Question to nons - are victims really victims?

Okay, this is probably going to be a controversial topic, but let it. That will just make this fun.

Well, everywhere I go, I see that the boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses, friends of narcissistic people are referred to as victims of abuse. But how can they be victims? They always have the option of just rejecting that person, cutting them off, dropping communication. It's they choice to keep dating or hanging out with that person, because apparently the narc provides some kind of value in their life that they're not willing to give up.
So, these people choose to stay with the narc... but they are victims. How does that work? These people are choosing to remain near the source of their suffering, and are completely free to make the choice to remove themselves from it. I get that it's a hard choice - attraction and habit are strong factors, but attraction and habit are feelings, not compulsions, they don't control people.

The only situations where a victim is an actual victim are where various actual tools of coercion are used. Force, threat of force, blackmail and the like - yeah, that would make the non a victim. Children and elderly people who can't separate themselves from an abusive narc are also victims, I would say. Generally, though, narcs' victims are not victims at all. They choose to be with the narc out of their own free will.

And if that is so, why so much flak for narcs and so much love for the "victims"?

A lot of them are dependent personalities. So they have their own psychological problems. Codependents are holier than Counter Dependents. The anti Narc community on the Internet are adherents of this philosophy. But there are also the practical realities of life to consider. Many (women especially) are trapped in abusive relationships because they have no independent means of support or simply through fear of the consequences of leaving a possessive partner.

MeAgain

I believe that there's still an element of choice there. Dependent people still choose who they will be dependent on, they are still selective.

Many (women especially) are trapped in abusive relationships because they have no independent means of support or simply through fear of the consequences of leaving a possessive partner.

Well, like I said, I draw the line of my argument at actual physical dependence or threats of force., so yes, I agree with.

VV ~ are we really free to choose our partners in life or are our options predetermined for us in our childhoods?

I think we're free to choose.

VV, you seem to be ignoring the fact that many pwNPD in referenced relationships employ massive manipulation techniques and don their more kind, guilt mask following the abusive episodes sometimes to the point of contrition. Through research, my assumption is this tactic is used to keep / maintain the supply if said supply is valuable or of service in some way. Regardless the reason, the behavior is still deception.

Nons have an emotional - not purely mental - connection to people; from this emotional connection, we do not easily 'give up on" or "discard" people because at the core, in my opinion and experience, we know we are not perfect and would not want others to "give up on" or "discard" us for our faults and flaws, especially if we are self-aware of the faults.

Through this connection to other humans at an emotional and soul level, we have also lived a life of reciprocity, of collaboration, of working together through life's challenges for growth and improvement, which is an approach to life seemingly foreign to or, at minimum, greatly diminished with a pwNPD. Many "nons" have absolutely no awareness people exist without these same emotions or human emotional connections. Many I've encountered - and I was once one - believe such conditions to only exist in psychopaths and criminals as portrayed in the media and entertainment industry.

So, first occurrence of the abuse-contrition dance, one typically forgives, overlooks and rationalizes, e.g. bad day, etc. Second occurrence, we work on the dynamics and situation together (we tell ourselves...we share mutual love, which means we both want to make "it" work); though, the victim might begin detaching for emotional and mental health safety in response to the red flags. Third occurrence, the victim leaves.

Then there are those, of course, who have weaker boundaries and are challenged with their own personality issues who stay and are complicit in allowing abuse (emotional, psychological, verbal, physical) to continue. And, of course, there are those who have stronger boundaries and leave at the first occurrence.

Further add to the mix the "intermittent reinforcement" of Jekyll and Hyde personalities of pwNPD and other Cluster B disorders - which eventually show on more levels than the pwNPD realize or would want to admit - and the pwNPD has created a state of confusion and cognitive dissonance: who is this person...really? In this case, many nons remain in an effort to either 1. figure out this incongruent behavior with more behavioral examples or 2. want to try to fix the incongruence (because certainly everyone desires to be good / better, right? People don't want to remain bad, right?) or 3. a combination of the two, which are each futile and harmful.

However, in any of these dynamics, abuse is abuse whether one remains in the environment / relationship or not. Stealing from my home is stealing from my home whether I leave my doors unlocked or not. Your statement that victims are only victims where actual tools of "coercion...Force, threat of force, blackmail and the like" are used is glaringly inaccurate as the demonstrated in the following example.

When a pwNPD falsely presents as a loving, caring, emotional person who is authentically interested in and desires a relationship with a person as a person in the "idealization phase" and later reveals through words or actions that s/he has none of, or an extremely diminished capacity for, these traits and only desires a "relationship" for her/his self gain or as an object to provide a self-serving source of supply to feed his/her ego or prop up a false identity, it's fraud. Regardless of what happens in the "relationship", that aspect is still fraudulent.

As a non, because I trusted a pwNPD to be who they presented in action for four (insert number) months (because I believed the skilled deception), does not make me a willing, informed party. I have, indeed, been victimized. Disclosure at the beginning of the relationship would change the situation because at the point of disclosure, I am an informed party making informed decisions just as in the third occurrence of abuse: it's a pattern; this is who this person is; this is how s/he will treat me; and the behavior is unacceptable in my life.

Though, in both cases of non-disclosure, the pwNPD or other personality disorder engaging in same / similar behavior does not have enough courage or honor for honesty because her/his needs and self gain are more important than the well being of another person.

Is that victimization? Yes.

You seem to be grasping to make yourself feel better about dishonest, manipulative, deceitful or other bad behavior with and toward others.

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As far as I know only one of my "victims" knew I was a narcissist, so they knew what they were getting into. Should've known better. Everyone thinks it won't happen to them, cause they're special.

Everyone else just thought I was a caring and lovely person, because I can keep that facade up for a few months or so to get what I want or until I get bored. So if we're arguing moral principles, part of the responsibility for the damage is probably mine for not informing them and the rest is theirs for being blinded by emotional obsession.

VasVlad wrote:The only situations where a victim is an actual victim are where various actual tools of coercion are used. Force, threat of force, blackmail and the like - yeah, that would make the non a victim. Children and elderly people who can't separate themselves from an abusive narc are also victims, I would say.

There you go, the description of narcs: use of threats and coercion. First, play the good person. Secund, once you have built dependency, you can show your real side, but not so clearly: also pretend that you are helping someone as you are destroying them. Otherwise, just show them clearly who's the boss: you might get stuck in another country with no visa if you don't obey, for example.

So that's why "victims" of narcs are often in a hierarchically lower position that they can't get away from. They are more often the employye than the Boss, more often the spouse that does not work than the one who does. In a couple, the guy might want to wait until the latest stage of the woman's pregnancy to show his real side.

As you see, People who have the choice leave the narc in the end, and that's what you read here: People who have managed to leve, because that's what people do when a narc has not managed to create a dependency situation that is strong enough.

sanny, the behaviour you describe isn't pre-planned and deliberate, it's automatic.

cargo wrote:sanny, the behaviour you describe isn't pre-planned and deliberate, it's automatic.

Sorry if I came across as judgemental or moralistic, that was really not my intention. I was just trying to describe situations, it was not my aim to portray narcissistic people as bad people, or imply that they do these things on purpose. I was just trying to show why victims are called "victims", why it is true that they can't always influence their own situation and in which way the means employed by narcissistic people can be seen as blackmail or coercion. I know that some narcissistic people might not even be aware that they are doing that, which was the situation I was in previously. What was done to me was partly intentional and partly non-intentional, partly planned and partly impulsive. This was done by someone I depended on, who viewed himself as someone with higher morals than others and who could not believe that his own behaviour could have negative consequences on anybody, no matter how many rules he broke.