Good habits

I like to think I’m a very disciplined person. I’m very good at delaying gratification. That’s how I study. That’s how I learn new skills, learn a new language, learn a new sport. I understand that if I have patience and I let myself fail, then I’ll grow over time. I think I just never knew how to apply that to my relationships. What I learned from studying and experiencing a narcissist’s brain is that a narcissist is constantly searching for urgency. They’re searching for immediate gratification constantly and all the time, particularly when it comes to validation and love. One of the ways I got stuck is because I never seemed to be able to win or beat him, but it was because I had a habit of underestimating myself in the present so that I can have long-term results. For example, a kind of contest you would lose with a narcissist is, let’s say you meet someone else and you want to move on with someone else. When you’re starting to meet someone else, obviously it takes time to get to know them and time to express those big feelings and feel like it’s all romantic and enjoy it and go out and hold hands. But a narcissist will compete with you by finding another partner, but he would dramatically fake and force the situation to be something very immediate. So he will pretend and lie to make that new person fast track the relationship. So even after one week, maybe you’re still talking to someone else and you’re still getting to know them, but he’s already out holding hands and showing public affection with someone else. So you’re constantly being appended no matter what it is, no matter what the fight is about, no matter what emotion you have, your ego is constantly being appended and you want to win and you want to find that moment where you feel like you’re better than the narcissist. You feel like you’re bigger than them, but that moment never comes because you’re never going to feel great and big and perfect in the moment for the qualities that make you feel confident that are all long-term qualities. Because everything that makes me feel good about myself from like an ego point of view is things that I’ve learned over time. Like I’ve learned better dancing skills over time to the point where I’m probably almost surpassing that narcissist now because he’s not investing in learning anything new. And my career is growing and my writing skills are growing and also my tolerance for loneliness and self reflection is growing so that I can show up to my friends and relationships as a more whole person. And these are all things that make me feel confident. They’re not anything that I could win in a contest instantly, in like some ego contest instantly. And trying to win that contest was what was keeping me tied to the narcissist. Because when you don’t feel good enough, you feel like you can’t leave. But I think that’s just a really miraculous thing that I learned from a narcissistic relationship is that feeling of being better than someone else is simply never going to come. And that’s not what self validation and self love is about. And so I’m using the narcissist as a template for everything I shouldn’t do. Like now I don’t even need to feel proud when I look in the mirror and think like, okay, I’m so pretty. Because it’s just not necessary and it’s not what’s creating the healthiest, happiest version of me that loves myself the most. And I don’t have to feel bad about myself, but I don’t have to feel great about myself. I just need to be in that stable neutral zone where the narcissist is not actually able to do. And that’s kind of ironically where my safe space is. It’s in the space that he doesn’t know how to reach because he doesn’t have it. And it’s just this zone of self love.

The love felt like heroin because it came in heavy intense hits after he completely socially isolated me. It’s easy to send a bachata song and pretend it’s a real feeling right now. It’s romantic but it doesn’t actually mean anything. Some people won’t declare their feelings dramatically at all but will spend their whole lives growing that connection with you. I was waiting for a feeling, like I was waiting for a hit of a drug. It never occurred to me that feelings are built with discomfort and patience, the way I build other areas of my life. It was a form of emotional laziness that held me back.