonding by transferring her attachment and emotions to another man now this attachment and emotions could be very short term very shallow they could lead to a one night stand or casual sex or nothing flirting all night it's just that she violates, breaks an agreement of sexual exclusivity or emotional exclusivity that symbolic act is in itself sufficient like raising the flag and so she transfers her attachment and emotions to another man her interest, her intimacy her openness, her trust her gratitude to another man and usually she does it in public or she makes sure that the narcissist gets to learn about all this and by doing this she both abandons the narcissist and abrogates her maternal role and from that moment the narcissist will find it very difficult to regard her as a safe base mother because she hurt him he did not believe that she will hurt him but she hurt him and so there are two types of shirt fantasy one is aborted shirt fantasy and one is active shirt fantasy sometimes the narcissist tries to create a shirt fantasy with a partner and it's not working out the shirt fantasy is not fully formed it's it's the beginnings, there are rudiments of shirt fantasy but they don't coalesce into a shirt fantasy when cheating occurs in an aborted shirt fantasy this leads to a successful exit the narcissist cannot return to women who had betrayed the shirt fantasy by cheating or triangulating if the fantasy had been aborted before it had matured that's a critical thing if the narcissist picks up a potential partner or potential mate tries to create a shirt fantasy with him and fails and then she cheats he will never return to this woman and then there's cheating in active shirt fantasy this kind of cheating is much less effective it's recurrent it's failed exits it must result in modification to be successful when the shirt fantasy is active the narcissist ends it only after having processed a modification after having endured several rounds several rounds of injurious cheating so the sequence in an active shirt fantasy is cheating injuries, reclaiming the woman cheating reclaiming the partner and then the partner says enough is enough she mortifies the narcissist undergoes modification processes the modification and then dumps the partner and breaks up with her or lets the partner dump and break up and this is owing to the fact that these women are perceived by the narcissist as having betrayed the shirt fantasy and exited without his prompting of their own initiative as a display of personal autonomy and dependence with other men while cheating this is acceptable in an active shirt fantasy but not in an aborted fantasy and it's acceptable if there's no modification involved if the cheating is instrumental if the woman cheats just because she wants to feel better or wants to have sex but if she cheats in order to ruin the narcissist psychologically to modify him and challenges the foundations of his psychology, his grandiosity everything then he will avoid this woman like the plague afterwards the impact is owing to the way the partner had abandoned the shirt fantasy another way is to transition from shirt fantasy to anti-fantasy without going through the interstitial phase without giving the narcissist time to detach and de-cathect this leads to traumatic narcissistic modification again this is the kind of woman a narcissist would avoid there's no problem with a partner who had kept disrupting the formation and maturation of the shirt fantasy because this kind of partner doesn't allow the shirt fantasy to flourish and to coalesce and to come into being so a partner who comes and goes approach avoidant refuses to idealize the narcissist refuses to adjulate refuses some types of sex is not a good playmate this kind of partner is disruptive and doesn't allow the shirt fantasy to form and to mature so if this partner walks away or cheats or something like that the narcissist doesn't react to badly he perceives the whole thing to have been a fling or casual sex and he will try to go over this kind of woman or partner in the future now the breakup that ensues is in itself a very complex phase psychodynamically speaking let's start with sex sex with a woman is similarly at the service of securing the stability of the shirt fantasy it also fulfills another role it allows the narcissist to humiliate and degrade the woman so as to prove to himself his own irresistibility and addictive quality you see if he humiliates a woman disappoints her, degrades her and she keeps coming back for more it proves that he is irresistible that he is addictive that he is sweet-hearted this is only one of his kind here he is destroying her, annulling her, humiliating her demeaning her, berating her debasing her and she keeps coming back for more what does it say about him? he is gone when triangulation or cheating an active shirt fantasy space or phase the narcissist persists in the fantasy because the fantasy as you have seen crucial fulfills crucial psychodynamic psychological needs and so it would take a lot to break an active shirt fantasy only when these needs are challenged directly in the modification in a modification only then the narcissist gives up but as long as there are narcissistic injuries here, there the fantasy is worth maintaining and keeping using confirmation bias so triangulation is not enough cheating is not enough he persists in the fantasy he embarks on a reclaim honeymoon following every incident every episode and of course this reclaim honeymoon doesn't last long and is followed by abuse and absence and this forces the woman to escalate she flirts doesn't work, she triangulates doesn't work she cheats doesn't work so she has to escalate she has to severely injure and modify the narcissists by cheating on him ostentatiously in a humiliating way to end the relationship simply to dump him and walk away now this is cheating it's a form of modification there are many other forms of modification it's a form of trust the ruination or destruction of the safe base element in the relationship can be done in many ways she could steal all his money there's a famous, there's a very good movie the best offer for an old reclusive bachelor art collector falls in love with a ravishing stunning but mentally ill woman she pretends to be mentally ill she obsconds with all his art collection and his money so there are many ways to modify I'm focusing on cheating and sex because this is the most common way actually but a woman a narcissists intimate partner can modify the narcissists in many other ways if the shared fantasy I remind you if the shared fantasy is aborted or does not mature the narcissists dumps the woman immediately after her triangulation in cheating and he suffers only narcissistic injury but once dumped by either party the shared fantasy is over a relationship can continue but the fantasy is over and it cannot be revived by either party even if the will is there even if they try even if the woman remains in the narcissists life even if she returns to him he returns to her the shared fantasy is dead once dead always dead even if he hoovers this kind of woman this woman in the future he will hoover her not as a partner for a shared fantasy or if he creates a shared fantasy with her it will be with such reserve and so many preconditions actually it will be more transactional so there's been a breakup and there's a process of grieving and moving on as the narcissist is attached not to the shared fantasy itself or to any of its details but to the way he had felt in the shared fantasy this is very crucial narcissists is not attached to his partner he doesn't fondly remember what they had done together he doesn't even put emphasis on the sex he gets attached he gets attached to the way the shared fantasy made him feel gets attached to his own reactions to the shared fantasy he grieves the passing of the shared fantasy only self-referentially and auto-erotically the woman's indispensable role in the fantasy is solely as a mere theta problem the catalyst is an object a presence is required but she must remain quiet the woman's function is only to counter factually buttress all the elements of the narcissist's grandiosity and to affirm the reality of the fantasy to make the narcissist feel elated feel high the narcissist idealizes the woman in order to facilitate the shared fantasy if he doesn't idealize her it will not be a fantasy so he has to idealize her or he idealizes her in order to resolve modification he de-cathets he removes his emotional investment in order to switch off and to move on to the next shared fantasy so the idealization devaluation cycle that we are also acquainted with is closely connected to the various phases of the shared fantasy and it's brought on by these phases he idealizes in the grooming stage he idealizes in the shared fantasy and then he has to devalue he has to devalue to break out of the shared fantasy and to establish a new one some people are addicted to love some people are addicted to risks some people are addicted to money or to thrills the narcissist is addicted to fantasizing and is fantasizing not only in romantic relationships he fantasizes in business narcissists are well known for consistently coming up with get rich quick schemes and harebrained projects he likes to fantasize fantasy is the permanent state of mind and being of the narcissist it's where he feels most safe most comfortable, most calm, most happy the catexis the emotional investment is in the shared fantasy or actually more precisely in the way the shared fantasy is experienced not in the woman not in the relationship and this is why when the narcissist accepts the fantasize demise he disengages he switches off he dick attacks overnight and he transitions with alacrity to the next shared fantasy intimate partners of narcissists keep musing keep complaining, keep being shocked at the speed with which the narcissist transitioned from the relationship to another one you know he dumped them on Wednesday and on Friday he has a new wife and on Monday she's pregnant and they're shocked at this instant transition I've witnessed a transition which took 20 minutes to witness with my own eyes a psychopathic borderline narcissistic grandiose woman who transitioned in a few minutes so as long as the fantasy has any life or hope left in it it's imminent passing he tries to reverse reverse the situation to keep it alive and he's mortified when the shared fantasy expires make no mistake about it he pays a very dear and deep emotional price and that is but that is why the narcissist never grieves over any aspect of the woman of the relationship the shared fantasy in which he's exclusively invested in the state of mind it's not a reality it's the way he interacted and interfaced with the fantasy that he mourns that he misses the narcissist does not miss or dwell on the sex on common activities on memories on plans, on his partner they're all interchangeable commoditized components of the shared fantasy he can have this any woman and he does he just needs a trigger and the trigger is in the form of a woman but he just needs a trigger to activate an internal mental state what the narcissist does grieve are the outcomes of the modification he grieves the renewed laws of innocence and being forced to revert to reality and to confront himself in an unforgiving, unflinching, cruel or this yes or this is a totally decompensating disintegrating effect on the narcissist but that's more or less it the narcissist grieves and mourns himself now there's another variant of interstitial phase one another option and it is the option to persist this option involves frustration the sexuality becomes conventional, the sex and still there is a presumption of exclusivity the narcissist partners mistake the shared fantasy phase they think it's a passing temporary love bombing or infatuation stage and it's going to be followed by the implementation of realistic plans or at the very least realistic fantasy adult fantasy fantasy that involves life elements of life like I mentioned before home, business doing business creating a home, having children so the narcissist intimate partners are much more grounded in adult shores responsibilities and and when they start pushing for more the narcissist becomes indecisive and approach avoidant as long as this discontent this friction this disagreement is not translated to specific demands ultimatums withholding, conflict or betrayal and cheating and continues to act as though everyone is still on the same shared fantasy phase page but it can't last for long it can't last for long and it leads to an anti-fantasy phase and the anti-fantasy phase, phase 4 of the 5 involves modification decoupling, sexualities is non-existent sexlessness, celibacy, abstinence and in some cases partners wish to stay together they create open relationships the minute the partner tries to transition from simulation to reality the minute the partner refuses to participate in the shared fantasy the minute the partner tries to convert the shared fantasy into some modicum of adult reality the minute the partner attempts to have natural benefits, material or otherwise she moves in to live with the narcissist or meets the narcissist regularly she demands sex the narcissist's time, attention sharing, which is boring the minute she obstructs his work or interferes with it the minute she grandiosly claims a share in or control of the shared fantasy or any of its elements the minute she rejects the narcissist's sexuality and criticizes his sexual performance or proclivities the minute she has any overt expectations the minute she makes any demands or ultimatums of any kind verbally abuses the narcissist narcissistically injures the narcissist the minute she triangulates, she flirts she misbehaves with other men spends time with them cheats on the narcissist betrays the narcissist in any way which mortifies him that's a critical element the minute she questions, disagrees criticizes, mocks, shows disappointment withholds any of the three s's sex supply and services or the minute she withholds two of the three companionship s's sex supply and services or any combination of the above all these are perceived as criticism and evaluation they are challenged to the narcissist's grandiosity and a proof of the partner's worthlessness she is, I don't know, stupid needy, dependent weak, dangerous she's out to get him, she's a gold digger it's paranoia, paranoid ideation provokes paranoia in the secretary ideation shared fantasy dissipates the cool-headed, unflinching, narcopath takes over disenchanted, this narcopath instantly and totally gives up on the partner emotionally he discards the fantasy or the game narcissist loses all sexual interest in the womb begins to verbally abuse her sadistically pushing all her buttons in that instant she's no longer his woman he doesn't care what she does with other men he no longer reacts to other men's disrespectful advances over or comments about her he wakes up, so to speak he fully reverts to reality upsetting himself he may be there physically but never emotionally he becomes a kind of disinterested roommate he also becomes egregiously verbally abusive and devaluing if he is impinged or if he's kind of pricked or addressed the narcissist sometimes pushes the partner to cheat on him with others in order to either cause himself mortification or to terminate the relationship without untoward repercussions or to guilt-trip guilt-trip the cheating party into submission this instantaneous transition from shared fantasy to transactional reality it's accomplished in sometimes minutes as I told you usually takes you know days and weeks but I've witnessed such a transition which took minutes and the narcissist does not bother after that to monitor the environment anymore for competitors he redirects all his energies and attention and focus to other tasks but not emotionally there's no object consistency she's gone, she's history out of mind, out of sight he still reads available cues perfectly but selectively in order to affirm that the partner is disrespectful unfaithful, disloyal or pervasive liar etc which makes it easier for him to take effect it helps him to move on to the next fantasy role-play with the next idealized partner to do so it also lets the narcissist to any pitfalls or risks in the process so to to take effect to withdraw emotionally the narcissist again uses splitting but this time reverse splitting at the beginning the shared fantasy phase, grooming phase the partner was all good now she's all bad to switch from shared fantasy to anti-fantasy he renders the partner he sees the partner as a cruel sadistic, withholding, frustrating, deceitful abusive, persecutory maternally cheating object, not safe dangerous, hostile an enemy and he coerces the partner to conform to this role, to enact it it's something called projective identification he rejects the partner he abuses her, he withholds sex and everything else and this pushes the partner for example, to cheat or to retaliate and this upholds his view that she's all bad but cheating as a role cheating or abusing the narcissist as a role for the woman as well for the partner it allows her to take effect and so the narcissist's misconduct provokes the partner to flee and to seek succor or to retaliate or to find another safe man sometimes someone who is vastly inferior to the narcissist so he's unlikely to reject an abuser and compound her injury in the case of cheating it causes the narcissist life-threatening pain if it reaches the stage of modification but following modification is emotionally free and able to transition to the next shared fantasy so the two parties collude and collaborate in modification the woman wants to modify the narcissist so she's set free and the narcissist wants her to modify so that he's set free they both want to be set free and the only ticket out is modification the narcissist's modification modification can be minimal if the woman assumes her share of the responsibility or blame for what had happened or modification can be major if the woman casts all the responsibility or blame on the narcissist and a prime reason for modification can be for example if the narcissist becomes convinced that he is the bad guy that his partner did not deserve the horrific cruel and human abuse that he meted out to them now why would the narcissist cast himself as a bad guy because then he can say I made her do it my misbehavior, my misconduct my abuse, my cruelty my sadism pushed her to do what she had done so I'm in control I'm still the prime mover and shaker in the prime reason, prime cause it restores his grandiosity there's another variant where the narcissist feels wrong and that is the good guy, the victim and their modification is reduced or absent altogether the cheating, she is a bad object yes, you remember splitting cheating makes it impossible for the narcissist to entertain counterfactual what if ego, dystonic fantasies like I failed I misbehaved, let's try again he can say that when there's no modification and he does very often the narcissist persists in the fantasy they try again and again but when there's modification he cannot say that, he cannot re-affect the betraying modifying object the woman he can have emotional sex with her or add more collaboration in the future but never again a shared fantasy modification, taught him a lesson that she is dangerous all women react the same to the narcissist and their lives intimidated, confused, exhausted angry, disappointed they then seek to hurt the narcissist but as they walk away or cheat many of them out of pity sometimes try to minimize the pain they had caused by lying or by minimizing their misbehavior reframing it it's a mistake because if they do this then the shared fantasy survives the narcissist will latch on these confabulations and prevarications in order to not be modified and he will persist with the shared fantasy if you want to end this torture the only way is to modify the narcissist you have to be cruel borderlines for example some borderlines are secondary psychopaths and they just don't care about hurting the narcissist grievously at the moment of pursuing the fulfillment of their needs regret, shame and guilt come later and consequently these kind of women often modify the narcissist by putting a cruel mirror to the hideous grandiose buffoon an obnoxious repulsive monster that he is these kind of women say any man, any man is preferable to you you are a horrible person an undiluted fool full of yourself fool he reacts to his own modification the way people react to him with shock, horror, nausea depression, avoidance, denial trauma he may even become psychosomatic headaches, gastrointestinal symptoms panic attacks, dyspnea inability to breathe shortness of breath depression, anxiety, aggression etc modification is crucial if you want to end a shared fantasy there is no way around it half measures, disguises prevarications, confabulations and pretensions will get you nowhere women realize that at the end many of them cheat with other men and many of them betray in other ways but I found out that the majority of intimate partners of narcissists end up realizing this intuitively and modifying the narcissist phase to the last stage interstitial phase 2 latency the narcissist switches from external modification caused by the intimate partner to auto-plastic internal modification or vice versa from internal modification to auto-plastic external modification and usually cycles between these two modifications in a brief nutshell because there are 4 videos dedicated to this the narcissist can say it was all my fault, I made her do it thereby regaining his sense of grandiosity as the prime cause in control or he can say she was evil and she did this to me, I'm going to punish her these are the 2 types of modification narcissists reconstructs the false self reconstructs the false self with doses of grandiosity he assumes responsibility and implied control over what had happened or he casts everyone involved as evil and seeks to punish them he then goes into schizoid hibernation no sex, no social interactions masturbation minimal contact with this woman the intimate partner who had modified him and with other women tolerance of her misbehavior cheating other types of misconduct because she's no longer in his life and finally the modifying an envious woman and other evil parties are perceived by the narcissist as a threat to be shunned also because they recover and thrive after he had punished them while the narcissist withers and suffers irreversible damage so it's ego dystonics it's a pleasant for the narcissist to see how limited his power is so finally the narcissist has been modified, these are evil people try to punish them, I did punish them to some extent didn't work so well I don't want to be faced with my failure, with this failure to punish them I don't want to witness this, I'm out of here grandiosity restored however delusionally and partially the narcissist moves on to the next shared fantasy he becomes decisive and approach oriented no avoidance there immediately after the anti-fantasy the narcissist is vulnerable to abuse, manipulation and expectations by unscrupulous women and many narcissists fall prey actually they're very very vulnerable in this stage they are in a situation in a state of mind in a psychological state that is equal equivalent to the typical state of mind and psychological state of their victims they become victims because the narcissist at this stage after the modification and after latency he seeks another shared fantasy indiscriminate he idealizes anyone he is looking for an intimate partner to participate in a new shared fantasy urgently compulsively indiscriminately so he falls prey very often time for many I think restorative many he falls prey very often to psychopathic and so on women narcissists cannot survive without a shared fantasy for long narcissistic supply functions depend crucially on a shared fantasy narcissists is a grandiose fantasy that's how he derives narcissistic supply to support a false structure false self fantasy he needs this without these elements without supply he falls apart he also needs a maternal substitute he needs to feel loved and safe this is a mission critical for even minimal functioning of the narcissists he needs a mommy he needs a mommy and he needs constant praise then emboldened he can venture out into the world and fuck it up all again