Addiction:  a persistent, compulsive dependence on, or commitment to, a habit or practice, on a thing or substance, to the extent that its cessation causes trauma.

There are many definitions of addiction, but bottom line, it’s a dependence on something that causes one to have compulsive thoughts and behaviors, which they cannot control or stop.

Individuals can be addicted to many things such as, alcohol, nicotine, drugs, food, gambling, sex, but when we are talking about an addiction to a person, we usually use the word obsession.  When researches study addiction they often refer to certain neurotransmitters being present in the brain, or certain areas of the brain lighting up, or becoming visible on tests. At present there are no known studies to determine if the same brain patterns exist for an addiction to a person.

I was recently doing some research on addiction, for another publication, when I stumbled across something that fascinated me.

Alisa Valdes was living the dream. She did her undergrad at Berkley and received her Masters of Journalism at Columbia. She landed columns writing for The Boston Globe and later The Los Angeles Times. Her first novel The Dirty Girls Social Club was a huge success and landed her on the New York Times Best Sellers List. She was voted one of the top feminist writers under 30, by Ms Magazine and was even highly touted by feminist icon, Gloria Steinem. By all accounts Valdes’s career had taken off and the future was looking pretty bright…that is of course until she met him.

In 2013 Valdes released a memoir entitled The Feminist and the Cowboy: An Unlikely Love Story.

This memoir depicts the real life romance between Valdes and a rancher named Steve Lane. In it, she discusses the joy she found submitting to this alpha-male, which caused this feminist to make statements such as:

“Never expect anything; instead win him over ‘by giving and giving and giving until it hurts.”

“If an alpha-male cheats, let him. I would share him if I had to.”

“I would hate to have friends over, especially around dinner time. Before every meal my father would preach to us. This wasn’t simply the saying of Grace. He would go on a tirade for ten minutes and this ranting would always include a request for God to show my mother the error of her ways.”- D. Muniz

This ‘religious’ theme in Narcissism comes up a lot. I am often surprised by the copious amounts of messages I receive on the subject. While they may seem like opposite ends of the spectrum,  it does seem that religion and Narcissism really are a perfect match, but why is that?

We’ve all had break-up moments that we aren’t particularly proud of. You know, those scenes where we left the house, but forgot to take our dignity with us, those cringe-worthy moments where our behavior was, well….less than stellar.

Getting dumped hurts and if you’ve been unceremoniously tossed out on your backside, without a how do you do, and the person that ripped your heart out, trots off with someone else, it can stir up a lot of emotions.

You’re dealing with heartbreak, fear, abandonment, jealousy, betrayal, anger, outrage, indignation and all of these feelings are causing the ‘I’m not good enough monster’ to tear up your town in a Godzilla like fashion.

Dating is like investing in the stock market. We want to get the best possible return on our investment, so we want to be informed and make the right decisions.

We can do some insider trading, by getting info from previous partners and we can do our due diligence and research the product, so that you can make the most educated decisions possible, but the bottom line is, every time you invest your emotional currency in a relationship, there is an element of chance and it is always going to be a gamble. What most people should be doing is learning how to minimize risk.

After my long-term Narcissist and I broke up, I spent about a year and a half on self-improvement. I was looking and feeling pretty good and I decided that it was time to get back up on the ole dating horse.  I learned a lot in that year about myself and particularly about my dating habits. It seemed that I kept attracting the same type of guy over and over again and I couldn’t help but wonder, what was going on and if this was a coincidence.

That year my dating history looked like this:

Guy #1 – The date was a total disaster. I talked about my ex the whole time. Relationship duration: 1 date.

Guy #2 – The guy was totally buff, 6’3, muscles everywhere, nice clothes, nice car, good job. He swept me off of my feet and I was hooked.  He started to blow hot and cold. I didn’t hear from him one weekend, then the next he was fixing his c

Imagine growing up in an environment where rather than being loved and nurtured, you’re treated like an adversary and an unwanted burden.

Our parents are our first teachers and the messages we receive from them, shape our views and our beliefs about ourselves. If it is demonstrated to us, repeatedly, that we don’t matter, that we are unwanted, we will become adults that believe that we are worthless and damaged, we will have massive trust issues and difficulties in our adult relationships.

To be a Narcissistic parent is to be an abusive parent. Because to a Narcissist you are either a form of Narcissistic Supply, or you are nothing. The typical parent/child bond never forms, as Narci