My name is Sam Vaknin, and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
Women with histrionic personality disorder respond differently to two types of men.
The first type, these are men who openly desire the histrionic woman. They are infatuated with her, or evenin some instances, actually and truly love her.
The histrionic sees herself through their eyes, and she likes what she sees. Their gaze defines her, provides her with a sense of identity, where there is only diffuse identity, and enhances her self-confidence and self-esteem. She falls in love with herself through them.
But after a brief affair, or a few encounters with this type of men, they begin to bore the histrionic woman. They irritate her, and she begins to devalue them, because there is no thrill, no chase, no conquest, hunt or competition involved in the totally predictable relationship.
The histrionic woman should limit her contact with such men to a passive role. She should accept their admiration, attention and infatuation, but not take it any further, because the relationship is doomed.
This way she will not create enemies among these men, and will be able to dedicate her scarce mental resources to the second type of men, which is absolutely her only kind.
What is this second type of men?
These are men who are visibly attracted to the histrionic, and even desire her sexually, but are very avoidant emotionally, or even absent emotionally.
This is the only type of men with whom the histrionic woman can have a long-term relationship.
However dysfunctional and painful, the interaction may be.
Histrionic women abhor intimacy and love. Actually, they are not very sexual either.
Studies have shown that histrionic women have low sexual drive, low sexual desire, and they are not very good at sex.
So they don’t need sex, they don’t need love, they don’t need intimacy.
What do they need?
They need mind games.
With these men, there is always some game going on. Constant hunting, the adrenaline filled ups and downs, competing with other women, conquest and loss, etc.
When the histrionic woman is in a relationship with such an emotionally unavailable man, she should mirror him, she should approach him and avoid him, be his and not his, provoke his jealousy, vanish and reappear, promise and withhold, give and torture.
This kind of conduct will render these men dependent on the histrionic and gratify her sense of control of being the winner of having it all.
