Power Dynamics With a Narcissist (Song)

For the narcissist it's all about obtaining narcissistic supply, all about power and control.

For the victim it's about having a loving, normal relationship.

From the narcissists perspective, the victim is there, to make the narcissist feel better, by carrying the narcissists very unpleasant emotional baggage for the narcissist and by agreeing to take responsibility for it and to accept the baggage as their own.

Narcissistic supply; a sense of power is what is soothing to the narcissists own bad feelings of shame and trauma.

No one would voluntarily agree to carrying someone else's emotional baggage for them. The narcissist achieves it by deception and trickery.

Power dynamics in an interaction with a narcissist:

The Narcissist cares more about the narcissistic supply, than the individual person they are involved with. Narcissistic supply is top priority and s/he is addicted to it. Narcissists crave narcissistic supply to the point where they feel like they will dissolve or disappear, if they fail to obtain it.

One the one hand, this can give them seemingly the upper hand in a relationship, because they don't really have that much caring for the individual person they are involved with and are capable of just walking off, if they have a replacement lined up.

Not being that attached to the person and being capable of just walking off, shifts the power dynamic to the side of the narcissist.

Narcissists tend to cheat on their partner, if they can get narcissistic supply elsewhere. Sooner or later the narcissist devalues, replaces and discards.

On the other hand the narcissists addiction to narcissistic supply is their absolute achilles heal !

If the narcissist doesn't have a replacement lined up or ready (yet), and if the victim is the main source of narcissistic supply, then the power dynamic is shifted to the side of the victim.  

The victim usually isn't aware of this and the normal person isn't in a relationship for power and control. 

The narcissist is all about power and control.

The target is more attached to the narcissist, even than s/he would be in a normal relationship, because of the idealization phase, the mirroring, the emotional addiction, which was created through the emotional high at the beginning and the smaller emotional highs later on.

A narcissist is using the victims ability to love, against him/her ! The narcissist is incapable of love.

The narcissist wants the upper hand, because he is so dependent on and addicted to the narcissistic supply and needs to control the source of it. This is also why the emotional addiction of the victim to the narcissist is a projection of the narcissists own addiction to narcissistic supply.

Creating emotional addiction in the target is a way to control and gain power over the source of narcissistic supply and put the source in the same position (or lower) than the narcissist is in and to keep the source around, even during the devalue stage, so the narcissist can control acces to his drug narcissistic supply and dump all his unwanted emotional baggage into the victim.

Here are some key sentences from the song "Easy lover" - Phil Collins and Philip Bailey

"get out quick!" - before the emotional addiction takes a hold of you

"Before you know it you'll be on your knees!" - the narcissist will have the upper hand, before you know what has happened

"She's like no other!" - She is not normal.

"She'll take your heart, but you won't feel it. "- She'll cause you to be very much in love in the  idealize phase and you won't realize that it's like a love theft.  It's like stealing, because  it's getting the target to love and give a lot of positive supply, but under false pretenses, through pretending and decieving. By finding out what it is the target wants and then turning herself into the person the target is looking for. This will cause the target to love the narcissist, or the illusion the narcissist has created, very much. But it is not real, it is a love con. The narcissist does not know how to love, so the target is not getting any love back.

"easy lover" - is a reference to speed and the attention during the idealisation phase, which makes it very easy to be pulled into the "relationship" and very fast. One of the red flags of a narcissist, is that they move things along very quickly. This is not, because they love the target so much, but because they want to gain power over him/her and they know that their deception might not withstand the test of time, so they want to hook the target in quickly.

"better forget it, you'll never get it"- The narcissist dangles "love" infront of the target, like a bait. It's the carrot on the stick. But the initial high of the idealisation phase is not repeated and the target keeps on hoping for it to come back or for "misunderstandings" to get resolved, so things can go back to the wonderful beginning phase. It's best to understand that the narcissist is dangling a carrot on a stick in front of the victim, and it's just to motivate the victim to give the narcissist what he wants. Chances are they don't actually have the thing they are promising. The carrot is made of cardboard.

"don't try to change her, just leave her" - good advice. Go "no contact".

This song was probably not written with the label of narcissistic abuse in mind, but it is a very good description of it.

Assc Direct - Leave The Narcissist Now Before This Happens

This video is explaining the addiction to the narcissist and the dynamics of the relationship with the narcissist.

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