Joy can also be the pleasure you find with other people: laughing out loud until your face hurts; enjoying other people’s company; them enjoying your company; feeling safe and seen and heard; and sharing activities.
Joy can come from something that entertains you—like a great song, listening to a live band, dancing, seeing an amazing film or television show, or reading a great book.
Joy can come from your work, if you’re lucky. Joy can come from a hobby—knitting, interior design, fixing cars, making art, exercising, woodworking, or line dancing. You can get joy from those things.
Joy can come from playing with a child or your pet and listening to them laugh.
Joy can be trying something new—experiencing new sensations, like swimming in a warm ocean at night or eating a new, delicious food you’ve never had before.
Joy is a moment. It’s a moment when you’re in the moment, and it’s a good moment. You often feel in flow and connected with yourself and others. And in joyful moments, you’re aware that it’s good.
There’s a childlike quality to joy—a sort of clapping your hands at the wondrous thing you see. When people are experiencing joy, there’s a sparkle in their eyes, and it is so healing. And it is stolen in these relationships.
You might wonder: why are narcissistic relationships such joy stealers?
There’s a kind of contemptuous criticism that cuts through narcissistic people in general. Even when they’re grandiose, there’s a sort of natural malcontent. They’re never fully happy. They’re complainers. There’s always a chronic irritability right under the surface. Sometimes it’s even a snide, “What is this?”
Even in those friendly, grandiose narcissistic folks, again, they find something to complain about. So they can be quite contemptuous and invalidating when someone in their midst gets joy from something very simple.
I don’t know—watching a hummingbird hovering. The narcissistic person will say, “What’s the big deal? It’s a bird.” Or from seeing a group of friends having fun and laughing, they’ll say, “God, grow up. Why are you so loud? You’re making us look bad.”
Or just watching someone enjoy a hobby—saying, “Oh, great. What a lovely craft. Now you’re going to make our house look cheesy with your new decorating project,” or “just living your damn life.”
And then there’s the “How much is this new interest of yours going to cost me?”
The narcissistic person may kill joy with a passing comment. It may be criticism. It may be disgust—dismissiveness, eye rolls. And frankly, for a lot of people in narcissistic relationships, there can be “hell to pay” after you make time for a little joy in your life.
Things like, “Oh, so your friends are so much more important than our relationship? You sure seem to like other people out there more than me. You seem to laugh with them so much more.”
Or saying, “Okay. Well, now that you wasted a day doing all that nonsense, it’s time to come back to the real world. You’d better get this and that done.”
You may be told that you’re immature, childish, selfish, greedy—or that you always put yourself first—just because you wanted to be in a joyful moment.
You definitely cannot share your joy in these relationships.
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