Acting Like It Didn't Happen

The next day, after taking a crap on you, he is all smiles. And expects you to be, too. In fact, he pulls the projective identification stunt on you to project his cheery mood into you.

Ah, how nice. Your abuser carries no grudge, eh?

If you don't pretend that the person who attacked you yesterday is a friend . . . . If you don't pretend that you have no apology coming . . . . If you don't pretend that nothing has affected your relationship with the narcissist . . . . That is, if you don't act like it didn't happen . . . you are a sinner who doesn't forgive and forget, who doesn't "put it behind you," who "dredges things up from the past." Sound familiar?

This means that, in his home, his whole history of abuse must be washed away by everyone acting as though it didn't happen.

Washed away. Absolution. Swoosh, gone. As though it didn't happen. What does that make of it?



If I held a door for you yesterday, today you can act like it didn't happen. If you thanked me for holding that door yesterday, today I can act like it didn't happen. But if something important happened, we don't act like it didn't happen, do we?

Acting like abuse didn't happen is a lie.

Acting like it didn't happen makes nothing of it.

That makes abusing you nothing. And if it's nothing, it isn't wrong.

And if abusing you is nothing, you are nothing.

Acting like it didn't happen is a statement that nothing happened. That him abusing you is okay. For, it puts abusing you in the same category as thanking you or praising you or kidding you — in the category of things for which there is no penalty = the category of non-wrong things you can do. Indeed, there is no such thing as a wrong deed that carries no penalty.

He doesn't have to patch your wounded feelings. He doesn't have to say he's sorry. He doesn't have to promise never to do it again. He doesn't even have to admit he did it. Let alone that it was wrong.

He has incurred no liability whatsoever. Anyone who says you're morally obligated to forgive him had better clear the cobwebs out of their brain and start thinking for themselves.

By playing along with him in acting like it didn't happen, you are consenting in making abusing you okay. You implicitly give permission to do it again the next time he's constipated.

This is how you brainwash people and break their backs — by forcing them to act like it didn't happen. Especially when you raise them from birth in such an environment.

Imagine having to treat as a friend someone who treats you like dirt. That is acting out a lie.

Imagine having to treat as a true father, mother, spouse, brother, or sister, someone who has a long history of viciously attacking you for no reason. Someone who just needs to take a crap on you every so often. Someone who then feels better and is all smiles the next day, thinking you should be too.

And thus he just flushes his offense away by acting as though it never happened — forcing you to act out this charade for him.

Imagine having to relate to such a hostile enemy as to a friend.

Can anything be more perverted, self-destructive and against Nature?

That is the bending-for-it the narcissist imposes on those trapped with him in his home. If you are, or were, a child who grew up in a home with a narcissistic brother or sister and/or a narcissistic parent, you have my deepest sympathy.