I only got to reading Dr. Ramani Durvasula's book, "Should I Stay or Should I Go? Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist" by accident, after already rejecting two other books on a flight. I'd started reading it months before, on another plane, and had dropped it after landing. But then, books have a way of finding you at the right time for you to read them, even when it doesn't coincide with what you expect in your head.
This time around, I started reading it with no pre-set conclusions in mind, not expecting to be vindicated or proven wrong, not wishing to apply it to any situation in my personal life or that of my friends. I just read it for reading's sake... and found value, both for people trapped in relationships with a narcissist, but also for people who just aren't where they should be.
What I really liked about Dr. Ramani's book is that it actually entertains the question in the title. After a few long chapters outlining the traits of a narcissist and examining varied ways in which a relationship may be toxic, she actually lets you consider the question:
Should you stay or should you go?
She doesn't do the done thing where we agree this person's an asshole, now let's hit the road, because it's not that easy, in truth. In the lengthy chapter dedicated to staying, she acknowledges the various reasons we might invoke for staying in a bad relationship - from the practical (i.e. kids, finances, religion) to the emotional (we still love them or simply don't feel strong enough to leave).
She says you can stay and you might put this book down choosing that option. However, she leaves little room for fantasy.
People don't change.
It's the message Dr. Ramani repeats over and over throughout the book, and with good reason. Narcissists (much as the word has become over- and misused) don't change because they can't.
For people to change in general is very difficult. Not impossible, but extremely difficult. As a general rule, psychologists warn that staying in any kind of relationship (even with nice normal people) expecting them to change is a fool's errand. That's because most people are only ever capable of significant changes in times of great crisis.
People will change after a brush with death, for instance. They will not change because they like you and you think they should.
So expecting anyone to change is in itself problematic, but with someone with narcissistic personality disorder, it becomes downright madness. I think the problems a narcissist encounters relating with the outside world are just too broad to be curable, and the general consensus in the psych world seems to agree.
Narcissists have no self-regulation and depend on the outside world to regulate themselves emotionally. Most of us "normal" people have some form of self-regulation. It may be poor or maladjusted, but in some form or another, it exists, is subject to improvement, and is internally tied even if unhealthy. Narcissists don't have that.
The notion of changing how you regulate on top of the deep instability that creates a narcissist in the first place seems extremely naive.
So Dr. Ramani does a very interesting thing. She says okay, you can stay if you're not strong enough to leave or for some reason don't want to. But adjust to the status quo.
"If your partner's about-face is convincing, and you decide to stay, then do so, but armed with the knowledge that he will not change, so at least you are prepared for the landscape. Behaviors may shift temporarily, but the core issues will remain."
As long as staying in any relationship hinges heavily on the supposition of change, then you probably shouldn't stay. If you can't accept that, aside from minor-ish alterations, this is your person, then maybe they're not your person.
In her book, Dr. Ramani makes that very clear and that was, I think, my favorite part of the whole thing. These people trapped in bad situations need to hear this. They don't need our faux compassion, our nodding our heads that tomorrow might be better, because it probably won't.
And the reason we don't want to embrace the fact that most people don't change is that it creates accountability. As long as you stay hoping they'll change, you're a victim. Of a faulty narrative, sure, but also you were kinda lead on by the other person that they'd change and everything would be okay in the end.
If you accept they won't, staying becomes an active choice in spite of their inability to change. That's different. I think it takes tremendous ownership to accept your partner for the person they really are, so we prefer delusions and fantasies in which we're the innocent, the victim, the person who got lead on.
It's always harder to say "I'm a woman who chooses to stay with an unfaithful partner" than "It was a slip and he'll never do it again". While accidents and mistakes happen, the odds are stacked against you. Either own your story or change it.
How do we fall out of love with the story in our heads?
"The relationship with the pathological narcissist is often very activating because you kept it alive by writing a vibrant narrative around it. Your story may, in fact, have been more real than the relationship itself. In some ways, it is harder to leave an illusion than a reality."
Often, we resist break-up because it would shatter our narrative, and we're unsure what to do with the pieces. It's hard business, coming to terms with the fact that what you love is a fantasy image, not an actual person, and that the real object of your affection does not mesh with the illusion.
I think, to an extent, we all love a projection. An embellishment. I think it's normal to embellish, actually, but I think love is when you can acknowledge that the person you're living with differs from your narrative and accept it, not compartmentalize it. Which is what many of us do (and what people always do in liaisons with narcissists). We pretend. We disassociate between the story of us and the reality of us.
We start believing that the "bad" part, the one that does sleazy things or hits you or yells at you can be separated and extirpated from the warm, cuddly, fuzzy side you so love. Except that isn't possible. If anything, the warm fuzzy side may be extirpated, while the bad remain. That's because these "bad" traits are designed to help the person survive.
The human body psyche isn't organized in such a way that you can remove those traits that allow it to survive. You can, however, remove the good things. Which is why this illusion of change, this choice to believe in the fantasy partner are both so dangerous and foolhardy. They go against nature.
If anything, your narcissistic partner has the potential of becoming worse.
It's a good book, one that you should read whether in a relationship or not. With or without the narcissist, because as Dr. Ramani points out at the end, we're all susceptible to manipulation and abuse. It helps to have a roadmap and a guide of what to expect and what some classic "red flags" are.
It might sound naive, but often, until we meet them, we don't know people can be so twisted. We know being rude to waiters is a red flag, but we don't expect subtler red flags and we certainly don't anticipate the long game that a lot of manipulators engage in.
And not knowing those are "a thing", it stands to reason we're not socialized to keep a lookout for such red flags.
