In the early stages of a relationship does an N immediately devalue that person? Is it at all possible not to be devalued? Do they do this because of your actions or is it totally under their control and part of the delusion?
Once devalued is there any going back?
Can someone better define devaluation?
Thoughts?
Mine attempted to devalue me once in the early stages of the relationship. She was lying to me and being unfaithful and I brought it up nicely and politely, and she went into I tirade about how I was horrible and how everybody thinks she’s a slut. I interuppted her and countered, and it did actually reverse the whole devalueing thing. I told her I was a nice guy and didn’t deserve that and said she shouldnt start her games with me, and she stopped in mid sentanced and did a reversal. My response did play a part in it, and I don’t think she had any control over it. She may have really believed what she was saying.
Over time though, it was something niether of us could control. It got worse and worse. Believe me, I tried every way to comminicate with her… angrily, calmy, compassionately, firm, or understanding… there was no way to avoid it. Her disorder was determined to find a way to discredit me. There were many times though if I could figure out what was actually the thing that wounded her that made her act that way, I could bring it in the open and even resolve it. It wouldn’t be long before something else came along and I’d have to go through it again.
IMO, any action I did was at risk of a devaluing attack, and it was never under her control but part of her delusional processes. Thats just my ex though… others can be different. I think with enough compassion and unconditional love you can combat it, but unconditional love is supposed to be for children.
Wastedyouth,
Your paragraph below caught my attention:
“IMO, any action I did was at risk of a devaluing attack, and it was never under her control but part of her delusional processes. Thats just my ex though… others can be different. I think with enough compassion and unconditional love you can combat it, but unconditional love is supposed to be for children.”
I think that maybe why most of us are here - we showed compassion and unconditional love for much longer than most would. We give this only to have it crushed, stepped on and buried. But remember the ability to love someone unconditionally is true love and at least we have the promise of finding someone that can do the same one day and the N willnot.
Thats a great way to look at it =) Unconditional love is a very unselfish act and I don’t regret being that even though it didn’t work. I can be proud of myself even if I can’t be proud of my ex.
I can garuntee anybody, there are people out there who will appreciate it and not take advantage of it… and even return it. It is hard to find though =/
DEVALUE:
my talents are unimportant
my kids are unimportant
what I say is unimportant
what I do is unimportant
how I feel is unimportant
my opinion is disregarded
my ability to clean IS important and always utilized
my person-hood is unimportant
my friends are unimportant
my taste is beneath and unimportant
their person-hood IS important
their value system CHANGES daily
their whims change daily
you have to translate and interpret their needs on a minute to minute
basis
And if you get it wrong, they tell you about it
Your view on religion and politics ALWAYS ARE IGNORED because they
know ALL
Their friends are always better
what they think is cool and politically correct IS THE WAY
traditions are way uncool and mundane
only if you do something out of the ordinary that gets acclaim–that
is the only thing that they reward–
and usually the reward is not to your face.
LOSE LOSE situation…devalue
Bup,
I like your description. I’ve always heard people say, however, that Ns go through a D&D stage. If your description is of devaluing, then her stage started the day I met her and ended the day she left.
Maybe the stage is when theyjust stop hiding it and making it obvious?
Bup - I think the devaluation aspect of this disorder was the most disturbing and confusing to me. I’d never had anyone put me on so high a pedestal before - nor so quickly. I was his reason for being, he couldn’t be complimentary enough, he couldn’t get married quickly enough etc. etc. I was the one he’d waited his whole life for - all he wanted was to be with me forever - he couldn’t stand to part. THEN, ONE disagreement - ONE argument - ONE misunderstanding - and I was suddenly not the “person I want having my back”. He couldn’t love me if I wasn’t perfect. Plain and simple! I love unconditionally and told him as much - he looked at me like I had 3 eyes - it’s not a concept he could understand. I simply couldn’t wrap my brain around someone loving me so hard and then throwing me away without so much as a second thought when I revealed a “flaw”. THAT was the ultimate hurt for me.
Question:
What is the mechanism behind the cycles of over-valuation (idealization) and devaluation in the narcissist’s life?
Answer:
Continue to read this article here (click on this link):
http://samvak.tripod.com/devaluationidealization.html
Narcissists are afraid of intimacy and commitment.
Click on these links are read the articles:
It is an established fact that abuse - verbal, psychological, emotional, physical, and sexual - co-occurs with intimacy. Most reported offenses are between intimate partners and between parents and children. This defies common sense. Emotionally, it should be easier to batter, molest, assault,
or humiliate a total stranger. It’s as if intimacy CAUSES abuse, incubates and nurtures it.
Continue to read this article here (click on this link):
http://samvak.tripod.com/intimacyabuse.html
Intimacy Retarding Paranoia
Paranoia is use by the narcissist to ward off or reverse intimacy. The narcissist is threatened by intimacy because it reduces him to ordinariness by exposing his weaknesses and shortcomings and by causing him to act “normally”. The narcissist also dreads the encounter with his deep buried emotions - hurt, envy, anger, aggression - likely to be foisted on him in an intimate relationship.
The paranoid narrative legitimizes intimacy repelling behaviours such as keeping one’s distance, secrecy, aloofness, reclusion, aggression, intrusion on privacy, lying, desultoriness, itinerancy, unpredictability, and idiosyncratic or eccentric reactions. Gradually, the narcissist succeeds to
alienate and wear down all his friends, colleagues, well-wishers, and mates.
Continue to read this article here (click on this link):
http://samvak.tripod.com/journal60.html
The narcissist does his damnedest to avoid intimacy. He constantly lies about every aspect of his life: his self, his history, his vocations and avocations, and his emotions. This false data guarantee his informative lead, asymmetry, or “advantage” in his relationships. It fosters disintimisation. It casts a pall of cover up, separateness, mystery over the narcissist’s affairs.
Continue to read this article here (click on this link):
http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissismintimacy.html
The narcissist divides all women to saints and whores. He finds it difficult to have sex (“dirty”, “forbidden”, “punishable”, “degrading”) with feminine significant others (spouse, intimate girlfriend). To him, sex and intimacy are mutually exclusive rather than mutually expressive propositions.
Continue to read this article here (click on this link):
http://samvak.tripod.com/faq79.html
People with Personality Disorders (PDs) are very afraid of real, mature, intimacy. Intimacy is formed not only within a couple, but also in a workplace, in a neighborhood, with friends, while collaborating on a project. Intimacy is another word for emotional involvement, which is the
result of interactions with others in constant and predictable (safe) propinquity.
Continue to read this article here (click on this link):
http://samvak.tripod.com/faq69.html
Narcissists have no interest in emotional or even intellectual stimulation by significant others. Such feedback is perceived as a threat. Significant others in the narcissist’s life have very clear roles: the accumulation and dispensation of past Primary Narcissistic Supply in order to regulate
current Narcissistic Supply. Nothing less but definitely nothing more. Proximity and intimacy breed contempt. A process of devaluation is in full operation throughout the life of the relationship.
Continue to read this article here (click on this link):
http://samvak.tripod.com/faq80.html
Inevitably, the sexuality of patients with personality disorders is thwarted and stunted. In the Paranoid Personality Disorder, sex is depersonalized and the sexual partner is dehumanized. The paranoid is besieged by persecutory delusions and equates intimacy with life-threatening vulnerability, a “breach in the defenses” as it were. the paranoid uses sex to reassure
himself that he is still in control and to quell is anxiety.
Continue to read this article here (click on this link):
http://samvak.tripod.com/personalitydisorders47.html
http://samvak.tripod.master.com/texis/master/search/?q=approach-avoidance
Thus, paradoxically, the worst his anguish and unhappiness, the more relieved and elated such an abuser feels! He is “liberated” and “unshackled” by his own self-initiated abandonment, he insists. He never really wanted this commitment, he tells any willing (or buttonholed) listener - and
anyhow, the relationship was doomed from the beginning by the egregious excesses and exploits of his wife (or partner or friend or boss).
Continue to read this article here (click on this link):
http://samvak.tripod.com/abuse14.html
Thus, on the one hand, the narcissist feels that his freedom depends upon re-enacting these early experiences. On the other hand, he is terrified by this prospect. Realizing that he is doomed to go through the same traumas over and over again, the narcissist distances himself by using his
aggression to alienate, to humiliate and in general, to be emotionally absent.
This behavior brings about the very consequence that the narcissist so fears - abandonment. But, this way, at least, the narcissist is able to tell himself (and others) that HE was the one who fostered the separation, that it was fully his choice and that he was not surprised. The truth is that,
governed by his internal demons, the narcissist has no real choice. The dismal future of his relationships is preordained.
Continue to read this article here (click on this link):
http://samvak.tripod.com/faq4.html
In his quest to find new sources, he again embarks on ego-mending bouts of sex, followed by the selection of a spouse or a mate (a Secondary Narcissistic Supply Source). Then the cycle re-commence: a sharp drop in sexual activity, emotional absence and cruel detachment leading to
abandonment.
Continue to read this article here (click on this link):