Have you ever had a relationship that left you extremely hurt and confused after it ended? Did you feel like you were trapped in an alternate reality because nothing about your partner’s behavior made any logical sense? Did you feel like a part of your heart and soul died?

Did any of the following happen in the beginning?

You were made to feel like the most perfect person your partner ever met

He/she constantly called you and wanted to be around you.

He/she showered you with a constant stream of praise and admiration.

You felt like you were put on an unrealistic Pedestal of Perfection.

It feels like he/she has everything in common with you. You have met your soulmate, or someone very special in the least.

Deep in your mind you knew there was something very off about these very intense interactions, but you pushed it aside. After all, he/she must really like you if they are making such a big fuss about you, right?

Sadly, the answer is: WRONG. what your partner is doing is called is called idealization. It is the beginning stage of a relationship with someone who has traits from what’s known as Cluster B Personality Disorders. This grouping contains such disorders as borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and psychopathy/sociopathy (known as antisocial personality disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual, which is that mental health professionals use to diagnose mental illnesses). People with Cluster B personality disorders have a strong tendency to idealize and hold their partners up to unrealistic standards of perfection.

What the borderline, narcissist, or psychopath (hereby known as a borderline narcopath) is doing is mirroring you. He/she is taking all of your good qualities that he/she admires and wants to posess themselves and reflecting it back to you. This makes the target feel special and valuable in a way he/she has most likely never felt and the target becomes infatuated. It has an intoxicating, surreal feel to it, more so than normal infatuation that it feels like an extraordinary love is blossoming.

This idealization doesn’t last, though. After days, weeks, months, or even years a distinct change will happen. It can be gradual or overnight but it will happen. The borderline narcopath will start to enter a stage called devaluation. It is the beginning of the end, and he/she will exhibit some of the behaviors listed below:

He/she will distance themselves from you, especially after you feel like you have made a deep emotional connection.

He/she will find multiple areas of fault with you. Nitpicking and arguing.

He/she may start in constantly inject people of the opposite sex into your relationship (known as triangulation). Your partner can’t go a day without talking about another person, and it feels like he/she is trying to make you jealous.

Nothing you ever do is good enough.

This is called devaluation, and it is the middle part of the borderline narcopath’s relationship cycle. They do this for multiple reasons, but I find this is the main one: you have come close to seeing who he/she really is on the inside, which is nothing much more than an empty soul and a lot of pain. They are in search of the perfect partner; they want a partner who will be mother/father/lover to them and accept them no matter what. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, the borderline narcopath has been made to feel that no one will ever accept him/her completely and fully, so he/she will emotionally detach before his/her partner will to be spared the pain of being abandoned.

The end phase of the cycle is called discard. This is when your partner just up and abandons you in search of a fresh new target to start the cycle all over again. For most people this is the end, and they will never hear from their partner again. For others, the borderline narcopath will keep coming back. For still others (myself included), you never get to the discard phase, and your dealings with your partner become a loop of idealiztion/devaluation with no discard. For those of you who want your partner back and think that the idealization/devaluation is better than idealize/devalue/discard, well, I have to say your are terribly mistaken. At least with the discard you have and ending and are off the emotional roller-coaster, which is exhausting. No, it is up to the person dealing with the borderline narcopath to do the discarding, as painful as that may be. I wrote a couple of little stories/poems that pretty much sums up how I feel being tied to such a person:

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Another Day on Earth

Another day on Earth,

And it like too much Feeling has been innocently dancing in the soft green meadows,

While the Sun shines down and shyly plays with the river of clouds that stream across the baby blue sky,

Which suddenly turns blue-black, then a fierce wind rose,

And blew them all into the lifeless, unloving voids of outer space.

Two Fools, One Thread

I have dragged my body to the tops of multiple mountains,

So my soul could fly free and have a clear view of the happenings below,

Under the guidance of the Sun,

Hoping that I have found the Eternal Peak of Light that has embedded its image into my very being,

And finally have some peace in my self-imposed solitude as I watch all of the terrible happenings of the lands below,

But my quest is foolish to the nth degree.

I have not only been blinded by that harsh Sunlight,

But it has illuminated the very thing I fear most of all:

A silver thread shimmered and swayed in the breeze,

A thread so thin it was nearly nonexistent and only visible on these lonely peaks and under the pure yet harsh Sunlight only they can offer,

My horrified heart feeling it tug and writhe with the wind’s movements,

Knowing that another heart below feels the very same terrific pull,

And has fled in panic to the bottom of the deepest ocean,

In search of the deepest trench,

Hoping that all of the pressure of the water above will keep all that emotion form violently exploding upward,

And revealing itself to those who trawl its surface.

Two fools, indeed.

—Judelan