The human mind is a thing of beauty and fascination. When the Bible says, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made,” the best response you can get from me is, “No kidding!” Many have been baffled at how and why a narcissist so consistently and persistently engages in adulterous relationships, pornography, and deception without a chink in their external armor of “charming, God-loving, successful gentleman”.

Once you understand how our brains work and how much hard work the narcissist puts into retraining his own brain to believe his own lies, then it all makes sense. Then you will understand why deception comes so easily to a narcissist. Then you will understand how they can get away with decades of affairs, abusive behavior, and sophisticated deception all while maintaining their façade of being in a loving marriage. Then you will also understand why toxic narcissism is a choice. Then you will understand why toxic narcissism is a character disorder which evolves into a personality disorder. You teach your brain to do something long enough, it does it instinctively and defines your identity. The toxic narcissist makes a conscious decision to cultivate a predatory mindset.  

A narcissist positions himself in an antagonist position amongst his peers, his friends, and his spouse.  He sees them as competitors and only embraces those among them who see him as their hero.  In order to continue in these relationships he needs to master the art of deception – spinning stories, telling tall tales, rewriting history (a little bit of truth surrounded by a lot of fiction), and redefining words (like marriage and adultery). They use their empathic abilities not to care for you but to identify your weakness and then control you and your perception of them. They have no desire to “feel” your pain; they just want to identify your pain points. Therefore, they have to make a conscious decision to separate themselves from your pain.  

Our brains are divided into a left and right side: the left side processes logic and explanations, whereas the right side processes emotions and relationships. The narcissist works hard at blocking the right side from processing emotions. They have no desire to feel your pain. In order to accomplish this, they will copiously document everything you said or did to hurt their feelings; they will ruminate over these words and deeds that hurt them. They feed themselves information that is hurtful, bitter, hateful, judgmental, and exaggerated – over and over again. This is how they effectively disrupt the emotional and relational circuits in their brain. They have now trained themselves to hate you for hurting them without feeling an iota of the pain they have inflicted upon you. This is why it is pointless reminding them of the pain they are causing you. This is why counseling fails. This is why they are always right and never wrong. This is why they are successful predators. This is why they are successful liars.  

They have successfully prevented the right prefrontal cortex which is our identity center from processing the logical information that the left side has processed. Thereby, while they have knowledge of your pain, they can use it to manipulate you without feeling any of the pain they have caused you or empathizing with your past trauma. They have disconnected this Verbal Logic Explaining Center (identified by Karl Lehman, MD), and now engage in rapid self-serving justifications that allow them to continue their lies, deception, and abuse.

They have suppressed their ability to love others except in a transactional way; as long as they are getting from you they will pretend to love you. This is why they fail at marriage (even if they appear to be successfully married) because they have redefined love and marriage to permit all their indiscretions albeit under the cloak of deception. This is why they are incapable of agape love – the kind of love the scriptures talk about; love is patient, kind, not jealous, not arrogant, and not self-serving. They have invested all their emotional and intellectual capital into mastering the art of selfish love, which is an oxymoron.

What is desirable in a man is his kindness

It is better to be a poor man than a liar

Proverbs 19:22