Her head was spinning and she couldn’t breathe. Her chest felt heavy.
What was wrong?
These were the physical signs that at the age of 37 Natalia was experiencing the brutality of a smashed entitlement.
She had the rug pulled from under her by her once adoring partner, 38-year-old Javier. Ever since they met he had idolized her; admired her, showered her with gifts and vacations – anticipated her every need and want. But now his attention wasn’t on her anymore. He was grumpy, complaining and apparently overwhelmed with his work and his obligations to his widowed mother. He spent more time taking the dog for a walk than cuddling up with her on the couch as they had once enjoyed.
Natalia was in the grips of smashed entitlement.
All the things she had felt entitled to vanished.
Her lost place on Javier’s pedestal of attractiveness reeked of smashed entitlement.
Her experience of being cast as a good lover was now another smashed entitlement.
By making her feel like a queen to be served and adored just for being herself was intoxicating. It led to an entitlement that she was owed unquestioning adulation. But now that pedestal lost it’s footing, cracked and brought Natalia down to a brutal earth, bruising her preciousness – demonstrating the frailness of her ego, bludgeoning her with a smashed entitlement.
The fury of a smashed entitlement – the debasement shock
The speed at which she went from feeling idolized and special to debasement, rejection and humiliation was astounding. Worst of all, Javier had dared to switch his focus to his work and his mother. The fury at this reversal and placing his attachments elsewhere erupted to equal the depth of the shock that left Natalia reeling.
How dare he give her his devotion (albeit blind) and now place it elsewhere in places Natalia couldn’t compete? He had no right to do so. On the contrary, SHE had the right to punish and bring him to heel!
The conflict of a smashed entitlement – should Natalia get her place back in Javier’s heart by acting out or by being above it all?
One part of her was having the biggest temper tantrum of her life, hoping that it would scare Javier into putting her back in the center of his radar and throw everyone and everything else out.
Another part of her didn’t want to show the messy turbulent emotions swirling inside her. She wanted to be able to suppress, hide, and or cover up her embarrassment at her feelings, needs and demands. She wanted the fire without the stinky fuel.
So she oscillated between the two:
First she felt righteous in her indignation, threatening Javier in a desperate manner, believing that he would cower, fear losing her completely and be a good boy again.
Next she felt that she wanted to be superior by pretending that his adoration had never really meant all that much anyway.
Natalia switched from righteous fury to disowning her needs for adoration, which made her head spin even more, as neither worked. The stress caused by her fear of losing Javier altogether pushed her into another escalatory stage:
The fury of smashed entitlement: revenge enacted through a prism of deserved punishment
In order to regain her emotional balance Natalia seized on the only thing she could to feel powerful and strong: revenge.
Despite intellectually appreciating that revenge, especially conducted in a manipulative and surreptitious way was not morally acceptable, she justified that choice in the following way:
• He deserves to be hurt because he took away the one thing that I treasured
• He didn’t care about my feelings, so why should I care about his?
• He can’t get away with this, because it will make me into an unworthy person and I can’t bear that
• I can’t allow him to have so much power over me, so I have to get the upper hand and plan to hit him where it hurts, even if it means I destroy the man whose adoration I depend upon.
• He deserves to be wounded more than he wounded me, because he committed the cardinal sin of ceasing to devote himself to me. So I don’t have to feel guilty about plotting my revenge. It’s all on him.
The fury of smashed entitlement: the flames of revenge are doused by a sapped source of power
Natalia had fantasies of Javier regretting his mistake in shifting away from her. She imagined him begging to return to their previous life when his mother died, or when his work plans collapsed. She adorned herself with powers of taking away any pleasure he anticipated from taking care of his mother or business customers. She wanted to make him suffer the same sense of loss and terror of the future that she had, only more so. He had to learn his lesson and come to his senses. The revenge plan was to take precious things away from him, the way he had done to her.
She threatened him with losing their dog, vacation home, new car and season tickets to his favorite team. The intention was to make him feel so guilty about rejecting her that he would have to pay for all these things but lose access – they were her prizes! The power it gave her was thrilling and more so when she imagined his pained face.
However, Javier didn’t cower and beg forgiveness. He didn’t atone, or pledge even greater allegiance. He just agreed to pay for the obligations he had taken on without begging for access. He knew that she didn’t like taking care of the dog, had no taste for the sports games, and hated the maintenance of their holiday home.
Natalia was flattened when he just calmly agreed to keep things going as before. He was moving on and wasn’t wedded to the things she thought she could tempt/threaten him with. The depths of her insecurity echoed inside her, giving vent to bouts of protest crying that petered out into a cold sense of emptiness that scared her.
Now she smashed her own sense of entitlement. Her calculated punitive strategy had no power and left her feeling worse than rejected. It made her feel ineffective and useless. In a desperate crisis state Natalia began individual psychotherapy.
The fury of smashed entitlement: recovering from the devaluation after being idealized
Coming to terms with the fact that she was idealized and not loved was a brain twister for Natalia. She clung to the belief that they were synonymous until she was shown the mirror in therapy. To her being idolized was love and the only type of love worth having. Natalia was broken hearted when she came to reflect on her marital relationship and how it was based on images they had of one another that were anything but realistic.
They both stunted the growth of their true selves to live in the mutually idealistic paradise which at some point can’t resist the pull of gravity and falls, breaking into irreparable pieces.
In the real world entitlements can’t survive, as they are based on unhealthy dependencies and co-dependencies. Smashing entitlements are the only way to allow for love to arise from a sense of genuine care for the other rather than an entitlement for one to be enthroned and the other enslaved – even when they switch roles from one to the other.
The most potent defense Natalia put up against the mirror was denying that she could be as mean, cruel, unthoughtful, and as selfish as Javier. She had to wear her sense of superiority as a shield against complete disintegration. But as she got nutriously fed by her therapist trained in psychodynamic relational work, she was able to feel better about herself. Then and only then could she tolerate having similar negative HUMAN traits.
The fury of smashed entitlement: reinflating the self-image with authenticity and genuine regard
Smashed entitlement made room for meaningful relationships without expectations or proof of commitment. Natalia is on the way there, as she is discovering worthy things about herself that don’t the reflected life of idealization to make her so.
© Jeanette Raymond, Ph.D. 2026
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