When You’re Starved For Affection, Crumbs Feel Like A Full Meal
This is why bad relationships are so hard to leave, especially narcissistic ones.
Emotional needs are important in any relationship.
Whether it is with a parent, friend, child or romantic partner, the need for intimacy is part of the equation.
When the person you are dealing with is narcissistic, you will have many bad moments. AND…you will also have some good ones.
This is what makes things so tricky.
If they were all bad, it would be much easier to leave.
The Good Times Don’t Have To Be That Good
Damaging relationships are marked by highs and lows.
Not the normal highs and lows that every relationship goes through, these are extreme. The highs are in the stratosphere and the lows feel like they are subterranean.
But are the highs really as high as they seem or do they just feel high because the lows are so bad?
When you have been treated poorly by a narcissist, you live for the small moments in between the abuse. Any moment in which you aren’t currently being hurt feels amazing.
What others would consider a normal everyday experience is one of the high times for you. It could be a walk around the neighborhood that they didn’t berate you. A night in watching a movie and you didn’t get into a fight. It may even be a dinner where they said your food was “not bad”.
If you have been conditioned to expect the worst, getting the bare minimum will feel like a dream come true.
Like It Was In The Beginning…
There are 3 stages to every narcissistic or abusive relationship.
- Idealization
- De-Value
- Discard
In destructive romantic relationships, the sentiment “I wish it could go back to the way it was…” is uttered many times.
This was the moment in time when things were actually on a high.
This was during the Idealization Stage
Commonly known as the Love Bombing Stage.
Love bombing is exciting. It is the first stage of the intermittent reinforcement cycle. A high level of attention, adoration, effort, affection or interest gets established. This is not the typical amount of increased interest that most relationships go through in the beginning. This is a tidal wave of everything that feels good.
It is meant to get you hooked. Like an addict. Addicted to feeling amazing and they supply the drug you need.
It over-excites your pleasure center and manufactures feelings of closeness and intimacy.
It is not real. It is fake intimacy.
The speed and intensity are mentioned to confuse you into lowering your guard so the next phase of the plan can commence.
The next phase is the De-Value Stage.
This is when the lows begin to happen. The abrupt shift in the relationship atmosphere can be felt. Even if you don’t know what is happening, it is clear that something has happened.
You begin to feel the distance. Words and actions no longer line up. The big promises of a grand future have not materialized and they get upset with you for pointing that out.
You will inevitably do something that knocks you off the pedestal they had placed you on.
Maybe you blew your nose too loudly? Maybe you didn’t look at them with the same admiration you had the day before. Maybe they had a bad dream and woke up mad?
It can be anything real or imaginary.
During this stage that the thought Why can’t we go back to the way it was? begins to creep into your mind. The eggshell walking begins here and the bids for affection and love inch their way into your life.
They give you less and less, and you begin to wither away waiting for the old version of them, the when we first met partner to show back up.
And they do! Well…every once in a while.
They give you morsels of attention, drips of love, scraps of affection and kindness. Not enough to make you feel satisfied, but enough so you don’t pack up and leave.
You became addicted in the Love Bomb phase and now during the De-Value stage, they give you just enough love to keep you strung out and on the edge of withdrawal. The “hits” of love and attention get the cycle rolling again.
Get ready for the rollercoaster ride! It’s going to hurt.
The final phase is the Discard Stage
During this phase, the pain gets to an all-time high.
Abuse often ramps up. It can be any type of abuse. Psychological and emotional abuse hurt just as much as a hit would, and there are no physical bruises to prove it.
Your body IS hurt. Your body is thrown out of homeostasis. You may be suffering from physical manifestations of stress.
Hormone imbalances, cortisol spikes, poor digestion, difficulty thinking, panic attacks, weight changes (either up or down), leaky gut, adrenal fatigue, PCOS, arthritis, insomnia, etc… they are all ways abuse show up as symptoms.
When your body is in a desperate state, even a single moment where they are simply not currently being abusive can feel like the most amazing experience.
It feels like they are going back to being loving when the reality is they are just not actively hurting you.
There are enough moments of reprieve that it feels good. When you have been hurt so much for so long, even this feels like it’s enough to sustain.
During the discard phase, they may try to make you leave by being the most unkind they have ever been, but then if you do try to leave they panic and want you to stay.
Often mixed messages happen.
“Go away! Don’t leave me!”
It’s confusing because it makes no sense.
Hoovers and bids to reconnect
There is a 4th stage that often happens but is not guaranteed. That’s the Hoover Stage.
This is when they ramp it back up to 1000 and go back into the Love Bombing. If you go back, you will cycle through the entire thing again.
Don’t do it. Get away while you can!!
Don’t go back to the crumbs they fed you before.
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Narcissism Informed Trauma and Abuse Life Coach- for links to my life coaching services, you can find me at www.cpresleycoaching.com or email me at [email protected]
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