by Amy Chan
But a month before the big wedding, Tracy received a call.
The call.
From the other woman.
Apparently, perfect Tom had been living a double life with someone else for their entire relationship. In fact, Tom had been involved with the other woman for so long that by the end of the call, neither one could tell if she was the “other woman.”
After coming to Renew and dissecting the relationship a bit more, it became clear to Tracy there had been red flags all along. But the lifestyle, the house in the Hamptons, the dreamboat guy—they had been enough to make her overlook them. For example, life had to revolve around Tom’s needs—his career, his social functions, and his preferences in where they should live. If she ever felt upset or questioned him, her feelings or concerns were invalidated; she’d be accused of being “too sensitive” and “acting crazy” (hello, gaslighting). Tracy felt lucky that a charming guy like Tom chose her, and bit by bit, she bought into the story he was telling her and stopped doubting him.
Tracy was a prime target for a narcissist. She was beautiful and smart (required traits for a narcissist, who needs his partner to boost his status and validation), she was overaccommodating and habitually put the needs of others before her own, and since she had exited a loveless marriage, she was starved for passion and excitement. When Tom came along, it was as if he were the remedy to everything that ailed her. He had the finances, the lifestyle, the good looks, and the promise of an exciting life. Tracy wanted so badly for Tom to be “the one” that she filled in the gaps with projection and fantasy. She had a virtual PICK ME sign above her head.
Tracy’s story is unfortunately not unique. At Renew, approximately 30 percent of the participants are getting over a breakup with a narcissist or come to bootcamp because they are still in a relationship with one they can’t seem to leave.
You would think that spotting a narcissist is easy; however, they can be incredibly charming, attractive, and seductive. In fact, an experiment with speed dating showed that those with the highest scores on the narcissism scale were perceived as the most desirable and datable by the opposite sex.15 These people are often in powerful positions and overrepresented in fields where being the center of attention is an asset, such as entertainment, entrepreneurship, or politics.16 They’re the life of the party, tend to surround themselves with people, and invest in their appearance (i.e., they’re hot). People are usually pining for their attention, and this can feel extremely validating when that prized attention is directed at you.
When the popular, powerful hot guy suddenly directs his laser-focused attention on you, it naturally feels great! You feel lucky that out of everyone he could have chosen, he chose you. Because he’s skilled at being likable, he says all the things you want to hear. He may even engage in big romantic gestures: flowers, trips, gifts, and promises of the future. Suddenly, intoxicated by the whirlwind of romance, you think you’ve found your Prince Charming, Mr. Big, and Harry Styles all in one. You’re hooked. And once you’re hooked, the switch happens. Suddenly, Mr. Perfect withdraws, and you don’t feel so special anymore. You start clamoring for his attention, his time, that rush of feel-good chemicals that you were flooded with in the beginning. You might even start sacrificing your needs to please him, to reclaim his validation and attention. And as soon as you’re on the brink of cutting him off, he comes back strong and love bombs you, overwhelming you with tokens of affection to regain your interest. A tornado of excessive flattery, gifts, and romantic gestures sweeps you back up into his vortex, and suddenly you’re hooked again.
Narcissists also present a false self, where they appear to be the loving and attentive person of your dreams until you don’t do what they want. They will then become punishing, distant, and cold. They gaslight, a term used by psychologists that describes when someone uses manipulation so that his target doubts her own sanity, judgment, and memory. Psychotherapist Jeremy Bergen explains: “It’s a tactic one partner uses in an effort to exert power over, gain control over, and inflict emotional damage on the other.” He adds, “One of the big warning signs is this persistent sense that what you saw, you didn’t really see. And what you experienced, you didn’t really experience. What you felt, you didn’t really feel.”17
Without the awareness that this is all typical narcissistic behavior, you feel confused and start blaming yourself, convinced that if only you behave in the right way, do more of this or less of that, the Prince Charming you once knew will reappear.
NARCISSISM AS THE NEW SCAPEGOAT
Narcissism is a spectrum disorder and exists on a continuum ranging from a few narcissistic traits to a full-blown personality disorder, which is a mental illness. There’s no doubt that understanding the clinical terminology can help us make sense of things, but we need to be careful of falsely pathologizing others as a catchall for bad relationships. Today, with our vocabularies woke AF, we’ve armed ourselves with a new lexicon where the people who piss us off are now diagnosed as having a personality disorder.
He might have been noncommittal. He might have been an asshole. But this doesn’t automatically make him a narcissist.
When we point the finger of blame by falsely accusing someone of having a personality disorder, we don’t see or accept the reality of the situation. When we can’t accept reality, we cannot grow. We stay stuck repeating the same emotional experiences, just with different people: “It’s the treadmill’s fault! Not the fact that I keep running on it.”
Whatever you want to call your ex—asshole, narcissist, avoidant, or crazy—if you’re consistently choosing toxic people, this says a lot more about your patterns than anything else.
NARCISSIST PROOFING
You know what the best narcissist repellant is? A strong sense of self-worth. People who don’t outsource their validation and need to feel “special” to someone else are hard targets for the narcissist to manipulate. If you’ve fallen for one, you have to take accountability for how you fell for the narcissist in the first place.
What made you want the connection so badly that you ignored the signs? Because, let’s be honest, there are always signs.
Did you play into the fantasy he presented? Were you yearning for external validation to feel special? Did you get intoxicated by the lure of the image he projected because you thought it could be a ticket out of your current status? Were you, perhaps, trying to up-level your lifestyle?
It’s easy to point the finger at someone for being a narcissist. But how many of us can admit to having some narcissistic characteristics too? Have you dated someone because it was easier to latch on to his life, his success, and his power rather than create that on your own? Have you ever dated someone to boost your self-esteem or status?
Mic drop.
THE LOVE SPELL: A PROVOCATIVE CONCOCTION OF CHEMICALS
Speaking of narcissists . . .
Meet Justin.
Justin was the quintessential bad boy: a well-known, perpetually single New York player, a successful lawyer with an impressive Tribeca loft. We met at a festival, where I was drinking tequila straight from the bottle, and he was partying in the VIP section. We danced. He kissed me. So began our romance.
Justin whisked me off to St. Kitts on our second date. By month two, we were jetting off to Tulum. Every experience we had together was intense, exciting, and passionate. Of course, we were principally opposite in the most important ways: I believed in monogamy, and he didn’t. He told me he wanted to be emotionally but not sexually monogamous:
JUSTIN: All I’m saying is, if I casually hooked up with someone, that shouldn’t mean the end of the relationship. All guys cheat; they just lie about it. I want to be honest.
AMY: Actually, I don’t think all guys cheat. I want a monogamous relationship and know I can find someone who wants the same thing. What’s the value of me getting into a relationship with you? Because I don’t like what you’re offering!
JUSTIN: You’d get street cred for taming me.
Can you say “heart melt”?
So, what did I do? I stayed with him, duh. I convinced myself that I could manage my emotions with him and keep things casual.
Unsurprisingly, Justin dominated my headspace. I was physically addicted to him even though we had nothing in common except for sex and tequila. I was thrown off by my chemical response to this man: the tingle in the pit of my stomach, the warm flush lighting up my cheeks. My. Heart. Wouldn’t. Stop. Racing.
That was Mother Nature screwing with me. And you know the feeling.
Love is not an emotion; rather, it’s a motivation system designed for humans to mate and procreate.
When we fall for someone, there’s a flurry of chemicals and hormones reacting in our brain. If you’re so lucky, the chemical cocktail brings you closer to a suitable mate, but our primal mating drives can often trick us into getting attached to someone who’s not a compatible partner.
Human behavior researcher Helen Fisher discovered there are three mating drives that intertwine to convince us we’re in love: the first is lust, driven by testosterone; the second is romantic attraction, driven by high dopamine and norepinephrine levels and low serotonin; and the third is attachment, driven by oxytocin and vasopressin.18
The Spark
Lust is driven by the hormone testosterone, which promotes aggression, risk-taking, assertiveness, and self-confidence and enhances the visual (spatial ability)—it’s our sex drive working at full force.
We know “the gaze” all too well. The gravitational pull that draws us together, which neuroscience terms our “adaptive oscillators.” Should the gaze become mutual—perhaps made more uninhibited by a nightclub setting, sexy clothes, and booze—and you fall into another person’s eyes, that’s your adaptive oscillators locking and forming. The stronger this gaze becomes, the more overwhelming your lust. It takes less than a second for a person to find someone physically attractive and initiate a gaze.
For men, who tend to produce ten times more testosterone than women, the spark of the gaze is a lot more visual. Within microseconds, a man’s brain judges a woman’s physicality and her receptivity to him (animal brains assessing potential for sex/mating). This is why men report love at first sight much more often than women. Some research suggests that men with higher baseline levels of testosterone, while impetuous and aggressively romantic and sexual during the lust phase, tend to marry less frequently, have more adulterous affairs, and divorce more often.19
For women, visual stimulants infer character, status, dominance, and wealth. Rather than sex/mating dictating her gaze, she is subconsciously assessing if a relationship might be in the future, as well as signs of the man’s ability to provide and protect. Once he checks out physically, the next assessment is his voice. Women generally perceive men with deep voices who speak rapidly as more educated and better looking. The female brain is driven to seek security and reliability in a potential mate before she has sex. In a study using the brain scans of women who had recently fallen in love, the women showed more brain activity in regions associated with reward, attention, and emotion. The scans of men’s brains showed that most activity was in the visual processing areas and sexual arousal.20
The Flame
Although lust motivates people to have sex with as many partners as possible, romantic attraction takes the process a step further, helping to focus one’s mating energy on just one person at a time. This mating drive is often referred to as “passionate love” or “infatuation” and is characterized by obsessive thinking about a person and a strong desire for emotional union.21
Playboy Justin soon told me he was at a stage in his life where he was ready to settle down. He told me he was convinced I was the person he’d do that with. He said, “I knew within the first twenty minutes of meeting you that we’re going to be together.”
I became addicted to how special he made me feel. The rewards I received from his promises fed my addiction and perpetuated the romantic attraction. Justin would shower me with attention, desire, and passion, and right when it felt like we were getting closer, he’d pull back. He’d become unresponsive, sometimes disappearing completely. He’d push me away and sleep with other women. Despite his behavior toward me, I craved him more. This was because of a hormone related to dopamine called norepinephrine, which is released during attraction. It is responsible for the surge of energy, the giddy feelings, and the loss of appetite and need for sleep when you’re in the throes of romantic attraction. Although more scientific research needs to be done, many scientists believe that during the attraction phase, there is also a reduction of serotonin, which is characterized by the feelings of intense infatuation and obsession. People who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder also show similarly low levels of serotonin.
The Burn
Before Justin, I couldn’t even have a crush on two people at once without feeling like I was cheating. Now, three months in, I was surrendering my values to see if I could make this relationship work. My feelings were building. Wild date nights were morphing into me staying over, packing lunches for him for work, and making future plans. Justin went from being the hot extra to the protagonist of my movie reel. I was getting attached. I should have known better. This was just Mother Nature running her course.
According to Helen Fisher, this drive of attachment enabled our ancient ancestors to live with a mate long enough to rear a single child through infancy.22 When there was a couple, a child’s chance of survival was more likely. The hormone at play here is oxytocin, which has a significant role in pair bonding. It promotes trust, empathy, generosity, and affection. Oxytocin levels increase when we hug or kiss a loved one, when we orgasm, and when a woman gives birth and when she breastfeeds. Because the level of oxytocin is enhanced by estrogen, women tend to have stronger reactions to oxytocin. So, women are more likely to fall first . . . and hard.
Attachment is characterized by feelings of calm, security, social comfort, and emotional union. Because its primary drive is to ensure successful mating, it’s helpful to look at the chemicals in a man’s brain when his female partner is pregnant. During pregnancy, a man picks up on his partner’s pheromones, secreted chemicals that can trigger physiological responses. This stimulates his brain to produce the hormone prolactin. Men with higher levels of prolactin appear to be more alert and responsive to their infants’ cries once the baby is born and are more likely to encourage their child to explore and interact with toys. Also, the woman’s pheromones cause the man’s testosterone levels to drop by about 30 percent. It’s arguable that this is biology’s way of dissuading men from seeking sex with other partners, instead encouraging them to focus on their families just after the birth of a child. Men with higher testosterone levels, however, appear less likely to be attentive to their children’s needs.23
In the end, we need to understand that what we know as love is more a convergence of biological factors that once ensured our survival as a species than a swell of true emotion. We can’t always trust what our bodies are naturally wired to do. Love does not necessarily evolve in a linear fashion from lust to attraction to attachment either. That’s why you can have sex with someone and never get to a stage of bonding. Or, after years of platonic friendship, you suddenly develop lust for your best friend.
Our mating drives developed in the most primal part of our brains. As “evolved” as we may think we are as a species, our brains are still operating with the same basic programming. It is up to us to be cognizant of this biological reality and be aware of the true nature of potential partnership. Even if biology leads us down the path to couplehood, it may not be right for you. So it was with Justin.
We all subconsciously build defense mechanisms to protect us from pain; we develop habits and coping mechanisms to help us survive; we create story lines to make sense of the past. Without knowing, dysfunction builds, one layer on top of another, creating our baseline. Soon, we become comfortable with that new normal.
Add chemistry, societal press
ure, false ideals, fantasies, and the absence of models of what a healthy relationship looks and feels like to this mix, and we are left with a complicated cycle. We say we want one thing, but we are ruled by our patterns, subconscious conditioning, and biological imperatives, so we behave and attract another thing. This cycle continues with the same end playing out each time.
Armed with self-awareness and acknowledgment of chemical impetuses, you have the tools to break the cycle, choose differently, and create a new beginning.
7
A New Standard for Love
You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world . . . but you do have some say in who hurts you.
John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
In previous chapters, we’ve discussed how our wounds from early life impact whom we are drawn to. Our chemistry compass steers our partner choices, and when we find ourselves consistently drawn to the “wrong” types of partners, this is likely an indication that our chemistry compass needs some fine-tuning.
In the past, my romantic life was defined by a pattern of short-lived romances that ended in disaster. I habitually fell head over heels for guys who were emotionally unavailable and never gave the “nice guy” a chance. My breakup with Adam was the catalyst for me to start reflecting on my patterns in relationships. If I wanted to be in a healthy, committed relationship one day, I would need to take a look deep within and make a serious change.
As a highly analytical person, I set out to discover the patterns I was enacting and the defense mechanisms I had built around my heart. Quickly, I saw that I had a type. The men I was drawn to were all busy entrepreneurs, all married to their work. I had developed a warped sense of attraction, equating unavailability and inconsistency with excitement, and excitement with love. My model of what love felt like was not a healthy one.