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The seductive allure reels you in; the insidious thorns tear you apart

By ARLEN KEITH LEIGHT, PH.D.

It’s a whirlwind romance. You meet the man of your dreams and he sweeps you off your feet with his charm, charisma and allure. He shows you effusive affection and makes you feel as though you are the most wonderful man he has ever met. He lets you in on all his secrets. You hear about his past loves (and there are many), but somehow this one with you is different. He appears to open his heart and soul to you, and you begin to do the same. The connection is so strong you are convinced quickly and completely that this is your soul mate. You can hardly believe this can be real and, unfortunately, you learn in time it truly is not.

Then it happens. You are in love and he knows it. He starts to withdraw. He becomes distant and you wonder what you did wrong. You may find yourself withdrawing a bit yourself only to see that he comes around a bit. As soon as you begin to make yourself available again, he seems distant again. You approach him about this change in the “connection” and he seems to blame it on you.

But he’s not ready to let go of you quite yet. He sets up new boundaries to suit his needs and keep you at a distance. You get clues that he is dating someone else – he leaves a guy’s phone number somewhere so you’re bound to see it. He subtly puts you down and goes away for several days without calling you. He may tell you he wants to continue to see you while he dates others. You may even find him in bed with another man the day after you had the most romantic evening in your life with him.

This is the life of a narcissist, and you happened to get caught up in it. The narcissist is seemingly the most wonderful of men. No one has ever been this nice to you, and you simply cannot imagine that the love of your life could have some sort of personality disorder, and it is this very fact that makes him so dangerous. He’d do anything for you. He’s generous, caring, open, loving and full of life. Well, sorry to say, he is all of these things because more than anything else he needs to have others love him.

There is a huge void in the personality structure of the narcissist that results from early childhood wounds. Parents who were more concerned about their own needs than their child’s needs create a world in which the child has to figure out a way to get love and attention and have their needs met.

The adult narcissist has had a lifetime to consciously and unconsciously figure out how to lure others to give him the love he never received from his parents. Once he receives love in return it feels frightening, because true intimacy is unfamiliar and uncomfortable. The only love the adult narcissist understands is the one that is unavailable.

The biggest fear for the narcissist is abandonment. If the narcissist has fallen in love with the unavailable man of his dreams, and this man leaves him, the rage and/or depression will be unbearable. Even after the most devastating of rejections, he is quickly back to his charismatic self. And if your whirlwind romance ends, don’t be surprised to find him with his arms around another man within days, if not hours. You may have been replaced even before you were out of the picture. The sad truth is that men who fall in love with narcissists do so because they have some of these narcissistic tendencies themselves. And, let’s face it, because the narcissist is unavailable, aren’t we simply finding ourselves loving the unavailable – a person with whom we cannot share true intimacy? If this is your pattern, it may be something you want to look at with a trained professional.