Can Narcissists Love?

As having personality disorder not otherwise specified (mix of narc, schizoid and dissocial), I sort of have an affection for a person. To me, I'll do something for you if I get something out of it. This means, if I need to love you to get something from you, I'll do it. I view people in general as objects, so my love or hatred towards them is more like love/hate to an object. If I hate it, I'll throw it out or destroy it (not always, usually though) and if I love it, it's as someone said on here, it's like love for a new TV.

Yes, narcs are capable of love as we are said to love ourselves, deserve admiration, praise, etc... even if force is needed.

I'm not sure if this is purely due to the NPD or not, however, I know I can hate as I always, 24/7, feel irritated to some degree. If someone wrongs me, I give them the consequences and a "reminder" so they won't dare do it again.

I also know that I am very clingy, so if someone leaves me, I'll go after them to be with them again. It's not love for me, like two people who "click" (although it can be for the other person), it's more like people have a use. Once that usage is expired, it can either be thrown out or refubished and used once more.

A Silverchair lyric I always related to: "I love the way you love, but I hate the way I'm supposed to love you back."

To love is to be vulnerable. But then again, so is to need love. I just pretend I don't need it.

danyalexis122 wrote:
Personally, the only things that I know exist in reality are actions, not thoughts and emotions. Those thoughts and emotions only come to exist when they are articulated or acted out.

http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com ... utpear.jpg

This might be the most absurd question to launch a topic on mental health. The amount of people "diagnosing" a bad relationship after the fact is disheartening. There are people who take advantage of people, sad fact. You've done it, I've done it, it's a thing human beings as a species have in common. In the context of a relationship it's never an equal partnership, one side is always putting in more than the other, be it emotional, financial, material, hell, throw in spiritual if you like. When we find ourselves perpetually on the "wrong" end of that arrangement it's frustrating, no one likes to be "had". To leap to the conclusion that a person with NPD is an unfeeling monster may help you gain some kind of closure, but(at least in my experience as an "N") looks, and feels a bit too much like the same sort of demonizing everyone does after a relationship goes south. Most of the time the worst thing someone did was decide that it didn't work for them anymore...and we color it up with all sorts of fun and abrasive words to describe the other person in an effort to get over them. We all devalue the lovers we lose, or else losing them would be too much to bear. I had a marriage fail due to NPD, no, I didn't "abuse" her, I wasn't caustic or insulting, I wasn't taking advantage of some situation, and the reason I wanted her around, the "purpose" she served, was simply that I enjoyed her company and saw her as someone who could level with me emotionally and intellectually. My mother left my father when I was two years old, my stepfather was physically abusive, I was sexually abused(as a very young child) by a neighbor, my stepfather died while I was serving in the Armed Forces(which may seem like a big bonus after my childhood but you still love the people who raise you regardless) and all of these things made me caccoon, made me erect a shell around my thoughts and my feelings. I wanted to be the kind of person that didn't know about any of this, never experienced any of this, and so day by day I imitated people around me who I admired and practiced their mannerisms, learned their favorite jokes. Still to this day I watch people for pieces I'm missing. I wrapped myself up in this so long ago that in all likelihood I have the emotional resiliance of a 6 year old boy. Everytime I even peak out of my shell I get wrecked, absolutely positively wrecked. I haven't been able to leave my house or speak to my family and friends for a year now, and this is nearly 4 years after my divorce. I have one friend, my current wife. My wife is the physical expression of divinity to me, I worship her, I believe in her, I cannot imagine a place that exists without her. My lack of outward empathy (and since you people are intent of bashing "N"s you should know that NPD is an outward expression of inner frailty)is in no way a reflection of who I am sitting in here watching everything. To assume that I am incapable of love actually hurts me, and I don't even know you people from adam. So if you're wondering if someone with NPD can "Love" first you might ask yourself what criteria you wish to assign to love, or how to gauge the veracity of one persons love for another, or maybe you should ask if anyone can love.

I can admit that I have the ability to be very manipulative, very convincing, because I listen! I spend the better part of my time watching and listening to the people around me trying to get a connection. Trying to feel the same. I know that there's nothing fundamentally different or special about me, other than the way that I process my interactions with others. I've had this wiring in my head for more than two decades unfettered and uncontrolled because I never knew I had it, no therapy, no medication, no support groups. I couldn't even begin to guess at who I "really am inside". What I'm trying to express is that I am hardwired into this and I'm not some unfeeling caricature of a human being.

I would be lying if I said that I empathise with people who've been hurt by others who have a more destructive personality construct, I've been hurt to the point that deep down I'm angry with the world itself for being the way it is, thats the deal. It's not a lack of empathy per se as much as a feeling of "tough $#%^, guess what that's life, I deal with it, so can you" NPD doesn't make someone abusive, people become abusive through suffering abuse.

Imagine yourself as a tiny black tennis ball, now imagine that there is ten feet of empty space all around you, and outside of that is a wall made of caked earth that you know can't hold, but it looks good and sturdy from the outside. Now try to wrap your thoughts around the act of constantly patrolling, inside, looking for places where light peaks through, frantically searching for something to patch it with because you absolutely know that there are evil things outside that are always looking for a way in. You know that you can't handle them, you know that they're stronger than you, you know you will be hurt, every time your shell has cracked you've been hurt, you know you're not normal, you feel weak and powerless and the only thing that you can control is the perception that the people around you have of you. Living like this is panic, and disappointment, fear, sadness, and these are the things that fill up that empty space, slowly. You hold it in as long as you can but eventually you know you have to go outside, just to let everything out because there isn't enough air left in the shell. So out you go, and the people you've worked so hard, the people you've imitated, the people you admire, when they see this blackness, this seething discontent dripping out of what they thought was you they draw back because they're uncomfortable with the idea of feeling this way. They can't even bring themselves to try and understand what's happening, all they see is the shell cracked, you're a liar, you're a manipulator, you haven't been straight with them, and here you are at your most vulnerable and this is what you get. So you double up the shell on your way back in...over and over, for years. You don't even know who you are, you don't know what you like, you don't know what you want to do.

Unfeeling monster, caricature of evil, abusive, manipulative, grandiose, that really sounds like all of that eh? It's a tough break that some of you have had bad relationships, but was the guy just an ass, or did he sound like this might have been what was going on? Did he beg you to stay and tell you that leaving was good advice? Did he need you to return his love so much that he would alter anything about himself to please you? Could he be anyone you wanted? Someone with NPD doesn't just act like a prince for 3 months and then turn into a frog, it's permanent, systematic and predictable. If he needs you, he needs you, he'll be anyone you like, he'll listen and change his outward persona to more closely match what he believes is your ideal mate, because that's all he knows to do, he is a child who loves you and wants you to love him. That, is why we have "emotional outbursts" when things don't "go our way" All this nonsense about things getting worse over time and turning to physical abuse, maybe it's just my opinion but someone has to have that tendency to begin with before they go smacking people around.

Do I have violent thoughts? of course I do, my emotional contact with "the outside world" has been so patchy that I never fully developed and I have trouble containing my emotions. My thoughts range from the extreme edge of violence to the extreme edge of passion, to the extreme edge of sadness, but I haven't-

A: Shot anyone who wasn't wearing camoflauge
B: Killed Myself

However I have

Written love songs, made love for 12 straight hours, and created two beautiful children.

I find it difficult to work up the strength to defend myself when I'm assualted, and I'm 6'2 and weigh 245lbs!

The short answer, at least in my case, is yes, I have NPD and I can love, completely, with every part of myself. While that may not be a lot at least I know it's 100% of what I have, and I, for one, would rather be loved by a very "small" person completely, than be loved by a normal person half assed!

As a side note to some(but not all)posters above- get over it and stop looking for boogeymen behind every failed relationship. God forbid he may just have been a bad person, and not an "N", and god forbid you have bad taste in mates, and what if, just what if, your attempt to devalue your ex is just a screen to mask your own longing to have them back out of some masochistic or co-dependant urge in your own personality? Im sick and tired of reading posts like this.

A person with NPD is someone who suffered some event that made them break with who they were and completely invent a person around them, it requires constant maintenance and cannot fail or the "N" is screwed. I wouldn't say you should feel bad about what happened to them, it's a way of dealing with something, it's my way of dealing with something, but if you insist on putting up sappy posts about love and empathy and compassion, then show a little, or don't...your "N" won't ever show you whether or not he cares, you've already proven poisonous...untrustworthy, hurtful, he's doubting his judgement, hell, in some circles you might consider that one in the "W" column, you beat him at his own game.

^ I loved that. Thank you. Felt like you reached into my soul. Totally made my morning.

One thing though - made love for 12 hours? Please tell me that wasn't 12 hours of sex.... because... ouch! Haha (I kid, I'm presuming it was general "love making")

Yeah, that was a lot to get out. I've just seen post after post bashing people with a mental disorder and it was irritating me. If people were spitting this vitriol out about someone with depression, or schizophrenia they would get lynch mobbed by the love and compassion crew, but because it's a disorder that often expresses itself explosively in relationships people feel that they can say these things and remain morally congruent. Replace the abbreviated "N" in these posts with the word Jew, or Arab, or Man. All you would have are racist/sexist insults and blanket statements about people who obviously don't "choose" to be the way they are.

Then theres some nutjob writing about his experiences playing up to the stereotype of every middle aged woman's "evil ex husband" and telling them it's not their fault (which it most likely isn't), not because he has some profound wisdom but because he is SELLING BOOKS that give people closure and something to blame for their misfortune.

When it comes right down to it we live in a time where things can simply be "diagnosed away" and it's not uncommon for everyone and their brother to be an armchair psychologist. I married a mental health specialist who was so enthralled by the idea of being with someone with NPD that it became a huge disappointment to her when she couldn't get a rise out of me, when I wasn't as manipulative(in a destructive way) as she had imagined. I'm not diagnosing her post-relationship because I have no clue, I don't have the credentials, I simply know that her walk on the wilder side of things didn't go as planned and that, in combination with other things caused us to grow distant.

NPD is not "the disorder that makes people evil mental supervillians". It's a disorder that is seated in a deep self loathing and discontent. It's a disorder that forces the sufferer to calculate their relationships and actions in an effort to avoid being hurt. It's a zero-sum game of psychological warfare with the entire outside world in which the only goal is to keep your head above water. The blanket of internet anonymity lets me get all of this out when in person I couldn't bear to break the persona I've created for myself.

I'm ready for the inevitable flood of "he's being manipulative" comments. I also know that anyone who "needs" their ex to be an "N" will simply ignore what I've said, and I bet I'll even get a few "You don't have NPD" remarks. See, here I am, calculating, pulling on passed experiences listening to people and gauging what their reactions will be from a snap judgement of them. The extent of my evil powers sadly.

The short and sweet: no one is beyond being manipulated, not even an "N", con artists have exploited that simple facet of human psychology since time immemorial. That being said the easiest way to make sure that you do get manipulated, is to feel like a victim. If you feel and act like a victim, you look and smell like a victim, and predators love victims.

:the lovemaking comment: lol, I've felt inferior as a lover to my old self ever since that night. I had been deployed for a little over a year and so I was pretty wound up. I ended up marrying the girl. No, it wasn't "lovemaking" that is just the only decent word that I felt comfortable posting not knowing the readers of this site personally.

stop looking for boogeymen behind every failed relationship. God forbid he may just have been a bad person, and not an "N", and god forbid you have bad taste in mates, and what if, just what if, your attempt to devalue your ex is just a screen to mask your own longing to have them back out of some masochistic or co-dependant urge in your own personality?

the easiest way to make sure that you do get manipulated, is to feel like a victim. If you feel and act like a victim, you look and smell like a victim, and predators love victims

I find truth in these statements. I'm glad someone (other than me) said them.

i dont think khemical has NPD

I have come to the understanding that the phenomenon referred to as love requires a very deep soul(s or one deciever and one believer) to experience

I have never loved, but in my research on the subject I've come to understand it can be something like this;

One recogizes his/herself as a product of the natural world, and thus a connected, inseperable part of the world/universe/etc.
Another person, is observed, interacted with, understood. As the bond grows, we can realize a state of oneness with a partner- "This person is connected to me in a much deeper sense, we are born from the natural world, and though our experiences are subjectively, we are the same, we are one"
I suppose you would observe in the other, a reflection of the world and life that I could never understand, a deep experience I can't comprehend.

Deeply narcissist people, I believe, would share my incapacity for a full and true experience of my understanding of love. However, also like me, some are very talented purveyors of charade. The truth is, we can never know. We can never know if one person's testimony is truth or lie, when the person is a master of (self) deception, it is even more blurred.

Most narcissists seem to have the capacity to form dependent relationships that, when shattered, can trigger real pain, real guilt, and real regret. But with my romantic definition of love as a barometer, I'd say it is very unlikely for an NPD to really love- although they can do great job pretending they do. (it's fun!)

There is ample evidence to support what you have put forward, and I'd have to say I agree with it.....but,

'Cept, in one place....about narcs being more honest with themselves.....not sure about that, I reckon that's quite questionable.