Intermittent Reinforcement

Narcissistic abuse is made up of a bunch of different things. Intermittent reinforcement is a term that always comes up when people describe it.

For me, it was a month of bad days. Then a week of good days. Then a month of bad days. Or something to that general effect. It was like we had wartime and peacetime, It was rare that there wouldn’t be some sort of turbulence during the peace times but generally speaking she could be ok, or appear to be ok.

During peace times my wife would be normal, in good form, peaceful, not being needy, it was almost like she was happy.

I found war times very unpleasant. I would do anything to avoid conflict. I would work hard to get her to stop being unpleasant. I would often give her a reassuring hug to calm her down. Often I would just pay for the thing. I would do anything to keep the peace.

This generally worked. We would have peace for thirty minutes, an hour maybe or better again she would happily head away off to bed for the night leaving me in peace. Rinse and repeat the following day.

I think this gave me a small sense of power and control. It gave me notions that I could perhaps not fix it but, could muddle through it and that things maybe weren’t always so bad.

We couldn’t and we didn’t but I didn’t know that at the time. Those peaceful moments kept me going… for seventeen years.

Consequences

I now recognize that this is the drug that kept me hooked. The bad was so bad that I would just relax into the good. I felt so grateful for it.

I become addicted.

The slot machine

Apparently you become addicted to it like you might become addicted to a slot machine. The slot machine takes your money most of the time but every once in a while it’ll give you something. You end up going and going hoping every time that it’ll give you something. You become addicted and eventually all your money is gone.

YouTube shorts

You scroll and you scroll. When you’re about to put your phone down, you scroll one more time just to see if the next short will be great. Before you know it, it’s 1:00am. Yet you hope the next one will be great, you scroll one more time.

Is is conscious?

It’s a mixed bag I’d say. I think Susan used to realize at times that she had pushed me to far and would go all nicey-nicey. At other times I think that something simply made her happy so she’d be nice. Other times, she’s take a hit, “narcissistic injury” and proceed to scorch the earth. In other words, she was volatile and way too easily influenced by other things happening in her life. Also, I think it might be clear by now that Susan is emotionally immature and emotionally volatile.

There were times when she would be an absolute bitch on purpose though. How could I possibly know that you might ask? “I mean, John, you’ve said often enough that your a programmer not a psychologist”. Yea, well, you see, it’s quite simple really. She told me and bragged about it!