My name is Sam Vaknin, and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.

Recently, I have received an interesting letter through the Cerebral Narcissist. He wrote this to me, quote, I guess I am going to throw back to the men of the 18th or 19th century.

I am patriarchal. I am transactional. I have had several serious relationships, including one engagement to be married, and three marriages.

The pattern had always been the same.

Having selected a woman far inferior to my position in life and thus less likely to abandon sheep, and following a brief period of rampant sex to demonstrate her that I am normal and to make her look forward to years of great physical and emotional intimacy, false advertising if there ever was one.

Well, following this period of courtship, I subside into this recluse, interested only in my studies, reading, writing, and the universe of the mind. Zero sex, no love, no intimacy, physical, emotional, no children, no home, always lived in rented flats, and no family. It’s a take-it-or-live-it proposition. It entails minimum nuisance value.

So why did I get married? What are the roles of my intimate partner?

One, to admire me. Two, to remind me of my past accomplishments and glory. Three, to act as a glorified housemate and do the chores. Four, to serve as my companion, available on the spur of a moment to do my bidding and adhere to my plans and decisions.

And five, to reflect well on me by not shaming me in public with their ignorance, promiscuity, or idleness.

The cerebral narcissist continues. As long as she fulfilled the aforementioned functions, I didn’t really care what else she did with her time and with whom.

Nothing stirred in me, not even a hint of jealousy, when all my women told me that they had cheated on me with other men, some of them multiply.

But when they showed clear signs of bolting, when they became disenchanted, bitterly disappointed, disaffected, disillusioned, cold, aloof, wary, demonstrably absent, when they all stole interest in me in my work, verbally and psychologically abused me, and refused to do things together anymore, then I panicked because I was afraid to lose their valued services.

The thing is, I dreaded the time, effort, and resources required to break in, to train and domesticate and obituary to another woman, to my highly special needs, in particular requirements.

I was also tired of having my women of scorn with half my assets time and again. After all, I married them only in order to secure their presence in my life, and I did provide them with a lifestyle that they could never have attained by themselves, inferior as they were to start with.

So faced with such a daunting prospect of being abandoned, I embarked on a charm offensive, and I again offered them sex, intimacy, love, attention, and if needed, adulation.

Only usually at this stage, it was too late, definitely too little. She was already phalange. She bolted all the same.

All my women felt that something was wrong with me, that something was missing in the relationship such as it was, but they couldn’t quite place their collective finger on it.

I simply absented myself because I regarded full-fledged intimate relationships as both a colossal waste of my precious time and the manifestation of socially sanctioned mediocrity.

There had always been a discrepancy in expectations which led to inevitable breakups and acrimony, concludes the unrepentant cerebral larcissist.