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It Takes Two to Tango
The NPD & the DPD — Caught in a Dance of Delusion
If you read a lot about narcissistic personality disordered folks and the partnerships that they form with their source of supply, it is easy to think of them as predators and those who love them as the victims. But that is not the case. They could not do what they do if their victims were not more like “volunteers”. And if you want to get down to the dirty truth of it all, both of them are victims in the most profound ways.
The partners of narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths often but not always suffer from some kind of issue that has groomed them to be the perfect fit. They may suffer from dependent personality disorder (DPD) which is technically codependency and is the formal DSM manual name for the disorder. They may also suffer from unhealthy attachment styles, abandonment issues, and even borderline personality disorder (BPD). Their brains and neurological pathways and biochemical addictions make a relationship with a disordered person with NPD or ASPD feel like a comfortable, perfect pairing. It is what they know and what they have been conditioned to crave.
When you think about how severely traumatized people with early childhood abuse and dysfunction actually manage to find one another, it’s not all that difficult to imagine or surprising to see. Both…
