The topic of narcissism is intensely interesting to me, I could really write a book about narcissists, I even have my own private word for describing them, “tyranni” which I think is clearer in describing them and their perfidious nature. However, in the interests of keeping my blog updated I thought I would share a few thoughts I’ve been having recently regarding the topic of bonding and how it concerns the nature of narcissists.

Bonding is a complicated subject, and one that is often brought to my attention by people asking me about women who have had multiple sexual partners and how compromised their ability to bond is. I am familiar with the research being referenced here, and statistically it is true, women who have had multiple sexual partners before marriage are a very high risk of divorce… However, statistics are not as straight forward to interpret at they may appear. For instance, how many of those women had lost (or lacked) the ability to bond before they had any sexual partners? I mean, is multiple sexual partners the cause of the lack of ability to bond or was their lack of ability to bond the cause of them having so many sexual partners?

Consider it this way, these women had to have a first time with someone, so why didn’t they just bond with him?

I have no proof of this, but I suspect that a good portion of the women who couldn’t bond with their husbands, couldn’t bond with men before they started sleeping with them. The reason why I suspect this might be the case is in the nature of narcissism and how it impacts bonding in general.

First, let’s consider, what does it actually mean to be bonded to someone? Bonds come in many varieties. You can have a bond of family, a bond of friendship, a bond of marriage, a legal bond, a bond of kinship within your tribe, a bond of community with your church, or even your workplace. So for this discussion I’m going to narrow down the definition of bonding to a specific type. In this type of bond the person who makes the bond stops seeing the other person as a separate individual but as a part of themselves; a kinship bond. Now, on the surface this might seem unclear so I will go through a couple of examples.

Imagine someone goes into your house, starts eating all your food, pays no rent, shits on your floors, and keeps you up all night screaming. How would you feel about having such a person in your home? Would you be angry and behave aggressively and threateningly to them? Or would you be patient, understanding, and accept that your home is now your uninvited guest’s home too?

Now, you might be thinking, of course, I would be furious! I would kick that selfish jerk right out of my house… Except there are actually several situations where you wouldn’t kick that selfish jerk right out of your home, but welcome them in.

Consider a baby, or a puppy if that’s an easier comparison, they literally go into your home, eat your food, pay no rent, shit on your floor, often destroy your things, and keep you up all night.

So do you scream at that baby? Kick that puppy? Starve the child? Abandon them? Kill them?

The answer is, I sincerely hope, of course not. Although, you might now be understanding what is going through the minds of a lot of baby and puppy killers now.

If you bond with your baby, or your pet, then they aren’t anywhere near as annoying as they perhaps logically should be. That’s because kinship bonding involves seeing the baby’s needs as your own. This is why some women experience post partum depression, for whatever reason they don’t bond with their baby and see it not as an extension of themselves, but as an annoying selfish jerk that’s taking up all their time and resources. This is also why it is extremely dangerous to have any other man except the biological father living in the house with your baby because the biological father will bond with his own baby, while the boyfriends of single mothers more often see the baby as an annoying jerk getting between them and their girlfriend.

Bonding is a powerful reality warping event in any relationship where the conventional rules of common sense no longer seem to apply. It is also essential for creating the bonds that build the family, and the bonds that build up friendships, communities, and nations. It is the kind of bond that dictators want to destroy to keep the people divided and fighting each other so they can easily be isolated and dominated. If you look around you and see nothing but a sea of annoying selfish jerks, then your ability to bond with your fellow man might be compromised, and this lack of a kinship bond is terrifying, because you can never feel safe or assured. This leads to exhaustion because of the constant level of adrenaline and cortisol in your system from perceiving yourself to always be alone even in the company of others.

What does all these mean to the narcissist?

Free food and rent.

That’s literally all bonding means to them. The narcissist either can’t bond with others, or choses not to bond with them. However, even though a narcissist cannot (/will not) bond with someone, they can see the material advantage to themselves in getting others bonded to them. Imagine a narcissistic woman, she might sleep with a man (or a woman, lesbians will exploit other women ruthlessly too), even actively encourage a him to sleep with her, while she remains emotionally detached and distant from him. Over time, that man might develop a strong kinship bond with her, narcissist women target men needy for a bond, and use him to supply her with her needs whatever they may be. Once the man is bonded to the narcissist, she can relax and start milking him for his time, resources, and attention. While other people see her as an entitled demanding bitch, her victim sees her as an extension of himself, he cares for her, he is patient with her, he puts up with her bad behaviour, and supports her financially. As though she were his baby or a close relative.

While his friends look on with incredulity at the warping of reality going on.

However, this kind of thing happens in nature all the time, there are spiders that pretend to be ants to live in ant colonies close to their food source. They release pheromones to trick the ants into bonding with the spider so the ants will feed, protect, and clean the spider. Likewise, there is a brain parasite that infects rodents and tells them not to be afraid of cats so that the rodents will not run away from cats and will end up eaten allowing the parasite to spread to new hosts. As far as nature is concerned, any survival strategy that works, no matter how deceptive and lazy, is a good strategy. Humans are no exception. There are intra-species predators that exploit other people, especially honest hard working people.

So I am sure you’ve all met the woman with the exploitative boyfriend/husband or the man with demanding girlfriend/wife, because frankly, if narcissists weren’t skilful at abusing the bonding mechanism in people they wouldn’t be able to survive. They are human intra species predators who have found a niche in exploiting our human ability to bond with each other and use it to gain all the resources and protection they need to reproduce.

In fact, narcissists are so well adapted that if they were reading what I just wrote, they would instinctively see the danger to themselves if this information were shared. They are likely to do one of all of the following: start hurling abuse or threats at me to get me to shut up about this, start telling everyone that I’m a loser and an idiot to deter people from visiting my site or reading my articles, and/or start talking about how relationships can’t be so cold and rational, just follow your heart dear, don’t listen to that guy online who over thinks things. He’s just a misogynist who hates all women. This behaviour of course tells you that narcissists know all about bonding, just as an Aboriginal knows all about finding water in the desert.

The more important question is why don’t you? Why didn’t your parents warn you about these people?

And quickly before someone comments, yes, there are narcissistic men who use this tactic on women too, it isn’t just women who are narcissists, this articles focuses on the women because I get asked about women who sleep around specifically all the time, and so returning to the topic of the women who have multiple sexual partners…

Here is my conclusion, what if a number of those women who have sex with multiple men are merely narcissists who are angling? A fisherman seldom hooks a fish on the first attempt. The women are sleeping with various men because but not all men bond, in fact, men seem to have developed a defence against narcissistic women by being able to have sex and not necessarily form a bond. In which case what we may be looking at is not “women who had their chastity protected” vs “women who were soiled” but “women who are pro bonding” vs “narcissistic women who can’t or chose not to bond”. In which case, even if you created a law that forced women to be chaste, you wouldn’t be changing the nature of these women. They would still be fundamentally narcissists and they would be agitating whenever possible for sex positivity because that would be the cultural environment in which their survival strategy would reap them the most benefits. Sex positive feminists didn’t just come from nowhere, there was probably a large population of repressed narcissistic women just waiting for the opportunity to get out from under the “oppressive” rules of Christian morality and push the type of hedonistic lifestyle they depend on to hook men.