Falling in Love With a Narcissist

This was a piece that I started to write for one of my many failed novel attempts.

Falling in Love With a Narcissist

Falling in love with a narcissist isn’t like falling in love with anyone else. It happens so fast, overnight almost, quickly dragged in by their dazzling wit and charm. The latter, of course, being one of the narc’s greatest tool.

Brilliant first dates soon turn into week-long stints together, his refusal to let you go a symbol of how much he cares for you. Or so you thought. Except it wasn’t, and it never will be. It’s not a symbol of how much he cares for you at all, it’s a symptom of control. That’s what the narc really wants – complete control. You’re now a player in his game, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Or is there … ?

In order to win the battle against the narcissist, you need to be one step ahead of his game. You need to understand narcissism, something that definitely won’t come easy. This is especially the case when you take into consideration that most narcs have a clever little habit of switching and changing their mood, and their minds, like the wind. To suit them … obviously. It’ll confuse the hell out of you. You won’t have a clue what’s happening for the majority of the time.

Narcissists all have the same characteristics that you won’t pick up on at first. It’ll be other people that notice it. Just like you’ll notice that something’s a little “off” with your BFF’s new BAE. For me it was the people who read my blogs who noticed that things were starting to go off-track. “It’s moving too fast!” or “He seems too good to be true!”. If he seems too good to be true, he probably is.

A narcissist is never at fault. Everything will be YOUR fault. That argument HE started will be because of something YOU said. He will flirt with other women but it’s YOUR fault because you didn’t give him enough love or devotion. Because that’s what he craves. And it’ll be the slightest thing that sets him off too – a towel left on the floor will easily become an angry rage, because he does everything and you do nothing / you’re so lazy. Because you’re lazy, you’ll have let yourself go. You’ll need to work harder to make him find you more attractive and eventually you’ll end up catering to his every need. It’s only at the end, once all is done and dusted and you’re moving on, that you’ll finally see those big red warning signs you missed way back when.

The narc is a self-centred man. Everything is about him and his needs. His social circle will change regularly depending on which of his friends can provide something he needs. He will drop friends like flies. If someone owes him money and doesn’t pay it back EXACTLY on time, he’ll fly into a blind-rage. He’ll call that “friend” every name under the sun, blocking him on Facebook and potentially even telling his wife too, even though she no idea about the loan in the first place. That’s what my narc did. He told his friend’s wife that her husband owed him money, and she ended up paying him back.

My narc also had blazing, abusive rows with his son – his own flesh and blood – picking him up and putting him down again when his needs required it. He had no conscience about it, and because of all of it – the changing moods and switching ideas, he’ll be terribly unreliable and incredibly undependable. He won’t ever be there for you, but you’ll be expected to be there for him. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Don’t you understand? His needs are more important than yours – that’s how the narcissist works, and that’s also why your relationship will never work. How can it work when only one person is catered for? Where does that leave you? Giving him everything he wants, and still doing everything he should be doing for you too?

You’ll get plenty of compliments from the narcissist, but only at the beginning. He wants to weave you into his game, get you completely and utterly dragged down by his bewitching spell. He’ll tell you everything you need to hear – how you’re the best lover he’s ever had, or how you’re the most beautiful girl in the world. You’ll be his everything … but only for a while. Once you start to play your own game, and not the one that he dictates, you won’t be his everything. You’ll be his nothing. Because if you’re not giving him what he wants and needs, he will go out and find someone else who will. And he won’t have a conscience about that either.

He manipulates people – he’ll tell you what you need to hear to get you to agree to what he wants, and he’ll do the same to everyone else too. There are no consequences. He doesn’t want to deal with them therefore he just doesn’t. If you try to project consequences onto him, he’ll just eradicate you. For me it was complete digital deletion. I was deleted from social media sites, blocked from contacting him, and told to get lost. Only for a few days though, and sometimes not even for that long. Once he realises there is no one else around to play his game, he’ll come back. He has the power over you, he knows it, and he’ll continue to use it for however long you let him.

The trick with surviving a narcissist is learning to be one step ahead. Learn these signs and traits. When something moves too fast, you need to ask yourself why. It’s called love-bombing, for your information. He’ll bombard you with love and affection from a very early point, sucking you in. He needs to make sure you fall in love with him fast to ensure you’re completely under his spell. If you’re not, you won’t play his game, and if you won’t play his game, he simply has no use for you.

Lying, irrational anger, a complete misunderstanding of what sharing actually means, and that’s before we even get to the important bit – the art of using sex to get him what he wants. And that’s what he’ll do to you, over and over again. He’ll be the best lover you’ve ever had. He’ll make you think that you won’t ever find someone who’ll connect with you on that level ever again. He’ll make you believe it too. He’s got to have something in his corner – some tool that he uses to control you. For many narcs that tool is sex.

There’s only so long you can keep pulling the wool over your own eyes when you fall in love with a narcissist, and that’s what you’re doing by staying with him and ignoring those big red warning signs. If you can relate to this, and I mean REALLY relate to it, then you’re probably falling in love with a narcissist. I would highly recommend that you get out now.

For the record, you will find someone who connects with you on that level again. And you will find a love that isn’t as hurtful as the one you’ll experience with a narcissist. Because that’s not love. That’s game-playing. If you’re silly, like me, you’ll keep banging your head against his brick wall for a while, but now day it *will* sink in. You will see it. You will understand. And then you’ll laugh.

Because he’s just not your problem anymore.

***I would really love it if you could share your blog posts and pieces with me if you’ve experienced a narcissist also. Throw your links in the comments below. If you haven’t written your tale yet, write it. Share it. I learned a lot (and managed to run away from my narc) by reading the blogs of others.

• Expected word count: 15,003
• Word count today: 1,378
• Word count to date: 12,133 (This word count business is harder than you’d think … even with the ‘cheating’!)

(Oh, and if you’re wondering what ‘Because I Can’t Write a Novel‘ is all about, click the link to be taken to the start … )