Narcissist Insider’s View of Shared Fantasy (Narcissist and Partner)
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 08/10/2020

In the shared fantasy, I refuse to act as a man, partly owing to nondifferentiated gender roles and partly because of Peter Pan Puer Aeternus syndrome: I refuse to grow up and to assume adult chores and responsibilities.

I accept that, in order to persevere and survive within my increasingly more sexless shared fantasy (in which I am intermittently a child or a father, but never an adult man), my woman has to meet her sexual and emotional needs with (other) men. 

As long as there is no risk of abandonment, I turn a blind eye or even encourage my intimate partner tacitly or openly to cheat on me and resort to other men as extensively and for as long as she needs to.

As my woman has emotional and sexual affairs and casual sex with other men, I do not experience any romantic jealousy or any other emotion except sometimes a relief that I do not have to cater to her demands as a woman: it is someone else's problem now, she had outsourced the potentially thorny and threatening issue. 

With her gone, imposing on another man's time and resources, I have now regained mastery of my life and feel liberated (like a child when the nagging adults are away). Nuisance busy elsewhere, I am left to my pleasurable devices and time consuming vocations or avocations. I can finally be a child and play in the sandbox unperturbed and unencumbered. I fulfill the father role when my woman seeks my advice or asks for money - and then revert to childish form.

When I perceive a growing and veritable risk of abandonment (for example: the woman becomes avoidant, secretive, or deceptive), I begin to stalk my woman persistently and intrusively. I abruptly impose new strict rules and boundaries and insist on exclusivity. I limit my partner's contact with men or prohibit it altogether. I may even initiate short-term reclaim sex until I deem the shared fantasy restored. 

The more approach-avoidant, labile, and dysregulated the woman is, the higher the probability of abandonment and loss and the more difficult it is to maintain a stable shared fantasy. This creates a sempiternal lovebombing-grooming-honeymoon phase with lots of sex and thrills. This may explain why narcissists find borderlines and histrionics irresistible but are more likely to end up having a stable sexless shared fantasy with a codependent or a healthier woman.

In most cases, by this stage, my newfound assertiveness pushes the woman to either abandon me or ignore me disdainfully and aggressively because: 1. She got used to life as a virtual single and refuses to relinquish it; and 2. The sexlessness, absence of masculinity and virility, infantilization, emotional absenteeism, and doormat acceptance of her cheating lead the woman to lose all respect for me, to hold me in utter contempt, and to resent me, be furious at me, and feel deceived and fooled.

By now, my woman is likely to have developed sex aversion and she finds me repulsive. If she stays, it is merely to enjoy material benefits or because she can find no alternative. She doesn't bother even to act and pretend that she is within the shared fantasy anymore. 

I become increasingly more delusional as I fend off the menacing and harrowing realization that it is all over. I cling to any shred of evidence to support the ongoing existence and potency of the shared fantasy, I reject any evidence to the contrary.

When there is actual or imminent abandonment involving other men, I experience mortification, romantic jealousy (dread of loss), and abandonment anxiety.

In the bargaining phase, I relentlessly push the woman to cheat ostentatiously and overtly - even humiliating me in public in the process - so as to feel justified to get rid of her and to be able to shift the blame for the breakup (alloplastic defense and disguising an internal mortification as an external one). 

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