The Reason You Can't Make Up With Narcissists Has to Do With What Psychologists Refer to As "Splitting" (for both sides)

For a reference and a long explanation as to what splitting is, you can go to my own article on it  HERE. 

For a short explanation it is black and white thinking, "all or nothing" pronouncements, Jekyll and Hyde behavior, looking at people as all good or all bad and nothing in-between those two extremes, and "I have to have my own way or I want nothing to do with you at all" types of behavior. 

It is a very obvious trait for Borderlines, Narcissists and people with Antisocial Personality Disorder.  

It does not breed success in relationships, but with the exception of Borderlines, it is a "fixed" trait that you cannot change by complaining, reasoning, facts, asking them to stop it, expecting them to grow out of it, expecting them to "wake up some day", and all of the other ways that involve change. 

For this post, I wanted to discuss an article about "splitting" on political matters, particularly when it comes to fixed perspectives that seem threatening, but almost all relationships with narcissists have this dynamic going on. You can merely "disagree" on a statement, or perspective, and the narcissist casts you out as a "them", an alien, no longer an "us", no longer belonging to the family, or marriage, or friendship circle. 

Being on the receiving end of a narcissist's splitting is usually heartbreaking and shocking for most people, and a depressing set of circumstances once you realize that the splitting will never change. For narcissists, it's a preferred way of life for them, a preferred mental state where they protect themselves from giving up the on-going agenda of getting evermore domination, power, control and manipulating in every relationship that they are in.

To a lesser degree, it is also their way of protecting themselves from criticism too: unlike the rest of us, they rage and very often hurt us and punish us for having the experiences, perspectives and feelings that they don't want us to have, whether the punishments are about insulting us, or discarding us in favor of looking for a new relationship where they can control the other person more easily, or beating us up, or committing crimes against us. 

Being in the orbit of narcissists means most of us will most likely be splitting too, at least when it comes to them, especially when the narcissist goes into a rage, decides to punish us, when they refuse to listen to us or resolve an issue where both people will be satisfied with the outcome. This comes from Dr. Ramani Durvasula. 

How much you "split" depends on a lot of factors, whether the events that led up to the narcissist's rage or punishment were traumatic for you, whether you were or have been already traumatized, whether you are dealing with physical illnesses or injuries, whether the narcissist clearly wants to or has said that they want to hurt you, your own resilience versus your vulnerabilities. Even when we aren't in the middle of a crisis, narcissists can and do manufacture one, and use it to grab more power and traumatize us. They've studied us long enough to know what will hurt us, and if they are trying to get more power at that time, there's no doubt you will be splitting then too, i.e. perceiving them as "all bad." 

I'd bet anything if a person really, really hurt you (with abuse as part of the picture) and you had traumatic reactions to the pain they caused you (lack of sleep, hypervigilance, stomach issues and/or headaches, muscle aches, lots of grief or pain), and no resolution which takes into account your feelings at all, and where the narcissist is consistently unempathetic and chronically trying to get their own way, it would be very rare for you not to split. You will likely see them as "all bad".

The big difference between us and them is that we go through considerable pain before reaching that conclusion whereas they can do it over the most minor of disagreements, or about a fact in dispute, or because they are momentarily not feeling grandiose, or they may even have a mistaken belief about our intentions towards them. A lot of them are suspicious and paranoid, particularly malignant narcissists. It's why they have a desperate need to control others, judge others and dominate.

But the end result is the same. So we can say we understand them if we've gotten to the point where we find ourselves not able to listen to them any more, no longer able to enjoy their company, no longer feel warm and fuzzy towards them, and feel our lives would be better if they weren't in it (kind of like a discard, only for us it is after our patience has been completely broken). Again, the big difference is that they discard us because they are finding that controlling us "isn't working, isn't enough for their standards" ("never good enough" being one of the major plagues of their disorder). It's a lot different than the way we experience discarding, usually after years and years of patience, trying to resolve un-resolvable issues, feeling sick and traumatized around them, and so on.

We are putting a lot of effort into the relationship, and often caving in to things we really shouldn't be caving into, but that is what all narcissists require. Our efforts, of course, would be deeply appreciated if we weren't doing this with a narcissist. It doesn't take the narcissist much time to get to the point where  they believe a relationship isn't worth their energy or consideration. 

When both narcissist and target reach the conclusion that the relationship cannot be saved, where there is too much stonewalling, contempt, ongoing defensiveness and where the decisions of both parties is that the other is "all bad", it is what Gottman discovered to be one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, where the narcissist shows the contempt first (i.e. "splits" and sees you as "all bad") , which in turn sets up a chain reaction of a mutual "splitting", thereby turning away from each other and ending the relationship. 

Narcissists usually end relationships first: they "split", devalue the person they now view as "all bad", and then they "discard" the person from their life. For malignant narcissists it is "discard and destroy". 

What you go through instead is trauma, then you go through the five stages of grief, and finally acceptance. Once you reach the "acceptance stage" which can take 7 months to several years, you will most likely not be willing to go through it all again, so the relationship ends. 

Some narcissists try to keep this from happening, so they attempt to come back at some point before you get to the acceptance stage of grief where they try to talk you into going back to them, or how they've changed. If you've gone through the acceptance stage, I bet you can't get talked into anything by them, or even have the same capacity to hear anything they have to say the way you used to. If you see them, you get triggered instead (i.e. feel pain or anxiety, wherein you want to get away, or for them to leave you alone). 

I can even attest to the fact that I view all of the narcissists I've had in my life as "all bad" too, even "exceptionally evil", and I ranked very, very high on a part of the Five Factor Model test on Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas (meaning I'm a lot less likely to be splitting than most people, and I do like to give people a lot of chances: whether to calm down, get their emotions under control,  be at peace enough to look at other perspectives, to get out of a defensive mindset, to sit down and talk things out - and by the way, this is not possible for most narcissists, and in contrast, they usually rank very low on Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas unless they are entirely their own). 

The narcissists in my life hurt me so much, were extraordinarily punishing over the most inconsequential matters and resistances, and also lacked reason, empathy, ethics and any trace of fair-mindedness, and believed in assumptions as reality/truth. They were all misogynistic, even the female narcissists went against girls and younger women with a ruthless war-like mentality, slashing away at any sign of a young female's self esteem. All but one commit crimes. And I do not want any of them in my life at all. As the saying goes, "I've had it." 

I think for any of us, we "have had it" when, again, our patience has been tested to the limits, or when we are going through pain from another life event - an accident, or surgery, or chronic condition, or life-and-death event when we are most likely to see their lack of empathy and realize that it is much worse than we ever imagined ... and for Malignant Narcissists, they make it abundantly clear that they get off on our pain at such times.  

Before we get to the "had enough" stage, ranking so high on "Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas" also means that we are able to listen with a much more open mind, and unfortunately, give way too many chances to people that most others would have been intolerant of and dropped long before we did. This is to say that it took some extraordinary events in my life to finally say "no more" to all of the tactics and head games they played. 

And I also found that I wasn't interested in hearing what people without empathy or ethics have to say.

In my own life, I take some pride in the fact that my attitude of "I've had it!" only applied to people with heavy narcissistic or sociopathic traits, the people among us who only seem to have some human qualities (and the worst ones). Granted, I understand that they have a personality disorder, and can't exactly grow empathy or a personality of their own because it was destroyed in childhood or abandoned by them in childhood. They may not have a choice in splitting either. But they do have choices about whether to gaslight or not, whether to go into a rage or not when they feel they are being  criticized or overlooked, whether they criticize others to the extent that they break others' self esteem, and they have a choice as to how they treat women. They also have a choice of whether to give ultimatums, about whether to use others to bully someone else, whether to scare people, and whether to hurt other people as egregiously as so many of them do, especially people who are going through tragedies (so diabolical of them, and even 100 times more so if they do all of this to a child).

I personally can no longer tolerate their lack of ethics and empathy, or deal with their head games and arrogance, especially with what I've lived through, and if no one else can either, their well-being is up to a therapist, not me.

I actually enjoy the fact that I've been able to spend most of my time with empaths in the many years since. The rest of the human race is not like narcissists and sociopaths, and what a difference it makes. I even enjoy other people's  different perspectives, something that they could never do themselves, or tolerate from me. I'm usually eager to hear what people have to say. It feels as though you get to see whole other ways of living, or worlds, beyond your own. Not that I feel I have to adopt theirs as my own, just as the Milky Way does not have to become part of, or mirror, Andromeda. But it's comforting to me that we are not all the same, or think in the same ways, that we all have expertise in diverse areas of work and study, that we don't have to be our own doctor, or our own teacher, or our own compass, or our own police force, and that there are even so many different species inhabiting the same planet who offer even more diversity in the way of thought and perspectives.

"Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas" seems like a good mental state, and to some degree, I think it helps when attempting to live through, and heal from, the trauma that narcissists and sociopaths invariably inflict upon us. It would be hard to "move on" without overwhelming intellectual curiosities, enjoying new experiences and new people, and having a creative approach to life.

Anyway, here is the excerpt of the article:

I’m a Couples Therapist. We Can Address Our Political Divide. - by Orna Guralnik for The New York Times
excerpt of the article:
     ... As children, early in our psychological development, we all resort to a defense mechanism identified by the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein as “splitting.” To cope with negative or inexplicable experiences, we divide our perceptions of people into either all-good or all-bad.
     This splitting allows us to avoid dealing with feelings of vulnerability, shame, hate, ambivalence or anxiety by externalizing (or dumping) unwanted emotions onto others. We then feel free to categorize these others as entirely negative, while seeing ourselves as good.
     In political environments, this kind of splitting manifests in an “us versus them” mentality — where “our” side is virtuous and correct, and “their” side is wrong and flawed — which produces the kind of rigid, extreme, ideological warring we are caught up in now.
     The technologies that mediate our access to reality only exacerbate this dynamic. The algorithms used by social media prioritize sensationalist and divisive content, creating “bubbles” that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives, rather than fostering a balanced discourse.
     It’s important for us to recognize just how gratifying this process can be, both for individuals and larger groups. Splitting produces a kind of ecstatic righteousness. There’s an intoxicating thrill in hate — in feeling that you’re in the bosom of a like-minded brotherhood, free from complexity and uncertainty. In this state we’re prone to ignore information that contradicts our idealized version of ourselves; we become allergic to dissonance; and those with differing views are cast out or canceled.
     To protect this brittle and distorted version of reality, we resort to extreme defensiveness. We frame opposing arguments as a threat to our identity and values. In psychoanalytic terms we call this the paranoid-schizoid position. We all tend to drop into this state of mind when we’re under extreme threat. In certain circumstances, it can allow for powerful acts of courage, but it’s also a state in which nuance and complexity are intolerable, and it’s too easy to see difference as danger.
     What I find most striking when talking to people in my practice is how intensely afraid they are of what they describe as “the other side.” Much as Louisa and Isaac sometimes felt they no longer knew each other even after decades of marriage, many of us have become frightening strangers to each other across the political divide.
     So how do we make our way back from this paranoid-schizoid state? It can seem difficult to imagine — but I know that empathy, compromise and brutally honest self-awareness are the beginnings of reconciliation.
     In Kleinian psychoanalysis, the “depressive position” is the phase that comes after the paranoid-schizoid position, when one emerges into a more integrated and mature state. In the depressive position, individuals begin to see themselves and others as complex and multifaceted, capable of both positive and negative qualities.
     To make this shift, you have to grapple with feelings of guilt and responsibility as you become aware that your aggressive feelings can hurt others — and that these feelings can also coexist with love and respect for the same person. The depressive position represents emotional maturity, within which one can reconcile ambivalence, manage feelings of loss, take responsibility and repair harm in relationships.
     When I work with couples on coming back from great mistrust and animosity, the initial phase requires encouraging each of them to take a good second look at their partner — approaching the other with friendly eyes to gather new and honest information. I embolden them to seek an attitude of true curiosity: How did their partner come to feel the way they did? What motivated them? What matters to them? This entails a shift in rhetoric, away from a stance of suspicion, ridicule and derision toward friendly curiosity. Interest in difference is a place of potential growth and repair. ...

I would argue that emerging "into a more integrated and mature state" has to come with Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas, at least a little. 

As I've said before, this is not a transition that narcissists will make. They get to the paranoid-schizoid state and stay there. 

You might think, "How can that be? Some of them seem to have regrets. Some of them come back and say that they will change." 

They may say that, but they really don't change (another link). And the reason they don't is that their version of splitting doesn't change. It is cemented into how they relate to other people. They won't and don't listen to you right away, way before most people will stop listening to other people. It can easily become an extreme form of confirmation bias where even the most unsubstantiated and ridiculous beliefs and prejudices are revered by them. 

Anyone who has ever been hoovered by a narcissist knows that even if they say they are going to change, they go back to splitting and not hearing your perspectives, and often it happens instantly, in seconds, and stays stuck there for months, years and decades.

Most people who have been in close personal relationships with narcissists, also know that narcissists go back to raging, or violence, or discarding if they feel criticized, no matter how sorry they appeared to be, and in a worse way than they were before. We know that the ambitions for power, control and dominance are still there for the narcissist, and probably more so since they failed at it so miserably the last time you were in their life. Believe me, they want that again from you, and it's a pipe dream on their part. They are also extremely jealous, envious people, and unless you burn out your bright light just for them, they are going to hurt you over and over again. It has to do with "what you have" that they feel they are lacking, or wanting, whether that is beauty, money, talent, attention, popularity, youth, a job, or you have family members or best friends who they believe are better than their family members or best friends, or just something they perceive as hierarchically superior to them.  

And because they split so easily they will feel that you are "all superior" and that they are "all inferior" at such times, which at the very least will make them extremely angry and you anxious. 

When narcissists feel inferior they most often triangulate, spread smear campaigns about you, rage, call you crazy or other names, or play the victim so that your time is spent giving attention to them and empathizing with them instead of spending your time on something that makes your light shine brighter. Narcissists really don't like hoovering or showing any signs of pretend-empathy or regret unless they feel they absolutely have to, for the sake of their reputations, or because they've driven everyone away, or for Malignant Narcissists, because they want to make sure they get back at you by hurting you so that you will remain inferior, a loser, to them in their eyes (as if whether you are hurt or not is a sign of inferiority - but to them it is ... just look at how they treat the disabled, the poor, children, women who they perceive to have no power). 

By the way, hoovering means trying to get you back to either reinstate you as narcissistic supply, or to get you back into the role they have assigned you, or to abuse you some more, or to enact a revenge by softening you up via manipulative flattering words. Hoovering is about trying to reinstate a toxic relationship with you and not respecting your boundaries, or the separation between you, your rights to say no, or ignoring your rights to make your own decisions about your own life. There is a creepiness to it, especially if they've trashed your self esteem and are suddenly acting as though it never happened and that you are the love of their life - common. 

Often when their hoovering attempts don't work, they become enraged again, so there are some entitlement aspects to hoovering. 

Some narcissists resort to stalking when hoovering doesn't work for them. 

Hoovering is also highly unethical as it most often comes with lies and fake promises, and can be dangerous. 

Hoovering is also unhealthy for you as it can stir up feelings of fear (again), feeling oppressed or spied on (again), feeling a sense of doom (again), feeling frightened and hypervigilant (again), and getting symptoms of traumatization. 

Most of all, hoovering is a sign of splitting. Let's say they called you a "senseless waste of a human being", "a b*tch", "insane and stupid", and they leave you for another woman. Then one day they show up at your door with flowers and tell you that you "are the love of my life", "the sweetheart of all sweethearts", that you must go back to them "because I had the great epiphany that I can't live without you, that it changed me to my core. You don't have to worry about me ever cheating again, babe". That's a sign of splitting, but it's also the sign of hoovering. 

If they were very nice to you until you "dared to criticize" them, whereby they abandoned you because of the criticism, that's splitting too. If they have the attitude that they have rights to do anything they want but that you don't have the same rights, that's also a sign of splitting. If they come back after months of being away after your separation, that's splitting with hoovering. 

Can you ever trust a hoover? I wouldn't - speaking about myself in my own life. And I'll leave it at that. 

Hoovering and splitting can also be a sign that they are insecure. Let us say that they dumped you and you found someone new. It eats them alive, and then they want to get back at you to see if you are still open to a relationship with them. If they find that they have the power and persuasive abilities to get you back even if you are in another relationship, it's all they really need to know, and they often abandon you again once they have the information they sought. Again, their own power and persuasion tactics are more important to a narcissist than being in a mutual relationship. It's like putting a check mark on a chalk board next to their conquests' names (for instance, checks on Melissa, Janet, Sue and Karen in terms of women who will take them back if they want to go back, or feel they need something from any of them). Again, even this is splitting with hoovering.

THE ARTICLE TALKS ABOUT A DEPRESSION PERIOD.
DO NARCISSISTS GO THROUGH THIS PERIOD TOO?

It's not very likely because of why they are in relationships in the first place: for dominance, power and control of another person. 

Instead of depression, they tend to become very paranoid instead. They can't live with the fact that they are not in control of you, and cannot believe it either. "Why was this person so easy to control before, but they aren't now?" - the answer is because the controlled person was leaning towards peace in their everyday life and was walking on eggshells to achieve that peace. Most everyone does it at one point or another with narcissists.

Also, for narcissists, the paranoia is also about their inward self, that they don't have "the magic to control and dominate" enough, or "the magic to persuade" enough, like they thought they did, or even "the deviousness to control and have people believe in the false narratives of what happened." Sometimes they are happy when the people closest to them say, "Oh, I believe you!", but again, beliefs are flimsy and often built on magical thinking, not reality, not facts, not proven, not vetted, not seen from all sides, often not within reason even, and resemble what the population has about politicians, or religious leaders, or cult leaders.

In terms of believing a politician will save our jobs, or incomes, or statuses, we often feel let down, right? When they talk about how great everything is under their leadership, we feel left out, and some of us vote for the other guy from the other party over it. The same goes for looking to religious leaders to perform miracles. Or cult leaders showing empathy they do not really have. 

Narcissists undergo the same "disappointments" where they know that people look at their "leadership", or advice, or persuasions, or their bullies, as just another ruse of self serving nonsense. 

While the average human being gets depressed and draws inward, and ruminates for a long time about what led up to the event of the paranoid/schizoid state, and how they are going to relate to the person they disagree with going forward, the narcissist gets paranoid and seeks immediate narcissistic supply from someone else instead. Obviously this doesn't help matters, however it is not obvious to them. And when they gather yes-men who have been fooled into a certain narrative, or go further and get their bullies to attack you, it makes matters unresolvable. It's more of an impulsive and thoughtless defensive reaction on the narcissist's part.

But in that impulsive state they are trying to protect themselves from being wrong by staying in that aggressive and paranoid-schizoid state. And you'll notice that the aggression escalates as they try to prove to their partner over, and over again that they are right and that their partner is wrong, and is so wrong that they deserve to be shamed and/or abused a lot. The hurling of constant insults is even abuse, but it tends to go beyond that. 

The other part of this is that narcissists aren't "invested" in relationships the way the rest of us tend to be. They are attached to us in very, very superficial ways, and since power, control and domination are all that they seek in relationships, breakups are superficial happenings because they weren't able to dominate you or tell you what to do as much as they thought they were going to be able to. You'll notice that when you talk to narcissists, they'll either be playing the victim and spouting on and on about how crazy you are, or they will describe the break-up in an off-handed, non-traumatic, "I don't care" way, even if it is their spouse or their child or their best friend. 

As I've said in this post, narcissists can feel disappointed that their relationships don't work out, but not as much as that their relationships didn't feel "good enough" to keep. 

That's an attachment style that most of us cannot relate to at all, but it is important to know that for narcissists it is par for the course. It means, for the most part, that if you want to be in a relationship with a narcissist, you won't be allowed by them to disagree, or at least outwardly disagree with them. But it's also a fact of life that at some point during our lives, we will disagree with them about something. 

Sometimes that disagreement is a life-and-death issue that they won't take seriously. The narcissist then produces an ultimatum where you have to agree to their point of view, no ifs, ands, or buts, or otherwise endure a shaming session and a discard from them instead. You can't afford to put your life in danger, so you accept the end of the relationship. 

While life-and-death issues aren't always the reason, it can be because you were ill and they abandoned you - typical. It can be because they got angry and told you that were worthless to them, but then acted like it never happened - also common.  It can be because of one of their enablers is a sadist, or because you are their adult child and aren't willing to divorce a spouse or get rid of a boyfriend at their command, or let your child live with them, or any number of reasons where you finally hit a wall and cannot "give into them" any more. 

And let's face it, relationships with narcissists are always about giving into them. There isn't much else to it.  

But more importantly, it often means that relationships with narcissists break apart because they are at the paranoid-schizoid level, and never get to the mature level. 

And it is apparent that the issues don't necessarily have to do with divisions over politics either. You can break up with narcissists over just about anything, even the most confusing, confounding reasons, particularly ones not imbedded in reality. 

It seems nuts that a parent would forbid a child to get married, when for most families they accept that it is part of having a human life (pairing), or for spouses to break up over who does the laundry, but again, for narcissists, they are willing to break up over these kinds of issues and differences regularly. Again, it's because they view their own opinions and thoughts as superior, and that because of that, their attachments to others are superficial. As Dr. Les Carter says, narcissists don't invest in relationships, they manage relationships. I would say "they see themselves as a manager" of other people at all times, whether it is wanted or not. Or maybe that's too nice. Maybe they take a dump on others, metaphorically speaking, since they are so negative about others, especially behind their backs. 

Their type of "managing others" is also what is referred to as utilitarian love. The idea is that falling in love with a person is like falling in love with a toaster oven that works until it seems broken. And they give a person as much consideration as a toaster oven too. They do not go deep. Their love does not include depths of compassion, wanting to understand and learn, exploration, admiration for individuality, admiration for talent and beauty, admiration for the intelligence of others, none of that "openness to new experiences, perspectives and ideas" that make long lasting relationships.  

Once the narcissist splits off from you and sees your perspectives as "all bad", everything else about you becomes "all bad" for them too. It resembles someone only looking at your black and blue fingernail and deciding that the rest of you is all black and blue too - i.e. it is fantasy-making. 

Only submission and agreeing with their perspectives, no matter how fantastical and child-like they are, is seen as acceptable behavior to them. It's another reason why hoovering can be dangerous. Narcissists who want you back usually only want you back in the role they assigned you - and in one way or another dealing with their manipulations again. They know that you are not going to agree with them on absolutely everything, and for most of them, that's the pre-requisite for being in a relationship with you in the first place. It's what they mean when they say, "Loyalty is the most important thing to me" (but they require that the loyalty only be in others; it's not a quality they want in themselves at all). 

Since they know you disagreed with them, it's suspicious when they want you back.

So for the hoover, there will be consequences for not having the loyalty to agree to everything they say they want or need you to be. 

If you do not agree with the pre-requisites of being submissive and agreeing, grandiose narcissists will tend to say you are crazy and stupid and they will have the stance that you never mattered to them much anyway. 

     Covert vulnerable narcissists are likely to want you to pity them, to feel endlessly sorry for them, and they play the victim and even take the reason for the break up and twist it around into a lie. Let's just say the narcissist is a male and he is pressuring his wife to do all of the laundry in the household, that it's a "woman's job." She feels they both work, and both bring in the same amount of income and contribution. He goes ballistic on her, rips up her clothes that are in the laundry bin, pushes her when she tries to save her clothes, shoves her into a concrete wall when she tries again whereby she has a concussion and is taken to the hospital, and she leaves him after she is discharged and files for divorce. The typical covert narcissistic response is: "We broke up over laundry! Can you believe it? I'd never expect a woman to do all of the laundry all of the time, but she wouldn't lift a finger and left our relationship over it! Can you believe it? What other poor sucker is she going to reel in to do her laundry?" - very common, very projection-oriented, and also a sign that suddenly looking at a person as "all unreasonable about laundry" and creating a version where they are "all bad" comes with plenty of lies, omissions, and for paranoid narcissists, fantasies. 

     For malignant narcissists, they will be seeking ways to hurt you for not being as submissive as they want, or submissive enough. If they beat you up and they are your marriage partner, they'll often try to convince everyone they know that you were having an affair (when you weren't - they want their audiences to see their violent actions as a crime of passion; i.e. as reasonable justification over jealousy, to not take the wounds they inflict seriously). 

     If they are your parent, and they are committing crimes such as theft against you, they'll try to convince others that you are so crazy and that you lose things constantly (again, the lie covers up their criminality against their own child). 

BUT AREN'T BORDERLINES THE ONES WHO "SPLIT"?

Splitting has been attributed to Borderlines as a stand-out trait. But it is something that can be treated in them. Borderlines do have empathy, and self reflection, and that is where they differ from narcissists. 

The lashing out also tends to be impulsively driven, but also just as impulsively regretted afterwards. 

As with narcissists, they tend to grow up in abusive abandoning families too, but their empathy, abilities to self reflect, and potential, weren't destroyed in childhood like narcissists tend to be. They generally weren't in households with a golden child and a scapegoat either, though there can be milder versions of it like the roles being switched around.  

And many tend to have a reactive form of PTSD too, especially when it comes to abandonment where their emotions fly from one reaction to another, the "I hate you; please don't leave me" kind of responses that Borderlines are noted for. In reality, the response has been attributed by some clinicians as a really rapid PTSD trigger flipping from one trauma response to another (fight, flight, freeze, fawn and avoid). The trauma responses are often so overwhelming that they don't know what they feel in the end, as they flip in and out of one impulsive traumatic response after another, and then finally freeze when they know they have been abandoned for good.  

So Borderlines can find themselves wanting to get out of the paranoid-schizoid state, of at least knocking harder on that door to let them enter "the mature state" (if they are not active addicts, that is - many of them tend to be, as it is part of "the impulsivity part" of Borderline Personality Disorder). 

Narcissists plainly can't get there, nor are they interested in a more "mature space". It's the lack of empathy that keeps them from entering "the mature space", but it also has to do with the fact that they feel safer, stronger, more self-managed, more in control of others and the emotional climate in a room if they can stay stuck in their accusatory aggressive patterns. 

Borderlines tend to be creative visionaries, and I'd argue that they are too creative for maintaining ongoing accusatory aggressive stances (like they have more openness to new perspectives, ideas and experiences than narcissists have). 

Borderlines also don't have the illusion that they self-manage very well. In fact, most of them agree that their lives are a mess. 

In contrast, narcissists have the delusion that they self-manage exceptionally well, and that all of the people around them don't or can't. And narcissists tend to think that way even when their lives are full of broken relationships, broken commitments, broken promises, feeling like no one and nothing is good enough for them, unremitted raging, the kind of aggressions that most people would regret. Their lives are often also filled with regretful affairs, firings, lies, pretending, shallow narcissistic pastimes like gambling, getting drunk, endless trash-talking about other people, going on endless trips to get away from something or someone, going to prostitutes daily or weekly, and taunting, goading and bullying others. They would never see their lives as a mess, and if there are some messes in their lives, they attribute those messes to others, always.

If they rape a woman, it's always deemed to be the woman's fault, or they will deny having raped her in the first place. - those kinds of messes. 

And, of course, if they can't convince the woman that she needs to say "I brought this upon myself" (which they actually entertain because they believe that they are *that special and charismatic* or teflon-like), or press her to say that it "never happened", she is deemed to be "all bad, all nasty, the most 'ugly horseface I've ever met', would never want to rape her let alone look at her, unbelievably stupid and will face consequences for having accused me of such aggressive, criminal acts." - i.e. the immature, never-accountable, side of them comes out. 

Borderlines are less able to go to these kinds of extremes in splitting, accusing victims, or even trying to make their victims the guilty party. In other words, if they don't have morals, or empathy, or if they spend lots of time blaming victims for everything, they are not Borderlines. They are probably Narcissists, or Sociopaths or Psychopaths. It's a good distinction to make (and yes, some Narcissists can be mis-diagnosed as Borderlines, and vice versa). 

FURTHER READING
AND VIDEOS

Why Narcissists Can Forget Their Own Bad Behavior Using "splitting" to expel bad behavior from their memory. - by Erin Leonard Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Splitting (psychology) - from Wikipedia

Narcissistic Behaviour Post-Separation: Understanding Splitting in Psychoanalytic Theory - by Sarah Squires for Get Court Ready, Improving Outcomes for Children in Family Court

Splitting - from the administrators of Mindset Therapy 

Narcissists and Splitting - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula (clinical psychologist), You Tube video
Note: interesting comments on this video too

When A Narcissist Shifts From Promising To Devastating - by Dr. Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)

A Narcissist's Outside Angel, Inside Devil - by Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)
Note: interesting comments on this video too. 

Splitting and Narcissism - Google AI from a number of articles written on the subject

splitting and a narcissistic discard - Google AI from a number of articles written on the subject

When narcissists "devalue" and "discard" (Glossary of Narcissistic Relationships) - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula (clinical psychologist), You Tube video

Splitting in the narcissist relationship | Idealization and devaluation with the narcissist - by Mindset Therapy, PLLC (You Tube)

"SPLITTING" IN BORDERLINE AND NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER : WHAT IT DOES TO US IN CHILDHOOD - by Dr. Kim Sage, Licensed Psychologist (You Tube)

Another reason making up with narcissists doesn't work: An Angry Narcissist's Non-Negotiable Stonewalling - by psychologist, Les Carter, for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)

FOUND ON FACEBOOK

From "I Am a Queen" (poster from the Phillipines on Facebook)
I included it because there may be some truth to it?
 
Do narcissists plan to destroy their relationship from the beginning ?

The truth is that the narcissist never wanted a future with you. From day one, they saw you as something that was temporary. You were disposable.

When a person is in a relationship and they're thinking about their future with that person. They're going to take the necessary steps to ensure that everything turns out ok. It's like preparing for a storm. They're going to do everything they can to prevent destruction. To prevent anything from going wrong. But the narcissist never took any steps to protect your future with them. And although you could argue that there are storms in every relationship.

They never took any steps to make things right. When you look back at your relationship, you will see that the narcissist is the storm. They caused destruction in your life. They broke you down. They turned you into nothing but a shell of what you used to be. They destroyed you mentally and emotionally. They destroyed you financially. If they were considering a future with you, they would never have done any of that.

If they have a purpose for you in the future, they're going to treat you with dignity and respect. They're going to protect you from danger or harm. They're not going to abuse you. But that's exactly what these narcissists do. They abuse you to the point where there's no going back.

Where you're not going to serve any purpose for them in the future. Because those are their true intentions. They want to break you down. So that you're not going to be good for anyone after they're gone. They know that the relationship is going to end. They know that at some point you're going to leave them and move on to something else. Every narcissist knows this. They know that they're not meant to be loved. They know that you would not willingly desire to remain around them.