If only I figure out the right combination – everything will be fine. I can finally make them happy.
Do you feel like this? That surely the person in your life who is causing you pain will become caring and considerate. If only you figure out the right combination of actions and words to make it happen.
It can leave you feeling incompetent, discouraged and hopeless. But also believing that all of the responsibility to solve this problem is yours. If only you were competent, said the right thing, knew all the answers. Then you could fix it. You could fix their pain and yours.
Logically, you know you can’t fix someone else. But that doesn’t mean that your heart, emotions or habits are also on board with that.
Generally, with compassion, discussion and understanding, you could talk out a situation with someone and come to some agreement. Even if it was agreeing to disagree. But hopefully finding a win/win solution.
However, with a narcissist that is not an option. From their perspective, everything is a win/lose situation. Of course if they don’t “win,” they lose. And that is intolerable for them. Even over the most petty situations. To them it feels like their entire value as a person is staked on every little discussion, argument, perception. This seems entirely normal and expected to them.
For some narcissists it’s not just that they must win, leaving you to be the loser. It becomes a challenge to “make” you lose bigger, make you suffer, make you lose your self-confidence footing. So what seems like it would satisfy them doesn’t. And neither does the opposite. Or any other plan you come up with.
That leaves you with an impossible situation where you lose whether you play the game or not, whether you engage or don’t. Thus the similarity to trying to solve the cube blindfolded. You have no direction, you cannot tell if you’re making progress and there is no way to recognize your winning since you can’t see the results. You have no validation for doing the “right” thing.
Also, like solving the cube blindfolded, you are bound to match up a few squares. But each move you make, randomly without true feedback, is just as likely to undue progress as continue it. Expecting that your narcissist can or will tell you what would make them happy, is naive and quickly proven decidedly wrong. As you feel you are achieving what they said would make them happy, likely they will tell you why that is wrong, not enough, or they “never said that.” In fact, sometimes they will shame and punish you for “not knowing” what they want.
Back to the cube.
In fact, you actually have a better chance of solving the cube blindfolded than pleasing a narcissist over any amount of time. Because with the cube, there is an actual result that can be achieved and is highly defined as a successful solving. But the narcissist is never satisfied so you cannot pin down either the goal or the correct result that will validate them enough.
Given the choice – take the blindfold and the cube. It will definitely be less painful.
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