Encounter with a narcissist

The following sounds like a character assassination. I guess it is — I am trying to induce an acceptance in myself rather than anger because there is no hope of L acknowledging any of this, and so it is for me and not for him. He is lost and would probably take delight if he knew this existed.

My expectations of him were enormously unrealistic. It is the fault of my own expectations, not of his character. It is like walking into a bar to get drunk, then deciding you don't want to do that any more and trying to persuade everyone to stop drinking.

I found myself thinking I was helping someone who had a physical injury to recover. Long story short, he did have a legitimate injury I think — I forgive myself for the doubt which is only relieved by the nature of the evidence — but, from the beginning of the six-month period to the end, I battled through a daily web of lies and manipulations. In the end, I exploded in frustration and so he blocked me. Having told me he was at the beach, a second person with perfect English responded on his other phone — a phone I had to trick him into confessing that he owned and could only have bought with money I had supplied for treatment. Having blocked me, he then advertised having spent a lot of the money on wildly inappropriate things, thinking I could not see, with some accompanying fabricated evidence elsewhere about its legitimacy.

Nonetheless, he is a narcissistic child with an apparent learning difficulty who has no other way of fulfilling his wishes and seemingly no legitimate method of creating an income. It is structurally impossible for him to do the right thing, he is clearly not used to having his needs met and it seems he has learned that honesty is dangerous. He is wired to scheme and manipulate, but not in a skillful way: he barely maintains the same lie for more than a few hours. There were three different stories about the reason for his visit to Soão Paulo on the same day.

I cannot be sure if he thinks people believe the tangle of lies, but since he switches stories so freely, surely he must think he is undetected? It is really grossly unfair of me to chastise him now: I should have called it out at the time. I did try that once or twice. However, I learned that the lies are carefully constructed to be able to be dismantled at speed, or he can retreat into a storm of mock self-pity that suggests harm would come to him if you do not believe him. That he produces this type of lie without any thought or apparent effort suggests that deceit is a core tool he uses to produce the crust that protects his fragility.

He adeptly compartmentalizes thoughts that would induce shame and, once sealed away, they can never be revisited. It took a week of nagging him to apologize for the most innocuous issue, despite the income for treatment being at risk. Now that the situation is gone, the chances of his openly admitting stealing are negligible and it would cause him significant harm to be coerced into doing so. He cannot resist boasting about these behaviours though, which is a weakness, but he does so in a manner that separates the action from the consequence, taking credit for a good situation he stole for to create, and even employing others to fabricate supporting evidence. It is the same breathtaking delusional state that allows the lying to be so persuasive.

He keeps the truth just one step into the distance and, by purposefully manufacturing attraction in others, it seems he grants himself license to take advantage, imagining he is irresistible. The continuous stream of depressing seductive poses he sent grant some weight to this idea. This behavioral mechanism is clearly designed to avoid shame, a key characteristic of L's character. There was not a single moment where I felt connected to this person I thought I was helping, despite the continuous theater. But his mock self-pitying and habit of keeping you simultaneously close and distant were too tiring to battle.

The shame of asking for help in an authentic way from another human being is seen as much too risky and might invite psychological catastrophe and is to be avoided. This might allow the poison sealed in one compartment to leak into his avoidant, pride-filled daily life. It is better for him to be surly, preferring to steal than to request, thinking that developing himself physically is a reasonable substitute for having inner strength and trust in himself and others. He is undeniably very handsome and very strong, but this functions merely to allow him to feel superior to others by default. It helps him avoid the feeling of desolation whose source he cannot quite pinpoint and that he has no hope of resolving with protein shakes.

And so it is counterproductive, and still he conceals everything. He must be tricked into telling the truth, which he deeply resents. He is an Instagram baby who is concerned only with how he appears and has no actual fully-rounded character to speak of and his sense of responsibility and gratitude to helpful strangers is one of the many things to be arrested by lingering memories of having been bullied, which is tragically beginning to harden and has skewed his perception of others' intentions.

But he does love his mum. And he has a girl who perhaps loves him. That he is able to maintain any relationships at all with such an approach to others is a fascination. That he played me so hard indicates that he has the capacity, and that is all it takes to understand that sooner or later this behaviour will seep into every relationship this narcissist develops – L is always number one and he thinks nothing of causing others significant distress to get what he wants when the wishes of others are not aligned.

In summary, he is a reckless and cold child who retreats further into a fantastical world in which he is battling countless external enemies, — always victorious of course — sublimely ignorant of the thick black clouds produced by his intense self-loathing that gather and choke out the remaining glimmer of light in his heart.

Otherwise, splendid chap. I always wanted to get to know a narcissist, see how I would get on. It is not as fun as I had imagined. It is a bleak experience to engage with someone so empty and manipulative.

There is no longer any purpose in entertaining thoughts of an apology or an explanation from him. He has recently revealed his utter contempt and delight in having done this, and so I am no longer interested. The last fragment of hope that I was mistaken has evaporated, all thanks to his inability to maintain his cool at the critical times. He has made it impossible for himself to recover now, and so we proceed with a different plan.

Now I have to give thought to how much I make others aware of the dangers of getting involved with him, keeping in mind the potential for harm. This is entirely new territory for me, and so I think I will seek the advice of a professional about the recommended scope of this.

If I lived in a small apartment with few resources and a meager income, and a man on the other side of the world who clearly found me attractive started sending me money, and who also accepted my lies, is there even the slightest chance I would consider misspending it and taking advantage?