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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2019 18:21:54 GMT
Because it's bad behavior. It's destructive. I don't believe you can have a healthy relationship with someone who does this. If they want their time alone, they would have to say so. Not just take it. That's not a relationship, that's 2 individuals playing couple sometimes, when it's convenient for one. As for taking into account subconscious - great. That doesn't make it any less destructive. And by pointing to subconscious stuff it's excusing the behavior. I've mentioned elsewhere before, but narcissists don't actively know what they are doing. Where's the empathy for them? You can have empathy without putting yourself in harms way. And it's not your issue to fix. You must have missed it along the way, but I'm an admitted soft FA. Really soft now. I come across as very secure - can be pushed anxious at times, but I have control over my physical actions (words too) - just not the somatic feelings. This wasn't always the case. I've even done some stalking as a result when I was a teen (I'm not proud of this). Sure my emotional state drove me to do this, but I realized I am in control of what I do and say and that's not who I wanted to be. None of us are remote controlled. As for being FA, my history suggests that I'll leave you eventually. My longest stretch - 14 yrs. Relationships take work, and someone bouncing without warning is not putting in the work I would want to see. I wouldn't ever trust them to be there for me when it mattered. Being with someone is hard. But it's worth it, and I'll never be alone again because I didn't put in the work. I'm looking for the same. I have said to everyone I was in a relationship with, that if either of us leaves, it's over for me, and I'll be moving on. My last gf (an FA), left abruptly, and rudely. She gets to test drive my statement. I'm pretty sure she's aware that it's over. Maybe it'll make her next relationship more stable, knowing that some men, at least, have a backbone. I think most FA's are used to being with people who don't stand up for themselves, so it's normal to have someone always waiting for them. Not me. It also seems to me that people who are accepting of this are putting the other person's needs in front of their own. That's just not healthy. , my personal perspective here is that if an individual is healthy enough to have and enjoy a genuine emotional connection with you, they are not so far unhealthy on the spectrum to be unable to communicate a need for space or decompression. I don't think you can have enough emotional awareness to be healthy enough to bond genuinely but not healthy enough to consider that bond and communicate a shift. To me, those things don't coexist. That's been my own experience as well. That's why I don't see periods of silence to be compatible with the good stuff. That's just my own take but it seems you have that position also. Again, it's all down to people's personal perspectives. It's so good for me, knowing what I've come to understand and be able to do, and to not be having to try so hard to make sense of things. The natural flow of reciprocity and consistency is something we all need and it's great when you can establish it in relationships- that's all I have now! Have you been dating, and has this awareness changed things for you in that regard, if you are? |
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Post by dhali on Oct 31, 2019 18:24:43 GMT
nyc- I didn't call them narcissists. I compared empathy giving due to their knowledge of their actions to empathy giving of a narc, who also isn't aware of their actions. If empathy is the overriding factor, then it should be for everyone else who doesn't have a choice in how their neurons snap due to trauma. A narcissist falls under that categorization - especially this one:
"If someone is made aware and doesn't do anything about it, then yeah, I will hold someone more accountable, but if they just have no clue, I can't help but hold them less accountable because they are ignorant, just like I was."
As for others being flexible, that's your interpretation that you don't think I'm tolerant of that. You can do what you want. I'm on record comparing any avoidant not aware/working on it (and I mean working it) to the scorpion. That's it. The evidence bears that out. Anyone can choose to ignore that as they see fit. That's not fighting words from me. But if anyone asks me what they should do with their deactivated avoidant, I'd recommend running away. It's just a matter of time. Again, my opinion, which seems to have at the very least qualitative substantiation on here. And in my opinion (and I think this is where you get ruffled up), your situation is ripe for a let down. I'd love to be wrong.
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Post by dhali on Oct 31, 2019 18:58:34 GMT
dhali , my personal perspective here is that if an individual is healthy enough to have and enjoy a genuine emotional connection with you, they are not so far unhealthy on the spectrum to be unable to communicate a need for space or decompression. I don't think you can have enough emotional awareness to be healthy enough to bond genuinely but not healthy enough to consider that bond and communicate a shift. To me, those things don't coexist. That's been my own experience as well. That's why I don't see periods of silence to be compatible with the good stuff. That's just my own take but it seems you have that position also. Again, it's all down to people's personal perspectives. It's so good for me, knowing what I've come to understand and be able to do, and to not be having to try so hard to make sense of things. The natural flow of reciprocity and consistency is something we all need and it's great when you can establish it in relationships- that's all I have now! Have you been dating, and has this awareness changed things for you in that regard, if you are? Yeah, I'm dating. Nothing crazy at the moment. I was seeing a woman for a month or so when she got more serious with another guy she was dating. I'm looking for a relationship, but not dying for one. It would be nice. They take work, and it's easier being alone - but also... alone. My awareness? I guess it's only 4 months old at this point. But I've done some intense personal development stuff (on the social side) that I expect to pay dividends. I've amped up my spirituality practice, and I'm feeling pretty bad ass at the moment. That carries itself into the dating world. I guess you could say I have my mojo back, even though I'm not in a relationship. I feel it'll come pretty naturally at this point, when the right person comes along. I'm having an easier time connecting with people. I was going through some pretty major social anxiety for a couple of years that I feel I'm finally over. It didn't stop me from dating, but I was using my dates as a crutch. It's not as if my avoidant leaving me didn't have some major positives in my life. It got me off my ass to fix some things about myself in a focused and concentrated way. My self confidence has made a sizeable leap. My esteem for others has done the same. And that's the work to moving towards secure that I do. I'm going to check out somatic therapy in the new year, but I'm feeling good. Not that I did it for this reason, but if my ex were to see me now, I'm pretty confident she would do a double take. I just carry myself differently now (I did a week long, wakeup to bed, close quarters set of sessions that included field work). I see the world differently now. Better. Easier (that's not to say easy). |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2019 19:14:50 GMT
dhali , my personal perspective here is that if an individual is healthy enough to have and enjoy a genuine emotional connection with you, they are not so far unhealthy on the spectrum to be unable to communicate a need for space or decompression. I don't think you can have enough emotional awareness to be healthy enough to bond genuinely but not healthy enough to consider that bond and communicate a shift. To me, those things don't coexist. That's been my own experience as well. That's why I don't see periods of silence to be compatible with the good stuff. That's just my own take but it seems you have that position also. Again, it's all down to people's personal perspectives. It's so good for me, knowing what I've come to understand and be able to do, and to not be having to try so hard to make sense of things. The natural flow of reciprocity and consistency is something we all need and it's great when you can establish it in relationships- that's all I have now! Have you been dating, and has this awareness changed things for you in that regard, if you are? Yeah, I'm dating. Nothing crazy at the moment. I was seeing a woman for a month or so when she got more serious with another guy she was dating. I'm looking for a relationship, but not dying for one. It would be nice. They take work, and it's easier being alone - but also... alone. My awareness? I guess it's only 4 months old at this point. But I've done some intense personal development stuff (on the social side) that I expect to pay dividends. I've amped up my spirituality practice, and I'm feeling pretty bad ass at the moment. That carries itself into the dating world. I guess you could say I have my mojo back, even though I'm not in a relationship. I feel it'll come pretty naturally at this point, when the right person comes along. I'm having an easier time connecting with people. I was going through some pretty major social anxiety for a couple of years that I feel I'm finally over. It didn't stop me from dating, but I was using my dates as a crutch. It's not as if my avoidant leaving me didn't have some major positives in my life. It got me off my ass to fix some things about myself in a focused and concentrated way. My self confidence has made a sizeable leap. My esteem for others has done the same. And that's the work to moving towards secure that I do. I'm going to check out somatic therapy in the new year, but I'm feeling good. Not that I did it for this reason, but if my ex were to see me now, I'm pretty confident she would do a double take. I just carry myself differently now (I did a week long, wakeup to bed, close quarters set of sessions that included field work). I see the world differently now. Better. Easier (that's not to say easy). There's a lot of good stuff in there, that's great! And, the somatic piece has been huge for me. Just saw my therapist today, and I'm continually amazed at the shifts in my life that happen quickly, in line with the work we do in session. Visceral shifts. Somatic shifts. Cognitive shifts. The world and my place in it has become different to me. It's very cool stuff. There are difficult elements but in a lot of ways I feel expansive and like I have my mojo also. All of us who experience the attachment dilemmas have similar AND different impacts- but relief is good and feels a lot healthier. Glad you're making gains. |
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Post by alexandra on Oct 31, 2019 19:55:53 GMT
So, in the interest of anyone experiencing intermittent reinforcement in a romantic relationship, but unsure about what that looks like emotionally for them: does anyone have a good res source that describes the dynamic? Are there emotional states, patterns, and cognitive processes that are indicators of being "successfully" conditioned by intermittent reinforcement in a relationship? For anyone that is stuck it seems like the first step would be, being able to identify what it looks and feels like. alexandra, I think you might be the most well-read person on here with all this... we know what it looks like in a dog or a dove or whatever experimental subject there may be. Not assuming diabolical intent on the part of the inconsistently available individual, how do the symptoms of conditioning present in the person who is the role of the one being reinforced? What's the internal dialog, the external expression, etc? It could benefit someone thinking "I wish I could get away from this person but I can't seem to!" if they had a concise description they could relate to in order to understand what they are dealing with in themselves and their conditioning. In this regard, for me it's reading the same mice and dog research and just going through years of a bunch of relationships like that and being self-aware enough to eventually identify patterns, see how the most frequent feelings in the relationship feel relative to getting triggered anxious, even comparing that to how I feel in a casino or playing video games (I rarely go to casinos and have no gambling or addiction issues, but I'm aware of all the tactics casinos use to promote gambling with both environmental control and intermittent reinforcement, so still pay attention to how it feels). I'd say if the person is prone to having anxious trigger episodes of overwhelm, to pay attention to what's bringing them on and how they feel, even if they're not full-blown, and see if you can connect it to inconsistent behavior in your partner setting it off. A healthier relationship generally won't cause things to feel "off" in that anxious way. If it was present, I had to just force myself, mind over matter, to observe my emotions but not act off of them, and realize that no matter how I felt the situation was bad for me and I couldn't continue on that way even if it was painful to create distance. But to try to think of it more as ripping off a bandaid, and depending on the situation, I could decide if we could be friends later on after healing assuming they also wanted that (which to me depended on if the person meant well but was troubled as opposed to insecurely attached AND a jerk -- which was indeed sometimes the case). There's an old paper proving that humans have a much more difficult time "extinguishing" behavior that's been trained by an intermittent reinforcement schedule than a fixed schedule: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279891/?page=1 |
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Post by alexandra on Oct 31, 2019 20:02:44 GMT
I don't know how helpful that was... to describe it as eventually I just learned to sit within myself and recognize it, with the starting point of I know how full-on anxious episodes feel and how is this dynamic relative to that if a full-on episode is like a 10 out of 10 trigger, and how often does the other person make me feel arousal. I don't mean that sexually, just more alert, more vigilant, nervous system being more activated for some reason.
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Post by serenity on Oct 31, 2019 20:03:04 GMT
So, in the interest of anyone experiencing intermittent reinforcement in a romantic relationship, but unsure about what that looks like emotionally for them: does anyone have a good res source that describes the dynamic? Are there emotional states, patterns, and cognitive processes that are indicators of being "successfully" conditioned by intermittent reinforcement in a relationship? For anyone that is stuck it seems like the first step would be, being able to identify what it looks and feels like. I believe that a spouse/partner would need to be isolated in order to experience the full affect. The rats in the intermittent reinforcement/ operand conditioning experiments became desperate and anxious because their only food source became unreliable. The effect loses power if there is an accessible pile of food elsewhere. Dependent spouses with kids, who have let their jealous spouses isolate them over the time are the most vulnerable (usually narcissists and malicious people would push for isolating their partner). Social people with a close network of family and friends tend to be the most resilient (this also goes for spouses who find themselves in care-taking roles due to their partner becoming ill/disabled/alzheimers/stroke etc...which is not uncommon in later life). |
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Post by nyc718 on Oct 31, 2019 20:14:17 GMT
nyc- I didn't call them narcissists. I compared empathy giving due to their knowledge of their actions to empathy giving of a narc, who also isn't aware of their actions. If empathy is the overriding factor, then it should be for everyone else who doesn't have a choice in how their neurons snap due to trauma. A narcissist falls under that categorization - especially this one: "If someone is made aware and doesn't do anything about it, then yeah, I will hold someone more accountable, but if they just have no clue, I can't help but hold them less accountable because they are ignorant, just like I was." As for others being flexible, that's your interpretation that you don't think I'm tolerant of that. You can do what you want. I'm on record comparing any avoidant not aware/working on it (and I mean working it) to the scorpion. That's it. The evidence bears that out. Anyone can choose to ignore that as they see fit. That's not fighting words from me. But if anyone asks me what they should do with their deactivated avoidant, I'd recommend running away. It's just a matter of time. Again, my opinion, which seems to have at the very least qualitative substantiation on here. And in my opinion (and I think this is where you get ruffled up), your situation is ripe for a let down. I'd love to be wrong. Ok, I'll have to say then I don't think it's a good analogy, because a narcissists are grandiose in their ideas of themselves where FAs do not feel that way, amongst many other differences. But I don't want to argue semantics like that. I understand where you are coming from, I really do, but I don't think you can understand where I am coming from, which is fine actually, it's not so important that I need to demand you do understand where I'm coming from. |
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Post by iz42 on Oct 31, 2019 20:16:25 GMT
There is a helpful discussion about relationships and intermittent reinforcement in the book Unbroken Brain by Maia Szalavitz: www.amazon.com/Unbroken-Brain-Revolutionary-Understanding-Addiction-dp-1250116449/dp/1250116449/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=. She treats addiction as a learning disorder. So it makes sense that there would be a period of conditioning where the anxious partner adjusts to the intermittent reinforcement and learns to expect the occasional validation. I have mixed feelings about treating love as an "addiction" per se but it's more like this particular type of relationship that the brain reacts to addictively. From the book: "All attachment is molded by and requires learning. Critically, the learning the occurs in addiction or love is distinct from the way, say, you learn a fact about history or science. The role of oxytocin, dopamine, and opioids in wiring future cravings to past memories of our passions means that we learn about love and addiction much more permanently than we do things we care less about. Part of the function of emotions themselves is to carve important experiences into memory, so they are visceral. These experiences aren’t just stored like other memories; the changes are deeper, longer lasting, and more pronounced.” |
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Post by nyc718 on Oct 31, 2019 20:30:44 GMT
Ok, I'll have to say then I don't think it's a good analogy, because a narcissists are grandiose in their ideas of themselves where FAs do not feel that way, amongst many other differences. But I don't want to argue semantics like that. I understand where you are coming from, I really do, but I don't think you can understand where I am coming from, which is fine actually, it's not so important that I need to demand you do understand where I'm coming from. That's not true. Covert narcissists have low self esteem and their actions are an effort to cover that up. There are actually a lot of similarities if you do a comparison of the 9 DSM characteristics. Grandiosity is just one. And even for a covert, their grandiosity can appear in one on one circumstances, maybe how they may puff themselves up to friends, romantic partners, in an effort to cover up their low self esteem. That is just one characteristic. Only having (or not having) that does not make or break a narcissist. But that isn't even what dhali was talking about. He wasn't comparing but analogizing. If you are empathizing with someone's bad behavior because well they just don't know any better, you can say the same for a narcissist. A narcissist's behavior is harmful and damaging, but he doesn't know he is a narcissist. He doesn't understand why he triangulates and discards. The root is in his childhood, especially for a covert, who probably did not receive love from his parents. He was neglected. So let's all give him a hug, even when he waives other women in front of you or discards you. He just doesn't know what he is doing. You are right about covert narcissists. I don't give any narcissist a pass though, and i just don't see them the same as FAs, at least not the ones I've known. |
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Post by dhali on Oct 31, 2019 20:37:26 GMT
No one said they are the same. It seems, to me, that your qualifications for empathy aren't what you described though: "if they just have no clue, I can't help but hold them less accountable "
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Post by nyc718 on Oct 31, 2019 20:49:58 GMT
No one said they are the same. It seems, to me, that your qualifications for empathy aren't what you described though: "if they just have no clue, I can't help but hold them less accountable " I meant for FAs..and more specifically, the FA I am currently dealing with, and perhaps another FA that someone else is dealing with that they spoke about. We have our reasons why we don't just walk away the way you do with the FA in your life. |
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Post by dhali on Oct 31, 2019 21:47:15 GMT
I meant for FAs..and more specifically, the FA I am currently dealing with, and perhaps another FA that someone else is dealing with that they spoke about. We have our reasons why we don't just walk away the way you do with the FA in your life. Well, I don't have an FA in my life at the moment. Thankfully (and I haven't decided whether she's FA or DA, not that it's material). And this doesn't just apply to her. Regardless of the amount of anxiety I have over it, if they leave me, the only way I'd consider going back is for them to show me what's different now. It has yet to happen. I don't play the yo-yo game, and everyone I've been in a relationship has been told that. It's a solid boundary to have, imo. A breakup (and ghosting for a few days qualifies) is crossing the Rubicon. |
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Post by nyc718 on Oct 31, 2019 22:04:50 GMT
You are right about covert narcissists. I don't give any narcissist a pass though, and i just don't see them the same as FAs, at least not the ones I've known. You're not getting it. It is an argument by analogy. No one is making the premise you continue to defend. The premise being "FAs are or are like narcissists." I'm sorry, clearly I am not understanding, so I will drop it. |
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Post by nyc718 on Oct 31, 2019 22:08:42 GMT
I meant for FAs..and more specifically, the FA I am currently dealing with, and perhaps another FA that someone else is dealing with that they spoke about. We have our reasons why we don't just walk away the way you do with the FA in your life. Well, I don't have an FA in my life at the moment. Thankfully (and I haven't decided whether she's FA or DA, not that it's material). And this doesn't just apply to her. Regardless of the amount of anxiety I have over it, if they leave me, the only way I'd consider going back is for them to show me what's different now. It has yet to happen. I don't play the yo-yo game, and everyone I've been in a relationship has been told that. It's a solid boundary to have, imo. A breakup (and ghosting for a few days qualifies) is crossing the Rubicon. And that's fine. I had a DA in my life ghost me, and I consider it a blessing in disguise. He really brought nothing to the table anyway. The FAs did have some redeeming qualities, and the current one definitely does, otherwise I would just drop him, as I have others in my life who I didn't see reasons to hang around for. My point is just because I don't have that hard black and white line like you do doesn't make me wrong in taking the approach that's not the same as yours. |
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