What are the signs that you are dating or have fallen for or been married to a narcissist? There are certain types of people in this world that will never make sense to the rest of us. Those are the narcissists. I don’t mean that word in the generic way that it gets thrown around these days, where anyone seems to be able to be construed as a narcissist based on one or two things they’ve done. I am talking about someone who truly fits the bill, and you know one if you have been with one because they don’t just tick the box on one count; they tick the box in almost every diagnosable criteria of a narcissist. If you have been with one in the past, I think this is going to be a very cathartic and healing article. It’s going to help a lot of people feel a lot more sane. If you are with one right now, it’s going to help you understand how much information you have about the person you are with. If you have just come out of a situation like this and you’re still in the devastation of it, I think it’s going to help you understand a lot about what has just happened to you.
They Can Be Great… Sometimes
Number one, they can be great sometimes. Despite all of your suffering, despite all of the ways they cause you pain, all of the betrayals, and all of the ways they invalidate your feelings or gaslight you, one evening they come home and they’re amazing. They’re kind, they’re sweet, they have great conversations with you, they’re playful, they are loving—they are everything that you always hoped they would be. When this happens, it’s so maddening because we think, “Well, this is it. They are capable of being this.” It’s not that they’re never capable of being what I want; they are being exactly what I always wanted right now. We then start playing the game of thinking, “If I can just keep this going, this is the relationship I always wanted with this person.” What we have to remember is that a narcissist might actually come across as a delightful person once all their needs have been met. That’s not always the case, but for some, if all their needs have been met, if they have their “supply,” as it’s known, if they feel validated and adored and there’s nothing they want for, then they might be wonderful to be around. But what you’re really experiencing is them being great because every box is being ticked for them right now. The danger is who they are when they’re trying to get their needs met. I like to think about it like a broken watch: a broken watch is right twice a day. It’s wrong most of the time, but for two brief moments a day, a broken clock is correct. Don’t mistake a relationship that works a couple of moments a day, a week, or a month with a working relationship. You have every right to be loved, considered, and seen every minute of the day.
Your Empathy Gets You Worse Treatment
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Number two, your empathy for them gets you worse treatment, not better treatment. The very quality that can make us so special—our empathy, our compassion with people, our ability to truly see behind what’s going on with the person or to understand them at their core, not just blame or judge on the surface—can actually be the thing that gets weaponized against us. Think about how often you end up forgiving someone in a relationship like this. Well, empathy is often the horse that forgiveness rides in on. Empathy is the thing that ushers in forgiveness. When we understand someone, when we know their story, when we are able to see the hardships they’ve endured in their life—the things they’ve been through that maybe feel like they uniquely predispose them to this bad behavior or treating us this way—it breeds a kind of sympathy, maybe even a kind of pity. We think, “God, they’ve had it hard, they’ve been through a lot; they can’t help themselves.” That empathy is what allows us to keep forgiving someone, to keep making allowances for their terrible behavior in the present. And of course, when we finally say enough is enough, that person will often shame us, shame the part of us that wants to feel compassionate, by saying, “How could you leave me? How could you judge me? How could you not forgive me? You know me; you know what I’ve been through. I thought you of all people would understand.” In those moments, their story and all the reasons we should see them as sympathetic can get weaponized against us. Using our empathy, which is something we pride ourselves on, is something we have to be extremely careful about. The real insidious part of this is that one would think that the person who lives on this island with the narcissist, who gives them the most sacrifice, the most compassion, the most empathy, would be the person they treat the best. Sadly, the person living on that island with them is usually the person they treat the worst. For a narcissist, our empathy isn’t seen as a beautiful quality that signifies our value. Our empathy is seen as their ticket to doing whatever they want. It is seen as their perpetual “get out of jail free” card any time they want to get their needs met in any disrespectful or terrible way. They know that at the end of any terrible behavior, they can always rely on us to forgive them because of their entitlement.
They Are Able to Move on Impossibly Quickly
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Number three, they are able to move on impossibly quickly after something terrible they have done to hurt someone they love—which may mean you. I want you to think about the things this person has done to hurt you, and as a thought experiment, imagine that you had done any of those things to them. Imagine you had caused that kind of hurt to someone you love. How long would it take you to move on from that? How hard would it be? How much work would it take for you to forgive yourself, to let go of any shame that you felt, any guilt that you felt at having done that, any anxiety that you felt at having been what you might think of as a bad person? How long would it take you? How hard would it be for you to move on from that? Then consider how easy it was for them to move on from that. Many narcissists will never apologize and expect you to move on. Even the ones that can apologize will often expect that once the apology has been issued, the situation is over. If you continue to have any feelings about the betrayal you’ve been through, the pain they’ve put you through, the hurt they’ve caused, they will start to become incredibly impatient or even angry at the fact that you are still making a big deal out of it. “Why are we still talking about this? I thought it was over.” Their response is devoid of compassion. And by the way, that doesn’t mean they won’t grovel in the beginning or perform grandiose gestures in order to win back your good graces or prevent losing you. They’re only doing that to get back to the status quo so they can get back to getting their needs met, to getting their supply again. They’re not doing it because they fundamentally feel bad or because what they have done has gone against some fundamental moral compass that they now find challenging to reconcile or forgive themselves for. What they want is for you to move on as quickly as possible because they moved on the moment they did it. In fact, for them, there was nothing to move on from. By the way, never let someone else’s ease of moving on gaslight you into believing that what they did wasn’t so bad after all. In a situation like this, their ease of moving on has nothing to do with the scale of what they did; it has everything to do with the absence of empathy and compassion that they feel when they do bad things.
What Happens When They’re Caught Red-Handed
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Number four, when caught red-handed, they will make excuses that are almost unbelievable—which, by the way, we might still believe. You might have clear-as-day proof that someone is cheating on you. You might literally find the messages on their phone, and they will say something like, “What are you doing on my phone? And come to think of it, that’s my private life and has nothing to do with you.” You’re thinking, “But we’re in a relationship.” Before you know it, you are on a different planet than the one you thought you were on, having to defend yourself for not being a good partner to this person who, three minutes ago, you found out was cheating on you. Have you ever heard of Occam’s Razor? Occam’s Razor is essentially the idea that the simplest explanation is the most likely one. I found evidence of you cheating; that’s the most likely thing that has happened: you have cheated. What they are telling you is the complete opposite of Occam’s Razor. It is the most complex, ridiculous, insane version of events that somehow leads to them being innocent or being the victim, and you being the perpetrator—though you just found that part out. It’s almost like the excuses version of Murphy’s Law. Murphy’s Law is kind of “anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” or “anything that can happen will happen.” In this case, it’s “any excuse that can be made will be made,” and even the ones that you think couldn’t be made will be made. Remember, if the excuse sounds wild, that is just about right.
They Don’t Have a Genuine Connection to Their Own Emotions
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Number five, they don’t have a genuine connection to their own emotions. This is a very subtle but important point. It’s not that they don’t have emotions at all. It’s not that they don’t experience them. In fact, narcissists experience all kinds of emotions. The difference is that narcissists are not deeply connected to their own emotions, and that is why they can have a complete absence of empathy for you. They don’t have the ability to connect with or understand their own emotions on a deeper level. They have access to emotions like rage or frustration or sadness, but they don’t experience those things deeply or reflectively. They experience them as a tool to manipulate others or as a means to an end, rather than as something that reveals something about who they are. Because of that, they lack the self-awareness that helps us to understand our own feelings and to empathize with others. When a narcissist is expressing anger at you, they are not connecting to the depth of that anger as a part of their own internal landscape; they’re simply using it to get what they want or to exert control. They can hurt you deeply and not feel any regret or guilt about it because they are not truly connecting to the impact of their actions on a deeper emotional level. They simply don’t have a full range of emotional awareness and connection that would allow them to deeply understand or care about how their behavior affects others.
