Oedipus Complex?
Here comes another day, fraught with memories that comprise a most massive disappointment of my life for a thousand reasons and simultaneously for no reason at all. My mother, who lived a full life, died two years ago on May 26th. June 3rd marks the anniversary of her funeral, and another siginificant event in my life … the day my Narcissist chose to end our relationship.
I don’t know what to think about that event. I’ve garnered many opinions from others, yet I keep my own counsel on the matter. A part of me wants to empathize with the stress my Narcissistic lover might have been under but another part of me wants to believe the words of those who also knew him then. As he is a coward and will not speak of the event with me, his point of view remains hidden.
He came forwards as a hero on the day my mother fell into a coma. He was at the hospital with me, being everything I dreamed a lover would be at such a time. We spent hours on the phone talking over things as my mother’s condition worsened. It is impossible to forget the angelic glow of white that surrounded him as he soothed her dying body in the hospital bed. At face value, he was perfect in that role.
The day Mom died, as he walked away from my car to go back to what he referred to as work, he claimed he felt free. The tone of our conversations on the phone, the week after her death, took on a different tone. He bagan to tell me my calls were intrusive but he never explained why. The day of Mom’s funeral, when he came through my door nearly an hour late, unshaven and unshowered wearing clothes that looked as if they had been slept in, I felt the storm he brought with him. I knew I was in danger with him that day but I had no where else to turn.
He waited until we were walking through the doors to the funeral that he needed to get back to the office to work on bookkeeping. It was a lie. After the funeral was over, he invited me to dinner but wound up screaming at me in a public place when I asked if we could go to a movie or do anything that would keep me from being home alone with my grief. He wanted to be left in town but I needed help carrying funeral sprays and plants into my house so he agreed to return home with me.
Back at the house, as his latest victim persistently rang his cell phone with her digital demands, I suggested he ought to answer the phone. He chose to turn it off and linger in a vain effort to explain what was beyond comprehension due to all the lies he had told me leading up to that day. Our argument became public again, as he stormed away and I watched in utter disbelief.
The words he shouted at me as he stormed away pierced my heart and destroyed any perception I ever had about him. He screamed, “Get Drunk! Kill Yourself! I don’t care!”
His lack of concern was obvious…
It is easy to judge a person at face value. At face value, on that day, my former beau was heartless. It is impossible to forget the shroud of gray that enveloped him as he made his choice to tear my beating heart from my chest and leave me alone in my terror and grief. It is impossible to forget how he shouted his angry words, suggesting that I kill myself for he no longer cared. At face value, it was clear that he is a sociopath.
The peculiar look on his face wasn’t the expression a man wears when he is confident. He knew that his words and actions were irrevocable, though he later tried to deny that. He was a man gripped with fear and hollowed by the material greed that dimmed the bright light of the shiny spiritual being I once felt that I had loved. In an odd sort of way, I died that evening in June of 2006.
I’ve wondered if he is capable of being completely honest with me about everything that led up to that horrible day. For his sake, I hope he can someday. Although hearing his explanation would be nice, it won’t change anything I’ve come to undersand through years heart-wrenching introspection.
His main issues is centered on his mother. He showed me his shattered guitar once, explaining that he had broken it when his mother was controlling his life. He said he had broken it when he found his mother going through his trash and kept it as a reminder. And when his mother chose me as his partner, his anger about this was something he could not express to her so, over time, I became collateral damage in their war.
My former beau was in constant conflict about his mother. Perhaps he suffered an Oedipus complex. The Oedipus complex or conflict is a concept developed by Sigmund Freud to explain the origin of certain neuroses in childhood. It is defined as a male child’s unconscious desire for the exclusive love of his mother. He was jealous of his siblings. He was jealous of the love his mother had for me.
Yet, he seeks to have a mother figure and his mother will not live forever, either. His new partner is many years his senior, according to Zabasearch. Learning this helped the puzzle pieces to fit into place. Based on what I have come to know if his new partner, she is every bit as controlling as the mother he sought to overcome for years, using turmoil to maintain control over him.
Though he claimed to love women, I’m fairly certain my former beau was a misogynist … a woman hater. He once showed me a photograph of a woman he used to love. This woman had made a decision that she wanted to live a lesbian lifestyle. He told me this story and, clearly, he was still angry with her about that because he punctuated the turn of events by expressing his pleasure about the fact she had died of breast cancer. The grin on his face when he explained she deserved that for breaking his heart was chilling to recall after what I experienced with him.
I wonder if this is a common theme with Narcissists?
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Yes it is a common theme for them to enjoy seeing or knowing that people suffer. They feel like they are Godly.
Not all narcissists are sociopaths, but it is clear in your descriptions that this one was. I have some thoughts to share.
I firmly believe there are varying degrees of this condition. What often distinguishes transient n’s that have potential for healing from the permanent personality disorder variety are the two E’s: (lack of) empathy and exploitation.
To an extent someone like John Lennon exhibited some classical n traits, but found a way beyond them perhaps because people in his life brought out his capacity for empathy and allowed him to be REAL. On the other hand you have someone like Tom Cruise who is so damaged that he merely perpetuates an eternal false self. When you listen to him speak you can hear that he doesn’t care in the least bit. You are merely there as an echo pad. The degree to which he possesses and exploits those closest to him is also quite scary.
Ultimately, you must do the seemingly impossible: try to empathize with the utterly empathy-deficient. This is the only way to avoid echoing the hollow ring of narcissism’s chilling emptiness.
Yes, there appear to be varying degrees of narcissism and there also is something called “healthy narcissism” which allows you to have confidence in yourself and your abilities.
It did take me quite a while to see the sociopath in my former beau, probably because I didn’t want to see it. On the day of my mother’s funeral, however, it was inescapable.
I guess that I have tried to empathize with him and feel that I always did. Even on the day of Mom’s funeral, I empathized with the fear he must have been feeling. I do recall seeing a gray aura around him, almost as if he had been taken over to the dark side. And the look on his face as he spoke his cruel words portrayed an inner battle.
Ultimately, in order to reconcile everything, I had to make some decisions about the man that I once loved … I had to decide that he was a Narcissist and had to stop lingering in the land of empathizing with him in order to recover my own center of balance again and begin to heal.
The only long-lasting benefit that I received from my interactions with him was to learn what it feels to be in the presence of a narcissist. When I sense it, I immediately evacuate the relationship, whether it is business or pleasure. I will not go down that road again, believe me.