Written with my tongue firmly in my cheek… By an autistic human who wouldn’t accept ‘because love is like that sometimes’ as an answer to my grief over losing my ex. A guy who, on the whole, was a pretty troubled man. His struggles made ever harder by his inability to communicate them and a learned fear that to do so would lead to punishment.
But also a man who made me feel worthless and who I have seen grow and realise how you don’t have to do that to someone that you love. I firmly believe that the security I gave him, at great cost to myself, led to him finding a lot of personal understanding.
He’s a good man underneath. I also think that sadly this understanding didn’t really fit mine in many ways and he didn’t know how to communicate it. He loved being loved by me. He didn’t love ME. It came out in so many disrespectful ways. But in a mammoth attempt to keep me with him, he had ways of distracting me, avoiding things, outright lying to cover up his unavoidable disrespect.
Lonely, too, I’m sure. He seeks out love and attention in lots of places. He needs it. But that thirst is beautiful. When you lack motivation, it’s like a red rag to a bull. You can’t ignore it. That need to get up and be PART of life. That need to seek out dopamine pleasure. Well now who doesn’t like a dopamine ride? (Read into it that how ever heavily you like, the sentiment stands)
I learned a lot from my ex. How to check the weather. How to live in nature. How to take risks. How to feed sustainably. Lessons I didn’t learn growing up in city suburbs as a homeless middle class junkie with a warm bed to sleep on somewhere near at Tesco at all times.
Of course to him it was defined as ‘normal’ cooking, being able to fend for yourself if you are stuck (and he was often stuck). How to manage being outside everyday because you had no choice. Every series he watched involved survival out in the wild, it was clearly an anxiety he had himself. How to manage problems at the last minute because he took risks in every aspect of his life and taking risks often had complications.
He made me stupid whilst I was learning anything, though. That was horrible. But I was used to that. That’s how my parents parented. In some ways, very understanding, but in ways they didn’t understand they handled badly. 🎶When she was good she was very very good but when she was bad she was horrid 🎶 but if he hadn’t made me feel stupid, I might not have changed.
Narcissistic traits are necessary because people need motivating to better themselves. See, I remembered my point again 😉 People need motivating to get out of bed sometimes. And boy are narcissistic people motivating. They have you feeling like you’re not doing enough without you even noticing the manipulation. It’s perfect. We employ narcissistic humans every day. They sell us fine wine, train our best athletes, run large high schools. Wake us up in the morning? The difference is where we define purpose.
It’s a simple yet addictive formula for chaos and destruction. Yet we all know we need chaos and destruction to have peace. It’s all in how you manage it. But try googling ‘how to manage a narcissist’ and the first pages to do with relationships tell you to leave if you can.
I hope one day to provide some answers to that question because I do really believe narcissists are necessary. But I have just lost a good one because I reacted badly early on and fed easily into a picture my abuser created, trying to isolate me from his family to protect himself.
And we all are just trying to do that, aren’t we? Or does he deserve prison for the abuse he unwittingly unleashed on me by not communicating how he felt in a reasonable way. In that way, how many other men deserve support? They need to learn to deal or at least educate themselves on how their underlying issues will come out somewhere. How many other men don’t know how to communicate or even address feelings but also have sociopathic narcissistic tendancies born from a childhood of having to SURVIVE…? Where would people like that go for help? How do you encourage them to see it as a need for help rather than a need for survival?
As always I leave with more questions than I started with. This one has made my head ache and my heart heavy.
FaerieFalls 