The Achilles Heel of the Narcissist: Inability to Feel or Understand Love The narcissist sees the world in black and white. Someone or something is either good or bad. A statement made to them is either good or bad. There are no shades of gray or colors in the narc's dark world. You can liken that to the fading of colors outside as the sun sets and you edge towards dusk. Love is complex, true love that is, and the narc can't comprehend it for two main reasons: one, he doesn't have the ability to feel the emotion and two, he can't understand love, because love is very complex in the sense that love has many shades and colors to it and is constantly changing and evolving. Love is the ultimate in variability as far as emotions go. To call love a “dim switch” of emotions, in that it has infinitely variable settings still doesn't account for its various infinite colors. This is mind blowing to a narc. Harsh words to a narc can only be bad and evil, but harsh words spoken to someone that you love that is harming themselves can be the essence of love and kind enabling of that same activity, although “positive”, is the essence of a partner who isn't engaged and concerned in the relationship. Of course, a partner can get worn down and forced into accepting the bad behavior of their partner, but that is not due to lack of love. Because love is complicated, the average person shouldn't present themselves an authority on the subject, so I will proceed with caution in the following discussion. The narc doesn't feel or appreciate love, but he readily sees it's power and the effect it has on people, so the narc has a great clinical, emotionally detached, knowledge about love and is adept at mimicking it's appearance and using it to his advantage. The narc sees his ability to not be susceptible to the effects of love and the vulnerability it produces as a strength. The narc considers this immunity from the effects of love and the ability to use it to manipulate the people he judges as weaker and more vulnerable around him as one of the reasons for his superiority to those people. How can you reason with someone that has this mentality? How can you prove to them that without love and the strength to make yourself vulnerable that life is not worth living? To put it another way, how can you tell the narc that one of the biggest reasons for their dissatisfaction with life is that they have no appreciation for the power of love and the power of making yourself vulnerable, and that vulnerability requires courage and strength? The narc is unaware of all of this and believes it to be pure nonsense, hence no true love, no true joy, no growth, no satisfaction with any relationship or situation. So what is the point of this discussion? The narc has had true love in his life, maybe even many times, since he moves from one relationship to another, but has never even comprehended or taken advantage of that love for personal growth. Instead, these relationships were simply a source of temporary energy and excitement, that needed to be discarded when no longer useful. How many of these discarded people had true insight into the narc and truly wanted to help? How many of these people could have provided the narc with the keys to true happiness and joy if he would have ever understood that the perceived harshness of these people was actually love? But again, since anything not complimentary is simply seen as negative and therefore useless to the narc, all of these opportunities were wasted on him. The Achilles heel in these situations is the narc's inability to understand “tough love” and the inability to realize all of the complexities of love. Love is not all about feelings of intense elation. Love is not only about positivity and good times but of course, since the narc is a detached, non committed observer he will cherry pick only the aspects of love that he sees as good and will discard those aspects he views as bad. This is a clear indicator that the narc hasn't any comprehension at all of what love is. Even the average 14 year old could teach the narc something about love. Love, in essence seeks the highest good and ultimate joy for the person that is loved and will gently, but continually be used by the partner to try to make that joy and happiness and contentment a reality for their partner. This requires the ability to present insights honestly to the partner. The narc can't understand this and when he tries to recreate what he considers the negative criticism that was really presented to him to try to help him, his criticisms are a cheap fake of the real thing. What is the difference between the “insight” a narc has about his partner and the real thing? The narcs insights are always designed to injure and not enlighten and are always a warping or distortion of the truth. There is NO value in the criticism from the narc, because the intentions are to destroy the other person, not build them up. In short the narc's criticism is devoid of love. But the narc will never be able to understand the difference between criticism given with love that is intended to build up and help and heal and his brand of criticism. To him both are the same a clear indicator that he will never benefit from a partner who truly loves him or her. A partner who refuses to be a “yes man” and refuses to blow continual sunshine their way. Thank you for watching, comments are welcomed.