True Crime: Narcissistic Moms and a Lack of Object Constancy
Can parents without object constancy forget their children exist?
A lack of object constancy is an often confused phenomenon when it comes to NPD and ASPD. A lack of object constancy is not the same thing as the lack of long term memory. They have long term memory.
They remember their former supply. They talk about their exes all the time (with hatred, usually).
Object constancy is the ability to maintain a bond with another person.
That means that even if the person upset you in some way, you still recognize that this is a person you love and why you love that person, and you see them as a human being with feelings. You can be upset yet know you still love them and remember loving them.
A narcissist doesn’t see anyone as human beings with feelings because they lack empathy. They KNOW you have feelings (hence why they love to hurt them), but they do not FEEL your feelings as if it’s their own.
When you’re sad, they do not feel sad. When you’re happy, they do not feel happy.
They see you as an object only, and you help to maintain their fantasy self; when you feel bad, they feel great because they either had power over you or are better than you. When you are praising them and obsessing over them or crying over them, they feel godlike and important.
Supply is like a drug high. It helps them avoid shame.
And whatever shames they have, they’ll accuse you of and make you feel bad for, so you’ll carry their shame.
If they feel ugly, they’ll tell you that you gained a few pounds.
If they’re cheating, they’ll start accusing you of cheating and making you prove fidelity.
If they feel jealous, they’ll triangulate you.
If they feel dumb, they’ll mock your intelligence and tell all their friends how dumb you are.
If they feel crazy, they’ll say you’re psycho for having emotions.
If they feel evil, they’ll call you the devil. (Pro-tip: if they are obsessed with calling people evil, their shames are REALLY BAD. This is most likely a sociopath).
Supply is there to be a dumpster for shame and to make them feel like a God. That’s it.
Without empathy, they not only can’t see you as human, but they can’t bond with you. (Love? A peasant? Never! A king needs only power!! 🗡️)
They TRULY do not give a flying f#%* what happens to you. They’ll abandon you after a cancer diagnosis without flinching. Zero emotional bond. They feel a bond to no one.
They’ve never bonded with anyone since their narcissist parent in early childhood before they had long term memory and that parent abandoned them physically or emotionally, because they couldn’t bond.
So love became something too dangerous and predatory to them. It also became synonymous with hate and revenge.
Therefore, a lack of object constancy means that if they feel upset with you, they no longer remember ever loving you.
They remember you exist.
They remember that you supplied them.
But they don’t remember ever loving you. They don’t remember idealizing you. They see you only as all bad because you gave them bad feelings.
When you don’t remember loving someone, you never grieve them.
It’s really hard for those of us that become supply who do bond and love genuinely, because we remember the love and therefore we must grieve.
And an intense loss of love can take years to grieve.
But narcissists don’t grieve. They only stay stuck in anger. If they are abandoned, they’ll collapse and cry and have suicidal ideation for a short period of time, but it’s followed by rage and reversal of the blame. And, once again, they forget how collapses felt, and they even often forget the things they said during them. (I had a few confess some horrors to me and then forget they did the next day).
Whether they discard or you do, they don’t grieve, they just move onto new supply.
They’re always looking for a new drug high. Because all supply grows stale.
When they’re with new supply, they go straight into idealization. And, without that object constancy for past supply, each time they go into idealization, it feels like the first time, the best time, because they don’t remember ever idealizing you or anyone else.
Factually, they know you dated. They remember you did stuff together, had a lot of sex. They see the pics where they look happy.
But they think you tricked them, and they only remember the bad feelings for you, they can’t remember how the good feelings felt.
And they don’t remember you as you really are: they don’t see you as having a stable and unique identity. They just remember you as an ALL BAD person.
You become what the narcissist needs to survive, and they need to hate you so they won’t hate themselves.
This is why they can also just obliviously keep cycling through this pattern without any self awareness or reflection.
Each time they have new supply, it’s like they never felt that way before, they never loved like this.
They feel it for their golden children, their romantic partners, friends…and each time, it’s brand new and they never loved like that.
And each time, they split and don’t remember the bond. They don’t come back from splitting you. And they see you as deserving of abuse.
And when they’re with new supply, they’re so stoned that you might as well not exist. And if they discarded you, they had new supply.
A good example of a lack of object constancy is the mother in Ohio who killed her 16 month old baby by leaving her in a crib while she WENT ON VACATION TO PUERTO RICO FOR 10 DAYS.
Her baby starved to death. She found her when she came home in a urine and feces soaked bed. Her daughter had even eaten her own feces.
SHE WAS SHOCKED, and she was screaming something AWFUL when she called 911.
How in the world could she not know this would happen?
A narcissistic sociopath is only a 3–5 year old in an adult body, and would YOU let a 3 year old babysit?
They’re notoriously irresponsible and they feel REALLY put out by the needs that babies have. They can’t handle it. They’re also atrociously selfish and impulsive. They leave kids home alone all the time when little. And their reactions to children’s needs are punishment and neglect.
Narcissists also vary in cognitive intelligence. A smart sociopath wouldn’t do this: they may leave the baby alone a lot and abuse it without giving AF, but they wouldn’t do it for ten days because they understand that would mean death, and likely prison.
This woman, in addition to having NPD/ASPD as a mental disability did not seem very smart at all.
Her stories to police seemed to be someone incredibly unintelligent. Intellect is mostly genetic and she definitely pulled the short straw.
Plus, that daughter was likely her scapegoat daughter: that means the baby was all bad at birth and the purpose for the child was to project shame.
But, did she remember she had a daughter?
Yep!
They asked if she thought of her daughter or thought to call anyone to check on her, and she said…
…that she only thought of her daughter ONE TIME, because someone brought her up, and she had a moment in which she said, “it was like when someone brings up someone who isn’t there and you briefly remember they exist and then forget about it soon after again.”
WAT?! Who feels that way? For those of us with empathy, this makes no sense at all.
But it’s about a lack of object constancy.
No, she never thought to check.
No, she didn’t think she’d die.
No, she wasn’t concerned about her eating or not having water or being terrified or traumatized. All of that would require empathy.
But yes, she was surprised and grief stricken AF to find her dead. That’s undeniable in the 911 call.
What happened is that in Puerto Rico, she was living obliviously in her narcissistic fantasy, as children do.
She’d had problems with her baby’s father, BUT…she’d met a NEW MAN, and he wanted to go on vacation.
And so they went! She was in idealization and in fantasy and feeling GREAT! 👍
Emotions regulated!
Bad feelings relieved!
Here she is just having a ball while her baby was dying.
AND THEN…
…as the judge sentenced her to life in prison, she said defiantly to the court:
“No one knows how badly I was suffering. My daughter and God have forgiven me.”
You want to know how bad the narcissist was suffering?
This bad:
This bad:
But does she believe she was really suffering so incredibly badly?
YEAH.
Because in addition to thinking they are the best in the world and that the sun and moon rise and fall at the behest of their sparkly new supply, they also truly believe they are supreme victims, not abusers.
Whenever their abuses are exposed, they always revert to how victimized they are — more than anyone on the planet.
Since they can’t conceptualize the suffering of anyone else, then their feelings really are the only ones that matter.
And if she didn’t get to go on her vacation with her new boyfriend, then she felt she would’ve suffered unbearably.
Would she have suffered?
Yes, they suffer. They have extreme boredom, extreme agitation and anger, and without going quickly to new supply after a loss of another supply, they wouldn’t be able to maintain the denial of their narcissistic fantasy. They’d collapse and usually rage.
BUT STILL, THAT SUFFERING DOES NOT COMPARE TO HER VULNERABLE AND TERRIFIED BABY’S AGONY.
But that’s something she can’t conceptualize. Emotionally, she experiences the world like a baby herself.
So, even though she knew she had a baby at home, and remembered her baby, she still didn’t think about the baby or about the consequences of her impulsivity, because the baby had no use as supply in her current narcissistic fantasy.
That’s what it’s like when you’ve been discarded too and they’re in their new fantasy.
Someone may mention you and they’ll be like, “oh yeah, I remember them.” And then blink twice and wipe you away again.
BUT….
Say their HORROR happens: supply discards them.
They are like alcoholics with no alcohol in the house. But suddenly, they remember…you.
You’re that expired bottle of cough syrup in their bathroom.
HELLO HOOVER.
They take a swig.
GAG.
You taste NASTY.
AND YOU DON’T GET THEM DRUNK.
Your supply has gone totally STALE.
So, they pitch you in the garbage and head out to the liquor store in the morning.
Until the next time they’re desperate for a fix.
They’ll also Hoover when it appears you’re doing well or with someone new. In that case, it’s to break you and prove to their ego that you still want them and are still dumb enough to fall for their BS, so they have control over you.
Each time, they’ll abuse you worse and hurt you worse, because it takes more pain from you to get them the same high.
Don’t be like them and keep obliviously repeating the same toxic patterns until death. There’s a life beyond this suffering, and it’s so much better.
Say no to Hoovers.
Stop dating children in adult bodies.
Don’t subscribe to their fantasy. Live in reality.
Seek real adults and authentic people who can bond and emotionally attach.
And heal your own attachment wounds, lest you walk right into the arms of the next vampire.
My new book, Hunted Carrion: Sonnets to a Stalker is now available on Amazon!
![]("https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/fit/c/320/320/0*gn9h8ZruE5VWWZfP")
For individual coaching, visit https://am-champion.com
If you’d like to support my writing, check out my books or Buy Me a Coffee.
Follow Blooming on the Borderline on Facebook.
A.M. Champion is the author of She Saints & Holy Profanities (Quarterly West, 2019), The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Book of Levitations (Trembling Pillow Press, 2019), Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her work appears in Verse Daily, diode, Tupelo Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Salamander, New South, Redivider, PANK Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a 2016 Best of the Net winner, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient.