Human beings are a lot less complicated than you might think . The great motivators for most people, are the desire for survival, sex and love, and power and money. There are other motivators too, like revenge, but usually when you find change, it’s being driven by one of these.

Introspection is the ability to look deep inside and examine your own feelings, thoughts and motives. It’s necessary for growth and change. Surprisingly, not everyone can do introspection. Many either lack the ability, or the desire.

When we don’t look inside at what drives us and others, you’ll feel a sense of disconnect and a separateness that makes us feel alone. Not being in touch with ourselves, can keep us stuck and in a state of denial.

For most of my life I didn’t do introspection. I walked around believing that I was a normal girl, from a normal family, doing normal things and I believed that in my relationships, I was the normal one, I just always seemed to pick the wrong men. I even remember throwing around

“It does give you an extra bit of a thrill. It’s forbidden, so it feels a bit more naughty and erotic, which makes it so much harder to resist.” – Chantelle The Other Woman (TOW) 

In our minds, the other woman is a mysterious femme fatal, who uses her whiles to manipulate and connive. The other woman is a thief and when she seduces your man, she has stolen so much more than your partner. She’s taken your self-esteem, your future and your sense of security, peace and justice and in return, she’s given you gut wrenching heartache, humiliation, jealousy, rage and crippling fear.

We love to hate the other woman. It’s easy to hate her. What is surprising is how we are able to brush aside our mate’s indiscretion and make her the focus of our malcontent. We do that because a part of us expects it from men, the other part wants to believe that he is a victim too, that he wouldn’t purposely betray us. She must have done something, promised him something or seduced him somehow. She has cast a spell or some kind of a web, that he just couldn’t free himself from. She used her sexuality to coerce him into doing things he wouldn’t normally do. She should know better and she’s broken the sister code, so it’s all her fault. She knows the vulnerability of his biology, and for all these reasons we save most of our outrage for her.

“I liked the feeling of being chosen over someone else. I really wasn’t thinking about his wife, or her feelings. I was just thinking about how I felt and when he wanted me, I felt really good.” – Jessie -The Other Woman (TOW)

We all want our relationships to workout. We’ve all grown up with the adages that relationships require work, compromise and sacrifice. The problem many of us have is knowing when to keep fighting and knowing when it’s time to let go and move on.

De-coupling can be complicated and scary. Certainly there is a great deal of fear and uncertainty involved, but staying together when you are both deliriously unhappy has equally negative repercussions.

Staying with someone, for reasons other than love, commitment and happiness, stops you from living a full authentic life. For one, it means that you’ve accepted that the romantic aspect of your life will remain unfulfilled and that there will be an absence of intimacy for the rest of your days.

Your home is supposed to be your castle – the one place where you feel safe and comfortable. It’s supposed to be the place where you want to be – your sanctuary but, if you live in a hostile environment, you won’t get through without battle scars.

When the person closest to you treats you like an enemy – what does that do to your self-esteem?

When the one person that should love you the most doesn’t – how do we explain it to ourselves or others?

I went to my brother’s cottage this weekend and I got to spend some quality time with my nephews and niece.  We swam and played volleyball and badminton and ran around like children.  As we played another game of badminton, my five year old nephew Jacob, who isn’t as agile or coordinated as the rest of us, looked at me and shouted, “Let me win one Auntie.”

“What do I always say?” I asked.

“You gotta earn it.” He answered ritualistically, while rolling his eyes.

“And why does Auntie always say that?”

“Cuz nobody gives you anything in life, you have to stand on your own two feet and do it yourself.”

I explained to him that if I let him win, then his victory wouldn’t mean anything. That there would come a day, that he will beat Auntie at everything and when he does earn his victory, it won’t be a hollow one – it will mean something.

I often pull my brother’s little ones aside and give them Auntie’s words of wisdom.  They probably don’t grasp what I’m really trying to tell them, with their young, immature minds, but it’s my hope that they will all grow up feeling valued and loved and that they will grow into good, kind people and live their lives with integrity.

Imagine for a moment, that you were an emotional predator and that, in order for you to just feel normal, you needed people to like you and to want you. You’ve got to con your way into your target’s life, heart and/or bed, in order to obtain this objective, and you need to do so quickly and with the least amount of effort. What would you do? Where would you go to achieve this?

Online dating sites are ripe with emotional manipulators. At the touch of a button, you can sort through a myriad of profiles, just like you would leaf through a catalogue. And at the same time, you can create your own profile, whose sole purpose is to attract as many prey as possible. In this imaginary online world, you can lie about your age, your profession, your income, your education, your likes and dislikes and if you’re a somatic Narcissist you can even post muscled body pics, or highly provocative cleavage shots, for just the right effect. 

“I typed in the nickname he uses on his Xbox and social media accounts. This search led me to his profile on the free dating site, Plenty of Fish…his profile was filled with so many

Have you ever come across a definition or a list of symptoms, and by the time you got to the end of it, your eyes were completely bugged out and your jaw was resting comfortably on the floor?  And as the shock of recognition sank in, all you kept saying was, “Oh-My-God, Oh-My-God – this is me. I could be the poster child for this.”

That was me many years ago, after reading Melanie Beattie’s book, Co-Dependent No More. Before I understood the term co-dependent I blamed my Narcissist for everything. And why shouldn’t I? He deserved the blame and my animosity for everything that he had done. But as I looked into this co-dependency business, I realized more and more, that I played an equal roll in this sad excuse of a relationship. I was equally responsible, equally at fault, and I was totally and solely to blame, for the sorry state I was in. Sure, he was a Narcissist and sure, his list of issues and relationship crimes could circle the globe, but I had a thing too and it had a name. My label was worse than his, because…well…it was mine. I was co-dependent.  I could relate to every bit of it. It was a pretty tough pill to swallow, because now on top of the hurt and everything else I was dealing with, I had to deal with this too.

Parasite: “An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on, or in a different organism, while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.” – answers.com

It has been said that the inverted narcissist leads a parasitic lifestyle, but what does that really mean? While the above definition holds true for many organisms, when we apply it to human beings we can modify it a little and define it as:

A deliberately, manipulative and exploitative financial and emotional dependence of one person on another. Where one person, consistently takes advantage of the kindness and resources of another, without any desire to reciprocate, or contribute in any meaningful way. This exploitation is fueled by a sense of entitlement, a lack of responsibility, motivation and self-control.

I had a reader discuss her frustration with having to deal with the parasitic behavior of her former Narcissist, she writes,

“There are many, many aspects of narcissists and their behavior that are just mind boggling and literally insane. What kills me the most about my Narcissist, all Narcissists, really, is how he CANNOT possibly understand, or care, that I do NOT want to hear from him. These people have selective amnesia about what they’ve done. They seem to NOT be able to grasp this very basic concept: That the people they’ve hurt DO NOT want to hear from them! When someone says “DON’T contact me, ever again,” DON’T!”