Narcissism and the Twin Flame Fantasy

When I recently wrote a Facebook post about hoovering, a few people wondered what I was on about.

Well, today I’m going to explain what that term means and how it relates to the phenomenon of narcissistic abuse.

In the autumn of 2016, I put a powerful call out to the Universe to meet my Beloved.

The very next day, I met the man I believed was my Twin Flame.

We met online – on Facebook in fact.

He had just come out of a 3-year relationship. I had just ended a 1 month affair.

It never occurred to me at the time to question the prudence or timing of this.

Having been a devotee of Divine Love for over a decade, I was convinced my prayers had been answered.

And, in some very uncanny ways, they had.

All the very specific qualities and attributes I had cast out for were delivered right into my lap. Right down to the fact that my Beloved lived in Australia, was a film-maker and offered to put me up, while I finished writing my book.

Within a few days of our online meeting, we were talking for hours every day. On Skype, on Whatsapp, on my way to teach yoga, as soon as I’d finished.

I found his insistence on being in touch with me every minute of the day a bit overwhelming (and possibly needy), but put it down to the first flush of love.

I was bowled over by his romanticism and devotion. He quoted Rumi, called me his Goddess, his Shakti and we frequently communed in deep presence together. It was mystical and electrifying, as I felt him embodying the energy of his teacher Osho, to my Sacred Sexual Priestess Self.

Within a few weeks of our online meeting, he had flown to London to meet me in person.

It really did feel like the union with my Beloved of all time. There was so much love, so much passion and so much profound connection.

The day he arrived, we walked in a nearby park and he went down on one knee and pledged his life and heart to me.

I recall feeling not quite ready to fully receive this, but when I shared that with him, he offered all the right answers to appease me.

We enjoyed a delightful week together. He was attentive and ueber-generous. We saw eye to eye on everything. And there was such a deep intimacy and openness between us.

The only time I ever questioned anything about him, was when I took him to a concert and he shamelessly barged right to the front of a very long queue to buy the artist’s CD. I was mortified and told him so. Yet his contrition seemed real enough.

Soon after, I headed to Australia to join him.

We had a joyous reunion and I was touched to the core, when I got into his car and saw the foot-well strewn with fragrant frangipani flowers… a trail that continued from his garage all the way up the stairs of his house and into the bedroom, where it ended in a beautiful heart of flowers on the bed.

It was the very Paradise and Divine Union I had been visioning and invoking for years. And I honestly believed all my prayers had come true.

He continued to overwhelm me with his generosity, attentiveness and kindness: buying me gifts, cooking me meals, making beautiful love, supporting my writing process and praising me to the heavens.

I opened myself fully and completely to this man. I had not a shadow of a doubt in my heart that we were Twin Flames and the Universe was delivering to me all that I had so passionately requested and worked for through years of self-development.

On Christmas Day, we exchanged gifts (his, once again, on such a grand scale of generosity, I was gob-smacked!) and then over our slap-up Christmas lunch at a fancy restaurant, he took out a box and offered me a very expensive “friendship ring.”

Although I’ve been married twice, I’ve never been given a “proper” ring with real gemstones. This touched me on so many levels and even though the ring was too big and not really to my taste, I wore it with pride and immense gratitude.

Could things get any better?!

Well, despite all the bliss, love and out of this world amazingness, there had been a few little hiccups in our time together.

I found aspects of his way of interacting with me controlling. And aspects of his communication frustratingly obtuse and passive-aggressive.

He seemed to want me to live life on his terms, in his rhythm and in his way. He seemed to want to mould me into his ideal, rather than accept me for who I was.

And, at first, I didn’t notice too much, because I was jet-lagged and simply overjoyed and grateful to be in such a beautiful place, with so much love and attention and the gift of being able to write without interruption.

But when I did gently voice my feeling of being controlled or pushed, or ask him to communicate more clearly, he became frustrated.

Nothing came to a head right away. We would both slide back into the love-vibe and I would make allowances, telling myself that we were all different and I just had to learn how to interact more effectively with this person, whom, truth be told, I barely knew.

Yet somehow, over the weeks, these behaviours grew. He would make derogratory comments on my dress-sense or hair. Urge me to style myself differently, even though I kept insisting that I was totally at peace and happy with who and how I was.

He said his input was only love. I felt it as interference and control.

He would poke fun at me, say something really nasty that made my heart hurt and tears fill my eyes, and then when I pointed this out, tell me to lighten up, stop being so serious – he was only joking.

And then he began to react to my communication in a stronger way. Whenever I voiced an opinion that differed to his, asked him to respect a boundary of mine or was upset by his behaviour, he grew angry.

And in his anger, he was nasty. Cutting, demeaning, undermining. Using personal details I'd shared with him in trust against me. Undoing all the praise with words designed to make me feel worthless and self-doubting.

He stopped listening too. Whereas at the outset, he had been able to hold space with pure presence, now I found myself growing increasingly frustrated at his inability to hear me without putting my words through a distorting filter, which often seemed to make my words sound like blame to him.

It was becoming increasingly impossible to communicate.