 Ever since I released the video One Narcissist Relationship Cycle, people have been misidentifying narcissists with cackles. Both the narcissist and the cackle push their intimate partners to be with others. Not all narcissists, but many narcissists do, but these narcissists are not cackles. The reason for what the narcissist does is not the same as the cackle's motivation. The cackle is motivated by pain. He is an emotional masochist. The narcissist's reason is that he wants to experience betrayal. The narcissist, in other words, has a betrayal fantasy. My name is Sam Vakny. I'm the author of Malignance of Love, Narcissism Revisited, and I'm a professor of psychology in SEAPS, Center for International Advanced and Professional Studies, the Outreach Arm or Program of the SEAS Consortium of Universities. Let me button my upper button, right? I don't want to titillate you. Okay, Shoshanim, let's delve right in. Narcissistic supply, even sex, are anxiolytic. In other words, they serve to reduce anxiety. The reason the narcissist pursues narcissistic supply and the reason the somatic narcissist engages in sex is because it makes them feel good. And it makes them feel good because these reduce anxiety. They mitigate it. But there's another thing that makes the narcissist feel vindicated, elated, somehow relieved. And that thing is betrayal. Narcissists have been betrayed in early childhood. The narcissist has been betrayed by his mother in early childhood. He seeks to recreate this betrayal throughout life. He chooses fake friends who bedmouth him, steal from him, poach his mates and betray him. He behaves obnoxiously and abusively to make people hate him and then hurt him. And he pushes his intimate partners to betray him in a variety of ways, including by cheating on him. So it's all about the pursuit of betrayal. It's all about fulfilling some fantasy of betrayal. What is this fantasy? Why does the narcissist need to be betrayed? What is the role of betrayal in the narcissist's psychological economy? What processes does betrayal bring on and about? And where does it all culminate? What is the aftermath? This is the topic of today's video. Remember just a refresher? Narcissists convert their intimate partners to substitute mothers in order to accomplish separation individuation. The narcissist's original mother did not allow him to separate from her and did not let him become an individual. This is an unfinished business. It's an unfinished agenda. The narcissist has to go through this phase in order to become an adult and then an individual. And the narcissist goes through life, engaging in what Freud called a repetition compulsion. He keeps choosing intimate partners within a shared fantasy. He then converts these intimate partners into mother figures and he then tries to separate from his intimate partners by devaluing the intimate partner and then discarding her. This is a replay, a reenactment of the separation individuation that he had never had with his original mother. One way to make separation individuation happen is by insistently and persistently pushing the partner to betray the narcissist. For example, by being with another person. I'm going to use, from this moment on, I'm going to use the male gender pronoun, but it's utterly interchangeable, utterly interchangeable with a female pronoun. There are 50% of narcissists diagnosed, narcissists today are women. So as I said, one way to bring about separation individuation is by pushing your partner to betray you somehow. And I'm going to use the example of cheating, because cheating is the ultimate betrayal. Cheating is a total rejection of the narcissist as a man, as a lover, as a person, and as an intimate partner. There is no greater rejection than cheating by the person you trusted and loved. So when the narcissist pushes his partner to betray him, this way, the separation from the partner is coupled with debilitating pain. Why would the narcissist choose an option that involves agony, excruciating, writhing pain? Why would he do this? Why doesn't he simply, I don't know, devalue the partner and then discard her? Or why does he simply, doesn't he simply break up and move on? Why does he have to go through this drama of betrayal and in the example that I'm using, being cheated on, sometimes ostentatiously, egregiously, and life threateningly painfully? Why would he choose this? Because he wants the separation. He wants the separation to be coupled with pain, because if the separation is painful, it's irreversible and it's final. The narcissist always mourns and grieves the mother fantasy, not the actual departed intimate partner. The narcissist couldn't care less about his intimate partner. She's interchangeable. She's fungible. She's an extension of himself. She's a mere internal object, a snapshot. It's not about the intimate partner. It's about the loss of the fantasy. The narcissist separates not with his real life spouse or not from his real life girlfriend. The narcissist separates from the fantastic imaginary maternal figure that she had become in his mind through the process of snapshotting or interjection. So in order to efficaciously separate from the partner, the narcissist needs to make it so harrowingly painful that he would never, ever go back. The process is rendered irreversible by the agony involved in it. The narcissist, therefore, is not a masochistic cuckold. The narcissist does not get sexually aroused by the cheating, as a cuckold would do. On the contrary, the narcissist's subsequent suffering causes him extreme depression and a marked decrease or disappearance of the libido of the sex drive. The narcissist has become asexual in the wake of such betrayal and cheating. This is the exact opposite of cuckoldry. Cuckolds are sexually aroused by the betrayal and by the cheating. Their libido increases, not decreases, and they're not depressed. They're just in pain. Back to the topic. Normal people react to mate poaching with mate guarding or sexual gatekeeping. In other words, if someone is trying to take away your spouse or your boyfriend or your girlfriend, you're likely to react very aggressively by fending off the intruder, isolating your intimate partner from the wannabe mate and generally restricting her movements, maybe even spying on her. These are typical behaviors, but not with the narcissist. The narcissist reacts to mate poaching. The narcissist reacts to attempts to poach his mate, to steal away his mate. With the exact opposite, he reacts with mate sharing. He actually engages in projective identification. He pushes his intimate partner towards the poacher. When another man shows interest in the narcissist's spouse or the narcissist's girlfriend, the narcissist is not likely to react by guarding his intimate partner, isolating her, sequestering her or demanding that she cuts all contact with the poacher. On the contrary, he is likely to offer his spouse or girlfriend to the newcomer, to the male who is interested in her, and he is likely to do this in a very aggressive way. He's likely to actually orchestrate the whole event. The cheating is likely to push his intimate partner by abusing her or by extolling the virtues of the new man, idealizing him to her so that he renders the new man irresistible. This is made sharing with the man she would cheat with. Often the narcissist actually chooses this man himself. He chooses the cheating partner of his spouse or girlfriend. It's all part of a play, a theater play, a production kind of movie. And it's all about the narcissist's betrayal fantasy. He needs to be betrayed. Because having been betrayed, he experiences such pain that facilitates the separation, and not only facilitates the separation, but makes it irreversible. Having idealized his partner, the narcissist's self idealization, grandiosity, depends on his ownership of her. This is known as co idealization. When the narcissist idealizes his partner, he's also idealizing himself by owning the partner. It's like he's saying, I own this perfect object. That means that I'm perfect. So relinquishing his partner to another man, handing his partner, his mate, his spouse, his girlfriend, handing her to another man undermines the narcissist's sense of self worth, actually results in self devaluation, so extreme, that the narcissist's internal bed object takes over and the dual messages of the bed object are amplified. You're not lovable. You don't deserve happiness, because you're not good enough. I'm going to repeat this because everything I'm describing here is totally counterintuitive and outside the experience of the vast majority of humanity. The narcissist converts his intimate partner to a mother figure. Then he needs to separate from her. The best way to separate from her irreversibly is to force her to betray him. And the most exquisite form of betrayal is cheating. So the narcissist pushes his partner to cheat on him. He introduces her to eligible men. He praises them and idealizes them and idolizes them so that they become irresistible. He makes sure that she meets them continuously. Finally, if all else fails, he actually demands that she that she sleeps with the other guy or have a romance with the other guy. He needs her to betray him. He needs her to betray him. And the narcissist partner feels this. She keeps saying, it's as if you would be angry at me if I don't do it. And indeed the narcissist would be because his overriding need is to separate from her. And he can't separate from her unless she does something really, really bad, unless she misbehaves egregiously, unless her misconduct cannot be overlooked. He needs her to be evil. He needs her to really, really misbehave so that he can just say goodbye in good conscience and attain the high moral ground and feel like a victim. And these are the conditions for separation. And even though handing over his partner to another man is possibly the most excruciatingly painful experience imaginable, it is far better. It is far more tolerable. It is far more bearable than not being able to separate from your intimate partner. The narcissist needs to separate from the intimate partner because if he doesn't, there is going to be a replay, a reenactment with the terrifying dynamics with the original mother, which involve life-threatening shame and other negative effects. The narcissist is compelled to separate from his partner and he beseeches her. He asks her to help him to do that by misbehaving, by betraying him on some occasions with another man. I'm using the example of cheating, but it could be any form of betrayal. Remember that once the betrayal is accomplished, the bad object inside the narcissist takes over. The bad object, the voices of the dead mother and other sadistic, harsh, disparaging, inner critic voices. So these voices tell the narcissist these interjects, create, generate automatic negative thoughts. And the two dominant ones are, you see, she cheated on you, she betrayed you, she chose another man over you. You're not good enough, you are not lovable, and you don't deserve happiness, and you will never have happiness because no one will ever love you. Even this intimate partner, as you see, the minute she met another man, she just walked away. The bad object inside the narcissist now essentially takes over. And the narcissist is in a process of extreme, extreme life-threatening self-devaluation. At the same time, the narcissist is also very envious of the other man with whom the spouse or the girlfriend had cheated. The other man now possesses the good idealized object. The other man now is, and the owner of the narcissist's intimate partner, her introject, the internal object that represents the partner inside the narcissist's mind is still idealized. So now the other man is in charge of the idealized snapshot of the idealized internal object in the narcissist's mind. It's as if the other man had reached into the narcissist's mind and absconded with the good object inside it, which represents the intimate partner. And this feels like self-harm or self-mutilation. It feels like the narcissist feels like a self-destructive fool for having handed over, for having handed this intimate partner over to a man, and he envies this man for possessing her. And he says to himself, I used to possess this intimate partner. I used to be in charge and I used to be the owner of the idealized object. This other man used to envy me. This other man wanted to possess her. This other man desired her and now this other man had replaced me in her heart and mind. And this is a horrible feeling. The narcissist has usually a referential ideation, which in this case is probably true, and he believes that the other man is bed-mouthing him as a predator or a monster. He believes that the other man has taken over the heart and mind of his intimate partner by casting him as an abuser. In other words, the narcissist realizes that he is trapped in the Carpman drama triangle. He is the abuser. His intimate partner is the victim and the third man, the third party, the man who she's cheating with, is actually a rescuer or a savior. He has attained the role of a predator and a monster and this was all he's doing. He made it all happen. He orchestrated the whole thing. He pushed the parties towards each other. Never mind how many times they protested against it. He insisted, even became indignant if they wouldn't obey him. He feels, the narcissist feels that his repetition compulsion renders him defenseless, disrespected by everyone involved, weak, even pathetic, and he consoles himself by clinging to the fact that he had made all this happen. He was in charge and everyone involved was merely a puppet. He was the puppet master and they were just puppets and acting the drama of his betrayal. That is not far from the truth it usually is true and yet it's not enough to reduce or to ameliorate the narcissist's seething envy of the other man with whom his intimate partner is cheating. It's not enough to reduce the sense of utter helplessness in the face of such powerful inner compulsions. It's not enough to allay the overwhelming sense of loss and the huge sadness that sweeps over the narcissist in waves in the aftermath. The narcissist hates to do this. He doesn't want to do this. These are the worst moments in his life in the wake of betrayal by an intimate partner. He would rather avoid all this but he has no option. He has no choice. This is a compulsion, a repetition compulsion and like every other compulsion there's no way out. There's no way to counter it. There's no way to negate it. He needs, he needs to separate from the maternal figure that his intimate partner had become. He needs to let go of her and he needs her to let go of him and this needs to be done in such a clear cut and ostentatious manner so that there's no doubt of the separation and it cannot be reversed. The narcissist perceives the man that the partner is cheating with as superior to him in some ways. Why does he do that? Narcissists don't like to feel inferior. Narcissists like to feel superior. Why in this particular case in the betrayal drama, in the betrayal fantasy, why does the narcissist want to feel inferior to the man his spouse or girlfriend had chosen over him? The man that he pushed her to choose. Again there is an artificial resemblance to the cuckold. The cuckold is a masochist and he does often feel inferior to the bull. The bull is the third party, the other man who is having sex with his wife. But the resemblance ends here. The reason the cuckold wants to feel inferior is because he wants to experience pain because pain arouses him sexually. That's not the case with the narcissist. Absolutely not the case. The reason the narcissist wants to feel inferior to the man his wife is having a romance or sex with is because this way he can be a child again. Remember separation individuation is an early childhood process. It takes place between the ages of 18 and 24 months. In order for the narcissist to separate effectively, to really separate and to have a chance at becoming an individual, the narcissist needs to go back in time and become a child again. He needs to regress and infantilize himself because only children separate an individual. And so he needs to feel that his spouse and or his girlfriend is the adult. She is the mother. The other man who is now having an affair with her or a fling or casual sex or whatever, that other man is an adult too. There are two adults doing this. Two adults are betraying him but he is not an adult. He is a child. Mother is cheating with him. Cheating on him with a real man. I repeat, mother, his intimate partner, is cheating on him with a real man. He is not a real man because he's a child. Because he can separate from mother only as a child. He cannot be a grown-up in this game. He needs to infantilize and of course children by definition are inferior to adults by rendering the third the other man an adult by considering the other men to be a grown-up. The narcissist is actually saying you're a grown-up. You're an adult. I am not. I'm a child. I'm much inferior to you. And my intimate partner is my mother. So in this drama, in this triangular drama, usually triangular drama, the narcissist uses his intimate partner and her lover as props. They are the adults compared to which or compared to whom he is a child. Now as a child the preconditions for separation are fulfilled. There's a devalued mother. There's a painful breakup in a reenacted childhood and there is an adult figure resembling very much a father figure who is taking away mother from the child, a reenactment of the Oedipal Oedipus complex. Of course all the drama, all the betrayal drama and the betrayal fantasy involves splitting as a precondition for individuation. The child in this story is all good. The child is a victim. Mother and her lover, mother and the other men, they're all bad. Now that the child is all good and mother and her lover are all bad, the child can safely separate from mother. Actually it feels safe to separate. He has an incentive to separate because mother is threatening ominous. She's a bad person, a bad object, a bad external object. So now the narcissist has an incentive to separate. Having devalued her, having rendered her a bad external object, the narcissist tells himself it's the right time and it's the right thing to do to say goodbye because these people are evil, they're dangerous, they don't love me the way a child would think. So let me summarize this part for you. It's really this, this is a mind-bender. The narcissist wants to separate from his mother, from the maternal figure, from the intimate partner. To separate from a maternal figure he needs to be a child again. To be a child again he needs to regard the mother figure, the intimate partner, as an adult and he needs to regard the other men with whom she is cheating or having an affair as another adult. There are two adults there and they are betraying him together. Together they're betraying him and now that they betrayed him he is in huge pain. He is in pain because these two adults are evil, they're victimizing him, they hate him, they don't love him. The bad object inside the narcissist keeps telling him you're not lovable, you don't deserve happiness, you're not good enough, you see she has chosen someone else over you. So at that point the narcissist is ready to separate. He says to himself, anyhow I'm not lovable, no one can love me, she hates me, her lover hates me, her lover is superior to me because I'm a child and he's an adult, of course she would go for a real man, not for a child, so she would never come back to me. I am ready to separate because I'm all good in this story. Even though I orchestrated everything, even though I made it happen, even though I pushed them towards each other, they didn't have to do what they're doing, they could have abstained, they could have refrained from doing this, that they are doing this, proves how much they hate me, that they ended up complying with my wishes and demands, just goes to show how disrespected I am and how hateful I am. And so now he's ready to separate and in the process he involves the ancient primitive defense mechanism of splitting, I'm all good, I'm a victim, I'm a child, a molested child and this evil woman who is my mother or maternal figure, she has a lover who is as evil as she is, they both betrayed me and always willing to say goodbye. Narcissus engineers the whole situation of betrayal is fully in control of it. He selects mates for his wife, he selects mates as his wife or as his girlfriend, he selects mates that are more likely to collaborate in realizing the betrayal fantasy, he selects mates who would betray him, he selects mates who would cheat on him, promiscuous mates, unboundary mates, mentally ill mates, he selects spouses and girlfriends who are likely to go along with the betrayal drama, such women are anyhow prone to fantasy and they collude with the Narcissus to the point of complying with his wishes even when his demands of them are egodistonic, even when what he is asking of them to do is perceived by them as wrong, they are unhappy with it, they don't want to do it, he kind of broadcasts to them you should cheat on me and they say I don't want to cheat on you, I don't want to cause you pain, I never did this before I don't want to do this or I did this before and I don't want to do it again but he keeps pushing relentlessly, he keeps brainwashing them, he keeps entraining them, he keeps grinding them to the point that they say okay in order to remain in the fantasy we're going to do this in their minds if they do this, if they cheat on him for example it would make them closer to him, if they cheat on him it's an act of intimacy, if they cheat on him he's going to reclaim them and he's going to love them even more because they have complied with his wishes but of course they don't realize the narcissist wants them to cheat in order to get rid of them, the narcissist wants his intimate partner to cheat on him or to betray him in some other way so that he can separate from her finally and irreversibly narcissist abuses his intimate partner prompts them he prompts her to betray him, he sets the stage even to the point of choosing the other men introducing him to her and making sure they spend a lot of time together and then acting as a kind of cupid promoting that other men idealizing him and idolizing him telling his intimate partner he's your perfect match don't ever let him go don't let go of this opportunity it is important to note that the fantasy of the narcissist is that of having fallen victim to an evil partner which is reminiscent of his real dead mother dead i mean psychologically not physically the dead mother is narcissistic selfish absent instrumentalizing parentifying dead mother so he he he's the fantasy the betrayal fantasy is that i'm going to be a victim of a partner an intimate partner who is essentially a mother a mother substitute but she would be as evil as betraying and as hurtful she would cause me as much pain as my original mother the fantasy is mostly counterfactual it's delusional it's persecutory in reality it is the narcissist who literally coerces forces his partner to cheat on him in a variety of ways i don't know of any there are very few partners who could resist this unless they walk away so it is the narcissist who sets everything in motion he is the deus and he is the machina he is the puppet master everyone is manipulated into acting the roles and the parts in his theater play of betrayal and yet in his mind he is a victim in his mind is being persecuted in his mind he did nothing to to deserve this in his mind it was all a test that they had failed a loyalty test that his intimate partner had failed and his friend for example had failed in his mind it's kind of make belief not real a simulation and when things actually do happen and he is betrayed or cheated on he is reduced to smithereens he falls apart he literally falls apart he disintegrates the fantasy that he has of himself as a victim victim of an evil partner and her even more evil lover this fantasy is not true of course so he has to defend it fiercely against reality against the facts he needs to believe that he had been betrayed he needs to believe that he is a victim because an efficacious separation individuation depends on this belief depends on this fantasy that the maternal figure the intimate partner is bad and that the other party is equally bad he needs to sustain this fantasy in order to say goodbye and never look back his original mother had left in his mind a legacy a trace a sadistic tormenting introject a voice that his enemy his hostile voice voice that wants to destroy him a voice that pushing pushes him to incredible acts of self harm and self mutilation to self punitive actions that defy belief and now what he does he superimposes the bad object he superimposes the sadistic original mother introject on the introject of his intimate partner so once the intimate partner had cheated on him or betrayed him in some way the road is open and he can merge the introjects he can merge the original mother introject which is hateful keeps telling him that he's not lovable emerges it with the intimate partner introject as an aside this attempt is doomed to failure because it has some inherent contradictions i recommend i advise you to watch the video i've made about hovering why doesn't the narcissist hover but back to our topic the narcissist distorts reality he reframes reality he deceives himself into accepting a version of the events which is largely untrue but a version of the events which is excruciatingly agonizing and therefore conducive to separation individuation he adopts a fable of rejection humiliation and victimization but it's not true it's a confabulation this confabulation is intended to buttress and magnify the twin messages of the bed object you're not good and therefore deserve no happiness and you're not lovable so in the aftermath of the betrayal and the cheating the narcissist feels so down so depressed because his bed object is tormenting him the bed object is infused with new power because remember the bed object is the original mother introject it hates the narcissist sadistic and now that it had merged now that it had been merged with the introject of the cheating or betraying intimate partner it is much more powerful it is much stronger it overpowers and overwhelms the narcissist indeed he becomes dysregulated very similar to borderline at that point the only solution or resolution is to start all over again with a new partner in order to internalize a good idealized object which will be able to somehow balance the bed object the rampant bed object to summarize the narcissist converts his intimate partner to a maternal figure he needs to separate from her because he has unfinished business with his original mother or his original mother did not allow him to separate individually he needs to do it with his intimate partner he pushes his intimate partner to betray him for example to cheat on him with another man he coerces her to do it even if she doesn't want to and he does this because betrayal and cheating cement the power of the separation having been betrayed having been cheated on the separation becomes strong irreversible and final the narcissist believes that now he can move on and individuate regrettably this doesn't happen for reasons that i mentioned in the video on Hooverie but one more important reason is that he has now in the aftermath in the wake of the betrayal in the wake of the cheating he has to merge the original mother interject the hateful sadistic interject the voice in his mind her voice in his mind with the interject of the betraying and cheating intimate partner this creates a much stronger bed object inside his mind and then he's driven to the point of suicidality he becomes suicidal he becomes borderline dysregulated he can't sleep at night can't eat he doesn't take care of his health he neglects himself he's super depressed any contemplate suicide repeatedly to emerge from this state the only solution is to effect another fantasy to emotionally invest in another fantasy remember the narcissist is never emotionally invested in any real life person the narcissist is incapable of perceiving external objects as external he creates immediately an internal object that represents the external object and he continues his interactions exclusively with the internal object with the snap shot so he needs now to find someone another person another spouse another life partner another intimate partner another girlfriend he needs to find someone which he can then convert into an internal object imbue her with maternal properties she's idealized she's a good mother in his mind and she's fighting off the bad mother for a while peace is restored restored and tranquility losses it is happy he love bombs love bombs his new newly found mother but then the cycle kick starts again and he has to separate from this maternal figure as well and it all recommences i recalled certain phrases and sentences that my intimate partners told me my girlfriends my wives they told me because i subjected all of them to this cycle successfully um the overwhelming vast majority of them ended up being with other men sometimes as fast as four days or six days i'm good at what i do they succumbed to the betrayal fantasy they fit it into it and they played their own to perfection but in the process and definitely in the aftermath when they woke up from this simulation from this dream state and they realized what they had done many of them became very ego dystonic even those who did not become ego dystonic realized that they had been played and manipulated into the role so they spoke to me as an example one of them told me i thought you were getting rid of me i thought you wanted me to sleep with another man another one told me i thought you hate me and you would be angry if i do not go to the other man you love pain and you will do anything to be in pain you push your woman to cheat to in order to be able to say that mommy again betrayed poor baby another one told me we agreed and you insisted that i try to have a baby with another man you love pain you push your women to cheat and then you're in pain and richard granon my fake friend told me everyone is your puppet because you want to prove to yourself that every woman will betray you and he's a whore like your mother so people around the narcissists do notice what he's doing they interpret most of his actions properly but they're helpless to resist resistance is futile why because they themselves are addicted to fantasy they have powerful fantasy defenses when they fit into the narcissist fantasy they become intoxicated with it and they kind of derealize and depersonalize they become dissociative they act the part on autopilot it's like they are in a dream state or some nightmarish landscape even if they believe themselves to be embedded in reality they are not the only thing they are grounded in is the narcissist betrayal fantasy unfolding inexorably as they play their parts zombie like this is a post script post script with wine of course so i forgot to mention in the original video that the narcissist self-harming the narcissist self-destructiveness self-mutilation they're all forms of emotional disinvestment or decafaxis in clinical terms the narcissist in order to separate needs first to separate emotionally but all that you say narcissists have no emotions yes it's not emotions in the in the layman in layman's terms the narcissists are emotionally invested they are affected in the fantasy in order to separate they need to decafect the fantasy they need to withdraw the emotional investment in the fantasy this is a process of emotional disinvestment by harming himself by causing himself pain by buttressing and reaffirming the signals and voices of the bed object the narcissist is able to detach emotionally from the fantasy and to embark on separation i recommend that you watch a video titled narcissists emotional involvement preventive measures on this channel that's it that's all i have to say now to much much more important things it's red wine not what you're thinking