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| Love Junkies and Heroin Addicts Continued...
The solution to addiction is normally a spiritual solution. This is why in the twelve step programs the first step is realizing we are powerless over our addiction to the drug and the second step is that we made a decision to turn our lives over to God, or a higher power, as we understand him. It is in seeking after something greater than ourselves that we find comfort in life. Perhaps when we are involved with the narcissist we have unconsciously assigned him God like power in our lives. We have assigned him the power to define us, to determine our worth and value. When we fall short of perfection in Gods eyes we feel our own worthlessness on a very deep level. Hating the narcissist is not the answer! I tried to hate him and project all that worthlessness I was feeling right back onto him. But it didn’t work. How could I hate someone I had loved so deeply? What I had to do was realize that I didn’t really know him and he didn’t really know me. We were both living a lie. I couldn’t be responsible for his lie but I could be responsible for my own. He could go on living in his lie just as the heroin goes on entering people’s bloodstreams, but it wasn’t going to enter mine anymore. I would set myself free of this addictive force in my life. I would wake up to the truth and embrace what I was feeling inside. Looking back on the moment when I believed I was a love addict I realize it wasn’t love I was addicted to, it was approval. I sought the approval from someone who seldom administered it. My addiction went way back into childhood when I sought the approval of my stepfather. He always found things to make fun of me about whether it was how I ate, how I dressed, the makeup I wore, my chubbiness, my intelligence, my laziness, my sickness or whatever else he could find that didn’t fit into his vision of the world. I didn’t fit! I just never felt I was good enough! My unconscious life quest was about feeling good enough. The initial encounter with the narcissist was a huge high because he was so very approving of me. It was like I had finally met my match. I had found someone who approved of me so completely. It was so comfortable to just melt into him and his acceptance of me. I don’t know exactly when the disapproval began; it was very subtle, of course. As I reflect back I remember early in relationship that I didn’t feel my needs were being met. Isn’t that ironic? I didn’t feel I was being listened too, or considered the way I needed to be. My needs for communication and attention were not being met. I pulled him aside early on and told him I needed to talk to him. I expressed how I was feeling and told him I didn’t feel my needs were being met in the relationship. I fully expected that this wonderful man would be attentive and listen to what I had to say and ask me what I needed but instead he asked me a question. “What are YOU going to do about it?" What he was telling me was that this was not HIS problem it was MINE. And…I took the bait. I took it on! I somehow believed it was about me and from that day forward everything was about me. Years later I finally decided what I was going to do about it. I was going to leave and find a way to get my needs met. He could have cared less! There was a long line of beautiful women waiting in the wings who would not be so demanding. I felt so betrayed by his lack of ability to invest emotionally in the relationship. I asked myself over and over again why he didn’t value the relationship enough to want to give anything to it or invest anything to save it. But I came to realize that he never did invest anything. I was the only one who invested and I was the only one who really had anything to lose. The only thing he had invested was on a financial level. He invested in the support of our household and was really quite generous about it. I think this is what kept me hanging in there. I traded my soul for his financial support. Then towards the end when I was in the process of reclaiming my personal power he asked me to start paying half the bills. At this point I was so irate because, on some level, I realized there was no longer any exchange at all. There was no trade off. I would be getting nothing for my investment. This is when I left. It was this horrible realization that I had invested myself so deeply on an emotional level with this man and he had not invested himself at all that caused me the greatest pain. I had given my very soul, my lifeblood to this relationship and when it was his turn to give he went elsewhere. He had no interest in saving the relationship. He didn’t even ask me why I was leaving. When I told him I had found another place to live he asked me where he was supposed to live. He didn’t ask me what was going on, how I was feeling, what made me want to leave or if there was anything he could do to change my mind. He just let me go as if I was his roommate. He even offered to help me move. What a nice guy! There was no emotional energy exchange in this relationship. There was only my giving and his taking. I would never have had my needs met. There was no way for me to win here. I had to leave if I was to survive, otherwise I would have simply drained my life away. When we find ourselves in narcissistic relationships we have to recognize our own addiction to whatever it is we are trying to get from the relationship and we have to focus our attention and energy back onto ourselves and getting our own needs met. We can no longer look to the narcissistic drug to appease us. He is a hollow, empty shell wanting to be filled with our energy. As long as we are with him we must give our energy to him. When we stop feeding him with our energy he will go away. |
For the heroin addict to finally break free of the seductive power of his drug, he must not only swear off the drug indefinitely but he must find, on some level, what it was he was seeking in that high. Most will find it is their connection with God, or the oneness of life that they are seeking. For the first few moments, that rush that comes over the user, there is a moment when the self disappears and there is nothing left but oneness with all that is. It is a connection to life they long for and crave but have not found any other way. It is a connection to life that makes all the big stuff seem small and insignificant.