When things are calm, this is their intense fear of engulfment. This is perhaps the most confusing part for you as a victim, as it happens when things are going well. You may have noticed that every time you had a great weekend, a romantic date, or a moment of true closeness, a fight would break out immediately after. This is because, for a narcissist, safety equals danger.
We generally believe that a relationship should be a safe harbor. We want peace, routine, and to know our partner is there for us. But a narcissist hates peace. To them, peace feels like boredom, and boredom feels like death. Moreover, intimacy feels like engulfment. Imagine you are a scuba diver. If someone holds you too tightly, you feel like you are going to drown. This is how a narcissist feels about emotional intimacy because they have a fragile, fractured sense of self. They believe that if they get too close to you, they will be swallowed up; they will lose their identity and become just an extension of you.
So when the relationship becomes stable, they start to panic. They feel the walls closing in on them. The pressure to be connected to you becomes suffocating. So what do they do? They have to come up for air. They must push you away to reclaim their sense of individuality, which of course does not truly exist. This is why they ruin holidays and birthdays. This is why right after you say “I love you,” they pick a fight about the dishwasher issue. They are creating chaos on purpose. As I say, they are merchants of chaos.
They need to make you the enemy; if they are fighting with you, they are separate from you. If they’re angry at you, they are not engulfed by you. The conflict creates the distance they need to feel safe again. They are essentially pushing you off the raft so they can breathe, leaving you drowning in confusion.
The Paradox of Dependency and Contempt
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