Why Is It Never Enough?

I took on a second consulting contract so that we could move to the flat Mallika wanted. I gave up Sunday cricket because she said it showed where my priorities were. I learnt to cook Thai food. I have not seen my college friends since March.

Last night she stood in the new living room and said the Mehras have a terrace. I do not know what else there is to give.

Jatin, there is nothing else. That is the answer, though not in the way you fear.

“For whom?”

The psychologist Ramani Durvasula says that one sentence comes up with almost everyone she meets who has a narcissistic partner. “I never feel like I am enough.” She has a two-word reply. “For whom?”

We are raised to believe that effort produces results. Study and you pass. Work and you are promoted. She points out that this rule holds in most of life and fails in close relationships, and fails completely with a partner of this kind. You conclude that you are falling short. It rarely occurs to anyone, at first, that the other person cannot be pleased.

A bucket with a hole in it

Her explanation starts with what such a person lacks. Underneath the confidence, she says, is a sense of worth that cannot hold itself up. It has to be topped up from outside, all day, with admiration, attention, service and success. Clinicians call what flows in narcissistic supply.

She gives two pictures of it. You are a cargo ship arriving at the same harbour every morning, unloading, and sailing home empty. And your partner is a bucket with a hole in its base. However much goes in, the level does not rise.

So the trouble is not that you are too little. Nothing would be enough. The flat was not, and a terrace will not be either.

There is a harder part. Supply goes stale. What thrilled her in the first year is expected by the fifth, and she may begin to look to other people for the fresh kind.

How it crept up on you

Durvasula uses a military term, mission creep, for the way a short campaign turns into a long war by small steps. Nobody asked you on the first date to give up your friends. It went one concession at a time, and you adjusted to each.

The people she interviewed described the same slide. One stayed thin and changed her hair. One earned all the money and kept the children quiet. One borrowed money to keep up the lifestyle his partner wanted. One rang every hour to report where she was. Many said they ended up as someone they did not recognise.

The word you say most

She would like someone to invent an app that counts how often a person says “I’m sorry” in a day. Her bet is that the highest scores belong to people in your position.

Most of those apologies are not for anything you did. They mean: please do not be angry. Please do not let this spoil the weekend. Because your partner never takes the blame for anything, you end up apologising for both of you.

Her suggestion is to acknowledge and not grovel. If dinner is criticised, you might say: “Yes, it is pasta again. It was the quick thing on a busy day.” That is a fact. It is not a plea.

Doing and being

Durvasula makes an observation I keep returning to. A good relationship does not need this much doing. Respect and kindness are not tasks. If the whole thing stays afloat only while you are bailing, the bailing is the relationship.

You have run the experiment for years. More effort has not produced more warmth. You could stop adding and watch what happens. That would tell you something too.

If you are afraid of what will happen when you stop apologising or stop giving way, take that fear seriously. Talk to someone you trust, or to a counsellor, before you change anything.