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Why?
Why are malignant narcissists obsessed with multiple online identities and dating sites?
By Jackie Corbett, RSN Volunteer, Ireland
You need to step back, and step away from the word “Malignant” for a moment. Let’s just look at the Narcissist for a moment.
The Narcissist is a person. That means that there are variations in them, just like there are variations in people who wouldn’t earn the label “Narcissist”. And… as it turns out, many of us have narcissistic tendencies to varying degrees. We can’t help it. We all look at the world out of our eyes. We are quite literally, the center of our own universes.
The Narc (narcissist), just fails to see everyone else as also being the center of their own universes. The Narc sees everyone else as just being an extension of their own universe. The Narc will even genuinely fail to understand that some of their actions are actually abusive to their supply, because they will fail to understand that their supply would have feelings, thoughts, desires and wants that were outside the purview of the Narcissist.
The Supply is really the extreme example of how a “Narcissist” can mistreat another person.
Now… to accomplish all of this, the narcissist will typically lie and manipulate. When lies and manipulation are used a certain way, it comes out as Gaslighting…. which is really just creating a situation where the target begins to doubt their own sanity trying to make sense between reality, and the stuff coming out of the Narcissist that the target wants to believe. Lots of lies and manipulations all combined to create that scenario where the Narc says that Up is Down… and the target tries to reconcile that with how they’ve always known Up to be Up.
What’s this got to do with dating online?
This is an analogy, so bear with me. Narcissists are social predators. They feed off people. They feed off attention. So, if we use the ocean in an analogy, Narcissists would be very similar to sharks. Sharks aren’t evil as such, but they do strike us as being relatively unfriendly and quite dangerous. By and large, we tend to avoid them for the sake of our health, unless there are a few inches of strong glass between us and them. Or, we give our attention to one of the milder species in the family.
As social predators, Narcs have learned how to swim through social situations. They know to listen for those key phrases and conversational tidbits that indicate if someone is likely to have dependency issues… or that overly optimistic person that has total faith in humanity… or that really giving guy in the corner who is desperately trying to make friends by giving away cigarettes or hits from his flask, or pens… they have learned to spot the personality “quirks” that indicate those people would be receptive to them.
Doesn’t cover the Multiple accounts angle, I know. But you should start to be able to piece it together.
Narcs need that interaction, to be able to find the people who are receptive to the stuff they do. Online dating sites provide an easy access to people who are desperate to provide attention. Narcs can read a profile, see exactly what that person is looking for, and then they can lie and manipulate that person to make them THINK they are getting exactly what they are looking for. Again, the dating profile makes it easy.
They make multiple accounts to maximize their exposure, and try to appeal to as many people as possible.
They make an account to MATCH what they first see people are looking for, and then they make another different one to match what other people are looking for.
Narcs live their lives behind masks. Internet dating sites make it extraordinarily easy to fabricate masks.
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