Love Relationships and Presence of The Narcissistic, Jealousy, Stalking, and Controlling Behaviors

Love can be all rainbows and butterflies for a while maybe even throughout the whole relationship but sometimes love can go wrong, with narcissistic, jealously, stalking, and controlling behaviors. Narcissistic usually have an excessive interest in oneself and tries to make everything abut him or herself. Jealously can often times feel like threats to someone other then the partner. Stalking is basically following someone, knowing their every move. Lastly controlling, in controlling people often times are controlled and limited to what they can and cannot do in relationships. Of course, each of these things vary and not all relationships go “wrong”. All of these key behaviors go off of each other, like if one is jealous they are controlling. Same could go if the relationship were to go wrong the significant other could be jealous and stalk the other person. With narcissism the partner can be jealous and controlling which is why the partner is often not allowed to do things without the other.

Narcissism

Narcissism can be considered a personality disorder. Narcissistic people have a sense of superiority and entitlement, they manipulate and exploit others. Freud has proposed a model that did not explain enough about narcissism so Kernberg had alerted it. He theorized that narcissist experienced a childhood that lacked adequate love from a caregiver, especially before the age of 3. So basically narcissisms were a defense against the aversive feelings of loss and abandonment form the child’s parents. But Kohut has proposed something different about this, mirroring and idealization. The mirroring part was the love from the parents and idealization was the belief of the child that they considered their parents as a perfect person (Lam,2012). Usually males are the narcissists. Narcissist also believe that they are more attractive, unique, and smarter then others, while dating they can charm their way into getting what they want. Narcissists were self-focus rather than focused on others. For instance, they lacked empathy, agreeableness and communion. They were also more likely to use the first person pronoun “I” in unstructured and unrehearsed speech. (Lam,2012) Some people might also believe that narcissism can be positive, because they are considered funny, entertaining, energetic, and confident. Other also think that narcissist are more attractive then someone who isn’t a narcissist. Narcissists compared with non-narcissist reported less romantic relationship dysfunction in the short term (Lam,2012)

Jealously

Jealously can be both positive and negative, depending on the person. Usually more people see it as negative, jealously is usually n unhealthy manifestation of insecurity, low self-confidence, and possessiveness (Benokraitis, 2015). Children who grow up in homes were the parents are overprotective or even rejecting the child usually lead to the children being more jealous because they fear abandonment in their love life. Jealously is not universal, what we feel out here someone in a more rural area and smaller population would not feel jealous.

Without jealousy, a person stands to lose her or his investment in the relationship to an extra-relationship threat. The expression of jealousy then, can have a positive connotation because it serves to protect the relationship. Although jealousy has some positive connotations, extreme jealousy can communicate to partners that a lack of trust exists in the relationship (Barelds & Dijkstra, 2006). As we would expect, long-lasting relationships are built on trust (Rusbult, Martz, & Agnew, 1998), but when jealousy becomes a persistent pattern in a relationship, it erodes a foundation of trust that is essential to a successful, rewarding relationship. (Newberry, 2010) Depending on the person some people like it when their significant other has the jealous trait, people see it is they are over protective and wanting to protect the relationship.

Stalking

Stalking is never a good thing, it is harassing and usually unwanted by the other person and just causes fear and distress to the person being stalked. There is also such thing as cyberstalking, which is stalking through email, texting, and social media. Of the 6.6 million stalking cases in 2010, almost 79 percent of the victims were women. Also about 66 percent of female victims have been stalked by a current or former intimate partner. (Benokraitis, 2015) Stalking is associated with pathology in the human bio-behavioral attachment system. Often times stalkers way of thinking is a unconsciously thought about, fantasies vary based on the relationship with the certain person. If the stalker is rejected they will feel humiliated and express rage toward the victim.

Stalking behavior may be associated with any one of any combination of three primary brain systems that solved for mating and reproduction: the sex drive, attraction, and male/female attachment. The sex drive is the motivation to achieve sexual gratification. Attraction is the preference for and motivation to pursue a specific mating partner. Male/female attachment refers to the formation of a pair bond, the maintenance of proximity, co-parenting duties, and in human’s feelings of calm, security and union with a long term partner. (Meloy & Fisher, 2005)

People don’t necessarily see stalking when in a love relationship with someone, it is encounter after. From what I had explained above we can see that stalking comes from not being able to technically be with that person. In TV shows and movies, the person is stalked because they thought he/she was beautiful or handsome or maybe in high school he/she was in love with her and stalk the person to know everything about themselves.

Controlling

Controlling people want power over other (Benokraitis, 2015),they want to feel important and in power. Controllers aren’t only seen in relationships, we often times see out family controlling us by tell us that we should follow this certain path because they did. But in relationship the controllers want their partner to take care of the house, prepare dinner for the partner, and show love to them. Often time if someone cannot demonstrate that the partner complains to them and often times the other partner will quit their jobs or stop their life to keep their partner happy.

In many cases, manipulators know the harm they’re doing, but do so to gratify their own needs and wishes. (Benokraitis, 2015). The controller is often times in love or says that he/she is in love with their partner which is why they want them to do this or this. I have seen the controlling factor in one of my own friends, she is very weak and cant be alone so this boy who is now her fiancé controls her whole life. At one point she stopped going to school and quit her job because he wanted her to be home and he wanted to be able to support her. This same friend even let her fiancé get in the way of our friendship of almost 10 years, so we no longer speak. People get so infatuated with other people that they lose sight of the good and let the controller take over.

In all, love relationships are hard work, they don’t always go as planned, and often times we are playing scenarios the way we want them more then the way they happen. When finding a partner there are often signs that show the real side of a person, none of us are perfect so a lot of us have flaws in relationships. Remember your worth if you ever encounter someone who shows jealous, controlling, narcissistic, and stalking behaviors. You always have the chance to leave and you are never stuck with that person.