Theatophilia - Idealization - One motivation of CNPDs

[Sallying Forth]

Strange word, Theatophilia. When I first read this description in the Compensatory NPD I tried to think of an incident where my stb-exNh demonstrated this behavior. Then numerous incidents came to mind. This is about the strangest behavior my stb-exNh does.

Here is the psychological description:
"Theatophilia ["idealization"] can be defined as the desire to watch and observe, to admire and to be fascinated, to merge and master through attentive looking" .... "the magical force of the object [a person] is incorporated, identified with, submitted to, and merged wtih, with the help of looking, hearing, and being touched; one is filled with, gripped by the power fo the awe-inspiring object and becomes enthusiasticaly enriched"

When we used to watch a movie I would catch him looking at me while I'm watching the movie. I'd ask him why he's looking at me. He would say, "I am experiencing what you are going through watching you."

I've always felt icky when he would say this. And like the description says, would feel as if he was trying to merge with me through my experience. I had become an object.


Has anyone ever experienced this with a "N"?

[October]

Yuck, yes this does strike a nerve.  Years ago, when I was a girl, my mum used to stare at me in the bath, with a weird look on her face.  Just staring and staring and smiling.  Not a happy smile, more of a smug one.  Nothing to do with me at all.  It used to really creep me out.  She kept doing this long after I was uncomfortable with it, with the excuse that I would not rinse my hair properly if she did not do it for me.  So she would just stand there ...  You get the idea.  <shudder>

She does this to stuff as well.  If I buy something, she has to handle it, and stare at it all over, as if she is devouring it with her eyes, to make it hers, rather than mine.  So, needless to say, I show her nothing.  

Knowing this, I honour my own daughter's need for privacy absolutely.  She has a lock on her bedroom door, rinses her own hair, and if I pass anything to her in the bathroom, I only put my arm round the door, not the rest of me.

[Sallying Forth]

Knowing this, I honour my own daughter's need for privacy absolutely.  She has a lock on her bedroom door, rinses her own hair, and if I pass anything to her in the bathroom, I only put my arm round the door, not the rest of me.

There were no locks on bedroom doors when I was a child except my parents'. At least there were locks on bathroom doors.

[Marta]

I remember witnessing this phenomenon with an Nish friend and her disciple friend(not an N.) As if the N could do no wrong. The disciple was like under a spell or something. I've also seen this phenomenon in religious groups. Usually it is exhibited not by Ns, but by "normal" (meaning non Ns, for lack of a better term.) Yes, indeed it is very creepy.

My N mom had taken too of buying articles of clothing/accessories that I possessed, or copying my dressing style. After my dad's death, in one fragile moment she even told me that she had tried to cpy his behavior in the hopes that she might win the love that he was accorded, so she did not understand why she failed! She left out one critical ingredient from his recipe, namely love.....

[miss piggy]

Hello,

I don't think this is the same as what SF defined but still...my PSIL would stare at me and my d like bugs under glass when d was a baby.  The thingifying thing they do so they can memorize your moves and act as if they knew what they were doing in the same situation.  In this case, she didn't have children yet, her friends did, and she used us as models.  She also didn't understand that my d was mine, not hers.  She would even use the word "borrow" when d went with her to visit PSIL's friends (before I truly realized how 'out there' she was), as in "can I 'borrow' d?  My friends are taking their kids to the zoo."  Of course it sounded tongue in cheek but I think she really meant it this way now. 

Who can stand this kind of scrutiny?  It's like being monitored and robbed of privacy, having a human camera record your every move.  So weird.

MP

[Marta]

"can I 'borrow' d?  My friends are taking their kids to the zoo."

MP, this is SICK, NAUSEATING, CREEPY. Do you really have to be in touch with this creepy crawly SIL? My sympathies.............

Marta

[October]

She also didn't understand that my d was mine, not hers. 
MP

Years ago, when I used to work, my mum looked after my baby d.  I found out from photographs at my aunts that my mum used to change d's clothes when I went to work, and dress her in stuff I never even saw, and then change her back again before I got home.

Needless to say, I stopped her doing that as soon as I found out.

Also, when asked her daughter's name, she used to answer with my daughter's name.  I heard her do it.

Doesn't take a genius to work out that she wanted me out of the way, so she could be the mum.  Part of her eternal youth.

[Hopalong]

ewww, October.
I'm sorry. What a rotten (as in stinking) memory.
You and your little one deserved a grandma in the picture,
not a retarded doll collector.
Creeps me to think of this.
Have a close friend who seems so overpossessive of her children that it strikes a familiar chord...
And though I was grateful for my handmade dresses as a little girl, most definitely it had some of that about it too. I was forever being primped and prodded and trotted out on display.

In fairness, had as much to do with NMom's childhood in poverty and her determination to avoid that appearance (which to her was shameful) as it did with her N-ness. She was an amazing seamstress, too.

She worked as a nanny for the well-to-do and read etiquette books cover to cover, and ran our house like an early Martha Stewart. No one ever EXHALED, of course, but the living room was impeccable.

Poor miserable Ns and poor everybody to whom they spread it to!

Hopalong

[spyralle]

Oh I think i have had experience of this one.  Firstly with my mother.  When i have been introduced to people by my mother she stands there staring at me intensley with this fixated grin, mouthing every word I say with me.  I, like October was also primped and preened snd put on display and still am at the age of forty three.  When she is not doing that she spents her time deriding me for my lack of dress sense, flat chest, scruffiness, clumsiness etc.  I am hers and therefore must be a reflection of what she believes her self to be...  think i have gone off track a bit here.

My ex n is probably a better example.  he would listen carefully to what I would say and thenhe would take that behaviour for his own.  Whilst employing the behaviour he would put it down in me.  Thereofre I guess feeeling he had actually taken it for himself.  i guess the sad thing was he actually did take it from me.  My therapist said something which touched me the other day about how he had used me to metamorphaisi and then shed his old skin when he left....

Oh by the way.... on the subject of bathrooms.  my mother would always come in and deficate when I was in the bath....  Think she might have been making a statement there!!!!!

[andromeda]

This is a fascinating thread, and oh so true...

I think Ns who do this have no internal life, are so out of touch with their inner experience they have to suck it off of everyone around them...like vampires.

That look is like a spell, a cage. In it I see the N-viewer writing the script for the rest of their lives, with me playing some role. Its bizarre. I've actually snapped my fingers before an N-man's eyes and said, No. This has usually happened on a first date. Which makes it a last date.

They are actively interacting not with me, but with the picture of me they make in their head.

There were no boundaries in my house, either.