he knows what makes me feel “cared about” and delivers these, and I stay hooked.

That’s the key right THURRRRRR. :) For a lot of women, the choices come down to a) being alone, b) being with a consistent guy that isn’t very exciting, or c) taking whatever they can get from really exciting guys that don’t give a damn about them 29 days out of the month.

Lots of the middle-of-the-road, relationship-dudes just don’t deliver the goods. *yawn* It only adds to narcissistic behavior because they can get away with so much stuff because they know (and most importantly, the women know) they’re just BETTER than the next man.

It’s not a mental/article issue. It’s a chemical issue. You can drink as much apple juice as you like and you’ll never get drunk. Have a little beer and it’ll get you tipsy and you won’t feel that way again until you have another beer, Capisce? :D

I agree that it needs to be treated like an addiction. It’s the narcissist’s goal to get you “high”, even if it’s only to prove to himself that he could do it. Even sexually, he might hook up with you just to drive YOU.. not caring at all whether HE gets off or not. The excitement’s in how people are so affected by your presence & touch.

The men who are “left single” are the guys that enjoy the single life and the guys who were found out to be cads by their former girlfriends/wives. If there were some kind of value for them in having one girlfriend, they’d have one, as there is no shortage whatsoever of women looking to retire from the game.

The problem with “Staying away from Narcissists” is that you won’t find out until it’s too late. Nobody’s going to walk up to you and say “Hi. I’m a Narcissist” because that defeats the purpose. Telling someone you’re fantastic is way less exciting than just being yourself and having them tell you you’re great on their own.

Another problem, specifically for women is that Narcissists know how to put on a good show. When you’re with him, the Narcissist will make you feel like you’re his *only* girlfriend because he takes pride in making YOU feel so good because he gets to prove to himself once again that HE’S that good that he can make your day anytime he feels like it.

I realize there’s a good chance I never will have a healthy, joyous love relationship with a man, as I keep meeting men like this (at my age, are these the majority of men “left” single?). I recently read the book “The Narcissim Epidemic,” which is about how narcissism has crept into our whole culture… also touches on the apparent increase in the number of narcissistic individuals out there. The authors suggest ways to counter the trend, the first being: Stay away from Narcissists, do not include them in your life!

The unprofessional statement I would make to tie that concept into this discussion is that there’s a difference between going out with “Alex The Individual” (or any other person) and going out with “A chick that I enjoy spending time with, having sex with and whatever other forms of entertainment I do with her”. It’s not like the narcissist sees MOST other people as peers to begin with. This is why the quest to make someone like this feel a certain way about you is fruitless, frustrating and most likely depressing.

If you are a source of Narcissist Supply, then any other source will do, a better source could replace you OR no source at all could replace you if the Narcissist gets bored of the stimulation you present. I don’t mean physical stimulation, haha I mean something like this:

There’s this friend of mine that I’ve known for years. I can tell her on any day of the week or on every day of the week that she looks good, and she may or may not say “Thank You”, but even if she does, I can tell that she’s not MOVED by what I said. That’s because she doesn’t feel me as a good source of NS. Meanwhile, we can go to a bar together, and some schmo that she’s never seen before in her entire lifetime that feels like screwing her can tell her she looks good and all of a sudden, she’s blushing and excited.

The compliments are the exact same, but coming from different people. When the random dude says it, she feels like he’s giving an unsolicited, unbiased opinion. When I say it, she feels like I’m just saying something in an attempt to make her feel good. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. If I say it, I mean it. If HE says it, it’s because he’s trying to get her to lay down and would tell her she looked good even if he thought she was ugly but had a nice fat ass, being that the better the cushion, the better the pushin’.

So, basically, if a guy can take you or leave you, prepare to be taken or left.

Bill is right when he says you can never be an equal of a narcissist. But you have something that the narcissist desperately needs because of his fragile self-esteem (see the list of symptoms in Bill’s original post), and that is narcissist supply (admiration, attention, awe, respect, whatever….). He might come back for that (or maybe not, if the reason that he left you is that he has found a better source of narcissist supply elsewhere). For details, see this article: http://samvak.tripod.com/faq76.html.
Here is more information on the inverted narcissist or the co-dependent:
http://samvak.tripod.com/faq66.html
If you are happy this way, you can always keep a narcissist interested by acting as a reliable source of narcissist supply. But you will never have a meaningful emotional connection with such a person. You’ll never get anything back. Are you really okay with that?