Sunday, August 19, 2012

Narcissism and Sexual Promiscuity

"The individual with a narcissistic personality has not mastered [the necessary] developmental tasks." - Salman Akhtar


All societies that I know of have frowned on excessive sexual promiscuity. I used to wonder why but I don’t so much, not anymore.

Some years ago I lived in the St. Louis area. The city prosecuting attorney was a sleazeball named George Peach. It turned out Peach was a nut. He spent his career putting prostitutes in prison (as a misdemeanor, it’s up to a year) and putting their customers’ names and pictures in the paper.

His behavior was way too extreme. I knew an old, retired city judge who told me during his time the city was involved in policing prostitution. Once a year the police would round up the girls and take them to the city health department to be tested and treated. The police, judges, the health department – all were involved. They knew it couldn’t be stamped out, so they informally policed it.

Peach, on the other hand, while trying to eradicate something that cannot be eradicated, was frequenting prostitutes for years and using city funds to pay for them (he got caught on tape saying, “I’d like some oral sex to make me feel good”). When he got caught in a sting operation he started destroying city records to cover his criminal behavior.

The reason I know so much about that sting operation is because I got caught in it, since I was driving a taxi and was transporting a hooker to a hotel. Since I didn't know that she was a hooker (although I suspected), the vice cops let me go – and her, too, since they were after Peach. Although, I found out to my dismay that while being a hooker is a misdemeanor, transporting one is a felony, since it is “promoting prostitution.”

I always thought I was closer to Bob the Builder, not Bob the Inadvertent Pimp Felon.

Strangely, Peach never served time (which he should have), but did get fired, get probation and lost his law license. I don’t know if he had to pay any money back, but I hope so.

Peach had to have had a character disorder to do the things he did. He was some kind of narcissist, and was so sexually promiscuous he was paying dozens (who knows how many) of prostitutes for sex.

He caused a lot of problems because he just happened to have political power. He had to have zero empathy for the girls he put in prison and the guys whose names and pictures he put in the newspaper. I’m sure he conned himself he was doing a good thing, but of course was so disassociated from himself he could patronize hookers while simultaneously trying to put them in prison.

The only thing Peach ever regretted was that he got caught. It was always about him and how things affected him, never how he affected anyone else. That’s the way it is with all narcissistic people.

I started running across excessively promiscuous girls when I was a teenager. I noticed they all had certain things in common. For one thing, their idea of sex was something that lasted a minute. They never kissed – just like prostitutes don’t kiss.

All of them had problems with their relationships with men, not so much because of their promiscuity, but because of their character flaws that resulted in their promiscuity. Every one of them was self-absorbed and lacked empathy toward others. The sex, such that it was, was about them only, not about their partner.

How can you have any kind of relationship with someone of the opposite sex when you are self-absorbed and lack empathy? You can’t, not a successful one.

One 19-year-old girl I knew in college once told me, bitterly, that a man she had been interested in was told by one of her “friends” that this guy should stay away from her, because he considered her a nut. And she was self-absorbed, lacking in empathy, and her idea of sex lasted one minute with zero foreplay. It was for her, more than anything else, physical relief – it was just for her (I have found one-night-stands utterly unsatisfactory). She had no clue what she was like.

I knew another girl who had been a promiscuous party girl in college – sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. She ended up 51 years old, unmarried, no children, and no prospects – all she had was a cat. She was also self-absorbed and lacking in empathy. She didn’t know it, unfortunately.

When I drove a taxi for a while I worked for an escort service. There is no such thing as a hooker with a heart of gold. They’re all mercenary. It was always about the money.

None of them had a relationship with a man and I never saw one who ever did. The guys were just things to them, ones to be used, which is the classic sign or a narcissist. Did they have empathy for others? Of course not. What concern they did have was only for their selves.

I have found the more sexually promiscuous someone is, the less they understand the other sex. In fact, they barely understand them at all. It can’t be otherwise, when you’re so self-absorbed it’s always about you and other people are just props in your play.

I've decided that a "slut" (which can be male or female) is not merely someone who is promiscuous. I've seen promiscuous women who had emotional problems, such as being molested as a little girl. They can't be considered sluts. A slut is someone who into the sex for the sex itself and has no concern for their partner. They're narcissistic.

I know a guy who's slept with about 100 women. He's ruined his life and has never been in love or had a real relationship. He finally realized what he has done and told me, "I finally got a taste of my own medicine."

To him the women were just playthings. The traditional name for such men has been a "cad," although today the more lost and puzzled in the Manosphere call them "Alphas" (as Steve Sailer wrote, "...dopey intellectual frameworks can lead to wacky results"). This is why I claim a "true Alpha" (and technically Alphas don't even exist) is a chivalrous man - which is a man who doesn't use and exploit women.

Incidentally, this guy wasn't all that smart - and he knew it. He had to study a lesson four or five times to master it in college. And not being that smart when it come to relationships, he discounted the future. In fact all sluts, male or female, discount the future ("I'll fuck around for as many years as I want and then find someone really good...hey, I'm 40 and I can't find anyone!").

Most cads and sluts suffer from narcissism, impulsiveness (which means not thinking about the future) and they engage in various psychological defenses such as rationalization, self-deception and projection ("It's your fault, not mine").

Dr. Sam Vaknin wrote this about narcissists: "Sex for the narcissist is an instrument designed to increase the number of sources of narcissistic supply. If it happens to be the most efficient weapon in the narcissist's arsenal - he will make profligate use of it.

"In other words: if the narcissist cannot obtain adoration, admiration, approval, applause, or any other kind of attention by other means (e.g., intellectually) - he will resort to sex. He will then become a satyr (or a nymphomaniac): indiscriminately engage in sex with multiple partners. His sex partners will be considered by him to be objects not of desire - but of narcissistic supply. It is through the processes of successful seduction and sexual conquest that the narcissist will derive his badly needed narcissistic 'fix.'"

I've also found that cads are cowards. One I knew quite well, when his girlfriend was called ugly in his presence, said and did nothing. He also used to call his male friends to cover for him when he wished to remove himself from a "girlfriend's" presence.

Calling a man a slut or a manwhore will make most men smirk. Telling him he's a cad will bother him just a little bit. But calling him a cad and a coward will get to him.

I don't know where to draw the line on how many is too many. It certainly is the attitude and not so much the number (although most people know intuitively the number does count). But even the Greeks noticed that those who devote their lives to physical pleasure become degraded.

History has shown there is a huge risk in marrying these promiscuous, narcissistic people. They'll certainly have problems being faithful. There are entire sites devoted to such women. Shrink4men, for example, which shows how many men can no longer see through such women.

As Sandy Hotchkiss wrote: "Narcissists are people who never learned to make it on their own. Except for their fantasies of perfection, envy of others who have what they lack, and unacknowledged fears of humiliation, they are empty on the inside. They have no real Self to bring to a relationship with another person, but they desperately need someone else to join them in their emptiness and help them maintain emotional equilibrium. The ideal candidate is someone willing to become an extension of the narcissist's fragile ego, to serve as an object of admiration, contempt, or often enough both. The sign over their door ought to read: Abandon Self All Ye Who Enter Here."

Then, of course, many women cannot see through narcissistic men, as exemplified by their inability to discriminate between a player and a chivalrous man - and chivalry was originally based on Christianity (on life support today) and the better warrior virtues (think Edgar Rice Burroughs and not J.K. Rowling).

Speaking of Christianity, cads and sluts show most of the Seven Deadly Sins, and a chivalrous man would show most of the Seven Heavenly Virtues - or at least the Four Cardinal Virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance or Restraint, and Fortitude or Courage.

Too many people today have lost their way. If they hadn't, they would allow these exploitative, rapacious people to gain political power - such as whore-mongering politicians. Or be able to recognize exploitative, rapacious narcissists, and instead think they are wonderful people - until they get to know them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am seeing a narcissistic man, we were great lovers for two years, then the devaluation started. he had a harem of lovers,and I discovered he had all along, a mistress who he took on cruises with his other friends, they were a couple. he left me behind, lying about where he was, and refused to tell me where he had been on return. he left photocopies of cruise tickets on his desk, maybe he wanted me to know. it broke me and I nearly went mad, crazy.