I feel beautiful when I'm at peace with myself. When I'm serene, when I'm a good person, when I've been considerate of others.
- Elle Macpherson
A relationship with a narcissist is lopsided. Their plans always have priority. In a conversation, their voice has priority. When you try to influence them, they put up massive walls. Unless it serves their interest, they say no.
Your lifelong mission is to cultivate relationships where the scale is even. It’s a skill which takes time to hone. If you’ve been in contact with narcissists most of your life, you might have lost sight of what balance looks like in a relationship. You might be the kind of person who always says yes, and then brushes it off when the other person keeps saying no to you. You might sit quietly, and listen empathically for hours, help the other person with their issues, but when you assert your opinions or problems, you’re met with a blank stare and a dismissive comment.
When you’re not conscious of it, the narcissist’s refusal to be vulnerable creates an emotional investment mismatch. Narcissists don’t believe in mirroring emotions. That would involve the true self. Their only way of relating is to have you mirror their false self. When two people normally connect, the person listening would raise their emotional intensity to that of their partner, hence achieving limbic resonance. When you are in ‘connection’ with a narcissist, you don’t get any emotional feedback, so you try harder to get your message across. Instead of investing their true self, the narcissist will dismiss the emotional content of your message. They will instead analyse your words and then speak about them from their point of view. Before you know it, the tide has turned, and you are left mirroring the narcissist.
The emotional investment mismatch can have damaging effects on the target. The target grows to think that emotional resonance is a scarce commodity and that if you want people to hear you, you need to force your way into the listener’s mind. If you live with narcissism for long enough, you develop a habit of expecting an emotional investment mismatch. When you are in an open exchange with others, you might end up raising the intensity of your emotions and not give them a chance to match and connect. You might speak at people like you would a narcissist and try to force the emotional content on them, hoping it gets through quickly before they can cut you off. The problem with having your emotional laser on full power, however, is that the other person does not have the space to connect and resonate with you.
Balanced connection can only occur when:
-The speaker spoon feeds the listener their intention, giving them time to mentally grasp the message and connect emotionally with the intention of the message.
-The listener can hold their thoughts and allow the speaker’s intention to impact their true self, giving ample space for the speaker to express themselves.
-The speaker allows space for the listener to chime in and ask questions to better help the listener grasp their intention.
-Both people are equally aware of the emotional resonance behind the conversation and can balance the intensity.
Keep in mind that emotional investment is not the same as speaking. A narcissist can talk for a long period of time without actually investing real vulnerability into the exchange. What they are effectively doing is using their false self as a smoke screen. Emotional investment is felt. For example, you could begin telling a story about your pet who recently died. The story is one thing, the expression of sadness behind the story is another. Also, the other person’s response is one thing, and whether they are empathising with your sadness is another. In an exchange, you can either leave feeling understood or be left feeling like you were never actually heard; even after the other person responded. It’s the emotion behind the exchange which matters.
If the person you are interacting with refuses to accept and match your level of emotional investment, even after you’ve given them the space to do so, or continually hijacks the conversation, then it’s best to end the interaction. Without equal mirroring, shame will arise.
The narcissist wants you invested. They have you stuck in a loop of trying, being disappointed and then trying again. Over time, this wears down your self-esteem and leaves you in a love-starved state. Empathising, listening and understanding are how we show love. Being on the receiving end of this recharges us. Like food or air, the true self needs this to thrive. The narcissist thrives on this too, but in a different way. Investing in them gives them an ego boost and feeds their narcissistic supply. It doesn’t matter if you’re empathising with them or you’re defending yourself over something they said; as long as you’re engaged, you are feeding them narcissistic supply. In their case, however, it can never be filled.
If you start losing interest in them, the narcissist will feed you morsels of fake love and charm to keep you on the hook. They will pretend to empathise and understand, to pull you back into believing that you can achieve balance. If that doesn’t work, they’ll create drama to obtain your engagement. They might randomly declare that you’ve been distant or preoccupied. They could subtly poke fun at you. Then the minute you react and re-engage emotionally, they resume sucking you dry for their narcissistic supply. That’s the trap.
Bringing emotional balance back to a relationship with a narcissist is pretty much impossible. Trying to find it there is like trying to find water in a desert. The way to bring emotional balance back to your life is by finding people who are capable of balanced emotional investment. By spending more time with such people, you eventually start to see the difference between narcissists and those with healthy shame and empathy. When it becomes clear to you, it’s like night and day. Spend long enough living in darkness, and it’s only normal you forget how daylight feels.
A narcissist will use humour as a way to control. They might laugh when saying something mundane, just to get you to laugh along. It’s a game of “When I say haha you say ha”. You could be mistaken for thinking it was a nervous tick because it happens so often and without any real cause. Being polite and aware of social norms, you laugh too, unconscious of the fact that you might not even think what the narcissist said was funny.
Narcissists also hide ridicule in humour. Because they say it in a playful way, and often in the presence of a group of people, you feel coerced into laughing along. When this is done long enough, you eventually start downplaying yourself and laughing at yourself in the presence of the narcissist. Over time, you can be conditioned to put yourself down and accept being put down by others.
The solution to this problem? Stop laughing. It’s not funny. You don’t have to laugh every time someone else does. You definitely do not have to laugh when you are the subject of ridicule. If you’re in a relationship where back and forth banter is the norm, then go for it. Banter can spice up a friendship. But doing it with a narcissist is pointless since they will turn it into a competition. If you are always the butt of the jokes, or you realise that behind the jokes the content is actually hurtful and making you feel small, then just refuse to laugh. By not laughing along, you take the power away from the narcissist.
When the target is always investing, then the narcissist won’t need to say much. It’s usually a waiting game, where if they leave enough space, the target will be inclined to fill it.
Many narcissists, however, use conversation as a form of control. They will usually begin by enquiring about your life, asking how you are doing or how work is going. Once you become engaged, they swiftly turn the focus back on themselves and keep it there. They then hit you with a barrage of words which trap you, stringing together a never-ending series of mental concepts which barely relate to you. A lot of words are spoken, but not much is said. You then feel trapped because you’re too polite to interrupt, as your frustration and despair continue to build.
Speaking to the narcissist makes you feel like you don’t even exist and leaves you feeling frustrated and used. Conversation should be a sparring session of back and forth sharing. The limelight should be shared and the interest mutual. The emotional investment should be equal on both sides. A good conversation can warm the heart and feed the soul. A conversation with a narcissist can leave your brain feeling as though it has been under siege by a machine gun that fires words. It’s empty and mentally exhausting. Such conversations should be cut short at all costs.