Interacting with Your Abuser

Uploaded 5/19/2011, approx. 4 minute read

Summary

Sam Vaknin advises those in abusive relationships to work with professionals such as lawyers, accountants, and therapists to extricate themselves from the situation. He suggests maintaining the minimum contact mandated by the courts and avoiding any gratuitous contact with the abuser. Vaknin also recommends exposing the abuser's needs and filling one's life with new hobbies, interests, and friends. Finally, he warns against discussing personal affairs with the abuser and disconnecting from third parties who may be spying on one's behalf.

against, especially, for, in, narcissism, Sam Vaknin

May 19, 2011

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

Having chosen your team of consultants and experts, and having, of course, hired their services, relegate any inevitable contact with your abusive ex when and where possible to professionals, so your lawyer, your accountant. Work with these qualified third parties to extricate yourself and your loved ones from the quagmire of an abusive relationship.

Be sure to maintain as much contact with your abuser as the courts, counselors, mediators, guardians, or law enforcement officials mandate.

Do not contravene the decisions of the system.

Work from the inside to change judgements, evaluations, and rulings, but never rebel against such institutions. Never ignore them. You will only turn the system against you and your interests.

But with the exception of the minimum mandated by the courts, decline any and all gratuitous contact with the narcissist. Remember that many interactions are initiated by your abusive ex in order to trap or intimidate you.

Keep referring him to your lawyer regarding legal issues, to your accountant or financial advisor concerning money matters. And to therapists, psychologists, and counselors with regards to everything else, yourself, your common children.

Abuses react badly to such treatment. Yours will try to manipulate you into unintended contact.

Do not respond to his pleading, romantic, nostalgic, flattering, or threatening email and snail mail messages. Keep records of such correspondence and make it immediately available to the courts, to law enforcement agencies, court-mandated evaluators, guardians at Lytton, therapists, marital counselors, child psychologists, and to your good friends.

Keep him away by obtaining restraining orders and injunctions aplenty.

Abuses crave secrecy. Expose their needs. Deter abuse by being open about your predicament. Share with like-minded others online and offline. It will ease your burden and keep him at bay, at least for a while.

Your abusive ex-partner will try to dazzle you with attention. Return all gifts that he sends you, unopened and unacknowledged. Keep your communications with him to the bare cold minimum. Do not be impolite. Do not be abusive. Do not be abrasive.

It is precisely how he wants you to behave. It may be used against you in a court of law.

Keep your cool but be firm, especially about your boundaries. Do not let him re-enter your life surreptitiously. Stealth and ambient abuse are powerful tools.

Refuse him entry to your premises. Do not even respond to the intercom. Do not talk to him on the phone. Hang up the minute you hear your voice while making clear to him in a single, pithy, polite, but unambiguous sentence that you are determined not to talk to him, that it is over and for good.

Do not succumb to your weakness. It is tough living alone. You are bound to miss him horribly at times, selectively recalling only the good moments and the affection in your doomed relationship.

Do not dip into the poisonous offerings of your abuser. Do not relapse. Be strong.

Fill your life with new hobbies, new interests, new friends, new loves and lovers, and a new purpose.

Do not visit your abuser on special occasions. Do not call upon him in emergencies. Do not let him convince you to celebrate an anniversary, a birthday, a successful business transaction, a personal achievement or a triumph. Do not let him turn your own memories against you. Do not visit him in the hospital, in jail, a rehab center. Do not join him in a memorial service. He does not exist for you any longer. Do not ask him for anything, even if you are in dire straits and dire need.

When you are forced to meet him, do not discuss your personal affairs or his personal affairs.

Your abuser’s friendship is fake, his life with you, a confabulation, a sham, his intentions dishonest and dishonorable.

He is the enemy. Remember that.

Abuse by proxy continues long after the relationship is officially over.

Do not respond to questions, requests or pleas forwarded to you via third parties.

Disconnect from third parties whom you know are spying on you at his behest and on his behalf.

Do not discuss with him your children. Do not gossip about him.

The majority of abusers finally, after a protracted period admittedly, get the message.

Others, more vindictive and obsessed, continue to hold their quarry for years to come.

These are the stalkers.

There are several videos on this channel which deal with stalkers. Be sure to watch them.

Summary Link:

https://vakninsummaries.com/ (Full summaries of Sam Vaknin’s videos)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html (My work in psychology: Media Kit and Press Room)

Bonus Consultations with Sam Vaknin or Lidija Rangelovska (or both) http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/ctcounsel.html

http://www.youtube.com/samvaknin (Narcissists, Psychopaths, Abuse)

http://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings (World in Conflict and Transition)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html (Biography and Resume)

Summary

against, especially, for, in, narcissism, Sam Vaknin

If you enjoyed this article, you might like the following:

How Narcissist Survives Defeats, Errors, Failures

The speaker explains the internal conflict of pathological narcissism as two irreconcilable narratives—grandiosity (godlike omnipotence) and victimhood (external locus of control)—which produce intense anxiety and lead to externalized self-regulation via narcissistic supply. To resolve this dissonance, narcissists construct “internal solutions” (e.g., believing they control, permission, create, or imitate others) that

November 30, 2025

Narcissist’s Opium: How Narcissists Use Fantasies to RULE

The speaker argued that pathological narcissism functions like a distributed, secular religion built on shared fantasies that organize and explain social life, with leaders imposing narratives to convert and control followers. Examples include race and meritocracy, which serve to entrench elites by offering false hope, fostering grandiosity and entitlement, and

November 29, 2025

Narcissist’s MELTDOWN: Becomes Raging Borderline, Psychopath (Narcissism Summaries YouTube Channel)

The speaker explained that narcissists, when stressed, can shift into borderline and then psychopathic states due to low frustration tolerance, with aggression aimed at eliminating perceived internal sources of frustration. Narcissists interact with internalized objects rather than external reality, making them prone to coercion, dehumanization, and potentially escalating violence if

November 28, 2025

How You BEHAVE is NOT Who you ARE (Identity, Memory, Self)

Sam Vaknin argues that core identity (the self) is distinct from behaviors: identity is an immutable, continuous narrative formed early in life, while behaviors, choices, and roles can change across time. He discusses clinical, legal, and philosophical implications, including dissociative identity disorder, concluding that even when behavior changes dramatically the

November 27, 2025

Unconditional Love in Adult Relationships (Family Insourcing and Outsourcing)

Professor argues that ‘unconditional love’ means accepting a person’s core identity, not tolerating all behaviors, and distinguishes loving someone as they are from trying to change or control them. He traces modern misunderstandings to Romanticism’s idealization of partners and the outsourcing/insourcing shifts that hollowed family functions while turning the home

November 26, 2025

Sociosexual Narcissist: CRM vs. Agency Models (Clip Skopje Seminar Opening, May 2025)

The speaker opened with multilingual greetings and briefly noted living in the Czech Republic and Poland. The main content summarized models of narcissism: sociosexuality and the contextual reinforcement model (narcissists seek novelty, destabilize stable contexts, and prefer short-term interactions), and the agency model with five elements—focus on agency, inflated self-concept,

November 25, 2025

Baited, Ejected: YOU in Narcissist’s Shared Fantasy (CLIP, University of Applied Sciences, Poland)

The speaker explained Sander’s concept of the “shared fantasy”—a mutual, addictive narrative created by narcissists and their partners that becomes a competing reality and relates to historical notions like mass psychogenic illness. The talk detailed how narcissists recruit and bind targets through stages—spotting/auditioning, exposure of a childlike self, resonance, idealization

November 24, 2025

Psychology of Fraud and Corruption (Criminology Intro in CIAPS, Cambridge, UK)

Professor explained financial crime as a white-collar subtype, focusing on fraud and corruption and arguing that many offenders show significant psychopathology rather than ordinary greed. Key psychological features include magical thinking, impulsivity, entitlement, narcissism, psychopathy, impaired reality testing, dissociation, lack of empathy, grandiosity, and compulsive behaviors (e.g., kleptomania) that make

November 23, 2025

Abuse Victims MUST Watch This! (with Psychotherapist Renzo Santa María)

Professor Sam Vaknin argued that narcissistic abuse causes distinct, reversible trauma by imposing the abuser’s deficits on victims—eroding identity, agency, reality testing, and inducing internalized ‘introject’ voices that perpetuate suffering. He recommended initial self-work (identifying and silencing alien internal voices, rebuilding an authentic internal friend, body-focused interventions, and delaying therapy

November 22, 2025

“Bad” Relationships Are Opportunities (with Daria Zukowska, Clinical Psychologist)

Professor Sam Vaknin discussed dysfunctional relationships and reframed them as learning opportunities rather than “lost time,” emphasizing that growth requires emotional insight and embodiment in addition to cognitive understanding. He explained that negative self-concept arises from internalized hostile voices, can be countered by developing an authentic, supportive inner voice, and

November 21, 2025

Vaknin Transcripts