3 ways to not want to be with a narcissist.
Suffering in silence seriously sucks!
Weird sentence to start with I know, but hang with me for a second because it matters when understanding the impact of the 1st step. In fact, I’ll go ahead and ask you now to keep reading after you see what the first step is even though I understand why you won’t want to do it, and instantly lower the value of my opinion.
First Step — is simply (but powerfully) TELL YOUR INNER CIRCLE/FAMILY/FRIENDS.
Hear me out — or in this case, read me completely.
Being in a relationship — healthy or unhealthy means turning your empathy of full strength. At least, it’s supposed to mean that.
Funny thing about dating a narcissist long term is that usually means you have to turn your empathy on full blast PLUS turbo boost with Nitro kickers with complete mental gymnastics.
All of this is necessary in order to consistently twist and bend the selfish, manipulating, self-serving, uneven expectations that are at the core of being with a manipulator.
Over time — and it doesn’t take long — you learn to edit or censor yourself anytime you start to have thoughts like “I can’t believe he/she said something (or did something) so thoughtless or selfish and hurt me like that!”
You turn those thoughts into something less argument inducing like:
“I wish he/she had been more thoughtful and realized how that would hurt my feelings….BUT, I’m sure they didn’t mean to not think of me or how that would deeply hurt my feelings so I’ll use this new wound as an opportunity to show them how understanding and forgiving I am because I know they only seem to be a self-serving ass because they never had someone love them they way I do and they were hurt a lot as a child so I should never mention my pain to them…since them causing me pain hurts them too much to hear about.”
So you go all-in on studying and become experts on their pain — while surrendering your own needs and worth and respect as an offering you hope will be strong evidence of your love.
Which makes it very difficult to talk to them about moments that leave you feeling like less. So you just learn to live with feeling like less until it passes.
Normally, you could just turn to family and friends for that extra shot of self-worth. Except…that can get touchy.
You know this if you ever made the mistake of telling someone who loves you about the treatment you get from someone who keeps claiming to love you but doesn’t seem to act like they love you a lot of the time.
You tell Dad about how your jackass boyfriend has been treating you and YES he might make you feel better in certain ways — but he might also make you feel “stupid for tolerating that kind of treatment” from a “loser” or a “boy who never learned to become a man”.
Now you feel a little better in some ways, but you feel insulted in other ways — AND more importantly, you just made the odds that your boyfriend and father never have a chance to build a friendship.
So you say nothing.
Same principle applies to your friends.
If your love finds out you bashed them (rightfully or not) they will even go out of their way to remind you why they don’t want you to be so close to them or spend time with anymore.
Because you poisoned them. (you didn’t really poison them but it feels like you did to you)
All of this leaves you with:
- The behavior of your BF/GF making you feel worthless
- Your own empathy making certain to understand why its ok (which makes it worse)
- Unable to tell your friends how “less” you feel
- Unwilling to tell you own family about your own very real pain
- DEPENDENT ON THEM TO GIVE YOU WORTH AND EASE YOUR PAIN
Needing to get your consistent sense of value from a Narcissist is a certain LONG TERM path to agony.
It’s also an unavoidable aspect of being with a Narcissist long term.
And one of the most painful and brutal aspects of trying to recover from being in love with one of them.
Even when it’s a toxic, or even abusive relationship, it’s difficult to go to a friend to make you feel better.
When they give you advice, how are you supposed to know if what they’re saying is true, or if it’s unbiased? They are your friend, after all, they might be low-balling some things.
You’ll have people in healthy, happy relationships, telling you to just let it go.
But in reality, they don’t know what you’ve been through.
If you’ve been in one of these relationships, you know how dependent you become on those people. They have trained you to be that way, and it’s confusing, and painful, and beyond difficult to step out of.
You’ve attached your worth and value, your future, and meaning to someone else.
And that someone isn’t trustworthy.
Even if you know that in your head, you’ve already invested so much time and pain, willingly, with the hopes that the pain will convince them you’re the right person for them, that it’s hard to see yourself backing out at this point.
It’s even more painful.
It’s not possible to leave you decimated as a person.
So coming from someone that’s been where you are, who’s been in a years-long marriage with this sort of person, let me make my advice clear.
Stop contact with them, now.
Stop thinking if they know how much you love them will make a difference.
We’ve been programmed to believe, through Hollywood, and novels, and stories, that if you can just get this person to have that beautiful moment where they finally see all you’ve done for them, they’ll apologize, and commit themselves to you.
Don’t kid yourself any longer like they want you to do; that’s not happening.
It makes no difference whether or not they know or not how much you love them, even after they’ve broken up with you. They know, believe me they know.
In reality, love and life isn’t about who wants you and loves you the most, or the most beautiful women in Hollywood would be with some of the ugliest men in the world.
Odds are, no one is going to love the beautiful Hollywood actress, or the Victoria’s Secret model, more than the loneliest guy on the planet.
What attracts people, is a sense of accomplishment, and purpose, and strength.
Every time you reach back out to them, you are voting against yourself.
They chances are, especially when they’re with another person already, they think someone else is stronger, more determined, and more assured of who they are than you.
So how does it help if you’re trying to get them back, despite everything they’ve done to you?
Saying “You are my life!” or “You are my purpose!”
That’s the best, fastest way to lose someone.
If you have any hope of winning them back, it’s to not contact them. But I hope most of all, by not contacting them, you realize you don’t need them, and you shouldn’t want them.
So my advice to you is, once you’ve cut contact with them, find something else that you’re good at, and choose to put yourself around people that assure you of who you are.
Choose to do things that give you that sense of worth.
Because chances are, while you were in that toxic relationship, they were keeping you, in one way or another, from doing what made you assured of who you are.
So they could further convince you how worthless you are without them.
You have to break out of that.
So plunge yourself into that, what makes you more assured of your own capabilities.
And remind yourself that while you do that, and while you keep from contacting them, you are showing them that you do have strength, and purpose, and meaning, beyond them.
You are convincing two people while you do that; yourself, and that toxic person. And you’re showing them you do have worth beyond them.
And finally, as rough as this is, surround yourself with people who will remind you of the bad things.
Because as you look back on a relationship like this, you tend to forgive the bad things. And when you do that, you forget those bad moments, it’s gone, forever.
So you need those people there, reminding you, no, it wasn’t all good. Or good at all. Or acceptable.
And look, forgiveness is one thing. Forgiveness is, “I choose not to want to get even, and I don’t want something bad to happen to you because of what you did to me.”
It means you won’t carry around that anger and refuse to treat you like another human.
But forgiving is not forgetting, and don’t forget what they did, and who they are.
Don’t forget all the times they said you were trash, you won’t amount to anything, you’re useless without them, you can’t accomplish anything.
So you need those people in your life that say, “I know you still miss them, but they hit you, they said things to you that were beyond not okay.”
Chances are, it’s hard to admit to people what that person did to you, because a lot of the time you don’t even want to admit it to yourself.
But it’s, normal. And it’s healthy to admit it, so you can face it, and others can hear it.
So listen to the people you’re telling. Let your friends and family remind you of how horribly they treated you, how disgusting their behavior was towards you, until it gets you angry again.
It’s normal and healthy to be angry, but it’s what you do with that anger that determines whether or not you do something good or evil, legal or illegal.
Never do anything illegal, or dangerous, don’t let them take something else from you.
But dwell on the truth of who they are, until you can see how bad they are, and you can finally see some self worth again.
Don’t be their plaything, or their puppet, anymore, just get away from them, and rediscover the person they tried to hide from you.
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