Narcissist Boyfriend and His “Mother-Whores”

Who’s to Blame and How to Fix Him

If you are in a relationship with a narcissist, you know all too well the difficulties that you already face. Communication is difficult and strained. You are criticized a lot for no reason. Your self-esteem may be suffering because your mate isn’t able to meet all of your needs in the relationship consistently.

With an epidemic of 1 in 4 people having narcissism, odds are pretty good that if you went to find another partner, they would have narcissistic traits, too.

So, you work towards the relationship with the narcissist, ever growing and changing like the rest of us. But there is something more beneath the surface of your narcissist. He tells you that he loves you, and he might jump through hoops to show you this. However, other girls are constantly turning his head. He practically gets whiplash trying to climb over you to look at them.

Your narcissist might have a great addiction to women. He might have a
porn collection the size of Alaska. He might talk to other girls or fantasize over other girls while he is sleeping at night. He may be ducking out and texting other girls. Or, it may be just that he has stopped or slowed his frequency of sex with you. He used to be a stallion in the bedroom, but lately he falls asleep snuggling with the television remote. You always hear about the women ‘having a headache’ when it comes to sex. But it seems as if your man is always the one turning you down for it.

You want to feel needed and loved, but you don’t know why he is treating you this way. He used to be romantic, maybe even sending flowers and staying up talking to you on the phone all night long. Now you can’t seem to drag his attention away from other things. Is it something you did? Is it something you said? Are you not sexy, funny, witty or complicated enough to keep his interest?

You start to doubt yourself, as if this is your fault. Since he is a narcissist, he would lead you to believe that it is your fault.

Maybe he even calls you fat or ugly to save his own frail ego. Narcissists don’t have intuition inside themselves the way that you might. He doesn’t know what’s wrong, either. But he doesn’t want to look stupid in front of you. So instead of him looking stupid, he will simply direct the blame for the failing sex life onto you. He will say that it is because you don’t do things that he wants, or because you fall asleep at night, or because you don’t talk to him a certain way, or rub his back.

The truth of the matter is much more complicated than even he can grasp. And, believe me, he won’t seek to find the answers. He will be angry with you if you share the things that I am about to share with you. He will tell you that my story is garbage and that the problem isn’t him. This is the natural narcissist way. Just ignore his tirade and plunge on ahead in my story so that you can be better educated on the reasons that your man does some of the things that he does.

The truth is that many men (a very large percentage), and particularly narcissists, are afflicted by something called the virgin-whore complex, or the Madonna-Whore Complex.

What is the Madonna-Whore Complex, you might be asking? That is the purpose of this article…

First, I must give you some background and help you break down a couple things: If you have read any of other texts on narcissists, you will quickly learn that narcissism is a learned group of self-absorbed and negative traits that were passed down to your partner by his caregivers or someone close to him. Does he have a narcissistic mother? What about a narcissistic father? He will
have portrayed them as being ‘perfect’ parents and raising him perfectly (because a narcissist would never admit that his perfect body/mind/soul/being was raised by anything less than perfect).

But look really close at his parents with an objective view. REALLY look at them, like you have never looked at them before. Go hang out at their house awhile and analyze their speech and thought patterns. Ask them questions to see how self-absorbed they are. Ask them about things that happened with their son was born, and how they handled their role as parents.

Most of these narcissistic sons had mothers with narcissistic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder. Do they talk down and criticize you for seemingly no reason? Do they view you as though their son is too ‘perfect’ to be with the likes of you? Are they constantly pushing your boundaries and making you uncomfortable? Were they a hovering helicopter parent, who couldn’t seem to stop interjecting in their child’s life. Do they have difficulty accepting your differences, and the differences of others?

When you go to a family reunion, does everyone seem angry and on edge? Do they bicker to each other about how things really should be, none ever seeing the other person’s point of view? Is the air filled with constant debate instead of warm and open conversation? Do people storm off or get defensive? Are there people who beg all the attention in the room, or come late purposely expecting a grand entrance? If you see a lot of these signs, your narcissist may have come from narcissistic parents or a long line of narcissists in their family.

If his mother or father appear to be narcissistic, this is where he learned his narcissism. Even if they aren’t narcissistic, did they have other personality disorders, like OCPD or OCD? Did they have issues of drug dependency, sex addiction, or other problems that may have turned them cold and aloof towards their children? Were they frazzled with too many kids, and went into survival mode?

All of these things can cause a child’s parents to be cold and aloof towards them in subtle ways. Look to see if hugs were easily given out and received. Do they give appropriate approval and encourage autonomy in their adult child? How were they when he was little? Were his feelings invalidated. Was he told to ‘toughen up’ and ‘boys don’t cry’. Was he largely ignored because there were too many other siblings in the home?

The cold truth is that any of the things that were done in his childhood that caused him to be narcissistic could also have contributed to his Madonna-Whore Complex.

The Madonna-Whore Complex stems from a relationship between a mother and a son where the son views his mother as ‘perfect’. To him, he can see no flaws in her.

This is particularly true for narcissists. As I mentioned before, narcissists cannot admit that their own perfection would have come from someone much less perfect than what they view themselves to be. He may have the perfect relationship with his mother, and odds are good that he is a mamma’s boy — even though he will claim not to be (since he is sensitive about his mom always pushing his boundaries and sensitive about anyone controlling him in any way — he will never admit to being a mamma’s boy, but he is).

The trouble with this complex is that the men who view their mother as perfect will grow to seek a ‘perfect’ wife who mimics many of her traits, or is similar to her in any way. This isn’t unusual, since you (as a woman) are probably also looking for a man who mimics your father in some way. It is natural to seek a partner who is like our role models were and who will fit well into our families. It is not natural to seek a ‘perfect’ partner, because all humans are flawed on some level and are ever-growing and changing.

Say this man does seek and find the wife who is ‘perfect’ in his mind. You do everything he asks. You worship the ground he walks on the way his mother did. You love him unconditionally, no matter how nasty, rude or abusive he is to you. He’s got it made, right? Now you should have a wonderful and fruitful marriage, babies, and grow old together… Wrong…

Just after the babies and marriage, his complex emerges. Because he views you as the perfect wife and mother, he starts to subconsciously compare you to the ‘perfect’ maternal figures in his life. He starts to feel as if he doesn’t want to defile you with sex. He feels as if sexual women are naughty and forbidden the way his mom may have taught him.

He was told not to look at ‘dirty’ women, so he grew up instead craving and lusting after what was forbidden to him. He sought out a ‘clean’ woman to raise his children and marry. Clean women in his mind don’t have dirty sex. And they certainly don’t participate in fetishes or sex talk. So he stops broaching these topics with you, even though the two of you may have been open previously.

His mind splits the virgin from the whore, and the two cannot coincide in one body in his mind. He subconsciously starts to think of you more and more in reference to his mother (because you are now caring for his children, house, and his needs the way she does). He can’t bear the thought of having sex with his mother. And soon, he also cannot bear to have sex with you.

He starts to look at you in a platonic way. He wants to still play house with you on some level, but he seeks excitement in the other girls around him that he can’t have, instead of focusing on you. He may not be cheating (yet). He may still be devoted to you. But he can’t seem to shake the naughty ideas in his head. He can’t stop looking at other girls. He can’t seem to stop checking out his porn collection. And his head is filled with all the sex he thinks he could have somewhere else, instead of seeking out fun ways to spice up the sex life in the bedroom with you.

The more he denies these deep sexual needs that he has, the more he looks at you with contempt, resent and scorn. You are the reason that he can’t seek sexual excitement. All the while you are there, wondering why he won’t seek it with you. Wondering why he doesn’t initiate sex anymore. Wondering why he is no longer interested. Blaming yourself for all of these things.

Meanwhile, you are also growing restless and bored. The sex that used to help you overlook some of his annoying flaws is now gone. He grates on your nerves more and more each day. You have physical needs that he isn’t meeting. You have no outlet for your sexual tension. You’re tired of him looking around at girls, so your eyes start wandering now, too. Or you lose yourself in love stories and movies, pining for your own romantic prince to sweep you off your feet like he might have done when you met him. You wonder: is this all there really is to life?

The Madonna-Whore complex is relatively common. If you listen to all of your married female friends, many of them will say they are having sex a lot less than normal. Many of them will also say they stopped bothering to have sex with their boring husband who only now initiates vanilla sex instead of the wild and fun sex that he used to provide. You resign to the fact that married sex stinks, and now you are another statistic in a mostly sexless marital community.

There are other signs that your man may have Madonna-Whore Complex. If he has obsessions with certain actresses when he is watching movies, especially for them being portrayed as ultra-pure or ultra-sexy in the film. If he bashes other women in general. If he treats them as if they are on a pedestal or subpar in his eyes, without viewing each one as an individual.

Another sign is when he has always had trouble talking to women. If his dating history is kind of splotchy or nonexistent. If he has always seemed shy or aloof toward girls. If he has always had intimacy and bonding issues with them. If he has a history of very short relationships where the girls caught wind of his peculiar personality and ran like the wind.

Add to this the behavior of him always asserting his boundaries when there is a woman around, afraid that she is going to smother him or ‘run his life’ or take his things from him. Or he is always talking up his experience with women or acting arrogant about his ‘player’skills. He has a history of lining up girls to ‘conquer’ them as if they were material objects instead of caring, feeling human beings. He objectifies women by obsessing over their photos and videos online.

He may feel inferior to women but constantly assert his superiority over them to cover up his feelings of inadequacy. He may have been especially experimental in the bedroom when you first met him, sort of like he had an unmet sexual curiosity about the female body. He may seem to worship women or have made a lot of bad decisions based on women, because he grew up doing the same with his own mother. He may rely on silly things to win women over, like cars and money, instead of relying on himself.

A strong man without Madonna-Whore complex feels confident around women. He can talk to them like they are friends. He doesn’t need their company, but he enjoys each individual personality for who she is inside and out. He views their strengths and weaknesses and treats them as he would want to be treated. He doesn’t put them down or defile them. He doesn’t force himself on them, nor does he use coercion, intimidation, threats, tantrums or anger to put them in their place. He respects their thoughts and ideas, and listens to them in a way that is real and genuine. He does this with ease because he views women as being his equals instead of his antagonists.

The truth is that these are the men who saw their mother falter in the their childhood. Maybe she took up with another mate and stopped paying as much attention to her son. Maybe he found out about his mother’s infidelity, lying, or some other weaknesses that she had. This helped him to resolve the MadonnaWhore complex in his mind so that he could go on to seek a maternal and sexual woman all in one body.

Many of us girls do not seek out a man who is comfortable about women, because we think that he will be the player. The truth of the matter is that the person who is more likely the player is the one who has this Madonna-Whore split in how they view women, some being far superior to them, and some being far superior than them. Their inability to resolve a sexual and maternal being in one body will cause them to seek 2 separate and distinct women, each with the qualities that he ultimately wants. But he cannot wrap his mind around such women.

As you can see, men from all walks of life exhibit Madonna-Whore complex.

You have 3 options at this point:

1. Have a sexless marriage (maybe your sex drive isn’t that high anyways) and hope he doesn’t cheat or leave. This works for some couples, particularly where the two of you can refrain from satisfying your sexual urges with someone else. Many marriages continue to stay successful this way, especially if the couple is truly connected in other areas that help them to continue feeling closeness and intimacy even without the sex.

2. Force him to have crazy bedroom sex (which might cause him emotional trauma seeing as how he compares you to his mother). Some couples are able to break through this and start having more and more communication with each other that helps them re-discover their sexual sides and reconnect with each other physically. Some couples have success seeking a sex therapist to spice up their bedroom activity. For this to work, he will need to somehow resolve the Madonna-Whore complex in himself, finally realizing that he can have sex and love with the same girl.

3. Or you can get out of the relationship. This is a good option if your narcissist is physically abusive, dishonest, cheating, or doing other things to seriously hurt you or any children you have together.

I hope that my article provided you with a lot of information that you can digest in a short period of time that will help you to assess your own situation and make informed decisions on your relationship. All women and men deserve to have a loving relationship with a partner who will treat them well. There are many reasons that a narcissist is a difficult person to have a relationship with — the Madonna-Whore complex throws a lot more complication into trying to make a marriage with a narcissist work for the both of you. You must continuously analyze your happiness with the happiness of your partner to determine if the two of you are compatible enough to grow and change together. I try to provide useful and relevant information for you, using my expertise in the dating and marriage arena.