To admire and to be admired. Or: The role of narcissism in matters of love

Last week I went on two Tinder dates with two different guys, two days in a row. While I had a great time with the first guy (I was taken to a great, trendy cocktail bar, had good conversations, he covered the uncomfortably high-for-my-standards bill and helped me into my jacket like a lady, asked the right questions and listened carefully) I felt awkward when he kissed me seemingly unexpected and could barely return his affection and lust. We said good night and both went our separate ways back home. The second date with guy number 2 felt thrilling on the other hand. We had Himalayan food (paid our equal shares separately like friends), had way too many drinks for my mind to stay clear, ended up smoking weed in front of another bar with rock music and Nina Simone running, started to make out and I ended up at his place with snuggles and not-too-great-because-drunk-and-high but intimate-thus-satisfying sex. It was an almost perfect night so to say. We ended up hanging out more that weekend and it truly felt like holidays with the sun out for the first time that year and us strolling across a flea market and having coffees by the riverside. I was exhilarated. Although I did have a great time, the more I got to know R. that weekend I felt increasingly pushed into the shadows by his presence and started to feel awkward about expressing myself, just like my inner self was somewhat shrinking. I felt confused because at the same time he was very sweet, like putting lotion on my chin and nose, which were sore from kissing his beardy chin too much, spooning at night without hesitation and cooking for me. It weirdly felt like I was building up the wish to be heard by him, to let him know who I was and all the things on my mind, but didn't know how to, just like someone had chopped my tongue off and put bubble bath in my brain. Thinking back now I remember scenes when he clearly drifted off while I was telling him some story, acting like the sex had ended with his orgasm (I made him finish me anyway) and standing up with no warning to keep on walking when I was still comfortably sitting in the sun. Before seeing R. for the first time, I actually had online stalked the shit out of him and by knowing that he was a researcher at the local university, his unique first name and field of research found his online presence and CV pretty quickly. His public profile was nothing but impressive to me (especially because he was working in a field that I very much respect) and I must admit that I was a bit intimidated by what I saw. On top of that he was quite handsome with his big curly hair and charismatic confidence, which turned me into a shy sissy. What matters more though is that I got the feeling that he was very well aware about his success and charm and seemed to enjoy being admired more than to admire me in return. He was spending more time telling me about his thoughts, his ways of thinking and wisdoms and seemed closed off to what was going on on my mind and my views. At the same time I found myself quite fascinated by him and he didn’t fail to attract my desire for him. You could also say that he was full of himself and my fascination for him is not very surprising, as lots of self-absorbed and narcissist people seem to have that effect on their surroundings. I felt the feeling of loneliness increasing whilst being with him and realized that my desire to be understood and to be admired was cut short. You could wonder why I reacted so sensitively to his behavior. I reasoned that I must have (wherever it stems from) an innate desire to be heard and also taken care of. But this, you can also say, is a very fundamental desire of any human. Ideally there probably should be a balance between hearing and being heard. This was particularly obvious as I had just gone on the other date a few days before. You could say the first guy A. had given me a stage by asking anything that mattered to me, talking about my profession and friends. I think I mentioned my friends and what generally mattered to me a lot and was able to give him a picture of my inner self. Yet I didn’t get much of an idea of who he was because he revealed very little. The focus was on me and he was the listener and commentator. You can say he failed the narcissist ability of making himself and his very person attractive to me although he was perfectly pleasant. You have to be a little full of yourself to shine and convince other people of your beauty. And no matter how great it feels to be standing in the spotlight, I think you as a lover are not complete unless you give back that same feeling to your partner and also have the capacity to admire someone just as much in return. In one of his first papers on the field of narcissism, Freud explores in an admittedly sexist-for-his-days-way the different modes of loving and singles out two different types of choosing an object of desire and love. He argues that a person can love on one hand what he calls the narcissist way, which he mostly attributes to women (or the purest type of women). People of this type choose to love somebody similar to who they are, who they used to be or who they would like to be. Because this is a type of narcissist self-love people in favor of this type are suckers for admiration also (think of R. that never failed one chance to make himself interesting to me). On the other hand there is the "Anlehnungstypus" or the dependent type (Anlehnung means “to lean on”), which Freud attributes to men. This is the type of lover whose preference is somebody that can take care of him or her, who can nourish him or somebody that offers protection (in my story this would be A.: the generous gentleman, giving emotional support and offering stability and steadiness). Generally, so Freud says, we’re free to love one way or the other with a preference towards one of those two types. Women, he says, thrive on being admired. They love the glaze in their partner's eyes that loves them. Men on the other hand look for a partner that is loving and nurturing, that they can lean on. They actually therefore love the other person while women simply put love to be loved by their partner. Now creating this gender binary of loving is of course a very outdated way, has been criticized and reversed, but understandable for Freud’s times. Also Kernberg, another expert in the field of narcissism, mentions the crossing between these two types as “being admired” and therefore “being taken care of” aren’t exclusive but might be conditioning each other. I still see some truth and inspiration to my thoughts about ways of loving, desires and being with a partner. In the end it comes down to the fact that us humans are sexual, pleasure seeking creatures from the beginning of our lives. And at the beginning there are two original sources for pleasure: our very own person and our mothers (or other no.1 caretaker). The person we choose to love is associated with either one or the other of those to very primal objects of love. Do we favor ourselves or the nurturing mom as the beloved object of pleasure? Or can we even find both in one and the same person? Would the ideal lover be somebody who we admire for representing a part of ourselves, who admires us and takes care of our needs, all at the same time? What a jackpot that would be. And there are definitely individual differences in the amount a person is able to admire, desire and holds the need to be admired in return and the pleasure we take from this. And there are also differences in how we take pleasure in taking care of another person, nurturing them and receiving this in return on a mental, emotional and physical level which would shine some light on the other, more active side of loving. My old roommate used to divide lovers into givers and takers – mostly in terms of oral sex. To be very honest, I think I have been in favor of being taken care of too. Most of my boyfriends had younger siblings, were even the oldest of many, and thus had a way of caring that I very much seem to enjoy unconsciously. It also puts myself in the center quite a lot. What might have confused me this weekend might therefore been that R. managed to reverse the roles I have become used to somehow. Instead of taking on the (as Freud would have noted MALE) role as the admirer and me as the one being admired and therefore living off my narcissist fantasies, I must have found myself in the unexpected role to be the one that does admire, show interest and to give more than to take. How odd and simple at the same time that this caused me to feel upset in the end. What I also do wonder is, if these reversed roles motivated me to fall for R. in the end. I clearly remember guys, brief lovers, that I somehow fell for, that seemed like unreachable, most attractive guys on earth, that I still can't shake off of my fantasies to these days without them ever giving me back that same longing. Why is it that we fall for the so-called assholes - dudes that care for nothing but themselves? The guys that had a lasting impact on me were those that didn't need or want me very much, with very clear narcissist tendencies and me knowing this but apparently not caring about it very much. Our narcissist side seems to love to be loved but then there seems to be another, more self-destructive side in us, that loves the chase and rejection. I don't have any terms for this yet, although I view it as quite masochistic and might have to do with early stages of sexual developments. (We could never fully own our mothers or fathers, right?) Maybe we still don’t have to be as radical as Freud used to be and see humans as a species that is fundamentally able to drive pleasure from both giving and taking, from admiring and being admired, from loving and being loved. The individual difference might be the extent of both. And it might be a quite deciding factor when it comes to the question of who we are comfortable with and who we choose to be with. Thinking back, not too long ago I had a wonderful partner of three years who was the ultimate caretaker, who was sweet and admired me for the person that I am. Unfortunately somehow I failed returning the admiration he had for me. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that apart from me loving to be taken care of and loved and admired by him I just could not see very much more that I admired in him. His interests seemed quite small and flat, his inner world not very colorful, his affections modest and his temperament the opposite of passionate. I always felt like something was missing. I hung around, searched for more in him, eventually gave up and led a selfish relationship for a while where I seemed to take more of him than to give back. I also talked more than I listened because I felt like there wasn’t much interesting to find out. This didn’t satisfy me too much, because I definitely wanted a subject to admire too. Or maybe like Freud would have said: I couldn’t find myself in him. There you see both sides of what Freud describes. The narcissist way of loving and the lean-in type both coexisting and showing its individual needs and desires. What does this mean for R. and where we might or might not be going towards? It’s silly to spend too much time thinking about this after hanging for one weekend. The experience of getting hurt and feeling rejected just because I was with someone who didn’t seem too interested in me made me think about these issues. However I could be wrong. The narcissism I’m accusing R. of might just be him looking for fun without attachment. He did tell me that he had come out of a five year relationship not too long ago. Maybe the time and place are just not right for us. If we assume my hypothesis is right though, does the discomfort he caused in me also show that I’m lacking self-worth by needing approval by someone else that I am an interesting person and that I deserve loving and admiration? I did have to tell myself multiple times that my life and the person that I am aren’t as uninteresting as I was made to feel that weekend. On the other side hanging with R. could be an interesting change for my usual dynamics in my relationships (which somehow never quite worked out so well). Being with someone who doesn’t offer to be a care-taker, a savior so to speak, might challenge me to take on another role than the woman in need, who needs saving and nourishment (emotionally and physically). It might activate me to take on the role that my partners played so far or will put the focus of onto a totally different dynamic. Maybe the lesson I should be taking from this in the end is simply to surround myself with people that make me feel great and that I also find so great that you can give them back the same feeling. The question about the complicated relationships between the self, the other, narcissism and loving is a dense and complicated one and the ability to love despite all of its challenges and risks is a great accomplishment of any human development that I don’t want to miss out on.