In this episode of “My Inner Torch,” I confront the complex dynamics of being in a relationship with partners who have Cluster B personality disorders. Delving into the intricacies of such relationships, I explore the challenges of maintaining hope for a return to the initial love bombing phase, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Through my candid personal experience, I shed light on the manipulative nature of early relationship stages and share a recent realization about the use of sex as a weapon within these dynamics.
I encourage you to face these difficult truths head-on and to remain open to understanding the complexities of relationships with individuals who have Cluster B personality disorders. The episode concludes with a powerful reminder of the significance of gaining clarity within relationships over time.
Tune in every Friday at 10 a.m. EST for new episodes of “My Inner Torch,” where I navigate the complexities of relationships and offer insights into understanding and confronting the challenges of being in a relationship with individuals who have Cluster B personality disorders.
In this episode of “My Inner Torch,” I confront the complex dynamics of being in a relationship with partners who have Cluster B personality disorders. Delving into the intricacies of such relationships, I explore the challenges of maintaining hope for a return to the initial love bombing phase, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Through my candid personal experience, I shed light on the manipulative nature of early relationship stages and share a recent realization about the use of sex as a weapon within these dynamics.
I encourage you to face these difficult truths head-on and to remain open to understanding the complexities of relationships with individuals who have Cluster B personality disorders. The episode concludes with a powerful reminder of the significance of gaining clarity within relationships over time.
Tune in every Friday at 10 a.m. EST for new episodes of “My Inner Torch,” where I navigate the complexities of relationships and offer insights into understanding and confronting the challenges of being in a relationship with individuals who have Cluster B personality disorders.
Think about it. Do we expect too much from our cluster B? Welcome to this podcast of My Inner Torch. So I wanted to start out with advice of the day. This is from somebody anonymous, but it was posted on a board and I wanted to share it with you because it did resonate with me.
Self-control is strength. Calmness is mastery.
You have to get to a point where your mood doesn't shift based on the insignificant actions of someone else. Don't allow others to control the direction of your life. Don't allow your emotions to overpower your intelligence. It comes down to emotional intelligence. How you react, how you accept, how you behave, especially with your cluster B. And it comes down to the topic of this week's podcast of My Inner Torch. Do we expect too much from our cluster B? I did touch on this some podcasts ago, a long time ago. It was a popular podcast because as much as I sit here and tell you, my wife of 21 plus years does this, that, and the other, and I can't believe it.
And we all talk about how abusive these people are. And there's no discounting the emotional, the financial, the physical, the whatever abuse that they dish out on a daily, regular basis. It doesn't discount the fact that we have to adapt ourselves to their behaviors. But at the end of the day, do we expect too much from our cluster B? So what do I mean about, do we expect too much from our cluster B? Well, we all know, and we can all go back to the love bombing phase with the cluster B, how wonderful that was, how intoxicating it was, how addictive it was. When the cluster B, the mask slips from the narcissist, the love bombing kind of fades from the borderline and anybody else in the cluster B genre, they change.
They become their, their true selves. And we're left just reeling. We're left wondering why, why did they change? Why can't they be the person that they were? Well, that person never existed. That person was an act. They are masters at manipulation. They are masters of drawing us in to the fold. And then we expect them to continue to be that way. And we wait and we wait and we anticipate and we try to pave the way for them to reinvent themselves into the person that we thought they were.
And it just doesn't happen. We expect that they are the person who they presented themselves to be way back when. And so I got to thinking about my wife who I've had a relationship with for over 22 years. And yes, I do hold those early days in high regard, but they were a, they were a piece of theater. They were something that she used to manipulate me at her own admission years later. And only two recently she talked about using sex as a weapon, as a way of getting what she wanted. It was very telling. It was a black swan because I don't know if she really thought that through of what she was confessing to. That's confessions of a cluster B, a podcast that I did not too long ago.
Check it out. Listen to it because occasionally they will reveal the truth and we have to be open to listen to it and we have to be open to receive it, to understand it, and to process it. And most of us don't want to, including me, and I don't hold you at fault because I so want to believe that the person I fell in love with, the person I thought she was is still there. And yet that person is reserved for the next relationship. And this is why we can't believe when they discard us and they move on to somebody else that they're so happy with the other person and they're all over social media saying, this is the true love of my life.
I can't believe it. Look at these pictures. We love each other. Come on. It's yet another part of theater, theater of the cluster B, which might be a good title for a future podcast because we all play our part in this Greek tragedy that is called a relationship with a cluster B and it is a Greek tragedy.
So think about it. Are you expecting too much from your cluster B? Are you expecting them to be something that they're not? Are you expecting them to turn back into the person that you thought they were when they never really were that person? It's very difficult for them to go back to who they were and occasionally they do. When we talk about the hoovering, when we talk about the bread crumbing, when you say I'm going to leave or you do leave, then they kind of change back into that person that you thought they were and they can't sustain it. They turn on the charm, they turn on the love bombing, the sex bombing. Then they come back and they reinvent themselves as the person that you remembered them as and they Hoover you back. That's why they call it hoovering or they give you a slight view, a little bread crumb, a little morsel of what they used to be.
And we come running back. We gobble it up. We are so hungry. We are so starved that we throw all caution aside. And that's the crime that we commit. We expect so much from these people that they can't deliver it. So there is onus on us. As much as they play the victim, we do as well. We will sit there and say, my gosh, I can't believe they were so mean to me.
I can't believe they did that. I can't believe they had an affair. I can't believe that they took money from me. I can't believe that they lied to me. I can't believe that they abused me.
Now who's the victim? We are. We feel sorry for ourselves. How could I get into this relationship? Why didn't I see it for what it was? Well, folks, you're seeing it for what it is, but you're wanting it for what it was.
Therein lies the problem. We just can't see the forest for the trees. We can't accept that these people cannot continue to act the way that they did when the mask slips. When you see like the phantom of the opera, the horror that is behind the mask, the real person who they truly are. For some reason, we seem to ignore that or we're horrified by it, but we go back.
And that is our problem. We have an expectation that will not be realized. It hit me. It hit me several times over the last few years that I'm expecting something from my wife that she cannot and will not deliver. She will not be the person that I thought she was. And we can all argue that, well, people change and they do. We all change. Some of us for the better, some of us for the worse. As life goes on and as we learn lessons in life, some of us do actually pay attention and some of us don't. And that's why I've said I am grateful to my wife because she has taught me a valuable lesson about myself. And I told you in a previous podcast that I would be doomed to repeat a relationship like this if I hadn't learned about myself through my relationship with my covert narcissistic wife or my cluster B or somebody with a personality disorder.
Because again, not hip on labeling people. I am not a professional to do that. And even professionals have difficulty picking up a narcissism. It's difficult. We all possess narcissistic traits. We are all vain in some form or fashion. We all sometimes think highly of ourselves. Does that make us a narcissist?
No, it doesn't. When we use these tools as weapons against other people and we put ourselves above other people and we don't care what we do to other people to do that and to achieve that.
Yes, that's narcissism. That's just thinking about yourself and not having empathy or compassion for other people. But our problem is we do have empathy and we do have compassion and we have hope and we have expectations. We have expectations from a cluster B that they cannot and will not deliver again. And if they do, it's only for a short period of time. And yes, I do know that when they breadcrumb you or they hoover you, it's intoxicating again. This is a brain condition on our part. We are rewired as time goes on with these people. They rewire our brains.
They mess with us. These are the traumatic effects that we suffer and it gets worse as time goes on. And so the longer you stay in the relationship, the more you become rewired, the more you become accepting of their behaviors as being normal. As I've said in many podcasts again, I don't know if I would recognize a normal relationship.
What is that? What is that when somebody is nice? It's difficult sometimes when my wife shows a moment of brightness where she can be nice and it's like, whoa, where did that come from? I'm so conditioned to deal with negativity and toxicity that if somebody is nice, it's like, whoa, that's okay. That's not normal.
Are they hoovering me? Are they breadcrumbing me? What are they doing?
What's behind this kindness? Even though it may be 100% pure and with no mission behind it, with no false narrative, but this is what happens as time goes on as we continue with our cluster B. My Inner Torch at gmail.com, I always appreciate hearing from you and I also appreciate your review on whichever platform you happen to be tuning into My Inner Torch today on. It goes a long way to exposing other people to at least enlighten them, whether they want to be enlightened or not, or whether they want to receive the information, at least they can hear it. And eventually over time, perhaps they can see some clarity in their relationship and make their lives better as a result.
New episodes uploaded each and every Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. As always, be good and in whatever you do, be well.
This has been My Inner Torch.