The narcissist is the ‘the boy who cried wolf’ who gets away with it

Aesop’s version of the fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, is so legendary that we might not see how scarily applicable it is to our everyday world, and especially today where narcissists play with their empaths like cats do with their balls of wool.

Try this for size. Think of the phenomenon of being called to a crisis once, and you’re hyper alert. Nothing comes of it. The next time it happens, you spring to action, but it’s not quite the fright it was initially. Finally, it happens a third time; well, we’ve been here before.

There is a conditioning that the clever (pathological) narcissist engages in.

The first time he abuses you, you’re horrified. It was once too often! But he worms his way back into your life, because he knows you love him. And, of course, there’s something very special about this man! (Narcissists embody everything that is ‘very special’—i.e. in the worst of ways.)

The second time he abuses you (it is so strange to even say this), it feels just as bad, but somehow the act is normalised. It’s horrific, of course, but incredibly we normalise it.

The third time, two polar opposite things happen, that just messes with your mind and heart. Your mind says, “He’s gone too far,” but your heart cannot see through his act; “He’s just so pitiable,” and the excuses to cover for his criminal behaviour run counter and in direct opposition to the truth you know—that IT MUST STOP. NOW.

The boy who cried wolf, as the fable would have it, came up against a town’s folk who would not believe him on the third occasion. The boy who cried wolf was forced to learn a very hard but dear lesson—for anyone who could learn. Notice that it took a whole town united. The narcissist gets away with it because he targets individuals.

Our narcissist refuses to learn. Indeed, in a world according to him, everybody else has learning to do, especially if they have the audacity to oppose him.

The narcissist conditions his empath to keep giving him more chances. He plays on their empathic strength, undoing it, because deep down he hates anyone having a strength that loves so unconditionally, that trusts unequivocally, and that can live sacrificially.

He keeps crying wolf. He keeps traumatising his empath. And he keeps getting away with it, until on the 62nd attempt, bruised and battered psychologically, the empath, still dazed by the confusion that can only indicate the subtleties of gaslighting, says ENOUGH!

BOUNDARIES. She draws up boundaries. But she herself will need the help of others—a town united—to enforce them, because she is wrapped around his little finger.

The most confounding of all situations is where the narcissist has convinced his empath that he is an empath—he’s got such depth of insight, and he feels and communicates with such charismata. Little does the empath know that all along their narcissist has been feeding. On them!

He’s a masterstroke of crying wolf and getting away with it every single time. Even when he’s supposedly being punished, the punishment itself he uses to woo his way back. This is covert mind control, for the narcissist well knows the empath cannot stand punishing anyone.

No matter how big the problem gets he manages to creep right back into the life of the empath. Only by becoming like him can she get away from him. 

At least as far as he’s concerned, she must be applauded for having the strength to be rid of him for good. If she’s wise, she’ll get help. She’ll get good counsel, she’ll listen, and she’ll apply it.

Some of the best advocates seem over the top; they aren’t! For these kinds of problems, we must become mercenary, and this is particularly a problem for Christians who feel they must be nice. For people who are diabolically unable to love there can be no mercy.

Jesus wasn’t nice with narcissists. They were the only ones he treated with unashamed disdain. But, because we’re not Jesus, we won’t have his wisdom, strength, humility, and ability to discern their guile, to do battle in the very arena the narcissist was made for in this skirmish.

The commonest thought we have when it comes to dealing with narcissists is that we’ve got some kind of control. Not against a tyranny of maleficence we haven’t. We underestimate what he’s capable of to our peril.

What we must do is look at the evidence that our eyes see. We look at the law. We face the concreteness of the facts at hand. We are honest about feeling controlled and manipulated. You see behind the lack of physical abuse (if battering isn’t present) to see how he emotionally, verbally, socially, financially and spiritually abuses you. We see how quickly he is defensive. We note how quick he is to get us to doubt what even our own eyes and senses know to be facts. We recall his diversions. We see his aberrant neglect that indicates it’s all about him. Through what the mind knows we act.

Photo by Heather M. Edwards on Unsplash