We recently encountered the Bruin triplets. As a precaution, we photographed them through our windshield – the photo quality suffered because the window was dirty and there’s also a lot of visible glare. The bears are coming into a lot of contact with humans however, and we think it’s best not to open windows or to stop and get out. The more minimal we can be, the better, because in the end, it’s the bears that pay the price for human thoughtlessness.
The bears? Well, they’re just being bears.
One of the bears was particularly explorative while the other two stayed close to mummy. They all appeared to be very healthy and well fed.
These bears were born during the winter and will stay with their mum for about the next 12-14 months until they become juveniles, at which time they will start their independent lives. Their mum will go on to find another mate and to give birth again.
But as with all young ones, right now they are completely adorable. 🙂
M and I recently drove through a small part of it.
We saw bison (buffalo) of course but also bears.
And a sink hole.
It was the middle of May but there was still a little ice and snow at the bottom of it.
We didn’t see any whooping cranes – this park has one of the largest whooping crane nesting sites in the world – but had a very interesting short visit to an environmentally sensitive and important area.
On the weekend, M and I drove through Wood Buffalo National Park on our way to Fort Smith. We saw quite a few bison (frequently mislabelled as buffalo; the park has also retained the old inaccurate name) but lots of bears as well.
They have been out and around for about two to three weeks now and are fully awake.
I was surprised at how tame they are. This bear stayed in the road, unphased, as we carefully maneuvered around him. He looked hopefully at us as we passed.
There were others as well. This one stood up, also unbothered, as we slowed down to take his picture. There was no attempt to flee.
Another beautiful bear was curious enough to start walking towards us. We took the picture and pulled away.
I was dismayed to learn later that the reason why the bears seem so comfortable with people is that they are often being fed. And in a national park no less! Heartbreaking. As the saying goes, “a fed bear is a dead bear.” This park is huge (bigger than Switzerland) and there is limited access by vehicle, so park rangers will try to move bears that become too friendly into the back country. Unfortunately, some of them return and are then euthanized. All because human beings can’t stop being idiots.
I have had a particular search term show up a lot lately: narcissists whochase women (or words to the same effect). Narcissists do chase women, but those who chase women aren’t really chasing women. Sound confusing? Read on.
Unlike this lake, a narcissist can be good at hiding a ruffled surface.
First of all, my apologies to those who have suffered through a female narcissist. However, the fact is that most narcissists are male, hence the search for information on narcissists who chase women. I admit to having something of a bias in this area because I had a relationship with a male narcissist and I often write about my experiences with him and about what I learned. However, I was raised by a narcissist – my mother. It’s taken me a long time to see that and to even admit it or say it out loud or write it here. (It took a lot of reading and thinking and chatting with my blog friend Ursula at https://www.anupturnedsoul.wordpress.com. Thank you, Ursula.) So, to those who have experienced female narcissists and who may also feel a bit like they’re stepping on female territory, or who feel left out, don’t. A narcissist is a narcissist and that’s that. They may take different approaches, but the damage they cause is profound, no matter what sex you or they are.
Narcissists do chase, mostly because you have something they want or they think you have something they want.
They like to hang on to people whom they have for the most part discarded when they’re in the process of collecting someone else, just in case the new subject gets away.
They like to return to someone they have discarded when they are in between “relationships.”
The point is that they are never without someone. (Please see the piece I published about that particular situation.)
The first example – that narcissists chase when you have something they want or think you have something they want – is probably the trap that catches the most targets. Narcissists are usually determined, highly motivated and extremely single-minded when they have zeroed in on a target that they see as very suitable – in other words, when they have zeroed in on someone who fits a set of characteristics that they believe can be easily exploited.
Narcissists are never direct or straight.
There are degrees to which they will pursue, however. The less important you are to their wellbeing or sense of self and/or success, the less seriously they will invest energy in you.
The more desirable you are to whatever it is they need, the more ardent they will be.
So, if they really want something, and they believe that you have whatever it is they want and you possess the right characteristics, they will chase you. They will study you to find out the information they need in order to get you to trust them, and then they will put a lot of energy into proving that your trust is warranted. During this phase, you will feel like you have landed in the nirvana of relationships. It will feel absolutely wonderful.
What comes next, though, is devastating, because once they have secured you, once you are no longer a challenge, once they have achieved what they wanted from you, you will become, at best, unimportant. At worst, well, that could be anything that another human can do to you to hurt you.
A narcissist can clean you out.
Do narcissists chase? Yes. They do. It is what they do. It is their defining characteristic. It is how they survive, emotionally and financially. They chase women, men, colleagues, neighbours and children. They will chase anyone who fits the “profile” and from whom they can get whatever it is that they determine they need.
The important thing to remember though is that they aren’t really chasing people. They’re really chasing stuff.
I first published this post in 2012, not long after I started this blog. I was particularly annoyed about how pushed I felt to participate in the buying of stuff and produced this rant. I’ve made a few changes to it but otherwise, here it is again, in all its grinchy glory.
Ahhh … Christmas. That time of the year when people bolt madly about the mall, foaming at the mouth, their eyeballs rolled back in their heads; I sometimes wonder if we’ve mixed up the seasons and I’m seeing a replay of last Halloween’s midnight showing of Night of the Living Dead.
There’s been a couple of different versions of this movie with slightly different names, but you know. The one where the good guys are all trapped in a mall and their numbers gradually dwindle until there’s only two or three of them left, and they’ve run out of ammunition and water and toilet paper and they have to decide which one of them is going to dash out among the monsters to get to the only working vehicle that’s left in a radius of 100 km. Why didn’t they think of that before they trapped themselves in the mall?
I think that the Night of the Living Dead was here. (Glenbow Museum, Calgary)
Anyway, I’m digressing. Or maybe not. I don’t think that glancing around at the mall decorations would be any indication of what month it is anyway. Back in October I found myself tripping over the jingle bells while hunting for the Halloween pumpkins.
Or maybe that was Peter Rabbit.
Cupid?
I can’t tell any more. The so-called special occasions are all starting to morph into each other. The only thing I do notice is the surge in mania that accompanies this time of year.
It starts with Christmas music that’s supposed to put us in a seasonal frame of mind and get us to start parting with our cash as early as possible. The earlier we start, the more we’ll spend! Or some such reasoning. All it does for me is to get me going on my seasonal vocabulary, as in “Oh fudge, it’s ‘deck the halls’ again.”
Really, you say? Well, not really. My language tends to be rather … er … spicier. The fact is, if I hear those piped in carollers fa la la-ing one more time I’m going to hunt them down and strangle them with their own holly out in the parking lot. Shouldn’t they be done with that whole decking the halls thing by now anyway? They’ve been at it since they chased the headless horseman out of town months ago.
Then we’re supposed to decorate anything that stands still for longer than two seconds. Since the stores start this at the end of September, the passive-aggressive suggestion to the rest of us is that if we don’t buy our lights and holly and tinsel and get them up soon, we’re all really the worst kind of lazy procrastinators who probably don’t even separate our whites and our colours when we do the laundry, if we do the laundry.
We’re supposed to have a theme, and mulled wine stewing on the stove, and our houses are supposed to reek of pine needles and fresh cookies.
At my house, it’s more like this: theme – getting the laundry done this week without having a nervous collapse; baking – finding that pair of dirty socks that has been baking under the bed for so long that they’ve started growling; Christmasy smells – getting out the PineSol and cleaning the bathroom; mulling – trying to remember all the stuff I have to do this week and why it is that I’m doing it; wine – falling upon any wine that I can find and drinking it straight from the bottle before collapsing into the recliner and falling asleep and snoring in front of the news.
Wine for the whiner.
The next step in this nightmare on Mistletoe Street is the shopping. I hate shopping at the best of times but during December it’s demented. People don’t even know what they’re doing. All they know is that they have to buy twenty presents and get them wrapped up or there’s going to be hell to pay.
Living dead, indeed.
One pair of silver-plated, self-cleaning, automatic nose hair pluckers. Just what Auntie Jo always wanted.
If you can lift it, get it. Drag it over to the till and wait for an hour in the line. Find out what it is when you get home. Cover it in two hundred dollars of paper and stick it under the tree.
Then there’s jolly old Saint Nickle Ass. Ho, ho, ho. Sitting there cringing, his knees covered in a sheet of clear plastic, hearing the supplications of the tiny teenagers toddlers, an example for sociologists everywhere of how greed can outweigh sheer terror.
The merchants are rubbing their hands with glee …er … delight, warmed through and through with the spirit of Christmas cash … er … past.
The kids are wound up so tight their eyeballs are bulging. The list of what they want is terrifying and you better hop to it because they’ve got Granny held hostage up in the attic. Who says that this generation suffers from entitlement?
Anyway, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to carve my jingle pumpkin and deck the halls with zombies. Fa la la la la la la la la la.
What is it about the season that makes you want to channel your inner Grinch?
When I take a look though my search terms, I am sometimes surprised at what I find there. “Narcissist piano” showed up there, three times. I did a post about it. Another time, I did a post on a very serious search term: how to get a narcissist to love you. You can read that post here.
Now I’ve found this lovely search term: what to say to a narcissist to get him back. I suppose that on the surface, it’s not so different from “trying to get a narcissist to love you,” but maybe the searcher is thinking of other things, like trying to get the narcissist back to force him into his share of the child-raising, or something else like that. But I wouldn’t bet money on it.
Maybe the searcher wants the narcissist back so that she can treat him as badly as he treated her: revenge! Hummm. That is a possibility. We human beings can get pretty angry at the injustices done us and sometimes it helps to fantasise about getting our own back. So yes, I can envision someone typing this into her google search, visions of vengeful scenarios dancing in her head.
But given the whole narcissist trainwreck that gets dumped all over the victim’s lawn, there’s probably always some fantasising about revenge, but on balance anyone who has escaped a narcissist probably doesn’t want him back. I mean, there might be those who fantasise that the narcissist has been cured, has mended his ways, has learned his lesson, yadayadayada. But no one dreams about getting the actual narcissist back, with his narcissy ways intact.
Unless …
This person is in denial.
She’s heard others say that he’s a narcissist. She’s looked it up and seen some descriptors of narcissistic behaviour that apply greatly to this person. Maybe he’s told her that he’s a narcissist.
So, the word “narcissist” is out there, but she’s not taking it as seriously as she should. She’s dissociating from it?
Denial is an amazing thing.
Denial can cloud a clear vision.
Sometimes, denial can be a good thing. It can help us to make the adjustment after a traumatic or distressing event; it can give us time to take in what has happened. In the short term, it can protect us.
The problems start when the denial goes on for too long, especially in the face of mounting opposite evidence.
We can get that way about our relationships, and can find ourselves hanging on by the threadiest of marginal hopes that what we are seeing isn’t what we are seeing.
Or choosing to not see at all …
… and even inventing another “reality.”
What to say to a narcissist to get him back? How to get a narcissist to love you? How to get a narcissist to chase me? I wonder about the people who type in these questions. Sometimes, I worry about them a bit too.
Do they just not know what a narcissist is? A real, live, NPD narcissist?
Have they convinced themselves that they can “cure” the narcissist with their love? That all the narcissist needs is a chance to see that trust is possible? That love is possible?
Is the narcissist simply a challenge? (And if so, this brings with it a whole other dynamic – is the person who’s trying to win the narcissist back also a narcissist?)
Or, is this simply human nature? A very human need to show that problems, no matter what they are, can be solved? That there really is love in a world that so often demonstrates the opposite? That there are second chances and that they do work?
In other words, that there’s hope. And perhaps, that’s the most human of human characteristics. And also perhaps, it’s incredibly misplaced sometimes.
What do you think? Is hope sometimes misplaced? How do we know when to have hope and when to not have hope? Is denial hope or hope denial?
I found this in my search terms: narcissist piano. I did the mental equivalent of shifting from one foot to the other while I mulled that over. What does it mean??? Is it a typo? Is the searcher wondering if pianists are narcissists? Is that an actual type of piano?
I mean, this is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night.
So I did what anyone would do and googled it. At first, google stared stupidly at me. Then it coughed up narcissistic jazz, narcissistic piano bench and Ryan O’Neal.
Who knew?
Does Ryan O’Neal play narcissistic jazz while sitting on a narcissistic piano bench? Is Ryan O’Neal a narcissist? Or is it just his piano? Nope. I think that might be Billy Joel. (Get it? Nudge nudge. Just me and my old piano?)
This is so confusing. Is it an alien piano? It grew up on Mars eating Matt Damon’s poop potatoes?
Oh – I know! It’s a zombie piano. The lid opens and it takes a big drooly bite out of your sheet music.
And I couldn’t find my blog on that google search either so I have no idea why the narcissistic piano wound up in my terms.
Justin Trudeau, our PM. I just thought I would throw him in. Better than a narcissist piano and better looking, too. I think. Because I have no idea what a narcissist piano looks like.
The word piano means soft.
And narcissists aren’t soft. Not unless it gets them something. And then they’re hard.
Could the searcher have been looking for something like “narcissists who are soft” and since his first language is Italian, and he’s just learning English, it came out as narcissist piano?
Maybe I’m going a little far with that one …
My ex-narcissist played the piano.
Apparently he would have been Mozart’s doppelganger if he’d had the right breaks in life.
Or something pretentious like that.
I arranged for the piano tuner to come by and spiff up my piano so that the narcissist could play it. It had been in storage but I got it out for him because naturally, the narcissist didn’t have a piano of his own. Most doppelganger Mozarts don’t have their own pianos. True. It’s a fact.
When I came home from work, the narcissist told me that the piano was done. As in finished. Kaput. Toast. Ready for the big dirt nap.
The tuner had told him that the sound board was crumbling to bits. The carpenter ants were coming to take it away.
Then, a few months later, the narcissist asked me for a new piano. I briefly considered it but then decided not to. My financials were feeling the strain of being married to a doppelganger Mozart.
Later, after I had divorced him, I checked the piano myself. It has some little cracks, but everything I’ve read says that this is not a big issue. It sounds okay.
Hummm. I think the narcissist just wanted a new piano.
So there you have it. If someone else googles narcissist piano, there will be an answer.
It’s still January but about two weeks ago, the weather turned. The temperature crept up, the bit of snow we had started to melt, and the ducks started squawking and flapping. Every day now it’s a little warmer and a little sunnier.
This morning I was out walking and took this photo of Skaha Lake. I’m lucky enough to live across from it and have been watching its moody winter changes this year.
It’s still got some ice over the shallows near the shore, but I don’t think that will last long.
Today I listened to CBC radio’sTapestry presentation on the subject of emotional labour. It’s an interesting topic and a type of work to which someone has finally given a name. Essentially, emotional labour is anything that people do that requires an emotionally invested outlay of energy. For example, we expend emotional energy keeping track of and making sure that our children go to the dentist, we listen when friends or family members need a shoulder to cry on, or we ensure there’s gas in the car. For the most part, emotional labour refers to the million little maintenance jobs (and sometimes not so little) that need to be taken care of and done on a regular basis, although much of this work can also be unexpected and/or quite time consuming. Statistically, it’s mostly women who complete these tasks, and we apparently spend a lot of time on them.
While listening to this piece, I was reminded of the amount of emotional labour one will expend if involved with a narcissist, and then I was reminded of a post I did about three or four years ago called The Seasonal Narcissist. It’s one of my more popular posts, particularly at this time year, but it only looks at the seasonal narcissist from the perspective of dealing with one on a temporary basis. It doesn’t really look at the long game at all. And it also doesn’t look at the energy that goes into having to be married to or in some sort of live-in relationship with one while Christmas, or any other holiday or special occasion, is in full swing.
Narcissists are never straight.
Those of you who are familiar with me know that I have first-hand experience with this. Over a 20-month period, I became immersed in all the difficulties one encounters during any type of special occasion if involved with an NPD narcissist.
The emotional energy I expended around these events was enormous.
First of all, “Harry” was incredibly unpredictable in general, but if Christmas was coming up, he was much worse. I have read lots of accounts of people watching their narcissist walk out the door just before Christmas (or other special events), leaving the significant other or spouse in emotional hell and the children devastated, only to return as soon as the holiday or event is over.
This is typical behaviour.
Essentially, they don’t want anyone to enjoy the holiday or event, because they aren’t going to be the centre of attention. And if they aren’t going to be the centre of attention, then what’s the point? It’s just a bunch of work for nothing. Then there’s also the problem that watching others have fun when they’re not is just too much to bear.
So, let’s take everyone down! Let’s make everyone feel like crap! Let’s walk out! Let’s have a horrible argument! Let’s make everyone feel as wretched as possible!
Then everyone’s attention will be back where it should be. That’ll teach them!
I spent two Christmases with Harry. During the first one, we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii and within a couple of days, he became completely morose and withdrawn. I had no idea what was going on and felt confused, scared and concerned. The only time he talked was to forcefully complain about everything from what I was wearing to the food that was available. All he wanted to do was stay in the hotel room and watch tv. Otherwise, he brooded and became uncommunicative. He faked a stomach bug (I know this because he kept eating heavy meals from the room service menu) so that he didn’t have to go out. A couple of times, he claimed boredom. Of course, suggesting that he leave the room would have been met with more complaints.
Describing him as “high maintenance” would have been an understatement.
Unbeknownst to me, though, it was my very first set of indicators that the person I married wasn’t the person I married.
When we got back home, for a short time he became all sweetness and light, and apologised for his behaviour in Hawaii by claiming that he just hadn’t been feeling well. I didn’t know it then, but my expenditure of emotional energy was about to go up in a big way, because during our trip, he had been grooming me to walk on eggshells.
By the time our second (and last) Christmas came around, I was dwelling in a land of contradiction, confusion and confrontation. I had been shouted at and called every kind of name. I had been accused of betrayal, disrespect and dishonesty. I had been accused of contemplating an affair and of spending too much money. I had been accused of eating too much, of making too much noise when eating, of eating the wrong things, and of being an alcoholic. He said I was lazy, poorly educated and stupid. My clothes and hair were wrong. My furniture was wrong. Nothing was right.
And for a while, I swallowed the notion that it was me who was the problem.
My head was swimming and I was starting to feel like I might head into a depression, but I kept trying. I invested serious emotional labour into trying to fix the so-called wrongs. The list of things that I needed to be careful about became longer and longer and I tried to adhere strictly to the “rules,” but every time I thought I had them right, he changed them and pretended that they had always been that way.
Just before the holiday, I was subjected to a tongue-bashing that left me reeling, but as I see it now, it was also the beginning of my liberation.
It dawned on me that he was looking for an excuse to leave or to destroy any happiness that I might have during the holiday with family and friends. And once I made that connection, other connections that had been loitering in the background strode into the foreground.
An uneasy Christmas proceeded, but the day before New Year’s Eve, when we were supposed to go to a party together, the other shoe dropped. He announced that he was leaving and would be back later in January to pick up his things. According to him, we were done.
And that’s when I turned the tables on him. I left, and spent the night at a friend’s house.
My friend C invested some serious emotional labour of her own in helping me through that night and encouraging some flames from those awareness embers.
I began to see that I was in an emotionally abusive marriage. I began to see that no matter what I did or didn’t do, it would never be good enough. I began to see that no matter how much emotional labour I invested, it would never be enough.
Trying to maintain him, to run around trying to remove any source of annoyance or anger from his day was impossible, because there was always something else. There was no amount of love, effort, or material items that would satisfy him. He was a bottomless pit, and I was expected to keep trying to fill it until I was exhausted and no longer useful.
The beginning of the end had started. Within the next month, I had started counselling, and seven months after that, I got him out of my house.
What it finally came down to was an unadorned realisation on my part that there was nothing I could do except walk away and work at getting my life back: the seasonal narcissist is always a narcissist. It’s just that they do more manipulation when those special occasions roll around. They know that people want to have fun and want things to go well, and that makes them vulnerable and malleable, especially if children are involved.
Stay tuned for Part II.
Have you experienced a seasonal narcissist? What are your thoughts about emotional labour?
I was dismayed to learn later that the reason why the bears seem so comfortable with people is that they are often being fed. And in a national park no less! Heartbreaking. As the saying goes, “a fed bear is a dead bear.” This park is huge (bigger than Switzerland) and there is limited access by vehicle, so park rangers will try to move bears that become too friendly into the back country. Unfortunately, some of them return and are then euthanized. All because human beings can’t stop being idiots.
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