Idealise-devalue-discard cycle
A described sequence in which a person puts a partner or colleague on a pedestal, turns critical and contemptuous, then drops them abruptly, sometimes returning later. It is overused: a relationship that cooled and ended is not this.
What drives it
When it is real, the person is relating to an image rather than to the other person: idealising while the other supplies admiration, devaluing once ordinary flaws or needs appear, discarding when the image can no longer be sustained. It is associated with narcissistic and borderline organisation.
How it shows
Work
A new hire is the CEO's star ('best hire we've ever made') and sits in every meeting; within months she is 'not senior enough', cut out of the loop, then managed out abruptly. The CEO has done this with several people, and the next star is already being praised. The repetition across people is the signal.
Relationships
A swept-off-your-feet start, then mounting criticism ('you've changed', 'you're not who I thought you were'), then an abrupt exit, often with a new partner lined up, sometimes followed by hoovering.
Self
As target: confusion about what you did wrong and longing for the early version. As possible actor: excitement about someone curdles quickly into disgust at their flaws, and you have told yourself 'they fooled me' about more than one person.
What tells it apart
Splitting: Splitting is the internal all-good or all-bad perception and can flip within a day; the cycle is a behavioural sequence that plays out over weeks or months and ends in an exit.
Limerence: When limerence fades, interest dims without contempt; in the cycle the devaluation is active, contemptuous and often public.
A test
Look for the same arc with several people, not one: a single relationship that soured is ordinary; a repeated pedestal-to-contempt pattern is the signal.
Questions to carry
- Across several relationships, how often does the same arc appear, from pedestal to contempt to sudden exit?
- When someone I admired showed an ordinary flaw, what happened to my picture of them?
How strong the research is
weak. A popular description from online abuse-recovery writing, never tested as a cycle; it borrows from clinical accounts of idealisation and devaluation and is often applied to any relationship that ended badly.
Where it comes from
Online narcissistic-abuse communities, 2000s; draws on Otto Kernberg's accounts of idealisation and devaluation, 1975