We Must Have An Expiration Date On Our Patience With Evil Doers

On Internet message boards, people claiming involvement with narcissists ask, "Must I leave him?"

Whenever I hear this question, I get two ambivalent urges at once. One is to reply, "Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes!" And the other is to reply, "What the heck kind of question is that?"

Notice that the grown children of narcissists don't ask it. The mates of narcissists do.

Typically, when adults realize that a parent who troubles them is a malignant narcissist, they react to discovering that the relationship never was a mutual symbiosis, but rather a parasitic one in disguise. Their words convey a deep sense of betrayal. And relief — in the knowledge that it wasn't their fault, that something is wrong with their parent, not them. In their words it goes without saying that they will break this hostile and predatory relationship that is so hurtful and harmful to them.

So, what's with the mates of narcissists? Often the thrust of their reaction is complaint about how wronged they are. Then they ask, "Must I leave him?"

To some extent, this difference is to be expected, because the relationship between parent and child is different than the relationship between lovers. And it is much older — a lifelong, virtually unbreakable relationship of blood, not a mere recent contract like marriage. We can expect the children of narcissists to take some things for granted about them that the mates of narcissists find hard to accept. Yet, there is the same abysmal betrayal in both experiences. And the same liberating justification. So, why do the reactions of many mates seem so peculiar to the children? Why do they often lack reaction to that betrayal and liberation?


People who are stuck in relationships with narcissists are generally people who have been reluctant to call the narcissist evil. The stumbling block they are dealing with is their own inability to properly label the malevolent force they call "Mom" or "Dad" or "Spouse". There is very little evidence to support a contention that my calling narcissists evil is a stumbling block to individuals who are in a relationship with a narcissist and thereby preventing them from breaking from the narcissist. Truth is, it is their own reluctance to call evil by its right name that is the problem. The problem is not that I am consistently calling narcissists evil. On the other hand there are reams of evidence that many who were previously unable to see the evil of narcissism have found relief and escape from seeing narcissists properly labeled as the evil force they are.

Is it necessary to view the narcissist as evil in order to go no contact? Is just seeing the situation as being a case of incompatibility enough rationale to make an escape? I am sure there are people who can justify leaving a relationship based on simply calling on incompatibility as justification. My blog isn't for those people. They don't need to read what I have to say. In fact, this person is very unlikely to go to Google to type in some search in order to demystify what they've gone through or are going through. They have simply shrugged off the parasite and moved on. No damage done. The person you describe has likely never even seen my blog.


What I've recognized is that some relationships are very hard to extricate from due to societal pressures and ingrained teaching from our earliest moments of sentience. Parents. Children. Siblings. Spouses. Probably in that order. These are the relationships which we find very difficult to terminate based alone on that word "incompatibility". No one distances themselves from their parents by simply citing "incompatibility". It is never that easy.

This means that the person who is being systematically destroyed by a narcissist...usually by a family narcissist...has a daunting task before them. The task is to properly identify what force they have been trying to reckon with all these years. Many of these people have been reluctant to label this force as being "evil" mostly because the narcissist has taught them to see things upside down and inside out, black as white, and evil as good. How many times have family narcissists presented themselves as the embodiment of all that is good? All. The. Time. If someone doesn't call the narcissist's so-called good what it really is..."evil"...then there is likely little hope of helping the victim out of their victimhood. They will continue on believing that the evil is centered in themselves, that they are the one who is crazy, that they are the problem. You know, all the lies the narcissist has taught them to believe in order that the narcissist can escape accountability.

You don't have to be entangled with a narcissist for very long to get the sense that evil exists. The problem is that you're not quite sure where it resides. This is because the narcissist is careful to project their own evil outward from themselves onto whomever is handy. Likely, YOU. The narcissist is well aware that evil exists in themselves and are desperate to not get pinned down themselves with the very proper label of evil. Here, on my blog, I will put the proper label on the evil doer. I will not mollycoddle anyone by mincing my words. I won't tell you want you want to hear. My creed is: never fight reality because reality always wins. The narcissist is the one always fighting reality. We cannot hope to win against the narcissist unless we fixate like a laser beam on reality. It is reality that exposes the narcissist. One of those realities is that what they do and what they are is EVIL.

I am not daunted by people's reluctance to call evil by its right name. I present my case. Blog post by blog post. Definitions, evidence, moral principles. What is very interesting is how many times someone will dismiss evil when it happens to them but can clearly see some act against someone else as being evil. We have been taught (by the narcissist) to minimize the effects of evil behaviors on ourselves, but we will often not minimize evil when it is perpetrated on someone else. This blog is often a place where people can see the evil done to others. With a little extra help they are then able to make the leap, "If that behavior is evil when done to others then it was just as evil when it was done to me!"



In my opinion, based on personal experience, individuals who are 'put off' by calling narcissists evil have their own ulterior motives. There is very likely some behavior in their own lives they are trying to justify, to get away with. A behavior(s) which is destructive to others and aggrandizing to themselves. There is simply too much evidence that the narcissist is evil...as defined both by their intent and behaviors...to dismiss the label out of hand. When someone refuses to properly label what narcissists do and the effects they have on others then I harbor mistrust of that person's agenda. At the very least, I mistrust that person's moral sensibilities.

I am a blood hound set on the scent of the narcissist. I will sniff them out of their hiding place. They always hide under a cloak of goodness. A pretense of righteousness. They get away with their evil by calling their evil good. So, dammit, I will rip their shabby little fig leaves away so you can see the narcissist without their pretended goodness. What you are left with is naked evil. It may be an ugly sight but that isn't my fault. It is the fault of the narcissist for being spiritually, emotionally and mentally twisted and grotesque. It is the fault of the narcissist that they are predatory, cruel, hateful, insatiably coveteous of what you have, and emotionally arrested. I will call evil what it is. Each and every time. If someone is 'put off' by that then I accept that I have nothing for them. I can't be all things to all people and am certainly not trying to be.


As I've said before, a synonym of 'malignant' is the word evil. Malignant narcissism is destructive and malevolent. People who come here have been injured in some measurable way. Calling things by their right names is essential for identifying the problem and finding a solution to the problem. If someone was able to just cite "incompatibility" as a rationale for leaving the situation do you think they'd need to come to my blog for insight? People who come here are suffering. There is a reason for their suffering and I'm not afraid to name that reason.



You, the reader of this blog, have likely seen enough of the world and life to have your own observations to call upon to illustrate this truth. You've seen the contagion of evil infect from person to person in your own family. Or the workplace. Or perhaps you've found yourself co-opted for a time into someone else's evil deeds. The understanding that evil is contagious is understood by all good parents. Most parents will guard the associations of their children because they know that bad influences are very likely to lead children and teens into bad behaviors. Evil doers are never satisfied to be alone in their deeds. They want accomplices. To corrupt their peers is essential in order to be able to carry on their evil with a minimum of moral judgment or risk of exposure. Evil doers are not confined by truth or by morality if it stands in the way of getting what they want. So this amplifies the persuasive power of evil. Because it can and does lie to get its way; because it can create a false reality; because it can use the implements of cruelty, bribery, violence and exercise of any and all power it may possess without moral considerations -- all this increases the likelihood that evil doers will create other evil doers.



Having elaborated a bit in the paragraph above about the FACT that evil is like a virus that will infect those who remain in close contact with it I have again underlined the central reason I so energetically urge "no contact" with the malignant narcissist. To avoid picking up their traits, to avoid being used by them as a "cat's paw" to hurt others, to avoid becoming indifferent to evil and therefore more likely to be evil oneself, it is essential to separate yourself from it. For a Christian to urge the opposite is to reveal themselves to be profoundly ignorant of the Bible or, I fear, profoundly over-confident of their ability to not be co-opted by evil. A confidence the Scriptures do not urge us to have!


Evil doers in the family are not granted a special exemption by God! Evil doers are in the best position to harm those who are closest to them by reason of familial ties. Family ties are not any justification for evil else we condemn each new generation to endless repetititions of evil doers in the familial circle. The cycle has to be broken at some point or entire families will be destroyed. There are historical examples of this going back as far as recorded history goes. Like begets like. Evil spreads. Entire nations can be eventually consumed by unchecked evil in families.


For The Christians

For the Christians who agitate for the idea that we are not true, loving Christians if we don't emulate their own eternal patience with evil are actually only perpetuating evil rather than spreading good as they claim. Eternal patience with evil is equal with being a despiser of the good and the innocent!


Don't be cowed by the unflinching hypocritical self-righteousness of those who claim to be better than you because they won't give up hope that God will save the narcissist. Recognize the false premise in their reasoning. They reason thus: if you walk away (i.e. give up on) the narcissist you have, at the same time, shown that you don't believe God can save the narcissist.

Walking away says no such thing! God is not rendered powerless to save anyone just because you've had to go 'no contact' to end your exposure to their evil! Where in the Bible has God said that every person we will ever come in contact with will be saved by God through us?? It is no where even hinted at such a notion. The arrogance inherent in believing that God can only use YOU to save a particular person is quite odious when you recognize it for what it is. You are not that important. Or powerful. Get over yourself.


I ask, who of you is better than God who cuts off the wicked? From my view none of you are better than God Himself. Therefore, I will not listen to you who believe that the "good" Christian will never cut off the malignant narcissist. I can only see you as a coddler of the wicked not a protector of the innocent and the virtuous. Your eternal patience for the evil doer is taken by them to be a license to continue on as they are. Never cutting them off allows the evil doer to feel justified in what they are and in what they do.



It is because God loves people that He instructs them to cut off the wicked. It is not from hatred of the evil person himself. God hates evil because it destroys the evil doer and all those in the evil doer's grasp



I'll say it one more time before closing. Cutting off the evil narcissist is not a commentary on your believing that God can't save that person. Going no contact with the malignant narcissist doesn't mean God has gone no contact with him!!! Please, don't be a simpleton. God can still reach them even if you never speak another word to them. Because the Biblical instruction to the Christian is unequivocal that we must "Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person" , don't expect God's protection if you refuse His clear command on this point. And believe me, there will come a day when the trap springs and there will be no help for you.




Properly identifying evil behaviors and evil people is not a stumbling block. It is a life line. People may refuse to take the life line. That is their choice. I wouldn't throw a string down to a person trapped in a pit and say, "just grab this and you can climb out!" Would I get credit for trying to save that person even though I just threw them a string which is absolutely useless for the task? Not to sane and rational people. No, I will throw that person a knotted rope. They get to choose whether or not to use it. If they don't like my rope they are welcome to stay in the pit. I did my best.



"Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you. Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse." Prov. 2:11-12

"A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it." Prov. 22:3

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The Important Stuff

Narcissism as natural self-love is a good thing, essential to survival. It's what makes us value ourselves. It's the root of our instinct for self-preservation. In fact, humans don't have a corner on the market. Animals have a healthy self-love too. In his seminal 1914 essay on narcissism, Sigmund Freud called narcissism "the instinct of self-preservation" found in "every living creature."

In infants, narcissism is critical to survival, and some failure of it to develop may have something to do with unexplained infant deaths. For example, as I mentioned above, their narcissism is what makes baby birdies stick their heads up out of the nest every time Mother comes near, stretching their gaping mouths wide and chirping their heads off. They are crying, "Feed me! Not him, not her — ME. Feed me!" Any baby birdie that doesn't do this well enough is going to starve. Thus the infants of every species compete with each other and run Mother ragged, so that she forgets her own needs in preference to theirs.

Their heavy dose of narcissism is what delights me no end about dogs. I think that's because their healthy, natural, good-natured narcissism is in such stark contrast to the malignant narcissism I have had to deal with in other people. Each dog thinks he or she is the greatest dog in the world.

They prance and strut and show off like crazy. And they will dominate just about any other dog, no matter how large. They will dominate you too if you don't watch out. They are entitled to and demand your attention! Now! And they know how to get it. They will get it by making you mad, if necessary. Nothing around here can be louder (and therefore be the center of attention) than a dog.

Them's the rules. Cairn Terriers for example have minds of their own. They won't do tricks to please you. Or for a treat, no matter how tasty. In fact they sulk at the offer, looking at you as if to say, "What do you think I am? a prostitute? Take that treat and eat it yourself. I ain't gonna do what you want just to get it." So, to "train" a Cairn, you have to persuade him to do what you want by making it a game in which he wants to do it to show off, because it's fun. Which is why he can never be loose — because if some varmint comes along, he won't care what you say: he's going after it. You can sort of train him to come when you call, but he will have to remind you first (by heading the other way for a moment) that he's coming only because he wants to, not because you told him to. I love it.

But malignant narcissism is perverted self-love. In fact, it isn't really self-love. It's self-hatred. The person "suffering" from NPD hates himself and loves his IMAGE instead. He makes it look good the easy way — by making others' images look bad by comparison. That makes him a predator on the image of everyone around him. Everyone.

So, at bottom, the nature of the narcissist is the nature of a predator on his own kind. The importance of that fact cannot be overstated.



The brain of a predator just does not relate to the living soul of its prey. If you don't believe this, just watch PBS. Watch the behavior, and look into the eyes, of predatory animals while they're making a kill. There's nothing there. They are like machines at that moment. They must be, or they couldn't do it. In other words, Nature has equipped them with hard-wired circuitry in the brain that takes over the moment prey is sighted when they are hungry. It suppresses what we could observe in that animal only a minute earlier while it was playing with its siblings or a waving leaf on a twig, tenderly nuzzling its offspring or mate. Perhaps it was even grieving over the death of a member of the pack. But that's all gone the moment it sights prey while hungry. Then suddenly it's a killing machine.

It likes killing. Nature has endowed it with a taste for killing as necessary equipment for its survival. It even considers killing fun. Which is why we sometimes see in nature killing made sport: Chimpanzees (who don't eat meat) will gang-up on and attack a monkey, cruelly tearing it to pieces and having a blast over its heart-rending cries. Killer whales sometimes play with baby seals like a cat plays with a mouse. Wolves sometimes bring down and eviscerate prey they feed on the guts of until it dies and then walk away. Sorry, that's just the truth. Humans are animals too and have that same predatory mode. Nature endowed us with it as hunters. It's in everyone. But in narcissists and sociopaths something has gone haywire. They go into this mode against their own kind. And they are permanently in this mode against all their own kind.

Why? Because they don't view themselves as of our kind. They are of a superior kind. They think we are here to feed them, just as we think cattle are here to feed us. Correction: we do (or should) treat cattle humanely. We don't relate to them as objects like narcissists relate to us = like we relate to bugs or plants. Compared to us, narcissists are gods. Alien beings.

They can't help it. They are not to blame for feeling this way. Today the prognosis is poor. There is little sign of any real success in treating these people. Those who commit prosecutable offenses are repeat offenders — such as pedophile priests, sexual predators, and serial killers. They get this way as children and demonstrate it by torturing animals or murdering other children on a whim.

Though they can't control their temptations, they can control their conduct. And this is what competent psychiatric care might help them with. It can show them better ways to deal with their problems, making them resistant to temptation.

And a lion tamer can walk into the lions' den. But they are still wild animals, so he can never be sure they won't give in to the temptation to attack the prey tantalizing them beyond their power to resist.

We don't morally condemn those lions for being lions. And the only thing more stupid and useless than morally condemning narcissists for being narcissists is trusting them. Don't tempt them. Just because a pedophile priest has behaved for the last five years doesn't mean he won't finally lose it and eat another altar boy. Indeed, it's cruel to tempt him daily thus! You wouldn't wave a bottle of whiskey in front of an alcoholic, would you?

I don't see what's so difficult to understand about this. Talk therapy isn't the answer with PREDATORS. We must do whatever it takes to minimize or eliminate their access to vulnerable prey as targets of opportunity. Period. For ever. Let's get a clue already and stop dangling bait before their eyes.

There are many ways to do this: prison isn't the only one. For example, don't let him teach school or be a police officer. Don't give him power over his fellow employees. Don't elect him to be President for Life. Don't let him live off his parents until they die. Don't follow him on a purge to cleanse the Holy Land. And if he steps over the line whack him, so that he thinks twice before doing it again.

And, especially, let's stop passing this curse from generation to generation by subjecting children to narcissistic parents. It takes the consent of the non-narcissistic parent for that to happen. So, just because your mother or father put up with it doesn't mean you should.

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Arrested Child Development

What's the pain that the drug of attention kills?

It is widely believed (and my own experience with narcissists bears this out) that it is the pain of being judged as something to be ashamed of as a little child, during that crucial stage of personality development when the ego is all and fragile to boot. Being judged a disappointment. Not-good-enough to be acceptable to at least one parent.

Because something's wrong with you. What? Good question. That's The Big Mystery.

But you've always known that nobody holds and cuddles you or picks you up when you cry, or comes around just to giggle in your face and talk to you and play with you for a while. And you're finding out that you can never get it right, because you're always too "this" or too "that." You never say anything worth listening to. You never do anything worth noticing. You never deserve a compliment or praise. You shouldn't be encouraged to aim high, because that would give you the wrong idea and make you think you have what it takes to achieve something out of the ordinary.

But you need plenty of negative attention and criticism. Because you screw up all the time. Wet the bed? O God! That's worse than spilling milk. Over that the ear-piercing screaming will run for ten minutes straight.

Then she'll tell you that she has problems so you shouldn't be doing anything that bothers her.

How can a little child live up to that standard? They are always getting muddy or spilling milk or something. And notice the perversion of roles in that twist. In other words, you must see to it that Mamma has no trouble. She isn't here to take care of your needs and troubles: you are here to take care of hers. Because Mamma is a big baby. And, you are defective because you have problems that give Baby Mamma trouble.

Ah, the abuse that takes on a life of its own and keeps on abusing.

At this point, I must pause to point out that an abusive home life as a child is not a cause of NPD. It may be a temptation, but normal children come out of the same homes as malignant narcissists. Moreover, malignant narcissism is the foundation of psychopathy, and research on the psychopathic prison population strongly indicates that psychopaths come from both good homes and bad ones. Though an abusive home life is a big family secret that defies discovery by anyone on the outside, the amount of this research is so great that it must be taken seriously.

Therefore, this pain may be no more than any little child feels when his parents are too busy for him or when a parent makes the common verbal mistake of condemning the child, instead of the child's behavior, as "bad." We all got some of that, no matter how loving our parents were. So, it may be that malignant narcissists and psychopaths are just people who chose to carry a grudge, at a crucial age when it stunted their growth as human beings.


So, though she's dead and gone, Mamma becomes his demon. And here Narcissus is, an adult but still feeling the shame and trying to get right for her. He too is a case of arrested child development: he is still that child and still in that child's abyss of unbearable pain, doomed to forever try to claw his way out of the dungeon of her low regard.

Like his narcissistic parent, he rejects that child. He has replaced it with an imaginary self. It is perfect, godlike, mighty. Indeed, he cannot bear to look within and know his true self. So, he pulls the wool over his eyes by portraying a false, grandiose image of himself to gaze upon in mirrors.

Rather like a child playing "Pretend" — dressing up in his daddy's clothes before a mirror or imagining that he's Superman. Hey, nobody hurts his feelings!


But that isn't him. That's an imaginary him. The ideal him. Of course, this is a normal stage in child development. Children easily lose themselves in this game of "Pretend."


Kitty, dear, let's pretend --' And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to say, beginning with her favourite phrase 'Let's pretend.' She had had quite a long argument with her sister only the day before — all because Alice had begun with 'Let's pretend we're kings and queens;' and her sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn't, because there were only two of them, and Alice had been reduced at last to say, 'Well, YOU can be one of them then, and I'LL be all the rest.' And once she had really frightened her old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear, 'Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyaena, and you're a bone.'

— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass


Some children get stuck in the Land of Pretend and don't distinguish between fantasy and reality, creating an imaginary, ideal friend. Children do this because they feel so small and insignificant in our world. So they "pretend" a different one, one more to their liking. Their principal aim is to be important and grand like grown-ups.

Important enough to be worthy of some attention. They will actually die for want of attention, because their budding personalities cannot take the damage being disregarded does to their tender self-esteem.

Once fully formed, the person-alities of children outgrow the need to create an imaginary, "dream" self. They then become themselves. It's as though they accept and marry themselves, merging with themselves, as their person-ality integrates. In their thoughts they normally refer to themselves as "I" — not "you" or that imaginary "he" or "she."

But the dysfunctional person-alities of people with NPD remain forever in this disordered, half-formed state. They are in a permanent identity crisis.

They don't identify with themselves! They still identify with that imaginary self — a fictional character!

Consider that — in their thoughts, normal people never refer to themselves in the same terms that an author refers to the characters in a novel, as "he" or "she." We never step that far outside ourselves. And only when bawling ourselves out do we distance ourselves by addressing ourselves as "you."

How can anyone who doesn't have a proper relationship with himself have a proper relationship with anyone else?

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