Two topics stand out when I look over my website analytics.
Narcissistic Discard and New Supply pull in more traffic than anything else.
It’s not surprising.
When the Gay Narcissistic Relationship ended and the Gay Narcissist I was partners with for several years discarded and replaced me with someone new, the very foundation of my existence was shaken and I lost all hope. Life was meaningless. I saw failure in everything. What was the point of even going on?
When we loose your narcissistic partner, it feels like we can’t breathe.
A narcissists consumes all of the resources a person has to offer while demanding nothing but praise and adoration. The targets of narcissistic people usually give up everything to these individuals. Why not? We believe if we keep giving we’ll eventually fix the problem. If we try a little harder, then all will set itself right.
That’s why it’s so devastating and galling when a narcissist declares he’s finished, gets up, and walks out. There an attitude of: thanks for your time, but I’m ready to bounce now.
Pardon me?
It’s all the worse when a replacement is waiting in the shadows to move into the recent vacancy. Trust me—even if we don’t see someone right away, a source of new supply is very near.
This is when the mind of the discarded burns with fury. The narcissist will finally change. All of that hard work we put in will pay off for another. The replacement partner—the source of new supply—will succeed where we failed.
Think again, my lovelies. Think again.
Winning Something—Anything
Narcissistic relationships are a lot of work.
That’s because narcissistic partners are nothing but a series of demands. And as the partners of these these difficult and antagonistic pains in the ass, we still approach our work with a chin held high and a stiff upper lip. We tell ourselves that we need to keep the narcissist’s life moving on schedule.
Trust me, I know all of this from personal experience. When the Gay Narcissist was in one of his frequent glum moods, I had a pit in my stomach. Whether or not I was the cause of his misery, it was my reasonability to stabilize his psyche and do what I could to mend his hurt mind.
I foisted this responsibility onto myself.
Even now, I can still remember my through process. I truly believed I had no other option. If I didn’t make the moods and feelings of the Gay Narcissist my responsibility, then I was failing as a partner. There were surely control issues on my part, too. I wanted to make him feel better, because then I, too, would have a stake in his good mood and his cured sense of self.
I would be the champion. I would be the victor. I would be the saint who fixed the Gay Narcissist and all of his problems. Then, surely, he’d change, treat me better, and never leave. And so, I invested a lot of effort to help this guy over the years, trying my hardest to fix everything so I could finally win something—anything.
Man, oh man—I cannot express just how much it did not work out like that.
Control Issues
Let’s return to the topic of control.
The boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, partners, whatever, of narcissists fight a daily battle to maintain some kind of agency in these relationships. But no matter how hard the struggle, we always fail in the end.
I’m the first to admit that I have my own control issues, and the years I spent in the Gay Narcissistic Relationship pushed me to my limit. My obsessive-compulsive behaviors ran up against the Gay Narcissist’s sloven behavior and cause untold amounts of frustration. His carelessness would lock horns with my detail orientation, and I’d deeply hate him for it. I was filled with resentment and agitation.
And yet, I still loved him, whatever that word even means.
Worse was that, no matter how far he’d push me, I’d always simper back with my tail between my legs, begging him to accept me once more. Oh, I had my own issues (plenty and more) I needed to sort out. The Gay Narcissist often pointed out my issues, telling me how much I needed psychological help.
But him?
No, nothing was wrong there.
The Gay Narcissist didn’t care at all about of the emotional pain he caused me in our toxic and fraudulent open relationship. He freely and willfully manipulated money out of me for his own superficial and fleeting desires. He forever ignored and invalidated me while also expecting my attention and admiration on demand. He put everyone in his life before me, including men he barely knew but who gave him boosts of confidence with their hollow flattery.
I fought to win the Gay Narcissist over, regardless. Yes, I saw everything falling apart around me as the years passed. It was all a decaying mess, but I still wanted to resuscitate the Gay Narcissistic Relationship and give it a new life.
New Life, New Supply
A new life was exactly what the Gay Narcissist had in mind, but I wasn’t apart of his master plan.
The New Supply was destined for that starring role.
In my post from 2021, “Gaslighting And Narcissism | It Wasn’t Any Big Deal,” I described the events that led to the Gay Narcissist meeting the New Supply; he used the ever-morphing parameters of our dysfunctional and toxic open relationship as a weapon to threaten and control me.
The Gay Narcissistic Relationship was already on the rocks. There was too much distance between the Gay Narcissist and me to really salvage anything. I knew it and he knew it. That made me panic, because even though the relationship was devolving more and more, it made me want to try and fix it—and hopefully save it—by any means necessary.
It was no use.
The Gay Narcissist was ready to dump the baggage of our relationship, unburden himself, and move on to a fresh and exciting new start. It was adventure and novel stimulation the Gay Narcissist wanted, and since he never felt more alive than when he experienced the intense limerent feelings of a new relationship, he was open for business and on the hunt.
There’s an acute panic when you know a narcissistic partner is pulling away in favor of someone else. The project of fixing the relationship transitions into pure survival mode, fighting against fate to try and stop the most unimaginable event ever…
That you are discarded and the narcissist in your life will move on to another person and be a better—or the best—version of himself or herself.
Love Versus Passion
How can we not fear this?
When a narcissist moves on to a source of new supply, we see that which we’ve been trying to recapture since the beginning weeks of our now-dead relationships.
Returning to my personal experience, the Gay Narcissist was happy, glowing, energized, enthusiastic, and loving after my Final Narcissistic Discard and the subsequent installation of the New Supply.
I should say seemingly loving, anyway. The actual emotion is probably more equatable to passion. It’s the early stages of love—passionate love—that a narcissist excels at. The fun adventures, the long weekends, the incredible sex, the doe-eyed promises; this is what gets us hooked on our narcissistic lovers. The conflict and antagonism has yet to emerge. Idealization and love bombing are still in full effect.
It was agony watching this unfold between the Gay Narcissist and the New Supply.
I knew I was far from perfect, but what did I do to deserve it all?
The Diagnosis Obsession
Nothing, really.
I had a vague understanding of what narcissism was when my relationship ended, mainly due to Robin Quivers being described as having a narcissistic personality on The Howard Stern Show.
But I still viewed narcissism as purely a “diagnosis” at that time, and was fully invested in the Diagnosis Obsession. (Please note that narcissism is not, in any way, a diagnosis but rather a psychological descriptor that covers a lot of terrain.)
Yes, throughout the Gay Narcissistic Relationship I noticed all of the the Gay Narcissist’s bad behavior. But I explained it away as my fault and a result of my own bad behavior. I assumed I was too needy and too demanding and had way too many expectations of him. What I failed to notice (or chose to ignore) is that whenever I amended my ways, the Gay Narcissist never did anything to his own behaviors. He always carried on behaving how he always did—selfishly and childishly and brazenly.
So, after the events that led to the Gay Narcissist meeting the New Supply happened, I was completely at a loss.
How come he was so different for this guy when I was really, really trying to be agreeable in our relationship?
This is why the Diagnosis Obsession happens, and targets of narcissistic abuse develop a fixation of certifying someone as “a narcissist.” We believe everything is our fault, we did not try hard enough, and we gave someone a reason to treat us badly. Our self respect is shot (if we even had any to begin with) and we need something, anything, to hang on to.
So knowing that narcissism is that “something, anything” and that it explains what’s going on—well, it’s a lifeline. It pulls us back from the brink of Cthulhu-level madness.
An Unsatisfying Truth
I think the hardest thing to admit in any kind of narcissistic, antagonistic, and toxic relationship is admitting that the definition of a “relationship” is simply not the same between the two people involved.
What a relationship was to me was not what a relationship was to the Gay Narcissist.
I was fine with our relationship transitioning into a calmer and quieter form of companionate love. But the Gay Narcissist was not. If life slowed down too much, he grew restless, bored, fussy, and petulant. And the accusations would always fly in my direction. I never wanted to do anything. I never wanted to have fun. I wanted to hold the Gay Narcissist back.
This was how I was manipulated into our open relationship. This was how I was manipulated out of a lot of money. And this was how I was manipulated into believing everything was my fault.
Whenever a narcissist finds a source of new supply to replace an old partner, it’s because the narcissist is bored.
That’s it.
It’s an unsatisfying truth. We want to believe there’s something more to it all, that there’s some great diagnosable mental condition describing this betrayal and the deep and unending pain it causes.
But it’s really just a narcissistic person simply growing bored and needing new stimulation.
It’s a nauseating reality to face, but we were never a priority to our narcissist. But neither is the source of new supply. The value of the new supply only holds up so long as there is novelty. Once that’s gone, so too will the new supply’s glimmer start to dull.
It’s impossible to keep up with a narcissist’s gnawing sense of FOMO.
Thoughts And Feelings
We, too, fear we’re missing out on something when the dramatic and antagonistic partner moves on to someone new.
Note that those words—“move on”—in and of themselves are very difficult for a target of narcissistic abuse to swallow, let alone process and digest.
“Move on” from what, exactly?
This was a point of madness for me when the Gay Narcissistic Relationship ended, I was discarded, and the Gay Narcissist started dating the New Supply. How could I take a step forward into the future when I was desperately trying to figure out what exactly happened in my past?
Worse still, what was I missing out on now that the Gay Narcissist was the person I wanted him to be once again, just with another person—the New Supply.
The happiness of a narcissist is finite and situational. He or she will only ever be satisfied so long as the experiences are fresh and stimulating. This is what I did not understand.
I believed everything the Gay Narcissist told me at the beginning when we first met. I believed him when he told me I was the person he was searching for his entire life, and that all of his (many) past relationships were mistakes and failed because of the abuses of others perpetrated against him.
I was naive.
I didn’t see him as the single common denominator in the crashing and burning of all of his past relationships. And my naiveté didn’t abate when the New Supply entered the scene. I was still heaping all of the blame and responsibility upon myself, and I didn’t see or understand clearly what was going on.
Also, my own anxious attachment system was in hyperdrive, and all of the intense emotionality that resulted from this made my life feel like an unending earthquake day in and day out for months at a time. I can honestly say I’m still surprised I pulled through the whole thing as well as I did without becoming very sick, because there wasn’t a day where I wasn’t a wreck for at least 80 percent of my time awake. Even my dreams were consumed by the whole thing.
Coping with a narcissistic discard and then the installation of new supply is just as much about what you’re feeling as it is what you’re thinking. Our sympathetic nervous system is very much smacked around during a normal breakup, let alone the pain of a discard followed up by the introduction of someone new.
The Power Of Time
There is no magic pill to make it all go away.
I can say with certainty, several years out from my own experience, that the pain does end. Your body will calm down, and your mind will clear. It’s the answer no one wants to hear, but time does heal these wounds.
The greatest salve I found during my time was education.
I consumed all I could concerning narcissism, emotional abuse, and toxic relationships. I churned through book after book covering all kinds of topics about dark and antagonistic personality styles. And the blogs—the blogs were where my recovery began, and they’re what saw me through until the end.
It’s partly why I am still writing about this stuff, so many years out.
At one time it was a form of catharsis, with my earlier writings covering my own experiences in the Gay Narcissistic Relationship and with the Gay Narcissist. But now I find it fascinating, and I have no qualms picking apart my past so those currently struggling can learn from my first-person accounts. It’s a way to give back and contributing to all of the free knowledge that helped keep my head above water when I needed it most.
I was fortunate enough to find a therapist, too—the Lovely Therapist—who understood my situation and listened to me.
But patience and time with and for yourself is what’s most important.
Trust me, you’re going to slip up and peek at social media. It’s going to make you sick to your stomach. But you’ll think about it a tiny bit less each subsequent day.
The day will come when you realize you haven’t given the narcissist from your past any thought at all, and you’ll feel damn good.
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Confused by some of the terminology I use to describe people and places?
Check out the Gay Narcissistic Relationship Glossary for more information.
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If you’re interested in learning more about narcissism, toxic relationships, dark personalities, and sexuality, then I highly recommend the books below.
Please consider buying through the provided Amazon Associate links. While the content on my website is yours to read for free, I do appreciate any support offered toward my work.
The reading list includes:
Should I Stay Or Should I Go: Surviving A Relationship With A Narcissist (Dr. Ramani Durvasula)
The Human Magnet Syndrome: The Codependent Narcissist Trap (Ross Rosenberg)
The Sociopath Next Door (Dr. Martha Stout)
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World Of The Psychopaths Among Us (Dr. Robert D. Hare)
In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding And Dealing With Manipulative People (Dr. George Simon)
Rethinking Narcissism: The Bad—And Surprising Good—About Feeling Special (Dr. Craig Malkin)
Being Homosexual: Gay Men And Their Development ( Dr. Richard Isay)
The Velvet Rage: Overcoming The Pain Of Growing Up Gay In A Straight Man’s World (Dr. Alan Downs)
