How does a narcissist make you feel loved?

A narcissist is a person who has a narcissistic personality disorder, NPD for short. I’ve long been zeroing in on the suspicion that narcissism isn’t really a real thing, but a mismatch in expectations, nothing more. Still, a narcissist is a thing.

These are people are exceptionally charming, lovely people. They are self-centered and self-occupied, and their view of other people is that they exist to provide service or benefit to the narcissist. They are like small children, who are wonderfully cute, but who also are eternally selfish and looking out for their own interest in survival only. This may sound bad to you, but that simply means that you don’t have that need to nurture a profoundly selfish adult baby.

I don’t want you to get cynical or fearful as a result of reading this post. Charming, wonderful, child-like people exist, people who are cute to the bone and who have 0 narcissistic traits in them, and some them love you to your core, right? It’s just that I want to point out WHY and HOW does an absolutely fully narcissistic person manage to tug your heartstrings so that you’ll fall their pray helplessly, and how can you stop yourself from falling further than what you have to fall.

Why does a charismatic person want you with them?

When a charismatic person is interested in another person, they can be so for two different purposes: “I want to figure you out because I love you and I want to make you feel amazing around me, so you’ll stay with me”, and “I love myself and I want to figure out how to make you feel great about serving my needs.” A person in love with you wants to find a way to make it worthwhile for you to stick around just for their joy of you existing, but a narcissist wants to figure out how to make you into their servant.

Granted, a narcissist has true lovers, too. Some people LOVE the idea of serving someone’s needs, to be solely at the disposal of a “superior” person, whose “star power” leaks on them a little, too. The narcissist believes that their star power should be enough of a payment for the lesser people’s servitude and goodwill, and some people agree with it.

No drama here if the feelings are mutual and work both ways; the NPD gets all the worship and help they need in return for their light shining favorably onto their court, too, and the court is happy with that arrangement… BUT sometimes a court can get abusive of a person who DOES NOT want to have service personnel around themselves at their disposal but that’s beside the point.

The look in their eyes

It is charming to anyone to be the object of someone’s interest and true wish to figure you out. You’d have to be made of stone to be cold to this feeling of someone wanting to understand you and your needs. But when a person understands you, they can do this in order to use you (with an emotional payment), hurt you, or in order to make you feel good about yourself. Now, the key here is that you both want this interaction to lead to the same place, whatever it is.

• You may want sexual gratification from each other and to serve each other’s sexual needs.
• You may have romantic needs that you need met.
• You may have intellectual needs to serve.
• You may have professional goals that you can help each other with.
• You may feel they will elevate your social status by simply being seen with them.
• Your physical needs (food, shelter, safety, comfort, luxuries) will and can be met by this person.

With a True Emotion Mirror, ALL OF THE NEEDS YOU HAVE are mutually met. It’s a two-way street. With an NPD, only one or two of these needs are being met and returned by another need, (luxuries for sex for instance) but with a willing court, they are actually not hurting anyone there.

You have what they need… Is it mutual?

Now… Shy away from judging anyone too harshly, if I can find a way to not judge. HOWEVER, there is ONE THING that is ALWAYS a problem in a relationship, and that is needs and expectations that are in misalignment: You are getting “paid” in “a currency” you don’t accept or have no need for. For instance; you are being paid by an elevation in social status when you have no need for a social elevation, or you are being paid with actual money or physical goods for something you want to feel loved for, for instance.

Interest in another person means that they seem to have what it is that you need in order to be happy. Usually, this means good (enough) looks, status, character, or intellectual compatibility etc. Now, the question is, can you pay them in a currency they’ll accept?

You need to be blunt about your currency and your open positions.

Whenever you are negotiating a new relationship, you need to approach it with honesty and openness and assume as little as you can assume. Don’t EVEN assume that SEX is a part of “a sexual relationship”! This is because to some people, sexual abstinence is more sexual than the act itself. Some people feel that true love means that you have your dirty sex somewhere else, and to some, this is an absolute insult to your romantic partner.

Signs of trouble

If you got into a relationship with more assumptions than what was necessary, you’ll quickly find yourself arguing a lot. Both of you are trying to remind the other of “the obvious” expectations that the other isn’t meeting. You both ASSUMED you saw things the same way, and now, you realize that your needs are not being met.

You find that one or both of you are withdrawing the currency; the payment for what you expected to receive, because “your order” hasn’t been filled. For instance: you assumed by doing A you receive B.

My favorite celebrity drama as an example

Let’s just throw in my favorite Hollywood example.

Amber assumed that it was OBVIOUS that Johnny, as an aging actor, needed a nice-looking wife in his arm: social status elevation. HIS JOB was to provide her with an elevation in status, too, but also provide her with luxuries, security, safety, and an enviable position as his wife. (Girls don’t pay, right? Part of this was that Johnny would GET TO show off his wealth by adorning her with it.) Her job was to make him look good and to give people the impression he was still relevant as an actor.

HE assumed that she would provide him with love, companionship, charming company, emotional presence, and an intellectual counterpart. Obviously, he also assumed that she’d be sexually available to him, but that she may have assumed it was obviously not on the table as she was actually a lesbian. HE assumed he’d “pay” with the same currency of love, companionship, emotional presence etc., and in HIS mind, social elevation didn’t probably play a role in any of this, at all.

I do not think that money was Amber’s primary concern the way she saw it. When she insisted she was not a gold digger, she meant she was more than willing to do her part in the deal.

So, she’s still out there, willing to make some guy seem better than average by being allowed to call her his wife. In the meanwhile, she keeps looking for that romantic and emotional partner in a female friend, but she also needs the thrilling excitement of being someone’s untouched trophy wife, while he gets his sex somewhere else.

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