2. The traits of the narcissist can make you feel loved, even if those traits are considered destructive.
Sometimes, the way the traits are interpreted or expressed can make somebody feel cared for or loved. So we can look at several of these traits and see that idea expressed, the fantasies of success in power also include fantasies of the ideal love.
So if you are that ideal love, if you are perfect love, you’re really in a sense sharing in the narcissistic fantasy, at least potentially, and that’s very attractive, that’s a very powerful feeling. We could look at the jealousy that the narcissist has, the jealousy could be interpreted as making you feel very wanted.
The narcissist devalues rivals, and this is again tied to jealousy, so they point out the flaws of your previous romantic partners. And again, even though this is kind of negative and really unnecessary, it can be interpreted as an abundance of caring, they love you so much, they’re willing to criticize and take time to devalue these other people. Then we could look at this feeling of being special and unique. So this is a characteristic the narcissist could have.
What happens here is they can project this belief onto you. They intensely believe that they are special, there’s no one else in the world like them. So to the extent that they believe that and to the extent, they have a strong ability to project, you can come to feel that the same way.
You’ll feel special, you’ll feel unique, and in a moment again kind of share in the narcissistic trait, not to the degree we really have the trait, but just a moment where you can experience it. You can have an overlap there, an ability to touch on that trait for a moment and feel how powerful that must feel to the narcissist.
So it kind of explains in some sense why narcissism has a self-maintaining characteristic to it. The narcissist can feel really good by having narcissistic traits, and again, you get a little part of that sometimes, that’s why you may still love the narcissist.
Another item related to the same reason is the narcissistic tenancy to criticize. These criticisms could be interpreted as paying a lot of attention to you. So a willingness to invest time and energy in your well-being, even though that seems kind of strange like they’re criticizing you, but somehow again, this makes it look like they really care about you.
I think what happens really is that sometimes doesn’t matter what somebody is saying, whether it’s positive or negative. The fact that they’re saying anything at all can matter to some people. It can make people feel loved. Taking the time just to make any type of statement, especially if you’re taking a lot of time can be viewed as quite attractive.
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