My Wife Wants My Support After the Other Woman Dumped Her

Dear Luo,

I totally agree with CL and others that cutting and running is the only safe strategy to save yourself from this emotionally dangerous individual because they will ultimately try to displace all their negative emotions onto you.

In other words, the way she’s going to “cure” herself of suicidality is by making you suicidal. The way she’s going to shift out of her current nihilism and pessimism is by making you nihilistic and hopeless. The way she’s going to heal the wounds to her self esteem is by killing yours. And when that process is complete, she will cheerfully leave you where you fell in a bleeding heap. Because that’s how narcissist-vampires roll. In DV advocacy circles, that process is sometimes called “perspecticide” whereby an abuser destroys the world views, senses of self and faith in humanity in their victims and then “infects” their victims with the abuser’s own core toxic sense of self, world view, etc.

As for the particulars of “why” this abusive individual is like that, you can figure that out once you’ve been safely out of missile range long enough to feel stable again because the danger now is that trying to figure out and “untangle the skein” of your hopefully soon-to-be-ex will be an attempt to “fix” them. It would feed deadly hopium and keep you stuck.

But, if it satisfies some skein-untangling bug you have, below is my personal wonky dissection of abuse and abusers, who, in my opinion, are pretty much all the same minus a few minor differences. For instance, your story seems particularly heartbreaking because of the added betrayal that you’re both women and members of a marginalized group so it’s especially shocking that she subjected you to what many perceive as a particularly patriarchal abuse.

As a woman and a feminist, I can somewhat relate to the shock because of my added sense of betrayal when I’ve been stabbed in the back by other women. Though in a way it’s kind of silly to think bulls shouldn’t gore you because you’re a vegan, I think it’s typical to feel outraged that someone who should “know better” would abuse in the same way whole countries tend to reserve greater punishments for traitors than they do for enemy combatants. But, again, all abusers are the same in the way they think and behave and what drives them and the fact that, statistically, they don’t change.

I have to warn that my skein only untangles in the “run screaming” direction because, according to forensic research, at its furthest logical extremes, the abusive personality construct is found in domestic murderers and serial killers and basically all genocidal dictators, none of which are exactly known for their capacity to turn over new leaves.

As for the question of how and why abusive narcissists can presto-chango shift their allegiance to a new idol and completely erase or even sadistically destroy people they formerly swore undying love to, I think it’s a learned “skill.” Bear with my sprawling take on it but I promise at least a little bit of relevance by the end.

Reading this (and especially watching the Spamalot clip– thanks to CL for that) really increased my impression that narcissists/borderlines (“narcolines”? “Bordercists”?) are likely created by being raised with “hierarchical” values of some kind. For what it’s worth, I kind of cobbled this together to explain to myself why the “patriarchal” theory for domestic abuse– though it gets a lot right– is really just the most common expression (and probable evolutionary root) of a generalized us vs. them/black and white view of humanity that underlies all abuse and injustice.

And because I believe that this “hierarchical” construct is the root of all abuse, I think most people raised with this construct would likely also be raised with direct abuse and/or witnessing traumatic abuse of others. Either way, I think these types are typically scarred and damaged on top of being invested in a toxic hierarchical belief system.

As a side note, some people swear narcissism and particularly psychopathy have genetic roots and will argue that this is why it’s unsafe to believe these types can change or have any sympathy for them. But I don’t really buy genetic criminality or “low empathy genes” theories (too eugenic for my taste, plus the science behind these theories is dodgy). For one, I don’t think genetic theories are even necessary to argue that some behaviors and beliefs are unfixable. I personally have no problem feeling sorry for the traumatized, badly raised kids that abusers once were while feeling nothing for the dangerous adults they become precisely because not all traumatized children grow up to become abusers. Some go starkly in the other direction so there’s a matter of choice here. But I think the key to the “unfixability” of abusive personalities is inculcation where, from young ages, people raised with hierarchical beliefs were incited to act on this view and commit harm to those designated as somehow “inferior.” Eventually people like this end up with too big a mountain of victims in their wakes to ever face the shame of it and cross back over to truly redeem themselves. If you dig into their pasts, you’ll always find the trail of corpses.

But enough with the nature/nurture psychobabble. I think sometimes this “hierarchical” construct can be harder to detect in people who are themselves members of marginalized groups because being “hierarchical” (a bigot by any other name) is more ironic in “underdogs.” Being a woman, I think it’s true that people from marginalized groups have a slightly greater chance of developing egalitarian values, but people are people and it’s not necessarily the case. I find this just means that, when someone from an underdog group internalizes hierarchical views of human worth, they have to be more gymnastic in rationalizing and masking their bigotry and work harder to remain blind to how deeply they may have internalized dominant paradigm values even when the latter views condemn their own identity.

Malcolm X would have analogized the above to a “house slave” mentality and feminists call it “internalized sexism.” But I think if you boil it down to brass tacks, this mentality is really based on the irrational belief that some humans are inherently better than others and some are worse for whatever fabricated reasons. Because abusive personalities tend to all be the same and unoriginal, they also tend to operate on a stock market mentality of human value so that their biases are typically fueled by values drawn from dominant paradigm (so that, for example, abusive women almost always internalize patriarchal sexism in some way or other, even if its in the abstract sense that “might makes right” or “nurturing values are synonymous with incompetence,” etc.). But it’s all basically the “tribalism” that philosopher Karl Popper warns about in The Open Society and Its Enemies (if anyone is interested in the most granular analysis of it ever written and also the most thorough “macro” application of how this manifests politically).

It makes even more sense that narcissism could stem from hierarchical ideology if you think about so-called “splitting” in narcissism and borderline– the tendency to split other people into “all good” or “all bad” categories with little in between or to shift radically from idealization to contempt. It’s pretty much the same principle as Manichaeism, a modern analogy for “black and white” thinking based on a religion founded in third century Persia which divided the world into extremes of good/evil, light/dark and nothing in between.

In that way, narcissism might be more akin to a cult-like religion than a psychiatric condition (interesting that, in reality, narcissists are reportedly statistically more likely to be drawn to actual cults) but it’s not necessarily a spiritual cultishness since there are such things as existential cults. Basically all cults are based on the idea that some humans (mostly self-designated gurus and leaders) are inherently superior to others and make the false promise of conferring a bit of this transcendence– or at least offering an escape from the punishments reserved for the “inferior”– to those who blindly follow.

And this is exactly what narcissists are seeking: to be exempted from life’s pains and dangers (maybe even death itself) on the basis of sustaining an exaggerated sense of transcendence and superiority.

I don’t think it matters what the guiding “ism” is in a hierarchical construct– racism, sexism, heterosexism, religiocentrism, nationalism, classism, ableism, cultural/educational elitist or all the above. The deciding factor is raising children with the tribalistic view that some human beings inherently don’t count as much as others because this belief polishes up an unfortunately capacity to “erase” select others from consciousness (i.e., Arthur monarchic belief he’s alone while another human being is standing right next to him) or worse, to commit atrocities against certain people without qualms. I think that, once internalized and once a child has been inculcated into harming others that are viewed as inferior, that “erasing” mechanism can eventually be extended to any group or individual at will, including intimate partners.

In essence, the “mechanism” is the selective ability to turn empathy on and off which is psychopathy in a nutshell. Apparently even serial killers engage in a learned type of mental gymnastics in order to rationalize their heinous crimes. The rationalization would not be necessary in the case there individuals had zero capacity for empathy or sense of moral stigma. What it suggests is that the mental trick (called “neutralization” in forensic psychology) toggles the switch.

But the mechanism usually doesn’t stop at simply assigning lesser status to a target group or individual. “Manichean” types don’t merely subtract all positive human qualities and values from the scapegoat or scapegoat group without removing all negatives from some designated strata and also adding transcendent, magical qualities to the latter. Political analysts and sociologists call this “externalization of evil”, the principle behind the scapegoat ritual of casting all of a tribe’s evil onto some poor goat and punishing the goat as if this would cleanse the tribe of sin. In any case, I think this might explain why every narcissist I’ve ever encountered is also prone to periodically becoming a worshipful, groveling weirdo when they encounter an even bigger narc-shark than themselves.

This isn’t to suggest that everyone who gets chumped by an abuser was necessarily seeking out a “bigger shark” or “drawn to abuse” for reasons I’ll get into in a bit. But on the issue of adults having juvenile romantic crushes, it really stands out to be because I think the last time I had some gaga, idealizing crush was in seventh grade and even then I had the sense to be embarrassed by it. I knew by age 11 that limerence isn’t real love. But every narcissist I’ve encountered, no matter how old, will periodically go fanatically belly up to some perceived idol whether this is a public figure or some romantic crush.

Sometimes “narcomanicheans” or whatever you want to call them project magical, transcendent qualities on someone who isn’t a shark but they’ll usually soon realize their mistake because only a bigger narcissist would be able to subject the groveling narc to proper Pavlovian conditioning of intermittent rewards/punishments or abuse/lovebombing.

To wrap it up, you could probably get your STBX back and “in wuv” with you– at least for a while– if you’re prepared to become a monster yourself. But that would be the most tragic outcome of being bitten by this abuser-vampire– basically turning into one. From the sound of it, you’d probably have to play with your home lobotomy kit and surgically remove your own soul to turn yourself into this, otherwise forget it.

That’s because ‘tribal/Manichean/narcy” people like this can’t love in the higher human, reciprocal and enduring sense. They can only kiss up and slap down and, because of this, will almost mistake expressions of real love from others as a mark of inferior status.
In essence, your STBX projects her own idol worship tendencies onto you and assumes the love you show is not real or valuable but simply recognition that she’s of a higher caste.

Which probably comes as a huge surprise because I’m also sure your STBX mirrored the hell out of your ethical values and political beliefs when she first met you. This is why chumps getting chumped is fundamentally not the same as a narcissist putting themselves in thrall to a more dangerous narcissist. Like a lot of chumps, you might have been chosen deliberately by a FW as a departure from their normal pattern of hooking up with carbon copies of their dysfunctional FOO members. This is because abusive narcissists are invariably miserable people down deep since it’s a crappy formula for life. Abusers may even hope that a healthy partner might magically change them for the better so the mirroring and mask wearing aren’t always just a form of deliberate conning but sometimes an attempt to “fake it till they make it.” They’re trying on your way of being like a hermit crab finding a new shell. But it’s likely that, when your STBX found that proximity to you didn’t magically transform her charred out soul and, worse, made her feel like a creep in comparison to your basic fair nature, she ripped you off the pedestal she’d put you and and went back to the kind of devil she knows– some carbon copy of whatever abuser-vampire originaly bit her and turned her into a walking abortion in the first place.

You could try to explain all the above to this STBX or some explanation that’s more tailored to her particular fuckedupedness and, though she might pretend to be moved and inspired to fix what’s broken in herself, it won’t last because you’re likely not the only person she’s harmed in her life. Again, eventually the guilt and shame make it impossible for abusers to sustain any change since it would require facing that many of the things they’ve done are wrong and their past victims are actual humans who matter.

Secondly, there’s the problem of all sadists being secret masochists on the flip-side and the fact they all engage in “compulsive reenactment” where they forever chase the copies of whomever abused them in childhood in the hopes of things finally working out “better.”

Thirdly, sadism might be akin to OCD or a superstitious “rite” in the sense that sadists do cruel things in order to feel “safe” from the constant fear of being victimized. Causing pain and fear in others could be likened to genuflecting to ward off evil spirits or flipping a light switch on and off 20 times before stepping outside to ward of generalized misfortune. This might be because, in many abusive families, there are only perpetrators and victims and nothing in between so the only way to avoid being victimized is to commit harm.

This is all a long way of saying save yourself. It’s also a suggestion that you develop an alternative type of snobbery but just regarding character and capacity for real love. The director of the DV advocacy network I worked for in college used to say, “Harmlessness is the only glamour.” She didn’t mean harmless as in “weak” or “passive” but in terms of being incapable of harming the harmless (or standing passively by as the harmless are harmed). It was her way of upending the usual human hierarchies based on might and advantage.