But then, one day sooner or later, comes a DISAGREEMENT. It may be a genuine, or a provoked one by the narcissist him/herself.
You suddenly, and usually pretty unexpectedly, get to feel their wrath - what you never thought existed inside the nice person you knew. You are SHOCKED. He/she makes you feel bad about what you have done and said, or haven’t done and haven’t said. You are left questioning what went wrong, and why they have taken your disagreeing so personally. You feel terrible - mainly about yourself because they make you believe the problem lies with you not them...
They may gaslight you - a technique used to distort reality and statements of a conversation, trying to convince you that you did/said something you have NOT. They repeat it so many times, often very skilfully changing your own sentences making them mean something else. It is hard to catch up with what has been said when your own logic is turned against you. CONFUSION sets in as the smoke screen of distortions overshadows the truth and logic in your arguments. You feel like a FOOL for disagreeing, feeling sorry for them as they either look like the victim, or the saint who is trying to save you from insanity. Yep, it is extremely hard to win any arguments as they make you believe you said things which have never left your own mouth. You feel miserable, ridiculed and anxious, wondering if you are GOOD ENOUGH FOR THEM to be nice to you ever again.
They can be PASSIVE-AGRESSIVE, 'sandwiching' nasty digs in between pleasant comments. Upon your questioning they tell you how you failed to understand the double meaning which 'of course wasn't ment to be attacking you'. This MIND-FUCKERY is how they chip away your sense of Self in time. They drain your energy by all the confusion and questioning you are stuck with on repeat. The toxicity of such relationship erodes your self-worth whenever you focus on your own shortcomings, whenever you question why they are WITHDRAWN and cold towards you, ignoring your needs.
See, their GAME is one of feeding you with a 'high calorie attention diet' in the morning, and starving you for the rest of the day. They throw you some crumbs few days later, leaving you crave the attention you know they are capable of. They do this to make you feel so miserable it hurts.
While keeping you starving for attention, your INSECURITIES are being nicely fed. And they get stronger because you are left wondering why are they withholding their love, thinking there must be something seriously wrong with you. Your pain may even leave you suicidal. You would do anything NOT to feel the pain of their rejection!
Then, out of the blue, the prince charming arrives on a white horse to save you! You get your high calorie meal to soothe the heart ache and feel much better about yourself. The world is happy again. It is how you end up riding the rollercoaster of ups and downs in a relationship with a person who’s niceness to others is as illusionary as their love and care for you. And once you are on this highly ADDICTIVE, hellish ride, it is almost impossible to leave...
Narcissist never was and never will love you, nor truly care for you for many reasons. The main being they subconsiously HATE themselves.
They are out of touch with themselves and with who they truly are, lacking emotional feedback because they are scared of emotions. How could someone who is totally emotionally disconnected from him/herself share a genuine, loving connection?! These people are emotionally unavailable to themselves, hence they cannot be emotionally available to you!
Still wondering why they keep you at an arm length, making excuses why they CANNOT COMMIT to you? Well they do this because they are scared of a real emotional involvement, real intimacy and a true connection. Anything beyond superficial connecting is perceived a WEAKNESS. Their emotional disability is behind their lack of empathy, their incapablinty of a genuine concern for others. Precisely because they cannot imagine how others truly feel it is easy for them to cause pain.
Why do they find it impossible to spit a genuine apology? It would mean they have lost the battle, disappointed in themselves feeling like a failure. Which sends them on their own guilt trip for letting themselves down. For letting their mask slip, exposing to others the inadequate person they subconsiously believe they are. Their 'trump card' when cornered by your logic, is ‘POOR ME, I feel so misunderstood by you!’. Which is the ultimate attempt to shift the blame, and send YOU on a guilt trip.
How do they fool us? They can IMITATE emotions to mirror us. Which is how they got under our skin in the first place - by making us think they are similar to us. When everything else fails to convince us they are able to display tears. Beware though as their tears simply represent how sorry they feel for themselves, never because they are genuinely sorry for what they have done.
You will find it almost impossible to assert yourself, as you always come out as the one who needs help...
And you really need it. Urgently! You need help from your trusted friends and family who can support you in these most difficult times of restoring your sense of Self, worth and sanity, while battling your withdrawal symptoms from such toxic relating. That circle of friends - your ’sanity circle’ - your partner has systematically cut you off from so that she/he can rule your mind and emotions, feeling totally in control. S/he has you where s/he wants you to be - up or down, right, left, or centre...
Similar to a drug rehab, you need total isolation from your ex - NO CONTACT AT ALL!
Because believe me, they will tempt you. They know what emotional stings to pull to lure you back into the relationship, making you feel you made the biggest mistake of your life. (But you now know you cannot assert yourself with logic arguments, you also know about their trickery and blame shifting game.) On top of that they will totally IGNORE your boundaries, attempting to contact you in every way possible, shower you with 'surprises' to make you change your mind. If being nasty doesn't work they up their game. A totally new level of love bombing emerges, skilfully soothing all those painful wounds of yours.
Why do they know precisely which wounds to soothe? Because THEY caused them!
They have got your insecurities mapped, they know where you are hurting most.
Rest assured that the ONLY reason for wanting you back is because THEY now really need you. NOT because they truly love you and care for you, NOT because they terribly miss you, NOT because they 'made a huge mistake', NOT because they realised how badly they treated you, nor that they have changed in this short time!
They want you back for a single, most selfish reason: to feel good about themselves yet again.
You leaving their game left them feeling pretty POWERLESS - a feeling they cannot cope with. They lost control over you and feel like that unwanted, insignificant, unloveable little boy/girl again. And that really HURTS, you know? They want you back so that they can love themselves through you. So that they can see the loving, genuinely caring, significant person, they are incapable of believing they can ever be...
Thank you for reading. If my article contributed to understanding yourself, please be generous and share it with others.
Copyright © 2016 Michaela Patel