NARCISSISTIC INJURY
Apparently, by not taking his "possession" into my heart, I have injured him greatly. And he won't let go of this "injury"...he will stalk me until his dying day to "repair" it. That might be a bit dramatic, as he turned the tables around and proclaimed that he never abused me at all, that I'm making it up, and he won't have anything to do with me or my daughter. So, I don't think he'll be communicating anytime soon, if ever. However, this blog stalking surprised me, and I am sure that will continue. Fine, dad, C., anyone else, YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! (as one Navy JAG once said....)
Anyway, I had tried to repair our relationship a few months ago, believing that my daughter should have a maternal grandfather. The first phone call was fine. He sounded older, much more like his father than I'd ever heard before, still depressed, still having the same problems, still wanting to know all about my life, but I could manage that. It was good to hear his voice after so long. What I couldn't handle was the second phone call, when, at the end, he asked when I was going to talk to his wife again.
I was enraged--did he learn nothing in this decade of silence??? Did he never hear a single word I said, ever??? He never had heard me before, when I explained why this "acceptance" issue was so difficult for me (understandably, I think, because my parents had just gotten divorced!!!) and continued to shove this "need" down my throat for years. You know the story now.
I was simply shocked. I had told him I wanted to work on our relationship first, and then I would see if I could have a relationship with his wife. I told him I needed to take it slowly. He seemed like he understood, but he actually didn't HEAR me in the first place. And it felt as though he was patiently asking all the questions about me and feigning interest in my responses, to butter me up, for the REAL issue...when would I talk to his wife. His "relationship" building with me was all about getting me to accept her. To repair his narcissistic injury.
So, in a normal (read "non-dysfunctional" family), this issue wouldn't have been a big deal. But in mine, it was all about control. My father wanted to control an intimate part of me: my relationships. MY relationships. Dictate who I can love and who I cannot. And punish when I don't have relations with who HE wants. I am a free human; I was born to love, but not to be dictated to about who or how to love. Loving and relationships, compassion and sensitivity are WHO I AM. I needed the space to grow into myself, and my father could never get that. I needed AUTONOMY to decide how to structure my life and who should be in it. It is MY choice who to include in my life and how, not my father's. All this time, I believed my father had the RIGHT to control these things. Now, I am experiencing FREEDOM of CHOICE for the first time.
I chose to not want to engage with this woman yet. Who knows, given time, I might have been able to develop some sort of relationship. But he refused to allow me the opportunity and time to formulate a relationship for myself, and so desperately needs me to repair this "injury" that I pushed him right back out of my life again. And then he decided to make it sound like he was the one who chose to disown me. Wow.
Narcissists suck.
I LOVE this blog post on defining narcissistic injury. Quite brutal and vivid.
Narcissistic injuries have nothing to do with sadness. They are always and only about rage.
The narcissist says, "I exist." A narcissistic injury is you showing him that he does not exist in your life. Kicking him in the teeth and telling him he is a jerk is not a narcisstic injury-- because he must therefore exist.
Let's say I'm a narcissist, and you send me a 10 page letter explaining why I suck, I'm a jerk, I'm an idiot; you attack my credibility, my intelligence; and you even provide evidence for all of this, college transcripts, records from the Peters Institute, you criticize my penis size, using affidavits from past and future girlfriends-- all of this hurts me, but it is not a narcissistic injury.
A narcissistic injury would be this: I expect you to write such a letter, and you don't bother.
The reason it's important is because the reaction of the narcissist to either "insult" is different. In the first example, he will be sad and hurt, but he will yell back, insult you, or cry and beg forgiveness or mercy--he will respond-- maintain the relationship. He'll say and do outrageous things that he knows will cause you to respond again, to prolong your connections, even if they cause him misery. He doesn't care that it makes you and him miserable-- he cares only that there is a you and him.
But in the latter case where you ignore him, humiliate him-- an actual narcissisitic injury-- he will want to kill you.
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