Narcissism Book of Quotes | Page 5

everything at their disposal."
"He is a very insecure (and jealous) man, but he is also a dreadful coward. The Ns usually are."
"If some man were to say to your daughter: 'Here's the deal, sweetie. For several months or so, I'm going to pretend to be everything you ever wanted. I'll shower you with attention, affection and all manner of stuff to make you feel special. Then, once I know you're depending on me as your significant other, and have made a commitment, I'm going to quit pretending and be who I really am. I'm going to start treating you really badly, I'll say insensitive things, I'll lie, I'll cheat, I'll be really cruel, possibly humiliate you in public. Hey, I might even beat you. Your job will be to figure out what happened and do everything in your power to restore the relationship to what it was, until you either die, try to kill yourself, or collapse and get sent to hospital, which will be pretty funny because there's no chance whatsoever I'll ever pretend to be that 'nice guy' again - and by the way, it WAS a pretence. So what do you say, sweetie? Do we have a deal? Several years of hell in exchange for a few months of fantasy?'
If your daughter whipped out the pen to ink the deal, you'd smack her and say, 'What are you, NUTS? This guy's a lunatic!!!' Right? But that IS the deal. That is the contract. If that contract wouldn't be nearly good enough for your daughter, why would it be good enough for you?"
"I went along with him once and he said: 'Hey I like the way you talk!!!' He actually praised me when I agreed with him that a person who causes an accident should be left on the highway to die and just drive on by. What a polished piece of work! I swear I met the devil."
"What I'm wondering right now is... in the beginning when he was treating me like a Queen, was there a hidden agenda there? Was it always in the back of his mind that he would soon unleash the hidden fury to hurt me? He acts like I am 'the one', the 'kindred friend' that he's never had before. Is this all a lie? I seem to be hanging on to the hope that it will be different for me. Am I fooling myself?" (cont'd.)
(cont'd. reply:) "Does he want to hurt you? Well, now, that would imply that he thinks of you as a human being - an N doesn't. What he wants is to secure supply. If he cannot do it by means of flattery, he will do it by means of cruelty. The goal is to get you to give him what he wants. He doesn't especially care which method he uses, so long as he finds one that works. I know that sounds cold. It is cold. That is the mind of a Narcissist. Cold and devoid of empathy. Because he lacks empathy, he probably doesn't know or care if he hurts you, unless he's using bullying as a technique for extracting NS from you. Even then, he couldn't care less what that does to you, apart from eliciting the desired response. If it makes him feel better about himself to belittle you, he will do that, but the ultimate goal isn't to make you feel bad, the goal is perpetuate the myth of his own perfection and simultaneously control you. If by hurting you it gets you in check, makes you take on his failings as your own, and make you work twice as hard for his approval, it's a bonus for him. If he doesn't need to employ cruelty in order to accomplish either of the above goals, he won't. It's that simple."
"Who would not assume s/he was so lucky to have met this wonderful, caring individual. Nothing wrong with that. It is when the cannon-ball of devaluation hits you that the horror of the situation begins to dawn, but you cannot work out why. Naturally, you assume (because you think within normal parameters) that your partner/spouse is ill, has encountered a serious problem (work, finances), is maybe physically ill. Because you have never heard of NPD you do not, indeed cannot, know about the idealization-devaluation process."
"The N I write about probably never did a thing, unless there was something in it for him. He simply did not bother. He started from a position of weakness, in that he had a huge inferiority complex, but the pretentiousness of his facade gave the impression of enormous self-confidence."
"My N also had very low self esteem. It was as if he had to constantly bolster himself up to me by references to past relationships, and present/future possibilities. He always