An interesting metaphor is the vampire lifestyle. When I first began my Second Life years and years ago, the first place I started was with a clan of vampires. My career did not last for very long, largely because I could not understand what it is that these people do in the virtual universe. (I was so new; I was so naive.) There is a game propping-up many SL vampires and that game is "get as much blood as you can," with the unspoken "keep as many supply dolls around you as you can, in case you need blood in a hurry." These blood-doll submissives take pride in feeding the dominant vampires whenever needed: "count on me, bleed me dry," they beg, and their blood trickles from their bodies to nourish someone else. "Just love me, is all I ask."
A classic narcissist is someone who fundamentally has no life inside (or, no "blood"), and so they seek self-esteem and gratification from others (or, drinking the blood of others to survive). A narcissist thrives on the feedback from other people, even if it is negative feedback. (Positive is better, though.) Accordingly, they seek praise, or to troll and incite violence, or to steal someone's lover in order to feel "more special" (because life is a competition, according to them -- and the competition must be won or else someone must die). They seek what others have because they, themselves, believe deep down that they have nothing (rightly or wrongly).
Another word for this kind of behaviour is "parasitic" -- behaviour from someone who cannot live without the presence of another human being to draw from. To drink from. To receive from. If you have ever tried to leave someone who simply will not let you leave, you have felt the clutch of a parasite who is panicking that his "supply" might be trying to get away.
If you have ever tried to have a civilized discussion about the proper way of doing something that nearly came to blows because someone refused to admit defeat, or someone refused to admit he was wrong, or someone behaved like "you touched a nerve!" then you have tried to reason with the unreasonable. Mental health is unreasonable: it either works or it doesn't, and if it is not working then there is no logic that will solve that problem.
A narcissist presents herself to the world as someone who loves herself excessively: "I am the best," and "Other people are flawed because of this or that, but not me." In fact, excessive criticism of other people is a very good indicator of a disturbance inside the mind. Someone who soothes herself by putting others down is someone with whom logic will never win. There is, alas, no point in trying to speak logically to these folks, whether dominant or submissive. (There is great danger, in fact, if you pledge your service to such a person: you will inevitably find yourself on the receiving end of that same criticism they show towards other people. And sometimes it does not stop with words. And it goes without saying that you will have to keep a vein open for constant feeding regardless of your mood.) Jealousy, anger, insecurity, irrationality... behaviours like these do not just come from skipping lunch. They come from an imbalance in the mind that is more dangerous (and more common!) than I have really considered before now.
If you have ever felt the rage of a narcissist (the narcissistic rage from the narcissistic wound, they call it) then you are exactly the right reader for this. Failing to make your narcissist feel important means you risk your narcissist walking out on you: and that will cause some anxiety, especially when they come storming back (it never takes very long) with their rage, their pacifying, their new hunger, and then their feeding from your open vein, which will confuse the hell out of you until you begin to accept the patterns and cycles in your relationship... Or, until you lock the door and never let them in again. (Boundaries. Limits.)
There are many reasons, in short, why so many people do not connect properly and in healthy ways in the online gaming community: people are often not looking for you but, instead, for your blood (emotionally speaking). It may not be you they want but only the attention you bring. It may not be you they want but only the kneeling that you do, or the trophy that you represent. It may not be you they want but, rather, that you belong to someone important and that you now choose the narcissist to be with instead -- a real coup for the ego of the narcissist. And when it comes to taking a submissive to order around, or to pledging your service to a dom, the connection will be phoney without a free, balanced, two-way circulation system of communication. Because, honestly, the D/s lifestyle is uniquely positioned to handle mental health issues in ways that vanilla living is not. There can be good news at the end of the journey if you follow your safe, sane, consensual practicality and if you pledge to communicate with perfect transparency. And if you strive continuously for wellness, with the right nutrition and physical activity, your body will not sacrifice your mind to disease.
This is why I maintain, in any interaction, that I am not in competition with anybody. I do not know everything. I submit first of all to humility, for every single person I meet knows something I do not -- just as I know something they do not. And I do not want your boyfriends! And as part of my value system, I have become quite comfortable with "No, thank you."
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For people on Facebook there is a good resource for survivors of narcissistic abuse as you recover from being "the supply du jour."
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