A friend at work once described my narc and I as "The Golden Couple". She made the observation that "everything you two touch seems to turn to gold!" I have to admit that this did appear to be true. Looking back now, however, it is pretty easy to understand really. You see...we both had critical pieces to contribute to this equation. It is not that we were rich or anything...but we seemed to rise from nearly nothing pretty quickly...and since I was (SO VERY OBVIOUSLY) the screw up, the credit for this "Golden" status MUST be given to the Narc, right?
As a child, I was taught, very STRONGLY urged, NOT to "Blow my own horn" and not to "be cocky" and not to be "an extrovert" which was the conventional wisdom in the day of my Mother. Despite the fact that she was a wonderful Mother...there was more than one generation gap between us. She was 37 when I was born and, therefore, closer in age to the Grandparents of most of my peers. Today, having a child, even in your 40's, is considered to be not unusual. This was not really true prior to the 1980's.
So, I entered into life with the conventional wisdom of a generation which had really "passed me by". It is not that I was not PRAISED for my gifts...I was just urged to hide them for the benefit of others and to avoid being seen as "conceited" and "stuck up". Any attempt to bring them to the forefront was seen as "conceit" and that was something that MUST be avoided. To this day, I have a hard time looking at myself critically. I am VERY good at seeing my negatives and expressing them...but positives are difficult for me. I have made a conscious decision to try to turn my back on that conventional wisdom....but I still feel I must apologize, in advance, for what I am about to say.
The narc and I, when combined, did make ONE pretty FANTASTIC person!
My positive possessions...
- Significant intelligence
- Perseverance
- Creativity
- Strong Will
- High level of drive
- Intuition
- Diplomacy
- Empathy
- Integrity
- Extreme Focus
- A decent education/vocation/income
- The ability to love and appreciate others
- A sense of "Fair play"
- A tendency to always "protect the underdog" in any situation
- Ready charm
- Ease of interaction with others (surface)
- Confidence
The PROBLEM is...he so successfully mirrored my characteristics...I could not tell that he did not REALLY possess these things! If the narc PROJECTS on to us...do we NOT do the SAME thing? The narc projects all his bad traits onto us...and we project all our good traits onto them. Our OWN bad traits? They allow us to keep those and use them to control us and keep us from seeing how much we REALLY have to offer!
I CERTAINLY am not saying that I had no bad traits! I had/have PLENTY of those. The difference is...these were not EVER FORGOTTEN...nor would they be ALLOWED to be minimized, excused or explained. They were added to his flaws, magnified, and projected right back onto me with the precision of a laser!
You may not think you can relate to this but I think most of us can if we take a critical look at what achieved PRIOR to the entrance of the N into our lives.
So...real world applications of this info? I did the work, he took the credit. Even in my own eyes, my contributions were minimal. Turns out that the list of my good qualities are pretty useless, especially in the social context, without the presence of those few things the narc brought into the equation.
Once we had one WHOLE person between us...we were, indeed, GOLDEN.
I took the stress, made the decisions, did the WORK, provided the strength, took all the blame, felt all the guilt, made all the changes...and he was the public face degrading me at each opportunity...minimizing my contributions...pushing my buttons...holding the strings.
He got all the credit...I took all the blame.
Sound fair doesn't it?
love it...so true
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