Does Love Erode in a Relationship with Narcissist?

by A.J. Mahari

Does love erode in a relationship with a narcissist? Does it just erode, implode or explode, does it simply self-destruct? What happens to love in these relationships? Why are these relationships so painful for those who are not personality-disordered?

What are you supposed to do with the various forms of wreckage left in the wake of the rupture of so-called love - the love you thought you shared with someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and/or Borderline Personality Disorder?

It is important to admit that the narcissist isn't capable of healthy adult love. It is important to admit and accept that the narcissist can only experience the world from a frame of reference that is self-absorbed. Relating or trying to love someone else from the vortex of emptiness inside that is so painful to the narcissist that it is constantly being overcompensated for is not ever a dynamic that can house healthy love.

Has your partner with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) drained you? Do you feel exhausted? Do you feel like you are banging your head against a wall? Maybe you feel invisible? Yet, isn't also so compelling for some reason to want to continue to try to reach into that vortex of emptiness to see if you can really find the real him or her?

If you have fallen in love with someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, for all intents and purposes, you have fallen in love with someone who has a false sense of self entitlement, who is arrogant, who has a strong need to be right, who needs too much attention, who can't soothe him or herself and who needs your devotion, admiration and attention to soothe him or her. If you have fallen in love with a narcissist it doesn't even matter how much attention you do give to him or her, it won't be enough. It can be enough. It can't ever be enough.

There is a hole in the narcissist so large way down deep that is in many ways a bottomless pit. As the narcissist takes from others to try to soothe him or herself and to try to put some good feelings into that abyss inside - that cavernous woundedness inside - those who love the narcissist really end up only being representations of what the narcissist wants or needs. Simply put to love a narcissist is to become an addendum to his or her narcissistic supply - is to be a feeder for his or her every need or whim in ways that aren't healthy and can't ever really be helpful anyway.

If you've fallen in love with a narcissist what you are supposed to do, more to the point, what you need to do for yourself, is understand what that actually means. Understand that narcissism in its most extreme forms means that one is not capable of healthy adult love. That means that you are loving someone who just can't love you back.

It's like putting money into a bank account that doesn't give you any interest and in a bank that doesn't even keep the funds you deposit in the account.

In answer to the question as to whether love erodes or implodes in a relationship with a narcissist, person with NPD or BPD or person with a lot of narcissistic traits, the answer is no. Why? Simply because the love that you had hoped for was never really there in the first place.

Part of the by-product of those who have narcissistic traits or NPD or BPD, or both, is that they can often be quite charming. They can pursue and woo in ways that seem to be so loving. However, the narcissist only gives to get. It's somewhat calculated whether the narcissist realizes it or not.

Giving to get means of course that they aren't really giving at all. While a narcissist charms you and lures you into this romantic illusion of love he or she is really taking whatever they can get from you to feed an ego that is so damaged it is often all that drives the narcissist.

Love doesn't really erode or just implode with someone with narcissistic traits, NPD, BPD, or both, love - healthy love - truly does not exist in the company of narcissism.

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