Allowing Tiffany To Be Tiffany

Allowing Tiffany to Be Tiffany.

The Covert Narcissist and Golden Child

One of the simplest but sometimes hardest questions when it comes to toxic friendship is, "Knowing what you know now, if you met 'em today, would you still wanna be their best friend?"

Time, energy, and vulnerability invested often becomes a reasoning factor for us to keep things going despite our own inner knowing.

I've often thought something along the lines of, "I know it's not serving me well and frankly I don't even know if I genuinely like them as a person anymore, but why would I give something up that I've worked so hard for so long on? I've invested so much into this. They've always been here, I don't know that I'll ever find another friend like that." Buuuut it's the same reasoning as an alcoholic saying, "I know it's having a horrible effect on my health and it's sabotaging my entire future, but I've drank for so many years how could I just stop now? What would I do with life? This is what I know."

"That's just Tiffany..." is the quote I chose for this scenario because it is often something along those lines that we say about friends who we've had in our lives forever, who we know sabotage our happiness and covet our successes, but we'd just rather not be without them. So instead of acknowledging our choice to remain in an unhealthy situation, we kinda turn it around on ourselves and make it out as if we're being judgmental and critical by acknowledging the hurtful things someone does.

That's just who they are. That's just what they do. Didn't you know?

Exactly. We know.

So the question is not so much why do they keep doing those things or being that way...but why do we insist on sticking around for it time and time again? Because what makes a Narcissist a Narcissist, is that they don't change. They make mistakes just as we all do, but they don't learn or grow from them. Never. Ever. They live by blaming and taking from others, because they're the child that decided not to grow.

Sometimes the only way to truly determine if someone is a full-blown Narcissist, or whether they're just showing Narcissistic attributes they've yet to address, is to walk away and hand back over the accountability. We are all on a sliding scale, and although we cannot change anyone or make them aware of the pain they cause themselves and others, we can allow them the grace to find happiness and freedom on their own.  If the relationship works out and grows into new and healthier connections later, isn't that a far better place for it to start from? Sometimes we gotta let it breathe and surrender control in order to give it a chance to evolve.

Self-sacrificing beliefs that we ourselves are responsible and capable of fixing others will have us falling prey to these relationship patterns again and again.

We go into these situations with an unspoken agreement to play by our roles and all will go well. We are there to carry the weight and be the scapegoat for their worst actions and self-beliefs. This way they can take out their pain on the rest of the world and appear to be without fault.

We have subconsciously or sometimes even consciously agreed to support their continuing role as the Golden Child so we can also remain in our own familiar role as Scapegoat. Even if it's inhibiting and enraging...it's the safe proven method we've always used.

So what happens when we ourselves decide to evolve and start seeking freedom while they don't wanna waiver whatsoever from the original script? To them, it appears that we are selfishly betraying and abandoning our agreement.

They will name us the monster. They'll call us hateful and awful and shame us for abandoning them. They'll tell anyone who will listen that we're not at all what we seem and to keep away from us.

Our healing, our evolving, and our escaping our cages will make those who have needed to be in control of us quite upset if not absolutely enraged. We are now actively dismantling the very environment that makes them feel safe and powerful.

None of us want someone trying to force us to live in ways we don't want to, and even when we've had the best of intentions, this is what we are doing to others when we are begging over and over for them to stop behaving in ways that are completely normal and predictable for them. As hard as it is to malicious intent and hate in people we love, they are clearly showing us how they wish to live in this present moment.

If we know who someone is and we're never gonna be ok with it? We have to let them be.

Period.

We are not capable nor is it our job to fix anyone. We are never, and I repeat never, gonna drag someone to healing or self-realization. I mean... it is called self- realization for a reason, right?

Sometimes this is the best way we can love people after fighting them for so many years. We let them go. We set them free to be exactly who they choose to be without our consent being involved.

Ironically, we are finally give them the greatest gift of loving them exactly as they are. The thing their inner child has been crying out for the whole time. We stop reinstating to them what a disappointment they are and how they're not measuring up.

It can be excruciating to clearly see the pain and exhaustion they cause others and  the happiness and love they won't allow for themselves.

But the truth is, it's their choice.

It's the only way they know to live, to stay seen and loved, they omit anything that doesn't fit into their perspective as the Golden Child. The very survival of their identity depends on it.

Aaaaand there-in lies the problem. Every time we heal, we outgrow another version of ourselves. We walk into another new and unknown identity, and that takes incredible courage and strength.

To be real blunt about it, we can't exhaust ourselves begging cowards to do courageous things. We can't get people to see the beauty in them that we do when they are actively proving to themselves more and more reasons to be disgusted and furious with themselves.

People will unfortunately choose to live in fear and actively avoid their own healing, so they never have to go into unknown spaces. So they never have to start new or let go of an idealized past. To tune into a higher truth would open their entire world to collapse, and the longer it's avoided, the bigger the destruction they feel would await them.

To forcefully project the full picture onto a mind like that, is like kicking over their sandcastle. It doesn't bring clarity or open them to healing at all. From their wounded child's mentality, it only proves to them that they must live defensively in order to protect their lives.

We may beg for them to soften surrender and trust, but that sounds like suicide to them. To them we are trying to peel their fingers from everything they've ever known as a sure thing, and so to let them go to live as they please, is sometimes the most loving thing we can do for them. We are no longer enabling them by justifying their actions, and we are no longer reprimanding them for how they choose to live.

This is how we truly free ourselves and free one another. This is how we truly begin creating and living our lives- by relinquishing control of how others live their own.

To love is to set one another free, and to love ourselves is to grant ourselves that same freedom by creating our identity and lives for ourselves and no longer against or in spite of anyone else's.

Rather than arguing our right to be respected and live life on our terms til we're blue in the face, we really really can just get up and walk away and build something completely new.