The vineyards of the Okanagan Valley are verdant and blowsy with green growing …
… and green globular wine grapes, tight with juice and flavour …
… unless they’re red. 🙂
Most of them will soon be ready for plucking. They will become lots of types of wine, both precious and humble, and everything in between.
Like us.
Greetings from the vineyards of the Okanagan Valley. 🙂
This is Skaha Lake in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. I spent a lot of time there while on summer holidays.
It is very serene …
… and placid. Soothing and relaxing and exactly what water and sun and fresh air and nature can do for a tired human being.
A beautiful day in the neighbourhood.
Happy Tuesday. 🙂
The Salt River runs through the town of Fort Smith, NWT.
All is very green right now because recently, there has been a lot of rain.
The Salt River is not salty, but is named for the nearby salt plains. The plains can be found in Wood Buffalo National Park and are very attractive to the many types of animals who like to lick the salt that has worked its way up from deep inside the earth.
During the fur trading days, the salt was collected for seasoning. It could still be used for this purpose today.
Happy Independence Day to our American friends and greetings from the non-salty Salt River. 🙂
In the north, lilac takes a long time to bloom.
It’s July, yes, but these hardy blooms do arrive, even if late by southern standards.
I found this particular bush after a rain when their fragrance was particularly lush and heady.
Hardy they may be, but they spread their gaudy celebration of life with gusto.
Greetings from the lovely northern lilac. 🙂
The wild rose is the provincial flower of Alberta. But there are many of these lovely flowers everywhere, especially in the north.
They grow beside roads and in fields, splashing the green with their pretty pink, so cheery and fragrant.
That which we call a rose would by any other name still smell as sweet. 🙂 ~Shakespeare
Happy Tuesday from Great Slave Lake,
Northwest Territories.
I hope your day goes well. 🙂
This has become the most popular search term in my list. I have written before about other search terms of this type, such as how to get a narcissist back and how to get a narcissist to fall in love. The titular term is slightly different of course, and making a narcissist want you is not necessarily the same as wanting a narcissist to fall in love or to get him or her back.
There may be a number of things going on here. The first is that there may be the idea of vengefulness in the mind of the searcher. “I want that horrible person to want me so that I can do the same and give him/her the boot. Give him/her a taste of his/her own medicine!”
Or, the searcher may be another narcissist, and in that case, it’s probably an attempt at figuring out how to do a hoover.
Unfortunately, there’s a third option, and that’s the fact that the searcher may really be trying to get the narcissist to “want” him or her. And that’s disturbing, because what that tells me is that the searcher likely
knows what the narcissist is but still believes in redemption, in a cure, or that love can conquer all.
And that type of thinking only has negative results: heartbreak, betrayal, manipulation, verbal and emotional abuse (sometimes there’s physical abuse as well), gaslighting, rejection, abandonment, hoovering, more rejection. The behaviour of the narcissist is well-established and steady across years of interactions with others. The course of their interplay with you is very predictable, even if you are never sure what they will do or what is going to come out of their mouths; you know that it’s going to be something, and something unpleasant at that.
Most people are optimistic. Yes, we have periods when we aren’t, but for the most part, the majority of us believe in second chances, change, and opportunities to recoup. Narcissists know this, either consciously or unconsciously, and even if they are the unconscious type who becomes conscious of it, it’s not going to change them.
The people who authentically are trying to get the narcissist to want them are turning a blind eye to what they know. Really, they’re the ones who want the narcissist. The narcissist could care less – a few hoovers, a nice infusion of supply, and then, no more narcissist.
Well, the narcissist might turn up now and again, even years apart for a hoover, but for all intents and purposes, the “relationship” is over.
In the end, it’s the victim who has to stop doing the wanting.
Why do people pursue those who have hurt them, manipulated them, betrayed them? Do they feel that it isn’t worth it to themselves to set a standard? (I won’t accept this, this, this and that.) Maybe they’re worried that no one will be left. That unless they accept the narcissist, and convince the narcissist to drop the bad behaviour, they will be alone and everyone will judge them. Or, unfortunately, maybe they are just used to it and can’t imagine another way. Sometimes, it’s that we become comfortable with discomfort.
The charm that the narcissist exudes during the golden period can be heady, wonderful, completely intoxicating.
Once there’s a taste of that, especially if it’s combined with a fear of being judged inadequate if they are constantly alone, or a fear of what might be wrong with them, well, then they’re dealing with what’s in their heads.
The fear that there’s something dreadfully wrong with you if the narcissist can’t be convinced to want you is powerful. The pride that prevents you from moving ahead as a single is also powerful.
And again, the narcissist knows this and takes advantage of it.
This uncertainty in yourself is what the narcissist wants, not you yourself. And you wanting the narcissist? Part of it is that you’re wanting the person the narcissist made you believe you are – an unrealistic golden period version of yourself, and unfortunately, you will fall off the edge of that particular path if you try to stay on it. Yes, you’re wanting what you thought the narcissist is, too, but those feelings you had about yourself during the golden period – you thought you could fly.
Want can never be satisfied; it’s a false economy of hucksterism that the narcissist knows well and manipulates thoroughly. It’s the narcissist’s job to find out what your wants are in order to exploit them.
The narcissist lives externally, and has drawn you into that. There will never be enough love, enough faith, enough loyalty to overcome the narcissist’s deficits and make you feel like you did when you first met the narcissist. There may be glimpses of it, but they’re just that.
It’s unfair, but you will be left holding the “want” bag and will have to deal with it. No Contact is the answer. Many interpret this to mean that it’s for keeping the narcissist at bay.
Yes, it is that, partially. But the most important part is for you. You have healing to do, resting to do, and then, work to do. No Contact allows you to get yourself and your life sorted, to create space so that you can do the work of figuring out why you would love and/or want the narcissist. When you’re asking “how do I make a narcissist want me?” – what are you really asking?
Should I change my clothes? Should I change my hair? Make-up? House?Job? Personality? I know – I’ll become a chameleon and be whatever the narcissist wants me to be in that particular moment. I’ll spend all my time doing that and the narcissist will have so much fun with it experimenting with how many different ways I can be pretzeled. It’ll be a blast!!
Why do you want the narcissist to want you?
Answer the question.
It’s a hard question and will take work and struggle and you will feel frustrated and will want to give up.
But accepting yourself, as you are, with what you have to offer, is worth it.
The alternative is to accept that you want a mirage and that your life with this individual will be one of denial, deflection and obfuscation. And if you would rather do that, then that’s your choice. Lots of people have made the choice to live that way, but I believe that there’s a better way.
I hope you come around to that too.
On our last drive from the Okanagan to the Northwest Territories, M and I
stopped at the Overlander Hotel, just outside Jasper National Park.
It was a wonderful respite after eight hours of driving through the mountains. There was great food with a wonderful room in the original lodge that was built more than 100 years ago.
The view from the dining room is stunning, with the mountains gazing serenely from their redoubt.
Greetings from the beautiful Overlander Hotel.
Mother of fiery pearl and graceful shark
The pounding logs and grinding stones
Of life millenial
Arctic heat drives you
Breath of the world
As cables and leaves entwine us in brine and sand
The assassin, the mid-wife
You are all things at once and never.
When I left off at the end of part one, my boss was becoming very ill but was still at work.
Her decisions had started to become dodgy and unreliable, a complete reversal of character and ability for her.
I needed a rest from the demanding situation and took my summer holidays, and while I was away, she suffered an embolism and was suddenly gone. It was extremely and very mercifully quick.
I rushed back to a funeral, a dazed and grieving staff, including three new hires, and a huge workload.
Despite the fact that everyone knew she was terminal, people were shocked; many had bought into the notion that she was curing herself through traditional medicine, a modality in which she had such complete faith that it bled over to others. (I believe. Do you believe? Or something like that.) The new hires were more shocked than anyone, since they hadn’t been aware that she was sick.
As a group, we started putting one foot in front of the other, and got on with it, in spite of feeling sad and stunned. We got going again; we had to. The work carried on.
I was placed in an “acting” role and I set about the business of wrapping my head around all the things that needed to be done. There were a lot of them.
In the meantime, however, a coup was fomenting. A couple of people who were “grieving” on the surface were planning to put their chosen candidate into the head role – a chosen candidate whom they could control.
20 days into my new job, I was sitting in my temporary new office at my temporary new desk, bordering on letting myself slide into a private little collapse. I perched on the edge of my seat, white knuckling the desk’s edge, breathing hard and teetering on the verge of just walking away.
I had a few hostile employees who wanted to replace me. Others were angry at my boss for dying, and for telling them that she was getting better when she wasn’t. We experienced all the stages of grief like we were on a rocket sled.
No one had any idea how much had to be done, the timelines involved, and the contingencies needed. People kept materialising out of nowhere, demanding everything and taking responsibilty for nothing. Criticism hung on the air like a fog. And, there was the imposter factor. I kept thinking that I didn’t know what I was doing, that I was a know-nothing kid dressed in her mother’s work clothes, that I was in waaay over my head.
So I did. I pressed pause. I shut the door to my office. I set the phone to voice mail. I sat, and I meditated.
After I got rid of the ex-narcissist out of my life, I had learned meditation from my counsellor, and in this maelstrom of work and emotion, I had stopped doing it. I needed to get back to it.
I took a break, I re-grouped, and I fought my way through it, day after day and week after week.
I focused on what was going well: top notch support from head office, a supportive spouse and friends and faith in myself.
I won the permanent position. I got my staff in line; the ones who are discontented are moving on, and new ones are coming in. But it was a hard slog and I had to get tough. The staff who failed in pursuit of “their” candidate were angry and bitter.
It’s getting better now. The learning curve angle is beginning to soften, and a good team is starting to develop.
But pausing my life? Yes. It’s necessary. Sometimes you have to stop, take a look, and decide if this is where you should be, if it’s for you. A realistic self-examination is key, not just for yourself but also for those you work with.
That’s something that I learned from this, both by watching it and by experiencing it myself. Being able to recognise your weaknesses and consider them is not shameful, and being realistic about your strengths isn’t shameful either.
What is your opinion?
